Chuck versus The Last Wish

Chapter 13 – Omen

A/N – Fair warning of violence.

The apartment door clicked shut behind them. Morgan threw the heavy deadbolt, leaning his back against the frame with a long, breathless exhale.

“Please tell me all that cardio was worth it.”

Chuck stepped over to the coffee table and carefully placed the tiny black chip right in the center. It was all they had brought back.

Sarah stood over it in silence, her tactical vest unclipped. “Module seventeen is completely missing.”

Chuck sat down, resting his elbows on his knees. “The system was searching for it. Without seventeen, the whole archive stays locked.”

Morgan looked back and forth between them, bewildered. “Wait, so someone just snatched it right under our noses? Right before we showed up?”

“That’s what’s bothering me,” Chuck muttered, staring at the chip. “The armed squad showed up almost instantly, but the storage module was already gone.”

“You think someone knew we were coming?” Morgan asked quietly.

Chuck hesitated as the pieces clicked together—the vanished drive, the isolated level, the rapid response team. “I don’t know.”

“Or someone wanted the exact same data we did,” Sarah said, stepping closer.

“…Or someone knew precisely what we’d be looking for,” Morgan finished, the weight of the thought settling heavy over the room.

Sarah’s eyes drifted back to the small square of black silicon. “Except for this. The only thing they missed.”

“Or the thing they forgot,” Morgan offered with a hopeful grin.

“No,” Chuck said, gently turning the chip between his fingers. “This was hidden behind a custom panel. It doesn’t belong with the storage modules. Whoever hid it wanted whoever found that empty slot… to find this, too.”

Sarah frowned. “Then we stop chasing the archive.”

“We follow this,” Chuck agreed.

Morgan leaned over the table. “So… the Yellow Shadow drive. Do we boot it up?”

Chuck shook his head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re completely exhausted, and there’s no point rushing an unknown payload with fried brains.”

Sarah gave a tight nod. “He’s right.”

Chuck carefully slid the chip into a pink antistatic bag, setting it down on the edge of the table. “First thing in the morning with a clear head. I’ll make a clean backup, then we open it. Tomorrow.”

Morgan stood up, rolling his shoulders. “I’m gonna go make coffee.”

Chuck blinked. “Now?”

“I’m prepping for tomorrow, Chuck. It’s called proactive strategy.”

Chuck just shook his head, a faint smile tugging at his mouth. “That is… surprisingly solid Morgan logic.”

“Thank you,” Morgan said with total sincerity, heading toward the kitchen.

A rare stillness settled over the apartment. Sarah reached down, her hand coming to rest softly on Chuck’s shoulder. He looked up, meeting her eyes.

“I’m going to take a shower,” she whispered gently.

Chuck nodded silently. Sarah disappeared into the bathroom, and the quiet, rhythmic hum of running water soon filled the hallway.

Morgan paused at the counter, glancing over at Chuck. “How are you guys doing?”

Chuck sat there for a long moment, letting the tension bleed out of his shoulders as he stared tiredly into the quiet room.

“Better,” he said softly.

He stood up and walked into the bedroom.

XXXXXXXXXXX

Morgan set a fresh mug of coffee beside Chuck at the workstation. Micro-alligator clips spanned the gap between the black chip and the interface, lines of raw terminal code cascading down the monitor.

Sarah sat on the couch with a book in her lap. Morgan placed a second mug on the side table in front of her.

“Thank you.”

“You got it.”

Morgan grabbed his own coffee and stepped out onto the balcony, leaving the door cracked.

Chuck leaned over the keyboard, his fingers moving rapidly. “Backup complete…” He punched in another command. “Encryption… unlocked.”

A single isolated folder populated on the screen: VIDEO.

Chuck frowned. “That was fast…”

He double-clicked the icon. The screen went dark for a second, replaced by a metallic gray field.

Sarah didn’t look up from her page. “Find anything?”

“A video file.”

The next instant, the screen burst with a violent strobe of deep blue light. Then another. And another. The pulse accelerated exponentially into a high-frequency sequence.

Chuck squinted, throwing a hand up. “What the—”

He mashed the Escape key. Nothing. Instinctively, he reached for the laptop's power button.

“No…”

The flickering collapsed into a continuous, blinding band of light. Chuck’s jaw went slack, his eyes involuntarily locked onto the optical frequency as a forced Intersect sequence overloaded his brain.

A sharp, white-hot pain jabbed directly through his temple. “Ah…” he groaned, clutching his head.

Sarah’s head snapped up. “Chuck?”

“Sarah…” His voice broke. He strained with every muscle to tear his gaze from the screen, but his body wouldn't obey. “Sarah!”

The pain spiked, unbearable. Chuck pitched forward, taking the chair down with him in a loud crash.

“Chuck!”

Sarah cleared the room in a single bound. She slammed the laptop shut, dropping to her knees beside him. “Chuck! Can you hear me?”

No response. She pressed two fingers against his neck—pulse fast, but steady. Grabbing his face in both hands, she urged, “Look at me!”

Ding-dong.

The doorbell echoed sharply through the apartment. Sarah’s head snapped toward the foyer. “Morgan!”

The balcony door slid open. “Yeah?”

“Door!”

Morgan set his mug on the railing and hurried across the living room, pulling the door open.

A clean-cut couple in their early thirties stood in the hallway, smiling warmly. The man had his arm wrapped casually around the woman’s waist.

“Sorry to bother you,” the woman said pleasantly. “We ran out of sugar. Could we borrow a cup?”

Morgan gave a polite, hesitant smile. “Uh… sure. I think we’ve got some.”

“That’s so sweet of you,” her smile widened. “No wonder we’re so glad to have Americans for neighbors.”

Morgan’s face instantly froze.

He had never told anyone in the building they were American. He had never seen this couple in his life.

The man’s friendly expression evaporated in a microsecond. Reaching behind the woman’s hip, he cleared a suppressed pistol from his holster.

Morgan acted on pure instinct. Throwing his entire weight behind the heavy door, he slammed it shut with all his strength—catching the gunman’s hand and weapon right in the jamb.

A suppressed pop echoed through the living room as a round strayed into the entry wall.

“Sarah!” Morgan screamed.

XXXXXXXXXXX

Morgan slammed his back against the front door, his shoes skidding across the hardwood as two heavy bodies rammed it from the outside. The frame groaned. A muffled gunshot ripped through the hollow wood, showering his shoulder with splintered oak and plaster dust.

Before the door could yield another inch, Sarah materialized from the hallway. She didn't brace; she drove the heel of her shoe into the man’s exposed wrist wedged in the gap. Bone cracked under her weight. The silenced pistol clattered to the tile. Without pausing, Sarah threw her full body weight forward, slamming the door shut. A wet, muffled crunch echoed from the foyer.

Sarah grabbed Morgan by his shirt collar and threw him to the side just as three rapid gunshots blew through the door panels.

The door burst inward. Two bodies tumbled into the room.

Sarah was already moving. Her hand swept across the console table, grabbing a heavy marble bookend and driving it across the woman’s face. The blow landed with a thud, spraying blood across the wall. The woman staggered, but her instincts kicked in; she lunged low, tackling Sarah around the waist.

They crashed into the coffee table. The glass shattered.

In the kitchen, the male assassin scrambled up, slicking a broad blade from his belt.

“Oh, come on—” Morgan shrieked, snatching the cast-iron skillet off the stove and holding it up like a riot shield.

The blade bit into the iron with a screech that vibrated to the elbow. Another frantic stab struck the metal.

“This actually—!”

The man’s heavy combat boot drove straight into Morgan’s sternum. The impact knocked every drop of air from his lungs, throwing him backward into the lower cabinets.

Across the room, Sarah and the woman rolled through the glass shards. The woman hooked her fingers, tearing at Sarah’s face while trying to angle a secondary blade toward Chuck, who was staggering upright, his vision still swimming.

“Sarah—” Chuck slurred.

The woman lunged toward him, but Sarah caught her by the ponytail from behind. Sarah drove her hips backward, throwing both of their weight over the couch. They hit the floor together with a dull, bone-jarring impact. Her knife scratched the floor and rotated away.

The male assassin turned away from Morgan, his eyes locking onto Chuck’s disoriented frame. He took two strides toward him, knife raised low.

Sarah saw it. The panic overrode the pain.

She slammed the back of her hand across the woman’s nose, feeling the bridge give way, then launched herself off the carpet in a low sweep. Her shin slammed into the back of the man’s knee joint. The joint buckled with a sharp snap, dropping him to one knee. Before his momentum could carry him forward, Sarah planted her foot and drove a brutal, ascending kick into his jaw.

His teeth clicked together. Blood sprayed from his mouth as his head snapped back, his body skidding two meters across the floorboards before coming to a stop directly at Chuck’s feet.

Sarah scrambled up, standing as a human barrier in front of Chuck. Her knuckles were bleeding, her chest heaving.

In the kitchen, Morgan pushed himself up against the dented cabinets, his face white, holding the heavy cast-iron pan in a trembling, two-handed grip.

The two attackers slowly forced themselves back to their feet. The air in the wrecked apartment hung thick with the metallic reek of blood.

Morgan wiped blood from his lip with the back of his sleeve, his voice shaking .

“…Is this the part where everyone takes a deep breath?”

Nobody answered.

The female assassin bared her bloody teeth, locked eyes with Sarah, and lunged.