A/N: Thanks to Zettel for pre-reading once again. Remember, It is always darkest just before the dawn.
But it always takes so damn long
Before I feel how much my eyes have darkened
Fear hangs in a plane of gun smoke
Drifting in our room
So easy to disturb
With a thought, with a whisper
With a careless memory
"Careless Memories"
Duran Duran
December 1, 2012
Zurich, Switzerland
From across the street, Chuck reaffirmed he was in the right place. The number on the building facade was correct. It was just as Sarah had described it to him years ago, one night when they were lying side by side in the dark as the train moved through the mountains on the way to Zurich from Paris. The music shop. Chuck didn't read German, or Swiss German, a slight variation of the language, but he could guess what the sign said, based on his memory. The proprietor sold instruments, tuned instruments, and offered music lessons.
Rolande Blaser, the proprietor, was Sarah's contact. From the back room of his music shop, he procured illegal documentation, weapons, and various other elicit items, like sodium pentathol. It was a human and veterinary sedative, used in dental procedures and minor surgery, but in high enough doses, was also a truth serum. Chuck himself had been dosed with it five years ago, so he could attest to its effectiveness. Chuck hoped the man was still here, still doing the side jobs. Chuck remembered the code phrases Sarah had mentioned, but there was no way to contact the man unless in person, no way to ensure he was still in business.
Chuck had no backup plan without Blaser. Alarm had long since faded to indifference, now in almost everything he did. When he wasn't burning with rage, he was utterly apathetic. Chuck had always had a plan, maybe not always a foolproof plan, but a plan. Now, he was making it up as he went along, step united by step only by his need for vengeance. it. He thought perhaps Blaser could be dead, or have moved, or simply retired. But if that was so, he would just go and search on the computer until he found something else. Something else would be more sinister, more dangerous. He almost shrugged as he thought it. He had become indifferent to risk.
He walked slowly across the street, doing his best to hide the limp he had acquired as he'd struggled with Parsons over the past 48 hours. His ankle was still swollen, throbbing. He felt the pinch in his side from his bruised ribs. His eyes ached from the pain in his head, his heartbeat thumping in time with the pulsing he felt in the lump on the back of his skull. His bloodied knuckles were hidden deep in his pockets.
Shooting Parsons with his tranquilizer dart outside the coffee shop in Berlin had been child's play. Parsons had walked almost straight to Chuck, hidden in the dark alley. Chuck was sure the man never knew what hit him as he fell to the ground unconscious. Chuck had taken the man's gun, still warm from killing Deutch, and tucked it into his belt. It only flitted across his mind for a second, that he had touched a murder weapon with his bare hands.
Chuck had no assurances he would not need to use the gun for the same purpose should he lose control of Parsons.
His conscience, his wish to uphold his promise to Sarah, was dangerously close to the edge of the event horizon, the black hole in his chest, where his heart had once been stationed. He was a hollow man, nearly inhuman.
Chuck had dragged Parsons into his vehicle and driven back to the hotel. All of Chuck's things were packed in the trunk. He never left the vehicle. He purchased two train tickets using his computer; another phony name and the information he had found in Parsons' wallet. It could have been real or fake; it was of no consequence to Chuck. He waited for Parsons to awake from the tranquilizer.
When Parsons awoke, bound and gagged in the backseat, terror in his eyes, Chuck felt an unfamiliar thrill of satisfaction. How did it feel to be the prey instead of the predator? Chuck caught a glimpse of himself in the rearview mirror as he turned, shocked for a moment by his own reflection. His eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed, above an uneven gruff of two days' worth of facial hair that covered his chin and cheeks. I look how I feel, he thought.
Chuck took the man's gun and pointed it at him over the back of the seat. "You are Walter Parsons. I know you work for Nicholas Quinn. I know where you've been and what you were selling to Tsetse from Japan." The terror in the man's rheumy brown eyes deepened. "Do you know who I am?" It was more of a threat than a question.
Parsons muttered behind the gag.
"Nod your head, yes or no," Chuck demanded coldly.
Parsons nodded. The word he mumbled sounded like 'Bartowski.' Chuck expected that. Quinn knew him as Bartowski, not Carmichael, however that had come about. Perhaps Volkoff when he was still Volkoff? Volkoff had known Chuck's identity, although Volkoff, as he had been, never learned Chuck was the Intersect.
"You're coming with me to Zurich. By train. So these are the rules. You board the train with me and stay quiet. Then it's night-night for you and I'll see you in Zurich. You have information that I intend to extract from you. Once I get it, I will let you go. You become a problem, and you're dead. Do not pass Go. I move on to another man. You are convenient but expendable. Understand?"
Parsons mumbled again, shifting his weight uncomfortably. It was unintelligible, but Chuck got the gist. Incredulity.
"Shut up," Chuck snapped over the mumbling. "Maybe Quinn told you I was…weak. Soft. Maybe I was. But he cured me of that. Lucky you. You get to reap the whirlwind."
Chuck's injuries had been acquired in an altercation on the way to the train station. Of course, Parsons would try to escape. That was expected. Chuck was no longer the Intersect, but he had trained for a long time to be almost as good. He had once beaten Daniel Shaw with his bare hands, so he was confident in his fighting skills.
Daniel Shaw. Just the thought fueled the anger inside Chuck.
But then another voice in his head, that sounded too much like Sarah for his comfort. How are you any different than him now? How different is your revenge quest than his?
Innocence was relative, wasn't it? Sarah had done nothing wrong, yet had earned Shaw's hatred. Chuck was justified, he told himself. Justified — in my crazed need for vengeance. He shook off the thought.
Parsons put all of Chuck's fighting skills to the test. Chuck quickly recovered the gun, straddling Parsons' supine form and placing the barrel of the gun against the man's lips. "I don't need more motivation to pull the trigger. Don't tempt me."
The breathless, murderous rage in his voice merely surprised him. Nothing had the power to shock him any longer, it seemed.
A flash in his memory, and he was in the Buy More, holding Shaw by the throat while the defeated man goaded Chuck to kill him. It was so tempting to crush the man's windpipe closed, the man who had killed his father in cold blood. It had only been the knowledge of why Shaw urged him to kill that had stopped him. It would make Chuck a murderer, someone he was not, someone he had promised Sarah he would never be.
It was harder this time to pull the gun away. But the tiny part of him that was still struggling had won, this time.
Whatever Parsons had seen on Chuck's face as he stood over him, ready to break his teeth with the barrel of the gun, was enough to stop any further resistance. Chuck's urge to kill him had been plain on his face. Chuck didn't know whether that was good or bad.
The man went peacefully on the train and Chuck knocked him out again. Chuck sat for nine hours, alone in the compartment with the unconscious man, feeling the cold, hard pressure of the gun at his back. Parsons woke in time to disembark and travel to Chuck's hotel, but then Chuck knocked him out a third time.
Chuck remembered worrying about too much tranquilizer drug being used on one person in the past, but now he didn't flinch. Parsons only had to live long enough to get a lethal dose of sodium pentathol.
Chuck opened the door of the shop, hearing the soft tinkling of the bell attached to the door. The shop was tiny, crowded with wooden instruments hung on every wall from floor to ceiling. There was no one at the counter, but Chuck saw the bell there and rang it gently.
"Einen moment," Chuck heard, a muffled voice from the back room.
In a few minutes, a tall man with a shock of pure white hair shuffled his way to the counter. "Do you speak English?" Chuck asked hopefully.
"Yes, sir, how can I help you?" the man asked in a thick German accent.
"Are you Blaser?" Chuck asked.
The genial smile on the man's face faded. His eyes were shaded when he asked, "Who is asking?"
"Monsieur Truffaut. Greetings from Paris."
The man seemed to size Chuck up, scanning him from head to toe. Chuck had shaved, cleaned up his wounded face as best he could at the hotel, so he didn't look quite so unhinged.
"I'm Blaser," he said cautiously after a pause. "Zurich is best in the spring," Blaser added. The code, just as Sarah had described. "What can I do for you, monsieur?"
The french moniker was part of the code, Chuck remembered. "Sodium pentathol and the counteragent. Cash."
"You are in luck. Just restocked. The syringes are extra." Chuck handed the man a fistful of notes and the man disappeared into the back room. A few minutes later, the man emerged with a box that looked like a plastic pencil case. He clicked it open to show Chuck both vials and two wrapped, sterile syringes. Chuck nodded once and the man clicked it closed.
Chuck tucked the case under his arm and turned. He walked out and Blaser said nothing.
{}{}{}{}{}{}{}
The pinch of the needle entering Parsons' vein woke him.
Chuck knew the poison acted quickly, and it was only a few minutes before Parsons was visibly affected. He was groggy from the sedative, still coming around, when he started sweating, looking like he was about to be sick.
Chuck moved to stand in front of Parsons, his wrists bound to the chair in which he sat.
"What…what did you just do?"
Chuck leaned forward, speaking into the man's face. "I just lethally dosed you with sodium pentathol. The poison will make its way through your body on its way to shutting down your organs and your brain. And in the meantime, you will have the overwhelming desire to tell the truth…whatever I ask you."
Parsons' eyes darted wildly, as if he were assessing his own state of being and realizing what Chuck had just said was the truth. "I'm a dead man if I tell you anything," he rambled nervously.
"I have an antidote, which I promise I will administer when we are finished. Whatever happens to you after that is your fault. Not my concern."
Chuck pulled the other chair from the table and straddled it, facing Parsons. He crossed his arms across the top of the chair, shifting his eyes to the gun that sat on the surface of the table.
"How long have you worked for Nicholas Quinn?"
"Five years." The words were a soft monotone. Parsons' eyes widened, surprised by his inability to resist.
Chuck chuckled humorlessly. "Very hard to resist a dose like that." Chuck winked wickedly at him before his features hardened.
"Were you with him in the base in Japan?"
"Yes." Parsons visibly trembled, tugging at his restraints.
Now, it was time to ask the real questions.
"What was the primary mission objective of that base?"
"To repair the defective version of the Intersect Quinn obtained from Clyde Decker."
It was Decker after all.
"There was no Intersect to repair. What was going on once Quinn lost the glasses?"
"We were instructed to modify the equipment in the lab. He needed to transcribe the program from a human brain."
Sarah. He would not let Parsons see any emotion. The anger cleansed him on the inside, washing away the aching, the longing sadness.
"Why the Japanese women in your videos? What was the purpose of that?"
"Quinn was testing the electrodes. Tolerance, voltage, duration. He said he had to experiment first. He couldn't accidentally kill the subject before the Intersect was complete."
"How many?" Chuck demanded.
"Fifteen." Parsons seemed to wince at the number. "Mostly prostitutes, compensated dates."
That was the bulk of the footage Parsons had sold to Tsetse. The few minutes of it Chuck had witnessed, and what Tsetse had told him, corroborated it. Hours of footage–those women tortured with electrodes, raped, wrists slashed and throats cut, and bleeding to death on hidden camera.
A new horror entered his thoughts. The plan had changed. He took Sarah…and then started testing.
"Where was Sarah while the tests were going on?"
"He made her watch."
One long blink, to disguise the urge to crush his eyes closed and shake his head.
"What about you? Were you in any of those videos?" Parsons' eyes widened again. In a low, menacing tone, Chuck whispered, "Quinn doesn't know what you did… yet."
"Yes," Parsons groaned.
"What about Sarah?" Chuck asked, his voice chilled.
"I…I…don't–"
Chuck grabbed a handful of the man's hair and yanked, jerking his head back. "Was she raped? Did you film it?" he growled.
"I didn't. I wasn't allowed to touch her." Parsons was close to tears, unable to stop the words from spilling out. "I wanted to."
Rage boiling over, Chuck hit him across the face, shaking the chair until it almost toppled over. It took many moments in clenched silence before Chuck was calm enough to speak. Change directions. This is torturing you. Nothing compared to what she endured…because you let him go, because you couldn't save her from him–
"Did he succeed? Does Quinn have a functioning Intersect?"
"N-no," Parsons stuttered. He was either trying, and failing, to lie, or it was a complicated answer and the sodium pentathol confused the communication.
Chuck took a deep breath and redirected his question. "Did Quinn transcribe the Intersect from Sarah Bartowski?"
"Yes."
His stomach knotted, he asked, "How long did that take, start to finish?"
"Almost three months."
An impossibly long time, full of agony and pain like he had seen on the train. He swallowed down the bile that burned in the back of his throat.
"Why so long?"
"She would…lose consciousness for hours in between sessions. The program started to degrade. She could only tolerate two-hour spans of time."
You knew this was coming. You knew what you would hear. You need to hear this, as hard as it is.
"Why did he wait so long to kill her?"
"Because of the baby."
The universe trembled.
Baby.
The word echoed, tinny in his ears. The edges of the room darkened and for a moment Chuck felt like he was standing at his own shoulder, watching himself in front of Parsons. Every muscle felt like jelly, unusable. The only saving grace was Parsons seemed too far gone to notice Chuck's state of mind.
"What baby?" It was his voice, but it sounded like a recording of someone else saying it.
"Sarah was pregnant…got pregnant…I don't know…a baby."
Chuck's brain stopped processing information, every thought swirling together like paint on a rain-soaked canvas. Tears in his eyes, Chuck was dry heaving into the wastebasket beside the bed, Parsons and how Chuck appeared to his captive forgotten. Chuck's thoughts consisted of only pictures, unimaginable horror…Sarah raped and growing her rapist's child inside her body…
It seemed hours until he felt like he was back in his own body again, able to speak. January to October…oh, god…
"Was the baby born?" Yes or no, either answer was unbearable.
"Yes."
His vision went black, then red. His hand was around Parsons' throat and Chuck didn't remember grabbing him. "Where is the baby?" Quinn wouldn't have let her go to term if he only planned on killing the baby as well.
"I don't know."
"How did she die?" He squeezed, then released when he realized he was restricting Parsons from answering him.
"Cyanide."
It wasn't what he was expecting. But it was the truth, it had to be. Far more peaceful than the blood-splattered room Beckman found had indicated.
"Did you kill her?" he hissed, strengthening his grip again.
"No," he wheezed. "She did it to herself. The needle was…rigged."
There was more, more he needed to ask… change directions again…Letting go of Parsons' throat took all his strength.
"Why didn't Quinn download the Intersect?"
"He needs the key."
Chuck only glanced away for a second, but it was enough of a distraction. Parsons, sweaty and shaking, was on his feet, lunging at Chuck. The two crashed into the table beside the bed, going down in a painful jumble of arms and legs. He had undone the bindings, probably while Chuck was vomiting into the wastebasket.
Parsons was weak, no real match for Chuck, but Chuck was caught off guard, and now he was underneath Parsons, pinned. He kicked upwards, pushing the other man up and off him, only to see quickly out of the corner of his eye, Parsons grabbing the gun. They grappled together. Chuck felt the vial of antidote break in his pocket, a wet gush down the back of his leg.
Without the antidote, Parsons was dead. And Chuck had killed him.
The thought momentarily weakened him, enough that he lost his grip. The gun was between them as Chuck heard the shot, then felt it in his side like a hot poker, his shirt immediately wet with his own blood. The last thing he saw was Parsons, stumbling out the door.
We're both dead. The darkness enveloped him completely. He opened his arms to it, hugging it back. What else could he do?
December 2, 2012
Montreux, Switzerland
"Boule de poils."
An unfamiliar voice, using the code words Ciel knew. What was this?
"Pardon, monsieur?" Ciel asked, leaning against the door.
"I have traveled far. From Halmstad, to Rome, via Dresden. Please, doctor."
He was using the code, she thought, and had mentioned both Hammersmith and David. Rome was this man's codename. He was on her list.
Ciel opened the door. The man on the doorstep was tall and slender, with stark white hair. He was supporting a younger man, unconscious and injured, the man's skin a sickly shade of gray. Ciel could see a makeshift bandage wrapped around the younger man's torso, and it was dripping with blood.
"Mon Dieu," Ciel gasped, stepping aside so they could enter.
"Can you help him? Do you have room?" Rome asked sharply.
"My last patient left last evening." Ciel felt a twinge of apprehension, wishing Jennifer hadn't insisted on leaving. In the end, Ciel couldn't keep her. She was desperate to find her daughter. Ciel couldn't argue with that, once a mother herself.
Ciel leaned against the patient, taking some of his weight against her shoulders. He was quite heavy, taller than he looked, collapsed and unconscious.
"I normally have someone contact me before you bring someone here. What happened?" Ciel asked as she motioned for the man to walk with her to the back room. Where is David? She wanted to scream but held it in. This man only knew David by his code name. David should have been the one to call her. Rome mentioned him, but Ciel had no idea where he was. She hadn't heard from him in over five days, an eternity.
"This man came to me in Zurich looking to buy truth serum. Something wasn't right, I could feel it. I followed him. I stayed outside and watched. He was shot by one of Quinn's men. I'm certain of it. He's bleeding out, Doctor."
"But who is he? Mon Dieu, he could be anyone! How could you bring him here?" she admonished.
"The enemy of my enemy is my friend, no?" Rome said.
She stopped talking as Rome helped her lift him onto the table.
"He'll die otherwise. He used a reputable code when he came to find me. From someone I trust. I couldn't just let him die."
Whoever this man was, Ciel was a doctor before she was anything else. And no matter what, she couldn't let him die either. "Stay and help me," she ordered as she peeled the bandage away and got to work.