PART III: ATLAS
Why Don't You Love Me Anymore, Sarah Walker?
30 OCTOBER 2007
CASTLE: UPSTAIRS
11:02 PDT
Chuck didn't glance up when the Scooby door opened, even if it meant that Sarah was now in the room. He held up a finger and continued to scroll through the screens in front of him, eyes narrowing occasionally as if he were trying to instigate a flash. He had maybe thirty seconds before Sarah's patience dried up and he wanted to get this last screen checked, just to make sure he wasn't missing anything…
"Got a minute?" Sarah asked.
Thirty seconds had been conservative. Sarah had waited for a full minute. Chuck had to admit, he was impressed.
He pushed his wheelie chair back and popped his neck. "For you, always. What's up?" As he spoke, he glanced over. He immediately had to muffle a snicker. Normally, Sarah's workout wardrobe wasn't amusing—merely a bit rough on the blood pressure, as it didn't always include shirts—but today he had to manfully fight back chuckles.
Sarah simply tilted an eyebrow at that reaction. The game, it seemed, was afoot. "Seems to me you've figured out exactly what's up."
Chuck fought to keep a straight face. "N-not sure what you mean," he lied.
"Uh-huh." Sarah crossed her arms over her chest.
"Having a good workout?" Chuck interlaced his fingers and rested his elbows on the arms of his chair. If push came to shove, he could hide a smile behind his hands. "It's Tuesday, that means you run the entire San Andreas fault, right?"
"We need to talk about the dummy, Chuck."
"What?" Chuck asked, doing his best to sound innocent. "You don't like Frank's Halloween costume?"
"For the last time, the dummy's name is not Frank."
"Then what is it? I've yet to hear you offer a better suggestion."
"It's a dummy. It doesn't have a personality, which means it doesn't get a name, and therefore its name can't be Frank."
"Well, right now, probably not," Chuck said. "It's more like…Frankie, wouldn't you say? Unless Frank's into cross-dressing."
The game of chicken continued. "You're proud of yourself," Sarah accused, pointing a finger.
"Well, yeah." Chuck gave her a 'duh' look. "You have to admit, Frankie is a work of art."
"The dummy should not be a work of art. The dummy is a training tool. Where did you get the dress, Chuck?"
"Morgan picked it out." Chuck hummed innocently and swiveled his chair back and forth. "Nice touch, though, right?" He waggled his eyebrows at her.
As expected, that broke the dam. Sarah doubled forward at the waist, laughing. By sheer force of will, Chuck ignored the view now open to him and crossed to the miniature fridge he'd insisted on putting in the corner. He pulled out a bottle of water for Sarah and a Red Bull for himself, nudging the bottle into Sarah's hand as she continued to laugh.
"Wow, you were really holding it in," Chuck observed, sitting on the edge of his desk and crossing his legs at the ankle.
Sarah straightened, and wiped her streaming eyes. "God, Chuck, before today I would've thought it'd be easy to punch a transvestite hippie in the face. But it's not. It's really, really not."
"Don't tell Casey," Chuck said. "It'll break his heart."
Sarah stifled another giggle. Chuck grinned.
"Where is Casey, anyway?" Sarah glanced over at the door, even though Casey's office wasn't visible from her spot.
"I gave him a tip on a terrorist landing at LAX on the noon flight."
"Why'd you tell Casey and not me?"
"The big guy doesn't do offices well. He starts prowling. And growling. And it's really distracting. This way, he's getting to use his NSA buddies and without you there, he doesn't have to explain the strange jurisdiction." Chuck shrugged. "Also, who am I to deprive you of your training session with Frank-slash-Frankie?"
Sarah attempted to scowl. "Only you would think to put lipstick on a training dummy." A thought occurred to her; all laughter vanished. "Wait a second—whose lipstick was that?"
Chuck eyed all three escape routes from his office. "Ah…nobody's?"
"You stole my lipstick?"
Chuck reminded himself that running away over makeup was too cowardly for a CIA agent. It helped. Somewhat. "It was a shade you weren't ever going to use," he said, backing up. "And, hey, there's plenty left, Frank didn't need much. It's not like the dummy's been making out with anything else down in Castle. So, in all likelihood, Frank's lips have touched nothing but your fists…"
Sarah stalked forward like a predator, all but chasing him around the room. "Never steal a woman's makeup, Chuck."
"Look, look, look, it's right here." Chuck bumped into his desk and fumbled around in a drawer. Sarah continued to advance, even when he held the used tube of lipstick like a shield. "See? If I return it, it's not stealing, it's borrowing."
Sarah snatched the tube and frowned at it. "Oh. Hmm. I wasn't going to use this shade."
"Exactly. It's the color of a corpse."
"Still. The principle stands." Sarah rolled her eyes at him, but he could see the smile still fighting through. "You've got to stop messing with my dummy. First the sign, and now the dummy's wearing a wig and a dress and a flower power headband…" She shook her head.
"In my defense," Chuck said, "Frank really did want to know, hence the sign."
"Yes, but nothing's creepier than coming down to your dojo and seeing your dummy with a sign that says, 'Why don't you love me anymore, Sarah Walker?'" Sarah rolled her eyes for about the fifteenth time and uncapped her water bottle. Both she and Chuck glanced over when the phone rang at her desk. "You clean Frankie up, I'll take that."
"Aw, you called him-her-it Frankie."
"Shut up."
"Shutting up."
Chuck ducked through the Scooby door (they really needed to fix that, as Sarah was the only one who could walk through without head injury) and headed down to the so-called dojo. He had to grin at his handiwork—the ugly, floral-print dress Morgan had found in a thrift shop clashed with the dummy's green-gray "skin." The brute-like face was still twisted into a permanent attacker's scowl, but it looked ridiculous now, dead-flesh-colored lipstick gracing that grimacing mouth and—Chuck's crowning touch—blush pinking those green-gray cheeks. "You've got good cheekbone structure, don't let anybody tell you differently," Chuck told the dummy. Since nobody else was around, he slapped Frank on the shoulder in a consolatory manner. "Just wait until you see what I've got planned for Valentine's Day. Poor you."
He kept up a stream of chatter as he cleaned. Sarah came in just as he'd finished wiping the last of the make-up off. "Borrowed one of your face-wipes from the bathroom," he said without looking over his shoulder. He'd managed to convince her that killing the Intersect via heart attack was a bad idea, so Sarah made sure to walk noisily around him. "Well, I guess it's stealing in this case, as you probably don't want it back and—" Sarah moved into his line of sight; he immediately frowned. "What's up?"
She ignored the cleaned-up dummy and stuck her hands in her jeans pockets. She'd changed, but Chuck mostly just noticed the nerves. "Want to get lunch?"
Chuck glanced instinctively at the ceiling, and hoped his flinch wasn't too obvious. The problem was, he was dealing with Sarah Walker. The woman routinely put eagles to shame.
"I know. It's not an odd-numbered day. But I think we should get out of Castle, enjoy some time on the town."
Something in her tone, that too-bright, too-forced quality, made Chuck want to frown. He wanted to argue against going outside, but then, he always wanted to argue about going outside these days.
And cowering inside just ruined the tough spy image. "Okay. Though it's Casey's turn to buy, and I forgot to lift his wallet before he left."
"I'll treat. C'mon."
30 OCTOBER 2007
THE HARD WOK CAFÉ
12:18 PDT
"So what was it that you didn't want to tell me back at Castle?" Chuck asked as he set the lunch tray down and began to unload their meals onto a questionably clean table. Since Sarah was buying, she'd picked the restaurant—and the Hard Wok Café was probably the most interesting choice in her options. The lighting was moody and dark even in the middle of the day, which relaxed him somewhat. Of course, having so many people about also made him nervous, but it couldn't be helped in this case, so he'd already decided to suck it up.
Sarah busied herself with setting out napkins and chopsticks. "Caught that, hmm?"
Chuck shrugged.
Instead of digging into her meal—Sarah was usually economical, eating first what she would need for energy and savoring the rest only if she had time—she pulled out her phone. "You're going to flash, but try not to be obvious," she told him in an undertone.
"Yes, ma'am." Chuck smiled sarcastically as he took the phone, and glanced at the screen.
She was right. The flash hit him mid-crescendo.
A jelly-fish at night, lit in orange. Lightning. A brief flicker of binoculars.
A flier with three different images of a man vaguely reminiscent of Jude Law, doing an Eminem impression, scowling at the camera, and rocking a hobbit-like appearance respectively. LASZLO MAHNOVSKI flashed red above the pictures.
CONSIDERED DANGEROUS.
Binoculars again, this time with creepy faces peering out from the lenses. Lightning.
Information on Laszlo Mahnovski – DOB: 1 January, 1982. PLACE OF BIRTH: Arizona. HEIGHT: 5'10". HAIR: Dark. EYES: Hazel. SEX: Male.
The jelly-fish again.
Chuck sucked in a gulp of oxygen and blinked back to reality. When he saw Sarah raising an eyebrow at him, he hastily relaxed his grip on the chopsticks. Without a word, she handed him a fresh, unbroken pair. He discarded the pieces off to the side.
"So why's this guy important?" Chuck asked, glancing once more at the picture on Sarah's cell phone before he handed the device back. He shook off the last vestiges of the flash and focused on his teriyaki noodles. "Who is he? Or, rather, since I know his name and his height and hair color and all, why's he considered dangerous?"
"He escaped last month from an underground holding facility. They think he's loose somewhere in LA." Sarah leaned forward slightly and quirked her lips into a cover smile. To others in the restaurant, it would have seemed like she were just sharing an amusing, if private, anecdote with her dining partner. "They also think he may be trying to build a bomb."
"Hm." Chuck nodded contemplatively, focusing on working the chopsticks around a clump of noodles. He'd lost most of his chopsticks-fu in Siberia. "Why was he underground instead of prison?"
"Because he's pretty smart. Genius smart. Graduated college at fourteen, got his Ph.D. at seventeen."
"So if he's genius smart, why'd they keep him in a facility?" Satisfied that if they were to be called away right now, he wouldn't starve, Chuck switched to the miso soup. The Hard Wok Café didn't get much right, but they made a mean miso soup.
"The facility was also a lab. He's a weapons designer, and apparently very unstable."
"So there's a loose weapons designer that may be trying to build a bomb?" Chuck shook his head as he slurped up soup. "What, is Team Bartowski supposed to find him or somet—you said underground?"
Sarah had been watching him very carefully. Now she inclined her head, slightly.
Chuck felt his throat dry up. Suddenly, soup no longer seemed appealing. An entire platter of his sister's famous lasagna wouldn't have been appetizing. He rested both elbows on the table, crossing his hands at the wrist in the center of the tray. "How long did they hold him down there, Sarah?"
"Ten years." She said it without flinching.
A swell of emotions hit all at once—pity, disgust, anger, and as ever, the overwhelming sense of helplessness and despair that the government could do such a thing to somebody. He fought hard to control the shudders and blinked away memories of his own bunker. "Ten years? Well, good for him for escaping, then!"
Sarah leaned forward and touched a finger to his wrist. "Chuck, you have to remember that your situation is nothing like his."
But Chuck had already done the math. If Laszlo had become Dr. Mahnovski at seventeen, he'd become property of the government pretty much the next day for ten years to have passed. "Really? Because they sound pretty damned similar. They let a guy finish college and then they toss him away for the rest of his life. Sounds like a bestseller, don't you think?" He laughed hollowly and freed himself from the pressure of Sarah's finger so that he could rub both hands over his face. "So he got away. Good for him, then."
Sarah wordlessly pulled out her phone again. She flicked her finger across the screen. Laszlo's face disappeared. A much grimmer tale took its place.
"Whoa," Chuck said, staring at the dead bodies on the tiny screen. "Who're they? And why are they—they're not sleeping, are they?"
"They were Laszlo Mahnovski's handlers."
"Oh." Chuck stared at the picture. "I would never have done that to anybody."
"I know."
"Even if they'd kept me there for ten years."
"I know," Sarah repeated. She started to reach out, maybe to touch his wrist, but seemed to change her mind at the last moment. She reached for the soy sauce instead.
The rest of Sarah's words sank in. "Bomb?" Chuck asked, fully comprehending for the first time. "You said bomb?"
"Shh."
"Hey, it's not my fault. You could have told me this back at Castle, where I could have my freak-out in private and…say something treasonous," Chuck realized mid-babble. He tilted his head and studied Sarah. "You're just a master strategist to all things Bartowski, aren't you?"
"I'm just looking out for you. I got a call from the FBI—they're activating all agency teams in the area, keeping a look-out for this guy. Which includes Team Bartowski, so I've got a meet set up with Agent Scary for this afternoon."
"I'm sorry—Agent Scary?" Chuck, deciding that the teriyaki noodles weren't going anywhere, pulled them back in front of him and began to eat.
"Don't look at me. I didn't choose his name."
"All right. So now what, we're supposed to drive around and hope we spot this psychopath?"
"I hope not. That would take forever." Sarah fished out a piece of chicken and dipped it in soy sauce. She was unsurprisingly adept with chopsticks. "I'll get us copies of security footage and hopefully psych profiles, and we'll see if we can figure out what his target is from there. It's possible they're wrong about the bomb."
"He could have just wanted to escape?" Chuck asked. He pondered for a moment. "Maybe, but I don't think so. The injuries inflicted on those guards were too…violent. At the very least, this guy snapped. At the most…"
"We have to stop him," Sarah agreed.
Chuck slurped up the last noodle. "I think I'm ready to get back to work," he said, never one to linger in a public place. Even if he'd felt so inclined, there was an urgency now. He had a very odd, trigger happy doppelgänger running around Los Angeles to stop, after all.
Sarah finished up her own meal and rose, collecting their empty dishes on the tray. "I'll drop you back at Castle and head out for my meet. Promise me you'll stay put until Casey and I get back?"
"Promise." Chuck took the tray so that he could throw away the trash on the way out the door. He shot her a quicksilver grin over his shoulder as he did so. "Caught your use of the name, by the way, but still—no Casey present, no dollar."
"I'll tell you what you can do with your dollar," Sarah muttered.
30 OCTOBER 2007CASTLE: DOWNSTAIRS
17:02 PDT
"You did what to my training dummy?"
For the second time that day, Chuck backed up, his hands held out in appeasement. "Relax, Casey," he said, nearly swearing when he bumped into the conference room table instead of missing it entirely as he'd hoped. "The makeup came right off, and it wasn't even that big of a deal. Sarah's left more makeup on Frank from head-butting him, I think—"
Casey growled and began unbuttoning the cuffs of his left sleeve so that he could roll it up. Because he'd been busy picking up a Nigerian terrorist at LAX, he wore the G-man suit, but he'd discarded the jacket at his desk upstairs. The shirtsleeves and tie alone did absolutely nothing to lessen his menace.
"You put," Casey said, "an official government-use training dummy in a dress, Bartowski!"
"In my defense, it was a very pretty dress, and bought at a thrift store, which helps with welfare programs and—meep." Chuck dove under the table and scrunched himself into the smallest ball possible, just out of Casey's reach. If the NSA agent truly wanted to grab him, he'd have to get down on the floor—just like that, actually.
He had approximately two seconds to stare into Casey's feral smirk before a feminine throat cleared. "You boys have fun while I was gone?"
Since Sarah's presence evened things so that the odds no longer swung entirely in his direction, Casey growled—minor annoyance, deal with this later—before he rose to his feet. Chuck scrambled out from under the table, popping up and backing away from Casey.
Sarah, standing on the stairs, raised an eyebrow at him. "Under the table, Chuck?"
"Hey, I had a ninety-two percent chance of survival under there." Chuck eyed Casey sideways and scooted around to the other side of the conference table. He'd been in the main bay when Casey had returned from his mission at LAX, and he'd been grievously mistaken in thinking that Casey might enjoy hearing about his prank. He focused on Sarah now instead, giving her a giddy, caffeine-infused smile. "Did you get that footage and those profiles from Agent Scary?"
"I did." Sarah held up the file for evidence.
Chuck snatched it like a kid going for the good stash of Halloween candy and started to page through. "Good girl."
When he turned away, Sarah grabbed his ear. "I'm sorry, what was that?"
"Oh. Uh, ah, ah, woman. Not girl. D-definitely not girl. Woman. Nice woman?"
"Better." Sarah released Chuck.
Casey folded his arms over his chest and glowered at his two CIA compatriots. "Agent Scary?"
"Don't look at her, she didn't choose the name."
Casey and Sarah ignored Chuck, which had become unsurprisingly easy after the first few days of Operation Prometheus. "We've got a fugitive loose in Los Angeles," Sarah said, and proceeded to fill them in on everything the FBI had briefed her over during the meet. Chuck listened with one ear as he paged through Laszlo's psych files, his frown deepening every time he turned a page. By the time he reached the end, he was actively not paying attention.
Sarah nudged his knee—which had been jiggling—with her foot. "Why are you so twitchy?"
"Hmm? Oh. Red Bulls."
"There's a recommended limit for those, you know."
"I know. I just choose to ignore it." Chuck chose to grace her briefly with a brilliant smile, but it quickly faded. He just hadn't been in a smiling mood since their lunch together hours before. It was hard to smile through numbness, and Red Bull helped. "These files look familiar."
"You know this psychopath, Bartowski?"
"Yeah," Chuck said, sarcasm dripping. "All us bunker guys, we hang out. We've got our own chatroom and everything. Fascinating place. Got into this discussion once with a guy stranded in Africa about how to properly decorate a cinderblock wall and—erk."
"Casey," Sarah admonished once Chuck had started turning red. "We've talked about this. No violence toward the Intersect."
Casey gave her an incredulous look. "Pot or kettle, Walker?"
"I grabbed his ear. That's a fairly big difference between the ear and the neck."
"Not really. Just two inches," Casey muttered, but he released Chuck, who sucked in a deep breath.
Chuck massaged his neck and glared. He needed to get faster at stopping Casey. "You two are a barrel of yuks, you know that?"
"Bartowski, drop the sarcasm and tell us, in ten words or less, exactly why these files are familiar to you."
Chuck held up a finger and crossed to the filing cabinet near the desk Sarah had claimed for downstairs use. After a minute of rifling, he came back with a manila folder, and dropped that in front of Casey.
He flipped it open and scowled. "Your dossier that Davenport sent over? You couldn't just say that?"
"Not in ten words or less."
Casey grunted: fair point.
"There's bound to be some similarities, Chuck. Don't sweat it." Sarah stretched to put a DVD into one of the disc readers. "Here's the footage of Laszlo escaping. I'm told it's pretty brutal." She flicked a glance at Chuck.
"I can handle it," he promised, reaching for the Red Bull that he had been drinking before Casey and Sarah had arrived. "Hey!"
Sarah finished off the Red Bull she'd snatched in one gulp. "Heh," Casey said, and chuckled. "Thank you, Walker."
"Sorry, Chuck." Sarah winced at the taste. She tossed the can into a trash can behind her without looking. "It really was for your own good. You've had too many of those."
Chuck glowered at her even as both of his knees jiggled. "It's cold and flu season, you know."
"So?"
"So don't come to me if you got sick because you're sharing drinks. Without asking first, I must add."
"Are you getting sick? You should have told me, I—"
"Children," Casey interrupted. "As fascinating as it is to listen to you squabble, can we get on with it?"
Chuck was grateful that Casey had stopped Sarah mid-sentence. He wasn't quite sure he wanted to know what sort of medicines the CIA approved of for eradicating colds. All he knew was that Ellie probably wouldn't approve.
He watched, caffeine making him jiggle, as onscreen, a psychopath named Laszlo Mahnovski dispatched his guards. Chuck picked up details with the ease of long practice, allowing the back of his brain to muse over the situation. Laszlo had had to plan in secrecy and bust through a legion of guards to break free. Chuck had sat in a bunker for five years without a single guard holding him there. It had been patriotic duty and nothing else—well, nothing, he could admit, until the agoraphobia started kicking in—keeping him in one place. Sure, they'd set up a sensor, but Sarah had proved twice just how easy it was to sneak past that. Escape would have been as simple as walking away.
What made him and Laszlo Mahnovski so different?
When the security loop finished, he rocked forward in the chair. "Can you play that again?"
Sarah obliged him.
The second time, he focused on Laszlo specifically. He saw plenty of fear on the weapons designer's face, but more than that, he saw determination, resolve, and most disturbingly, not a single grain of remorse. Even when he had taken out the guard that had greeted him as "Laz" before Laszlo had attacked. No regret whatsoever.
"He's unstable," Sarah said. "And off his meds. Some of his mental problems were compounded by the underground lab, others made the underground lab necessary. But we're to treat the fugitive as dangerous and to contact each other immediately if any of us are to run across his path."
"By any of us," Chuck said, "you mean me, right? You can just say that."
"Of course she means you, idiot. Not all of us here make it a game to invite trouble," Casey told him.
Chuck glowered. "I'm sorry, who was it that got taken by the Triad before the drug lord could kidnap me? Must've been somebody else."
"Was this before or after some idiot got out of the bulletproofed car to be held at gunpoint by the Chinese spy?"
"For the last time, nobody told me the Crown Vic was bulletproofed!"
"Bullet-resistant. Bulletproofed is a myth."
"You do realize that you just said bulletproo—"
"Boys," Sarah said, her voice deceptively mild. "Can we get on with it?" Casey glowered; Chuck mouthed 'sorry' at her. "Chuck, did you find anything about Laszlo in the database?"
"Actually, yeah." Chuck held out a hand for the remote. When Sarah ceded control, he keyed a sequence in. Different images began to fill the screens. "So Laszlo, maybe-bomb-building-psychopath aside, was probably the coolest guy ever. This guy is like the government version of Q, I'm totally not kidding." He pressed a button and documents on three of the screens lit up. The Red Bull cushioning his system made him bounce a little as he pointed. "This is the guy that designed Castle. How awesome is that?"
Casey scanned the documents and grunted. "Grade-A egghead," he said, sniffing. "As if we didn't have enough of those running around."
Chuck ignored him. "I was able to dig up some of the specs he designed and this guy, he's a genius. I know you told me earlier, Sarah, but he really is a genius. He designed this logarithm that—"
"Don't care," Casey said. "What does any of this have to do with helping us find him?"
Chuck reminded himself that Casey hadn't been hugged enough as a child, and that none of his taunts, grunts, and growls were personal. "Well," he said, "since he designed Castle, and as far as I can tell, this is the nearest stronghold where he can gather supplies, I took it upon myself to beef up Castle's security, and I took our names out of the system as a precaution. If he does manage to hack my safeguards," and Chuck's tone told his partners just how unlikely he thought this would be, "he's going to think three very different agents work here rather than the ones that really do."
He clicked another button. Their pictures popped up on screen, a different name under each.
"Jaime?" Sarah asked. "You think I look like a Jaime?"
"Rainer?" Casey said.
"I had to get creative," Chuck said, a little disappointed that neither had liked the names. He'd thought the names fit. "And Casey, you could go by Rainer or Mike or even Mikey, if you prefer. Or maybe not Mikey. Definitely not Mikey. Anyway."
He clicked again and the IDs disappeared, replaced by detailed schematics of Castle. Chuck paged through with the remote, occasionally pausing to highlight something with the laser pointer. "Castle was Laszlo's last creation before he fled, and it's possible that he may not even know where it is because the date of his escape coincides pretty closely to when they decided to kick Prometheus off in Burbank."
"Will we be required to do anything else to get inside with these new security measures?" Sarah asked.
"No, but the retina scanner won't be random anymore, so you might as well ignore your code and just go straight for the scanner instead." Chuck shrugged apologetically. "I know it's a pain to stand still for the scan, but I figured it would be the hardest thing for him to hack."
"It's good work, Chuck," Sarah said. "Did you get all of the info dumps for the day registered?"
"No, I got caught up with the Laszlo research and with making a few tweaks, I've still got a few shipping manifests to look through. You want me to get back to those? I mean, I could stay down here and help."
"We're not the lead team—Laszlo was the FBI's asset, so they're handling it. Since we're a reserve team…" Sarah shrugged. "No point in having all three of us focused on this."
He'd much rather spend a few more hours focusing on Laszlo's impressive list of feats, as it read like a gadget-head's wet dream, but she had a point. Chuck swallowed his disappointment and reminded himself that he could always do more research tomorrow. "Yeah. I'll just head up and get started."
"When you're done," Casey said, "go home."
"You sure? I could help, you know."
"You've got your therapy appointment tomorrow, and Beckman wants you to tackle some of the New York info dumps." Sarah swiveled her chair so that she could smile at him. The smile may have contained a hint of apology. He didn't pay attention—the word "therapy" had made him scowl. "You should get some rest tonight. Take it easy."
Chuck stalked back to the conference table and grabbed his dossier. He wanted to study it one more time, though he'd memorized everything he would need to know. "The info I gathered on Laszlo is in the B folder, subfolder forty-nine. It's not exhaustive by any means, but it kind of gives you an inner look at the poetry of the guy's genius. You'll see what I mean."
"Okay. Thanks, Chuck. See you tomorrow."
Chuck just nodded and gave a half-wave as he climbed the stairs. Barring anything in those manifest lists that made him flash, he'd been dismissed for the day.
30 OCTOBER 2007
CHUCK'S CAR
21:37 PDT
Chuck knew that he and Casey didn't have the most easygoing working relationship. In fact, to call their working environment easygoing would be something like saying the mogwai hated candy. As roommates, however, it was simpler to cope. They woke in the morning, they prepared for work, they sometimes carpooled. They spent the day bickering. They returned home. Dinner was usually something of the microwavable and previously-frozen variety. Casey stayed downstairs and watched the FOX news network for a couple of hours before bed. Chuck retreated upstairs to play video games, or went to see Morgan or his sister. Or so he told Casey.
Since Casey didn't come back at their usual dinner time, Chuck had decided to grab dinner through the first drive-thru he passed. He sat in his customary spot on the corner and chewed on rubbery fries as he waited for her to appear. Since it was Tuesday, she didn't have night class, which meant she'd likely bring home take-out for herself and spend the evening inside. It would probably be a pain actually waiting for her, as her schedule was a little erratic on Tuesdays, but it beat sitting at home and thinking about a psychopath on the loose who'd been thrown into a bunker like he had. Besides, he had his own personal fake life to reread before his appointment the next day. He propped the dossier against the steering wheel and tapped his fingers along with the beat.
Time and repetition had convinced him of the need for an appropriate stake-out mix. Maybe it was strange to mix "Love Potion Number Nine" and "One Way Or Another." Maybe it was poking a little too much fun at himself, when the situation really, really wasn't funny. By all rights, he knew stalking was creepy—he didn't even have to see the way Sarah's jaw tightened whenever she found out what he'd been doing to know that. Or how Casey rolled his eyes and grumbled about God saving him from lovesick geeks with no concept of boundaries.
Through the speakers, Blondie rolled over into Cheap Trick's "I Want You To Want Me."
Chuck's phone chimed in on the chorus, only it sang Journey instead. His fault, Chuck thought as he pulled the device from his pocket, for letting Morgan anywhere near his phone.
"Yeah, buddy," he said, cranking down the radio as he answered. "What's up?"
"Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, you have to get to the Buy More!" Excitement crackled through Morgan's voice; Chuck imagined his best friend jumping up and down in place.
"Wh-what? What's going on?"
"That thing I told you about! It's happening tonight, we're mobilizing the troops, everybody's in place, things are good to go. You have to get here, man, and bring any ammunition you possibly can. Paintball gun, Nerf gun, hell, bring a Koosh ball if you have to."
Chuck glanced toward the empty apartment building. Jill could be back any minute… "Morgan, now's not really a good—"
"Wait a second." Morgan drew up short. "Are you with a woman, Chuck? That's your 'I'm with a woman' voice."
"I'm not—"
"Is it the hot blonde secretary whose picture you have in your phone?" Morgan sounded excited. Even the thought of Sarah made an odd stab of guilt spear through Chuck. "Bring her too! The gang would love to meet the woman who's captured the heart of The One Bartowski!"
"First, she's an office manager, not a secretary. Secondly, she has a name. It's Sarah. And I'm not with her or anybody else right now. Nobody has captured the heart of—really? The One Bartowski? That's what you're calling me now?"
"Don't knock the name, dude. My religion, my naming conventions." Morgan paused and shouted something unintelligible to somebody in the background. It sounded like the early stages of a riot, but with the Buy More crew, it was more likely a party. "So what, even if you're not with her, give her a call, tell her to come to the Buy More. She'll be very disappointed if she misses the chance to witness history in the making, Chuck. I don't think you realize this. This is big. It's huge. It's first-time-finding-out-Samus-is-a-chick enormous. So grab your weapon of choice and get to the Buy More. Harry Tang and his orangutans are going down! Twenty minutes, buddy. Don't be late."
Chuck was left with a dial tone.
He stared wistfully at the empty apartment windows, mourning the fact that a night of sitting in the car staring wasn't going to pay off. He wouldn't see Jill tonight. He had received his marching orders. It was time to go home, gear up, and head to the Buy More. With twin barrels of curiosity and melancholy eating at him, Chuck put his key in the ignition and drove away.
30 OCTOBER 2007
BACHELOR PAD
21:52 PDT
At the apartment, Chuck raced upstairs and pawed through his closet for the dual-action, fifty-round, semi-automatic foam-dart gun he'd purchased especially for this. A distant part of him acknowledged that he was rapidly nearing what could be called a psychological saturation point. Between lunch out with Sarah and sitting on an open street stalking Jill, his system might overload. But curiosity made the rest of him ignore all of that. Plus the dart gun just felt good in his hands.
Since Morgan had put him on a deadline, Chuck ignored the Bryce board and the multitudes of manila folders covering every inch of his bed. He walked right past his monitor, which was open to Kingdom of Athenei. Onscreen, Schnookie idled, alternating between eating patches of grass and nibbling on her own toenails.
Damn, but he was proud of her.
The front door opened just as he started toward it. Casey came in, dumped his keys, and stopped short. His eyes tracked immediately to the gun at Chuck's side, which wasn't all that surprising. The gun, after all, was a lurid green with purple accents, and loaded with yellow foam darts. It was about as stealthy as Colossus hiding in an elementary school.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, Bartowski?"
"This really isn't what it looks like," Chuck said.
"Really? Because it looks like you're going out of the apartment, the one where Walker and I asked you to stay for the night, armed to your geek teeth with a pathetic toy. Give me that." Casey jerked the gun out of Chuck's hands. "What is this? What were you planning to do?"
"It's a gun, Casey, I think even a badass super secret agent like yourself would realize that."
Casey pointed the gun at Chuck's midsection. "Wanna drop the sarcasm?"
Even though he knew the foam darts wouldn't hurt, they would still be a pain to clean up. "Fine," Chuck said, hoping Casey's temper wouldn't inspire him to shoot anyway. "I'll lose the sarcasm, but I would like to officially go on record protesting this double-standard."
"Noted. Ignored. Explain."
Chuck waffled. He was, in theory, a full grown man. It wasn't any of Casey's business since he wasn't putting himself in danger. On the one hand, admitting what he was on his way to do to a cold school killer NSA agent just seemed ridiculous.
On the other, Casey would never let him leave until he explained. So it came out in a rush: "Morgan and his pals are staging a revolution at the Buy More. It's supposed to be something like the war to end all wars, and not to be missed."
"A revolution?"
Was that interest in Casey's eyes? Chuck gulped and decided to push onward. "An insurgency to overthrow an evil overlord by the name of Harry Tang. Major tool if there ever was one. He's apparently making life hell for the workers at the Buy More, so tonight is the night for their revenge. I'm going over to lay down some cover fire for my buddies. At the very most, I'll have a Red Bull hangover tomorrow, and trust me, I've worked with worse."
"Okay."
Of all of the answers Chuck had been expecting, this one was so far off the list that it had held no hope of ever making it past the velvet ropes. "O-okay?"
"Here. C'mon." Casey shoved the gun back at him.
Chuck barely caught the gun. "C-c'mon?"
To his amazement, he followed Casey into the other man's bedroom. He got the barest details—a bed, white walls, a framed picture of Ronald Reagan keeping a framed picture of Charlton Heston company on the dresser—on the way through, for Casey crossed immediately to a closet full of G-man suits. Chuck watched the other man input a code into what he had assumed to be a thermostat.
Immediately, a grinding, whirring noise made him tense, but it was only the racks of ties and suits retreating back into the corners.
"Whoa," Chuck said.
The closet was still going. Long, slim trapdoors opened, very much like the monitor bays in Chuck's desk at Castle. Panels slid out of the floor, thin and wide, nearly as tall as Chuck and Casey. Lights around the edges flared to life, illuminating the panels' wares admirably.
Chuck's jaw swung gently in the breeze.
Casey ignored both the geek and three quarters of the panels that would make any card-carrying member of the NRA jealous. Not a single gun company was left out of this particular party, Chuck noted, though from the number of Sig Sauer labels above the guns pegged to those panels, Casey apparently owned controlling stock in that company. He didn't seem to discriminate—he liked guns. Shotguns, revolvers, pistols, machine guns, automatics, semi-automatics…blow-guns. Wonderingly, Chuck reached out to pick that one up, only to have Casey slap his hand away without looking.
It was unnerving how both Sarah and Casey could do that.
Casey swiveled the panel on the left around and surveyed his options with pursed lips. As Chuck continued to gape, Casey went for the gun in the middle. It wasn't the largest, but it was by far the most impressive.
"Like it?" he asked the bug-eyed Chuck. "I call her the Harbinger."
"Uh, y-yeah. She's a beauty." And she was, too. Easily twice the size of Chuck's own gun, the Harbinger could hold twice the amount of ammo, was dual-action, and had an automatic reload mechanism and what looked like a long-distance scope and laser guidance system. On top of that, the gun was sleek, painted matte black with electric blue accents. A functional work of art.
As Chuck goggled, wondering exactly when he had entered this alternate dimension and if there was perhaps a super-spy version of himself running around, romancing women that looked like Sarah Walker, Casey slung a couple of dart ammo belts over one shoulder, reset the closet panels, cocked the gun, and said, "Let's go."
30 OCTOBER 2007
BURBANK BUY MORE
22:13 PDT
Given the latish hour, it was unsurprising that the Buy More parking lot would be mostly empty, containing only a line of Buy More Nerd Herders and the employee cars. Casey parked over in front of Underpants, Etc. so that his beloved Crown Vic would be out of the line of fire should the battle spill out into the parking lot.
It had taken Chuck every bit of persuasion he had to convince Casey that they didn't need their tactical dress uniforms for this mission. Jeans, dark shirts, and ski caps would suffice. Looking like a couple of muggers with absurdly bright guns, they strode across the parking lot. Though the inside of the Buy More was dark, the doors opened with a whisper to admit them.
"Well, this is spooky," Chuck said as he looked into the belly of the dimly-lit electronics superstore.
Casey's head jerked and he yanked the Harbinger up, aiming to the right, toward the Home Entertainment center. "Get down," he muttered to Chuck, and they both slunk behind one of the freestanding carts that contained the new release DVDs. Chuck had no idea what License to Wed was about, but he had absolutely no desire to see it. He would, however, have no problem whatsoever using it as a shield.
"What is it?" he asked Casey.
Casey squinted into the dimness. "Saw movement. Where are we supposed to meet your team?"
Chuck's pocket chirped—new text message. "Break room," he said once he'd checked. "They must be tapped into the security feed back there, they saw us come in."
Since Chuck had briefed Casey on the layout of the Buy More, he was able to lead the way through the DVD section, heading parallel to the back of the store on a slant toward the break room. They gave the home entertainment area a wide berth—"Most likely the enemy base."—and used the Nerd Herd desk for cover. Though they occasionally heard the squeak of a sneaker against linoleum, no bogeys were sighted.
Chuck gave the secret knock while Casey covered him, the Harbinger pointed toward the store.
A very relieved Morgan opened the door and quickly yanked Chuck into a room full of people in commando gear. Even Creepy Jeff, it seemed, had found a way to geekify the Army Surplus. Or at least Chuck assumed it was Creepy Jeff underneath a full camouflage blanket.
"Where have you been? You took forever!"
"Getting back-up," Chuck said.
Morgan's eyes lit up. "You brought your secretary?"
"Office manager," Chuck started to say, but Casey shouldered his way into the room, knocking Chuck forward. "And no, I brought him. Morgan, meet John Casey. John Casey, my best friend Morgan. Casey here runs security for my company."
"Honor to be serving with you, man," Morgan said, extending a hand toward Casey.
Casey ignored him. "What in the sainted name of George S. Patton, Jr. is that abomination?"
Chuck quickly jumped between the NSA agent and the Wall of Chuck before the vein in Casey's neck could begin throbbing. "Morgan missed me, that's all this is," he said through his teeth, hoping that Casey could read minds and understand that the wall, while insane, terrifying, and quite frankly a little puzzling, was not a threat to national security.
"It's our shrine," Morgan said as he unrolled a set of blueprints onto one of the tables, "to The One. And it's not important right now. All right, lady and gentlemen, here we go. Let the Battle of Wolf Three-Five-Nine commence."
Chuck squinted at first the blueprints, which seemed to be of the Buy More, and then at Morgan. "Didn't the Battle of Wolf Three-Five-Nine go horribly, horribly wrong for the good guys?"
"Details, Chuck, details." Morgan produced a riding crop from nowhere and smacked it against the wall. More specifically, across a picture of a glowering bald man. The words "ASSISTANT MANAGER" blazed in Buy More yellow and green under the picture. Some clever geek had blacked out "ISTANT" and "AGER" with a Sharpie. "Tell me, Chuck, does that or does that not look like a Borg to you?"
Chuck tilted his head. "Now that you mention it…"
"And this time, the good guys are going to win because, well, that's how it happens on TV, and that's how it should happen in the Buy More." Morgan put both hands on the table, on either side of the blueprints, and met his teammates' eyes one by one. "Pay attention, boys. And girl." The woman who'd asked for Chuck's autograph (he'd since learned her name was Anna) rolled her eyes and shifted her wakizasci. "The game is Capture the Flag. Per the rules, we're allowed to put the flag anywhere we want, so we chose…" He gestured at the camouflage blanket in the corner.
Creepy Jeff appeared from its depths. As everybody watched in horror, he reached into his pants and—
"Eugh!" Every nerd herder, green-shirt, and Chuck cried together.
Creepy Jeff chortled and shoved the flag back into his underwear.
Morgan waited for the shuddering to finish before he continued. "It's not a certainty by any means, but we think that Team Tang will have stuffed their flag in one of the refrigerators in the home appliance section. So this is how it's going to go down…"
30 OCTOBER 2007
BURBANK BUY MORE
22:37 PDT
They'd been assigned two-man fire-teams for the battle. Apparently, Morgan and Harry Tang had laid out rules beforehand: any choice of weapon was fine, but team members had to acknowledge hits even if the ammunition didn't leave a mark. Chuck had seen everything from modified paintball guns to a blowtorch.
Though to be fair, Morgan had seen fit to take that away from Lester Patel. The little dude was just too squirrelly to rock a blowtorch, as Morgan had claimed. Chuck had thanked him on behalf of society.
His own partner was, and this was truly a shocker, Casey. Morgan had wanted to team up with his best buddy, but Casey had been adamant. He ran security for Chuck Bartowski's company. He would run security for Chuck Bartowski.
It was actually kind of fun working with Casey, not that Chuck would admit that aloud. Casey treated the war with the seriousness of a gun battle on the Ho Chi Minh trail. He led the way through the Buy More, hand signaling whenever a team needed to branch off, his footsteps quiet and measured, his every sense alert. Chuck walked backward behind him, covering his rear and trying not to stumble over anything that would give away their position. They could hear shouts and click of random nonlethal weapons as other fire-teams encountered the enemy, but so far, Chuck and Casey had been amazingly lucky.
Casey held up a hand. Wait. Obediently, Chuck dropped to a knee as he'd been instructed, his gun at the ready. Casey gave him the signal to stay put and wandered forward a couple more feet into the small home appliance section—
The little man struck in a blur of yellow, green, khaki, and Klingon war cry. He blind-sided Casey so fast that Casey wasn't able to swing the Harbinger around in time, not that that stopped Casey for long.
Casey reacted with all of the instinct of a hardened soldier and federal agent. He knocked the man in the yellow polo to the ground with one easy stroke, brought the Harbinger around, and shot him in the forehead.
Harry Tang blinked up at John Casey, a dart stuck right between his eyes.
Chuck gaped. "That was so cool! Can you do that again?"
"Shut up, moron, you're giving away our position," Casey hissed. He pointed one threatening finger at the stunned Assistant Manager on the ground. "Not a word out of you. You're a dead man, hear me? I shot you, fair and square."
The dart bobbled a little when Harry Tang nodded, too scared to speak.
"I think his warble might have given us away a little more than I did," Chuck whispered, scowling at Casey.
"Whatever. We need to move. C'mon." Casey sent one last glare at Harry Tang. He reached out to grab Chuck's shoulder and haul him along.
But Chuck, sensing movement behind him, whirled. He saw just a flash and took off without thinking, ignoring Casey's hissed, "Bartowski! It could be a trap!" He rounded a corner into the stereo equipment aisle.
The Koosh ball hit him right in the forehead. It kind of hurt.
"Hah!" Squirrelly Lester actually did a victory dance on the spot. "Got you!"
Chuck gritted his teeth and willed himself not to rub the mark where the Koosh ball had hit. "I'm on your team, douche-bag," he ground out through gritted teeth. "You just killed one of your own teammates."
Wow. Casey was certainly rubbing off on him. This could not be good.
"Did I? Did I really?" Lester's oily, conniving grin threatened to split his face. "Tell me, Charles. There's a Manager, and an Ass Man, and then what? Assistant to the Ass Man. No more wading in the depths of obscurity for me. I intend to ride the coattails of one Harold Tiberius Tang to fame and glory and—urk!" A dart sprouted between his eyes. He scowled at Chuck. "That wasn't fair! You're dead! I killed you already, that's against the rules!"
"But this isn't," Casey said from behind Lester right before he shot the Ass Man's ass man in the ass. For good measure, he added an extra dart to the back of the head. He blew on his gun barrel, chuckling under his breath. "Nobody likes a traitor."
Lester stalked off in a huff, probably to find the stunned-stupid Harry Tang and commiserate. Chuck sent a huge sarcastic grin after him—and froze.
"Well, if you're dead, Bartowski, might as well go wait out in the car. I'll go find the flag and—what are you looking at?" Casey shifted position to follow Chuck's line of sight. His eyes widened. "Oh."
Immediately, warlike Casey disappeared and his twin brother Major Casey took over. "He hasn't spotted us, so we don't want to spook him. I'll circle around, approach from the other side, and you sneak as quietly as you possibly can behind him. Do not alert him to your presence, do not engage him. Got me?"
"Got it," Chuck said, his voice cracking. He forced his limbs to move jerkily forward.
But it was too late. Their quarry, currently rooting through the home appliance section while every Buy More employee was otherwise occupied, had looked over—right at them.
Chuck had approximately two nanoseconds to stare into Laszlo Mahnovski's startled face before the fugitive turned tail and ran.
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