“You know,” Ducky mused as he patched a small cut on Abby’s forehead under her bangs, where she’d hit it on the edge of the table. “This whole business rather puts me in mind of when I was stationed at UNIT headquarters.”<\/p>\n
“You worked for UNIT, Ducky?” Abby asked, intrigued.<\/p>\n
He nodded. “Briefly, yes. The medical officer on record had gone missing, and…” He paused thoughtfully. “You know, come to think of it, I do believe the missing man’s name was Lieutenant Sullivan. What a remarkable coincidence: I do wonder if it could be the same man?”<\/p>\n
Abby smiled. “You were saying, Ducky?”<\/p>\n
“What?” He looked distracted for a moment before quickly catching onto his train of thought again. “Ah, yes. As I was saying, the general consensus seemed to be that the agency’s scientific advisor, one Doctor John Smith, had run off with him somewhere, along with a reporter whose function at UNIT I never did quite grasp. Apparently this Smith was a bit of a freelancer, and more than a little eccentric. However, being quite remarkably brilliant, he was generally allowed free rein and said eccentricities were…tolerated. I never met the man myself.”<\/p>\n
“He must’ve been pretty young,” McGee chipped in from the other side of the room, obviously thinking of the UNIT agent he’d been introduced to. “Either that or it was a different Doctor John Smith.”<\/p>\n
“The latter is more likely: it is a common enough name, after all,” was the cheerful reply. “The Smith I knew of was some years older than myself. Not to mention a good deal taller.”<\/p>\n
“How long ago did you work for UNIT?” Abby asked.<\/p>\n
Ducky paused, his hands hovering in mid-air. “Oh, a good twenty to thirty years ago, at least.”<\/p>\n
“Considering this guy looks about Tony’s age, yeah, I guess it’d have to be someone else,” McGee conceded.<\/p>\n
His bandaging done, Ducky dropped his hands back to his sides and Abby looked at him. “All set?”<\/p>\n
“As you said, you may very well have a few bruises come morning,” he admitted. “Otherwise, though, you are in perfect health, my dear.”<\/p>\n
Beaming at him, she hopped down from the table she’d been lying on and joined McGee over at the computers.<\/p>\n
“If I may ask,” Ducky chimed in again. “What precisely is it that you two are engaged in?”<\/p>\n
Abby grinned. “Let’s just call it…a little side project for Gibbs.”<\/p>\n
He peered closer. “Oh my. I wasn’t aware you had found any suspicious fingerprints.”<\/p>\n
“We didn’t–at the crime scene,” she explained, her hands flying over the keyboard. “These belong to the latest John Smith to claim UNIT as his employer.”<\/p>\n
“Gibbs doesn’t trust him,” McGee elaborated unnecessarily.<\/p>\n
“Yes, I can quite see that,” Ducky stuffed both hands in his pockets, showing no inclination to leave. “Dear me. Is the Director aware of this…side project?”<\/p>\n
“Officially? No. Unofficially? Maybe.”<\/p>\n
McGee’s computer beeped at him. “I’ve got a hit,” he exclaimed.<\/p>\n
A second later, Abby’s made the same noise. “So do I.”<\/p>\n
But the beeping didn’t stop. Nine more files popped up on each computer, leaving the three staring at each other in bewilderment. “I thought you said you had enough of a print for a definite match,” McGee demanded.<\/p>\n
“I did!” Abby insisted, looking more than a little distressed. “Besides, McGee, if it were that<\/em> bad, we wouldn’t have gotten a hit at all. Not–”<\/p>\n “Ten,” he supplied unhelpfully.<\/p>\n “Are there photographs to go with any of these files?” Ducky asked, intrigued.<\/p>\n “Yeah, of course.” Abby ran her fingers over the keys again and a black and white photograph popped up, of a long-haired old man with a frown on his face.<\/p>\n “Okay, that’s not…John Smith.” McGee stated the obvious. “Or at least, it’s definitely not the John Smith I met.”<\/p>\n She hit a few more and a second photograph popped up, this one of a shorter, black-haired man in plaid pants and carrying a recorder. Another keystroke summoned up a third image, of a tall, silver-haired gentleman dressed in a frilly seventies-style tuxedo. When the fourth popped up–a tall, curly-haired eccentric of a man with enormous teeth, even bigger hair, and an even bigger scarf–Ducky exclaimed, “That is, however, the John Smith I am acquainted with.”<\/p>\n “I thought you said you never met him,” McGee objected.<\/p>\n “Oh, I didn’t,” Ducky confirmed. “I did, however, see the man on one occasion and that is most certainly him. He was rather memorable.”<\/p>\n “But how is that possible?” McGee argued while Abby kept on bringing up photographs, one after the other. “How could the John Smith upstairs, who looks nothing like this, have the same fingerprints?”<\/p>\n “I haven’t the faintest idea.” Ducky looked equally bewildered. “Unless the John Smith you met this afternoon somehow falsified his own records.”<\/p>\n “He did a really bad job of it if he left another man’s picture on the file. Abby?”<\/p>\n The two men both glanced in Abby’s direction, only to find her staring at the latest two pictures to come up on her screen. One was the John Smith that she and McGee had met earlier, but the other was a man who looked like he’d walked out of a period movie. He had curls to rival Ducky’s John Smith but was wearing an outfit straight out of the Romantic period.<\/p>\n Even stranger, though, was look of absolute shock and recognition on Abby’s face as she stared at him. “John Smith…” she said in a voice so faint that the two men standing on either side of her could barely hear it. “Doctor<\/em> John Smith!” She leaped up from her seat so suddenly that she nearly clipped both Ducky and McGee with her elbows. “Oh my God, I am such an idiot!”<\/p>\n Ducky looked bewildered. “Beg pardon?”<\/p>\n Abby grabbed him by both shoulders. “Red tennis shoes, Ducky. Red tennis shoes!”<\/p>\n Then, with that cryptic explanation that was no explanation at all, she bolted from the lab.<\/p>\n +++<\/p>\n To Gibbs’ surprise, Jenny ushered them all not into her office, as he’d expected, but into MTAC. No sooner were they through the door than a man rose to greet them. He wasn’t a physically intimidating figure, being shorter than pretty much all of them except Ziva and Martha, but both his uniform and his bearing indicated that this was not someone to trifle with.<\/p>\n “Agent Gibbs,” Jenny said. “I’d like you to meet Admiral Daniel Stockton. Admiral Stockton has been briefing me on Admiral Sullivan’s mission here in the US.”<\/p>\n “Sir,” Gibbs greeted him respectfully. As a civilian, he didn’t have to salute, but that didn’t mean the impulse ever completely went away.<\/p>\n Admiral Stockton accepted the offered hand. “That was quite a jolt we felt a few minutes ago. I hope no one was hurt?”<\/p>\n Gibbs’ tone remained neutral. “Not seriously, no.”<\/p>\n “Good.” The Admiral nodded. “Since we haven’t been evacuated, it also seems safe to assume there’s no terrorist activity or structural damage to worry about?”<\/p>\n “Depends on who you ask and when,” DiNozzo muttered under his breath to Ziva, who allowed herself a small smile.<\/p>\n Gibbs shot them a look before answering. “Doesn’t seem to be any permanent damage, Sir.”<\/p>\n “So what exactly happened down there, Agent Gibbs?”<\/p>\n “That’s what I’d like to know,” Jenny added, pinning him to the wall with her glare, or at least trying to. He ignored it.<\/p>\n “Funny you should ask,” Smith interjected, stepping forward and assuming center stage. “Considering it seems to me, Admiral Stockton, that if you know what Harry was up to, then it’s likely you already know the answer to what happened. Or at least have an idea.”<\/p>\n Stockton’s eyes swung to him, but Gibbs kept his firmly on the Director. Her expression remained grave even as she avoided his gaze.<\/p>\n “Electric blue? Looks a bit like a jelly, but for the part where you could likely run the entire planet with a sample small enough to fill a thimble?” Smith prodded a little further.<\/p>\n Much to Gibbs’ shock, Admiral Stockton just nodded. “I should have known. It did much the same thing to our own equipment after we finally managed to get a sample from the object.”<\/p>\n “And what object might that be?” Smith asked.<\/p>\n “This.” With absolutely no dramatic flair, the Admiral pivoted to the giant MTAC screen and hit a button. Immediately, the screen was filled with a high-resolution photograph of something that looked like…well, to be blunt, like a special effect out of a movie.<\/p>\n It was a blob. More than that, though, it was a roughly six foot by three foot by three foot blob of the same electric blue gelatinous material that had been found in Admiral Sullivan’s car, the surface as smooth as if it had just come out of a Jell-O mold. That wasn’t the strangest thing, though: the strangest part was what appeared to be inside it.<\/p>\n “Is that…is that a person<\/em>?” DiNozzo exclaimed in shock.<\/p>\n “It certainly appears to be,” was Admiral Stockton’s dry answer. “A very specific and rather surprising person, all things considered.”<\/p>\n Gibbs was beginning to feel like he’d fallen into some sort of surreal dream, but nevertheless managed to keep his voice even as he asked, “And who might that be?”<\/p>\n “Well, taking into account this is based solely on a visual identification, since we haven’t been able to crack open the object to take finger prints…it appears to be Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor.”<\/p>\n Before Gibbs or anyone else could ask who the hell Lieutenant Charles Carroll Taylor was, a familiar voice answered that question from the doorway:<\/p>\n “Leader of Flight 19, who went missing over the Bermuda Triangle on December 5, 1945.”<\/p>\n They barely had time to register Abby’s presence before she was flying across the room, throwing herself into Smith’s arms as if he had been Tony or Gibbs. But the most startling thing of all was the smile that lit up his face the minute she touched him.<\/p>\n When she finally released him, she poked one finger repeatedly into his chest. “You! You are in big trouble, Mister! Where do you get off showing up here with a new face and a new name and not telling me? What if I hadn’t figured it out? Would you have just left again without even saying hello, let alone goodbye?”<\/p>\n Smith opened his mouth to say something, but she just ran right over him, still scolding like a mother to a disobedient child. “No, y’know what? Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. What I want to know is what are you doing here? And what happened; why the new look? And what does any of this have to do with Admiral Sullivan?”<\/p>\n Martha was still reeling at the concept of the Doctor not being able to get a word in edgewise when Gibbs managed to interrupt. “Abs!” he said sharply. “You know this man?”<\/p>\n Abby rolled her eyes and gave him her most ‘duh!’ expression. “Gibbs! This is the Doctor.”<\/p>\n The Doctor grinned. “That’d be me all right.” He looked at Abby with an expression that could only be described as pride. “I knew you’d put it together. You were always brilliant at that.”<\/p>\n Abby glared at him. “I’m not talking to you right now.”<\/p>\n The Doctor looked floored. “What?”<\/p>\n She turned to Martha. “You, on the other hand, I want to talk to. We can compare notes, and for what it’s worth? I know some of the best<\/em> tattoo places out there, if you ever want to get a nice, permanent souvenir.”<\/p>\n Martha grinned, instantly liking the other woman. “I’d like that.”<\/p>\n “Will someone please explain to me what the hell is going on?” Gibbs interrupted again.<\/p>\n “Come on, Gibbs,” Abby wheedled, turning her attention back to him. “You have to have heard of Flight 19–it’s one of the most famous Bermuda Triangle-related disappearances in history. Five Navy planes take off from Fort Lauderdale on a routine training mission, and disappear without a trace after a series of panicked final transmissions suggesting that their instruments had gone haywire and even the ocean ‘didn’t look right.'”<\/p>\n “That’s correct,” Admiral Stockton nodded. “For over sixty years, official Navy policy has been to deny that anything untoward happened to Flight 19. Even I didn’t know any differently until one of my men shot down a UFO a week ago and, when we went to look for debris, this is what we found.” He nodded towards the photograph on the screen. “Admiral Sullivan was brought over to see what could be done to extract and revive Lieutenant Taylor safely so that he could be interrogated.”<\/p>\n “Didn’t they find the missing planes, though?” McGee asked. He’d arrived a heartbeat after Abby. “I could’ve sworn I saw a special about it on the Discovery Channel or something.”<\/p>\n “The planes, maybe,” Abby answered with a shrewd look in Admiral Stockton’s direction. “That doesn’t mean something unearthly couldn’t have happened to the pilots.”<\/p>\n “Meaning…?” Gibbs prodded.<\/p>\n “Meaning,” Smith–the Doctor, as Abby had addressed him–answered as if the question had been directed to him, “that I need to have a word with your witnesses.”<\/p>\n Gibbs shook his head. Okay, enough of this insanity: he was putting his foot down here and now. “You’re not talking to anyone until I see some sort of proof that you are who you say you are.”<\/p>\n “Oh, he’s not,” was Abby’s breezy reply.<\/p>\n The Doctor looked at her, eyes wide and wounded. “Abby!”<\/p>\n She smirked at him then turned her attention back to Gibbs. “He’s better. He’s the Doctor<\/em>, Gibbs. If there’s anyone in the universe<\/em> who could find Admiral Sullivan, de-gunk Lieutenant Taylor and solve the mystery of who took them both, it’s him. Trust me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “You know,” Ducky mused as he patched a small cut on Abby’s forehead under her bangs, where she’d hit it on the edge of the table. “This whole business rather puts me in mind of when I was stationed at … Continue reading