Chapter 16: The Agent
Morgan intercepted Simon approximately four steps inside the Buy More entrance.
"Simon — okay, so yesterday, Chuck and I were at the comic store and this thing happened where—"
"Morgan."
"—because Jeff had borrowed Chuck's—"
"Morgan."
"Yeah?"
"Let me change first."
"Right. Yeah. Absolutely." Morgan stepped aside with the air of someone making a generous concession. "I'll be right here."
Simon changed in the back, clipped on his name badge, and walked out of the employee area directly into Sarah Walker.
She was coming around the corner from the direction of the main floor, moving with the easy confidence of someone who knew exactly where she was going. She'd dressed differently than yesterday — still put-together, but more casual, like she'd recalibrated for the environment.
"Oh—" Simon said.
DING.
[ Chuck series protagonist detected: Sarah Walker. First check-in available. Proceed? ]
Check in.
[ Select one skill — Sarah Walker profile: ]
The list that populated made Simon stop internally in a way that didn't reach his face.
1. Weapons Proficiency (Advanced)2. Hand-to-Hand Combat (Intermediate)3. Throwing/Projectile Combat (Intermediate)4. Disguise & Cover Identity (Advanced)5. Driving Mastery (Intermediate)6. Lock Picking (Advanced)7. Computer Systems (Beginner)8. Composure (Passive)9. Iron Will (Intermediate)10. Interrogation Techniques (Intermediate)
Ten skills. He'd never seen a profile with ten. Most people in this world — even the ones who moved through it with purpose — had two or three. A handful of specialists had five. Sarah Walker had ten, and none of them were below Intermediate.
The math was simple: this was not a normal person. This was someone trained systematically across a wide operational range. CIA, most likely. Possibly NSA. Either way, the answer to the question Simon had been holding since yesterday — what does she actually want with Chuck? — was now considerably less ambiguous.
She was an agent. Chuck was her asset. The date was a cover.
"You okay?" Sarah asked. She was looking at him with mild, professional curiosity.
Simon refocused. "Fine. Sorry. Chuck's over that way — he saw you come in."
He glanced toward the Nerd Herd desk. Chuck had, in fact, seen her. He was attempting to look busy and doing a poor job of it.
"Thanks," Sarah said.
She walked toward Chuck. Simon watched her go.
He made a decision: he'd cancel this check-in and use today's slot on Chuck instead. His own skill gaps could wait. The Intersect was more immediately relevant to his current situation — every day it loaded further, and the more he understood about how it worked from the inside, the better equipped he'd be to think clearly about Doc, about Chuck, about all of it.
He'd seen enough of Sarah's profile to know what she was. He didn't need to borrow her skills to understand her.
He went to work, waited until Sarah left an hour later, and then swung by the Nerd Herd desk.
DING.
[ Chuck Bartowski daily check-in: +100 XP — Intersect 1.0. ]
"You going to take her up on it?" Simon asked, settling against the counter. "The date thing."
"Obviously," Morgan said, from directly behind Simon, which was slightly alarming given that Simon hadn't heard him approach. "I already told him — you don't turn down a woman like that. It's practically illegal."
Chuck was trying very hard to look like he wasn't affected by the conversation. "I mean — I was going to. Obviously. Yes."
"Good," Simon said.
"She's clearly interested," Morgan continued. "You could see it. The way she looked at him—"
Simon said nothing.
He thought about what Meg had said: she looks happy, but she's pretending. Meg had read Sarah in thirty seconds from across a restaurant. Which was either impressive intuition or confirmation that Sarah Walker, despite ten skills and presumably years of operational training, had a tell that a seventeen-year-old girl with good instincts could catch.
That was worth knowing.
"Enjoy the date," Simon said. "But keep your eyes open. People can be interested in you for reasons that aren't what they look like."
Chuck's expression flickered — that same deep-down recognition he'd shown yesterday. He nodded once. "Yeah."
"Okay," Morgan said. "With that extremely ominous send-off—"
Simon grabbed his vest. "I've got customers."
He clocked out at seven, drove to Mia's, and found Meg at the counter with a barely-touched soda and the specific posture of someone who had been holding tension in their shoulders for eight hours straight.
"Hey." He sat down next to her. "How was the afternoon?"
"Manageable," she said. Which meant: not great, but survivable.
"Dinner," Simon said. "Come on. Not here — somewhere with music and things to look at."
"Simon, I'm not really—"
"Just dinner. You don't have to be festive. Just sit with me and eat something." He caught her eye. "Please."
Meg exhaled slowly. "Fine. Where?"
"There's a Brazilian place on Alameda. Live band on weeknights. Good food."
"Okay."
He told Mia they were heading out, swung by the garage to swap the truck for the Supra — the Supra felt like a statement tonight, and he wanted to make one — and drove them over with the windows down and the radio at a volume that filled the silence without demanding anything from it.
The restaurant was warm and loud in the best way — a four-piece band in the corner playing something with a rhythm that made sitting still feel like a mild act of resistance, tables close enough together that you absorbed other conversations without meaning to.
They ordered. The food came. Meg started eating without prompting, which Simon took as a good sign.
"Thank you," she said, after a few minutes.
"You don't have to thank me."
"I know. I'm doing it anyway." She looked at the band. "Veronica's going to figure it out, right?"
"Without question."
"And then it stops."
"And then it stops." He said it with the confidence of someone who had enough information to back it up. "She's already got the thread. She just needs to pull it."
Meg nodded. Ate another bite.
Then she put her fork down and said, "Is that Chuck?"
Simon turned.
Two tables away, partially screened by a support column: Chuck Bartowski, in a button-down that suggested he'd tried, leaning slightly forward across a table from Sarah Walker, talking with his hands in the way he did when he was genuinely comfortable with someone.
Sarah was smiling. Laughing at something he'd said. The picture of a relaxed first date.
"That's his date," Meg said. "The woman from the Buy More yesterday?"
"Yeah."
"She's stunning." Meg said it without any particular edge — just observational. Then, tilting her head slightly: "She's performing, though."
Simon looked at her. "What do you mean?"
"She looks like she's having a great time. But she's not." Meg watched Sarah for another moment. "The smile doesn't reach all the way. She's monitoring him — like, paying attention to him in a way that's a little too deliberate for a first date. If you're really into someone, you're not that controlled about it." She picked her fork back up. "Something's off."
Simon looked at the table across the room.
Sarah Walker, CIA agent, ten skills, perfect cover. And Meg Manning, seventeen, cheer captain, had just clocked the act inside of two minutes.
"You're perceptive," Simon said.
"I'm a girl." Meg shrugged. "We notice these things."
"Want to follow them when they leave?"
Meg put her fork down again and looked at him. "Who are you right now?"
"I'm curious about people."
"You're nosy."
"Curiously nosy. Are you in or not?"
The corner of Meg's mouth moved — the first genuine smile she'd produced all day, small but real. "You know what? Fine. Yes. I'm in. This is exactly the level of distraction I need right now."
Simon signaled for the check.
They paid and positioned themselves near the exit at a casual remove — couple leaving after dinner, nobody's business — and tracked Chuck and Sarah out of the restaurant from a comfortable thirty feet back.
Chuck was still talking. Sarah was still performing. They moved down the sidewalk in the direction of the parking structure on the next block.
"Are we actually following them?" Meg murmured.
"We're walking in the same direction," Simon said. "There's a difference."
"There really isn't."
"Put your head on my shoulder. We look like a couple taking a walk."
Meg put her head on his shoulder. "We are a couple taking a walk."
"Exactly. Nothing suspicious about that."
They followed for half a block before Chuck and Sarah turned into a bar — one of the semi-upscale ones with a bouncer and an age-check policy that would take approximately three seconds to end Simon and Meg's surveillance operation.
Simon pulled up short.
"Well," Meg said.
"Yeah."
They stood on the sidewalk and looked at the entrance.
"Options," Simon said.
"We go home," Meg suggested.
"Alternative option."
"Simon."
"I remember seeing a Nerd Herd vehicle parked on the street a block back," he said. "Company car. If they came here in it, they have to go back to it eventually."
Meg processed this. "So we wait by the car."
"We wait by the car."
"We're staking out your coworker's date."
"We're waiting for a friend to make sure he gets home okay," Simon said. "It's very considerate."
Meg stared at him. Then laughed — a real one, the kind that came from somewhere below the stress of the day. "You're insane," she said. "Okay. Fine. Let's go find the car."
They walked back up the block, found the Nerd Herd cruiser parked halfway up on a red zone with the specific confidence of a government vehicle, and settled in to wait.
Meg leaned into Simon's side. He put his arm around her. The street was quiet. The night was warm.
"This is a weird date," she said.
"It has variety," Simon said.
She laughed again, quieter this time, and stayed where she was.
Simon watched the bar entrance and thought about Sarah Walker's ten skills and Chuck's growing Intersect and Doc's prepaid phone sitting in his jacket pocket, and decided that for right now, in this specific moment, he was going to let all of it wait.
Meg was laughing. That was enough.
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