AU - That Which Is Greater

Chapter 03: First Date

Did the man never sleep?

Sarah pushed back in her seat, wishing she’d picked something besides a Porsche when she had gone to collect her car for the mission in Burbank. The other cars might not be as cool or as fast, but at least they would have more leg room. Given that she had spent the past four hours sitting in the Porsche, staring at a lit-up window and wondering if Chuck Bartowski mainlined Red Bull to keep himself going, leg room was gaining more importance with every hour that passed.

She toyed briefly with the idea of taking a walk, shaking out the kinks in her legs and lower back, and rejected it. It was now past the time when a single woman could wander alone through the neighborhood without drawing suspicion. She would have to wait it out.

At least it gave her time to think. She’d spent the day doing research, and her findings had been exceedingly puzzling. Chuck Bartowski did have a connection to Bryce Larkin, but she couldn’t find any communication between the two men any more than recent than five years before. The files she had uncovered had painted a picture of two friends, roommates at Stanford, rushing the same fraternity, member of the same honors societies, by all accounts inseparable. Until, Sarah thought, Bryce Larkin had turned Chuck in for stolen exams in their senior year at Stanford. All communication between the two abruptly ended. Chuck Bartowski had registered to vote in a new address in Echo Park, and a little shy of eight months later, had filed a petition for primary custody of one Violet E. Bartowski in family court.

And since then, not a word had passed between the two men until two nights before. She had done her digging and had even had Jerry do some as well, but it was like, to each other, Chuck Bartowski and Bryce Larkin didn’t exist.

So why had Bryce sent Chuck the Intersect?

It didn’t make any damned sense.

Maybe she just hadn’t caught the communication. Chuck worked in encryption software, he was bound to be good at covering his tracks. And if he had stolen tests at Stanford, who knew if he could have graduated to stealing government secrets?

Except...that didn’t really add up either. Sarah wasn’t so foolish as to believe that all men and women with children were good or kind-hearted, but Chuck Bartowski seemed like the genuine deal. Her surveillance told her there were three adults living in the house with the young Violet: a woman that could only be Chuck’s sister, Chuck himself, and a blond haired man that the voter’s registration listed as Devon Woodcomb, but Sarah was going to assume he was the “Uncle Awesome” she’d heard about. From what she could discern, all three of the adults seemed to share Violet equally. She’d seen the four-year-old out in the front yard playing catch with her Uncle Awesome, had watched through the windows as Violet helped her aunt fix dinner, and then had rough-housed with her father on the living room floor until Chuck had flopped spread-eagle on the carpet, apparently faking dead. Things like that didn’t exactly scream government conspirator.

And now, hours after the light in Violet’s bedroom had gone off, and the rest of the house had gone dark, that same enigma was still up, evidently hard at work in his office. It was two a.m. the night before Sarah was supposed to meet him for a date—or the morning of, depending on how one viewed these things—and it didn’t look like Chuck Bartowski was going to sleep for hours.

This was a problem for Sarah. She needed to get in and get a look at his hard drive. Since it looked like there was always somebody home at Casa Bartowski, Sarah would just have to sneak in under the cover of darkness. It was risky, but she’d done riskier.

Assuming she didn’t fall asleep first. Chuck had outlasted her the night before; she blamed it on the fact that her body was still adjusting from the eastern time zone. Tonight, she was determined.


Are you a robot? The thought was aimed at the still-lit office window. Get some sleep! Quit drinking Red Bull!

Sarah Walker then discovered something new about Chuck Bartowski: he did not read minds. It took him another forty-five minutes before the lights in the office went out, and the lights in what was probably Chuck’s bedroom came on. Sarah, who’d been nodding off with her forehead against the steering wheel, let out a sigh of relief. She gave it another half an hour, just to be safe, before she picked up her B&E toolkit, this time equipped with everything she would need to hack Chuck’s hard drive, and sauntered across the street.

In this little quarter of suburbia, it looked like everybody else might be sleeping. Perfect.

She grabbed a branch and hauled herself up on the tree that ran alongside the house, right up to the window of Chuck’s office. If Chuck and Violet still lived there during her teenage years, somebody would have to warn Chuck about this tree and its ideality for sneaking out, but for now, it served Sarah well. She shimmied across the branches, agile as a monkey.

Chuck’s office window wasn’t locked. Careful not to make any noise, she slid the window up. The first few times she’d done this, she hadn’t been able to hear her own thoughts over the pound-thud of her heartbeat, but now there was just the familiar feel of adrenaline and thrill. She stayed still, crouched on the window sill and waiting to make sure Chuck hadn’t woken, but the house was silent. Hearing nothing, she unfolded the toolkit and laid the flap of cloth across the desk, immediately getting to work.

It would have been smarter just to take the whole desktop so that the boys at the home office could look over it. But Sarah wasn’t sure she could get it out the window without damaging it, and she didn’t want to go through the house with so many people around. Besides, most of her wasn’t even sure Chuck had even received Bryce’s email; she’d seen nothing to indicate that he was harboring government secrets. And she didn’t want to rob a potentially innocent man of his livelihood.

The computer booted right up, and she set in to work.

Jerry had assembled a few tools she would need, but warned her that cloning an entire hard drive would take a lot longer than she was willing to risk. So Sarah opened Chuck’s email, hoping against hope that—

Email from Bryce Larkin.

Stanford.zrk.

So Chuck did have it. Sarah blinked before she copied the email to a hard drive. She would have to submit this as evidence to Graham the next morning, which left a sour taste in her mouth. She scanned the message, but there was no greeting or anything in the body of the email. Just a file sent from Bryce to Chuck.

And it wasn’t even a very big file, evidently, for it copied over in a split-second.

It was foolish to waste time when she would have the opportunity to look over the file later, but Sarah couldn’t resist. She double-clicked on the file.

Immediately, the screen went black, and Sarah went still.

Text began to fill the screen.

>attack terrible troll with nasty knife

Clang! Clash! The troll parries.

The terrible troll’s mighty blow drops you to your knees.

>kill troll

(with the nasty knife)

You are still recovering from that last blow, so your attack is ineffective. You stagger back under a hail of axe strokes.

>kill troll with nasty knife

A furious exchange, and the terrible troll is knocked out!


What. The. Hell? Bryce Larkin had sent Chuck a video game?

Sarah straightened, her brow crinkling as she tried to puzzle through it. The tech guys had said that Bryce, at the time of his—his death—they had said that there was a large email sent out to an IP address in Burbank. Had that been a ruse? Had Bryce really sent the Intersect somewhere else, and this email, this video game had been sent to Chuck Bartowski to send them on a mad goose chase?

It was devious enough to fit Bryce, but kind of cold to Chuck, in Sarah’s opinion.

Frustrated and confused now, she clicked out of the game. She started to close down Chuck’s email client, when another email in his inbox stopped her.


MAILER-DAEMON. Your email could not be sent to this address.Without knowing why exactly that had caught her attention, Sarah opened the email. The original message was embedded after a bunch of code.


Bryce,


Thanks for the Zork game. Haven’t played it in years, but it was nice to spend a couple of hours on it today. It’s just as cheesy as I remember. Also, what’s new with you? Maybe next time you’re in town, you should give me a call and we’ll have a beer. A lot’s changed since we last talked.'


Chuck


P.S. – What the hell is up with all of the pictures and why would you be sending this to me now? Not that I’m not grateful, it’s just kind of random.

Not exactly the most acrimonious message on the planet, Sarah thought. Then she froze for what felt like the ninetieth time since she’d stolen into Chuck’s office. Pictures? There hadn’t been any pictures in the Stanford.zrk file.

But there would have been pictures in the Intersect files Bryce had sent.

For safety’s sake, Sarah copied that email to her drive, trying to puzzle it out. So Bryce had sent Chuck the Intersect? If so, where the hell was it? She did a search on his computer for large files, but nothing came up but some movies.

The mystery would have to continue. Looks like I’m keeping my date with Chuck Bartowski after all.
Annoyed that she was even more confused, Sarah shut down the computer and reached for her toolkit. It was then that a sound in the hall stopped her cold.

“Daddy?”

Violet sounded nervous—or scared, Sarah thought. And sleepy, too.

She heard rustling from the other room: Chuck, no doubt. “What? Vi? What is it, sweetie? Can’t sleep?”

“I heard something. I think something’s in my closet again.”

Sarah’s eyes widened. Had she been too loud? Could Violet have possibly heard her? The monitor shut itself off, plunging the room into darkness. By all rights, she should make her escape now, but she couldn’t seem to move.

This time, there was more rustling, which she had to assume was Chuck getting out of bed. “Okay, well, let’s go check it out.”

“Can’t I just stay in here with you?”

“What, are you telling me your old man can’t face down one measly little closet beast on his own?”

“But I’m scared.”

“And I’ll be right here with you. You know, I bet if there really is a closet beast, he’s just as scared of you as you are of him.”                       

“Her.”

“Oh, so it’s a beast-ette? Well, let’s go see, Megabyte.”

Mercifully, their voices trailed off, which meant that they had gone into Violet’s bedroom. Sarah shook off the brief paralysis, grabbed her toolkit, and all but dived out the window, hurriedly and silently shutting it behind her. Great, she thought as she wormed her way down the branches and onto Chuck’s front lawn, now I’m giving four-year-olds nightmares. Excellent work, Sarah.

And now she had a little more than twelve hours to get some sleep, report in to Graham, and try to get to the bottom of this whole Intersect mess before her date with Chuck Bartowski.

* * *

“How come you’re not wearing a tie?”

“Because it’s a casual thing,” Chuck said, though his daughter’s question made him pause for a second. Should he wear a tie? Was this an event worthy of wearing a tie? Would Sarah like that more? He shook himself inwardly. Ellie had picked out his outfit for him; he would have to trust that she knew what she was doing. He grinned over at his daughter, who was sitting on the counter next to the sink while he shaved. She had her hair in pigtails, done up in bright pink barrettes that didn’t exactly match Chuck’s Batman T-shirt, which was to be pajamas for the night and fit her like a tent. “Besides, your Uncle Morgan warned me to never wear a tie on the first date.”

“Why not?”

“Because it makes it easier for ladies to strangle you if the date goes badly.” He removed the last strip of lather and rinsed the razor off before turning to Vi for inspection. “How do I look?”

Vi laughed and bounced. “Handsome!”

“Did I miss a spot?”

“Uh-huh!”

“Where?”

“Right...” Vi held a hand up, and Chuck obliged her by leaning over so she could reach him. She poked him in the center of the forehead. “Here!”

Chuck poked her back, gently, in the same place. “Well, if I did, so did you.”

“That’s silly, Daddy.”

“Why is that silly?”

“Cos girls don’t shave!”

“Oh, Aunt Ellie’s going to have fun teaching you about that one in a few years.” Chuck opened the after-shave and let her have a whiff, laughing when she wrinkled her nose. “Well, some ladies like it.”

“Do you think Miss Sarah will?”

“I certainly hope so, Megabyte. I certainly hope so.”

“So is Miss Sarah your girlfriend?”

Chuck paused. Dating in the modern age was complicated enough—and it had been five years since he’d been on a date, and even that had been with a long-term girlfriend—without having to explain it to a four-year-old. So he took the coward’s route. “Why? Do you want her to be?”

“She’s pretty. And if you can’t date Princess Leia, then I think you should date Miss Sarah.”

“Well, thank you for the endorsement.”

“Besides, she looks like Tink!”

“Oh, she does, does she?” Chuck bit back a laugh as he wondered how Sarah might react to the fact that his daughter apparently thought of her as a life-sized Tinkerbell. The Star Wars reference, however, made him grin. To think he’d once been worried that the original Star Wars movies might be too scary for Vi. Now she had all but worn out the DVD set, which neither he nor Morgan minded, as it was loads better than watching Dora the Explorer. He picked up the stuffed teddy bear that shared quite a few things in common with Chewbacca, and held it out to her. “C’mon, let’s get downstairs, I think Aunt Ellie has your dinner ready.”

“You’re sure you can’t stay and eat with us?”

“But if I do that, Miss Sarah will be sad that she’ll have nobody to eat with.”

“Miss Sarah could come over here.”

“Nice try, but nope, this date is for adults only.” Chuck grabbed his wallet from his nightstand as he paraded Vi through the upstairs living room and to the stairs. “If things go well tonight, I’m sure Aunt Ellie will insist that Sarah come over for dinner, and then you can humiliate me—I mean, ask her all the questions you like. Sound good?”

“Sounds great!” Vi took off, racing down the stairs at a pace that always made Chuck stop breathing for a second. But the girl was nimble like a spider-monkey; once she’d gotten past the chubby stage, she’d sprung up like a weed and hadn’t seemed to inherit her father’s lack of coordination at all. He heard her greet Ellie and then the scrape of one of the stools at the kitchen island being pulled out. Since it was a special occasion, the others would be eating dinner at the island rather than at the table.

When he came downstairs at a much slower pace, Ellie glanced up from her magazine at the island, and he all but heard her go, “Aw!”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said, “I know.”

“What? I was just going to say you looked handsome. Doesn’t he, Vi?”

“I already told him so.”

“It’s a first date, it’s important to look good. You’re not freaking out, are you? Tell me you’re not freaking out. You have nothing to worry about.”

“I’m not freaking out,” Chuck said. “It’s just dinner, El. Not a big deal.”

“How is this not a big deal? This is your first date in years. This is a very big deal!”

“Okay, now I am freaking out.” Chuck gave his sister a sour look as he opened his wallet and pulled out a post-it he’d written up that afternoon. “The numbers of all of the places we’ll be tonight, and Sarah’s number, just in case. I’ll have my cell phone on, but in the case that something happens and ninjas attack me and feed my phone to piranhas, that’s where you can reach me.”

“We’ll be fine,” Ellie said. “Since Devon got called in, it’s a girls’ night. We’ll paint our nails and watch chick flicks and pretend they aren’t making us cry, right, Vi-Baby?”

“Aunt Ellie says I get to play with her make-up!”

Ellie gave the four-year-old a betrayed look. “Shh. You were supposed to keep quiet about that.”

“Whoops.” But Vi grinned.

“Yeah, right, whoops.” Chuck crossed around the island to drop a kiss on the top of Vi’s head before raising an eyebrow at Ellie. “Please don’t let my daughter look like a clown when I get back.”

“No promises. Have a good time on your date.”

“Yes, ma’am. Violet, you listen to your aunt. When she tells you to go to bed, it’s bedtime. Don’t argue with her. And not too much sugar tonight, you hear?”

“Shouldn’t you be going now?” Ellie asked. “You’re officially trespassing on our girls’ night.”

“All right, all right, I know when I’m not wanted. I shouldn’t be back too late.”

“Stay out as late as you like. We’re not going anywhere.”

“Ha-ha, mind out of the gutter, Sis. Nothing of the sort is going to happen tonight.”

“Pity.”

“Good night, Megabyte.” Chuck snatched her up for one final hug-and-tickle before he headed out. After five years out of the dating game, he was getting back into the swing of things by going out with Sarah Walker. If that didn’t count as jumping into the deep end feet-first, he wasn’t sure what did.

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