Over the course of the next six months, life seemingly returned to normal. The Bartowski Family Vacation lasted for nearly two months and took them in a loop around the United States. By the time the maroon Dodge Magnum pulled back into the driveway of the house at 4320 Saint Clair Avenue in Studio City, it had twenty-two thousand more miles on it. John and Lisa had been to more states than either Chuck or, strangely enough, Sarah had been to up to that point.
John Casey’s nearly secret relationship with radiologist Maya McCarthy had continued and grown. It had been kept such a secret that when the Bartowskis returned home and there was a rock seemingly the size of the Hope Diamond on Maya’s hand, Chuck and Sarah had both nearly passed out from shock.
Then there was the discovery that Ellie was pregnant again. She found out on John and Lisa’s second birthday, and announced it at their birthday party. There was, of course, great rejoicing all around – although Chuck noticed a certain sadness on Sarah’s face.
“Are you doing okay?” he asked her that night.
“Yeah,” she replied with a sigh. “It’s just… well, as happy as I am for your sister, it makes me kind of sad to think about it, to know that I never get to experience that again.”
The look on her face was heartbreaking – the look of resignation and sadness. Chuck took her in his arms and just held her for a while. She didn’t cry, didn’t break down – just stood there, feeling safe and protected in his embrace.
On Christmas Eve, they decided to take John and Lisa to midnight mass at Our Lady of the Angels Cathedral. Father Mike O’Halloran was the officiant, and both the kids recognized that at once. “Is that Papa Mike?” John asked Sarah when the Jesuit priest ascended the chancel.
“Yes, it is,” she replied in a hushed tone.
“He looks silly!” Lisa giggled, taking in his vestments with no small amusement.
“Shhh!” Sarah shushed her daughter, although she was unable to suppress a small giggle herself.
By the time the service ended, it was after 1:00 AM. Both of the Bartowskis found themselves carrying a two year old, but Sarah wanted to speak with Father Mike briefly.
She and Chuck walked up to him, toting their toddlers. “Merry Christmas, Agent Walker,” he said softly as they approached.
“Merry Christmas, Father Mike,” she replied. “Lisa thought you looked silly in your vestments.”
“Aye, and a wise lass she is,” Michael O’Halloran replied. “Or perhaps it’s a wiseass… who can tell the difference?”
Sarah and Chuck both laughed softly. “I wanted to ask you something,” Sarah said. “What would you think… what if Chuck and I were to adopt a child?”
Chuck had not been expecting her to ask that question, but there was no disguising the look of joy that crossed his face when she said that. He looked briefly at her, then expectantly over at Father Mike.
The veteran CIA agent looked from Sarah to Chuck and back again. His face turned serious, and his Irish accent practically disappeared, as it often did in serious situations. “Ordinarily, as your Agency handler, I’d recommend against it,” he told them. “It could expose you and the child you adopt to untoward danger.”
He paused, and then smiled. “However, I think that doing such a deed would more than make up for a litany of sins the two of you have committed, and I think it would do you and your family a world of good.”
His smile got even bigger, and his accent returned. “As such, if it’s somethin’ the two of ye wish t’ do, ye’ll definitely have me blessin’ as a priest and as yer friend, and I’ll keep me mouth shut as a CIA agent.”
Three weeks later, the pilot episode of Mindnode aired on NBC. Chuck and Sarah had a “premiere party” for it at their house – although the guest list was limited to the Woodcombs, Casey, and Morgan.
Morgan was less than amused that the studio had gotten Efren Ramirez to play the character based on him. “They got Pedro to play me?” he complained.
Everybody else was mostly satisfied. Sarah was actually fairly impressed with the job Katharine McPhee did handling the Tara Pierce character, and Casey was quite pleased with the job Sean Maher did as Robert Johnson. Ellie and Devin were rather amused with being portrayed by Jewel Staite and Jason Dohring.
Chuck was loath to admit that Anton Yelchin actually did a better job playing his character than Chuck felt he did in real life – although he felt he REALLY overplayed the scene where he received the Rorschach System (read that, the Intersect) from Kelvin Cardinal. There was a round of moaning at that particular character’s name. “They just HAD to go with another bird name, didn’t they?” Casey grumbled.
The show actually did very well, winning its timeslot on the first night it aired. NBC was pleased with the results, and it continued to do well and inspire a rather sizable fan database.
A couple of weeks later, though, the first “fanfic” began to pop up. Chuck had been on a fan fiction website, submitting some of his own from Firefly – “Yes, I write fanfic for Firefly. Get over it,” he had told Casey – when he noticed that there was a category for Mindnode on the page.
Curious, he had clicked on the link. There were only a few stories on the page. The first one written was called “All the Way Down”. Intrigued, he’d opened the story –
“Oh my God,” he gasped. This wasn’t just fanfic, this was smut. It had seemed like normal fanfic for the first few pages, but then, on the last page, Tara Pierce had been working on some martial arts moves with Rick McCune, had ended up knocking him on his ass, and then –
“What’s with the look on your face?” Sarah asked, coming through the door. Chuck didn’t say anything, just pointed at the computer monitor, wide-eyed. Sarah looked at the story, read through it –
“Wow,” she said with a whistle, her eyebrows raised. “I don’t think I’ve ever tried that with you before.”
Surprised, he looked up at her, and she looked down at him. “You want to?” she asked with a smile.
Meanwhile, Maximillian Calijo had been slowly but carefully rebuilding the legend of El Anillo del Fuego. However, this time around, the Ring of Fire wouldn’t have some amateur street gang behind him, but rather, the full force of the organization known as Fulcrum.
Of the original eight core members, General Louisa Beckman was dead, and six others refused to have anything to do with Fulcrum. Their justification was that with the President’s re-election, if they were EVER to resurface as part of Fulcrum, he would have them rubbed out so quickly they wouldn’t know what had happened.
And so it fell to Lou DeBlasio and Max Calijo to rebuild and reactivate Fulcrum. Of the roster of more than five hundred, only a little more than one hundred members of the organization were willing to rejoin the good fight. But they were one hundred who had been trained in the US military and its intelligence organizations. They would more than suffice.
Max Calijo had decided not to take the stupid path of attacking Chuck Bartowski. He would not go anywhere near Bartowski’s children, like his brother had. He would attack him peripherally – his business interests and his friends would be chipped away at slowly until Bartowski was essentially naked.
But Calijo had a little bit of an ego problem, just like his brother. He wasn’t content to just sit back and let things happen. He had to let Bartowski know just how screwed he was. And that’s why, on March 1st, he dispatched a team of Fulcrum agents to Studio City, and told them to communicate with Bartowski the way the Firestone Boulevard Slayers would have.
7:00 A.M., Pacific Daylight Time
Friday, March 1st, 2013
Studio City, California
Chuck Bartowski was up early, as usual. It was his task to wake up every day and get the coffee going while Sarah made sure that the kids were ready for day care.
But the smell of coffee almost invariably brought Sarah wandering into the kitchen before she woke up the twins. “Mmmm,” she said approvingly, smelling the coffee as she wandered into the kitchen.
“Good morning to you, too,” Chuck replied amusedly. His very sleepy wife embraced him and laid her head against his chest, closing her eyes.
“Don’t move,” she muttered. “Going back to sleep here.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not an option,” Chuck said, laughing softly. “The kids have to be woken up and gotten ready for the day, and I have to go to work.”
“Spoilsport,” Sarah grumbled, squeezing him tight before releasing him. “Get me something to wake me up then.”
“Yes, señora, allow me to be Juan Valdez,” Chuck replied in a ridiculous accent. Pulling the pot off the coffeemaker, he poured a mug for Sarah.
She accepted it, and took a sip. “It’s good,” she approved. “It’s been good ever since Will told you how to make Marine Corps coffee. What’s the difference, anyway?”
“I was sworn to secrecy,” Chuck replied, mock-zipping his mouth shut. What Major Will Williamson of the United States Marine Corps had taught him was very simple, but Chuck had sworn he would never share it with anyone.
“Punk,” Sarah complained. “And I can’t weasel it out of him, either.”
“Kinda hard for a woman to seduce a gay Marine,” Chuck laughed. Will Williamson had finally been able to stop living in the closet three months before when the President had convinced Congress to put a stop to “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
“I can still seduce you, though,” Sarah said with a smile. She ran her fingers through Chuck’s hair, and gently traced her fingernails down behind the backs of his ears. His eyes involuntarily closed and he shuddered as she did that. His mouth dropped open just a little bit, and she seized on the opportunity.
Sarah kissed Chuck, ever-so-slyly snaking her tongue into his mouth and making him shudder again. She withdrew, and gently bit his bottom lip.
“Oooookay,” he gasped. “You add a pinch of salt and a half teaspoon of brown sugar to the grounds.”
“See,” Sarah said with a smile. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Chuck was just about ready to say “to hell with the morning schedule” and let Sarah finish the whole seduction bit right then and there, but they were interrupted by a dull thud that came from the direction of the living room window.
“What the hell?” Chuck asked, heading toward the front of the house. He opened the front door. A brick sat on the front porch, a note tied around it. Clearly, it had been meant to go through the front window, but CIA Director Sam Tyler had insisted on having bulletproof glass installed over a year prior.
But that wasn’t Chuck’s immediate concern. “Holy shit,” Sarah said, as she stepped out the front door and saw the large burning circle on their front lawn.
Chuck grabbed the garden hose, turned on the spigot, and was quickly able to extinguish the flames on the grass that John Casey had worked so hard to make perfect. “Casey’s gonna be pissed,” Chuck groaned.
“I don’t think that’s our biggest problem,” Sarah replied. She held out the note that had been tied around the brick.
Chuck took the note and read it. You’re a dead man, Bartowski, it read. It was signed, El Anillo del Fuego.
“Okay,” Chuck said, taking a deep breath. “This is definitely gonna be a problem.”
“You think?” Sarah asked. “En Anillo del Fuego is dead! I saw the pictures from his funeral in the L.A. Times!”
“I don’t think we’re dealing with Alberto Calijo,” Chuck replied slowly. “I think we’re dealing with the Ring of Fire, California State Assemblyman from District 56.”
Sarah’s eyes went wide, and then she shook her head. “No WAY,” she replied. “You think that Max Calijo is taking his brother’s place at the head of the Slayers?”
“No,” Chuck replied. “I think he’s taking his brother’s place as El Anillo del Fuego. However, I think the organization behind him is far more powerful than the Firestone Boulevard Slayers could have ever HOPED to have been.”
Sarah narrowed her eyes. “You can’t be serious.”
“Of course I’m serious,” Chuck said. “He had the contacts, the know-how. His brother worked with them.”
“So you seriously believe that Max Calijo is reactivating Fulcrum?” Sarah asked.
“I do,” Chuck replied worriedly. “And I really don’t know how we’re going to be able to stop him.”
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