Epilogue

Corporate Boardroom

Volkoff Industries

St. Petersburg, Russia

September 15, 2008

2100 hours

"Report." Alexi Volkoff ordered. He was seated at the head of the large conference table that took up most of the room. Seated around the table were his corporate lawyer, Riley; his lieutenants Jurek, Antonia, and Christoph; his daughter Vivian; and his two American wizards.

"The CIA/NSA has successfully dismantled Fulcrum." The American woman stated. "According to our intelligence, they have killed or captured nearly 200 Fulcrum operatives and confiscated nearly two dozen facilities and properties."

"And their money and data?" Alexi asked.

"We succeeded in transferring about 65% of Fulcrum's monetary assets to secret Volkoff accounts." The American man stated. "We had to leave enough to make sure we didn't tip the CIA/NSA off too soon. As far as the data, we copied all of it onto our servers before we deleted certain files from the Fulcrum servers…mainly research and technology that we don't want the CIA/NSA to know exists."

"Excellent." Alexi stated.

"There is one more thing." Vivian said.

"Yes, daughter?" Alexi asked. In a flash, Vivian had produced a Walther PPK and fired three shots into her father before he could react. At the same time, the American couple had also produced guns and shot Mr. Riley, Jurek, Antonia, and Christoph. A moment later a guard entered the room.

"Get these bodies out of here." Vivian ordered and then turned to the American company, smiling. "It's time for Volkoff Industries to move to the next level. Isn't that right, Mother, Father?"

"That's my girl." Mary Bartowski, aka 'FROST', responded.

"Soon the CIA/NSA will learn the penalty for screwing with the Bartowskis." Stephen J. Bartowski, aka 'ORION', said. "And we will possess the Intersect, one way or another. Of course, the demon-spawn that the CIA tried to saddle us with will have to be put out of the way, as well."

Office of Thomas Harper

Team Intersect Headquarters

MCB Quantico

Quantico, Virginia

September 25, 2008

1500 hours

"Hey Chief, got a second?" Himeko asked, standing at the doorway to Harper's office.

"Come on in." Harper responded. Himeko walked in a sat down. "What's up?"

"Boss, we've been going through data taken from the other Fulcrum servers we captured, as well as the activity logs. And we've found some anomalies." Himeko said.

"What do you mean?" Harper asked.

"It appears that just after we raided the Fulcrum facilities, someone copied all of the electronic data housed in them to another server. Then they deleted about 10% of the files. My team is still trying to reconstruct what was deleted, but whoever did it is very good." Himeko said.

"One of Fulcrum's people we didn't get, maybe?" Harper asked. Himeko shook her head.

"I don't think so, boss." She said. "Something was bothering me about the server we took from the Fulcrum facility in South America that led us to the information we used to conduct the raids. It took some doing but I found some code that generated a very brief signal once the encryption was broken. It was an alert that encryption was broken. I haven't been able to trace it, but if it had gone to someone in Fulcrum, wouldn't they have moved their operations? Or beefed up their security?"

Harper thought for a few moments. "You're right." Harper said. "'But then that means-"

"That someone wanted us to find and put Fulcrum out of business." Himeko said. "But they also wanted Fulcrum's data. And since they deleted some of it off the servers we captured-"

"There's something they don't want us to know about." Harper finished.

Author's Endnote: And there we have it folks, the end of Chuck vs. Semper Fi. There will be an eventual sequel that will focus on the Volkoff story-line introduced in the epilogue, but this sequel will not be happening right away. I'm going to concentrate on my other Chuck story, There Is Such Thing As Second Chances, for a while.