District of Confusion, District of Comfort
27 NOVEMBER 2007
FEDERAL CORRECTION INSTITUTION
13:19 MST
Sarah must have cleared the way, as Chuck didn't have to flash any credentials at the guards. They took his name, looked at his driver's license, and wrote the time down in the logbook. They didn't quite strip-search him, but they came close. By the time the guards finished patting him down, Chuck was covered with a light sheen of sweat that had nothing to do with the thought of meeting the father of the woman that liked him.
Oh geez. Did Sarah want to sleep with him? Why the hell was he thinking about that now when he was just minutes away from meeting her father? Oh, God. Did Sarah want to get naked with him? He'd seen her naked, she definitely outclassed him in that—God! Now was not the time to think about that! Did he seriously hate himself that much?
Chuck pinned the badge they handed him to the front of his jacket, grateful they'd let him put that back on. Why the hell had he talked Sarah into letting him get the Artoo-Detoo shirt? It had seemed important at the time, but now, just like his stupid prison gambit, it was coming back to bite him in the ass.
And oh God, he wished he'd thought to ask at least a little more about Sarah's relationship with her father before agreeing to do this. There was a difference between abhorring violence and meeting the daughter's…whatever Chuck was to her for the first time. Chuck pushed down the ball of nausea threatening to make him throw up all over the processing room floor and instead moved to the doorway as directed by the guards. The one who had patted him down had walked him through the rules of the visiting room, and they seemed pretty self-explanatory.
They also seemed like shanking wasn't a regular occurrence, too. Put in perspective, that was a relief. Sarah's father might have a problem with violence, but that didn't mean he couldn't outsource it, if he was the overprotective type. And he probably was. Chuck couldn't imagine having a daughter that looked like Sarah without being overprotective.
What the hell had she told her dad about him? Hey, Dad, the guy who made me break down in tears for over twenty minutes this morning is right outside. You should meet my new coworker, he's really great. He vanishes off the face of the earth for over a day and leaves me to pick up the slack, isn't he nice? He's so awesome I'd kill for him. Oh, wait, I already have!
This time, the nausea had absolutely nothing to do with fear of Jack Burton. Chuck pushed the image of the blood dripping off of the knife in Leader's hand forcibly from his mind and stood in the doorway. Something buzzed, and the guard inside the visiting room pulled the door open for him.
It wasn't hard to pick Jack Burton out of the crowd. Even if Chuck hadn't flashed on him, there weren't that many people visiting their loved ones at the prison, so most of the tables were empty. Sarah's father wasn't a terribly imposing man, Chuck saw right away. He was clean-shaven, he didn't seem to bear any prison ink, and he rose with a genial smile when Chuck approached. He was also handsome, which Chuck figured was fitting given that his daughter looked like Sarah Walker, and Chuck would never have pegged him for a criminal, also fitting because Chuck would never have guessed CIA agent for Sarah.
He had an enthusiastic handshake, like a traveling salesman or a preacher, and the smile didn't lessen at all. "So you're the one my daughter spent twenty minutes not talking about," he said.
Chuck's mouth fell open a little, but he recovered quickly. "Uh, I guess that's me. Chuck. Uh, Chuck—yeah, never mind, probably better just to keep it Chuck. It's nice to meet you, Mr. Burton."
"Please, call me Jack. Sit, sit." Jack gestured toward the visitor's chair across the table from him. Feeling somewhat ill, Chuck obeyed. The chair wobbled, and it was one of those uncomfortable chairs that made Chuck feel as though he had been transported back to high school. Of course, maybe that feeling stemmed from the fact that he once again felt seventeen and meeting the father of his prom date for the first time. He was just glad he wasn't wearing a tuxedo with a bow tie pinching his neck this time.
He imagined that it would look even more out of place in a prison visiting room than it had in the Kennilworths' paisley-patterned living room.
"So, Chuck," Jack said, drawing the word out like he wasn't sure it was a real name. "What is it you do and how do you know my daughter?"
Chuck's mind went absolutely blank. What had Sarah said? She had said not to tell Jack what she really did for a living, but did that include her cover as an office manager for Pacific Securities, LLC? Or was it all off-limits?
"It wasn't that hard of a question," Jack said. "Need a glass of water?"
"No, no, I'm fine." Though now that water had been mentioned, his throat was drier than the desert outside. Chuck swallowed hard and tried for a self-deprecating grin. "First time in a prison. Just…getting used to the atmosphere."
"A tip, son? Don't do anything that gets you beyond that door right there." Jack nodded at a door off to the left. Chuck had to assume that it was the inmates' entrance into the visiting room. "At least, don't get caught."
"Right." Chuck swallowed again. "Right. Well, to answer your question, I'm a software designer out in L.A. I have my own firm, and I know Sa—your daughter because she's my sister's roommate."
"Mm-hmm." Jack leaned back and put his fingertips together, creating a steeple with his fingers as he studied Chuck. "And what are your intentions toward my daughter?"
Chuck felt all of the blood rush out of his face.
Jack Burton burst out laughing. It was the last noise Chuck expected to hear, so he felt it was understandable that he jumped. He stared, torn between confusion and mortification as Jack continued to laugh until he had to wipe at his eyes. "I'm sorry," the man said, surprising Chuck. "I really shouldn't have done that, but she told me if I asked you that, your face would go exactly that color. I couldn't resist."
Immediately, Chuck scowled. "Very funny, Sarah," he muttered under his breath. It appeared Sarah would be getting her revenge for quite some time for his stunt of leaving the Heartbrake Hotel behind, or maybe for driving up to the prison. He cleared his throat. "So you really don't want to know my intentions?"
"Hell, my daughter's a grown woman. She can take care of herself." Pride in that fact, mixed with emotion that Chuck couldn't quite decipher, glinted in Jack's smile. "I'm not here to interrogate you. It's just nice to have a change of pace every once in awhile and talk to somebody new. So tell me, how are things in the software game?"
Chuck opened his mouth, and burst out laughing just as Jack had a minute before. "Things are great," he lied, and spent the next twenty minutes just shooting the breeze with a convicted criminal and the father of a woman who puzzled him as often as she made him feel safe.
27 NOVEMBER 2007
SKYBORN FLIGHT 1337 (SOMEWHERE OVER OKLAHOMA)
18:02 CST
Keeping his movements slow and sly, Chuck carefully slid his watch face around so that it lay against the inside of his wrist. He'd set the timer—he checked now—twenty-three minutes and seventeen seconds before. He let another couple of seconds tick by before he returned his attention to the comic book open across the tray-table in front of him.
The fact that it was taking so long surprised him. It also made him glad he hadn't made any bets on it because he'd surely be paying somebody by now. Apparently, Sarah Walker had more patience than even he had suspected, which startled him. After all, he was Chuck Bartowski. His entire existence on this earth seemed to revolve around testing the limits of Sarah Walker's patience, which meant that he was intimate with the knowledge of how long testing said limits should take.
He turned a page and smirked to himself, ignoring the constant bubble of fear in the back of his mind that the longer those seconds ticked by, the closer they came to DC and what awaited them there.
Sarah hadn't turned the page in over half an hour, which was what had alerted him. After awhile, he'd set his watch, and he'd spent the twenty-four minutes and thirty two seconds since observing her out of the corner of his eye, watching the way her fingers flexed on the pages of the Sky Mall she'd been pretending to be reading, watching her eyes shift constantly toward him and quickly look away. He knew that if they had been on a mission or if this was a cover, she could last for ages, but since it was just Sarah, she was close to her breaking point.
He'd wait her out.
27 NOVEMBER 2007
SKYBORN FLIGHT 1337 (SOMEWHERE OVER TENNESSEE)
20:04 EST
Sarah had by now managed to surpass even Chuck's estimation of her patience. She had even turned the page of the Sky Mall.
Once.
Did the woman have superpowers that let her sit that still? Chuck didn't look at his watch, even though he knew exactly what it would say. He just continued to idly turn the pages of the graphic novel Sarah had bought for him at the airport in Phoenix, just like Sarah continued to stare at the magazine in front of her.
This was getting ridiculous.
So, deliberately, he cleared his throat. "That's interesting."
Sarah nearly dropped the magazine, she lowered it so fast. "What? What is?"
"I'm not enjoying this as much I thought I would," Chuck said, holding up the copy of Wanted. He deliberately made his smile of the clueless variety. "I mean, Millar did such great work with 'Red Son,' but this…" He closed the graphic novel and tucked it into the knapsack they'd picked up for him at Waldbaum's earlier that morning. "It's disappointing, a bit."
"Oh." Sarah seemed to deflate. "I'm sorry to hear that, Chuck."
"I'll get over it. Enjoying that page?"
Sarah's eyes narrowed. "You've been watching me."
Chuck merely turned the face of his watch so that she could see the one hour, twenty-six minutes, and twelve seconds displayed there. One hour, twenty-six minutes, and twelve seconds closer to DC.
Sarah's jaw dropped. "You've really have been watching me!"
"Didn't they teach you how to turn the page in spy school?" Chuck wondered, and dodged the playful smack, laughing. One of the men sitting across the aisle sent over a disapproving look, but Chuck ignored him. He'd found it easy enough to ignore all of the people on the plane by focusing on Sarah's apparent neurosis over the conversation with her father. Besides, being crammed into the 737 was actually comforting, in a way. It bespoke a lot about him that he breathed easier with recycled air than he had in the open desert. "I mean, that's supposed to be the first rule in the handbook, right?"
"First rule is don't get dead," Sarah muttered, picking up the magazine. First, though, she maturely stuck her tongue out at him.
Chuck just grinned. "You should just go ahead and ask me."
"Who said I wanted to ask you anything?"
"The fact that you've only turned one page in," Chuck checked his watch, "one hour, twenty seven minutes, and forty-nine seconds?"
"That's not fair! The stopwatch should have stopped after you called my attention to it!"
"Turn a page, then."
Sarah's chin went up. She closed the magazine.
"Okay." Grinning, Chuck put his tray table up and reclined his seat. "Wake me when we get to DC?"
Sarah mumbled something.
"What was that?" Chuck asked, though he'd heard her perfectly.
"I said, you win." Sarah gave a sigh, obviously disgusted with herself. "What did you talk to my father about, Chuck? And don't you dare evade. I was taught by the master evader, I'll know if you try."
"Oh, trust me, I know."
Sarah's eyes narrowed again.
"Right. Sorry." Chuck held his hands up for peace as he put his seat-back up. "Well, the first thing he said to me was, 'So you're the guy my daughter spent twenty minutes not talking about.'"
"He did not!"
"God's honest truth, Sarah," Chuck said, holding up three fingers in a Scout Oath. He grinned even while Sarah looked as if she might have liked to disappear right into the plane seat. "And then he told me to stay out of prison and asked me my intentions toward you."
Sarah was silent for a long moment before she abruptly turned and faced the seat in front of her. She had insisted on taking the aisle seat, leaving the window to Chuck and placing herself between him and any danger that might come from other passengers.
"Are you blushing?" Chuck wanted to know, craning so that he could get a better look.
Sarah set her teeth.
"You are!"
"Shut up, Chuck."
Chuck collapsed against his seat, laughing.
"Glad you're enjoying this."
He wasn't, entirely. There was an edge of hysteria to his laughter that Sarah was either ignoring or she didn't hear. "Turnabout is only fair play since your dad was messing with me. He said something about how you told him my face would go that color if he asked me my intentions, so…" He returned the favor by sticking his tongue out right back at her.
She rolled her eyes. "I told him not to mess with you like that."
"Why? You do it all the time."
"But that's me." Sarah's frown was one dangerously small half-step away from a pout. "I'm allowed. I've earned the right."
Chuck had to laugh again. "Oh, you have, have you?"
Sarah picked up the Sky Mall, opened it, and deliberately turned the page. Chuck tilted his head, a salute to a worthy opponent, and stopped his watch. It made Sarah roll her eyes again even as she smiled, and the conversation paused as the flight attendant stopped by to take their final drink orders. When he had ambled down the aisle to help others, Sarah put the magazine down and turned to Chuck. "What did you really talk to him about?"
"Software," Chuck said, shrugging.
Suspicion cleared way for surprise. "Really?"
"Yeah, he was curious to see how things were in the software game—his words, not mine—and I think he tried to get me into a couple of cons, but Ellie didn't raise no fool." Chuck smiled at his own lame joke. "He was an interesting guy, your dad, after those first couple of minutes. I do have to ask one thing, though."
"What?" Sarah asked warily.
"What the fractal is a 'Schnook?'"
27 NOVEMBER 2007
DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
21:47 EST
"Okay, one more time, tell me what you're going to do."
"Stick close to your side at all times, alert you if I flash on anything, and if we get separated, activate the tracker on my watch. If my watch gets taken away, get to Union Station and hide out at the food court until you can come back to me," Chuck said. He didn't pinch the bridge of his nose, though he wanted to. The last thirty minutes of the flight had been a lecture and/or briefing from Sarah about all contingency plans that were in place, in case Fulcrum had discovered the aliases they had used in Phoenix. He'd spent the time actually watching her body slowly tense up, the muscles knit together, as she anticipated trouble at the DC airport. In response, everything in his own system had slowly gone loose and watery and jittery with a strange, disassociating sort of terror.
It appeared their brief respite in Arizona had now officially come to an end. Friend Sarah was on the backburner, replaced by an Agent Walker that had only the Intersect's safety as a priority.
He followed her up the bridge between the plane and the airport and thought, upon entering the terminal: oh, crap. The vacation really is over.
None other than John Casey stood there waiting for them.
And he looked pissed.
27 NOVEMBER 2007
THE DC CROWN VIC
23:03 EST
"And to recap," Casey finished, "if you ever, ever do that again, Bartowski, I'm going to what?"
"Can I just use the highlights?" Chuck wondered dully.
Casey glared at him in the rearview mirror, and Chuck sighed. He began ticking points off on his fingers. One finger. "Wallop me so hard my great-great-great-great-grand—"
Casey cleared his throat.
"Fine. Great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren will have bruises." Chuck held up a second finger. "You'll personally see to it that I get not only a tracker anklet, but a tracker bracelet, necklace, and stick up my ass as well." Third finger. "You will personally ensure that every single Red Bull I drink is laced with nanobots." A fourth finger. "There will be pain. Lots of pain. Which, I gotta say, Casey, you've used that one before so—"
Casey cleared his throat harder.
Chuck glared as his thumb joined the four fingers already held up. "Every, and these are your words, not mine, every idiot box, video system, moron game, geek computer in the Bachelor Pad will be summarily smashed and shredded, then mashed together and spoon-fed to me by a legion of angry ninjas that owe you a favor."
"Damn straight," Casey said.
"Sixth," Chuck went on, switching to a new hand.
"We're here," Sarah interrupted, sitting up in the passenger seat. "Casey, that's the driveway right there."
"I see it, Walker, I see it." Casey grumbled and looked at Chuck in the rearview mirror once more before he pulled his DC Crown Vic—discernable from the L.A. Crown Vic only because it was black instead of dark blue—into the driveway of a rather nice Georgian-style home. Most of the lights were out, given that it was almost midnight, and there weren't many other houses in the neighborhood. In fact, it was mostly trees out here, which made it seem even darker around.
"This is where Gwen Davenport lives?" Chuck wondered, peering through the car windows at the house in front of them. "Seriously?"
"Seriously. Let's go."
They passed a BMW, a Jaguar, and a basketball hoop in the driveway as they made their way to the front porch, Casey leading, Sarah bringing up the rear. Chuck pondered briefly how they were going to get inside—did Casey have a key? Did they have free reign of the Davenport estate?—but the door opened just before they reached it and Gwen Davenport stepped out, automatically hugging her arms close to her body from the cold.
The last time Chuck had seen her had been during their negotiations to get an operation set up in Burbank for him. She had been all government agent, prim suit, hair in a bun, clean lines. Now, Chuck would never have guessed FBI agent because Gwen Davenport was wearing a long-sleeved tee and pajama pants, though he figured that was idiotic. Even FBI agents had to wear pajamas, didn't they?
She smiled at the three of them. "Major Casey, I see you found them. Hello, Agent Walker, Chuck."
"Ma'am," Casey said, slipping past her to go inside. He shot a final threatening look over his shoulder at Chuck as he did so.
If it was going to take Casey awhile to get over Chuck telling Ellie about Operation Prometheus, it was going to take him years to get past Chuck's little stunt with the Grand Canyon. Chuck could only be grateful that Sarah had let Casey get only one head-smack in before she had declared violence against the Intersect off-limits.
"Agent Davenport," he said now, nervously.
"Please, Chuck, it's Gwen. C'mon inside, it's cold out here."
And it was, too. The Grand Canyon had been cold with the snow and the wind from the high altitude, but it had seemed like a fleeting cold, an unnatural one. Here in DC, the world felt so frozen that Chuck was grateful Sarah had insisted on picking up warm coats for both of them.
He followed Sarah and Gwen into an entryway that seemed as homey and nice as the outside of the house had been. It almost looked like a show-house, all refined colors and dark, antique furniture that matched the floorboards underfoot. Gwen spoke even as she led them onward. "So this is my home, but for the next however long it takes, this is your home, too, and I want you to be comfortable. So, feel free to wander wherever you like, anything in the fridge is up for grabs, so on and so forth."
Gwen led them through the parlor and by a tasteful living room with a huge flat-screen TV dominating half of an entire wall, and finally down a picture-lined hallway into a kitchen that spoke both of show-rooms and family summit meetings. There were photographs of children of various ages held to the fridge with magnets, what looked like schedules, flyers, fast food coupons, and everyday minutiae, but the appliances were sparkling clean and obviously expensive, professional-grade material. That concept should have clashed with the cookie jar on the counter in the shape of a dog wearing a basketball jersey, but somehow it seemed to fit.
"My husband designed the kitchen," Gwen said, perhaps noticing that Chuck was staring. "He calls it his masterpiece. Too bad neither of us can cook worth beans."
"Awesome," Chuck said and swiveled his head away from the marble countertops. He wasn't quite feeling shy, but the Davenport house had quite a lot of space, and he wasn't sure what to think of that right now. Sarah's presence at his side grounded him somewhat, but not enough. "Your, um, family's okay with having a bunch of strange people coming to live with them like this?"
"With my son's friends and my husband's work associates, and the fact that, between Russ and me, we're related to half of the eastern seaboard, the house is never empty." Gwen's smile seemed genuine, at least. "Also, if you can get my son to look away from his X-box and my daughter to look up from her cell phone, it'll be a modern miracle. Are either of you hungry? I imagine you've have a long day."
Both Chuck and Sarah had eaten on the plane, so they declined. "All right, then," Gwen decided. "Seeing as you two are all but swaying on your feet, why don't I show you where each of you will be staying?"
28 NOVEMBER 2007
DAVENPORT ESTATE GUEST ROOM
00:08 EST
Chuck's room ended up being the attic, which had been refitted and redone into a guest bedroom. The house truly was a masterpiece, he thought as he set the suitcase of clothing bought at Waldbaum's on the bed. Gwen claimed that it had nothing to do with her; her architect husband and an interior decorator were the geniuses behind the house looking as great as it did, as she had been too busy working since forever. Chuck would get to see the guest house where Sarah was staying with Awesome and Ellie the next day, as the latter two had already gone to bed.
Great, Chuck thought now, rubbing his hands over his hair, dodged that bullet until tomorrow. If Casey had had an hour-and-a-half-lecture for him, Ellie would certainly top it. And the bosses would top that.
He had no idea how long they were staying in DC, or what was being done to find out about their compromised covers in Burbank. From this standpoint, he knew very little outside of the fact that he had made Sarah cry, and Casey was pissed, and Ellie had been out of her mind with worry for him.
Chuck didn't sit on the bed. Instead, he just sort of kept sliding until he was on the floor with his back against the bed, staring at the window opposite the door. Through it, he could see the moon, three-quarters full and waning, providing ample silver light across the trees around the Davenport estate. The room was nothing like his place in Burbank; it was old-fashioned in an appealing way, with antique furniture like the rest of the house, and the bed was smaller. Like his room in Burbank, it felt like a temporary place to crash.
Nothing had ever really felt like home since the bunker, but Burbank had been coming close.
Chuck rested the back of his head against the bed, closed his eyes, and just sat for a minute. His body felt like lead, or something heavier than that, each of his limbs dragging and drained. He tried to empty his mind, as he did every morning in his Tai Chi routines, or as he tried to do. An old conversation with Sarah came back to him, all the way from the bunker two years before, when she had guided him through the first routine and he had stumbled along like an idiot.
So, am I supposed to be feeling at one with the universe right now?
I never feel at one with the universe.
And now, two years later, they had finally come to DC. Well, he reminded himself, come to DC again. They had been in DC together before, but they had both been behind bars, and then Sarah had been shipped off to set up the operation in Burbank, the one that was now potentially in flames because Chuck had stumbled on a Fulcrum cell, with explosively disastrous results. If he had been ten minutes earlier or later in delivering that letter, would he have crossed paths with the doomed Lawrence? Would all of this have eventually blown up in his face if he'd continued to pursue this Jill angle?
You'll go crazy, playing 'what if,' and 'what if that hadn't happened?' You have to accept that what happened, happened.
Chuck closed his eyes. Even with Sarah's words ringing through his head, threatening to overpower reason and logic and emotion, he saw the shocked look on Jill's face as she tumbled to the ground, and the way Leader's own blood had dripped off of the knife in his hand, each individual droplet catching the dusty light of the much-ventilated office before it tumbled to the carpet. He saw Leader fall to his knees in absurdly slow motion, as though somebody kept rapidly pressing pause and play on the world.
He saw the final Fulcrum thug hit the sand in the desert as Sarah dropped him.
He saw Jill's face, bled of all of its color just like her body was bleeding of all of its life-force. He saw Sarah kneeling in the aftermath, fingering a bullet-hole.
Chuck hit the back of his head against the side of the bed, but it did nothing to make any of the images go away. He did it again anyway. He had barely let himself think about a thing at the Grand Canyon for fear that exactly this would happen, and when he was with Sarah, it was like there was a magical buffer between him and all of the horrors experienced at the Heartbrake Hotel. With her gone, the buffer had once more receded to the corners of his mind.
He had killed a man.
He had saved his own life, Ellie's voice, his conscience, pointed out.
His hand had made the killing blow before Sarah's could.
Leader had been trying to kill him. Ellie's voice again, firmer now. Upset at him, Chuck thought almost wryly, for not listening to her.
Damn was he going to be in trouble with her tomorrow morning at breakfast.
Chuck climbed into bed and stared at the ceiling, not bothering to change into pajamas. It wasn't like he was going to sleep anyway, not with all of these nightmarish memories to keep him awake.
He was asleep the instant his head hit the pillow.
28 NOVEMBER 2007
LANGLEY HEADQUARTERS
08:11 EST
The lack of Tai Chi in his morning routine (Casey hadn't roused him in time), as well as the fact that neither Sarah nor Casey would let him shave off the few days of stubble that was now on its way to officially becoming a beard in case they needed to change his appearance, made Chuck feel a bit out of sorts as he walked through the front doors of Langley for the first time in his five and a half years of being an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency.
They were supposed to report in at 0800 to the bosses for the first briefing, but they had been delayed at the gate by the guards that wanted to double-check Casey's Crown Vic and the necessary permits that went with said automobile. Chuck could only be grateful that they hadn't brought the Burbank version, which was probably getting kitted out with a rocket launcher even now.
To say that he felt nervous was an understatement. He felt frozen and overheated and vaguely itchy, and like his suit didn't fit quite right, even though it had been one from his own closet back in Burbank, not-so-lovingly packed by Casey himself. Chuck wanted this day to be over. He wanted to get the lecture from the bosses over, as he'd already weathered the Ellie version, which involved tears, and a repeated, "Thank God, you're okay!" and other things that made him feel even guiltier than he had before going to sleep.
The conversation with the bosses wouldn't go anything like that. He was almost fairly certain General Beckman had never uttered the words "Thank God, you're okay!" in her life.
"Stand up straight," Sarah muttered under her breath, but she gave him a sympathetic look right before a young woman in a business suit hurried up to the three of them quickly enough that Casey automatically reached for the holster at his side. She was holding a stack of glossy folders, which she scanned right before she came up to the group.
"Agent Lynch?" she asked. "Agent Lynch, Agent Lynch, and…" She checked the third folder in her hands and glanced at Casey. "Major Lynch?"
The three core members of Operation Prometheus stared. Chuck was the first to break the silence. "I knew a Lynch once—oof!"
Casey had elbowed him in the stomach.
"That's us," Sarah said, stepping between the woman and her teammates. She shot a brief death glare over her shoulder. "Can I help you, Agent…?"
"Weier. Vespa Weier." The woman, still perky, shuffled folders to shake Sarah's hand. "And you must be Agent Lynch."
"Which one?" Chuck deadpanned, and dodged the elbow to the gut.
Vespa Weier was undeterred by that, though. "Agent Karrin Lynch," she said, either not recognizing sarcasm or just ignoring it altogether. "And I'm guessing you're the other Agent Lynch—Agent Cameron Lynch?" She handed Sarah and Chuck folders, and held a third out to Casey. "Which makes you Major Barnabas Lynch."
Casey, Sarah, and Chuck all blinked at that one. Chuck opened his mouth to comment, but Casey made a noise that was frightening precisely because it wasn't a noise; it could probably only be heard by small dogs and other such creatures. Chuck's mouth snapped shut.
"Glad to see that NCS has the same sense of humor as ever," Sarah said dryly.
Vespa Weier, to her credit, grinned at that. "Of course. I'm on hand from the DNI to assist you three with whatever you need today. Those are your schedules, and they're pretty airtight, unfortunately, what with Agent Lynch—"
"Which one?" Chuck deadpanned again, only this time he wasn't fast enough to dodge.
"Agent Cameron Lynch," Vespa Weier said without missing a beat, "having to split his time between Langley and Fort Meade."
"Wait a second." A frown line appeared between Sarah's eyebrows. She held her hand out for the other folders and Chuck and Casey handed them over without a word. Sarah flipped through each of the folders, the frown deepening. She scanned Casey's folder last and unceremoniously held the stack out toward Vespa Weier, shaking her head. "This isn't going to work."
"What? Why not?" Real alarm crossed Vespa Weier's face.
"One of us has to remain with Agent Ly—Agent Cameron Lynch at all times." When Vespa Weier looked like she might protest, Sarah's look hardened. "It's not negotiable."
"Oh." Vespa Weier looked like somebody had taken the wind out of her sails. "Very well. I'll write up new schedules while the three of you are speaking with General Beckman and Director Graham. It would be my pleasure to do so."
Chuck's eyebrows rose as Vespa Weier practically stalked off, her kitten heels ringing on the tiles. "Sounds like you've made a new enemy, and in your own agency, too," he whispered to Sarah.
Sarah just shook her head and smiled. "Hopefully the bosses won't be too upset that she waylaid us," she said, mostly to Casey.
"Oh, yeah, they won't be upset at all." Casey rolled his eyes and clamped a hand on Chuck's arm above the elbow. "March, soldier. Lesson one, never keep the bigwigs waiting. They hate it."
"I don't think that's exactly my fault," Chuck protested as he was led deeper into the CIA's headquarters, flanked by his Prometheus teammates in a way that either spoke of comfort or prison.
Casey rolled his eyes. "It would be the one thing they'd be upset about that isn't."
That didn't make Chuck feel a whole lot better about things.
28 NOVEMBER 2007
LANGLEY HEADQUARTERS CONFERENCE ROOM
10:10 EST
"And how are we doing on the other objective of Operation Prometheus?"
It was very unnerving, Chuck discovered, when your bosses barely looked up from a legal pad during an hour-plus-long briefing. He'd thought it was disconcerting to be face-to-face with a Brigadier General and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, but that feeling had nothing on the sensation of staring at the top of Langston Graham's head for over forty-five minutes while Sarah or Casey talked, and Graham scribbled. General Beckman, at least, could be counted on to keep up appearances; she had been frowning dourly at Chuck throughout the whole briefing, as if he were a particularly annoying fly buzzing around the room, or her personal problem to be dealt with later.
He'd done his best to keep his mouth shut. He was under no illusions here: the patented Bartowski ramble would get him into hot water.
Still, right now he almost asked, "Other objective?"
Sarah, who'd been seated to his left at the long conference table, the same one that was empty apart from the three Prometheus agents, the CIA Director, and General Beckman, answered before Chuck could, "I've put out feelers, hoping to entice Agent Larkin to come in willingly."
Agent Larkin? Oh, right. In his preoccupation with Jill and Lawrence's cell phone, Chuck had completely forgotten that Sarah had been tasked with locating Bryce. He didn't dare glance at her now to see what she thought about it. She'd been maintaining that cool Agent Walker—or was it Agent Lynch?—façade throughout the entire briefing, just like Casey had on his unreadable Major Casey persona. Of course, that one was pretty much normal.
"And how successful, Agent Walker, do you feel these 'feelers' will be?" Langston Graham looked up now, mostly to peel off his reading glasses.
Sarah didn't waver. "I'm fairly certain they'll be successful. Agent Larkin and I did have a working relationship for a number of years."
Chuck frowned. How could he have completely forgotten about that? It's complicated, Sarah had said. But if Sarah had been with Bryce, what on earth was she doing looking at a guy like—Sarah kicked his ankle under the table, and he had to fight everything not to jolt. Belatedly, he realized that his "at attention" face had turned to a vicious scowl, and shifted back to his previous expression.
"Very well. You'll keep us updated on your progress."
"Naturally."
"And that brings us to," General Beckman said, speaking up for the first time in awhile, "the tertiary objective of Operation Prometheus. The hunt for Fulcrum. I'm sure the most recent developments on this objective ought to be…enlightening."
It truly was fascinating, Chuck thought, how she could say "Explain. Now," without actually voicing the words. He almost outright asked her, until he realized that the silence had stretched for an unnaturally long time, and that everybody assembled at the table in the otherwise bland conference room was looking at him expectantly.
"Me?" he asked, just to be sure. "You want me to, uh, enlighten everybody?"
Sarah leaned in close to mutter, "Start with the raid on Sergei Ezersky and try not to use the words 'robo-rabbit.'"
Later on, Chuck decided, they would really have to discuss how unhelpful Sarah's advice could be. Sweating, he turned to face the bosses, neither of whom was looking at a legal pad now. He found himself regretting that.
"When General Beckman faxed over the list of Fulcrum suspects, we opted to focus on Sergei Ezersky first, given that his work in cybernetics and robotics could be highly beneficial to a group like Fulcrum. However, since Mr. Ezersky had, uh, the security system from hell protecting all of his information, a little creativity was required, so we broke into his estate to gather intel from his personal computer. It," Chuck said, searching for a way to describe the night of the earthquake, and being chased by rabbit-like machines through a mansion, "went a little less than spectacularly, but we were successful in grabbing ninety-nine percent of the data off of Ezersky's computer."
He took a drink from the water glass in front of him, mostly to wet his terrified throat. Another droplet of sweat slid between his shoulder blades.
"Unfortunately, the missing one percent of information contained a key line of code that was required to actually break the security on the drive. I was unaware of this until my computer matched that line to another device that was, ah, lifted from what was definitely a Fulcrum agent. So I can say without a doubt that Sergei Ezersky is Fulcrum, and that the organization is likely using an algorithm created by his company to secure their phones and possibly their transmissions.
"As to what the hell Fulcrum is?" Chuck shrugged. "Still don't have the first clue in hell, but my ex is a member."
"You'll have to forgive Bartowski," Casey said, quickly leaning forward. "He's an idi—"
"He's under a lot of stress," Sarah interrupted, shooting death glares at her teammates. And then she began to explain everything that had happened to the team over the past week, starting with Chuck lifting the phone from Lawrence on Thanksgiving and not stopping until she had found Chuck at the Grand Canyon the day before, trading off the story with Casey as necessary, and even a few comments from Chuck that weren't precisely welcome, judging by the fact that Sarah's hand twitched every time he spoke up.
Halfway through the recital of events, Graham began tapping the eraser of his pencil against the varnished tabletop. Beckman folded her arms over her chest.
"So if I'm to understand all of this," Graham said once Sarah had finished, "the three of you uncovered a Fulcrum cell simply because Bartowski was stalking his ex-girlfriend."
Sarah didn't quite know what to say to that, judging by the mystified look she shot at Chuck and Casey. The latter shrugged. The former said nothing. The recital of events had proved one thing to him: he really was the idiot Casey claimed he was. Why the hell hadn't he told Casey or Sarah about that damned phone?
"Yes," he said, surprising even himself as he spoke. "That's exactly what happened."
"I see." Graham's face abruptly creased into a frown that boded no good for the three sitting across from him. He slowly rose to his feet. "If that's the case, why the hell did we bother training any of you? It sounds like we can just let the three of you wander all over Los Angeles until you find a damned problem to fix! This is not how the Central Intelligence Agency works, agents!"
Chuck wanted to sink into his seat, but he sat with his back ramrod straight.
"What the hell do you have to say for yourselves?" Graham went on, his cold gaze sweeping the entire team. "Bartowski? This is on you. You got anything to say?"
"With all due respect, sir," Sarah said, leaning forward slightly, "but Agent Bartowski is a member of my team, and his actions reflect back on all of us. I take just as much blame in these events."
Casey opened his mouth, perhaps to grunt, remembered himself, and said, "Seconded."
This was apparently the wrong tactic to take. Graham's scowl darkened further, and the sourpuss on Beckman's face increased as well. "This is not a committee!" Graham thundered. "You screwed the pooch on this one! I've got the FBI making very uncomfortable inquiries into a shoot-out in the middle of damned no man's land, I've got agents deciding they can take a nice little vacation in the middle of a serious situation, and to make things worse, I've got to deal with the clean-up of an operation in Burbank that I can see was unwise to grant you in the first place, if this is what you do with it! I don't have time to deal with this sort of bullshit from the three of you, I have an agency to run and I don't need to be running around cleaning up your mess all the damned time!"
Forget sink into his chair, Chuck thought. He wanted to sink into the floor. There didn't seem to be a good place in the room to stare, so he forced himself to meet Graham's eyes. Next to him, Sarah was so tightly wound she was practically vibrating, and Casey had developed a thousand-yard stare that would make any marine drill instructor proud.
"If any of you, any of you, ever pulls a stunt like this ever again, I will have you stripped of your rank, sent through every obstacle course on the Farm, painted bright pink, and set on the CIA driving range with a sign that says 'Twenty points for every hit.'" Graham's furious gaze swept all of them. "And if that doesn't work, I will personally take you all through jump training without so much as a parachute, and you had better hope to God you learn how to fly before now and then. Are we understood?"
"Yes, sir." The chorus was ragged; Chuck was half a step behind his teammates, but they all spoke fervently.
"Good." Graham straightened to his full height and crossed his arms over his chest. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have an agency to run. General Beckman can take it from here."
And he walked out, leaving the room ringing in his wake. Chuck didn't dare breathe. He wasn't sure if Casey or Sarah were breathing either, and he was too afraid to ask. He hadn't expected that sort of outright fury. And that had been a very oddly specific rant.
Though he wondered in the only part of his mind that wasn't stunned stupid or hysterical, what Casey would look like painted bright pink.
"Very well." General Beckman's voice cut through the silence, and Chuck snapped back to reality, to face her unsmiling mien. She folded her arms on the table in front of her in a way that let Chuck know that, though they might not get such a forceful dressing down from her, she was just as displeased as her counterpart. She eyed them narrowly. "Let's go over everything that happened, step by step. And don't leave any details out."
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