Chuck Vs. the (Tw)Intersects

Every day was an adventure with a set of rambunctious seven-year-old twins named Kelley and Maya racing about the Bartowski apartment. They were identical in every way except their clothing. It was the only way to tell them apart.

They raced through every open door, and even some closed ones, eventually finding their way out to the building's courtyard. Their uncle Devon, or Uncle Awesome as they liked to call him, was taken by surprise as one twin nearly crashed into him. Panic wouldn't have entered the man's mind had he not been holding a heavy box of decorations for a birthday party he and his girlfriend, Ellie Bartowski were hosting for her brother later that evening.

"Careful, girls. Watch where you're going," he warned. He didn't want them to stop being themselves, but they were of the age where they needed to become more aware of their surroundings. Devon showed them the box he was holding and explained how he nearly dropped it when they almost ran into him.

"Sorry, Uncle Awesome," they said in unison. Devon shuddered after sending them back on their merry way. He knew these girls for seven years, even had a hand in raising them for five, but it still creeped him out when they did stuff like that in perfect unison. It took twin telepathy to a whole other level.

Ellie wasted no time calling the girls back inside. While she was glad that they were on their best behavior for their father's birthday, the twins had just had their showers so that bedtime was the only break their dad would get between his kid friendly party, and one with alcohol. She was trying to make it impossible for him to sneak away from his own party like he'd done over the last four years.

"Kelley, Maya! Come play inside," she called to them. The front door was open, allowing them to hear her. But she hadn't expected to see them wrestling on the ground. They weren't fighting but trying to one-up each other in a tickle war was their definition of wrestling.

Seeing the sisters have fun like that reminded Ellie of when she and her brother were little. The behaviors weren't nearly as identical, but she could see them. She could also see the dirt two playful, recently bathed children had encountered without anyone even knowing it happened.

"Looks like Daddy's going to set up your second shower when he gets home," Ellie said to the twins. The kiddie party was all set up inside, but Ellie was running out of time for the grown-up party, which meant she didn't have time to run another bath, or even a shower for the girls. Kelley and Maya liked to be clean, but they could attract dirt faster than a freshly groomed puppy rolling around in the mud.

The girls were on their way inside when the familiar sound of car doors closed outside the courtyard walls, the second bath was nearly forgotten as a chorus of DaddyDaddyDaddy followed them out the gate.

~***~***~

To say that tired children could sleep through anything was an understatement. With the events that were thrown every year, and how loud they could get, Ellie didn't worry about waking her nieces when she caught Chuck attempting to escape with his best friend, Morgan, from his own birthday party.

Chuck held his finger to his mouth as if trying to make her talk quieter. Kelley and Maya didn't want to sleep in their own beds that night, and he didn't feel like fighting them on the matter, so they were in his bed. Little did he know, it would become a nightly occurrence.

"I have invited real, live women... for you," Ellie said. Her voice cracked slightly as if she was pretending to hold back tears. "If you're not going to do this for me, at least do it for them," she said gesturing to the kids. "They need a mom. So please... let's go. Morgan, you stay here."

"Need a hand, Buddy?" he asked Morgan who was pretending to repel out the window of a first-floor window.

Morgan stood to his feet, telling Chuck to go enjoy his party. "I'm okay, I'm all right. You go. I'll keep an eye on them for a bit," Morgan said.

"Okay. Just... no scary movies... stay away from The Shining...even while they're sleeping. And no porn. Especially no porn. Not only do I not need the new virus, but my kids should not be seeing that if they wake up at all tonight. Nor do I ever want to field the questions such websites will give them."

~***~***~

The three women Ellie and Awesome had scouted for Chuck could indeed be considered attractive, and even potential dates. The only expectation Ellie had was that he would at least walk away with a phone number. It would be progress after the last four years of very few first dates, no second dates, and single parenthood.

Said expectation became smaller and smaller as each woman became less interested the longer they spoke with Chuck. It was going well, at first, talking about his job and five-year-plan. Even the twins had made it into the conversation without the mention of their mother, until Stanford University was mentioned. Suddenly what had been a fun time, even if he had tried to escape from his own party, turned into yet another depressing night of his life.

One by one, each woman walked away from Chuck without his notice. He wasn't aware of their vanishing acts until he looked up, no longer reminiscing the good times he had in college. The bad memories were trying to make their way into the conversation, which brought him back to the empty space before him, a constant reaffirmation that he was doomed to be alone for the rest of his life.

"So, there I was. Jill with Bryce. Me on a train home with two-year-old twin daughters," he replayed that last part repeatedly. It dug his depression hole deeper each time the event played through his mind.

Chuck spent the rest of his party trying to find ways to escape and be back in the safety of his room. But everywhere he looked, someone was blocking the way. So, instead of planning failed escape routes, which Ellie had been watching, he decided to sit at the edge of the courtyard fountain, sipping from a beer bottle until the party was over and the guests were long gone.

"Thanks for my party. Your seven-layer dip... tasted like eight," he said as Ellie took a seat beside him.

"Chuck, can I tell you something?"

"It really was eight layers?"

"Even though we may ask, no woman really wants to hear about an old girlfriend. It's depressing, okay? Stanford was five years ago. You need to move on. It's time," Ellie said. There was annoyance in her voice due to the number of times this conversation had taken place.

Chuck didn't really know what he wanted in life yet, but he wasn't going to get over his devastating breakup unless it was on his own terms. And he wasn't ready to move on from that time in his life. Jill Roberts was his first love, and Chuck Bartowski was one to believe such a person was never forgotten.

"Do we really have to have this conversation again?"

"We've rehearsed it enough."

"Fine. I'll get over Jill tomorrow." Chuck left his sister and Morgan behind as he went back inside the apartment.

Chuck went straight to his room where the twins had long since settled into their usual fitful night. He turned the light on, knowing it wouldn't bother them since they were out for the night.

Morgan followed him and took a seat in Chuck's computer chair while Chuck sat at the foot of his bed. He turned his TV on, lowering the volume, and setting up a video game.

"Cheer up, Chuck, you talked to some women. You know, it's a start," Morgan said, trying to be encouraging. He wasn't pushing Chuck into something his friend wasn't ready for, but he wanted to have a repeat and believed that if Chuck was able to talk to these women, he'd be able to speak with any woman.

A ding sounded from Chuck's computer and a popup box appeared with a name that would make the Hole of Depression one stroke deeper than it had been during the party.

"Wow! Blast from the past 'wow.' Bryce remembered your birthday, Dude."

"What?" Chuck quickly got up from his bed. The swift motion woke one twin. She slowly sat up, yawning and rubbing her eyes. By the time she was finished, her sister awoke and made the exact same movements.

"The guy who got you kicked out of school, the guy who stole your girl, remember that guy?"

"Yeah, Morgan, I think I remember Bryce." Just hearing the name annoyed Chuck, especially after one of his potential dates practically worshipped the man, but he was glad Morgan left the twins off the list he was making.

He opened the e-mail, curious to see if his former best friend turned nemesis had anything to say about the last five years of Chuck's life. Maybe it was an apology or even an explanation as to why Bryce had decided to ruin his life, or how he had brought his expulsion upon himself when he was innocent.

"All right, well... what, uh, what do we got here? Huh, what is it?"

"Zork... you remember Zork the old text, based video game?" Rarely did college memories make Chuck smile. But this was different for him. Chuck preferred to keep only good, happy college memories when it came to his creations, especially the two who were supposed to be asleep and were currently in his bed, crawling as silently toward the edge closest to him as any five-year-old can move when they're trying to be stealthy. "Well, Bryce and I programmed our own version of it back at Stanford using a TRS-80."

"Wow, you guys were really cool."

"You two should be asleep," Chuck said without turning around. Morgan looked at the back of his friend's head as if trying to see if what people say about parents is true. He turned even further to find that the twins were in fact awake and trying to see what was so interesting on the monitor. "If I could only remember what was in my hero's satchel. The weapons that I would use to kill the terrible troll." He answered Morgan's unasked question.

"Right. You know what, you're still really cool," Morgan said, still looking for the ever elusive third eye all parents seemed to have.

"And, uh, you're going home."

"Is it that time?"

"It's that time. Thanks for watching them for a while before joining the party."

"Thanking me for staying with them or giving Ellie Morgan Free time?" No answer came from Chuck. The time Morgan had stayed to essentially babysit the twins gave Ellie the Morgan Free time.

"Attack... troll... with nasty knife," Chuck said to himself as he typed. His fingers hovered above the Enter key, freezing when a little voice caught his attention. He knew they were still awake, but the voice confirmed his suspicions.

"Daddy?" He turned around to look at them. Both sat with their feet just over the edge of his bed. They were moving in sync, each rubbing one eye as if trying to wake up.

"Hey," he said as he moved stand at the side of the bed.

Kelley immediately stood to her feet and clung to him as if she had a bad dream. Maya quickly followed. If they really did have a bad dream, they were so in sync with each other that he would have bet money it was the same dream. And if one twin was doing something, the other had to join.

Chuck couldn't pull away from them. It wasn't for lack of trying; he just didn't want to. Between their school hours and his work schedule, he didn't have much time to spend with them before they went to bed. So, he took what he could get.

"Were you pretending to sleep this whole time?" he asked in a scolding voice. But the twins knew it wasn't real.

Maya tiredly shook her head. But Kelley ratted them out as her eyes brightened. It was easy to tell which one was lying. If they were happy and energetic, the lie and think before acting filters as Chuck liked to call them, didn't exist. They only worked if one or both kids were tired.

He lifted them up in his arms then put them on the floor and led them over to the computer. It was still waiting for him to press Enter.

"One key left to stroke. Who wants to hit it?" he asked guiding their little hands with his words to the correct spot on the keypad.

"Daddy? What is that?" Maya asked, pointing to the screen.

"This is a game Daddy made with Uncle Bryce."

It was one thing for Chuck to harbor hatred toward the man who got him kicked out of school, but he couldn't have his kids hating someone they didn't remember. But that didn't stop Ellie from filling their heads.

Kelley and Maya pressed down on the Enter key. Images began flashing across the monitor at hyper speed for the next several hours. At some point during the night, the twins had taken seats either on the floor or on the bed, all six eyes still on the screen. Chuck was fixated on the monitor, the thought of looking away or even covering the twins' eyes never once crossed his mind.

Suddenly, morning had come to find Chuck passed out on his floor and the twins were stumbling around the room. Their brains were so disoriented from the email Bryce had sent. Each one was trying to get back to Chuck's side only to either walk into each other or fall to the floor.

Chuck probably would have laughed if he hadn't been unconscious. He didn't hear them calling out for him.

They didn't understand what had happened. Or how they found themselves waking up on the floor.

It took Morgan standing over Chuck, shaking him, drawing his mind back to reality for him to wake up. The curious sight of a black screen on his computer monitor had him wondering if what he remembered had happened.

Morgan helped him to his feet as Chuck asked him if he spiked the punch during the grownup party.

"Where's the trust, man? Yes, yes, I did," he said making the girls laugh. But the adults were glad they didn't understand the question. Their minds were too young to be polluted with such knowledge.

It was a late start to the day and Chuck needed a shower before going to work. But he didn't have time to take a shower and get the twins ready for school, so Morgan offered to help.

In the background, the news was on, warning people to stay away from the 101, but Morgan didn't hear the traffic warning. He was busy picking out the twins' clothes, making sure he had the right color for each kid and still be identical. They whined if they didn't look exactly alike minus the color.

Morgan came to a complete halt when he saw the girls. The traffic warning had ended, but what freaked him out was the near catatonic state the girls were in. If he thought the talking in unison reminded him of The Shining, this was going to take its place.

The twins didn't understand a word of what they saw or remember much of it. But now they wanted their favorite desert for breakfast. One of the images that flashed before all understanding was lost on them was a pie. It wasn't their favorite, but the sweets craving was only present if they saw or heard someone talking about sugar.

Chuck had a splitting headache. He couldn't understand what had caused it but hearing the twins chant 'cookies for breakfast' wasn't helping ease the pain.

To satisfy what constitutes as a healthy breakfast, and stop the chanting, Chuck opened two packets of cookies and cream pop tarts. The girls took them and ran out the door without their school bags. They chased each other around the fountain, the pop tarts were no longer food, but airplanes flying alongside them as they raced around the courtyard.

Morgan talked video games as the four of them made their way across the street to the Nerd Herd mobile. The twins weren't listening to a thing Chuck and Morgan were talking about as they were in their own little world. Everything their imagination came up with became a toy, right down to their booster seats which were now possible floatation devices, and the Nerd Herd mobile was a plane in the midst of a crash landing.

"Do me a favor and stay off the 5, okay? Because the cops are in phased deployment." Chuck had no clue how he knew about the deployment. To anyone else, it would have been a closed section of highway or something of the like, but something about those images that flashed out of nowhere told Chuck there was another reason for the 5 to be avoided.

"Okay. Thanks for the tip, Ponch," Morgan said, confused, but also excited to be trusted driving a company car.

~***~***~

Morgan pulled up to the elementary school the twins attended and got out of the car. He helped Maya out while Chuck helped Kelley. Chuck took their backpacks from his seat in the front. He took Kelley's hand and lead her to the front of the car where they met with Morgan and Maya. Morgan took Maya's backpack and helped her put it on as Chuck did the same for Kelley.

As Chuck opened the doors to the school, he sent the girls to their classroom before heading to the office. They were late for school, so he had to sign them in.

"Morning," he greeted the office manager. The man nodded in acknowledgement as Chuck put pen to paper. His name now beside both of his kid's names and the time they arrived. "I sent them to their classroom already."

He had told the teacher before he left for the office that the girls didn't have the best night's sleep. He didn't say anything about the e-mail as he didn't really know what the e-mail was about, so he said they had nightmares. He had a feeling he wasn't going to be wrong soon if the twins were seeing the same things he was.

The drive to the Buy More Chuck and Morgan worked at was relatively short without kids in the back kicking the front seats. Morgan pulled the car into its parking space and Chuck's headache had begun to dissipate. Morgan passed the key back to Chuck and both exited the car to head inside.

"Fellow nerds, today is going to be a very bad day. We've got a new computer virus on our hands. They're calling this one the Irene Demova virus," Chuck began the day's briefing for the Nerd Herders he supervised. One, by the name of Lester, laughed at the deadly virus' name. "Yes, yes, it's named after the Serbian porn star. Lonely dude call volume will be high. This is a nasty one, kids. It's a computer killer." Chuck opened a display model to show his team exactly what the virus does to a computer. "Last night, the display version of our prism express laptop was fried when someone... decided to enter Miss Demova's web site. Anna, close the eyes. This is what happens."

The site played, echoing the same words as several windows opened by themselves until the screen went darken and sparks came out of the keyboard.

"Sorry, Chuck," Morgan apologized with some sincerity. "She drives me crazy. But that's love." Behind him, The Wall of TV's turned on to a news channel covering the arrival of a general who had hopes of running for political office.

"Ladies and gentlemen, if you'll please just ignore dirty uncle Morgan, I think that everything... (to arrive in Los Angeles later today to deliver a speech before the pacific security league tomorrow evening...) Will be... (the general has drawn fire for his criticism...) normal. (General Stanfield, the former allied commander of NATO...) He's already here. He landed last night."

Chuck had no idea what he was seeing but the same images that told him to avoid the 5 also told him about General Stanfield.

Little did Chuck know the twins heard the news broadcast coming from the fifth-grade class across the hall from them. Images flooded their minds, and they went catatonic for the second time that day.

They were the reason Chuck was on the phone when CIA agent Sarah walker, or Vicki Vale as Morgan had dubbed her, entered the store. She was looking for Chuck who was waiting for someone to take him off hold. He never knew that the next ten minutes were going to be the busiest of his day.

"Vicki Vale, Vick-Vicki Vale. Vickity-Vickity, Vicki Vale, Vic-Vicki Vale," Chuck sang in a high-pitched voice that would have had his daughters rolling on the floor. The phone he had against his ear fell to the desk below as Chuck tried to cover his embarrassment when he saw her standing in front of him.

"I hope I'm not interrupting," Sarah said with a smile on her face as she came closer to the desk.

"No. Not at all. That's... it's from batman."

"'Cause that makes it better."

Chuck laughed nervously while Morgan took the opportunity to introduce himself and hopefully get Sarah's name in the process. Chuck's attraction to her seemed immediate... immediate enough to forget he was on hold with Kelley and Maya's school.

Please hold came from the dropped phone.

"I didn't think people still named their kids Chuck, or Morgan, for that matter," Sarah commented on their names. She was entertained by them already and she'd only just learned their names.

"My parents are sadists, and carnival freaks found him in a dumpster," Chuck joked.

"But they raised me as one of their own," Morgan said, playing along. Then he grabbed the phone line, pulling the office equipment toward himself so he could listen for when the line was no longer on hold. "You take care of that, I'll let you know when the line opens up."

"Sorry about that," Chuck apologized for his line being put on hold. "School nurse called about my daughters... I wanted to hear what the teacher had to say about it, too. So, how can I help you...?" He wasn't expecting her first name, but he did want something to call her as a sign of respect for the customer.

"Sarah. I'm here about this." There was a cell phone in her hand. A trained spy would have seen that it was obviously fresh from the package, but all Chuck saw was what needed to be fixed for the device to work again.

He pulled out his set of small screw drivers and got to work, explaining everything he did as he did it. "Oh, yeah. The Intelicel. Yeah. Absolutely. This model has a little screw that pops loose right in the back here. Just go ahead and give it a couple of quick turns and... good as new, no problem."

"Wow! You geeks are good," she said only to be corrected by both Chuck and Morgan

"Nerds. I would say nerds probably more... It's no big deal. You know, yeah. I mean, nerd herd."

Right then, a fearful customer chose to approach the counter with problem that could have been avoided had the customer known, or been told, that he had to buy a tape for his digital recorder, and that for this device, digital didn't mean what he thought.

"The school will just have to wait. Morgan, I need the wall."

"It's yours," Morgan said before speaking into the phone. "Mister Bartowski is with a customer at the moment if you could wait about five minutes or he can call you back when he's through..." and hung up. "They said to call them back when you're done."

The fearful customer now had the recording that would have ended his life if he didn't have it, a video of his daughter's dance recital. Once that little side project was completed, Chuck attempted to get back to the counter where Sarah had been watching him enjoy rare moments like these. And if it hadn't been for Harry Tang, a power-hungry sales associate supervisor, he would have made it back to the desk before Sarah vanished. Her business card was the only evidence that she had been there.

~***~***~

Chuck and Morgan were walking through the courtyard. The twins had long since been picked up from school and were out with Devon and Ellie, so he didn't need to need to get them.

"Why wouldn't you call this girl?"

"Oh, I don't know. Did you see her?"

"Yes. Oh, man, yes. That's why I'm going to repeat the question. Why wouldn't you call this girl?

"Because I live on planet earth, Morgan. And why are you following me home?"

"Aw, come... hey. We're buddies. We're going to go do friend things, and... I need to use your computer because mine's still acting up on me."

"Irene Demova," Chuck stated more than asked. He knew Morgan a little too well.

"Ah! So beautiful and so... deadly."

"Yeah," they said in unison. Both shuddered, suddenly being reminded of the twins and their creepy The Shining moments where they talked in unison.

"You know, you got to understand. This is what I've been telling people for I don't know how long..." Morgan was saying as Chuck opened to the door to his apartment. He stopped talking when they saw someone in an all-black outfit, no visible skin or identifying features of any kind, holding his computer tower. He was so glad no one was home.

"Please, not the computer," Chuck pleaded.

The next few minutes of what could hardly be considered fair fight ensued. Chuck found himself lying on the floor, Morgan on top of him, and his computer tower smashed to smithereens.

~***~***~

After Chuck brought his computer to the store in hopes that it was salvageable, he made a quick run to Large Mart, a neighboring store in the mall, to buy new locks for his apartment. Crossing paths with what the unexplained flashes told him was a Serbian demolitions expert, he was more than relieved that it was a school day, and the girls weren't with him.

He wasn't experiencing anything weird, like seeing the images, until Bryce's e-mail. Kelley and Maya helped him open it. They saw everything he did. He couldn't help but wonder if they were affected by it as well.

Coming across the Terminator Vibe, he forgot why he'd gone into the store and quickly left. The images made him feel like he was losing his mind. He had no idea why they were sent to him or what they even meant. Was he in danger? And if anyone knew the twins saw it too, what would happen to them? If he told someone what he suspected the e-mail had done, would they think he was crazy? Is that why the school had called yesterday? He never called them back.

"I'm losing my mind. I'm losing my mind. I'm losing my mind," he chanted to himself with his head buried in his arms. Then the service bell rang. "Morgan, not now." His hand covered the bell to silence it, only there was a soft hand that was definitely not Morgan's tapping the button. His head shot up and he stood as if he had no control over his own body. "Hi! Hi... phone trouble again?" It was Sarah from the day before.

"Yeah. I'm not sure I'm able to receive calls, 'cause I never got one from you... I'm sorry I left so quickly yesterday. I had an appointment with a realtor. I just moved here."

"Welcome," he said, nervously.

Sarah told him she didn't know anyone and asked him to be her tour guide. Morgan who was watching from a short distance nearly exposed him as a loner.

"Oh, he's free. Aside from his kids, he's got nothing but time on his hands. He is very available. You guys are going to have a great time. What's that, sir? Xerox machines? Yeah, I'm on it."

"Apparently, my schedule is almost wide open," Chuck said while thinking Thanks for telling a stranger that I don't have much of a life.

The twins were entertaining themselves and Devon and Ellie were watching TV when Chuck came home with Morgan. His friend's presence wasn't a surprise, but the news that he came home with was. He had a date.

Ellie had a difficult time containing her excitement. While she would have been happy if any of her setups had worked, she was ecstatic that he got one on his own. "Oh, God, what are you going to wear?" Ellie had immediately gone to the fashion portion of the date.

"So, Sarah... She's nice? Pretty?" she was wanting details about what was almost a blind date since Chuck knew very little about Sarah.

"Yeah. Actually, Morgan met her online in this kind of chat room... I'm totally kidding," Chuck replied to relieve to near horrified expression on Ellie's face.

"Daddy? What's a 'date'?" Maya asked as she played a racing game with Kelley and Morgan on Chuck's Xbox.

"Something neither of you are going on until I'm dead," Chuck gave the standard protective father's reply.

"But Aunt Ellie is dating Uncle Awesome."

Chuck didn't have an answer to that as he didn't even know where his own father was. But Ellie provided a distraction for him but putting a shirt up against his chest to check the color against his skin tone.

"Try it on."

"Honestly, this..."

"I'm a girl. I know what girls like."

"I'll go change." He realized he wasn't getting out of dressing the way Ellie wanted him to look on this date, much like he didn't get out of meeting her friends the night before. He just hoped this went better than last night.

Ellie wished him good luck on his date. And due to experience, she felt the need to say, "Don't forget about the old girlfriend rule."

"Right, got it. No mention of Jill." He wasn't planning on mentioning the twins yet either even with Sarah already knowing he had kids based on the call holding at the store the previous day. It was a first date. Meeting his kids could come later if this went anywhere.

~***~***~

The date was going surprising well. Sarah seemed to be enjoying herself. He was upfront about living with his sister and her boyfriend, and even explained the reason behind the Awesome nickname. Exes were brought up, but Chuck stayed away from his, barely contributing to that part of the conversation.

He was thrilled to have met someone who didn't have Bryce in her life. It was a nice change from the other women he'd met.

"So, what about you? What skeletons do you have in your closet? Any secrets? Any women?"

"Uh, yeah, yeah. Uh well there are my daughters, seven-year-old twins, who remind Morgan of scary movies. But, back in college there was someone. Their mom... actually, that's all over with now and her restraining orders are very specific. So..." Chuck realized things were getting into awkward territory if he continued the ex-topic.

After the meal portion of their date was over, Chuck brought Sarah to a bar that had live music. Though not much of a dancer, he didn't fight much as she dragged him onto the dance floor. Her movement and how close she was to him made his eyes look up toward the ceiling because he was too much of a gentleman to do anything else.

Without warning, he was yanked from the dance floor, and followed Sarah out of the club only to find himself the target of a high-speed car chase which led to the explosion of a Nerd Herd mobile that was signed out in his name.

The NSA and the CIA wanted him. As far as Chuck knew, he was a nobody. From his perspective, one agency was trying to kill him while the other was trying to save him.

"Sarah. Sar..." Chuck was scared.

"Request emergency air evac. Track location, we're on foot," she said into a cell phone before grabbing Chuck's arm and leading to a rooftop. "How well do you know Bryce Larkin?"

"What? How do you... how do you know Bryce?"

"We worked together at the CIA." Sarah being a CIA agent was suddenly less surprising than finding out that his former best friend was an agent as well.

"The what?! The CIA? Bryce is a spy?! Bryce Larkin from Connecticut is a spy?"

"A rogue spy. Did he try to contact you?"

Chuck was out of breath. He couldn't remember the last time he'd ever run like that, or at all. "I haven't heard from Bryce in... wait. No, he... he-he sent, he sent me an e-mail."

"Did you open it?"

"Yeah. It was, it was a line from Zork. It's a video game that we used to play. It was like a riddle, and I solved it and then there was, uh, pictures. Lots and lots of pictures."

"You saw them? Uh, your computer, did you back it up? Is there an external drive?"

He swallowed, hard. Whatever was happening was freaking the daylights out of him. "It crashed a week ago. Wait, wait, wait. Hold on. Was I not supposed to look at those pictures?" He was right. There was something strange about those images and someone did come after him. The new question was, could he trust these people enough to tell them his daughters saw them as well?

"Okay, I may have to aim my gun at you, so just don't freak out."

"Why?" Chuck asked with his hands raising before they even needed to.

"It's late. I'm tired. Let's cut the crap and give him to me now. He belongs to the NSA," said a man who had yet to introduce himself as Major John Casey.

"The CIA gets him first... You come any closer and I shoot."

"Sarah... I'm freaking out," Chuck's voice changed pitch as he spoke.

Casey pulled a gun and aimed it at Sarah before saying, "You shoot him, I shoot you. I leave both your bodies here, go out for a late snack. I'm thinking maybe pancakes."

That made the decision for him. He wasn't going to say a word about his daughters. The only thing Chuck could think of doing was run. Run as far away from all of this as he could. Run back to his home, to his kids. Or just run away entirely to protect them. He had to do something. But something about the building he turned to face flashed a memory of things he shouldn't know. The General from his second flash was going to be killed.

"Look, something is wrong with me, okay? I don't know what it is, but something is very, very wrong with me, and I'm remembering things that I shouldn't know."

"Okay, Chuck, talk to me. Like what?"

"I don't know. I don't know. For example, uh... there was, there was a Serbian demolitions expert at the Large Mart today. That's kind of odd, wouldn't you say? Look, last week the NSA, you guys intercepted some blueprints, blueprints of a hotel, that hotel. And then the CIA, you guys found a file of schematics of a bomb in Prague. The bomb is in that hotel!"

"He was working with Bryce," Casey accused.

"No, he opened Bryce's e-mail," Sarah stopped him.

"Chuck, those pictures that you saw were encoded with secrets, government secrets. If you saw them, then you know them."

That meant his daughters knew them, too. "There were thousands of them."

"Wait a minute. You're telling me all of our secrets are in his head," Casey suggested. He was a bit skeptical until Chuck found the bomb. The NSA agent didn't want to let such a valuable asset handle the diffusion, but he didn't have much of a choice.

Chuck nearly had to beg in order to help diffuse the bomb. He knew what he was up against because the bomb was controlled by a computer he worked on and was sold in his store. Once he saw that, and received a call from his best friend, he opened Morgan's favorite website and killed the computer, essentially killing the bomb just before detonation.

"I did it. I did it. I... I defused a real bomb. This was a real..." Chuck began scaring himself as reality set in. "What if I was wrong?" This was not a life for his kids. It wasn't even a life he thought he could handle.

"Don't puke on the C-4," Casey said, shoving his shoulder.

The agents argued over who was taking Chuck to Washington. One wanted to see if this was real or a fluke while the other was perfectly willing to drop Chuck in a padded cell for a decade.

"What about his job? And his friends? What do we do about his sister? Or his daughters?" Sarah started asking.

"What about my family?"

"Nothing. We were just discussing..."

"No, no, no, hold on a second. You have to leave my family and my friends out of this."

"We'll see," Casey said as if letting Chuck believe it was even up to him.

"Look, Bryce sent that e-mail to me. I'm the one remembering your secrets. Which means you have to listen to me, both of you. And right now... I'm going to go home."

But Chuck didn't go home. He went to the beach instead. He wasn't avoiding his responsibilities, but he needed some time be alone to process the so-called-date he'd just been on, to process that someone he was close to at one time had been a CIA agent. Time to process that he was now considered government property, that the powers that be could do whatever they wanted with him, and he didn't have a choice.

He sat there for hours, watching the sun rise, wondering if this was going to be last time he ever saw one, if it was going to be the last time he ever saw Ellie or his daughters.

"How long you been here?" The sound of sand shifting behind him made him aware of Sarah's presence.

"All night."

"There's nowhere I can run, is there?"

"Not from us. Talk to me, Chuck."

"Yesterday I was just a dad making 11 bucks an hour fixing computers. Now I'm a dad with one in my brain. And I can't figure out why Bryce did this, why he chose me... What are you going to do with me? What happens now?"

"For now, you go back to your own life. We'll protect you and you'll work with us."

"And my family, my friends, are they in danger?"

"Tell them nothing to keep them safe." That's exactly what he was going to do. They could do whatever they wanted with him, but he was going to keep his family out of this no matter what happened to him. Sarah and Casey weren't going to know there were two little Intersects right under their noses if he could do anything about it. "I need you to do one more thing for me."

"Yeah?"

"Trust me."

Chuck and Sarah stayed on the beach for just a little while longer. He still had time before Kelley and Maya had to wake up for school and before his shift started at the Buy More.

Was he ready to walk through his apartment door and hear how Ellie stayed up all night, waiting for him because he didn't call her? How she was so worried that she called Morgan? Now knowing that any moment with his family and friends could be his last, he silenced them with a group hug. Neither of the recipients knew what brought this on, but they didn't pull away from it.

When he finally did let go of them, he walked to the twins' room and leaned against the door frame. He just watched them sleep. A nearly completed job application was in his hand. All he had to do was sign it.

He put the application in a folder and woke the twins. Ellie helped get them dressed and fed while Chuck got ready for work. He'd chosen driving them to school every day since they started so he could spend more time with them. It was something that he regretted occasionally, but after meeting Sarah and Casey, putting his kids on the school bus was the furthest thing from his mind.

At the buy more, Chuck signed his application in front of his nerd herders who felt he deserved the promotion. Only one green shirt, Morgan, was openly rooting for him. He left the application on the store manager's desk, then left to train a new employee who turned out to be Casey.

So much for keeping them away from my family and friends Chuck thought before saying, "Don't freak out."