Chuck vs. the Past Chapter 3: "It's Complicated"

1:59 P.M.

July 6th, 2018

Cedars-Sinai Hospital

Beverly Hills, California

It was darkness. All darkness.

She looked around. Saw nothing but darkness.

But wait. There. There was a brightness behind the darkness. And a sound.

Beep…

She headed toward the brightness.

Beep… beep…

The brightness filled her vision, and then she saw.

Beep… beep… beep…

She saw shapes, lights. But she could only see out of her left eye.

Beep… beep… beep… beep…

She began to be able to focus on things. She saw a clock. She saw an I.V. pole next to her. She saw the source of the beeping – her heart monitor.

Beep… beep… beep… beep… beep…

But she wasn’t onSerenity. She wasn’t in the infirmary. She was in a hospital somewhere. Slowly, she lifted her wrist, and was able to read her hospital.

“Kaywinnit Lee Frye,” it read. “Cedars-Sinai Hospital.”

Cedars-Sinai Hospital, she thought. She didn’t know that hospital. It wasn’t on any planet she’d ever been to. It wasn’t on the Core planets.

She tried to speak. Only breath came out. Focusing herself, she managed to get a word out.

“Hel…lo?”

She heard rustling cloth, and then a little voice spoke.

“Mommy?”

She slowly rolled her head to the left. A little boy. Her little boy.

“Hi there,” she whispered, smiling. “How you doin’, Chuck?”

“What?” she heard a voice say behind her. A familiar voice. A very familiar voice.

As she slowly rolled back over to her right, she heard the voice say, “How did you know I was here?”

But she hadn’t. Her open eye went wide as she realized who it was.

“Chuck?” she gasped. “Chuck!”

“Hi, Kaylee,” he said with a smile.

She couldn’t believe her eyes. “You… you look… you look old,” she whispered.

Chuck cocked his head to the side. “Good to see you too,” he replied wryly.

Then his face wrinkled as a certain confusion crossed his mind. “If you didn’t know I was here, why did you ask me how I was doing?”

“Not you,” Kaylee replied. “Him. Little Chuck.”

Chuck looked at Kaylee, and then at the little boy, and had the closest thing to a flash he’d ever had outside of the Intersect.

Curly red hair. Brown eyes. Pointed chin. “Are you my daddy?”

Chuck’s eyes went wide. “Oh my God,” he gasped. “Little Chuck… there’s no way…”

Kaylee raised her eyebrow and nodded. “Yep. Trust me. Nine months of most definitely.”

“But… there was only… there was like three times!”

“Simon tells me it only takes once,” Kaylee joked weakly.

Chuck was dumbstruck. He staggered backward and landed in a chair behind him, his head in his hands.

For the first time in years, Chuck Bartowski was utterly speechless.

---

3:02 P.M.

Los Angeles International Airport

Morgan Grimes was waiting at the bottom of the stairway as Sarah Walker and John Casey exited the CIA plane. “What’s the situation, Morgan?” she called over the noises of the airport.

“We’ve got a team covering the crash site in Kern County,” he replied. “The crew of Serenity are all conscious at Henry Mayo, and they’re under heavy security – I’ve got NSA on their rooms, and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has a perimeter on the hospital.”

“What about Kaylee Frye?” she asked.

“She’s at Cedars-Sinai,” Morgan said simply, as they started walking toward the waiting Lincoln. “They had to do a skin graft on her right arm, but otherwise, her burns weren’t too severe. They had to do a bowel resection to repair a perforated intestine, and her right lung had to be re-inflated. She’s still in lousy condition, but she’s stable, and she’s expected to be alright. She woke up about forty minutes ago.”

“Was Chuck there?” Sarah asked as they got into the car.

“Yeah,” said Morgan, buckling his seatbelt. “Here’s the thing, though. He’s in a bit of shock.”

“Really?” Sarah said. “I don’t understand. You said Kaylee’s going to be alright.”

“Wellll…” Morgan hesitated. “Did he mention to you that he ran into a kid at the crash site?”

“Yes,” Sarah replied, confused. “I don’t understand.”

“Turns out, the kid is Kaylee’s kid,” Morgan replied.

“Okay,” Sarah intoned. “I still don’t get it.”

“The kid’s name is Charles Irving Frye.”

Sarah’s eyes went wide, and Casey spoke for the first time.

“Oh, shiiiit!” he laughed.

---

3:30 P.M.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Chuck sat outside Kaylee’s room. She had fallen asleep again shortly after telling him that Little Chuck was his son.

Of all the things Chuck had had to deal with in the last eleven years, this one was far more mind-boggling than anything else. He was having a very difficult time dealing with it.

When Chuck felt a tug on his pants leg, he lifted his head from his hands and looked up. Little Chuck was standing in front of him.

“So, are you my daddy?” he asked.

Chuck nodded. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

Little Chuck climbed up in the chair beside him. “How’d you meet my mommy?” he asked.

“Well…” Chuck paused. He didn’t have a clue where to start. “Well… about eleven years ago, I got a computer stuck in my head.”

“What do you mean?”

“A friend of mine sent me an e-mail,” Chuck said. “It had… um, it had a whole lot of pictures in it that had all been in a big computer.

“They all got stuck in my head, and sometimes, if I saw something, it would make me see some of the pictures and understand something else.”

The little boy nodded, looking as if he was doing his best to comprehend what Chuck was saying.

“There were these people,” Chuck continued. “Bad people. They called themselves Fulcrum.”

“Fulcrum?” the boy asked. Chuck nodded. “A fulcrum is a support or point of support on which a lever turns.”

“Yes,” said Chuck. “And these guys thought they were the point on which my whole country turned. They wanted to get me, because I had the computer in my head. But I wouldn’t go with them, and my friends wouldn’t let them take me.

“So, they used this device they had found, and sent me 500 years into the future.”

“Wow,” little Chuck said. “That’s a long time.”

“Yes it is,” Chuck replied. “The device dropped me in your mommy’s ship – theSerenity. That’s when I met her. To make a long story short, your mommy and I fell in love, and then I had to go back to my own time. After I left, your mommy had you, but I didn’t know.”

“So…” little Chuck started. “Are we… are we in your time?”

“Yes,” Chuck said. “It’s the year 2018.”

“I see. We were in 2526.”

“2526…” Chuck mused. “So… you’re only six years old, right?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s weird,” Chuck breathed. “A three year time differential…”

“What?”

“It’s been ten years since the last time I saw your mommy,” Chuck explained. “But it’s only been seven years since the last time she saw me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Neither do I,” Chuck said. “Neither do I.”

---

4:45 P.M.

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

The Beverly Center cast a long shadow over the entrance to Cedars-Sinai as Sarah, Casey, and Morgan walked in. Sarah flashed her I.D. at the F.B.I. agent standing at the door, and he stepped aside, opening the door for them.

Sarah crossed the lobby to the reception desk. “Kaywinnit Lee Frye,” she said, showing her I.D. again. “Where is she?”

“Third floor, room twenty-four,” the receptionist replied.

The three took the elevator to the third floor. “Rooms 21-40,” the sign said, with an arrow pointing to the right. They turned right as they exited the elevator, and right away, saw Chuck and a little boy sitting outside of a room.

Morgan practically ran up to them. He crouched down in front of the boy, looked at him, and then looked at Chuck. “My God,” he said. “He looks just like you did when you were a kid!”

“My name is Charles Irving Frye,” the boy said. “But you can call me Chuck. What’s your name?”

“I’m Morgan Grimes,” he replied. “I’m your dad’s best friend.”

“You are?” little Chuck said, looking confused. “Why isn’t my mommy his best friend?”

Morgan opened his mouth, and looked like he was going to say something, but nothing happened except his face developing a very confused look. “Uh… ah… it…”

“It’s complicated, kid,” Casey said.

“Complicated?” little Chuck asked.

“Yeah,” said Casey.

Little Chuck thought about that a moment. “That’s what adults always say when they don’t want to tell the truth.”

That caused Sarah to break into a smile. “He is definitely your kid,” she said to Chuck.

“What’s your name?” little Chuck asked, looking at Sarah.

“I’m Sarah Walker,” she replied. “I’m your dad’s friend and his boss.”

“Oh,” he said. “Did you know that some of your hair is gray?”

“Oookay!” Chuck said, picking the boy up. “Why don’t we go see your mommy?”

“Okay, Daddy.”

Chuck and little Chuck disappeared into Kaylee’s room. Morgan looked at Sarah and then at Casey. “Can you believe this?!”

Casey just laughed. “This is great,” he said. “Didn’t that boy ever hear of a condom?”

Sarah rolled her eyes and sighed. “Casey…”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

---

6:20 P.M.

“Where’s Chuck gonna stay?” Kaylee asked softly.

“I’m going to take him to my sister’s house,” Chuck replied. “She and her husband can watch him. They’ve got two kids, one who’s seven, one five, so he’ll have somebody to play with.”

“He’s never really spent a lot of time around other kids,” Kaylee whispered. “Are you sure he’ll be okay?”

“He’ll be fine,” Chuck replied. “Kids are like that.”

“Does your sister know?”

Chuck shook his head. “I never told her about what happened. I couldn’t. And I didn’t even know I had a son until today.”

He paused. “But I guess I’m going to have to tell her now.”

“I’m sure she’ll understand, Chuck,” Kaylee said. “If she’s as smart as her brother and her nephew…”

“You’re probably right,” Chuck said.

Taking little Chuck’s hand, he said, “We should probably get going so you can sleep.”

He looked at little Chuck. “Say good night to your mommy.”

“Good night, Mommy,” the boy said.

“Good night, little Chuck,” Kaylee replied. “I love you.”

Chuck lifted him up so he could give Kaylee a kiss, and then he set him back down on the floor. “Good night, Kaylee,” he said.

“Good night, Chuck.”

Chuck and his son were almost out the door, when Kaylee softly said, “Chuck?”

He turned around and looked back at her. “Kaylee?”

She looked at him, and he could see a certain longing in her uncovered eye. It looked like she wanted to say something else, desperately wanted to say it.

But “Good night,” was all she said.

Chuck vs. the Past Chapter 2: "Crash and Burn"

6:51 P.M.

July 4th, 2018

Pine Mountain Club, California

“It’s Serenity,” Chuck said, his voice full of disbelief.

There was stunned silence on the other end for a moment.

“Oh my God,” Sarah finally replied. “Are you sure?”

“It’s got to be,” Chuck said firmly, as he clambered over rocks down into the ravine. “It’s a Firefly-class ship, it’s got the same markings as Serenity. She’s pretty fucked up, but it’s definitely her.”

“What does ‘fucked up’ mean?” came a little voice from behind Chuck.

“Oh, Christ,” Chuck muttered, realizing the little boy was still behind him. Turning around, he said, “You can’t say that, okay?”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Chuck said. “It’s not nice to say it.”

“Who the hell are you talking to?” Sarah asked.

“There’s a little boy here, he looks about six years old,” Chuck replied. “When he saw me, he asked me if I was his daddy.”

“Okay, that’s weird,” Sarah said.

“No shit,” Chuck replied. “I mean, no kid-“

It was too late. “What does ‘shit’ mean?”

Chuck sighed. “Look, Sarah, I’m gonna go. It looks like the sheriff is here. I need to try to get down to Serenity, and keep my eye on this kid at the same time.”

“Alright,” she replied. “It definitely sounds like DHS can’t handle this. I’m going to call up your San Joaquin Valley team, then call Casey, and then I’m on my way out there.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Chuck said, climbing down from one final boulder, parking himself next to a hatch into the ship that had been broken and twisted open. “I’ll see you in a few.”

He disconnected, and grabbed the edge of the hatch. He pulled, and it moved a little, but didn’t give much. “Is this where you came out?” he grunted to the little boy.

“Yes,” the boy said. “I climbed up from my mommy’s room and found the open door.”

“Who’s your mommy?” Chuck asked, as he attempted to pull the door off.

“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers,” was the answer Chuck got.

Chuck sighed. “Alright, can you at least tell me if she’s okay?”

“She wouldn’t wake up,” the little boy said. “One side of her face was kind of black, and the other side… she was bleeding a little…”

He was starting to cry. “I don’t know why Mommy wouldn’t wake up… I tried to wake her up, and then the Captain tried to wake her up… he yelled her name over and over again… I’m not allowed to call her Kaylee, but he said it… and then there was a big boom, and we were here.”

Chuck felt like his heart had stood still. “Did you say your mommy’s name was Kaylee?” he gasped.

The little boy nodded, his eyes wide and his cheeks red and wet.

Chuck turned back to the hatch. He gave it one almighty pull, and it twisted off in his hands. He turned to the boy. “You stay here.”

The hatch was just large enough for Chuck to wriggle through, dropping onto the deck below. It was slanted under his feet, pitched upward at the same angle as the ship.

Chuck looked around at a corridor he hadn’t seen in over ten years. He knew immediately where he was – the port side hallway, just forward of the shuttles.

Chuck could think of only one place where Kaylee could be that she would’ve ended up burned and bleeding. He turned toward the back of the ship and started moving, as quickly as he could.

As he passed the shuttles, he came around a corner – and ran smack into Malcolm Reynolds.

Mal’s eyes were already wide with fear and shock. He had blood running down his face, and his left shoulder appeared to be dislocated.

His eyes got even wider. “Oh my God…” he whispered. “Oh my God… oh my God…”

“Mal,” Chuck said quietly, touching his good shoulder.

“I watched… I watched you leave,” Mal said. “You were on Enterprise, and it disappeared. Then a year later, Kaylee got that package from you. You’re back in the 21st century.”

“That’s right,” Chuck said. “So are you.”

Mal’s jaw dropped open in shock. “That’s impossible.”

“I know,” Chuck replied, a renewed sense of urgency filling his voice. “But we don’t have time for that right now. Kaylee’s hurt in the engine room.”

“Yeah,” said Mal. “I couldn’t get her to wake up.”

“Let’s go,” Chuck said, pushing forward.

He reached the door of the engine compartment. The door was partway open. Chuck pushed the button on the panel next to it to open it, but there was no power. Pushing, he slowly slid the door open and squeezed into engineering.

Kaylee lay on the floor next to the drive. It was clear to Chuck that the drive unit had torn itself apart. Scorch marks were evident on the wall behind Kaylee, and the right hand side of her face was slightly burned. Her clothes were charred, but intact.

“Good God,” Chuck gasped, running across the compartment to her. He slid his arms under Kaylee, and picked her up. The left hand side of her face was bleeding from a deep gash, and there was bruising all around it.

Kaylee felt as light as a feather. Chuck turned, and exited the compartment. “Mal!” he shouted. “Mal!”

Mal staggered across the cargo bay to where Chuck stood. “Can we get the bay doors open?”

“Yeah, uh, there should still be enough emergency battery power,” Mal responded.

Shaking his head in an attempt to reorient himself, Mal hit a series of buttons on the panel. The door slowly groaned open.

“I’m going to get Kaylee to safety,” Chuck shouted. “You go get Zoe and Inara and Simon and River and Jayne.”

“Inara isn’t with us anymore,” Mal said dazedly. “She left the ship a while back.”

Chuck looked at him for a moment, then made a decision. “Okay, Mal, you go outside with Kaylee, and I’ll go get the others.”

He could barely bring himself to hand Kaylee to Mal and let go of her, but he did. Mal staggered up the ramp out into the rapidly fading daylight, as Chuck dashed back into the bowels of the ship.

Zoe, Simon, and Jayne were all in the crew mess, unconscious. Chuck managed to wake Simon and Zoe up, but Jayne had a lump the size of a golf ball on his head.

“Chuck?” Zoe gasped. “Is that really you?”

“Yeah, it’s really me, and we don’t have time to discuss this right now,” Chuck replied. “Take Jayne out through the cargo bay, and be careful – he might have a spinal injury.”

“I’m supposed to say that,” Simon said, sounding drunk.

Chuck shook his head and continued forward. When he reached the control room, he found River, strapped into her seat, staring straight forward, her hands wrapped around the control yoke with a white knuckle grip.

“River?” he said softly.

“I… crashed…Serenity…”

“River, it’s okay,” Chuck said.

“I… crashed…Serenity…”

Chuck peered around the front of her face, and then waved his hand in front of her eyes. No reaction.

Unstrapping River, he lifted her out of the seat. Gingerly, he made his way back to the aft end of the ship, carrying River up the ramp and out.

When he reached the exterior of the ship, he could see that local law and fire was present in large quantities. A helicopter sat in an open space about five hundred feet away. Three ambulances were parked at the edge of the ravine, and more police cars than you could shake a fist at crowded the camp.

As Chuck came up out of the ship, a team of paramedics ran up to him. As they took River from him and laid her on a stretcher, one of them said, “Were you on board the ship, sir?”

“No,” Chuck replied, distractedly. “I’m with the CIA… did you see a little boy?”

“Yes, sir,” the paramedic said. “He’s over at the first ambulance. He keeps saying that the woman we have in there is his mother.”

Chuck turned from the paramedic and ran to the ambulance. Inside, they had Kaylee on a respirator. The heart monitor she was on showed her pulse was weak and steady. The little boy sat on a bench inside the ambulance, crying.

“Where are you taking her?” Chuck asked.

“Uh, Henry Mayo, down in Santa Clarita,” one of the paramedics said.

“No, no,” Chuck responded. “Get her onboard that helicopter and take her to Cedars Sinai.”

“Hey, buddy, I work for the ambulance service,” the medic said. “That helicopter belongs to the Ventura County Sheriff.”

“Ventura – what the hell are they – never mind,” Chuck said, exasperated. “Come with me.”

He sprinted over to the helicopter, the medic behind him. “Who’s in charge here?” he shouted, trying to make himself heard over the noise of the aircraft’s engines.

“That’s me,” a man in a sheriff’s uniform said. “Deputy Mark Crisman. Who the hell are you?”

Ignoring the sheriff’s question, Chuck shouted, “There’s a woman in an ambulance over there. She’s been badly burned. I want her loaded on this helicopter and taken to Cedars-Sinai right now!”

“And I want to have sex with Hilary Duff!” the deputy shouted back.

Blood rushed to Chuck’s head and he grabbed the deputy by the collar. Slamming him against the helicopter, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his I.D. Not his standard issue CIA I.D., but rather one that had a black stripe with a single off-center red band on it.

“You know what this means?” Chuck growled, shoving the I.D. in the deputy’s face.

The deputy’s eyes went wide and his face went pale. “Oh my God… a national command authority I.D… I never thought I’d actually…”

“Shut up and get her loaded,” Chuck snapped. “When you land at Cedars-Sinai, tell them that this is an Echo Park casualty.”

Chuck turned away and headed back toward the crash site. Behind him, the deputy snapped into action, barking orders at the other deputies and the paramedics. Chuck shoved his presidential-issue I.D. back into his pocket. “Call: Sarah Walker,” he growled.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand your request,” his phone replied.

“Jesus H. CHRIST,” he barked.

“I’m sorry, I didn’-“

Chuck yanked the Bluetooth from his ear and hurled it into the forest. Grabbing his phone from his pocket, he dialed Sarah’s direct line and held the phone to his ear.

It rang once, and then, “This is Director Walker. I’m sorry, but I’m in flight right-”

Chuck, of course, knew how to override, and punched in his emergency code.

After a moment and three more rings, the phone was answered. “Director Walker.”

“Sarah, it’s them alright,” Chuck said. “Zoe and Simon were banged up a little. I think Mal and Jayne both have concussions. They’re being taken to Henry Mayo to get checked out. Inara wasn’t with them.”

Sarah was quiet for a moment. “Chuck…” she said.

“Yeah!”

“What about Kaylee?”

Chuck looked at his feet. He hadn’t seen her for over ten years, but the time that had passed hadn’t diminished the way he felt about her at all. Now, to see her like this, the first time he’d seen her in so long…

“Chuck?”

He sighed deeply. “She doesn’t look good,” he said. “She was burned pretty badly. The drive ripped itself apart, and it looked the explosion threw her against the wall behind her. She was bleeding badly from her head, and she probably has some internal injuries too. They’re taking her to Cedars on my orders. I said to tell Cedars that she’s an Echo Park.”

In the background, he could hear Sarah relaying this information to other people, presumably on the plane. Then he heard John Casey’s voice say something in the background that he couldn’t quite make out, followed by another voice. The second was familiar, but Chuck couldn’t quite place it.

“Uh, Chuck?” Sarah said, coming back on the line.

“Still here.”

“Casey had some choice things to say. Colonel Tweedum said to tell you that Kaylee will be in his prayers.”

Colonel Michael Tweedum. That’s who it was. The co-pilot on Enterprise on the mission to retrieve Chuck from the 26th century years earlier, now Sarah’s personal pilot.

“Tell Mike I said thank you,” Chuck said. Turning, he saw the helicopter lifting off. “I’ve gotta go,” he said, and hung up the phone without waiting for Sarah.

As the helicopter gained altitude and flew up and out of the valley, Chuck dashed across the campground to his DB7. He backed out of the driveway in a cloud of dust, and fishtailed as he dropped the car into drive, accelerating up the highway.

Chuck had kept a photo of Kaylee in the glovebox of his cars for years. Even during the affair with Sarah, he’d always had the photo. Now, he reached in the glovebox, and pulled it out.

“Hang on,” he whispered, holding the photo against the steering wheel. “Hang on, Kaylee.”

Chuck vs. the Past Chapter 1: "Ghost Riders In the Sky"

5:22 P.M.

July 4th, 2018

Redondo Beach, California

Chuck Bartowski’s life was good. Nearly eleven years since he landed the original Intersect in his brain. There had been “upgrades”, as it were – e-mails full of more images to put into the Intersect sent to him, which he viewed and essentially added to the database in his brain.

Of course, he didn’t work out in the field with Sarah Walker and John Casey anymore. No, he worked for the Agency now – as the director of the CIA’s Intersect project. Codenamed “Omaha”, he had agents in 271 cities worldwide, recruited from schools all over the United States – Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, even a few from public schools like Arizona State and South Florida, and one who Chuck himself found at Santa Monica College.

His agents all had brains that operated like his own – they absorbed millions of subliminal images, and then used the databases in their brains for analysis and operations. A regimen of hypnosis was used to train their brains to be able to access the images at will.

Several years after they first met, Chuck and Sarah had started what amounted to a torrid, passionate affair. After a couple of years, however, they realized that while they still cared about each other as friends, their further relationship had become about nothing more than sex. So, they decided to go back to just being friends – hard at first, but for the best.

And it turned out to truly be for the best about six months later, when newly-elected President Bloomberg had appointed Sarah the Deputy Director (Intelligence) of the Central Intelligence Agency. That made her Chuck’s immediate superior.

“Well, thank God we decided to end that,” Sarah had said. “We would’ve had to anyway due to the conflict of interest, and that just would’ve –“

“Been messy?” Chuck said. “Yeah. No kidding.”

Meanwhile, Casey’s star at Buy More had, oddly enough, risen far more quickly than at the NSA – or so everybody thought. Casey was now the chairman of the board of directors of Buy More, Inc., and had orchestrated its 2016 buy out of CostCo and its later sale of the Nerd Herd to millionaire Charles Irving Bartowski. Casey also happened to carry the rank of colonel in the United States Air Force, and still drew a fairly hefty paycheck from the National Security Agency.

And so, Chuck was the owner of the Nerd Herd. It still had franchises in all Buy More stores worldwide, but it also had separate offices in, interestingly enough, 271 cities worldwide. The manager of each of these stores also just happened to be a CIA officer employed by the Omaha Project.

The afternoon of Independence Day 2018 found Chuck driving from the Nerd Herd’s corporate offices in Redondo Beach back to his ocean-view mansion in Rancho Palos Verdes. Well, he owned the mansion, but he lived in the guest house out back. He gave Ellie and Devin the mansion to live in, with their two kids.

As he drove down the Pacific Coast Highway, there was a sudden bolt of light across the sky. Chuck’s first thought was fireworks, but it was way too early, and it was way too big for that.

A split second after the bolt of light appeared, there was a gigantic sonic boom. Windows blew out all around Chuck, but the glass in the windows of his Aston Martin DB7 Volante was bulletproof, and managed to hold up under the boom.

A dark shape appeared in the sky, burning and smoking. It was at least 20,000 feet up, but it was pretty clear it was going down. In seconds, it was behind Chuck, heading north, as Chuck headed south on the PCH.

Cranking the wheel over, Chuck hit the gas and yanked the handbrake, spinning the DB7 around in half a second and heading north at nearly the same speed he had been heading south at. He watched the craft go screaming across the sky, trailing smoke behind it. On either side of the road, people were stopping their cars and watching as it went down.

Traffic was starting to get just a little bit thick, as the curiosity factor got overwhelming. Chuck turned on the siren and police lights on his Aston Martin and hit the gas, bringing his speed up to just over 100 mph.

“Call: Sarah Walker,” he instructed the car.

After one ring, she picked up. “Director Walker,” she said.

“Sarah, it’s Chuck. There’s some – uh, thing about to crash north of Los Angeles. It doesn’t look like any airplane I’ve ever seen, and I just before I saw it, there was a huge flash of light in the sky and a massive sonic boom.”

“Jesus,” she breathed. “Okay, are you headed that direction?”

“Absolutely,” he replied. “I can call up a team to meet me there.”

“No, this will be a Homeland Security matter,” Sarah warned him. “I do want you up there, but let DHS handle it.”

“Right,” Chuck said sarcastically. “This should be good.”

“Chuck…”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He hit a button on his steering wheel, ending the call. As he did, the smoking craft disappeared behind the mountains. Chuck braced himself, expecting a massive fireball and a boom –

But nothing. The smoke trail had stopped, that was certain. Whatever it was that came out of the sky was clearly down. But there had been no explosion.

With no explosion, the curiosity factor diminished rapidly, and Chuck was able to fly up I-405 with fairly reckless abandon. He had to slow a little when it merged with I-5, but the lights and siren cleared a path for him.

As Chuck was nearing the top of the stretch of I-5 known as the Grapevine, his phone rang. “Chuck,” Sarah’s voice filled the car. “Satellite imagery is showing the smoke trail as stopping outside of a place called Pine Mountain Club. Take exit 204 for Frazier Mountain Park Rd.”

“Coming up on it,” Chuck said, hitting the gas and cutting across four lines of I-5, earning himself honks and fingers from angry truckers. He flew off the freeway, using his handbrake to turn left onto the road, hardly losing any speed as he went.

“Okay, just stay on the road for about ten miles,” Sarah said. “When you reach a road called Mil Potrero Highway, turn right. The crash site is about a mile and a half down the road, at an abandoned camp.”

“Copy that,” Chuck replied. “I’ll call you when I get there.”

Hitting the button to hang up, Chuck increased speed. Weaving in and out of trucks and cars going hardly half his speed, he reached Mil Potrero Highway in under ten minutes and hung a hard right. He could see the plume of smoke now, coming up out of the forest.

When Chuck reached the camp driveway, he stood on his brakes, causing his own cloud of smoke to bellow up behind his tires. Cranking the wheel to the left, he stopped in a cloud of dust in front of the locked gate.

Fixing his Bluetooth earpiece to his left ear, he grabbed the phone from its dock in the car. “Call: Sarah Walker,” he said.

The phone rang. Sarah answered on the first ring again. “I’m the first one here, Sarah,” Chuck said. “I don’t know how I beat the Kern County Sheriff, but there’s nobody else – wait a second.”

Chuck looked toward the cloud of smoke in the middle of the camp. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing – a child walking toward him.

“Sarah, I’ll call you back,” he said, disconnecting.

He ran up to the child. It was a little boy, looked to be about six years old. He had curly red hair, and his clothes were tattered and burned – consistent with a plane crash.

“Hey!” Chuck called. “Hey! Are you okay?”

The little boy looked at him as Chuck walked up to him. Chuck squatted down in front of him. The little boy cocked his head and looked up at Chuck. Then he said something totally unexpected.

“Are you my daddy?”

Chuck looked at him. “What? No, I don’t think so… are you alright? You were in an accident.”

“You look just like pictures of my daddy,” the little boy insisted.

“Must be somebody else,” Chuck replied, confused. “Can you show me where the accident was?”

The little boy nodded, then turned, and scampered off.

About two minutes later, Chuck and the little boy reached a ravine. “It’s down there,” the boy said, pointing.

Chuck couldn’t see much through the smoke except for a scar on the mountainside. “What were you in?”

The little boy started to answer, but just then, a gust of wind swept through the ravine and blew away most of the cloud of smoke.

Chuck’s eyes went wide and his breath caught in his throat as he recognized the downed craft. “Oh my God…” he whispered. “Oh my God… it can’t be.”

He just stared for a moment, and then, his reverie was interrupted by the sound of sirens and an approaching helicopter. Coming to his senses, he said, “Call: Sarah Walker.”

She took a few rings to pick up this time. “Chuck, can I call you back?” she asked quickly. “I’ve got the White House on the phone, I’ve got somebody called Torchwood on the phone… I’ve got to get this taken –“

“Sarah.” Chuck interrupted her rather forcefully.

Recognizing his tone of voice, she said, “Okay, Chuck, what’s going on? What have you found?”

He paused for a moment, trying to find the words, but in the end, he spoke only two simple words.

“It’s Serenity.”