4 FEBRUARY 2008
THE BACHELOR PAD
22:39 PST
“Faulkner?” Chuck asked, blinking. The gun did not disappear, and neither did the crazy person in his kitchen. “Faulkner, what are you doing here? You should be fleeing the country right now. Look, if you put the gun down right now and there’s no trouble, I’ll even let you get away before I call my partners. Hell, I’ll give you a head start.”
Faulkner laughed. “It’s nice to know some things haven’t changed.”
Chuck knew having a gunman in your kitchen was a bad thing. Having a deranged gunman in your kitchen was much worse than that. And if that deranged gunman thought you were someone else...this entire situation was approaching Star Wars Christmas Special levels of bad.
Even worse was the fact that Andy, standing by the door and looking blank, still hadn’t moved. The creepy-crawlies moving up and down Chuck’s skin only intensified. “Faulkner—”
“Don’t call me that. I’m not, nor have I ever been, Piers Faulkner.”
All in all, that was probably the least surprising thing about this whole situation. Chuck looked at Andy again. The other man continued to stare forward, emptier than the space between dancers at a junior high dance. And between Lifeless Andy and Chuck was his watch, still sitting on the coffee table where he’d put it for the solder to cool.
“I suppose,” Not-Faulkner said, inspecting the nails on his free hand idly, “that I should be insulted that you don’t remember me. But it’s flattering, on a different level. It means that your training finally took. I’m so pleased, Delta.”
“I’m sure. If your name’s not Faulkner,” Chuck said, “then who are you? And why did you call me Delta?”
“Because you signed away your name the minute you joined my program,” Not-Faulkner said. “I have many names. So do you.”
Chuck’s heart, already pounding, sped up more as Not-Faulkner took another step forward. Could he get to his watch in time? Would Not-Faulkner shoot him? Would the monologue keep going? “What are you talking about?” he asked, edging an inch close to his watch. It would take ages for Sarah and Casey to get there and save him, but it was better than nothing.
Wait a second. There had been an agent guarding the court yard. Instinctively, Chuck looked in that direction.
“Don’t worry about Agent Grey, Delta. Andy took care of her,” Not-Faulkner said, reading him easily. Chuck’s stomach bottomed out; the emotion must have shown on his face, for Not-Faulkner chuckled. “That hasn’t changed either, I see. But don’t worry, Delta. No need for too much collateral damage. She’ll have a mild headache only. And I see you haven’t rid yourself of your distaste with killing. Always your greatest failing.”
“Others might see it as a strength,” Chuck said, creeping closer to his watch.
“I never did. Stay put, Delta. I know precisely what you’re doing.” Not-Faulkner raised his gun. “No tricks. I’ve come to take you home, and I’d rather not use force. But I will, if I have to.”
“I am home,” Chuck said, straightening. The watch was not an option, he saw, and he didn’t even have any of Casey’s guns. He’d put the one taken from the guard at Ezersky Manor in Casey’s gun vault, and if he couldn’t edge toward a coffee table a mere two feet away, there was no way in hell he’d be able to trick Not-Faulkner into letting him get to Casey’s stash.
“Look,” he said, keeping any eye on both Andy, who hadn’t moved, and on Not-Faulkner. “I don’t know what either of you is smoking, and frankly, I’m not surprised you two were in on this together—well, actually, strike that, I’m surprised Andy was in on it. But I think you’ve got the wrong guy. My partners just ran out, they’ll be back any minute now, and I’d rather not let things get messy because that’s what will happen and... What are you doing?”
“I highly doubt that your partners are anywhere near here,” Not-Faulkner said, holding up a phone. Chuck saw a navigation app with two blue dots on the screen, and his throat went dry. “They’re still chasing the tracker I planted to keep them occupied. It’ll be awhile.”
“What do you want, then?” Chuck asked. “Besides to talk my ear off?”
“And that hasn’t changed either, I see,” Not-Faulkner said. “I want you to come with me, quietly, Delta. It’s time to go home.”
“Quit calling me that.”
“What should I call you, then? You’ve got many names, isn’t that right? Chuck Bartowski, computer nerd from California. Charles Carmichael.”
Chuck felt the world go still. Carmichael was a code name, a ghost, that wasn’t supposed to be breached. The fact that Not-Faulkner knew…Chuck’s cover was blown.
“Stargazer,” Not-Faulkner said, his eyes never leaving Chuck’s, and Chuck’s heart hammered harder. “Prometheus. ICE Agent Sean Fitzgerald. Peter Rogers. Jackson Georges. And,” Not-Faulkner said, “finally and most importantly, you’re Delta. Which is the only name you have ever needed or will ever need. I myself have just as many names, but you know me best as Carver.”
“C-Carver.” The wind was knocked from Chuck’s lungs in one frightening, intense whoosh. It was a name he thought occasionally, never when he was concentrating. He’d seen the name Carver on his computer screen for three ye—no, five years—stuck in that godforsaken bunker in No Man’s Land. Carver, who was often the only connection he had to the world at large, and had been the only connection total until Bryce and Sarah had dropped into his life.
Chuck had never wondered what the man looked like. Was that strange? It felt like it should be strange, now that the man himself—Carver, Carver—stood in front of him with a gun.
“I thought you’d be taller,” Chuck heard himself say, which wasn’t true. But his mouth and his brain suddenly seemed to be acting independently of each other. “And I expected you to have a mustache, too.”
Carver stared.
“Like a real mustache, you know?” Chuck went on. He distantly recognized the note at the edges of his voice as panic, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. He was now beyond certain of two things: he knew nothing about anything at all, and things were about to get very, very bad. But he couldn’t stop himself, so his mouth kept moving and the words kept tumbling. “A handlebar mustache, at least. But I guess you’d need a monocle and a penny-farthing for that. And a bowler. No handlebar mustache is complete...without...a bowler.” Perhaps his brain finally caught up with how ridiculous he sounded, for his mouth stopped working, almost on its own volition.
The skin around Carver’s mouth firmed, shifting into something uglier. “I’ve had enough of this, Delta,” he said. He looked over at Andy, still standing lifelessly by the door. “Foxtrot.”
Andy snapped to attention with military precision.
Every hair on Chuck’s body stood on end.
“Foxtrot,” Carver said, “the movie on the second floor is ‘Autumn Sonata.’”
Chuck’s eyelids fluttered at the oncoming flash even as across the room, Andy began to blur into motion. Time slowed down; images flitted through Chuck’s brain even as he watched Andy shift like some absurd puppet caught in Jell-O.
An osprey going in for the kill in living, breathing Technicolor.
LINCOLN PROJECT, FORMERLY KNOWN AS OPERATION MARDUK.
A spyglass.
PROJECT RELOCATED TO WARSAW, POLAND.
The osprey, catching the fish. The fish, too heavy, overpowering the osprey and dragging it into the water.
Andy coming toward Chuck, his eyes completely blank, his face twisted into a grimace.
CODE PHRASE: FOXTROT, OFFENSIVE, HAND TO HAND. DISABLE OPPONENT. The movie on the second floor is Autumn Sonata. Emphasis: second, Sonata. Accent: Austrian.
The fish and the osprey, the fish winning, dragging the osprey into the water.
“What the—” was all Chuck had time to say before Andy struck.
Andy had crossed the room in a long, single lunge. In the same move, he brought his right fist up and around. Chuck saw the punch coming, but thanks to the flash and his own shock, could do nothing to stop it. It slammed into his forehead and for a split-second, the entire world turned orange and pink.
He staggered back, hard. His head split in two, or it felt like it, but he still flailed out, fingers grabbing something soft—the arm of the couch. Instinct had him scrambling away, his legs kicking so that his bare feet scrabbled against the floor. He lurched.
Andy simply side-stepped, wrapped an arm across Chuck’s shoulders like they were buddies, and forced Chuck to fold at the waist. He twisted and drove his knee into Chuck’s chest. And while Chuck’s chest exploded and he cried out, Andy shoved him forward.
Chuck stumbled forward toward the TV and the desk. Unfortunately, the coffee table was already there, so he slammed his left knee down hard enough to hear it crack. The ground rushed at him. He landed in a clatter of video game controllers and Casey’s gun cleaning kit, on his side, with no way to escape.
“What the—what the he—”
The words came out as a gasp even as Andy, eyes never leaving Chuck’s face, moved around the coffee table. Chuck scrabbled for something, anything, trying to get away. But Andy advanced on him just like the Terminators from his worst nightmares, that normally-genial face clean of all emotion.
Chuck tried to push himself up, but he’d fallen awkwardly. His hand slipped on a video game box and lost all purchase. He slipped and went down hard. To make matters worse, he pushed up again and Andy was suddenly there, standing over him.
Chuck saw the foot coming and reacted on instinct, kicking out. It was a lucky hit, he’d be sure of that later, but it was a hit nonetheless. His foot connected with Andy’s knee.
Chuck screamed. That was his bad leg. It barely stopped Andy for more than a second, but that second was all Chuck needed. Gritting his teeth, panic making him sweat and want to cry and want to scream, he twisted about—and managed to kick Andy solidly in the groin.
It would have dropped a regular man into the fetal position with a sob. It slowed Andy down for about twelve seconds.
In those twelve seconds, Chuck forgot all about how his apartment was laid out, about all of the egress points he’d memorized every time he walked into any of the room. He was trapped, stuck between his coffee table and the TV. There was a door around here somewhere, and a staircase, but for the life of him, he couldn’t have told anybody where. All he knew was that Andy was coming and thanks to Project Lincoln, whatever the hell that was, he wasn’t going to stop. So he pushed past the confusion and, gasping as the pain made his eyes water, finally shoved himself to his feet. He took off running, not caring which direction, just that he needed to get away.
He got a step before his knee buckled and he felt something wrap around his shoulder. Andy grabbed his right shoulder with a vise-like grip, his fingers digging in hard. Chuck didn’t have time to throw an arm up to protect himself. Andy swept his right arm across Chuck, almost like he was going in for another hug. The inside of his forearm, though, was far more deadly than that: it caught Chuck right on the chin, sending sparks dancing across the edges of Chuck’s vision. He hit the ground once more, groaning. It sent all of the air rushing out of his lungs again.
Some instinct Chuck didn’t even know he had made him raise his arms. Andy’s kick glanced off his elbow, making Chuck cry out in pain.
It beat breaking his ribs, but damn, it hurt. What the hell was going on? Why was this happening to him? Where was Sarah?
The second kick caught him a little higher on the forearm. Chuck whimpered and, when Andy drew his foot back to deliver another punishing blow, threw himself forward. He hugged Andy’s leg like some toddler greeting his father coming home from work. And, his eyes streaming, he twisted hard.
Andy’s mass crashed into the floor hard enough to rattle the TV. Chuck didn’t wait around to see if the flatscreen would fall or not. Even though it was like driving a knife right into the meat of his own leg, Chuck lurched to his feet and ran. It was a stupid move befitting any horror movie, but he didn’t see any other way out: he raced for the stairs, which was the only route not blocked by an insane person or a Terminator.
“My sweet pet parrot,” Carver said, and Chuck immediately stopped, nearly tipping forward into the spiral staircase.
He was suddenly frozen, completely unable to move in a way that should have indicated some kind of paralysis poison from a comic book. Panic tasted like something real in his mouth. His thoughts raced faster than a million miles per hour, but his body never moved. In his mind, Chuck entertained one absurdly familiar and frightening real vision of pounding his fists against cage bars, of screaming until his throat was hoarse.
Behind him, he heard Carver take a step closer. Chuck felt fear sweat cascade. “My sweet pet parrot,” Carver said a second time, “has flown the coop.”
Chuck’s world went completely black.
4 FEBRUARY 2008
THE BACHELOR PAD
23:16 PST
An American flag.
PROJECT LINCOLN—
Chuck blinked awake, mid-flash, though his eyes had never closed—
DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS: RICHARD G. CARVER. WHEREABOUTS UNKNOWN.
A mime, playing with an invisible yo-yo. The hand bobbing up and down, up and down.
ASST DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS: GAIL HOLLOWAY, DECEASED, 17 JAN 05.
The American flag flapped over the black and white footage of the mime. Chuck watched it all, paralyzed by the flash, neither awake nor asleep. He was sitting up.
ASSOCIATES: ROBERT WOLF, PHD, NEUROBIOLOGY, DECEASED, 21 MAR 05.
JENNIFER SAMPLE, PHD IN PSYCHOLOGY, DECEASED, 21 MAR 05.
JOSEPH HANKS, TEMPORARY WORKER, DECEASED, 07 FEB 05.
Chuck blinked, but the flash didn’t stop. What was he seeing? Where was he? Why had he flashed?
What was going on?
The mime dropped his yo-yo.
PROJECT DISCONTINUED 1 JAN 05.
PERSONNEL RELOCATED UNDER ORDER OF GRAHAM, LANGSTON. CLASSIFIED: ECHELON LEVEL ALPHA.
The mime picked the yo-yo up and made a show of walking the dog again.
The American flag waved one final time.
Chuck blinked yet again and this time, his vision returned. The flash couldn’t have taken more than a split-second—they never took very long—but he’d never been woken by a flash before. He’d also never fallen asleep at the desk in the living room, which was evidently where he was now, judging by what he could see directly in front of him. The computer monitor currently scrolling what looked like government secrets about a Project Lincoln certainly wasn’t the monitor up in his room.
Other details leaked in. He was sitting straight up, erect in a military posture, his feet aligned with his shoulders on the floor, his elbows tucked to his side, his head held erect.
Carver was standing behind him, looking over his shoulder.
What the hell was going on? Why didn’t he remember anything? Chuck almost turned his head to ask what was happening, but out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Andy Kohlmeier standing at slack-faced attention.
It came rushing back in one terrifying flood. The pain followed close behind. It felt like a truck had run over his leg, making Chuck suck in a quick breath. And his head felt like Sarah had used it instead of Frank for kickboxing practice. Somehow, he managed to keep from screaming. He didn’t know how. Tremors moved up his legs and his chest, but Chuck kept himself absolutely erect.
His only saving grace, he knew, was that Carver didn’t know he was aware. Why he was aware, Chuck didn’t know that either, but the longer he could keep Carver from realizing he was awake, the longer it would be before Carver unleashed Andy on him like some kind of—
Manchurian candidate.
The words hit Chuck and made the trembling increase. It was moving up his arms now, though he kept his hands rigid on the keyboard. He’d seen The Manchurian Candidate, of course he had. He still had his nerd card, didn’t he? He liked the Frank Sinatra movie version more than the Denzel Washington remake years later, though the concept had, at the time, seemed rather indicative of Cold War paranoia. Soldiers, trained to rigid obedience. A single phrase, a deck of cards, a picture, a word. Mind control, the stuff of science fiction both classic and new. Zombies and Reavers and other creatures, all ordered around by a single thought.
Chuck wasn’t thinking about the Cold War now. It was real. All of it was real in a way that terrified him because it had nearly beaten the ever loving daylights out of him in his own living room, all because of a simple—
Everything inside Chuck stopped as though somebody had slammed on the breaks.
A simple phrase.
The last thing he remembered before the flash, before the American flag and the mime and a list of dead scientists, was Carver saying something... Something about what? Chuck thought hard, even while he kept his body rigidly still. It had been something about a pirate? No. Something about a parrot.
And it shouldn’t have meant anything, just nonsense words. Unfortunately, Chuck realized as dread slicked down his esophagus to sit in his stomach like a sick ball of poison, it meant everything.
Andy wasn’t the only Manchurian Candidate in the room.
Somehow or other, though he had no idea how, Chuck had been turned into something that could be controlled. He had no memory of it, no idea how it could have happened, but he knew with more certainty in that moment than he’d ever felt before: he had been part of Project Lincoln. He had been turned into a Manchurian Candidate.
It was only by some divine act that he heard Carver, still standing just behind his shoulder, draw breath, a sign that the other man was about to speak. It kept Chuck from starting like a frightened rabbit and giving away that he’d somehow shaken off whatever stupor the Project Lincoln programming had done to him. Why he had shaken it, Chuck had no idea.
“Delete that,” Carver said, and Chuck realized the mad scientist was talking about the file on Chuck’s screen. Quickly, he focused his eyes back to the project, though his heart was pounding, and it couldn’t be real. The screen showed a file about Project Lincoln, Chuck realized. Seeing it didn’t make things any more or less surreal, but it did confirm one thing: Project Lincoln existed. It was on paper somewhere.
And Carver was telling him to delete the evidence of that. A quick glance at the log in the bottom right-hand of the monitor told him that it wasn’t the first file Carver had had Chuck delete.
He wanted to shake and cower or possibly curl into a fetal position on the floor, but something in the back of his mind coldly kept him upright. He’d seen the look on Andy’s face, or the lack of one. If Carver ordered Chuck dead, Andy wouldn’t stop until Chuck was on the floor with a bullet between his eyes. Right now, the best way out was to play along. So Chuck mentally cursed himself and deleted the file on the Lincoln Project. He sat, staring at the computer screen and hoping that Carver wouldn’t notice that his hands had begun to shake in earnest.
He forced them to still. It took every bit of willpower that he had. Sweat began to drip down the back of his neck. It felt cold.
“Open the next one,” Carver said.
Chuck clicked on the next file on the list that had popped up on his computer screen. It appeared Carver was cleaning house, as that file had to do with the Lincoln Project as well.
The flash actually didn’t surprise him this time.
Grainy video footage of doors opening on what appeared to be Black Friday.
A list of names. ALPHA, DELTA, FOXTROT, KILO, SIERRA, TANGO, WHISKEY.
Following that, a list of phrases, all seemingly innocuous, phrases that could have passed for everyday, pleasant conversation.
HAVE THE CATS ALL BEEN GATHERED UP, MARGARET?
THE PENGUINS SWIM AT DAWN.
I THINK I’LL GO TO THE FAIR THIS MAY.
REWIND THAT TO THE FOURTH FRAME AND STOP, PLEASE.
The phrases were hand-written snippets on yellow legal paper, with little accents over some words that Chuck didn’t understand. They all had orders attached, sometimes underlined and sometimes circled.
CALM. SEDATE. ATTACK. OFFENSIVE, DEFENSIVE.
KILL.
The shoppers broke past the doors and spilled onto the sales floor, causing sheer pandemonium and ending the flash.
Oh, God, Chuck thought. Oh, God, oh, God. He was a sleeper assassin. He’d just flashed on all of the phrases that controlled him.
And there were more of them. Whiskey, Tango, and Foxtrot hadn’t been Project Omaha participants at all. They had never been super-soldiers like the ones Project Omaha had been trying and failing to produce for the US Military. No, Project Lincoln participants were all some kind of rejects from a bad science fiction movie—a bad science fiction that had become his life.
Oh, God.
“Delete,” Carver said, and Chuck deleted the file. He moved automatically to open the next file on the list, but stopped himself just in time. He was Carver’s puppet. He had to play along. Andy stood in the corner of his vision, a constant reminder just like the throbbing pain in his leg. If he wanted to keep up the charade and avoid more pain, Chuck had to keep up the act.
His eyes fell on a picture Sarah had given him, one he’d badgered Casey into letting him put on the computer desk. In the frame, Chuck was hard at work on some invention or other, his head bent low. Sarah had given him a surprise hug and was smirking over his bent head at the camera. She had joked at the time she’d given it to him that it perfectly summed up their relationship. It should have been reassuring to Chuck now. Sarah would come save him, Sarah and Casey would get him out of this. They would come in and take Carver out, and end this nightmare.
Until, Chuck realized, the sick ball in his stomach making him want to retch all over the computer desk in front of him, Carver used just the right phrase on Andy, or worse, Chuck. And then it would be over. They might take Andy down, but would they shoot Chuck if Chuck was coming at them like Andy, ready to kill them? Chuck hoped they would. He really, really didn’t want to kill his girlfriend or his partner.
He had to get away from Carver. He had to do something before Casey and Sarah came back and walked into a trap neither of them knew about.
“Open the next file, Delta,” Carver said. When Chuck obediently did so, he leaned in close over Chuck’s shoulder to get a closer look.
It was the best opportunity Chuck had had, so he let months of Casey’s various trainings take over. He didn’t bother to send up a prayer to whatever deity that might be watching. The gods had forgotten about him. So instead he twisted in his seat and drove his elbow up, hard, right into Carver’s throat.
Carver stumbled back, his hands going to his throat. Chuck got one glimpse of too-wide blue eyes as he surged to his feet and ran for it.
The minute Carver could speak, he’d send Andy after Chuck, and the throat jab had brought him only precious seconds. So Chuck ran. Andy was between him and the front door, he ran for the stairs. He had a balcony. He could jump down to the next floor from there. And if he broke his neck in the process, so be it.
At least he wouldn’t be used as a weapon against Sarah and Casey.
He took the stairs two at a time, whimpering every time his bad leg touched down. From the first floor, he heard Carver gasp out something. Chuck clapped his own hands over his ears. He couldn’t be used if he couldn’t hear the phrase.
Going into his room had been monumentally stupid. He lost precious seconds again by scrabbling in a panic at the sliding glass door onto his balcony. Adrenaline and fear and terror and pain flooded through his system, robbing him of all motor control. Somehow, he got the door open, though he had no idea how. He nearly threw himself head-first off of the balcony in his haste to get outside.
Andy hadn’t come up yet.
Maybe he could get away. Could he get away? Could he make that leap? Chuck leaned over the balcony, trying to get a good look and figure out the angle, even while his brain kept up a constant chatter of Escape! Escape! Run for it!
He was about to pop over the railing and make the jump when two things happened: he spotted the red button off to the side of the railing. And he heard Carver tell Andy to attack.
Without knowing what he was doing, Chuck slammed his hand down on to the red button.
An honest-to-God harpoon shot off from his left, aiming straight for a tree about two hundred feet away. Chuck watched it go, his eyes wide.
“Holy mother of—she really wasn’t kidding about the zip line,” he breathed. Reality reinserted itself past his shock: he was stuck on a balcony with a Terminator sleeper assassin coming to kill him. Now would be a very good time to use the zip line.
But there wasn’t, he saw, a handle anywhere. What the hell? What could he—an idea struck him, and he fumbled for his belt. His hands refused to cooperate.
He heard Andy on the stairs behind him, footsteps pounding like the toll of a countdown clock. He needed something, anything that could be a handle, something that wouldn’t drop him to his death—
He tripped over his jeans that he’d tossed on the floor before. Sheer instinct and panic had him reaching down and yanking so hard on the belt that he heard the pants rip. He’d care about that later. In a flash, he was across the room, the belt wrapped around the zip line.
Please don’t let me die, he thought to nobody in particular, and launched himself into the night.
He hit open air and his stomach leapt to his throat. There was a tug on the back of his shirt as he launched, but beyond that there, was nothing, nothing but the empty air and the feeling of plummeting to his death.
Or at least Chuck assumed that was what it was. That was what it felt like, at any rate. He sped along the zip line, the belt striping his fingers with red and white and pain. The ground and the tree rushed at him fast—too fast. He was going to crash.
Chuck nearly squeezed his eyes shut and gave in right then, as his bowels were already halfway to water. Some forgotten force of will inside him made him keep staring forward. And listening to some instinct he didn’t even know he had, he let go of the belt. For a second, he was airborne, flying feet-first through the air like something out of one of Morgan’s beloved Kung Fu movies.
There was one brief flash of memory, of flying through the air in the disgusting, grimy lobby at the Heartbrake Hotel, aiming for that scuzzy carpet. He hit the ground feet-first and his knee gave out from under him. He stumbled forward and landed on his face. It occurred to him that he wasn’t wearing shoes.
“This night really, really cannot get worse,” he said, and glanced over his shoulder.
Andy hadn’t bothered to find a belt. He was climbing down the rope, hand over hand, like some kind of demented spider monkey.
“Oh, right. Shut up, Chuck,” Chuck said, and took off running into the park behind his apartment complex. He ran the paths most every morning with Sarah—save lately, as she’d vanished off the face of the earth to think—but that was very different than right now. It was abandoned due to the late hour, for one thing, and he was normally wearing shoes. He also regularly didn’t have some kind of brain-washed assassin chasing him.
There was a bit of a forest, a pathetic copse where teens went to make out more than anything else. Chuck sprinted through it now as fast as his abused feet and his leg would let him. He needed to evade Andy long enough to form some sort of escape plan, made difficult because Andy wouldn’t stop until he found Chuck. He would just keep going in single-minded fervor, which meant that Chuck needed to be clever.
Chuck had never felt less clever in his life. His entire world seemed to be a repeated chant about the need to get away, which didn’t help at all. Maybe he could find some place to hide, at least until Andy went past? Then he could take off running in the opposite direction and get away? Chuck looked around, but the patch of forest provided little cover.
Andy would be a lot faster on foot than Chuck once he made it down the rope. He had the benefit of shoes and the apparent inability to feel pain.
But maybe he would think that Chuck would just keep running, which was the logical response in this sort of situation. Chuck’s instincts were screaming at him to do just that. Maybe that meant Andy’s instincts would do the same. And maybe Chuck could help him along.
When he spotted the empty Coors bottle on the path ahead of him, he didn’t stop. He merely bent, scooped it up mid-run, and flung it at as hard as he could in the other direction. Maybe it would distract Andy.
Chuck repeated the grab, scooping up a fist-sized rock this time. The patch of woods ended and he ran across rubber shavings toward a playground that looked vaguely like some kind of castle. He could really use the real Castle right now, but this would have to do. He dove into one of those short crawl-tunnels kids loved to get stuck in, and curled as tight as the limited space would let him.
As far as plans went, this one sucked. He knew that. But it was all he had. His feet were throbbing and wet with what he hoped was dew even though he knew better. His arm and knee hurt so badly that it made rational thought hard to come by, just when he knew he needed it most.
He wanted Casey and Sarah to come save him. He wanted them to stay far away.
His breath rasped in and out, amplified by the acoustics in the tunnel. Every time he tried to breathe quieter, panic made the very air inside his chest shudder so that he gasped. It was like somebody turned the volume up on nature: he could hear the thrum of the cars passing by on the highway, the chirp of insects, far-off noises of humanity. His heart beat a bass to all of the cacophony, and he could practically hear his bones clicking together as he shook.
There was not a single sound from the super-soldier/brainwashed assassin out to beat him to a pulp.
Had he gotten away? Had Andy bought the ruse? Chuck’s fingers quivered as they clutched the rock to his chest. It was all he had.
Maybe he’d pulled it off, after all. There wasn’t the thunder of footsteps outside the tunnel and with Chuck’s senses as hypersensitive as they were, surely he would hear Andy coming, or at least some warning—
Something grabbed his ankle and yanked.
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