fic: everything must go
Title: Everything Must Go
Fandoms: Dollhouse & Chuck
Author: just_drifting_6
Pairings/Characters: Chuck Bartowski, Sarah Walker, Morgan Grimes, John Casey; Adelle DeWitt, Topher Brink, Laurence Dominic
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Dollhouse and Chuck do not belong to me.
Author's Notes: Written for the multifandom crossover exchange 2010
Summary: “Nothing in your life is real, Chuck,” Adelle DeWitt tells him.
Chuck wakes in a blind panic. A quick glance around shows Sarah, Casey and Morgan are here also, all unconscious. He struggles uselessly against the restraints holding him down, then gives up after a couple of seconds. He’s tied to a chair in a strange room filled with all sorts of electrical equipment. They give off a low buzzing noise that sets him on edge. There’s something menacing about them.
Chuck twists in his chair and his eyes fall on his girlfriend. “Sarah!” he calls. He wants to reach out to her but his arms are tied firmly together. “Sarah, wake up!”
She stirs, and he waits with baited breath for her eyes to open. “Chuck?” she asks blearily. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know.” Chuck glances blindly around the room. This time, however, he notices something he failed to before. In the next room, just visible through the open door, is a chair that looks like something out of science fiction movie.
He feels the flash coming just before it hits. There are images he doesn’t understand; people in pajama wear with blank smiles on their faces, experiments, files, and the word ‘Dollhouse’ repeated over and over again.
“Sarah,” he gasps as his eyes clear.
“Chuck, what is it? What did you see?”
“Sarah, it’s...”
But before he can finish his sentence, he’s interrupted.
“Very good, Mr Bartowski. That’s a rather impressive skill you’ve got there.” The voice is British and it takes Chuck a second or two to find where it’s come from. Stepping out of the shadows, a well dressed woman is looking expectantly at him. On her right is a blond man in a dark suit and on her left a younger, fidgety man.
“Who are you?” Chuck asks fiercely. “What do you want from us?”
But the woman just smiles, and there’s something predatory about it that sends shivers down his spine. “I want you, Mr Bartowski. As for your friends, well... I’m just taking back what is mine.”
“What?”
“Mr Brink, you can start with Oscar.” She nods to Casey, who’s only just stirring now. The younger man gives a slight nod and then heads over to the computers as two grunts appear and drag Casey to the chair from Chuck’s flash. They strap him in, then step back.
“Hey, what are you doing to him!” Chuck cries.
The woman turns to him. “Didn’t you see that in your flash?”
How does she... Chuck thinks, but then files it away for later. He thinks back to his flash. What did he see? “Are you...wiping his mind or something? To turn him into one of those people?”
The woman gives him a cold smile. “Precisely.”
“Stop it! You can’t do that to Casey!”
Again, he’s ignored. “Proceed, Mr Brink.”
‘Mr Brink’ types something into his computer, and the chair starts making a whizzing noise as it rises. The rest watch, much to Chuck and Sarah’s horror, as a blue light flashes and Casey’s body contorts, fighting against the restraints. The process only takes a second, and as the machine dies down, Casey’s body flops. He opens his eyes, and in a voice completely unlike his own, asks, “Did I fall asleep?”
Mr Brink looks over to the woman in charge. “For a little while,” she supplies for him.
“Shall I go now?”
“If you like.”
Casey’s bonds are undone, and he stands, placid. He gives Chuck and Sarah a smile before walking off.
“They turned him into a zombie!” Morgan cries, horrified.
The woman scoffs. “They’re hardly zombies, Mr Grimes. We call them actives.”
“Zombies!” Morgan repeats. “Zombies, zombies!”
The woman rolls her eyes. “You can do him next,” she tells Mr Brink.
“No, no, no, no!” But it’s no use. The grunts pick Morgan up and drags him to the chair. He cries all the way.
Once the zombie-Morgan has walked past them, the woman says, “India next, if you please,” and the moment Chuck has been dreading most has arrived.
“Sarah!” Chuck cries out, struggling against his restraints. There are tears at the back of his eyes threatening to spill and this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening!
Sarah is picked up. She fights as best she can, but soon enough she’s strapped into the chair. “Chuck,” Sarah says. Her voice is calm but her eyes are wide and open, and now Chuck can’t hold back the tears.
“No, Sarah, no.” He’s shaking his head but it’s no use. The chair is starting up again, and then Sarah will be gone. “I love you,” he says desperately.
She gives him a watery smile. “You too.”
Chuck watches helplessly as the chair lowers and the blue light flashes. He lets out a choked sob when she sits up and asks, “Did I fall asleep?” in that voice.
His attention so focussed on Sarah, Chuck had almost forgotten the other people in the room. Now, he turns to them, furious. “How could you?!”
The woman just appraises him, taking in his tears, his anger. “Give him a half hour to cool off then send him up to me,” she tells the man in the suit. With that, she walks out, and Chuck is left to the mercy of the grunts.
+
Adelle’s sitting at her desk when Chuck Bartowski is brought into her office. Mr Dominic leads him in, then, much to his displeasure, leaves.
“Hello again. I do hope you’ve managed to calm down. My name is Adelle DeWitt.” She gives Chuck a smile and asks him to sit down. He refuses.
“Mr Bartowski, I’m sure you’re very upset, but please. We need to talk.”
“Talk!” Chuck yells. “You just turned my friends into...zombies or whatever! Sarah...”
Adelle watches him curiously. “I must admit, I am surprised at how taken you are with her, and she with you. The Sarah imprint was designed to keep detached...”
“How taken I am with her? What, have you been watching me?” Chuck’s anger is beginning to wain slightly, curiosity taking over.
“Of course we’ve been watching you, Chuck.” Adelle looks like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
It’s then that another thing Adelle said hits Chuck. “Wait, what do you mean Sarah imprint?”
Adelle sits on one of the couches in her office, gesturing for him to sit opposite. There’s a look of concern on her face, though Chuck thinks it’s more than likely fake.
“Sarah, Casey, Morgan...they’re not real, Chuck. They’re imprints,” Adelle tells him and the feeling is like being punched in the gut. “Nothing in your life is real, Chuck. It’s all fabricated.”
Chuck feels numb, like everything’s just stopped and he can’t quite figure out what to with it. “Why...” he manages to choke out. “Why would you do that?”
“Because we were curious,” Adelle says as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. As if it’s okay to play with someone’s life like they’re playing with his. “The Intersect was a Rossum experiment. We wanted to see if it would work, and to test that we needed you to be in a safe environment and we needed you to believe it.”
Chuck had believed it. He’d believed all of it. Until today, he’d thought he was living the perfect life: amazing girlfriend, amazing job, amazing friends... Now he knows it was all just a lie. Because he knows he can’t doubt the Dollhouse. He’s seen what they did to his friends, and from his flash he’s seen what else they’re capable of. The Dollhouse is not making this us.
Weary, Chuck falls into the chair Adelle had offered him. “So what now?”
+
“Relax,” Topher Brink is saying. Chuck is surprised by this man: he’s awkward, jumpy and informal. He certainly doesn’t seem to fit in this environment. “I’m not going to wipe you; I’m just doing a brain scan. Jeez!”
Chuck doesn’t really have much of a choice--though he can probably take out Topher quite easily, he doubts he’d be any match for the large security guard standing in the corner of the room--so he leans back in the chair that wiped Sarah and Casey and Morgan and waits for it to start up.
It takes only a few seconds, and then the chair is being raised again and Chuck is still himself. “Huh,” he says.
“I told you!”
It’s strange. Chuck thinks that, if he wasn’t in this situation, he and Topher could actually be friends. The smaller man reminds him a lot of Morgan. But then that thought reminds him of what the Dollhouse, what Topher did to his friend and he sours again.
“Okay, let’s look at this.” Topher has brought up Chuck’s brain scan on the large computer screen and is staring at it intently. Chuck goes over to stand beside him, but honestly he was never very interested in neuroscience.
“Look at that!” Topher exclaims. “Amazing...” Topher is grinning like a loon, hoping up and down on one foot in excitement.
“What am I looking at?” Chuck asks, peering at the image. He can’t see anything special.
“Look at those patterns...” He turns to Chuck. “Your brain is amazing. Dude.”
“Thank you...” Chuck says, unsure.
“No problemo.” Topher grins. He goes back to studying the brain in front of him. Bored, Chuck wanders over to the Chair. There’s a spot at the back where something is inserted. “How does this work?” he calls over to Topher.
Topher glances back at him. “Oh, the Chair?”
“Yeah.”
Topher comes towards him. “It’s pretty simple essentially. You design the imprint there.” He motions to the computer. “Then you put it in there.” He points to the slot Chuck noticed before. “You put the Active in, turn on the Chair, and activate it. Of course, it’s much more complicated than that but that’s the main dealio.”
Topher is smiling at him again, and Chuck gets the idea that this man is so starved for company he’d do anything to impress a potential companion. There’s something sad about that, but Chuck can’t really bring himself to feel sorry for the programmer.
“Anyway, back to your brain.” Topher walks off, leaving Chuck alone beside the chair, thinking.
+
It takes Chuck two weeks to figure out the workings of the Dollhouse. He hangs out with Topher, letting him do a whole number of tests on him, and in return Topher tells him things he probably shouldn’t be telling him. He learns how to work the imprinting technology, how to build an imprint, where the old ones are stored...
He talks to Adelle, watching how she interacts with the people around her, where she is at different times of the day, how she reacts to problems. He learns the emergency protocols, how many guards there are and where.
Most of all, he watches Casey, Morgan and Sarah. Or Oscar, Papa and India, as the others call them. Sarah is sent out on an engagement twice in the time he’s there, and it kills him a little inside to see someone else’s personality in her body, going off to meet with someone other than him. Still, he bears it because he knows he has to.
Once Chuck is confident he knows everything back to front, he acts.
+
“Where are we going?” India asks. It’s Sarah’s voice, but it’s...different. Too light, too airy. Too lacking.
“You’re getting a treatment. Wouldn’t you like that?”
Topher is on his lunch break, Chuck knows, and his assistant Ivy is out buying snacks for him. Adelle and Dominic are in a meeting that won’t finish for another two hours. This is Chuck’s best chance.
Leading India into the programming centre, Chuck draws her towards the chair, then goes into the back room. He finds the wedge marked ‘Sarah Walker’ pretty quickly, and inserts it into the Chair.
The Chair buzzes, then dies down and rises.
“Sarah?” Chuck asks uncertainly. What if it didn’t work...
“Chuck?” Sarah replies, and it’s her voice again when she talks and her smile when she looks at him and her walk as she steps towards him. Chuck feels like his heart is bursting in his chest as he grabs her and pulls her into a hug.
“God, Sarah...”
“What’s going on, Chuck? I...don’t remember anything. What happened?”
He pulls away. “We have to go. I’ll explain later, but first we need to get out of here. C’mon.” He takes her hand and together they walk onto the landing. This is gonna be the hard part.
“See those people down there, Sarah,” he says. At her nod, he continues, “You need to act like one of them. Don’t talk to me, just follow about three feet behind me. Is that okay?”
“Of course...” She’s confused, but Chuck doesn’t have time to explain.
“Okay, let’s go.”
They start walking and get across the atrium floor, down the lift and into the garage without anyone calling attention to them. Once in the garage, they’ll have to wait until someone comes in or out for them to sneak off, which hopefully won’t be long. Crouched down out of sight between two tightly packed cars, the two finally face each other.
“What’s going on, Chuck?” Sarah asks again.
She’s looking at him so expectantly, expression open and trusting. So he tells her, everything. He tells her about Topher and Adelle and the Dollhouse and the wipes and imprints and Oscar and Papa and India...
“So, I’m not real?” she asks slowly, taking it in. “I’m...an imprint?”
“Technically, yes. But you’re real to me, Sarah.” Chuck takes her hands, pulling her towards her. “That’s all that matters.”
Sarah glances away, looking out on the rows and rows of sleek black cars and vans. “I don’t know if it is.”
+
They’re back in the programming centre. Chuck’s grand escape plan is looking not so grand at all now. There’s still an hour before Adelle and Dominic get out of their meeting, but Topher should be back very soon.
Sarah isn’t talking, she’s just standing there. Her eyes keep flitting from the Chair and Topher’s computer screen. On the screen is her file; her original personality. India used to be a woman called Rachel McEllen, twenty two. She came to Los Angeles to be an actor, found herself in a lot of debt, and used the Dollhouse as her only way out. Her contract is said to expire next month.
“I can’t take her life away from her,” Sarah whispers.
Chuck looks on, heart breaking.
Suddenly, Sarah turns to him. “Chuck?” she asks, slightly hesitant. “Are you real?”
The question throws him. He hadn’t thought... he’d just assumed, but what if...
Chuck moves over to the computer. He searches through a number of files until he finds his own. Active handle: Zulu. The realisation washes over him and Chuck gasps, mouth gaping, mind struggling to find something to hold onto, some reason or answer.
He finds none.
He looks at Sarah, murmuring her name. Her expression looks like heartbreak.
“You know we can’t live like this, Chuck,” she says, voice breaking.
He nods, understanding. They can’t. They can’t take other people’s lives just to live theirs. That’s not who they are.
Chuck embraces Sarah for the last time, and then she lies back in the Chair. He switches it on and the blue light flashes. When his turn comes, he holds India’s hand, and as he leans back, his whole life, fake as it, flashes before his eyes. Then there’s nothing.
+
Watching the imprint room on the television in her office, Adelle turns to Dominic, a smile curling at the corners of her mouth.
“Well, wasn’t that fun,” she says as she walks towards her desk. “It’s always interesting to see how the different personalities react with the information we supply them.”
She sits, organises a folder, then looks up at her Head of Security. “Tell Topher. I think we’ll try this again. Use Sierra and Victor this time.”
Dominic nods, then leaves, leaving Adelle to watch curiously as Zulu and India take each other’s hand and leave the room.
Fandoms: Dollhouse & Chuck
Author: just_drifting_6
Pairings/Characters: Chuck Bartowski, Sarah Walker, Morgan Grimes, John Casey; Adelle DeWitt, Topher Brink, Laurence Dominic
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Dollhouse and Chuck do not belong to me.
Author's Notes: Written for the multifandom crossover exchange 2010
Summary: “Nothing in your life is real, Chuck,” Adelle DeWitt tells him.
Chuck wakes in a blind panic. A quick glance around shows Sarah, Casey and Morgan are here also, all unconscious. He struggles uselessly against the restraints holding him down, then gives up after a couple of seconds. He’s tied to a chair in a strange room filled with all sorts of electrical equipment. They give off a low buzzing noise that sets him on edge. There’s something menacing about them.
Chuck twists in his chair and his eyes fall on his girlfriend. “Sarah!” he calls. He wants to reach out to her but his arms are tied firmly together. “Sarah, wake up!”
She stirs, and he waits with baited breath for her eyes to open. “Chuck?” she asks blearily. “Where are we?”
“I don’t know.” Chuck glances blindly around the room. This time, however, he notices something he failed to before. In the next room, just visible through the open door, is a chair that looks like something out of science fiction movie.
He feels the flash coming just before it hits. There are images he doesn’t understand; people in pajama wear with blank smiles on their faces, experiments, files, and the word ‘Dollhouse’ repeated over and over again.
“Sarah,” he gasps as his eyes clear.
“Chuck, what is it? What did you see?”
“Sarah, it’s...”
But before he can finish his sentence, he’s interrupted.
“Very good, Mr Bartowski. That’s a rather impressive skill you’ve got there.” The voice is British and it takes Chuck a second or two to find where it’s come from. Stepping out of the shadows, a well dressed woman is looking expectantly at him. On her right is a blond man in a dark suit and on her left a younger, fidgety man.
“Who are you?” Chuck asks fiercely. “What do you want from us?”
But the woman just smiles, and there’s something predatory about it that sends shivers down his spine. “I want you, Mr Bartowski. As for your friends, well... I’m just taking back what is mine.”
“What?”
“Mr Brink, you can start with Oscar.” She nods to Casey, who’s only just stirring now. The younger man gives a slight nod and then heads over to the computers as two grunts appear and drag Casey to the chair from Chuck’s flash. They strap him in, then step back.
“Hey, what are you doing to him!” Chuck cries.
The woman turns to him. “Didn’t you see that in your flash?”
How does she... Chuck thinks, but then files it away for later. He thinks back to his flash. What did he see? “Are you...wiping his mind or something? To turn him into one of those people?”
The woman gives him a cold smile. “Precisely.”
“Stop it! You can’t do that to Casey!”
Again, he’s ignored. “Proceed, Mr Brink.”
‘Mr Brink’ types something into his computer, and the chair starts making a whizzing noise as it rises. The rest watch, much to Chuck and Sarah’s horror, as a blue light flashes and Casey’s body contorts, fighting against the restraints. The process only takes a second, and as the machine dies down, Casey’s body flops. He opens his eyes, and in a voice completely unlike his own, asks, “Did I fall asleep?”
Mr Brink looks over to the woman in charge. “For a little while,” she supplies for him.
“Shall I go now?”
“If you like.”
Casey’s bonds are undone, and he stands, placid. He gives Chuck and Sarah a smile before walking off.
“They turned him into a zombie!” Morgan cries, horrified.
The woman scoffs. “They’re hardly zombies, Mr Grimes. We call them actives.”
“Zombies!” Morgan repeats. “Zombies, zombies!”
The woman rolls her eyes. “You can do him next,” she tells Mr Brink.
“No, no, no, no!” But it’s no use. The grunts pick Morgan up and drags him to the chair. He cries all the way.
Once the zombie-Morgan has walked past them, the woman says, “India next, if you please,” and the moment Chuck has been dreading most has arrived.
“Sarah!” Chuck cries out, struggling against his restraints. There are tears at the back of his eyes threatening to spill and this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening!
Sarah is picked up. She fights as best she can, but soon enough she’s strapped into the chair. “Chuck,” Sarah says. Her voice is calm but her eyes are wide and open, and now Chuck can’t hold back the tears.
“No, Sarah, no.” He’s shaking his head but it’s no use. The chair is starting up again, and then Sarah will be gone. “I love you,” he says desperately.
She gives him a watery smile. “You too.”
Chuck watches helplessly as the chair lowers and the blue light flashes. He lets out a choked sob when she sits up and asks, “Did I fall asleep?” in that voice.
His attention so focussed on Sarah, Chuck had almost forgotten the other people in the room. Now, he turns to them, furious. “How could you?!”
The woman just appraises him, taking in his tears, his anger. “Give him a half hour to cool off then send him up to me,” she tells the man in the suit. With that, she walks out, and Chuck is left to the mercy of the grunts.
+
Adelle’s sitting at her desk when Chuck Bartowski is brought into her office. Mr Dominic leads him in, then, much to his displeasure, leaves.
“Hello again. I do hope you’ve managed to calm down. My name is Adelle DeWitt.” She gives Chuck a smile and asks him to sit down. He refuses.
“Mr Bartowski, I’m sure you’re very upset, but please. We need to talk.”
“Talk!” Chuck yells. “You just turned my friends into...zombies or whatever! Sarah...”
Adelle watches him curiously. “I must admit, I am surprised at how taken you are with her, and she with you. The Sarah imprint was designed to keep detached...”
“How taken I am with her? What, have you been watching me?” Chuck’s anger is beginning to wain slightly, curiosity taking over.
“Of course we’ve been watching you, Chuck.” Adelle looks like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
It’s then that another thing Adelle said hits Chuck. “Wait, what do you mean Sarah imprint?”
Adelle sits on one of the couches in her office, gesturing for him to sit opposite. There’s a look of concern on her face, though Chuck thinks it’s more than likely fake.
“Sarah, Casey, Morgan...they’re not real, Chuck. They’re imprints,” Adelle tells him and the feeling is like being punched in the gut. “Nothing in your life is real, Chuck. It’s all fabricated.”
Chuck feels numb, like everything’s just stopped and he can’t quite figure out what to with it. “Why...” he manages to choke out. “Why would you do that?”
“Because we were curious,” Adelle says as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. As if it’s okay to play with someone’s life like they’re playing with his. “The Intersect was a Rossum experiment. We wanted to see if it would work, and to test that we needed you to be in a safe environment and we needed you to believe it.”
Chuck had believed it. He’d believed all of it. Until today, he’d thought he was living the perfect life: amazing girlfriend, amazing job, amazing friends... Now he knows it was all just a lie. Because he knows he can’t doubt the Dollhouse. He’s seen what they did to his friends, and from his flash he’s seen what else they’re capable of. The Dollhouse is not making this us.
Weary, Chuck falls into the chair Adelle had offered him. “So what now?”
+
“Relax,” Topher Brink is saying. Chuck is surprised by this man: he’s awkward, jumpy and informal. He certainly doesn’t seem to fit in this environment. “I’m not going to wipe you; I’m just doing a brain scan. Jeez!”
Chuck doesn’t really have much of a choice--though he can probably take out Topher quite easily, he doubts he’d be any match for the large security guard standing in the corner of the room--so he leans back in the chair that wiped Sarah and Casey and Morgan and waits for it to start up.
It takes only a few seconds, and then the chair is being raised again and Chuck is still himself. “Huh,” he says.
“I told you!”
It’s strange. Chuck thinks that, if he wasn’t in this situation, he and Topher could actually be friends. The smaller man reminds him a lot of Morgan. But then that thought reminds him of what the Dollhouse, what Topher did to his friend and he sours again.
“Okay, let’s look at this.” Topher has brought up Chuck’s brain scan on the large computer screen and is staring at it intently. Chuck goes over to stand beside him, but honestly he was never very interested in neuroscience.
“Look at that!” Topher exclaims. “Amazing...” Topher is grinning like a loon, hoping up and down on one foot in excitement.
“What am I looking at?” Chuck asks, peering at the image. He can’t see anything special.
“Look at those patterns...” He turns to Chuck. “Your brain is amazing. Dude.”
“Thank you...” Chuck says, unsure.
“No problemo.” Topher grins. He goes back to studying the brain in front of him. Bored, Chuck wanders over to the Chair. There’s a spot at the back where something is inserted. “How does this work?” he calls over to Topher.
Topher glances back at him. “Oh, the Chair?”
“Yeah.”
Topher comes towards him. “It’s pretty simple essentially. You design the imprint there.” He motions to the computer. “Then you put it in there.” He points to the slot Chuck noticed before. “You put the Active in, turn on the Chair, and activate it. Of course, it’s much more complicated than that but that’s the main dealio.”
Topher is smiling at him again, and Chuck gets the idea that this man is so starved for company he’d do anything to impress a potential companion. There’s something sad about that, but Chuck can’t really bring himself to feel sorry for the programmer.
“Anyway, back to your brain.” Topher walks off, leaving Chuck alone beside the chair, thinking.
+
It takes Chuck two weeks to figure out the workings of the Dollhouse. He hangs out with Topher, letting him do a whole number of tests on him, and in return Topher tells him things he probably shouldn’t be telling him. He learns how to work the imprinting technology, how to build an imprint, where the old ones are stored...
He talks to Adelle, watching how she interacts with the people around her, where she is at different times of the day, how she reacts to problems. He learns the emergency protocols, how many guards there are and where.
Most of all, he watches Casey, Morgan and Sarah. Or Oscar, Papa and India, as the others call them. Sarah is sent out on an engagement twice in the time he’s there, and it kills him a little inside to see someone else’s personality in her body, going off to meet with someone other than him. Still, he bears it because he knows he has to.
Once Chuck is confident he knows everything back to front, he acts.
+
“Where are we going?” India asks. It’s Sarah’s voice, but it’s...different. Too light, too airy. Too lacking.
“You’re getting a treatment. Wouldn’t you like that?”
Topher is on his lunch break, Chuck knows, and his assistant Ivy is out buying snacks for him. Adelle and Dominic are in a meeting that won’t finish for another two hours. This is Chuck’s best chance.
Leading India into the programming centre, Chuck draws her towards the chair, then goes into the back room. He finds the wedge marked ‘Sarah Walker’ pretty quickly, and inserts it into the Chair.
The Chair buzzes, then dies down and rises.
“Sarah?” Chuck asks uncertainly. What if it didn’t work...
“Chuck?” Sarah replies, and it’s her voice again when she talks and her smile when she looks at him and her walk as she steps towards him. Chuck feels like his heart is bursting in his chest as he grabs her and pulls her into a hug.
“God, Sarah...”
“What’s going on, Chuck? I...don’t remember anything. What happened?”
He pulls away. “We have to go. I’ll explain later, but first we need to get out of here. C’mon.” He takes her hand and together they walk onto the landing. This is gonna be the hard part.
“See those people down there, Sarah,” he says. At her nod, he continues, “You need to act like one of them. Don’t talk to me, just follow about three feet behind me. Is that okay?”
“Of course...” She’s confused, but Chuck doesn’t have time to explain.
“Okay, let’s go.”
They start walking and get across the atrium floor, down the lift and into the garage without anyone calling attention to them. Once in the garage, they’ll have to wait until someone comes in or out for them to sneak off, which hopefully won’t be long. Crouched down out of sight between two tightly packed cars, the two finally face each other.
“What’s going on, Chuck?” Sarah asks again.
She’s looking at him so expectantly, expression open and trusting. So he tells her, everything. He tells her about Topher and Adelle and the Dollhouse and the wipes and imprints and Oscar and Papa and India...
“So, I’m not real?” she asks slowly, taking it in. “I’m...an imprint?”
“Technically, yes. But you’re real to me, Sarah.” Chuck takes her hands, pulling her towards her. “That’s all that matters.”
Sarah glances away, looking out on the rows and rows of sleek black cars and vans. “I don’t know if it is.”
+
They’re back in the programming centre. Chuck’s grand escape plan is looking not so grand at all now. There’s still an hour before Adelle and Dominic get out of their meeting, but Topher should be back very soon.
Sarah isn’t talking, she’s just standing there. Her eyes keep flitting from the Chair and Topher’s computer screen. On the screen is her file; her original personality. India used to be a woman called Rachel McEllen, twenty two. She came to Los Angeles to be an actor, found herself in a lot of debt, and used the Dollhouse as her only way out. Her contract is said to expire next month.
“I can’t take her life away from her,” Sarah whispers.
Chuck looks on, heart breaking.
Suddenly, Sarah turns to him. “Chuck?” she asks, slightly hesitant. “Are you real?”
The question throws him. He hadn’t thought... he’d just assumed, but what if...
Chuck moves over to the computer. He searches through a number of files until he finds his own. Active handle: Zulu. The realisation washes over him and Chuck gasps, mouth gaping, mind struggling to find something to hold onto, some reason or answer.
He finds none.
He looks at Sarah, murmuring her name. Her expression looks like heartbreak.
“You know we can’t live like this, Chuck,” she says, voice breaking.
He nods, understanding. They can’t. They can’t take other people’s lives just to live theirs. That’s not who they are.
Chuck embraces Sarah for the last time, and then she lies back in the Chair. He switches it on and the blue light flashes. When his turn comes, he holds India’s hand, and as he leans back, his whole life, fake as it, flashes before his eyes. Then there’s nothing.
+
Watching the imprint room on the television in her office, Adelle turns to Dominic, a smile curling at the corners of her mouth.
“Well, wasn’t that fun,” she says as she walks towards her desk. “It’s always interesting to see how the different personalities react with the information we supply them.”
She sits, organises a folder, then looks up at her Head of Security. “Tell Topher. I think we’ll try this again. Use Sierra and Victor this time.”
Dominic nods, then leaves, leaving Adelle to watch curiously as Zulu and India take each other’s hand and leave the room.