This is set in my Unintended Consequences universe. This takes place after UC: Down Time. This is another one of my planned out stories. I hope it goes as well as the last one.
Please let me know what you think. Case fiction is iffy. I need the big yea or the big nay from the readers.
Disclaimer: I don't own NCIS: Los Angeles.
Eric arrived at the Mission at 3:30 in the morning. He wanted to be sure that no one would see him. He had to get in and get out before anyone noticed. As he sat down in front of his workstation he wondered again if he should tell the team. He didn't want to drag them into this. He wasn't even sure what 'this' was yet. He wouldn't know until he pulled Sam out of hiding and they had a talk. He considered telling Nell but didn't want to drag her into something that would most likely cost him his job. He owed Sam. They had been friends for a long time. He decided for the hundredth time that he would keep quiet for now, but if things got rough he would contact Callen as the very least. Actually he had a better idea.
He spent half an hour setting up what he needed to before he blanked three sets of hard drives. He also scrambled and deleted all the video and audio running in the mission. He left OPS, moving to the server room. There he removed the drives that he had just previously deleted all the information from. He couldn't take the chance that anyone could reconstruct the data he had deleted. He took the drives, entered the burn room, and didn't leave until the drives where completely destroyed. Leaving the burn room he went to his locker putting in his phone, NCIS id, car keys, and wallet. He checked his watch, 4:15. "Time to get moving", he thought to himself. He was going to be late. With that he walked out of the Mission.
Nell arrived at the Mission at 6:00 AM on the button. Her normal time so that she could attempt to get ahead on some work. It wouldn't happen, but she would keep trying. She noticed Eric's car in the parking lot. She was beginning to think that he was having the same problem sleeping that Callen did. He had been showing up early for work for the last several days. She had asked what it was for, she knew it wasn't part of any ongoing NCIS operation. He had told her that he was helping some friends from the alphabet agencies on an operation they were working on.
She entered the Mission, dropped her stuff off at her desk and went up to OPS.
"Morning Er…" OPS was empty. She admitted to herself that was strange. She pushed the thought out of her mind. Time to get the work done she came here early for. As she logged into her station several alerts appeared. As she looked through the list of alerts she felt the color drain from her face. Her call to Hetty was immediate. She picked up on the first ring.
"Hetty, we have a problem. A very big problem."
Deeks rolled over, still mostly asleep, to grab his phone and look at the message that just caused the emergency notification alarm.
REPORT TO MISSION IMMEDIATELY
Deeks bolted upright in bed. "KENSI!"
Kensi opened the door to the bathroom, still towel drying her hair, and stuck her head into the bedroom. "You alright, babe?"
Deeks shook his head clear getting rid of old, bad memories. "Uhm…yeah…we…there…there's an emergency alert. We are supposed to report to the Mission immediately."
"That caused you to scream out my name?" She smiled at him. "What sort of dream were you having?"
Deeks thought about just letting it drop or lying, but they had gotten so good at their communication he didn't dare.
"No. I was still mostly asleep. This is the message that brought me into the Mission at three am to find out you were missing. I thought I was back there. I panicked."
Kensi walked out of the bathroom to sit on the bed beside Deeks. She leaned over to give him a soft kiss. Pulling back from the kiss she lowered her head unto his shoulder while wrapping her arms around his waist. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to tease you."
Deeks actually smiled. "No, you couldn't have known. Your teasing actually made me feel better anyway. Let's me know that our 'thing' is alive and strong."
Kensi raised her eyebrow at him. "I thought we agreed to call it a relationship?"
Deeks smile actually grew. "We did. I just wanted to see if I could get you to break your promise to not hit me."
"Not fair. You are not supposed to deliberately goad me."
"I know." Deeks stood up from the bed. "Let me get a quick shower. Given what happened last time this message came out, it's going to be a long hard day." With that Deeks walked into the bathroom to take a shower.
Deeks and Kensi walked through the mission doors at the same time as Sam and G. Nell was waiting for them at the bull pen.
"As of this minute we are going on tactical alert." She said and turned on her heel to march away.
Deeks, G, and Sam all froze to the spot. Each was having their own very painful déjà vu moment of the last time this happened. Nell and Kensi almost immediately realized they had stopped.
Kensi turned around. "Guys, you coming?" She was growing increasingly concerned about the looks crossing each of their faces.
Nell turned back around, immediately remembering why all of this felt so horribly familiar.
Kensi turned to look at Nell. As she saw her face, her concern for the guys was momentarily forgotten. "Nell, have you been crying. What happened?" Between Deeks outburst at home, the guy's reaction now, and Nell's tears, she was becoming increasingly unnerved.
G spoke first. "What is it? Tell us now, Nell."
Nell took a deep breath trying to control her voice. "This morning Eric disappeared. He moved terabytes of data, destroyed the drives on three servers, up to the point of burning them, disabled all the security systems for over an hour, left his keys, phone, tablet, laptop, wallet, NCIS credentials, car, and walked out of the building. That was almost three hours ago."
Sam went to ask another question, but Nell raised her hand.
"Granger and Hetty are in OPS. More of your questions can be answered there. Please follow me." Nell was determined not to cry in front of everyone. She walked away marching up the stairs to OPS. The four agents followed Nell up the steps and through the doors.
Granger and Hetty looked up from a conversation they were having when everyone else entered.
"What happened to Eric?" Sam asked.
"We don't know, Agent Hanna. We aren't even sure what he did while he was here. He disabled everything but the alerts that Agent Jones received." Hetty replied
"He didn't know about those." Nell added with a frown. "They run from my workstation. I made them just to help with the work load. I never told him about them."
"So if it wasn't for Nell's alerts what would we know?" Callen asked.
"That between three and five this morning the Mission was entered, all security was disabled, and several hard drives were destroyed." Granger nodded his head to Nell. "We would have known his truck was here, but wouldn't have checked his locker without Agent Jones suggestion."
"So what do we know?" Deeks asked.
Nell fielded the question. "This isn't related to any NCIS operation. As far as we can tell it isn't related to any investigation for any agency. Whatever he did to the security system can't be undone. We reached out to his friends at the CIA and the NSA. The CIA told us that they weren't working on anything with Eric. They also say that if Eric did it, that's the way it is going to stay. When we reached out to his friend Sam at the NSA we found out that he disappeared under similar circumstances two days ago."
"What do we know about Sam?" G questioned.
"Sam is a high level NSA computer expert. They don't work onsite but from a highly secure off site location. Very few people have ever seen Sam and there are no records of Sam in the system, open, restricted, classified, or otherwise." Hetty explained. "The NSA is quietly attempting to locate Sam but it appears he is attempting to stay hidden deliberately."
Hetty took a deep breath before looking everyone in the eye one at the time. "I'm about to violate a trust. I hope that all of you will not only forgive me but understand why. I trust that you will keep this information close in the spirit of trust is was given. Mr. Beale was at one time one of the foremost hackers in the world. He cracked several 'unbreakable' systems. Apparently Mr. Beale loved the challenge. He never stole anything. He never broke anything. In fact there are several systems that are attributed to him that the intrusions couldn't be proven and he never admitted to being responsible for them to anyone but me."
"Are you saying you think Eric has gone back to be a black hat hacker?" Deeks asked.
"Black Hat?" Sam asked.
"Bad guy hacker. Good hackers are white hats."
"No." Granger said. "That has not been said or even alluded to. We just wanted you to understand the skill that Mr. Beale has and why he would be a target. Our mission it to find Mr. Beale, immediately. I've already talked to Director Vance. With Mr. Beale and Mr. Sam missing this is being categorized as a national security matter. Do what you have to do to find him and bring him here."
"Alright. Kensi, Deeks, go to Eric's place and see what you can find." G said. "Who can get us in contact with the group from NSA looking for Sam?"
"I've already put in the call." Nell said. "They will make time whenever you are ready."
Granger looked at his watch. "I've got a flight to catch." Granger saw the questioning looks on everyone's face. "I have a flight to Washington to meet with Director Vance, the directors of the CIA, NSA, and DIA. Two computer geniuses from two highly classified organizations are missing. That causes panic."
"Yea, I could see where that would happen." Deeks said.
"Come on, Deeks." Kensi said heading out of OPS.
"Nell, tell the NSA we are ready whenever they are."
"At least we don't have to pick the lock." Deeks said as he used Eric's keys to unlock the door.
"This is worse than the time we had to search Rose's place." Kensi said as she entered the condo.
"Yeah." Deeks went straight to the home office that Eric had built. Kensi followed. "Well, that was to be expected." All of the machines were in parts with the hard drives taken. Deeks stooped down to push around the parts. "He not only took the hard drives he pulled the whole system apart."
"How do you know it was Eric?"
"Because these systems have been carefully taken apart. This was done by someone who didn't want to actually break anything and it took a lot of time."
"What did you get yourself into Eric?" Kensi muttered as she left the office to search through the rest of the house.
Deeks and Kensi searched the house for another hour, but nothing else of interest was found. All the damage was concentrated in the office, all of it having been done by Eric.
Sam and Callen were getting a little aggravated waiting for the NSA agents to contact them. Sam was about to ask Nell to contact them again when the screen came alive.
"My apologies, Agents. I'm Agent Devro." The man speaking pointed to the man beside him. "This is Agent Sellings. There has been a development in the case and it isn't good. The handler for Sam and several other assets, a Special Agent Marcus Langus, has been found dead. It appears that he was tortured before he was finally killed. We don't know who did him or what they wanted."
All of Callen's instincts kicked off. "Are any of the other 'assets' missing?"
"We don't know. As a means of keeping them secure, Agent Langus was the only one in contact with them. He's the only one that knew their real names and where they lived. All the agencies interactions were through him. The only reason we know Sam is missing is because of an email he sent saying they had been out of contact for extended period of time."
Sam couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Wait, so you don't know who you are looking for or what their name is?"
Agent Devro shook his head. "His home was burned after it was searched. All the information he had about the people he managed has either been taken or is ash. His personal files on the NSA network have been deleted. It appears to have been done by him, but we are checking on it. If you think it sounds bad to you, just remember I'm the guy trying to find these people."
"I'm sorry." Sam couldn't imagine the pressure Devro was under. "What does this have to do with Eric Beale?"
"Mr. Beale has met Sam in person. He is one of the few people that can identify Sam and connect him to the NSA."
"So you definitely believe that all of this is connected?" Callen questioned.
"With his disappearance this morning and finding Agent Langus dead? It's the best theory we have going."
"Alright. We'll keep you apprised of what we find, will you do the same?" Sam asked.
"Absolutely."
"Thanks." Sam and Callen answered.
With that the screen went dark.
"Well even though that was very informative, we aren't any closer to finding out what is going on with Eric."
Nell Jones was sitting at her desk silently flicking through her emotions like a motion picture. She was scared because she didn't know what Eric had gotten himself into or if he was ok. She was angry that he hadn't come to her for help with whatever it was he was involved in. More importantly it frustrated her to no end that she couldn't help him.
He had done an amazingly thorough job of covering his tracks. When Deeks and Kensi had called in and said that he had done the same thing at home he had done at the Mission, it had crushed the remainder of her hopes. His home machines accessed the internet through the servers at the Mission that he had destroyed so there was no ISP to go to for records. Nell Jones desperately needed an idea. She needed a break.
That's when it hit her, if Sam had contacted Eric, then it happened before this morning and there had to be a record of that. She was sure it wasn't by his phone, his work station, or his home system. They would have found that. Sam had to have contacted Eric in a way that was both anonymous and something that would easily accessible from anywhere.
"The game." She suddenly shouted. She jumped up sprinting toward OPS. As she came through the door she ignored the other people in the room focusing on her station. She actually knew Eric's log in for his character. She had secretly pulled it from the network previously to play a prank on him but then decided not go through with it. She logged into Eric's account without an issue. She was hoping that he would be online. Instead she started going through the conversations in Eric's account. It took a while but she found it. A conversation between Eric and another character. The conversation was cryptic but it was obvious they were not talking about anything inside the game. Eric was going to meet Sam. It appeared as if Sam was headed to LA. Eric was supposed to arrange transportation and identities to travel under. Nell checked the timestamp of the conversation. It has happened yesterday afternoon. So, Sam was alive at least as late as yesterday afternoon and Eric was going to meet him. Nell had to let the team know.