While no one is expected to leap tall buildings in a single bound, our aspiring heroes will be tested on their courage, integrity, self-sacrifice, compassion and resourcefulness - the stuff of all true superheroes. - Stan Lee
Rule Number Nine
17 OCTOBER 2007ABANDONED LA STREET
20:32 PDT
It was like an explosion in space. Without fire or flame, but the noise was immense. Something like the sound of bubble wrap being popped, magnified by a thousand, accompanied by a jolt that shook the entire world. Chuck's entire body whiplashed—his forehead smacked into the steering wheel as both hands flew back and his body rippled like a demented Gumby doll left in the sun. He bit his tongue. Hard.
He was out for maybe two seconds. It was more like blinking.
Copper flooded his mouth with its disgusting tang. He shook his head out of reflex—and groaned when this turned out to be a Very Bad Idea.
His vision was still swimming when he saw the men swarm out of the van.
"Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, oh crap—"
Random impulse made him stumble toward the back of the van rather than the driver's side door, tripping over cables. He all but exploded out of the back door, his body already in motion to run as far and as fast as he could.
But his left foot caught one of the free cables.
He stumbled his way out of the van, clattering to the concrete in an awkward pile of uncoordinated limbs. He glanced around him, some old instinct making him assess the situation. An alley, twenty feet away. 95% chance of making it without getting shot, but it could be a dead end.
A mailbox. He could hide inside. 100% chance of getting found and killed.
Store fronts. All closed. 10% chance of finding an open one. 8% chance of survival.
Chuck did the only thing that came to mind. He dove under the van—and not a second too soon.
He'd just whipped his right chuck under the car when footsteps rang out, pounding around the side of the van. Rapid fire Chinese accompanied them. Chuck watched the world at foot-level, the trouser-clad calves and dress shoes that prowled around the van, obviously looking for him. Two sets sprinted away, the third waited, pacing with frustrated energy.
Chuck stopped breathing. Every breath in his body seemed to collect just below his frozen sternum. The sensation grew until he felt as though he were going to blow apart at the seams. His hands twitched against the concrete, tremors racing up his arms and legs.
Chinese again. This time, it was farther away, maybe coming from the alley. Not a dead end, apparently.
The third pair of feet ran off toward the alley. Chuck counted to three—which took a small eternity—before he began to army-crawl under the van. It had been five years since he'd done this at the obstacle course during basic training, and a dirt course was a lot kinder to the elbows and belly than concrete. Gravel scraped against his stomach even through the material of his hoodie and T-shirt.
Another three-count, this time longer, and he burst, stumbling, from under the front of the van. Luck was finally on his side—not a thug or henchman in sight. Just the slightly crushed delivery van with the hostages inside.
Chuck opened the side door of the van as silently as he could under the circumstances and closed the door most of the way behind him.
"Moron!" Casey reached for his neck with his hands still bound. "I told you to go home!"
"Well, I didn't hear you, did I?" Chuck, actively shaking now, hurried to fumble with his left pants leg. "Everybody okay?"
"Chuck, get out of here!" Sarah struggled to her feet. "Go home! We've got this!"
"You're tied up in the back of a van, Sarah."
"And what, you just wanted to join us?" Casey growled.
"Yeah, kinda." Chuck's shaking hands finally unearthed their quarry. "Also, rule number nine—never go anywhere without a knife." He yanked one out of the holster around his ankle.
"Is that mine?" Sarah asked.
"You weren't using it."
Sarah gave him the look.
"I'll buy you a new one." Chuck grabbed her wrists to steady his own shaking hands before he began to saw at the cable ties.
"Be caref—" Sarah couldn't quite hide the flinch.
Chuck stared in horror at the bright line of blood. "Oh, God, oh, God, oh, I'm sorry. Sarah, I'm so sorry—"
"Chuck!" Sarah kicked him to get his attention. "It's okay. Just finish it!"
"But I cut you—you're bleeding!" Chuck's head threatened to float away from the rest of his body. He could feel his vision going black around the edges…
"Chuck. Finish it." Sarah's tone threatened dire things if he dared disobey.
His throat bobbled, but he reached out with his shaking hands and cut the ties. Sarah immediately snatched the knife and cut Casey's cable tie. Casey grabbed Chuck by the shoulder, maybe to steady the other man. "How many guards?"
"What? Um, three. That I saw."
"Hm. Maybe you're not just a useless spook."
Chuck opened his mouth to protest that counting guards wasn't that hard, but thought better of it. Instead, he fumbled for his holster again and handed Casey one of the remaining two knives. The last went to Mei-Ling, who had by now been freed. "Sorry they're not guns—"
Casey eased the door open slightly. "Bartowski's right—three guards. They're all looking for him. Heh. One of them's looking in the trash can."
Chuck was suddenly very glad he'd decided against hiding there.
Sarah nudged by Chuck to peer out the door. "I can take one down," she said. "But…"
"I'll take those odds. Chuck, take Lee, head east."
"Which way's that?"
"That way, numb-nuts."
Chuck glanced over at his unexpected running mate, who looked as worn as he himself felt at the moment. "Can you run?" he asked.
The other man swayed a bit, but nodded.
"We'll be fine," Chuck assured Casey, though he could actively feel the heart-pounding buffer of adrenaline fading into overt exhaustion.
"All right. Count of three—one, two…go!"
Chuck and Lee dropped out of the side door as silently as they could, Casey covering them while Mei-Ling and Sarah stormed out of the back of the van.
Chuck didn't see what happened next. He was too busy running.
But when he heard the gunshots, he prayed.
17 OCTOBER 2007
RANDOM ALLEY
20:38 PDT
"Chuck? Lee?"
The soft whispered cut through the sounds of distant traffic, the hum of streetlamps, the all-pressing power and thrum of a city that could be nothing but an agoraphobic's worst nightmare.
Chuck's head popped up. He dropped his hands. "Sarah?"
He heard footsteps—and Sarah rounded the corner of the dumpster behind which he and Lee had hidden themselves.
Lee, who'd been sitting quietly beside Chuck, letting him freak out in his own way, struggled to his feet. Since Chuck's Chinese was non-existent and Lee's English limited, their attempts to talk had been stymied from the get-go. Also, it didn't help that there might be armed men after them at any second. But the diplomat stood firm now. "Mei-Ling?" he asked.
"She's fine. She and Casey are back at the accident, waiting for our team to get here. I'm sure she'd like to see you." Sarah pointed back toward the accident.
Lee nodded, gave Chuck one last uncertain look, and hurried away.
Once he was gone, Sarah crouched down in front of Chuck. "You okay, slugger?"
"You're right," Chuck said. "Nicknames really aren't your thing."
"Shut it. Answer the question."
"Well, which one do you want me to do?" Chuck tried to wiggle his eyebrows, but that turned out to be another Very Bad Idea. He groaned as agony spiked through his head, bloating it even bigger than it had been a minute before. The intense knot of pain on his forehead worsened.
Of course, that sent Sarah into mother hen mode. She pushed his hair back to get a look at his injury.
"S'Fine." Chuck tried to push her hand away. "Just hit m'head on the steering wheel."
"And bit your tongue, and it looks like you scraped yourself up good." Sarah smoothed his hair back over the bump. "We've got to get you to a hospital and make sure you don't have a concussion. Can you walk?"
"I'm fine," Chuck insisted, taking care to enunciate his words, but when he tried to climb to his feet, he let out a groan. "Okay, maybe not so much fine as conscious. But s'okay—"
"Let me give you a hand." Sarah reached down to lever an arm under him.
Chuck grabbed her forearm. She'd apparently taken time to apply field medicine—a black strip of cloth was tied around her wrist—but it hadn't been wholly effective. Chuck watched a thick stream of red dribble from her wrist and down her hand. A couple of drops plopped heavily on his jeans.
"Is that—is that…blood?" Chuck demanded, his voice going up an octave. His head began to spin. The world stuttered.
"Whoa." Sarah lunged forward to catch his head before it could thud against the brick wall and add another goose-egg to his collection. "Chuck, stay with me—"
"Sorry," Chuck managed before he passed out.
17 OCTOBER 2007
MADISON MERCY HOSPITAL
21:45 PDT
"Wow, bro, you really weren't kidding when you said you weren't going anywhere." Devon put down Chuck's medical chart and folded his arms, eyebrows high. "Like, literally. Two nights in the hospital in a row, dude. Not awesome."
"You're not kidding." Chuck closed his eyes, mostly to block out the fluorescent lights overhead. He lay on his back on the examining table, but not out of any sense of exhaustion. Ellie had threatened him with many forms of death if he moved even an inch before she got back. He might have spent the evening fighting off Triad, but even they paled in comparison to the great wrath of Eleanor F. Bartowski. Especially an Eleanor whose baby brother had been in a car accident—at least that part of the story he and Sarah had concocted in the emergency room was real.
Ellie had vanished into the belly of the hospital to check on other patients, but Devon had clearly been sent inside to babysit in her absence. He was the third doctor Chuck had seen, aside from his own doctor and Ellie.
"You might as well sit down," Chuck told Devon. "Either of us leaves, we're dead meat. Why don't you tell me what you've been up to? We didn't get much of a chance to catch up last night. What's new in the life of the awesome heart surgeon?"
Before Devon could fill him in, the door opened. Both men straightened, expecting Ellie. But it was a blonde head that poked into the room. Her eyes cut from Chuck to Devon in surprise.
"Sarah! Hey!" Devon looked genuinely happy to see his girlfriend's roommate. "Heard you landed a job with the Chuckster here! Awesome."
He held up a hand. It took Sarah a moment to catch on, but she gave him the desired high five.
Which let Devon see the makeshift bandage on her wrist. "Whoa, Sarah. What happened?"
"Oh, nothing." Sarah tried to pull her wrist behind her back, but Devon was having none of that. He kept a gentle hold on her arm. "Really, I promise, it's nothing. I bandaged it up already—"
Chuck scooted over on the exam table to make room for Sarah when Devon led her across the room. She gave Chuck a distressed look as she sat.
"It's really nothing," she said again, but Devon made quick work of unwrapping the bandage.
"Ouch," Devon declared. "This looks..."
"I slipped while chopping something," Sarah lied as guilt wracked through Chuck's body. He couldn't look away from the wound, which looked like a gaping chasm on her otherwise perfect wrist. He'd done that. Not some Triad hench-thug. Sarah would have made it through the night without injury if he'd just manned up.
"Really," Sarah went on. "I've done worse shaving my legs. It's really not a big deal."
"Needs stitches."
"What?" both Chuck and Sarah asked.
"Needs to be cleaned, too. Don't want to risk infection—it'll keep the scarring minimal. Though a few scars can't hurt. Right, bro?"
Chuck returned the high-five by instinct, even though the thought of something he'd done causing a scar on Sarah made him want to throw up. He barely felt the high-five through the bandage on his palm.
Devon set in to work on Sarah's wrist as he told them about a fantastic scar he'd received on a white water rafting trip the year before. "Class five rapids, dude, staring death in the eyeball. Hey, you should come next time. Get the blood pumping, exorcise some of those demons."
"Sounds fun," Chuck said, ignoring the slight case of nausea just the thought of white water rapids had always given him.
Ellie came in just as Devon finished sewing up Sarah's wrist. "Oh, my God, Sarah! What happened?"
"Chopping accident. I told Devon it was fine, but he insisted."
Devon patted Sarah on the knee as he pushed the rolling chair away, a brotherly action. "Hippocratic oath. Hey, babe, I double-checked the Chuckster here, and he's good to go. Regular painkillers, you hear?" The last was directed at Chuck.
"You'd think knowing two doctors would get me access to the good stuff," Chuck griped. "So are we free to go?"
"Just one thing first." Ellie wrapped Chuck in a very careful hug. "You haven't even been back two days and you've already been in a car accident. I'm worried, little brother."
"Just a fender bender," Chuck tried to assure her. "And I'm going straight home and icing my tongue with ice cream, I promise. I'll take it easy."
"Healthy," Ellie said, but she smiled. "C'mon, I'll give you a ride since you already wrecked your new car, apparently."
Chuck had seen Sarah's "we need to talk face" as she'd come into the exam room, though. "Actually, I called Sarah to see if she would give me a ride. We need to talk about her interview and this way, you and Devon can head straight home, Ellie. You guys worked doubles today, you've got to be exhausted."
He could see the battle taking place behind Ellie's eyes, but the weariness won out over the protectiveness. "All right," she agreed. "But dinner—Friday."
"Deal."
"Sarah, you're of course welcome, too," Ellie said. "We can celebrate your new job…working for my brother."
"Just stay away from knives," Devon told Sarah.
Chuck couldn't hold back the nervous laugh at that.
Later, in Sarah's Jeep, he let his aching head rest back against the seat. "Sorry I passed out on you."
"Wouldn't be the first time something I did knocked you out." Sarah's smile was humorless as she focused on the road. "How's your head?"
"Feels like the football that made the field goal, thanks."
"While you were getting tended to, Casey and I reported in to Beckman and Graham. We neutralized Ben Lo Pan, Mei-Ling will go with the Marshals, and Lee is heading back to China tomorrow."
"A success, then," Chuck said. It made the scrapes on his palms, elbows, stomach, and knees throb somewhat less.
"And when you get back, I will personally be training you on how to tail somebody." Sarah's voice was lined with steel. Annoyed steel. "I was going to kill you myself if you survived the accident. They made you before we even left the neighborhood. God, Chuck."
Chuck ignored the annoyance. "Get back?" he said. "I can't leave! That was part of the deal!"
"Relax, you're not going anywhere. You're on medical leave for forty-eight hours. Nobody's sure what the concussion you had will do to the Intersect, and they're afraid to try." Sarah made the turn into the parking lot of Chuck's building. "Obey Ellie's orders, get plenty of rest, and stay out of the office for a couple of days, okay?"
Chuck blinked. Just like that, forty-eight hours of sick leave. It was like a miracle. "Okay. Thanks for the ride. I'm glad we all survived tonight."
"Me too. Oh, and one more thing." Sarah reached past him into the glove box and drew out a small object. She smacked it into his palm, making the scrapes sing with agony. "Your new pocketknife so that you don't break 'rule number nine.' Touch any of my knives again, and I'll use them to cut off your fingers, knuckle by knuckle. Got it?"
"Yes, ma'am." Chuck took the brave route—he high-tailed it from the Jeep.
18 OCTOBER 2007
BURBANK BUY MORE
10:08 PDT
He told himself that he was standing outside the store only because he needed a moment—to enjoy the southern California warmth. That was all. It wasn't the fear of people that would be appliance shopping one of the biggest, airiest places in Burbank. It wasn't the fear of seeing his best friend again and not having a good explanation for dropping off the face of the earth for five years. It wasn't fear of seeing just one more thing that had changed in the world when he…hadn't.
Oh, who the hell was he kidding?
Chuck took a deep breath. It did nothing but remind him that his entire body had been used as a punching bag by Chinese henchmen with crazy driving tactics the night before.
"Hey, buddy, you coming inside or what?" The green-shirt working security at the door finally ventured outside. "I promise nothing in there's gonna bite."
"Th-thanks." Chuck mustered up a smile, but it felt like more of a grimace. "Sorry, got distracted."
"No problem. Happens to the best of us."
Chuck sucked in another deep breath—a mistake, again—and took his first step back into the Buy More. "You're a good man," he said, and spotted the green-shirt's name-tag, "Fernando."
Fernando gave him a smile most people kept on hand for the crazy hobbit-like individuals on street corners. Chuck didn't blame him. If a sweat-covered stranger in a do-rag had come into the store when he'd worked there between semesters all those years ago, his reaction would have mirrored Fernando's. He turned, prepared to write it off as another common problem in his new life, but to his surprise, the green-shirt grabbed his arm.
Chuck recoiled, arms flailing.
"Whoa, sorry, dude," Fernando said, holding his hands up as a gesture of peace. "Didn't mean to startle you—but you're him, aren't you?"
"What?"
"You're Chuck Bartowski. You're the Bartowski!" Fernando's excitement grew with every word. As Chuck stared at him in something akin to horror, the green-shirt waved frantically at a desk in the center of the store. A desk Chuck remembered well—the Nerd Herd desk. "I can't believe you're real!"
"Um…" Chuck eyed the exit. "Maybe I should come back some other time?"
"Are you Chuck Bartowski or not?" Fernando demanded, sidling his mass sideways so that he stood between Chuck and escape.
"I am, but I'm also a little freaked out. Do I know you? Have we met?"
"I can't believe it. Dude, you're a god! C'mon, check this out." Fernando jerked his head, indicating that Chuck should follow him. "I just can't believe I'm standing in the presence of The One. Forget god, man, you're a legend."
A god and a legend? What the…? Sure, Chuck had spent summers at the Buy More, but he didn't think a stock-boy usually left such a mark on a place like this. Certainly, it wasn't reason enough for Fernando to treat him like a celebrity.
He eyed the door again. He could go, escape out into the warm sunshine, find some other place to meet up with Morgan. He could get his new computer at the Large Mart, even. They sold computers there.
But curiosity warred with paranoia. The chances that Fernando was a spy that had somehow managed to break through fifty levels of clearance and find out that he was the Intersect—extremely minimal. By all likelihood, it wasn't a trap. And hell, this was a Buy More. What on earth could possibly happen to him in a Buy More?
So he followed Fernando into the open bay of the store, with its cloying overabundance of space, its cheerful colors, and shelf upon shelf of nerd heaven. He might have been able to handle it with some semblance of dignity or class, but as they walked through the store, strange things began to happen. Green-shirts left customers behind to line the main aisle. Some peered furtively at him, some outright stared, others whispered to their neighbors behind cupped hands. Chuck felt spiders of the "truly freaked out" variety begin to crawl all over his flesh. He hunched his shoulders, cast his eyes to the far-far-far away ceiling, and began to mutter Klingon prayers under his breath.
The silent nerd parade continued. Beaming, Fernando led him into a hallway that read "Employees Only." They passed yellow and green inspirational posters with nerd insults scrawled along the bottom.
Though Chuck was at the height of the freaking out scale, some part of him couldn't help but appreciate the witty irony in the one about "yo mamma" and an Ewok.
The Tour of Creepy ended at the Buy More break room, a place Chuck remembered well. It had been the site of Morgan's breaking One-Toed Ted's Fluffy Bunny record in July of 2001.
Fernando held up a hand to signal a pause before they entered. Chuck sneaked a look over his shoulder; every green-shirt in the store stood fifty or so feet away, silently and somberly watching him.
He figured out what "beyond freaked out" meant in that moment.
Fernando, hand still held up, pushed open the break room door. "Ladies and gentlemen," he announced in a voice full of pomp and circumstance, "may I present one Chuck Bartowski, returning to our fold?"
And with his free hand, he yanked Chuck into the room.
Chuck stumbled over Fernando's foot, so his first view of the Buy More break room was a blur of white, brown, yellow, and green. He took in details quickly—tables with green-shirts and white-shirted Nerd Herd members alike, a wall of lockers, and…
"What the hell?"
It was him. A cardboard cutout of him, Charles Bartowski, arms crossed over a green Buy More polo. He was smiling, an actual innocent smile, and his hair was as long and as unruly as it had been during his Stanford days. That in itself was creepy enough, but what made everything worse was the wall behind the cutout. Framed pictures of him from toddler-hood on, sometimes smiling at the camera, sometimes completely unaware that there was a camera at all. A framed copy of an old receipt—his Sega Genesis from elementary school. That horrible picture from his junior high school yearbook. A handwritten IOU he'd given to Morgan after he'd accidentally broken his NES Super Mario Brothers game.
He still owed Morgan that game, come to think of it.
Before he could truly wrap his aching head around the concept of a stalker wall, every other person in the room had surged to his or her feet. "Chuck Bartowski!"
Chuck turned, dread turning to outright horror. One of the tables held all of the Nerd Herd, almost glowing with geekiness in their bright shirts and silvery ties. They'd risen to their feet with the rest of the room, but unlike the confused look present on every face, they looked awed, almost reverent. Chuck's stomach tilted a bit as he recognized Creepy Jeff from his stock-boy days, looking boozier and more disheveled than ever.
Even he'd changed in the five years away. Sure, it was only to change from a green shirt to a white shirt, but the fact that even Creepy Jeff could change hit Chuck like a sock to the gut.
A short woman who'd taken a few liberties with the Buy More dress code stepped forward. "Morgan is never going to believe this," she told him. "Can I have your autograph?"
"Um," was all Chuck could think to say to that.
Behind the woman, money exchanged hands—Creepy Jeff's creepy companion was paying off Creepy Jeff. "Damn it," the little dude muttered as he forked over a dollar. "I should never bet against you." He glared sourly at Chuck. "Thanks for not being dead, dude. You cost me a dollar!"
"Sorry to ruin your day by not ending my life," Chuck told him.
"Just don't let it happen again."
"Noted." Chuck rolled his eyes and nearly jumped a foot out of his own skin when he realized that his paranoia was no longer for naught—the Buy Morians had surrounded him completely, a pack of moths being drawn to the flame that was Chuck Bartowski. "Um, guys, I gotta tell you, this is a little weird for me. I really just came here to buy a computer and to see my buddy. Maybe you know him? Morgan Grimes?"
Please, he thought desperately, searching for an escape route through the crowds of nerds and salespeople. Please let me survive. Please don't let me die in a Buy More—
"Chuck?"
And just like that, the herd of nerds parted, forming an immaculate aisle from Chuck to the break room door. Chuck saw a flash of green, a flash of beard, and suddenly the world stopped closing in. "Hi, buddy," he said, straightening.
Morgan Grimes simply stood, frozen, a Large Mart deli bag in one hand. Time stretched to an eternity and back again, so long that Chuck nearly began to fidget and hyperventilate—
With a wordless cry of joy and ecstasy, Morgan launched himself at Chuck, latching onto his best friend's middle and clinging for dear life. Chuck told himself that the man was just glad to see him. The fact that Morgan's shoulders had begun to shake was probably just happiness, not the tears he suspected. He hoped.
"Finally," Chuck heard Morgan murmur against his shirt. "Finally, all is right in the world."
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