Chuck versus The Last Wish

Chapter 12 – VAULT-17

“Total Metal Gear Solid. All we’re missing is a cardboard box,” Chuck whispered, cautiously peeking around the corner.

Morgan’s quiet chuckle crackled through his earpiece.

“What box?” Sarah asked softly.

“Uh, nothing,” Chuck murmured, raising his weapon.

The corridor seemed deserted at first, but quiet voices soon echoed from the next hallway. Two guards approached at a lazy stroll, moving like men who expected zero resistance on this floor. Sarah yanked Chuck back against the armored wall, both of them freezing as the dull thud of combat boots drew near.

One guard laughed softly while the other shook his head, passing within inches of their alcove. Sarah held up three fingers, silently counting down. Three. Two. One.

Chuck stepped out and pulled the trigger twice. The stun darts struck both men in the neck almost simultaneously. Chuck lunged forward to grab one guard before he clattered against the floor, while Sarah caught the second, easing them both soundlessly to the ground.

Chuck exhaled sharply, checking the hallway. “Four down.”

Sarah gave a single, tight nod, her eyes already sweeping the dark corridor ahead.

XXXXXXXXXXX

The long corridor stretching ahead was bathed in the cold, flickering light of recessed LED panels. Every identical door and uniform corner seemed purposefully engineered to disorient, making it obvious why mapping the CCTV feeds had proven impossible.

Two more guards stood further down the hall with their backs turned—one tapping away on a tablet while the other checked his watch.

Chuck traded a quick nod with Sarah before they crept forward, closing the distance in silent, measured strides.

They struck as a single unit. Two quiet pops dropped both men instantly, but as one guard collapsed, his slung rifle slipped free and pitched toward the floor. Sarah darted in, catching the weapon mid-air a fraction of an inch before it could clatter against the tiles.

Chuck let out a breath, a faint smile tugging at his lips. “Six.”

XXXXXXXXXXX

The next door opened into a wide, circular foyer of black granite and smooth concrete. Chuck instinctively stopped in the doorway and pulled off his ski mask. Sarah followed suit, shaking her head as loose blonde strands tumbled around her face. At first glance, the room appeared completely empty, anchored by a thick steel door on the far side. Then something flashed red—a hair-thin laser beam swept across the floor, followed immediately by twenty more, weaving an unpredictable, shifting ballet of light across the space.

Sarah gave a quiet whistle. “They didn’t cut corners.”

Chuck simply nodded.

At that moment, the Intersect flashed.

The rhythm of the lasers seemed to break apart before him, then reorganize into a new pattern. The moving beams became a route. Distances. Angles. Arrival times. For one brief moment, the world slowed down.

“Got it,” he whispered.

He cracked his neck, then rolled his shoulders. “Watch this.” He gave her a satisfied look.

Sarah’s lips curved into a faint smile. “That didn’t work last time.”

Chuck was just about to move when a brief frown crossed his forehead. An old memory… Karl Stormberg, the arms dealer. His engagement party. Carina’s operation, not long after Prague. He remembered the lasers. And Sarah’s surprised expression when he had collapsed against her after his declaration of love, and the nerve gas taking effect.

“Of course… because I had the briefcase in my hand. Remember?”

They looked at each other at the same time.

“Later,” Sarah whispered.

Chuck nodded, taking a deep breath before launching into motion. He stepped between the two lowest beams, turned sideways, and executed a quick handplant to flip his body over the next row of lasers. He hit the floor in a low roll beneath a sweeping beam, sprang up, and drove two quick steps along the concrete wall as three lasers passed under his feet. Every movement dictated by the Intersect was precise, fast, and efficient.

A few seconds later, he landed on the other side of the room and turned back with a satisfied grin. “See? I told—”

The words caught in his throat.

Sarah had just stepped into the laser grid, but her movement wasn't explosive or acrobatic—it was pure, hypnotic grace. She slipped between the beams like a dancer, tilting her shoulders and hips just enough to clear the light. As a high beam approached, she rose onto her toes and arched into a backbend, the red light skimming less than an inch from her face, before spinning into a silent, effortless cartwheel.

She landed softly on her feet, right beside Chuck.

Chuck let out a quiet, defeated laugh. “You know… I kind of hate this.”

A playful glint appeared in Sarah’s eyes. “Why?”

“Because you even do parkour more elegantly than I do.”

XXXXXXXXXXX

A biometric palm scanner stood guard beside the vault door. "Great," Chuck groaned. "Now we have to go back and borrow someone's hand." Without a word, Sarah slid her combat knife into the panel gap, prying the housing free until it dangled by a colorful bundle of wires. "Or we just bypass it," she offered softly. Chuck attached his hack rig, triggered the solenoid override, and the steel door swung open with a muted hiss into a sterile, off-grid server room.

Inside sat an air-gapped terminal facing floor-to-ceiling racks of heavy storage modules. Chuck sat at the console and plugged in his drive to clone the archives, only for an error to flash across the monitor: Storage volume VAULT-17 missing. Across the room, Sarah scanned the numbered units on the shelf—one, two… sixteen, eighteen. "Chuck," she said, pointing to the gap. "Seventeen is gone. Someone pulled it."

Sarah ran her fingers along the smooth metal chassis until her nail caught on a hair-thin seam. Pressing a hidden release corner, a tiny spring-loaded compartment clicked open in the framework. At the bottom lay an unmarked, micro-scale black data chip. "The main system needs the missing module to run the full archive," Chuck whispered, staring at the tiny hardware. "But someone went out of their way to hide this."

Before they could analyze it further, Morgan’s panicked voice crackled through their earpieces. "Guys… you need to move now. A van full of heavy weapons just pulled up out back."

XXXXXXXXXXX

Chuck looked toward the exit—elevator, corridor, stairwell. Armed men closing in meant zero chance of a clean escape through the main routes.

His mind raced at breakneck speed. Think, Chuck, think…

Then it hit him. Even an off-the-grid facility hidden inside a commercial building had to hook into standard municipal safety infrastructure. His brain flashed back to the Buy More—specifically to Jeff and Lester pulling the fire alarm whenever they wanted to dodge an inventory shift.

A grin broke across Chuck's face as he tapped his comms. “Pineapple.”

A beat of stunned silence washed over the line.

Then Morgan’s voice practically exploded in his earpiece. “Oh… oh, dude. Got it! Pineapple is a go!”

“Hurry!”

“I’m already moving!”

The channel clicked off. Chuck snatched up the hidden data chip and locked eyes with Sarah. “Run.”

Sarah didn’t waste a single breath asking questions. She was already sprinting for the stairwell.

XXXXXXXXXXX

Downstairs, Morgan took a deep breath, pulled a black mask over his face, and stepped out of the shadows. The armed squad had left the main entrance slightly ajar when they entered moments earlier, giving him all the opening he needed to slip silently into the building.

“Okay… just like Jeff and Lester,” he muttered, creeping across the deserted lobby until he spotted the red wall-mounted fire alarm.

A wide grin spread under his mask. “They would’ve fired me on the spot for this back in the day… but today, I’m a hero.”

He yanked the lever down.

A deafening siren immediately shattered the silence, flooding the building with howling alarms as red warning lights began flashing on every floor.

XXXXXXXXXXX

Six armed mercenaries in heavy combat gear were ascending toward the secret floor when the alarm suddenly blared through the shaft.

The elevator slowed to an abrupt, jarring halt.

“What the—”

Before anyone could touch the control panel, standard building fire safety protocol took over. The lift locked its doors and automatically began descending back toward the ground floor to evacuate its passengers.

“Damn it!” One of the men slammed a gloved fist against the steel door, but the elevator ignored him completely, carrying the squad right back to where they started.

XXXXXXXXXXX

“It’s working!” Morgan’s exhilarated voice cut through the blaring klaxons in their earpieces.

Chuck and Sarah were already flying down the concrete stairwell, taking the steps two at a time. The emergency strobes painted the stark gray walls in harsh, rhythmic flashes of crimson, the pulsing light matching the frantic pounding of Chuck's pulse. Above them, heavy steel doors slammed against concrete as the stranded mercenary squad tried to manually breach the stairwell. Below them, confused shouts echoed upward as the building’s automated evacuation protocols forced the remaining security detail out of their defensive positions.

The deafening shriek of the fire siren swallowed it all, a continuous loop of ear-splitting noise that turned a highly coordinated tactical strike into absolute, unmanageable chaos.

Sarah matched Chuck’s pace effortlessly, her footfalls whisper-quiet against the concrete compared to his heavy, adrenaline-fueled strides. As they hit a wider landing on the third floor, she checked their six, then caught up to him.

“Did you actually plan this?” she yelled over the wailing alarm, her eyes alight with a mix of adrenaline and genuine amusement.

Chuck grinned, gripping the railing as he swung his momentum around the hairpin turn for the next flight down. “No!” he called back, already fighting for breath.

“Then where did that come from?”

“Just the old Buy More playbook!” Chuck yelled, leaping over the last three steps of the flight. “Never underestimate the tactical value of Jeff and Lester trying to get out of inventory night!”

Despite the heavily armed kill squad somewhere in the floors above them, Sarah couldn’t help the genuine, radiant smile that broke across her face.

Through the thick external walls, the distant, rising wail of municipal sirens joined the chorus. The local fire department was already converging on the Anka Logistics building, effectively turning a shadowy, off-the-grid black site into a highly visible public emergency zone. The mercenaries wouldn't dare open fire with first responders swarming the perimeter.

Chuck picked up the pace, his lungs burning but his legs moving on pure, exhilarating relief. A moment later, they hit the ground floor and slammed their shoulders against the heavy crash bar of the emergency exit. The metal door gave way with a screech, and they burst out into the cool, dark embrace of the Istanbul night, disappearing into the alleyway shadows long before the first fire truck even turned the corner.