Thursday, September 30, 2010

Chapter 24: A Stone Hitting the Water

The keys to patience are acceptance and faith. Accept things as they are, and look realistically at the world around you. Have faith in yourself and in the direction you have chosen. – Ralph Marston


A Stone Hitting the Water

13 NOVEMBER 2007
CASTLE: DOWNSTAIRS
15:37 PST


"For our next point, we'll have to officially welcome Dr. Bartowski to the team at another time, as her busy schedule made her unavailable for this meeting." General Beckman frowned her opinion of that, but, since the briefing had quite a few agenda points to get through, she didn't seem to want to dwell on the subject. "Until the NSA can furnish Dr. Bartowski with a proper cover identity and code name, please refer to her as Dr. X in your reports."

Chuck kept the frown off of his face only because Sarah had warned him not to react during the briefing. His feelings about Ellie—and Devon—joining Prometheus were still a mixed kettle of piranhas, even in the face of Ellie's obvious excitement about getting to work in the field of her dreams. And to finally have her little brother as a test subject, he thought, somewhat wryly. They really hadn't progressed far from the days when she'd examined all of his playground scrapes and bruises. Maybe he could convince Sarah that they needed to stock Incredible Hulk band-aids in Castle, just for old times' sake.

"Now, onto why we're really here," General Beckman went on when nobody had any comments about Ellie joining the team. "This mysterious Fulcrum group that Agent Larkin told Agent Bartowski about. I trust you've all had a chance to review the Sand Wall documents."

Chuck raised a hand, though he wasn't in a classroom. "General, if I may?"

Sarah and Casey flicked surprised glances over their shoulders at Chuck. They were seated at the conference table, Chuck on the very end with Sarah and Casey between him and the screens. He usually didn't speak up during the longer format briefings—that way often led to disaster—but since the subject involved everything that had to do with his head…

"Yes, Agent Bartowski?"

"The documents from Sand Wall seem to point toward the goal of having a human Intersect, but at the same time, all of the reports on my progress as Patient X have all been surprised as hell that I'm even functioning with this mega-computer in my head." Chuck leaned forward on his elbows, clasping his hands together so that he wouldn't try to mess with his tie. "I have to admit I'm confused. If a human Intersect was what they were building toward, why are they so shocked that it worked?"

On the screen, General Beckman paused. Her features were normally set to scowl, which hadn't changed, but now Chuck could sense a troubled undertone to her words.

"Operation Intersect was the brainchild of a small, select group of scientists. Unfortunately, their personal data was deleted from our system early on in the project's lifetime, so we have no knowledge of who actually created the Intersect."

"But the scientists that tested me—"

"Only worked on the late stages of the project and never with the Intersect's creators. They were never told about the Intersect's ability to reside within a human mind." General Beckman folded her hands on her desk. She was giving the briefing alone, as Director Graham had been called away at the last minute to a function.

Chuck felt the exhaustion get the better of him, and sighed. "So what you're saying, General, is that all knowledge of the people that created the Intersect went the way of things like Area Fifty-One?"

"Absolutely not." General Beckman looked offended. "We know exactly what happened to Area Fifty-One, Agent Bartowski."

Had she just—was that a joke? Chuck glanced over at Casey, who looked thoughtful, and over to Sarah. She had her hand in front of her face, covering her lips, while she looked down at a file in front of her.

On screen, General Beckman sighed. "Yes," she said, "I just told a joke. You have my permission to laugh."

Casey did so. Sarah merely smiled. Chuck was still too busy boggling to listen to cues.

"If you wish, Agent Bartowski, I'll have any surviving documents that we do have on the Intersect Project sent to you."

"Really? You'd do that?"

Abruptly, Beckman's face lost all of its kindness. "Yes, if it means we can proceed with the actual point of this briefing. Let's move on, shall we?"

Ah, there it was, Chuck thought. Just when he'd begun to suspect that the General had had a brain transplant, she proved him wrong. Whew. He sat back in his seat, but kept his hands folded and clasped on the table in front of him.

"From Agent Bartowski's reports, we've been able to come to the conclusion that Agent Larkin was recruited by this so-called Fulcrum group in order to steal and destroy the NSA/CIA joint version of the Intersect. We believe that Fulcrum wishes to create their own Intersect, but cannot do so without the science provided by the original creators."

Who were so well-hidden, Chuck thought, that even the Central Freaking Intelligence Agency couldn't find them.

"So what does that mean for us? For Prometheus?" he asked.

"Your overall mission objective will not change." Beckman's gaze swept over all three team members. "Agent Bartowski provides too valuable a service to be ignored, as his odd mental acuity for the Intersect has led us to find things that no computer would be able to discover. However, in light of the fact that we are dealing with an enemy that is almost literally unknown…"

Great, Chuck thought. A faceless enemy. Just what he didn't need.

"We can be grateful that there have been no signs that this Fulcrum group is aware of Agent Bartowski's identity. No undue attention has been given to the Carmichael persona, either, but given Agent Walker and Agent Casey's proximity to the Intersect project, we've taken precautions." General Beckman touched a button on her end of the connection, and immediately photo IDs of Sarah and Casey took up one of the screens on the wall. "Cover identities are being built for Sarah Walker and John Casey in various parts of Africa, running counter-intelligence missions for your respective branches. Major Casey and Agent Walker will now be on the record as ICE Agents Jaime Winter and Mike Rainer. Any reports filed will bear those names."

"What?" Casey sat up straighter, his eyebrows going low over his eyes. "We're going with the cover identities Bartowski created?"

"They're remarkably complex for a few hours' work. This is strictly for the purpose of introducing yourself to future auxiliary teams. Otherwise, protocols have not changed."

Sarah flipped through the folder in front of her, which Chuck now saw listed all of the details for ICE Agent Jaime Winter. "Hmm. What are the protocols for when we run into agents we've worked with before?"

"You're good spies, I suspect you'll come up with something."

Chuck leaned forward to get a better look at Sarah's cover details. She swatted at his wrist and pulled the file away, rolling her eyes. Chuck still caught the smile she tried to hide.

"You said our overall objective hadn't changed," Casey said, ignoring the Mike Rainer file that lay in front of him. "But some objectives have?"

"Yes. As of this moment, I'm placing Operation Prometheus on the forefront of the hunt for Agent Larkin. I understand that Agent Bartowski has been gathering data on his own. Major Casey has kept us informed of his progress."

Chuck shot Casey a betrayed look. Casey shrugged.

"Agent Walker, as she has the strongest connection with Agent Larkin, will take over that prong of Prometheus's objective, using the technology that should be arriving at Castle later today. If Agent Bartowski would be willing to pass all of his intel to her?" General Beckman's question wasn't actually a request, but Chuck nodded anyway. "Excellent. I have my analysts hard at work on possible leads on Fulcrum, correlating data based on the limited facts we've managed to glean from Agent Bartowski. We'll have a list of leads for you to follow by tomorrow."

It was definitely a start, Chuck thought, though he had to wonder what kind of leads Beckman's people could even hope to generate, given that they'd known absolutely nothing about a cabal that had managed to not only blow up a government building, but destroy one of its greatest projects in the meantime. Still, there wasn't much he could do but listen as Beckman let them know exactly what was going to happen in the near future.

13 NOVEMBER 2007
BACHELOR PAD
21:12 PST


Thanks to his forced nap in Castle, Chuck was able to make it back to the Bachelor Pad without doing a nosedive into his steering wheel or driving his car off of the road, something that he hoped the US government appreciated. After all, he was carrying their precious Intersect, wasn't he? They should be grateful every day he woke up and didn't immediately leap off his balcony. They should give him a friggin' medal.

A Red Bull or two had helped him get through the lasagna Casey had microwaved for both of them. He'd done the dishes (which involved throwing the paper plates that Sarah despaired of them having away), taken out the trash, regular Monday night things. Since there wasn't much on TV, he retreated up to his room, but he didn't turn on the video game console. Schnookie took up one of the dual monitors on his desk, but he ignored her.

It was time to find Phillip Dartmoor once and for all.

First, though, he had to clean all of the files off of his bed. They were just a waste of paper, anyway, since Dartmoor was actually dead, so he gathered them into a stack to dump in the trash can on the way to work the next day.

So much work, he thought, all of it useless.

He wanted to kick something.

Instead, he sat at his computer and hit the space bar to bring his second screen to life. A couple of keystrokes brought up his security checker. Sarah hadn't been by the Bachelor Pad recently, but before he did anything these days, he had to make sure she hadn't somehow ninja'd her way into his files. It added an odd flavor to their relationship, but he didn't mind.

Maybe that spoke a lot about his mental state.

Maybe he didn't care.

He typed in the last of his security protocols and grinned at his welcome screen, a screenshot of Schnookie trying to eat the end of her own braid. Good times, he thought, bringing up his search matrix. Phillip Dartmoor was already a saved entry in his search bar. It took only a small tweak—changing "Active" to "Deceased"—and he hit the search button.

Well, that made things somewhat easier. Only four Phillip Dartmoors popped up this time, as he'd specified government service. Phillip Dartmoor had to be somehow associated with this Project Omaha that the Gio Pete's menu had made him flash on. Which eliminated two of the Phillip Dartmoors on the list, as they had perished from old age.

Two Phillip Dartmoors left. Chuck brought up the first, and frowned. Died young, he noted. Age twenty-four. He would be twenty-eight now, Chuck thought, if he had lived.

The other had died at thirty-six. Also young. He'd died the year before, as an officer in the Army Reserve.

Just as Chuck hit "print" for both entries, his cell phone jangled. He picked it up without checking the view-screen. "City Morgue, you kill 'em, we chill 'em."

"Well, that's certainly…morbid. Hey, little brother."

Chuck sat up straighter in his seat. "Ellie! Hi. Ah, how are you? You doing okay?"

The last thing he expected was for his sister to chuckle at that. "I'm fine, worrywart."

"Hey, that's not fair because I'm pretty sure this is a matter where there's a pot and there's a kettle and one of them is black, but wait, that doesn't matter. They both are."

On the other end of the phone line, Ellie paused. "Chuck?"

"Yes?"

"You're babbling."

He rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. "I know. It's still a bad habit."

"I can see that. I'm calling to find out how you are."

"How I am?" Chuck blinked a few times. "I'm not the one that got conscripted into government service today."

"Ah. Sarah said you might see it like that."

"How else am I supposed to see it?" Chuck pushed away from his computer and moved over to his bed, momentarily grateful that he'd cleared it of all files. He dropped onto the mattress and stared at his ceiling. "It's my fault you're stuck doing this."

"Stuck?" Ellie asked. "Don't look at it like that, Chuck. I'm finally getting that fellowship I've always wanted. This is a good thing."

Chuck really didn't think it was, but he wasn't sure he wanted to articulate any of the reasons why he thought so. Mentioning even one aloud would be like hitting the dam with a wrecking ball, and they would all come pouring out in one desperate flood. So he just shook his head, even though his sister couldn't see him.

Ellie didn't seem fazed by his silence. "And Sarah told me all about what you can do with the Intersect," she went on. "She made it sound like something out of one of those weird movies you always used to scare yourself with late at night."

Chuck had to laugh, though he didn't quite feel the humor. "Some days, yes."

"It'll be really fascinating to finally have a legitimate excuse to poke through your head, little brother," Ellie went on. "I've always said you were special, and now somebody's willing to pay me to prove it."

Though he smiled, there were some things he couldn't get past yet. "You're not worried?"

"About what?"

"That they're going to eat up your whole life?"

"No, I don't think they will." He couldn't hear what Ellie was doing, but he imagined that she was sitting at her kitchen counter with a mug of her evening tea, phone held between her ear and her shoulder while she did something else with her hands. Maybe she was painting her fingernails. Or writing a shopping list. With Ellie, each was a strong possibility. "Sarah really made it sound like this Gwen Davenport is going to do everything she can to make sure I'm well-insured against any nefarious plans the government might have."

This was quite a switch, Chuck thought, from the Ellie that had railed against the government that had taken away her younger brother.

"Not," Ellie went on, clearly reading his mind as she always did, "that I'm going to forgive them for what they did to you. Ever. Dumping you in Switzerland with minimal contact is completely inhumane and I wish I knew who to sue about that."

Switzerland? Oh, right. The cover story for Siberia.

"It wasn't so bad there," Chuck lied. "And, you know, it had advantages."

"Like the Friedman Grant?"

Chuck smacked himself in the forehead. "How did you figure it out?"

"I didn't. Sarah and I kind of did when she was helping me with my security paperwork this morning."

He needed to have a word with his blonde coworker the next time he saw her.

"Were you ever going to tell me about it?" Ellie asked.

"Honestly?" Chuck shrugged, even though there wasn't any way that Ellie could see him. "No."

"I did think it was odd that there was a retroactive scholarship that I was eligible for, even though I wasn't the top of my class and I didn't apply. But Devon checked it out and said it was legitimate. How on earth—"

"Just some minor hacking," Chuck said, hoping to distract her before she started asking more serious questions. He sighed and rubbed at a low-grade headache that had ebbed and flowed all evening. "Look, they paid me a good amount of money to stay at that place in Si—Switzerland. And there wasn't anything I could really do with it, so I fudged a few things. I made up the grant, I stuck my third grade teacher's name on it."

"But paying off all of my student loans—"

"Since I had the scholarship, it wasn't like I racked up that much debt at Stanford, and I wanted you taken care of."

Ellie went quiet. For a few seconds, Chuck felt panic begin to claw through him. Was Ellie crying? He hated it when his sister even so much as teared up, which was pretty ridiculous, given that this was the woman that regularly sniffled while watching soap operas. He sat up, searching about for something to say, anything that would stop the tears.

But Ellie surprised him again. "Thank you," she said, her voice quiet, but thankfully lacking that throaty quality that meant tears. "It was too much, but thank you."

Chuck moved a shoulder. Setting up the faked scholarship and using all of his funds to pay off Ellie's student loans hadn't been enough, not when he should have been near her or at least been able to call her. But he couldn't say that now, not when she was being so sincere. So he cleared his throat. "You're welcome. I wanted you to be okay."

"I'm okay," Ellie said, her voice firm.

But for how long? How long before the government decided it was tired of having a human Intersect, and how long before said Intersect and his sister were tossed to the wayside? Or worse?

"Chuck?" Ellie asked when he didn't reply. "Did you hear me?"

"Yes, I heard you."

"I'm okay," Ellie repeated. "This is a good thing, me joining Prometheus. Okay? You're not allowed to worry about this."

"But I want to."

"Well, that's just too bad, isn't it? C'mon, aren't you happy to have Devon and me on the team?"

"Honestly?"

"If you say no, I'll tell Devon not to stock cherry lollipops in his office in Castle."

Chuck smiled. It appeared that his childhood sweet tooth really was going to haunt him, just like Ellie warned him it would. "Oh, come on, that's fighting dirty."

"Tough noogies, little brother."

"You know, I'm more than six inches taller than you."

"So?"

"So I'm not exactly your little brother, am I?"

"Chuck, I made your Halloween costume every year until the tenth grade. You'll always be my little brother."

He had to think about that for a minute as he rested one hand behind his head as a pillow. "Well, okay. But only because that Green Arrow costume from the fourth grade was so spectacular."

"I'm glad. I stayed up for three nights straight working on that one." Ellie fell quiet. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence, just a brief chance to stop and think. Chuck moved his attention to his ceiling, dimly lit because he only had his desk lamp burning. Finally, Ellie sighed. "Are you feeling better?"

"Yes," Chuck said, surprised at the answer.

"Good. I know it's not going to be perfect right away, but I'm glad you're feeling better. Now, you need to get some sleep."

"Ellie—"

"Nuh-uh. Sarah said you were exhausted all day, and if I know you at all—which I do, thank you—you're probably worse off than she was before I made her go sleep. Eight hours, Chuck, or I'll dose you with a sedative."

The thought of Sarah trying to face down Ellie in full mother bear mode made Chuck fight a grin as he promised Ellie he would sleep soon. They said their good-byes and hung up. Instead of rising from the bed and returning to his Phillip Dartmoor research, he just worked his other hand behind his head and crossed his feet at the ankles, staring up at his ceiling. He'd memorized the patterns and the shadows, but they seemed just a hair different from up here on his bed, so he took the time to categorize the differences as he thought about Ellie and her words.

She was scared. He'd heard that in her voice, however much she tried to hide it. But there had been genuine excitement, too, both about working on the Intersect and her fellowship, and getting to be a part of Chuck's super-secret spy life. That would change once she got her hands on past mission files and learned that her little brother had been in danger, but until then…

He might as well take her advice. Before he fully realized it, Chuck's eyes closed, and he fell asleep in his own bed for the first time in nearly a month.

14 NOVEMBER 2007
CASTLE: DOWNSTAIRS
13:52 PST


"Man, I love this system!" Chuck took a step back to admire his handiwork and crossed his arms over his chest. "It's just so cool. I mean, check this out." He stretched forward with one arm and touched his fingers to the main screen, which took up half of the office's wall. The icon nearest his fingertip immediately lit up, and on the screen to the right, a file opened. "So freaking cool!"

Behind him, he heard Sarah's suppressed chuckle. "You showed me that already."

Chuck shot a grin over his shoulder. He knew he was acting like a kid on Christmas morning, but that didn't matter. He and Sarah had finally hooked up the auxiliary monitors in one of Castle's offices, and the operating system was like something out of a sci-fi film. Everything was controlled by a single touch: the ripple of a finger across a screen could manipulate, resize, open, close, alter, anything Chuck could possibly dream up.

Since it was still faster to input data with a keyboard, though, Sarah sat at the room's only desk, typing away.

"Here," she said, selecting a file with the laser pointer. Chuck twirled a finger to make the file spin. He all but heard Sarah's indulgent eye-roll. "This one needs work."

"Ah, September twenty-eighth," Chuck said. "What about it?"

"We need to narrow down the time window, if we can."

Chuck spread his fingers across the screen to enlarge the file. They'd been hard at work at transferring Chuck's amassed data from the "Where's Bryce?" board to much more advanced technology. Now it was just down to tweaking small details so that Sarah could officially helm that part of Operation Prometheus.

"Our little jaunt on the ferry," he recalled now, studying the data on the file. "And that sweet little bungalow. Too bad we couldn't have stayed longer. How'd you score that, anyway?"

"I have my ways. Let's see, I finished up my meeting with Randy around nine or so, and I got back around a quarter to ten. What time did you go to sleep?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe eight? Nine? I was a little out of it."

"We'll go with 8:30." Sarah hit a few keys, swore under her breath at a typo, and fixed it. "Giving Bryce a window of an hour and fifteen minutes to sneak in and plant the menu on your nightstand."

"Realistically, it would be an hour, tops. Bryce knows I wake up pretty easily in the first fifteen minutes after falling asleep."

"Do you? Hmm." Sarah adjusted the data on the file. "Okay."

"Oh, that makes me remember: I've been meaning to ask you about that. How did you know about the perimeter sensors? You didn't set them off when you came in that night."

"You had the receiver dangling from the lampshade. I spotted it when I glanced in the window, and so I came in through the window. Simple."

"Normally I clip it to a belt loop," Chuck said, frowning as he studied the files splayed across the screens, "but I didn't want to crush it in my sleep. That's something I should work on in the design, I think." As he spoke, he started tapping things on different screens, making things appear and disappear rapidly. In the back of his brain, he mused over the functionality of disguising the sensor receiver, while his fingers continued to race on.

Finally, Sarah moved around the desk and stepped up beside him. "What are you doing?"

"Connecting this room to Castle's computer mainframe."

"Really? Just like that?"

"Well, I memorized all of the codes, and…a-ha." Chuck gave her a grin, but quickly returned his attention to the screens. "Now it's all set, you can access any computer in here. See? Here's mine." He tapped an icon twice and swiped a palm across the screen to send it to the left-hand screen.

"Interesting." Sarah squinted at the screen. "That's quite the naming system you've got."

"It works for me." Chuck manipulated another screen to show Casey's computer.

"It's all letters and numbers. How do you make sense of it—what's this?" Sarah stepped around Chuck and double-tapped a word processing document.

"Oh, that? What I remember from every flash I've had."

"And it's not even pass-coded?" Sarah slowly paged through the documents.

"Sure it is, but you've already got admin permissions for everything in this room. Oh, look at that. New message from Beckman."

"Really?" Sarah didn't look away from the file she was reading. In fact, her whole body had stopped moving. She was normally a very still sort of person, good at conserving energy when she needed to, so Chuck paid her no mind as he brought up the new missive from their boss and scanned through it. "What's it say?"

"It's the list she promised us yesterday. Possible Fulcrum leads." Chuck opened the document and read through it, letting out a startled laugh. "Ha! She put Bryce on here. Do you think she's growing a sense of humor because that would actually be—Sarah? What is it?"

She jerked on the spot. "What?" One hand stabbed out and closed the text document in front of her as she turned. "Nothing. Sorry, was just lost in thought. Any of those leads look promising?"

"Couple low-level politicians, oil magnate, some CEOs of…wow, really? Wil Wheaton is on the Fulcrum list?"

"Who's Wil Wheaton?"

"Never mind. Oh, here's a fun one," Chuck said as Casey, scowling came into the "Where's Bryce" Office. "Sergei Ezersky. Sounds Polish."

"Russian," Casey corrected, moving to Chuck's other side and folding his arms.

Both Chuck and Sarah turned to him, eyebrows raised.

"You can tell because it's a 'y' and not an 'i.'" Casey gestured. "I came down to see if you received the email, but this answers my question for me. Did you flash?"

Chuck shook his head. "But if we're going to start with anybody, I'd say this Sergei character seems the best bet."

"Why do you say that?"

"It says here that he's a cybernetic toymaker. Toy robots! How cool is that?" Chuck looked from one teammate to the other. "C'mon, awesome, right?"

Casey and Sarah exchanged a look. The former grunted, the latter shrugged. "It seems as good a place as any to start," Sarah said. She patted Chuck on the shoulder. "Why don't you get started on that? I'm going to go grab a water—you two want anything?" She left with the request to retrieve a coffee (black and bitter) and a Red Bull (which made her roll her eyes yet again).

The instant she was out of the room, Chuck moved over to the screen that showed his computer. "What are you doing now?" Casey said, a sigh evident in his tone.

"Nothing. Checking something." Chuck opened the flash document, grateful that the program automatically opened documents to the last viewed page. Something about this file had made Sarah freeze up. He rubbed the side of his thumb against the screen and frowned at the page on screen. He'd told her back in Athens that he had flashed on Randall Kaiser, that the Intersect had told him all about Sarah's albino Canadian ex-boyfriend. And she had a damn near perfect memory, so why would she react so strongly to this file now? He hit print and snatched the page from the printer tray before Sarah could come back in. "Guess it's time to see why the government thinks a Russian toymaker is evil, huh?"

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