Thursday, September 30, 2010

Chapter 21: Tap-Dancing Through a Mine Field

Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live. – Franklin Delano Roosevelt


Tap-Dancing Through a Mine Field

10 NOVEMBER 2007
AUXILIARY LIBRARY
21:07 PST


"You said what now?" Chuck asked, though he'd heard his sister perfectly. Too perfectly. In fact, there was no way in hell he could have misunderstood her question, since it had been asked at regular volume in an empty corner of an empty library.

At that moment in history, he would have given his left foot for anything to get him out of this conversation. A phone call telling him that the president needed him to flash on something. Magnus skewering him with a crossbow. Sarah appearing from around a corner and brightly announcing that it was time for them to go, big things to do at the office tomorrow. An excuse. A hole in the floor. A time machine.

None of that happened. Instead, Ellie gazed at him levelly, her expression unchanged. She summed up his thoughts by saying, "You heard me. Now answer the question."

"Ellie, I really—"

"Before you tell me that you can't tell me," Ellie said, holding up a finger. "I want to point out that I invited this woman into my home. Into my home, Chuck. She's been a part of my life, she's gone to parties with me, she's met all of my friends. If she's been lying to me from the beginning, I deserve to know about it."

She didn't add "And kick her to the curb," but her tone did.

"Are you crazy?" Chuck asked. "Sarah's just your roommate and my office—"

"Oh, come on." Ellie poked him in the arm. "Don't insult me."

"Ellie, I'm not—"

"She arrived a week before you came back," Ellie said, ticking individual points off on her fingers. "Let's see. She always seems to know my schedule. And even though she's got the world's scariest memory for where everything is in the apartment, she just happens to mix up the name of the computer guy she's got her big job interview with—Kowalski instead of Bartowski, which is her roommate's name? And let's not even forget the fact that you obviously knew her before I introduced you two."

"Obviously?" Chuck felt a stab of insult. He thought he'd put up a pretty good show when Ellie had first introduced him to Sarah as her roommate.

"Oh, probably not to anybody else." Ellie rolled her eyes. "But come on, Chuck, how long have I been your big sister?"

"A long time."

"A long time. And I know how you act around pretty girls when you meet them for the first time."

"Maybe I just didn't notice she was pretty," Chuck argued, feeling stupid.

Ellie gave him a look: get real.

"Everybody has different standards for physical beauty. She could just be not my type."

Ellie rolled her eyes. "Sarah came to visit me at work and my gay nurse friend commented that she was so pretty that he'd go straight for her. My straight nurse friend agreed she'd probably go gay. You know just as well as everybody else on the planet that she's beautiful, so just answer my question."

He wanted to. He wanted to start spilling, to just talk and talk until there was nothing left. At one point in his life, he had been able to tell Ellie everything. Now, the knowledge of everything that he wasn't allowed to tell her sat on his chest, a crushing weight, every time they even so much as talked on the phone.

His mouth worked. No sound came out.

Ellie sighed and looked away, her disappointment striking like a fist. "I thought so. Tell your government buddy that she has twenty-four hours to get her stuff out of my place, and I'll pay her back for the rest of the rent for the month. I don't need the government watching my every move." She rose to go.

Chuck surged forward and grabbed her wrist before she could leave. "Ellie, Ellie, wait. That would be a bad idea."

"Why?"

He was a government worker. He had to follow orders. Telling Ellie anything beyond what she already knew was a breach of protocol so severe that it could land him prison for years. Or maybe they'd just shoot him. After all, a dead man was much cheaper to protect than a man in prison. He shouldn't tell her. He should come up with a brilliant lie, something that would dig him deeper into the hole of lying to his sister. It was better for everybody that way.

But it was Ellie. Ellie, who had been through enough. She'd lost her parents, her brother, all without any explanation. All at once, Chuck felt a fury build up, so hot and intense that he could practically taste it. His free hand clenched into a fist.

"Wait here," he said, his decision made. "Have a seat. I'll be right back."

"Chuck—"

"Less than a minute, I promise." He hurried away, pulling out his wallet. The Velcro sounded like an explosion in the silent library, but there wasn't much he could do about it. He removed three small, flat pieces of plastic from the hidden compartment behind his credit cards and fiddled with two of them as he walked. Setting them up on either side of the stairwell was easy, lining them up exactly a bit trickier. He'd almost completed assembling the speaker out of the third piece when he made it back to Ellie.

She'd taken a seat as he'd requested, but not on the chair. Instead, she sat on the floor, apparently heedless of what the dust in this library could do to her jeans. Her back rested against the bookshelf so that she could look out the small window at the sky.

Without a word, Chuck sat next to her. He clipped the receiver to his belt loop and pulled out a flat, round circle. It wasn't large, just bigger than his thumbnail, and it fit perfectly over his watch face.
Ellie looked away from the night sky. "What's that?"

"White noise generator." Chuck adjusted it over his watch.

"And the…" Ellie poked the perimeter receiver. "Whatever that is?"

"Perimeter alert. It'll let me know if somebody comes up here."

Ellie goggled. "Chuck, what the hell—"

But he shook his head. "What I'm about to tell you is…well, they'll throw me in prison for it, and I'm already under suspicion, so better safe than sorry."

"Better safe than—"

"And I can't tell you everything," Chuck barreled on. If she kept interrupting him, or he thought about everything too much, about how much trouble he could get Sarah and Casey into, about what the knowledge would do to Ellie… He hurried on. "You have to understand that. It's not that I don't trust you, it's just that some of it isn't mine to tell, and there are others that could get into trouble, people that I…I care about, even if some of them are scary." He specifically avoided bringing Casey's face to mind. "So whatever I tell you, it has to stay here, okay? Right here in this room, and you can't talk to me about it over the phone, or in person unless I specifically tell you it's okay, okay?"

He could see the wheels working in his sister's head even as she stared at him, her eyebrows drawn close together and her mouth slightly open. "You're scaring me," she finally said.

"I know. I'm sorry."

"You make it sound like you're a super-secret spy or something," Ellie said, her eyebrows lowering. She looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to deny it.

Chuck didn't say anything.

"Oh, my God," Ellie breathed. "You are, aren't you?"

He remained still. It was easier to let her draw her own conclusions rather than confirm or deny. Right now, neither of them had technically done anything wrong.

"I mean, I knew you were doing something for the government. I just thought it was like a think tank or something like that."

"A think tank?"

"It made more sense in my head." Ellie pushed her hands through her hair, something she usually only did when flustered. "I mean, you've always been brilliant and creative, and it was kind of annoying how none of our household appliances were ever safe but—a spy, Chuck? With danger and—and guns and…" She trailed off and simply gaped.

"I'm not a spy, not exactly," he lied, trying not to think about the Triad, Peyman Alahi, Carina, defusing a bomb, or taking on a guy with a crossbow. "I'm an analyst. But…it's a weird situation. I'm special because of what's in my head. Which I can't tell you about, so please don't ask."

His sister's mouth opened and closed soundlessly for a few seconds. Finally, she shook her head, as if in a daze. "How?"

Chuck leaned back against the bookshelf. Even with the noise generator and the perimeter alert set up, he had to be careful here. It was like walking on a tightrope, deciding how much he could tell Ellie. Only, instead of plummeting to his death if he mis-stepped, he'd probably land in a vat full of sharks. Sharks with lasers on their foreheads, who just happened to be named Sarah and Casey.

"They recruited me from Stanford," he said, licking his lips, "my last semester here. And I went along with it because I was hoping to make a difference in the world, like you were doing with medical school. I didn't expect what happened to happen and trust me when I say that, if I could go back now and change it, I would." He stared at his hands since it was easier than meeting his sister's eyes, watching the way the fluorescent lights turned the bandages a sickly green color.

"Who? Who recruited you?"

"The CIA."

"The…" Ellie trailed off. "The CIA? The Central Intelligence Agency?"

"No, the Culinary Institute of America. I make a killer bean dip, emphasis on the killer," Chuck said, a small smile twisting up one corner of his mouth. "Yes. The Central Intelligence Agency made me an agent. I know. That was my first reaction, too."

"You've been a CIA agent for—for this whole time? All five years?"

Chuck nodded. "Joined up my last year in Stanford, yes. I'm still working for them."

"Doing what?"

"Data analysis." Well, more data filtering these days, as his job, on paper, was pretty much to watch a "data-dump" and report any flashes to either Sarah or Casey. "And I code. Really, I'm just a glorified code monkey for the government, that's all."

"So, if you're just a code monkey, as you say, why the hell do I have a—is Sarah CIA, too?"

Chuck just nodded. CIA, he thought, and very likely to karate chop him into many, many pieces and disperse with them where nobody would ever find him.

"So why do I have a CIA agent for a roommate?"

"She's there to protect you." Though, Chuck thought with an inward wince, not for much longer. After all, there was no point in having Operation Prometheus if the Prometheus portion was murdered by his CIA teammate.

He'd also said the wrong thing. Ellie's eyes widened; her hand flew to her throat. "Why the hell would I need protection?"

Uh-oh. "Uh, yeah, about that…"

"Chuck…" Ellie's tone held a warning note.

A lie now would mean that he'd probably find firsthand just how well Dr. Ellie Bartowski had done on her surgical rounds. So he sighed. "About a month and a half ago, something happened—a game-changer, you could say. They'd been keeping me in deep seclusion because I was working with some pretty sensitive stuff, but a building was destroyed—" The blood drained out of Ellie's face. Chuck threw both hands up to reassure her. "I wasn't anywhere near it, I promise. I was half a world away. But some intel in that building was, um, outsourced. It was…sent to me through some very questionable means."

"What?"

"I helped B—the guy who sent it—I helped him plan the operation. Without knowing it, of course. But I'm under a lot of suspicion right now, which is the reason for all of…" He waved a hand at his watch and the white noise generator. "And it probably didn't help that Sarah and I went rogue."

"What?"

"It's a long story—"

"Rogue? What? You're—Sarah's a rogue spy?"

"What? No!" Chuck stared at Ellie as though she'd suddenly started speaking Swahili. "No. She wouldn't do that. Not Sarah."

"You just said that you and Sarah went rogue—"

"Oh, right. Well, like I also said, it's a long story. She only went off the grid to protect m—the intel."

"Must have been some intel." Ellie leaned back against the bookshelf and folded her arms over her chest.

Chuck had to laugh, though there was no humor in the noise. "Trust me, it is. And because I have it and they don't, I finally had some leverage." He described what he could, keeping details vague, though he was sure quite a few slipped through in his excitement of finally being able to tell Ellie—or anybody at all really—about the adventures he and Sarah had had on the run. By the time he finished up his tale, Ellie was visibly gaping.

"You really did all of that?"

"It was all Sarah," Chuck said. "You have no idea. It's amazing to see her in action. She really shouldn't be here or in Burbank. She should be out there taking out the bad guys."

"If she's as great as you claim," and there was a healthy dollop of sisterly doubt in Ellie's voice, "why is she, then? In Burbank, I mean?" Her tone added: and living with me?

Chuck scrubbed his hands over his face. "Because of the leverage."

"I don't understand."

"I out-bluffed the government." Chuck gave her a sheepish look at her disbelieving stare. "Look, they were going to hurt Sarah or throw her in prison if I didn't do anything. And the only reason she went off the grid was because of me. I was protected by the intel, but she was kind of expendable in their eyes. So I bluffed—"

"Expendable?"

"Uh, ha. No, not like that." Chuck felt a thin trickle of sweat slide between his shoulder blades. "You know, uh, fired. Dishonorable discharge. Whatever. But don't worry, nothing came of it. I bluffed, and they were afraid to call it. I got a rep—her name's Gwen, and I think you'd love her—and she helped me call some of the shots."

"Gwen? Is she CIA, too?"

"No, FBI." Chuck had to smile. "Ellie, she's like you twenty, twenty-five years down the road. I told her my story and she walked right up to my bosses and started making demands. And they're clearly terrified of her. She says jump, you not only ask how high, but where to land and what would she like you to do next, too."

Though he could see the shock and the surprise working through Ellie's system, she mustered up a small smile for him. "I think you're right. I like her already. But I still don't understand how any of that has anything to do with Sarah living with me and lying to me about who she is."

"Orders, I expect." Chuck sighed. "I wanted the operation set in Burbank, but I don't know how much danger there is. So I requested that they furnish protection for you. I didn't specify that it had to be Sarah, as I figured she'd be off in some war zone doing…whatever it is she does. She's one of the best, Ellie, she really is."

"If she's one of the best, why isn't she living with you, protecting you?" Ellie poked him in the shoulder. "If this intel is as important as you say it is…"

"I've got a roommate-slash-bodyguard, don't worry." And yet another person in line to murder him once this conversation was over, Chuck thought. "He's big, and he grunts a lot, and he's nowhere near as pretty as Sarah, but he's actually halfway decent. I didn't think so at first."

"I thought you said Sarah wasn't your type, Chuck."

"Oh, c'mon, sis." Chuck gave her a look. "I've got a pulse."

"It's a fair point," Ellie said. "But if she's—"

Her cell phone cut in and made them both jolt. Ellie laughed and put her hand over her heart as she pulled it out of her purse. "That's Devon. Should I—"

"Go ahead, answer. Just don't tell him anything about all of this," and Chuck waved a finger in the air to indicate their conversation, "over a phone line, okay?"

"Okay." Though Ellie smiled, Chuck saw her hands shake as she answered. "Hey, babe. What's up? No, no, just hanging out with Chuck. He's showing me some of his old haunts on campus, and we're waiting for Sarah to get…really?" Her face scrunched up in confusion. "But I thought you said that Todd was the attending on tomorrow's…oh. Well, what time do you need to be there? Mm, okay. Yes, I guess we'd better get moving. Can you get the car and pick us up? That'll probably be faster. We're in front of…" She glanced at Chuck for confirmation.

"The Auxiliary library," he said.

"Yeah, it's…actually, I'm not sure. Here, I'll just hand you over to Chuck and he can give you directions."

"Ellie, we're in a library," Chuck said, glancing around and automatically lowering his voice.

"As your little sensor thingie pointed out, we're alone, nobody's going to care if you talk on the phone." Ellie rolled her eyes as she gave him the phone.

She had a point. A minute later, Chuck hung up the phone and handed it back. "He says to give him ten minutes, but it'll probably be closer to fifteen." He started to push himself to his feet, but Ellie grabbed his forearm before he could. He froze. "What? What is it?"

"Chuck…" She swallowed hard. "Thank you for being honest with me."

Chuck waited, warily. He knew that look well. Ellie was building up to something, and in these situations, it had always been better to just wait her out. The best way to get a Bartowski to talk, after all, was silence.

Well, silence, the threat of torture, holding Sarah at gunpoint, probably all manners of truth serum, and asking an outright question.

Face it, Chuck told himself. Bartowskis just talk too damn much.

"But?" he prompted when it looked like Ellie might take awhile to screw up the courage.

"But what if it happens again?"

"Me joining the CIA? Pretty sure that's a once-in-a-lifetime thing, sis."

"No, I don't mean that. I mean, I knew you worked for the government, I just thought it was some sort of research thing. I never imagined that you were a spy, or that you were working with something so sensitive. They put you in seclusion, Chuck. It scares me." Ellie looked troubled, but at least the tears in her eyes were still unshed. He'd feel like a grade-A creep for making his sister cry. "What if they take you away again, and don't tell me anything?"

Chuck opened his mouth to assure her, but stopped. Now that he was out of that godforsaken bunker, he could see the logic behind throwing him in another one. He was carrying around all of the government's intelligence secrets in his cranium, protected by only two agents. He hadn't had any torture resistance training. Hell, he'd failed Officer Candidate School.

It was frightening, when he thought about it too much.

"I can't say that it won't happen," he said. "I can't promise anything because, well…they're the government of the United Freaking States of America. But I've got people on my side that care about me, that don't want me to go back into the—into seclusion. I know I talk about Sarah a lot like she's unstoppable, but I'm not exaggerating. She's tougher than nails, and for some reason, she seems to think I'm important enough to have a real life. Trust me, it would take a few tanks to take her down once she's got her mind set on something. And I've got Gwen in my corner, too. And Casey, even if he'll never admit it. I think the big guy secretly likes me. Well, hates me less, at any rate. And I've always got you."

And then it happened. A solitary tear made its way down Ellie's cheek. Inwardly, Chuck winced as he scrambled to grab Ellie's hand. "Please, please don't cry. I'm fine. I'm not going anywhere. And hey, if I do…" An idea struck him, and he almost leapt to his feet, yanking Ellie up in the process. "C'mon, you have to see this."

"See what?"

Chuck tugged until they were both standing by the dumpsite. "Here," he said, grabbing Ellie's hand and putting it against the catch. "Feel that, right there? I set up this drawer when I was a student as a way to pass messages to my professor. Sarah and Casey don't even know about this. Only two people do, and one of them is in critical condition."

Ellie gave him an alarmed look.

"I was nowhere near him when it happened, I promise," Chuck said quickly.

Ellie sneezed as she opened the catch. "It's empty."

"Yeah, I cleaned it out already. But if I have to leave and I can't tell you, what I'll do is I'll leave you something…"

"A note?"

"No, it needs to be some kind of code…" Seeking inspiration, Chuck patted his pockets, ignoring the intel disk. He came up with only the promise ring, which he stuffed away before Ellie could see it, and his old Magic: the Gathering deck. He thumbed through it. "Here. This. If I vanish without a trace, I want you to come here, check this drawer. If you find the Prodigal Sorcerer card inside, it means that I went willingly, and that I'm coming back. If it's empty, I want you to contact Gwen Davenport with the FBI. She'll know what to do."

"And what if she's in on it?" Ellie asked.

Chuck had to admire the paranoia, even if it hurt his heart. "Then try and find Sarah, and hope she's had her spinach because she'll have some ass to kick."

"And what if she's in on it, Chuck?"

"Then you probably wouldn't be able to find her." Chuck shrugged. "But in all seriousness, Ellie, she's Sarah. I trust her. She saved me, and she's continued to go to the wall for me, even though I'm this constant drag."

"I highly doubt that you're a drag, Chuck." Ellie turned away to close up the dumpsite.

"We'll have to agree to disagree. But we should probably go outside and wait for Awesome. And I have to call Sarah and see if she's finished up with the—the old classmate."

Ellie's eyes narrowed. "And if she isn't?"

"Then I'll stay up here with her and we'll drive back down together." Chuck shrugged. "I'm supposed to stay within a twenty mile radius of her or my other partner."

It spoke volumes of his sister's mental state that she just accepted that with a nod. She bit her lip and glanced around the library. Thinking mode had kicked in. "What should I tell her? I mean, you said this conversation has to stay here, but…I'm not that good of an actress, Chuck. She's going to suspect something is up."

"Do you think you could keep up an act until we get back to Burbank?" Chuck cringed at the look Ellie gave him. "I know it's a lot to ask, especially since we'll be in the car for six or seven hours. But I'll talk to her, explain the situation the instant we get back. She'll probably even be relieved that you know."

If, he amended silently, she didn't simply kill him with an icy look on the spot. Ellie seemed to read his thoughts on that one. She gave him a droll look.

"Eventually," Chuck said. "Eventually she'll be relieved. C'mon, let's head out."

He took the white noise generator off of his watch, and deactivated the perimeter sensors as they headed downstairs. They were still the only ones in the library, except for the single bored woman working at the front desk. She didn't even look up from her magazine as they left.

10 NOVEMBER 2007
IN FRONT OF THE LIBRARY
21:47 PST


Chuck hung up his phone, which made Ellie glance over. They were shivering, as the temperature was much cooler at Stanford than Burbank. The fact that they were sitting on the marble staircase leading up to the Auxiliary Library didn't help matters. A nearby street lamp washed their world with orange. "What did Sarah say?"

"Stall," Chuck said, pocketing his phone. "She'll be here in ten minutes or so. The classmate must have talked a lot, or something." The last bit was said a bit lamely.

"It's probably going to take Devon that long to get to the car, so she'll probably beat him here."

"We can only hope." Except that Chuck wanted to push Sarah's arrival off for as long as he possibly could. And maybe stop by the van to pick up a few Kevlar vests, maybe a full bomb suit, and cookies. They might mollify Sarah somewhat, as she had shown a partiality to chocolate, but mostly, he was just hungry. It had been awhile since the pretzel at the game. "How, uh, how was the game going?"

Ellie turned toward him, her eyes bulging.

"Well, it's not like we can talk about anything else," Chuck said. "So, sis, how was the game?"

Ellie folded one arm over her chest and held a hand out by her face, fingers spread. It was her flustered stance, one he had usually seen only when a big decision needed to be made, or something had gone wrong. "Chuck, I need time to process all of this." She pushed the back of her hand against her mouth, again something she only did when distressed or upset. Or, Chuck knew, just deep in perplexed thought. "I don't think I can make idle chitchat right now, so do you think—oh, my God."

Chuck started to reach for the tranq gun still in his waistband before he thought better of it. "What?" He glanced around, searching for danger, for Magnus, for anything. They weren't the only ones on the street—people were strolling along both sides, enjoying a pleasantly cool Saturday night on Stanford's campus—but he didn't immediately see any threat nearby in any of them until his eyes locked on a lone figure walking toward them, hands in his pockets.

Chuck froze.

Ellie didn't. "Bryce? Bryce Larkin?"

The figure paused and squinted. Even from this distance, Chuck could see the clear blue eyes, though they were shaded from the streetlight by the brim of a Stanford cap. "Ellie Bartowski?" Bryce demanded in a shocked voice. He strode forward and pretended to notice Chuck for the first time. Chuck knew better. "And Chuck! The famous Chuck Bartowski! I can't believe it."

Chuck stayed absolutely still as Ellie gave Bryce a hug. What should he do? His insides had frozen, a coat of frost working its way over everything, making movement impossible. He needed to call Sarah. He needed to stop Bryce. He needed to know why Bryce had done it. He needed to not close his eyes—

He blinked. And as he did so, Peyman's guard from the warehouse fell to the ground, lifeblood leaking.

The frost turned to nausea.

"C'mere, you!" Bryce, still jovial though Chuck could see evident exhaustion in his ex-friend's pallor, grabbed him in a bear hug. "How long has it been, huh?"

"Si-since Stanford, at least," Chuck lied. He could feel the damnable coat of sweat beginning to sprout. What the hell? Could Bryce do this? Could he just walk out into public and start having conversations with CIA agents?

Apparently.

"Far too long!" Bryce grinned. "Heard you were back stateside, but I didn't expect to see you here. I thought you hated football."

"What are you doing here, Bryce?" Chuck said between his teeth, willing Ellie to get a phone call, something, anything to drag her away so that he could pull the tranq gun and bring Bryce in. The universe, however, didn't get his message. Ellie's cell phone remained silent.

Bryce seemed to know what he was thinking, if the broadening grin was any indication. "It's the big game, Chuck. Like I'm going to miss that. And I thought I'd drop by, maybe see some of the old haunts while I was here. Talk to some old professors, maybe."

Oh, God, Chuck thought. He knew about Fleming and the intel disk.

What the hell was he supposed to do? He couldn't do anythingand blow that part of his cover with Ellie. Why the hell had he been so reluctant to tell her that Bryce was part of the spy game? That would have solved all of his problems. He could probably just draw the gun anyway and try to hold his friend off until Sarah arrived, but he couldn't see that ending well for anybody.

Sarah. Oh.

Chuck's hand crept toward his pocket. If he could just get a message off to Sarah…

Bryce spotted the movement. An imperceptible shake of the head, a shift of one hand toward his waist. Of course, Bryce's cheerful mask didn't slip an inch. He looked wholly captivated with their conversation—idle chitchat, as Ellie would have put it—while Chuck stood silently by and tried not to freak out. Sarah, he thought, unable to move without Bryce blowing both of their covers, Sarah, hurry.

Finally, Bryce gave Ellie an apologetic smile. "Could I steal your brother for a minute? Stanford secrets, you know."

"Oh, sure. Right." Ellie grinned and gave Bryce another hug. "It was great running into you again, Bryce. Chuck, don't go far—we need to leave as soon as Devon gets here. I'll keep an eye out for Sarah."

Chuck winced. There went his ace in the hole. Indeed, Bryce's body language stiffened just a hair.

"Sarah's coming?" he asked once he'd dragged Chuck out of Ellie's sight, back into an alley between the library and the science building next door. "How long?"

"To?" If he could play dumb, keep Bryce talking, maybe Sarah would suddenly develop mind-reading abilities, which would enable her to break land-speed records and come save the day.

"Don't," Bryce warned. Now that Ellie was out of sight, the friendly, charming persona had fallen away. All that was left was a tired edge of exhaustion. Chuck had only seen that face during finals their junior year, when Bryce had taken Dickhead Dan Danforth's Psych 300 course. "Let's keep this simple, okay? I don't want to hurt you, but I'm here for the disk."

Chuck scoffed with a bravado he didn't feel. "Yeah, like I'm going to hand over important intel to a traitor, Bryce. For all I know, you're working with Magnus."

"The guy with the crossbow?" Bryce's brow crinkled.

Said crossbow had almost separated Sarah's head at the neck. "It's scarier in person."

"I'm sure. The disk, Chuck."

"What disk?"

"You already said you had important intel."

Damn it. "It doesn't necessarily have to be on a disk. It could be a flash drive."

"Well, fine. Hand over the flash drive, then."

Though Bryce hadn't pulled a gun, Chuck knew firsthand just how deadly he could be. He'd been tech support for the Sarah and Bryce Ass-Kicking Squad for two years, after all, and he'd seen video surveillance of both the battles and the aftermath. But he also knew to be more afraid of Sarah and Casey than Bryce. He'd already done enough tonight to piss them off. "Seriously, Bryce, what part of 'traitor' is so hard to understand? Is it the part where you blew up government property, the part where you sent me government secrets, or the—"

"Chuck, quit stalling and give me the intel already."

"What's on it, Bryce? What's so important to you?"

"It's something Fleming wanted me to have, not you. Otherwise he would have said White Hat."

"Yeah, but only because he didn't know 'Black Coat' actually meant 'turncoat.'" Chuck wanted to cross his arms over his chest. He knew better. Bryce could strike at any second, and he had a slim chance—a very slim chance—of fighting Bryce off if he remained tense and ready for it.

"I was never a traitor, Chuck."

He'd heard that one before, Chuck thought. "Again, what part's the hard part? Blowing up—"
"It was a government sanctioned operation."

Though that made him want to stop and think, again, Chuck knew better. He remembered Sarah's warnings. Trusting his once-best-friend right now might be deadly. And it would be very bad for Ellie to be the one to discover his body in an alley.

So he scoffed. "To destroy their own database and send it to a nerd in the middle of Siberia? Nice try." Chuck made a buzzing noise. "Game over, no lives left."

"So I deviated from the plan a little." Bryce shrugged and gave him a sincere look. "Come on, Chuck. The disk. Now. I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I have to."

"If you want this disk, you'll have to." Chuck's fists clenched. He and Bryce glanced down at them in surprise. "And no, I don't know where this bravery is coming from, either. I'd rather be hiding, trust me. But I'm not handing this disk over to a known traitor."

For ten humming, heart-pounding seconds, Bryce just stared. There was a hint of sadness on his face, but he finally conceded with a nod. "Very well. I'm sorry."

"For wh—" was all Chuck got out.

He saw a blur of Stanford red and blue jeans where his friend had been, and then Chuck's knees slammed into the concrete. Bryce twisted one arm behind his back, pressing a knee against his spine.
It hurt. More than a little.

"Damn it," Chuck said, flinching. "Can't I make it through one freaking day without getting injured in some way?"

"Sorry, buddy." Bryce did sound genuinely apologetic as he turned out Chuck's pockets. Chuck saw a flash in the corner of his eye of the disk being pulled out, and thought, Casey is going to kill me and Sarah is going to help him dig the unmarked grave. "Didn't want to hurt you."

"That's what you all say." Chuck scowled. He grunted when Bryce increased the pressure on his back, sending him face-first into the concrete. "Ow! Geez, Bryce!"

"Sorry," Bryce said again. "Stay down until I'm away. I don't want to have to shoot you, but…"

Chuck sighed against the pavement. "Yeah, yeah. Though you could do me a favor and shoot me now so that Sarah and Casey don't have to do it later. Really, it's the least you could do for your old partner."

He heard Bryce's footsteps still, and a quiet sigh.

"Why'd you do it?" Chuck asked. He kept his head down; he knew that tone of voice. Bryce had meant business about shooting him. "It makes no sense, Bryce. None of it ever did. You're not a traitor, you're Bryce Larkin of the Connecticut Larkins. You guys were here before this country was! You practically invented patriotism."

Something grabbed the back of his T-shirt. Chuck yelped as he was hauled to a sitting position against the wall. Bryce knelt in front of him, fury, exhaustion, and desperation all plain on his face. The gun was out now, not pointed at him, but still dangerously close. "Listen to me closely because I'm only going to say this once, Chuck. I'm not a traitor. Stealing the Intersect was a government-sanctioned mission. There's a group, Fulcrum. They're in all of the intelligent branches, and they're dangerous. They approached me with the mission to steal the Intersect. By the time I found out what they were up to, it was already too late. So it was either steal the Intersect myself and send it to somebody I trust, or let them destroy it."

Chuck felt each word punch through him. He wanted so badly to believe, but Sarah's warnings sat heavy the front of his mind. Still, they couldn't entirely eradicate hope. "Wh-why would they want to do that?"

"Because they have plans for the intel." Bryce's gaze remained steady. "They want to destroy it, and if they find out you've got the Intersect in your head, they'll take you."

"How d-did you know that? Nobody's supposed to know that."

"It was what I was hoping for when I sent it to you. And tell Sarah she needs to change her passwords." Half of Bryce's face pulled into a smile. Chuck's fist clenched. "Don't believe that I'm not a traitor? I don't blame you. I wouldn't believe me, either. But I did it for the good of everybody here. Just look up Operation Sand Wall when you get—"

Filing cabinets—footage of a Cold War assassination—

OPERATION SAND WALL. CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY 20605.

TOP SECRET. Documents. Automaticity, Problem Solving, Decision Making, Mental Flexibility and Creativity.

Nucleus-styled maps in quick succession.

Floor plans. OPERATION SAND WALL: INTERSECT.

Filing cabinets again.

"—Back." Bryce frowned. "Are you okay?"

Chuck raised a shaking hand to his aching temple. Flashes hurt just a bit more when he was tired. "You're really not rogue." It was said wonderingly, as if he couldn't believe his own thoughts. He looked at his friend, and felt the first full spurts of hope ignite through his chest.

"Did you—" Bryce's eyebrows drew close together. "Did the Intersect really just tell you all of that? Damn, that was fast."

Chuck ignored him. "You're still one of the good guys," he said.

He wasn't expecting to see the sad look cross Bryce's face. "Yes," Bryce said. "I'm still one of the good guys." He rose abruptly to his feet. "But Sarah and Casey can't know, Chuck."

"What?" Chuck blinked away the last of the fog and started to scramble to his feet. Bryce held out a warning hand. "Why the hell not?"

"Because they might be Fulcrum. You can't trust anybody, Chuck. Keep your guard up, and watch your back."

The thought of either Casey or Sarah possibly even being traitors floored him so much that Bryce was almost away before he regained his senses. "Wait!"

Bryce stopped, but didn't turn. "Chuck, I have to go."

"At least give me the disk back, so I can prove to Casey and Sarah that you're not a traitor that way."

Yet another sigh. Bryce still didn't turn. "No, Chuck. Not happening."

"Fine, then who's Phillip Dartmoor?" The question came out before he even realized he was asking it, but it didn't surprise him. The problem had sat at the back of his mind for nearly a month now. Bryce didn't move to answer now, so Chuck scowled. "I know you left that name in my pocket, Bryce, and I'm confused as to why. I'm having no luck finding him. I've looked up every Phillip Dartmoor living on the planet, and I still don't know why you left me his name."

"Well, there's your problem, Chuck. Phillip Dartmoor is dead." Without even so much as a final look back, Bryce vanished around the corner.

Chuck stayed where he was, leaning against the brick wall of the library and staring into the dimness. The Operation Sand Wall information still continued to roll through his mind as his brain worked to categorize all of it into usable portions. He let the information wash over him. It didn't matter as much as the rest of it all.

His best friend wasn't a traitor.

It almost made the fact that Casey and Sarah were going to murder him for losing the disk a little less scary. Almost.

"Chuck?" Ellie's voice drifted over the alley. "Devon's here! Oh, and there's Sarah!" She sounded nervous about the second prospect.

Yeah, Chuck thought as he rose to his feet, don't blame you there, sis. He stuffed his hands into his now-emptier pockets, and strode out to meet his fate.

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