Sarah vs. the Vortex, Chapter 8

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.”

Chuck vs. the Pie-Maker, Chapter 6

I'd like to apologize for the fact that it's been three weeks since the last time I updated this story... my life's been a little nuts lately, and quite honestly, working in Phoenix in the hospitality industry right now is a little insane, what with the Superbowl coming up here this coming weekend.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy, and as always, reviews are welcome!

---

As the morning continued forward, across town from where the intelligence agent sat in a hotel, her mind adrift in a sea of confusion, two women were preparing to begin the day at the Pie Hole.

Charlotte Charles and Olive Snook, having bonded over their late night mischief at Bitter Sweets, quite possibly worked better together in the kitchen than any other two pie makers in the history of pie making. Of course, it might be difficult to find any well-known pie making duos, but that fact remains irrelevant in the face of such extraordinary camaraderie.

Of course, the bond had only been strengthened by Ned’s truly insensitive way of revealing his deepest secret to Chuck. Olive had harbored Chuck after she discovered the true nature of her father’s death, and had, in fact, grown warmer to Chuck as of late than she was to Ned.

None of this mattered, however, to the two armed bastards who were about to come bursting through the door of the Pie Hole…

Chuck had just finished rolling out a large sheet of pie dough, and Olive was preparing the fruit filling for the pie, when the front doors of the Pie Hole crashed open. Two men burst in, guns in their hands.

“Don’t move!” one of them yelled, seeming to try to fake a Manchester accent. “You’re surrounded by armed bastards!”

The two women looked up at the men, a look of determination crossing Chuck’s face and one of disbelief crossing Olive’s. “My God,” Olive said, “I really hope that wasn’t supposed to be your Gene Hunt impression, because if so, let me tell you something – you’ve got NOTHING on Philip Glenister, boyo.”

The man looked at her, confusion crossing his face. “What the hell are you gibbering on about, tiny?”

Rage flashed across Olive’s face. “Don’t call me tiny, bitch,” she snarled, a large knife seemingly appearing out of nowhere in her hand.

“Drop the knife, TINY,” he replied, a caustic laugh tinging his voice.

The unmistakable ratchet of a pump shotgun interrupted his concentration. “I think she can hold onto her knife all she wants,” Chuck informed them, the shotgun held in her very steady hands.

The eyes of the two men from Fulcrum went very wide as they put their hands in the air, weapons clattering to the floor. “Good,” Chuck said. “Now, step toward the counter.”

“Don’t listen to her,” came a male voice from behind them. The two women whirled to see Frank Mullins approaching them from behind, a gun in each hand, aimed at their foreheads.

“Dammit,” Chuck breathed. “And I was doing so good.”

“Shotgun, knife on the counter,” Mullins said. As Chuck and Olive complied, the two Fulcrum men known as Two and Six retrieved their weapons and trained them on the women once more.

Now, if one thing had become abundantly clear to Charlotte Charles in the past few months, it was that the Pie Maker had absolutely disastrous timing in just about every aspect of his life. That had not changed for this morning, as she saw him come staggering through the kitchen, sleep still filling his eyes. Her attempts to communicate with her eyes that Ned should disappear as quickly as possible were, unfortunately, an utter failure.

“Whas goin’ on here?” Ned slurred as he came through the kitchen.

Mullins whirled, aiming both guns at Ned. Ned’s eyes went wide, sleep immediately banished, and his hands flew up in the air.

“Perhaps… I don’t want to know?” Ned’s voice quavered as he began to back slowly away – toward the shotgun mounted in the pantry. The shotgun that he wasn’t even sure would work – it had been placed there when he opened the Pie Hole, never removed, never cleaned.

“Don’t move another inch, pie-boy,” Mullins snapped.

The front door crashed open again. “What the hell?!” The voice of Emerson Cod boomed through the bakery as he grabbed for his gun. Two, turning quickly to face Emerson, squeezed off a pair of shots, the bullets hitting Emerson in his right shoulder and sending him crashing to the ground.

“CEASE FIRE!” Mullins yelled. “STOP SHOOTING!”

Mullins turned back to face Ned again. “Here’s the deal, my pie-making friend,” he sneered caustically. “We’re going to take Ms. Charles and Ms. Snook for a little ride. If you want to ever see them again, you’re going to call up Agents Bartowski, Casey, and Walker, and convince them to turn the Intersect over to us.”

He paused, looking briefly at Emerson. “You might want to see about getting your pal there patched up, but you’ll have to do it in a manner that doesn’t involve calling 911. I have a man nearby monitoring all phone calls – yes, that’s both landlines and cell phones – in a one mile radius. If he detects you calling anybody OTHER than one of the three agents I just named, we will kill these two.”

“I’ve been dead before,” Chuck said flippantly, but Olive’s face went pale, her eyes went wide, and then she crashed to the floor. Mullins rolled his eyes.

“Pick her up,” he muttered. Six moved quickly to comply, and Mullins moved forward, grabbing Chuck’s arm.

“Remember what I said,” Mullins called as the Fulcrum men exited the Pie Hole, Chuck in his tow and Olive tossed over Six’s shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “No calls to anybody but Bartowski, Casey, or Walker, or these two will be as thoroughly cooked as one of your delectable pies.”

Ned watched helplessly as Chuck was shoved into the car waiting at the curb, and Olive was unceremoniously dumped into the trunk. As the car pulled away from the curb, Emerson came to and struggled to a sitting position.

“Ow! Motherf-“ Emerson’s cry of pain was cut off by Ned as he came around the end of the counter.

“Emerson, they’ve taken Chuck and Olive. They said they’re going to kill them.”

Emerson raised an eyebrow. “Is this supposed to inspire feelings of regret or sadness within me?”

Ned gave him a filthy look. “Oh, alright, you big baby,” Emerson groaned. “First things first. I got two bullets in me. Can we possibly get me to a hospital?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Ned muttered.

Emerson Cod, private investigator and bullet receptacle, was loaded very carefully into Ned’s Mercedes-Benz. As Ned drove, he dialed the Days Inn, asking for John Casey. He quickly explained the situation to Major Casey, whose voice indicated nothing but that he had just woken. With the promise to get back to Ned as soon as he had briefed the other two, Casey disconnected.

As Chuck Bartowski exited the bathroom, a vicious pounding sounded on the hotel room door. It so startled him that he dropped his towel, leaving himself naked, just as Sarah turned to the door in response to the pounding.

Sarah and Chuck made eye contact, Chuck realizing that he was naked as the day he was born. They both turned bright red, Sarah’s mouth forming a soundless “Oh, my,” as the thoroughly embarrassed Chuck dove back into the bathroom, the door slamming behind him.

Sarah took a moment to compose herself before answering the door. John Casey burst in like a hurricane on steroids.

“Where’s Bartowski?” he demanded.

“In here.”

“Well, get your skinny little chicken neck out here!” Casey ordered him.

“I’m kind of naked, and all my clothes are out there,” Chuck replied. “As is my towel.”

“For Christ’s sake,” Casey muttered, rolling his eyes. He bent down, picked up Chuck’s towel, opened the bathroom door, and threw the towel in Chuck’s general direction, before slamming the door shut again.

He then turned his attention to Sarah. “And exactly what was he doing out here naked, Agent Walker?”

Sarah gave him what could only be described as a “LOOK”. With an exasperated sigh, she said, “He had just stepped out of the bathroom, in the towel, and when you attempted to reshape the door with your fist, he got startled and dropped the towel.”

“Suuuure,” Casey smirked lecherously. “You positive that was all that was going on?”

Sarah sighed, and from within the bathroom, they heard Chuck faintly mutter, “Only in my wildest dreams.”

Sarah’s face turned bright red again, and Casey’s smile grew larger, as he informed Chuck, “We can hear you out here, Chuckles.”

There was an awkward silence for a moment, as Sarah retreated to the other side of the room. Finally, Casey said, “We need to get a move on, Chuck. I just got a call from Ned – apparently, Fulcrum has abducted Charlotte Charles and Olive Snook, and they want the Intersect in return.”

“They can’t have the Intersect!” Chuck called back.

“No shit, Sherlock,” Casey snarked. “I was more thinking we find them and get the women back, yes?”

“Okay, fine,” Chuck replied. “But, could, uh, you and Sarah wait outside for a moment? I need to get dressed.”

Casey sighed. “Alright. Walker and I will be outside.”

Sarah stood silently, and walked to the door. Opening it, she stepped out into the hallway, and then her face took on a look of surprise as Casey slammed it back closed behind her, an evil smile growing on his face.

Hearing the door close, Chuck opened the bathroom door, and stepped out.

“Ah, the Intersect, in all its glory,” Casey chuckled.

Chuck whirled round, covering himself, his eyes gone wide. “You’re insane!” he shouted. “Get out! What the hell is wrong with you?! Get the fuck out!”

Laughing, Casey opened the door, and stepped out in the hallway, to be met with a glare of death from Sarah Walker.

“You really are an ass, you know that?” she said angrily.

Casey cocked his head, a smirk on his face. “All in a day’s work for the NSA.”