Author's note: Hey everyone! If you were brought here by my oneshot series, you're in for something fairly different. This is going to be a coherent story, several of the oneshots will make it in here at some point or another. Takes place right after 5x24.

Sorry if Eric's POV is a bit hard to follow at times; I'm trying to write his internal monologue as something believable considering how he acts on the show. In order to contrast the two of them Nell is quite coherent – this is based on how she acts in the show despite the fact that she claimed to have 'borderline ADD' in the second season. Suggestions are welcome!

Summary: Neric-centric season 6. The series will feature the entire team to varying extents, after a great deal of deliberation I have decided to split the story up quite a bit, I'll keep the updates to everything but the oneshot series chronological in terms of the AU.


"Callen, Sam, do you hear me?!" Kensi called out.

"Sam!" Eric yelled into his headset, knowing full well it was useless. The last thing they would hear from the two agents was gunshots echoing in a submarine, and this time he couldn't shake the cold feeling crawling up his spine. A submarine, why of all things was it a submarine? "Kensi, Deeks, did you see anything?"

He looked over to Granger for guidance and saw the man's stony gaze fixed on the map he had posted on the main screen hours ago.

"No." Deeks replied after a pregnant pause. "Nothing, not even a wake. The moors are cut, so I guess they left in a hurry."

"The coast guard, harbormaster and the navy are aware and mobilizing as we speak." Granger interjected coolly. "But, we still need to figure out where they're headed."

"Yeah, got it." Eric replied, absent mindedly swiping through information on his tablet. He found himself focusing on his partner; she stood right next to him paralyzed for a moment before something clicked in her brain. "I'll piece together what I can from what we heard." Nell announced, rushing to a computer on the other side of the room.

"Agents Deeks and Blye, get back here. Now." Granger rumbled.

"We can't just slink back! We are closer than anyone else right now, we have to do something!"

When Marty said that, Eric and Nell turned to see Granger's reaction. After a short moment of disgruntled bewilderment the man took a couple heavy steps toward the screen as if he were talking directly to the detective. "Did you bring your swim trunks, Deeks?" The man growled. "How do you expect to follow a submarine? Get back here. Don't make me ask twice."

"On our way." Kensi responded through gritted teeth, though Eric could tell even without being in the same room that she had interrupted Deeks who had some very choice words for the Assistant Director.

Granger stopped a moment before storming out; looking down at Nell as if he was trying to coax her to look him in the eye but, she turned her gaze back to the computer. "Stay focused you two, be ready for a brief in twenty." He commanded as he stormed out.

For a moment after the assistant director left, Eric just watched his partner work as she pulled a pair of headphones over her head and skipped through the audio log.

When he realized what had just transpired Eric couldn't endure staying seated any longer, his restless legs demanded some kind of motion so he placated them by pacing – even though he knew it drove Nell crazy. It was all wrong, they should have never gone in the sub – one of them should have stayed on the surface – and why are his legs so itchy? Deeks and Kensi were too late to save them and his favorite pair of shorts were suddenly driving him crazy. Everything he tried to string together just evaporated in his mind as he tried to turn it into a coherent thought. Who was shooting at them and why? What did it have to do with the Darlington? He had to focus, he knew he had to focus but it was impossible. Sam and G were depending on him but they didn't have anything to go on. Michael Wilson was in surgery for shrapnel related injuries, there wasn't a single thing out of the ordinary in the financials of the boatyard and Sam and G were going to die if he couldn't think of a way to save them.

There wasn't a program he had been saving for such an occasion, or a contact that could be of any use – he didn't even have an idea ready because something like this wasn't supposed to happen! What kind of senior agents walk blindly into a steel tube with one entrance? How could they have let themselves get cornered like this?

He balked at himself for judging them so harshly before turning to his partner. "Nell." He said softly. She was wearing headphones, completely oblivious of him and tried for a moment to assure himself; after all, they had found smaller needles in bigger haystacks before.

"Nell!" He repeated, louder this time. He nudged her shoulder and she jumped, turning to him so fast the headphones slid off her head.

"What?" She asked, a little too loudly.

"Sorry." He replied, shying away from her. Let her work. He told himself. We need to know what they said and she can't figure that out if you interrupt her.

"Focus, Eric."

"Yeah." He looked back at his tablet, studying the face of the kid Sam and G had apprehended, Martinez. "What if they don't have twenty minutes?"

"Eric."

"We don't know what's happening, Nell. They are –"

"Eric." Nell persisted.

"What?"

"They're going to be okay. Subs are built like tanks, and Sam is a SEAL." She breathed. "They're going to be okay."

Maybe it was his imagination but, it sure sounded like she was trying to convince herself. "Yeah."

It was like she saw the thought cross his mind, she met his eyes again and reassured him. "Don't give up on them."

"I'm not… it's just…" The look on her face was comforting, as it always was. The same familiar gaze they had shared on a hundred other cases; a hundred other fires, a hundred other life or death situations that they had helped the team out of.

"I know."

He looked down at his tablet, wondering how the kid ended up involved in something like this. The kid probably never questioned where the drugs came from or how they got into his backpack. "We're looking at a tag team effort, both the Brotherhood and the cartel combining their shipments to fill a sub that big. Do you think they had a chance to make a shipment yet?"

"It's not impossible. Anderson said they would release his wife when they finished constructing and testing the sub, and that if he ever wanted to see her again he should make sure it works or it would be her tomb." She recited rigidly, it usually reassured him, watching her reason through the tips but, he couldn't see a trace of relief on her face.

"They wouldn't trust him to do that, would they? Risk a billion dollars of product like that?"

"It isn't worth a billion until it they get it here. Besides, they could have tested it anywhere, at any time. They've had all the pieces for almost a month, Eric."

"Okay, so we may have an influx of a few tons of cocaine, at least we could figure out who the sellers are, right?"

"Yeah, try getting in contact with the DEA, see if they have any kind of lead." She suggested, turning her attention back toward the audio log on her PC.

"Eric, w- goi- ne- om odd."

"Callen, come again?"

"You're breaking up!"

"Er -onna ne- b- wad."

"Agent Callen."

She stopped the recording. Eric we going to need… "Om odd. Bo wad." She said to herself, repeating the fragments over and over. "Bom wad… Bomb squad!" She yelled.

"What?" Eric almost shouted, nearly dropping his tablet when she shot upward from her seat.

"Bomb squad. They wanted a bomb squad. It isn't a drug transport… it's a torpedo."

"With Callen and Sam trapped onboard."


When Kensi walked into the building, Deeks felt the need to say something. "Kensi, Granger said head back, what are you doing?"

"I'm not leaving them, we couldn't have missed them by more than a few minutes but if we go back to base we may as well just give up." Her voice echoed her hurried motions, pushing things across shelves, pausing on anything with writing on it.

Instead of arguing, as he probably should, Deeks started rummaging through everything on the table. There was a thick layer of the expected refuse, munchies and beer cans but, no sign of anything hinting at the existence of a submarine on their dock. There was a tablet hidden under a chip bag.

"Got something." Deeks announced, lifting the tablet off the table and clicking it on. It was a gesture unlock, which made him grin inwardly. He held the screen below a light and saw the oily trace of fingers on the glass; on the part of the screen with the gesture unlock he saw the remnants of the letter 'N' on the glass. On the second try he got the direction right.

"What's that?"

"I guess it belonged to one of the drug runners. Looks like... Akmal Haan." He replied, navigating through the email, chat and internet browser history before putting the tablet down and grabbing his phone. "Call Eric, tell him I'm going to tether a suspect's tablet to my phone, he should be able to access its contents."

"Right." She complied, pulling out here phone and hitting the speed dial for Eric.

Marty continued flicking through the tablet's contents, not seeing a whole lot of interest. The chat seemed to be tethered to a SMS service.

"Eric, Deeks is tethering a tablet we found, see what you can get off it."

Deeks heard a nearly inaudible confirmation from the technical operator only a few seconds before he noticed a warning prompt on the tablet.

Remote access requested… … … … …

Remote access acquired.

With that a search overlay appeared onscreen and he watched Eric work his magic for a moment before moving on. Kensi had become fixated on a weathered old binder on the other side of the room. It was stacked on a shelf with a bunch of manila envelopes and loose paper. When he got a glimpse of it over her shoulder he noticed that the contents looked a lot like a ledger.

"What do you got there, Kens?" He asked while making his way around the table.

She opened the binder wider so he could see, the column titles weren't English but it looked like account holder; payment date, payment amount; comments. "Payment records. The last actual record is from 2012 – wasn't this place in business until the middle of last year?"

"Yeah, yeah they were. I guess they got a payment that made them stop worrying about keeping track?"

"Not by the looks of this place, unless all they bought was the TV and the console."

"And the sub."

"I don't think this place is associated with the brotherhood; it's too…"

"Innocuous? That may be the point."

"Yeah. You might –" she stopped midsentence and pulled out her phone. "Find anything, Eric?" – "Yeah that makes sense." – "Alright, well it was worth a try."

"Nothing?" Deeks asked, deflated.

"Nothing."

"Well, we could move our search out of this room - maybe that will help."


For a moment the two agents just stared at each other; no jokes, no anecdotes, nothing but palpable dread as they both came to the same realization – they were trapped. The ominous rumbling of the sub's engine was louder than the Challenger at full tilt even from the front of the vessel, the vibration seemed to only heighten the tension in the air of the compartment. Sam turned away and patted the door, feeling along the seam methodically, probably hoping for a release switch or something familiar from his time on military subs. It became clear very quickly to both agents that this was not the case.

"Can you open it?" Callen asked from over his partner's shoulder.

"There's no latch."

"Damn. Okay, uh, maybe there's a release?" Callen replied, eyeing the walls near the hatch.

"Even if there is, we don't want to go up there." The SEAL replied warily, his eyes fixed on the hinges of the door.

"Yeah, but we will have to eventually." G responded, turning slightly and eyeing the rest of the room. His eyes fixed on a conduit running along the wall of the sub.

"No." Sam responded before Callen even had the chance to ask.

"They will have an oxygen tank, they may be drug runners but they don't want to have to surface in the case of a malfunction any more than the military does."

"That's it? That's what you're going on?"

"That's all we've got." G approached the conduit, stopping before he reached it to map out his surroundings first. The conduit lead to what looked like a breaker box but, it had none of the caution markings of a military vessel. The box was unlocked, showing a number of unlabeled small switches and a single labeled switch at the top titled 'MAIN'.

Callen took a minute to look around. There should be emergency lighting even with main power cut but, he didn't want to risk not knowing where he was. "What else we got? This second pipe is a fuel line, I'm guessing we don't want to cut that."

"Right, not a nuclear sub." The SEAL paused, pondering the situation. "Everything overhead is hydraulics for the elevators and on this side I got another fuel line, ballast water and –"

"Ballast water?"

"Yeah, a sub like this will need a ballast tank in the front and aft to control the pitch. They probably pipe water between them."

"Do you think there is manual ballast control somewhere in here?"

"I don't see it but, it's not impossible. The only other line over here is 'waste water'."

"Don't even think of cutting that." G joked, trying to lighten the mood a bit.

"Hah."

"Alright, sure your footing, I'm gonna flip it." He announced, reaching for the junction box. He watched his partner look around the room once more before he flipped the heavy switch. With a loud click the overhead lights immediately went out and the airflow from the vents died down.


"We have two agents stuck in your sub, probably trapped in one of the compartments. How can they get out?" Eric spoke into his headset, tapping Nell into the call halfway through his question. It was hard to coax himself into a less panicked state for the sake of calling the man but, somehow he managed.

"What do you mean trapped? Is it still moored?" Charles responded, just from his voice Eric could tell the man was simultaneously flustered and very wary of being overheard. The voices in the background of his call tapered off into the distance as the man pushed his way through a few sets of doors, presumably away from prying ears.

Before Eric had the chance to deny the civilian any specific information, Nell interjected. "It's gone. We don't know where it is."

"Are they alone? Do you know which compartment?"

Eric had to restrain himself from telling Charles the whole truth. It was a tightrope walk every time a federal agent needed advice from a civilian. Even if Charles could be of more help if the man knew everything, they couldn't risk information on the subject leaking out – intentionally or otherwise.

"No, they uh, they aren't alone. How many compartments are there?"

"Three, though I assume they aren't in the cockpit or we wouldn't be having this conversation." He responded quickly.

"What are the other two?"

"Ballast and cargo. Again, if they were in the ballast compartment they would surely have surfaced by now, you'd have called the coast guard instead of me and we wouldn't be having this conversation."

Eric had to give the man some credit for being pragmatic at a time like this. "So they are in the cargo compartment. What's in there?"

"Aside from the hold, that's also where the power and fuel lines run from the battery and fuel tank in the hold to the engine, it is at the bow."

"Okay, so just cut the power and they can't guide the sub anymore?"

"No. I mean, yes but, the guidance system itself is entirely contained on a computer with a backup power source that can last weeks, steering input is wireless and is powered by an alternator – sort of like power steering."

"You're saying you designed it to be piloted remotely?" Eric asked pointedly.

"I only did what they asked! I had no idea they would…" He trailed off as his breathing grew more exacerbated.

Eric paused for a moment while the man calmed down. It was hard not to sympathize, the man had only just got the news about his wife and they already needed his help to save two agents – Eric couldn't believe he almost told him about all the lives at stake. The Brotherhood had apparently asked him to design it to be drivable without main power; it wasn't like he would have been able to negotiate.

"It would shut down the oxygen generators, inertial guidance and the electronic ballast control. They will need GPS feedback at regular intervals, probably every few minutes or else risk going off course."

Eric muted the call. "And they will be headed for the Darlington."

"Okay, uh…" She trailed off, tapping something into her tablet. "The Darlington is headed to port at Hueneme; just over seventy nautical miles from the boatyard."

"I thought you said it had been at sea for three weeks!"

"Emergency recall, something about their engineer being compromised." She responded curtly, Eric saw the frustration in her face and as he turned back toward the map of LA he heard her quietly add. "Sorry."

Eric unmuted the call. "What speed is your sub capable of?"

"Forty nauts."

"Thank you." Eric replied before unceremoniously hanging up. "We have just under two hours to find a series of pings that looks like it is heading for a navy ship."

"Plotting the course from the shipyard now, let's hope they are taking the most direct route."

"I'll talk to Granger, hopefully he can get our sub moving in the same direction, should buy us some time. Let's just hope they managed to cut the power."


"So, now what wise guy?" Sam snapped, still holding onto the bulkhead. Apparently when G flipped the switch he killed everything, even the emergency lighting, assuming a drug hauling ship would even have a use for such a thing.

Before responding G looked around the nearly pitch black compartment; a green standby light next to the switch he had just flipped appeared to be the only source of light that remained. He reached into his pocket and flipped open his multitool with one hand while he hit the flashlight function on his phone, shining it toward the hold. His eyes locked on the hinges he had to remove, confirming his earlier observation that they were cheap, simple barrel hinges – the pivot on the bottom hinge wasn't even driven in all the way when they built the sub.

"Good old civilian quality construction." He mused.

On the other side of the compartment he heard Sam unholster his sidearm, when G looked over he saw his partner's aim trained on the door to the cockpit, holding his phone against the barrel with his left hand. The SEAL glanced back at the light Callen was shining in his direction and nodded. "As punishment for making me come in here, I'll keep watch."

Callen didn't waste time getting to work on the hinges on the hold's door. He placed his phone on the ground below the door, shining the light upward at the hinge. The pin was wedged tight but, using a wrench he found as a hammer and alternating between twisting and pulling from the other side with the pliers on his multitool he managed to get the first hinge unpinned.

"One down." He announced.

"Yeah, that's great. Why aren't they trying to get in here and restore power? Don't they need navigation?"

"You make that sound like a bad –" Callen paused when he smacked the second pin out of the hinge. "Thing."

"I'm just not comfortable waiting. We should at least be trying to anticipate their next move."

"Maybe their next move is to open the hatch and swim away because they're afraid of the dark?" Callen joked.

With the hinges off, G managed to bend the padlock off using the width of the door as leverage. The iron eyelet of the hasp warped and snapped, leaving the door to the hold wide open.

"They're going to regret trapping us back here." G mused as he started to pull out the fertilizer, one bag at a time. The engine was obviously in the back of the ship so the only logical conclusion as to why there were fuel lines running along the walls was because there was a fuel tanks in the hold with all the fertilizer. He intended to make sure the fuel pumps stopped working. Even if it meant never making it to the surface, they weren't going to make it to the Darlington – not if he had anything to say about it.


"So, I don't even know what we're looking for anymore, Fern." Deeks admitted.

"Anything, Deeks. Anything that looks even remotely related to that sub or anything on it." Kensi replied, her tone reflecting the panicked motions of someone who realized they were running out of time.

"Well, I see a lot of open space that could have at one point been used to store drugs until they could move it into the sub." It was a lousy time to try and crack a joke but, timing was never exactly his thing.

She reacted as he probably should have expected, spinning around to face him before almost yelling. "Just shut up. If you aren't going to take this seriously then just –"

"Sorry. I'm just trying to keep calm here." He cut her off.

"It's supposed to be a drug transport but, if it ever was they cleaned this place out perfectly."

"Maybe it isn't that simple. Look at this." He turned his shoulders and moved to the side so that Kensi could see past him to the floor beneath a shelving unit. At first she seemed hopeful but, when she showed her the granules in his hand that he had been inspecting she began to share his confusion. The substance resembled white sand, the crystals were of random shape, odorless and too square to be crystal meth. "I spent some time in a narcotics rotation and I've never seen anything quite like this."

"Oh no." Kensi murmured. When Deeks looked up she was inches from his left side. "Damn. They aren't smuggling drugs."

"What is it?"

"It's fertilizer."

A door slammed in the distance, it sounded like the sound came from the other side of the building but it was difficult to be certain. Deeks looked behind them and shared an uneasy moment of silence with his partner before they both reached for their sidearms.

"We've got company."


Author's Note: Woo! Aren't first chapters fun?

Also, in case you're wondering - reviews make authors happy :)