Having been under the care of the CIA and NSA for the last couple of months, Chuck honestly thought he would've gotten used to the idea of seeing dead bodies by now. People had been shot and beaten before his very eyes. Being dragged to a morgue in the wee hours of the morning by Casey shouldn't have surprised him as much as it did now...

"You woke me up at 3am to see if I would flash on a dead guy?"

Casey grunted something that sounded a lot like 'wimp' but Sarah afforded him a sympathetic half-smile. "Another CIA agent shot him down last night after he robbed a disk from Echno-Tech Industries. We want to know who he was working for and what he was planning to do with that information."

"He was planning a coup in Venezuela."

Both Sarah and Casey gave him a curious look, evidently surprised by the notion.

"…I was joking," Chuck mumbled. "Since when have I ever had a random flash without some sort of stimuli?"

"Ditch the sarcasm, Bartowski." Casey snapped before he returned his attention to the body. The corpse was still out on the operation table after just recently having the bullets removed from its chest. Thankfully, it was still covered by some sort of tarp cloth that hid the gruesome sight from Chuck's eyes. "Do you think Walker and I get a kick out of staring at dead guys?"

"No, Casey…but you do seem to get a kick out of making them dead."

Casey glared in retaliation, but instead of barking at the witty comment, he grabbed the edge of the tarp and threw it back over the dead man's midsection. His face now revealed, Chuck flashed instantly on every ounce of information the NSA and CIA had on the man.

"…His name is Jamie Colt and he's a free-lancer," Chuck said after he returned from his trance. "I think he was hired by another company to spy on Echno-Tech…"

Sarah nodded. "Thank you, Chuck."

"Wait!" Chuck exclaimed as Casey began to draw the tarp back over the man's face. "That's not all."

Casey shot another glare at him, but kept his voice level as he asked, "What now?"

"Drug trafficking," he explained, sounding meek. "He works for a Mexican drug dealer called Acilino Coronado. What if he has…you know…?"

"Drug bags?" Casey glanced down the table at the man's stomach. "Perhaps…"

Chuck suddenly had a mental image of Casey in a butcher shop, a maniacal gleam in his eyes as he lifted his weapon of choice—

"Do you want to go wait in the car?" Sarah asked as she tossed Chuck her keys. Evidently, his face betrayed his thoughts.

"…Yeah. I can do that."

Casey flashed him a grin. "What's wrong, Bartowski? Can't stand a little blood?"

"Blood is fine. But dead bodies—"

"Bartowski."

"…What?"

Casey gestured to the door.

"…Right…Wait in the car."

Chuck was actually a bit tired of getting the 'wait-in-the-car' command, but he couldn't really complain in this situation. The last thing he wanted to watch before returning to sleep this morning was Casey as he dissected a fresh corpse. Chuck had enough disturbing mental images to deal with already.

He gave Sarah a mock salute before heading through the double-doors into the hallway. There were only two people working the nightshift, one of which was a janitor. Dr. Janelle Morris was the only mortician around and she was currently busy in another room, prepping a body for examination. She hadn't asked any questions when Sarah and Casey barged in earlier, offering to lend a hand if they needed any help before returning to her own work.

Dr. Morris was a smart woman when it came to turning a blind eye on government operations.

Chuck nodded politely at the woman as he passed her in the hall, noticing that there was a distraught man standing beside her. The two of them were talking quietly (Dr. Morris asking questions about a deceased man's next-of-kin) but when Chuck glanced their way the distressed man's attention shifted instantly from the conversation to him. He stared at Chuck wildly, his face overridden with grief, before he paled and excused himself from Dr. Morris.

"I really wasn't expecting two surprise visits in one night." The mortician sighed as she watched the man's retreating back. "I can handle the dead; it's the living I have trouble with."

Chuck didn't say a word. He knew what it felt like to lose someone that was close to him; he could sympathize with the man. The fellow was acting perfectly normal given the situation...

"Is there anything you and the others need?"

Chuck shrugged. "They might need something; I don't know. I'm leaving."

"Goodnight, then," she said with a witty smile. "I hope I don't see you here again anytime soon."

"I certainly hope not…"

But at the rate he was going, Chuck didn't know how long he'd last in the spy business. He might've been improving on his missions but the bad guys were getting harder to beat and Fulcrum was drawing closer to discovering Chuck as the Human Intersect. His life was gradually spinning out of control.

"I mean it," Dr. Morris replied, looking a bit more serious. "You don't act like one of them. They've almost got no emotion in their eyes."

Chuck liked to think that Sarah had normal feelings like everybody else—and he was pretty sure that she did feel like a normal person when neither of their lives was in danger. Casey…well, Chuck wasn't at the liberty to say whether Casey was emotionally competent or not. He was pretty much convinced Casey wasn't entirely human...

"Watch your back, kid, or you'll find a knife it one of these days."

Dr. Morris left Chuck standing in the hallway, alone, with only her final words of wisdom to keep him company. They sounded incredibly Casey-ish and that freaked him out.

Unable to suppress a shiver, Chuck shoved his hands in his jacket pockets and headed for the door. Maybe tomorrow he'd call in sick for work…

Yeah right. Casey would probably kill him—and if not Casey, then Big Mike would certainly step up to bat.

Chuck sighed and wandered outside, trying to remember where Sarah parked. Casey had given him a ride to the morgue, half-kidnapping him in the dead of night instead of calling him first like a normal human being. Chuck pressed the 'unlock' button on the electronic car key and listened for the beep before shoving it into his jacket pocket. Sarah parked a good distance down the road instead of in the morgue lot, no doubt a habit of hers. Chuck figured it was all a part of some spy-protocol.

"—Excuse me!"

Chuck stopped half-way down the morgue steps and spun around on his heel. Dr. Morris stood behind him in the doorway, looking a tad bit worried.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were the other man. Do you see him anywhere?"

Chuck took a quick glance over the near-empty parking lot before facing her again. "Uh…no. Not really."

"Drats…" She held up a pair of gloves. "He left these in my office. If you see him in the parking lot, mention it to him, will you?"

"Sure thing."

"Thanks." She grinned again. "Be careful. It's fairly late to be wandering around."

Chuck just nodded and offered her a small smile of his own. Then he turned away from the parking lot and headed down the sidewalk to the road. Sarah's car was parked nearly half a block away under the shade of an oak tree. For a moment he imagined her sitting in the driver's seat, eyes barely visible in the dark as she solemnly loaded her gun. Her target would be drawing closer, just passing by, utterly oblivious to the danger lurking in the shadows…

Chuck shivered again. Morgues really did give him the jitters—he couldn't get rid of these morbid thoughts.

'Just sit in the car and try to sleep,' he thought to himself. Sarah probably wouldn't care if he passed out in the passenger's seat. She was a hell of a lot nicer than Casey.

He reached for the car door handle and slipped inside the sleek vehicle, careful not to slam the door as he closed it behind him. It was alarmingly chilly outside and Chuck could almost see his breath inside the car. Maybe the bad weather was an omen…

Banishing the thought from his mind, Chuck reached for the keys and put them in the driver's cup tray so Sarah could find them later when she returned. Then he put on his seatbelt, leaned back and closed his eyes.

He felt the hand over his mouth before his brain could register the shuffle of clothing behind him. His assailant's other arm wrapped around his throat and pinned him back against the headrest of the chair, at the same time cutting off his airway. Chuck began to thrash immediately, both hands snapping up to pry the arm off his throat as he kicked out with his legs. His left knee throbbed painfully as it collided with the glove compartment but he continued to fight against his unknown attacker, hoping against all hope that Sarah was on her way. He needed her—hell, he would be happy to get even Casey at the moment! Anyone would do.

Chuck's head felt lighter as the world around him began to fade into darkness. "Careful," someone said behind him and his assailant tilted his arm at a slightly different angle.

He vaguely registered the sound of the driver-side door closing as someone else climbed inside, then the muffled jingle of keys as they reached into the cup tray. He could barely see now and the white noise around him was muffled by the pounding of his heart in his ears. His arms and legs felt numb; his lungs felt as though they were about to explode.

'I'm dying…' Chuck thought as the energy slowly faded from his limbs. He couldn't fight anymore. 'I'm about to die and no one will ever know the truth about me.'

…Then the arm began to slacken. The sound of his heartbeat faded into the distance and his vision, though blurry, stopped spinning as the man sitting in the driver's seat leaned closer. He couldn't see his face, but that was hardly a surprise.

"…Again."

The vice like grip around his throat returned and he was dragged under the waves of asphyxiation once more before his vision faded entirely and there was nothing left to listen to.

Chuck thrashed again, weaker than last time, until his mind felt separate from his body. It was over now. He was truly dead.

Finally losing his grip on the world, Chuck surrendered to the darkness…

A/N: "Echno-Tech Industries" doesn't exist…I think. I apologize if it is, in fact, an actual corporation.

"Drug bags" – I'm a CSI fan (and I'm sorry that I can't remember what episode this idea came from). Sometimes people will swallow small pouches of heroin or cocaine (etc) and carry them across the border in their stomach.