A/N1: I don't think the owners of Chuck attend any seminars at the Strength Leader corporate headquarters. At least I hope not.

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Thursday, December 4, 2008; 11:14 AM PST

Fuck.

That was his considered opinion.

Fuck.

Luke Bragg, ex-operative from the Department of Energy's Office of Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence, sat with his feet up on his desk and stared out the door of his office. Visible on the wall of the corridor was a "motivational" poster with a picture of a sledge hammer leaning on a boulder and the words: NOBODY CARES; WORK HARDER. He thought it was supposed to be funny or something, but he didn't get the joke. Maybe it was just him. He'd always heard that, regardless of the reality of the situation, everyone thought they had a good sense of humor and were a good driver. Well, at least he knew he was a good driver, he thought sourly.

He was more than grumpy; he was borderline despondent. It was all going to shit. Fulcrum had shown such promise in the early years. A dedicated and highly skilled group of men and women who would move his flawed but beloved country into a safer, saner place. A group which had recognized the existential danger presented by America's enemies. A group with the courage and merciless approach needed to achieve victory. And with the knowledge that change would have to be made. That was simply nature. Creatures would change and adapt or die; and the nation would have to do the same. Outdated concepts like universal suffrage and civil rights were no longer reasonable in wartime. Hell, democracy itself was a luxury only suited to a peacetime nation.

He'd signed on with them willingly and enthusiastically. They had grown quickly and hadn't sacrificed the quality of the personnel along the way. Highly successful and highly placed agents throughout the government and intelligence community. And all sharing the understanding that the survival of this country depended on a change in both attitudes and legal structures, to be accomplished by any means necessary.

The Sachem arrived to fund and lead them, and did an outstanding job for several years. He was the one who had first alerted them to the Intersect and its potential. Securing the Intersect and producing an army of Intersected agents became a priority for Fulcrum. A necessary first step to turn the tide. They knew they were outnumbered by the government forces and having their people Intersected would even the odds, paving the road to victory. Things were promising and they continued to recruit and infiltrate while trying to acquire or create the Intersect. A bright future awaited both Fulcrum and the nation.

And then things started to go to shit a year ago. The Intelligence Community started to fight back. Someplace they found this Carmichael guy – God knows from where. Both Casey and Walker were known quantities, respected and feared, but known. But Carmichael came out of the blue and with him in the mix Fulcrum started to suffer defeat after defeat. Carmichael, Walker and Casey always seemed to be two or three steps ahead of them.

That man and his team were accomplishing unbelievable destruction to the cause. To get to the Intersect, they were told to lay off direct attacks on him. And Carmichael nevertheless destroyed them by the score. So, they changed tactics and attacked Carmichael directly, and dozens of their operatives ended up in body bags as a result. So, they backed off again...and then came the Battle of Ventura.

The Battle of Ventura, as the press was calling it. The most devastating defeat they had yet suffered. Dozens of their followers killed or captured in one insane night. Dead by the busload. The gossip was that the Sachem himself barely escaped. And, what was worse, their anonymity seemed to have been compromised. No longer would they pursue their agenda against the government in the shadows. Although the connection to the Intelligence Community was still closely held, the media was screaming about the armed right-wing conspiracy. Carmichael had driven them out into the light. While this facility was still unknown to Carmichael and his forces, even that might not be expected to last.

No matter what they tried, that bastard Carmichael outsmarted them and destroyed them.

Fuck.

That morning, Bragg and his team were waiting for the next orders from the Sachem, but to be honest, his confidence in the man's leadership and judgement was flagging at this point. The man's handling of the Carmichael threat was not at all inspiring and allowing the massacre in Ventura was almost criminal negligence. Bragg was half dreading the next strategic direction from leadership.

The radio at his belt buzzed and one of his men said, "Luke, we have a problem."

"What?" he asked, expecting the worst.

"I'm up on the fifth floor. I smell gas," the man said. Bragg was the Director of Security for the Strength Leader Corporation. 'Damn,' he thought to himself, 'I still love that name. Strength Leader, yeah. Good powerful name.'

"That's not right," Bragg said, swinging his feet down. "I don't think there are any gas connections to that floor."

"What can I tell you? I smell it," said the man. "You can come up here yourself and see if you agree."

"I'll be right there," he told the man.

Bragg pulled on the dark blue blazer with his id card hanging from a clip at the breast pocket. It only took him a few moments to meet his colleague up on the fifth floor. He noticed a poster on the wall showing a photo of a complex math problem and the words: NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE, UNLESS YOU CAN'T DO IT.

"Ok, you're right," Bragg agreed when he smelled the same sulfur smell as the other man had. The main gas connection was in the basement. If the smell was already up here, it was all over the building. Fuck.

Bragg took out his cell phone and punched in 911.

"Emergency services," said the woman at the other end.

"Morning," said Bragg. "I'm calling from 1600 Destefano Court off Mulholland. My name is Bragg and I'm head of security here. We have a gas smell in the building."

"What number are you calling from, Mr. Bragg?" Bragg told her. "Thank you. Is the gas smell prevalent throughout the building or at a confined location?"

"We can smell it on one floor, but this floor doesn't have a gas connection, so I'm assuming it's coming from somewhere else and is distributed more generally."

"Understood. Stay put for now. The Fire Department is on the way."

"Thank you," he said. "Should we evacuate the building?"

"Not yet, please. That will be decided by the emergency services personnel on-site," said the woman.

"Okay," said Bragg.

The woman on the phone continued, "Please meet the Fire Department in the lobby when they arrive. As I said, they have already been dispatched."

"Will do," he said, disconnecting the call.

The man with him said, "Think we'll have to evacuate?"

"You saw the building with the President and the Chinese guy blow up just a few months ago. Gas in a building is nothing to fuck around with. It'll be the call of the firemen, of course, but I'm thinking it's likely."

"Yeah, I guess so," agreed the other man.

Near the elevator was another bullshit motivational poster with a picture of a plane with only one wing and the words: IF IT'S NOT NECESSARY, YOU DON'T NEED IT. They took the elevator to the lobby, which, by that point, also smelled of gas. Bragg heard the sound of sirens in the distance.

"Hey, Boss..." said the security man in the lobby.

"Yeah. I know. Gas. That's the Fire Department responding. Hold tight for now," ordered Bragg. "Actually, give me the PA system." Bragg flipped some buttons on the building's public address system and spoke into a microphone from the security desk to the entire building. "Attention. This is Security Director Bragg. There's a smell of gas in the building and the Fire Department is on the way. In the meantime, sit tight and await the further instructions."

It was only a minute later when two fire trucks pulled up outside in the semi-circular driveway and men began to unload with their heavy gear. A separate LAFD car arrived and two firemen got out and came through the lobby door. One of them wore the yellow helmet matching the rest of the firefighters near the trucks, but the other man's helmet was orange. He wore glasses and was a little below average height.

Both men crossed the lobby to the desk and the man with the orange helmet said, "Which one of you is Bragg?"

As he got closer, Bragg noticed that the man wore the twin silver bars of a captain.

"That's me," said Bragg, extending his hand.

"Ok. I'm Silverstein," said the man, shaking hands. "I'm in charge of the response here. Yeah. I can smell the gas. Glad you called us." He turned to the other firefighter with him and said, "What have you got, Bill?"

The other man held a compact yellow machine in one hand with a long flexible probe. There was a light on the display flashing red. "Yeah, Cap. No question. Bad news."

"Mr. Bragg, how extensive is the spread of the gas?"

"We can smell it on the fifth floor. There are no gas connections there, so I have to assume it's throughout the building," said Bragg.

"Shit," said Silverstein. "Ok." He turned to the man next to him and said, "Are the ambulances on their way?"

As he asked the question, several ambulances pulled up and EMT's began to unload. Two police cars arrived only a moment later and unloaded several officers. "Ok," the Fire Captain said, mostly to himself.

Silverstein took a radio from his belt. "Listen, guys, we have a level 6 gas leak. Ben, get your men to the basement and see what you can find. Larry, get the cops with you and close off the two other exits from the building. We have to funnel the occupants to the ambulances for testing. Get the EMT's to set up the tents asap. Once you've got the other exits closed, go help them. I want to get these people out and tested as soon as possible."

The Fire Captain turned to Bragg and said, with a heavy sigh, "Mr. Bragg, I'm going to need your cooperation here. Until we know what we are dealing with, we are going to have to evacuate the building. But the level is severe enough that I'm going to need your people to get tested on their way out."

"Tested?" asked Bragg.

"Yes, Sir. Not a big deal, but necessary. It's a simple non-invasive test. Blowing into a straw really. We need to know if anyone's been damaged by the exposure. If you could please stagger the evacuation to allow us to get the testing done, we would appreciate it."

"How should they evacuate? Elevators?" asked Bragg.

"No, not with a gas leak. Please direct your people to avoid the elevators. Stairs only. And, as we need everyone to exit through the lobby, only those emergency stairs that exit into the lobby itself."

"All right, Captain," said Bragg. Through the glass doors of the lobby, he saw white tents being hastily erected on the grass near the vehicles.

Picking up the microphone, Bragg flipped a switch to isolate the announcement to a single floor and said, "Attention, please. Eleventh floor. Please evacuate the building in a calm and orderly manner. Use fire stairs C which discharges into the lobby and exit the building through the front entrance. Thank you."

Putting down the microphone, he removed the radio from his belt and instructed his security force to clear the 11th floor and make sure everyone left via the C stairs. He explained that they would be working through the building from top to bottom, clearing one floor at a time.

While Silverstein and the other firefighter stayed with him in the lobby, Bragg noticed that both of the other men with him, the man who had first smelled the gas and the lobby guard, were getting nervous. Bragg sent them out of the building and into the care of the LAFD outside.

It was a slow process. As each floor was cleared one by one, Bragg had one of his security men check the floor, including the restrooms, before declaring it empty. It had taken almost an hour to clear the entire building with the smell of gas getting worse before it began to taper off a bit.

Silverstein seemed very pleased with the results and was free with his praise of Bragg and his men. Bragg was the last person from the Strength Leader Corporation to exit the building, sort of the captain of the ship vibe. He was proud of himself and the calm and competence he'd displayed during the emergency.

Silverstein walked him to one of the tents and pulled up the flap to admit him.

"Can't forget to take care of you too..." Bragg looked into the section of the tent to find an enormous African-American man and Colonel Casey. Each man had a trank pistol in his hand and a pile of bodies at his feet. Bragg's breath caught in his chest and his eyes went wide with surprise.

Fuck.

Silverstein finished his sentence, "...you Fulcrum schmuck."

Bragg felt the sting of the trank dart and then black sleep took him.

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Thursday, December 4, 2008; 2:30 PM PST

"Good afternoon, Directors," said Chuck to the two men and one woman assembled on the conference screen in front of him.

There was a murmuring of greetings to him.

Graham said, "Agent Walker?"

"Just finishing up, Sir. She'll be along in a minute. We didn't want to hold up the call."

"How did it go?" asked Malone.

"No problems, Sir. We netted seventy-six new prisoners, all of whom we believe to be Fulcrum," said Chuck.

"Casualties?" asked Beckman.

"None. Not a shot fired. Well, other than the trank guns, of course," said Chuck.

Sarah walked into the conference room, still wearing her black fatigues. "Sorry, I'm late. Some of the clean-up took a bit longer than I expected."

"No problem, Agent Walker," said Malone. "Your plan worked perfectly. Congratulations." The Directors knew that it was Sarah's plan to pump mercaptan into the building to trigger an evacuation and orchestrated roundup. The Yama Twins had pumped a building full of gas with no mercaptan and Sarah's idea was to pump a building full of mercaptan with no gas.

"Thank you, Sir," she said, taking a seat next to Chuck. "The hardest part was physically moving the bodies of the unconscious enemy. Seems people are heavy. We could have used a forklift or something." She chuckled. "But even with some sore backs among our team, all the prisoners are on their way to the Minnie and interrogation by the FBI agents Justice has lent us. Agent Ribas' men are adjusting the roster files accordingly."

"Superb," said Malone. "Logistically, how did you manage to trank so many people without alerting any of them as to what was going on? They weren't going to stand by idlily waiting for the dart."

"It's why we emptied the building a floor at a time. To give us more time between waves of Fulcrum operatives. Luckily, the building was sparsely populated. We would take in five or ten of the enemy at one go. Our guys are pretty handy with the trank pistols and can knock out that number before the shouting starts. And then we would move the walls of the tents around to hide the bodies. When the next group came into the tented area, the prior group was behind an adjacent wall. And on and on. Bit of a scramble at times, though. It took a while, but it worked out ok."

"How did you get ahold of the mercaptan?" asked Beckman.

Chuck chuckled, but Sarah answered, "We got through to Socalgas, the local utility. They provided it to us from their stocks."

"Just like that?" asked Malone, with a bit of a smile.

"No, not just like that. It took some convincing," admitted Sarah.

Chuck said, "Begging. It was more like begging than convincing. But Ms. Bernstein, one of our newer additions here, can be really, really persuasive."

"That's Sarah's friend from Harvard, right?" asked Graham with a grin.

"Yes, Sir. She was my college roommate," confirmed Sarah, mostly for the benefit of the others on the call. "She also played the part of the 911 operator this morning when Fulcrum called the Fire Department about the gas smell. Chuck and Jorge intercepted the cell phone call and rerouted it to Castle."

"How did you know that the mercaptan gas would go into the air intakes? Those intakes aren't run continuously," asked Graham.

"Agent Ribas put a device on the roof yesterday. It allowed him to hack into some of their building systems, like HVAC. He's the one who triggered the intake to open this morning," explained Sarah.

"And the timing? You had the gas in place from dawn on. Why wait until 11AM?" asked Beckman.

"Compromise. We were making a bit of an educated guess, to be honest. Figured everyone late to their desk would be in already, but it would be too early to break for lunch," Sarah said with a shrug. "We double checked with the cars in the parking lot. I guess we might have missed a few stragglers, but we're confident we got just about all of them," she explained.

As she was answering the questions of the brass, Chuck was sitting with a small proud smile on his face. She'd really done a great job on this one.

"The cooperation from the Los Angeles emergency services seemed to have worked pretty well," said Malone.

"Actually, it was pretty minimal, Sir," said Sarah. "For the most part they were told it was a movie shoot. Only the top brass knew what was really going on."

Malone looked confused and said, "But the equipment? The vehicles? The uniforms? How could you pull that all off without extensive cooperation?"

Sarah laughed and said, "All equipment from Castle Studios, Sir. They have a huge fleet of vehicles for use in movies and TV. And all the uniforms were costumes from their wardrobe department."

Malone and Graham started to laugh and even Beckman looked a bit pleased. Malone said, "I don't know who came up with the idea of pairing you guys with a movie studio, but it was brilliant."

"I believe that was General Beckman's idea, Sir," said Chuck. "And yes, it was a terrific idea." Chuck actually had no clue whose idea it was, but figured a bit of bridge-mending with the General wouldn't hurt.

Beckman smiled and said, "Thanks, Chuck, but I think I can share the credit for that one with Langston."

Malone said, "What now?"

"We keep with the program, Sir," said Sarah. "Ms. Bernstein expands the FISA requests to include everyone we collected this morning. All data from the electronics we can find, whether personal or connected with the purported business operating there, gets fed into the database Agent Ribas is running. And the people get questioned and those transcripts get fed in as well. And then we wait for the next lead. We are already looking at some potential targets outside of Southern California."

"And we get one step closer to rescuing Orion," said Graham.

"Yes, Sir. One step closer," agreed Chuck.

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A/N2: I have to admit that I borrowed the beginning of this chapter from the start of The Martian by Andy Weir. I love that book.

A/N3: Mercaptan. Yup, that's what was in Sarah's and Zondra's gas cannisters in the last chapter. I suppose some readers were expecting knock-out gas of some kind instead. So, here's the deal with that stuff. Fictionally, knock-out gas has been around for the use of heroes and their ilk for almost 100 years. (As an example, Doc Savage again, for those keeping count of my references to his exploits.) In real life...not so much. In 2002 the Russians used it when a theater in Moscow was taken by Chechen terrorists. There were 850 hostages. The Spetsnaz operatives pumped a gas into the building to knock out everyone inside, hostages and bad guys alike. When it was reported in the press (as it was ongoing) I was very, very excited. The usefulness of such a substance in hostage situations could not be overstated. While the gas used (the exact composition of the gas remains disputed) was effective in rendering the building's occupants unconscious, it also killed approximately 132 hostages (the exact number remains disputed) and injured virtually all of the rest. Cognizant of that incident, I cannot find another example of the use of such a substance being attempted in real life. I have chosen to avoid creating a fictional perfect version for my New Day universe (the magic trank darts take things far enough, thank you). I decided that it would just make things too easy for the heroes.

A/N4: Your turn. What do you think? Seventy something prisoners and not a shot fired. Seems that Sarah's plan worked. Might I suggest that the Sarah Walker pre-Chuck in New Day might not have considered this a viable option? Chuck's not the only one who has changed through their shared experiences. Thinking outside the box is no longer confined to Mr. Bartowski.