2:35 P.M.
February 15th, 2008
The TARDIS
Mulholland Dr. & Laurel Canyon Blvd.
Duchy of Los Angeles, California Province
Imperial States of America
Sarah studied the Doctor for a moment. “Okay,” she said. “So I have to terminate the discrepancy. What exactly does that mean?”
“Quite simple, really,” the Doctor replied, almost flippantly. “You just have to kill Chuck Bartowski.”
Sarah’s eyes went wide. She tried to form words, but words wouldn’t come. She just stood there, opening and closing her mouth for a moment, before she was finally able to form one solitary word.
“WHAT?!”
The Doctor looked at her curiously. “I thought I was pretty clear there,” he said. “It’s not a confusing issue.”
Sarah held her hands up. “Just stop. You don’t understand.” She paused for a moment, gathering her thoughts. “In my reality, Chuck is a national security asset. I’m his handler.”
She took a breath. “And his friend. I can’t just kill him.”
“But it’s not him,” the Doctor said. “It’s Emperor Charles Bzechewski.”
“Yeah, but, but,” Sarah held up her hands, “you yourself said that when I come in contact with people and places that they’re going to start to turn into what they are in my reality. What if that happens to Chuck? What if he turns into MY Chuck, and then I still have to put a bullet in him? How do you expect me to do that?”
“It’s not like it’s a huge deal,” the Doctor protested. “You shoot him, it terminates the discrepancy, the timeline goes back to the way it should be, and when time corrects itself, it’ll correct itself all the way back to when Reinette touched me. It’ll be like nothing happened.”
“So Chuck will still be alive then, back to normal.”
The Doctor’s head bobbled around on his shoulders a bit. “Yeah, um, probably.”
Sarah blew out her breath in disbelief. “What do you mean, ‘probably’?”
The Doctor started almost speaking with his hands. “You see,” he began, “time… it’s not… it’s not linear, like people seem to think. It’s like it’s this big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… um… stuff.”
Sarah stared at the Doctor. “Are you sure you’re ‘brilliant’?” she asked, disgust laced in her voice.
“Well, I just… you know, I just…”
“Because you’re starting to sound like a total FUCKING IDIOT,” Sarah grated, beginning to lose it. She grabbed the Doctor by his lapels and pushed him against the wall.
“Let me tell you something, Time Lord,” she rasped. “I’ll do what I have to. I’ll kill Chuck Bartowski to correct time.”
Sarah released his collar. “But so help me,” she growled, “when time corrects itself, if he isn’t alive, I will find you, and I will END YOU.”
Charles Bartowski stared at the monitor. “What do we know, General?”
General Beckman looked back at him. “Not much, your Excellency,” she replied. “We’ve got these anomalies occurring worldwide, but they are mostly centered around Los Angeles.”
She stopped for a moment. “However, there are some very disturbing ones occurring on the East Coast. Washington –“
She paused, and then shook her head. “Washington D.C. keeps appearing and disappearing on the former site of the city. People are appearing. There have been sightings of what appear to be a Presidential convoy with old United States flags traveling through Texas.
“There’s one more thing, which, sir, I cannot emphasize enough that this is an anomaly, and you can’t concern yourself with it,” General Beckman said.
Bartowski raised his eyebrow. “What?”
General Beckman closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “There have been intermittent sightings of… well, of Bryce Larkin around the OSS complex.”
“WHAT?!” Bartowski bellowed. He jolted upward, knocking his chair over. “HE’S FUCKING DEAD!”
“I know that, sir,” General Beckman replied, seeming to steel herself in her chair.
Bartowski gathered himself for a moment, closing his eyes and pointing a finger at the computer. “Find him. Take care of him.”
General Beckman blew out a frustrated sigh. “We’ll do what we can, sir, but given that he just seems to come and go at random times, I can’t make any guarantees.”
“Take care of the situation, General. I would say you can consider it a major career opportunity.”
And with that veiled threat, Bartowski closed the link. He picked up his chair, sat down, and exhaled slowly.
“Shit.”
Sarah and the Doctor were going over the infiltration plan – the plan on how Sarah was going to get into City Hall, and terminate Charles Bartowski. The TARDIS had projected a 3D model of City Hall in thin air, and it cut away layers with each maneuver, taking them deeper into the building.
They were concentrating so intently on what they were doing that they both almost jumped through the ceiling when somebody knocked on the door.
“What the hell?” Sarah said.
“I don’t know!” the Doctor whispered. “It’s impossible for anybody to know we’re here!”
Sarah drew her gun and flipped the safety off, moving to the door as the Doctor moved around the console to check the monitor. He looked at the screen, and then looked up in disbelief. “It’s Colonel John Casey. Charles Bartowski’s right-hand man.”
Lifting her gun so that it would be leveled at Casey’s forehead when she opened the door, Sarah reached out and slowly turned the knob. The door swung open –
And registering absolutely no surprise when he saw the gun pointed at him, Casey said the last words that Sarah expected to come out of his mouth.
“Hello, Walker. Put the gun down and let me in.”
Sarah’s eyes went wide with shock as she did just that. Casey stepped around her, into the interior.
“Well, what DO you know,” he grumbled. “A bona fide TARDIS.”
Then he saw who was standing at the console. “Hello, Doctor. Fancy seeing you here.”
“John,” the Doctor replied laconically, with nothing more than a nod.
“Wait… wait!” Sarah nearly shouted, shaking her head. “How do you know each other… and how are you the Casey I know?”
“Well, I met the Doctor a few years back. He was causing trouble in San Francisco, and I had to straighten him out a bit.”
“The MASTER was causing trouble,” the Doctor protested. “I was trying to stop him!”
“How, by shutting down the atomic clock?” Casey sneered. “Give me a break. You were a national security threat, and if you hadn’t left when you did… well, let’s just say there likely would’ve been trouble.”
The Doctor grumbled something under his breath that Sarah didn’t quite make out but sounded a whole lot like fucking savage. “And as for you, Agent Walker,” Casey continued, “you may have noticed that there’s a lot of things around here shifting between one appearance and another.”
“Uh, yeah,” she replied. “I’m, um, apparently responsible for it.”
“Well, that’s fantastic,” Casey said sarcastically. “You see, I apparently shifted to being Major John Casey – the one that knows you – and instead of shifting back, like everything else is doing, I got stuck. There were reports of somebody who matched your description being near the anomalies, so I tried to track you, and lo and behold – here you are!”
“Here I – wait a second. Track me? How?”
“Every set of earrings you have has GPS tracking devices on them,” Casey smirked. “I’ve been able to track you everywhere you go since the day we met.”
“You’re a real son of a bitch sometimes, John,” Sarah grumped. “I can’t believe you’d do that.”
“Sticks and stones, Walker,” Casey replied. “Now, can I assume that the two of you have been here cooking up some plan to correct all these issues?”
“Yes indeed we have, Major Casey,” the Doctor spoke up from the other side of the TARDIS. “Seems we have a time paradox on our hands. It’s simple enough to fix, really – just have to terminate the discrepancy.”
“’Terminate the discrepancy’? What the hell does that mean?”
Sarah sighed deeply. “It means… well, it means I have to kill Chuck.”
Casey cocked his head and looked at her a moment. “If that causes time to correct itself, will he still exist, as his normal self, where we’re supposed to be?”
“Probably,” Sarah replied.
“Ninety percent probability,” the Doctor interjected. “Most likely.”
“I like those odds,” Casey said, his face breaking into a smile. “And heck, it’ll be therapeutic. There’s been more than one time I’ve wanted to –“
“God DAMN it, Casey,” Sarah snapped at him. “You really ARE a son of a bitch sometimes.”
“Oh, come ON, Walker,” Casey groaned. “I’ve seen the way you look at him. You have totally lost the ability to separate your professionalism from your personal feelings. It’s almost sad, really – you came so highly recommended, and yet some twenty-seven year old nerd has turned you into a shell of an agent.”
Sarah didn’t say anything. She just looked at the floor. Silence filled the TARDIS for a moment.
Finally, the Doctor spoke. “If I may interrupt this awkward silence,” he began, “there’s still a mission that needs to be carried out.”
“Like I said,” Casey replied, “I’m happy to help out.”
“Well… it’d be great if you could help Sarah get inside City Hall,” the Doctor said, “but in the end… well, you’re not technically from her timeline.
“In order for this to work… she has to be the one to pull the trigger.”
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