A Geek Sort of Thing
Written for the 'All is Discovered'Chapter One- The Geek Takes Flight
Story Notes
Weirdness, weirdness, weirdness. I can't even guess where this came from. Does this count as a crack!fic? You tell me.
With a boss like Leroy Jethro Gibbs, it wasn't often the MCRT had a nice, quiet, peaceful sort of day. But, usually they got a little respite in the mornings, while he wandered around the building, drinking up his lifeblood and discovering all the gossip he had missed while he was gone.
Of course, such peace only lasted if everyone followed the rules.
"Where. Is. McGee?" Gibbs demanded, every word causing his two present team members- Tony DiNozzo and Ziva David- to flinch.
"I don't-" As much as Tony hated to admit not knowing anything, he had been trying to reach the younger man since he'd arrived promptly 3 minutes late as usual and realized his Probie was not at it's desk. His Probie was much like the computers he ruled over- always running on a strict program. That Tim was late meant nothing good and the fact that both he and Ziva had failed to contact their team member in the ten minutes it had taken Gibbs to work his way back to the bullpen after first realizing that McGee was late (as well as giving Tony his daily why-are-you-still-three-minutes-late head smack) meant they were in trouble too.
"He's not answering his cell or his home phone." Ziva took up the slack when Tony shriveled under Gibbs' glare. "He hasn't answered any emails or IMs. Instant messages," she quickly elaborated. She didn't know if Gibbs actually knew what instant messages were or not, but knew better than to launch into an unprompted explanation- especially one regarding technology.
"He didn't say anything to either of you?" Gibbs demanded, taking a seat at his computer. In spite of his many warnings over the years, McGee still persisted in sending emails on occasion when he was out sick- some nonsense about it being regulation. Because, obviously, Gibbs was a big regulations guy.
"No, Boss." Tony protested, shaking his head rapidly. "We all went out Friday. He left a little early, but said wanted to do some writing. Typing. You know."
"Mm." Gibbs said in answer, rapidly pushing the button that would turn his hated machine on.
He carefully navigated his way to his email, growling under his breath the whole time and shooting glares at his team just for good measure. How dare McGee break Rule 3?
But, no, even this form of communication fell through. He looked in his In-box, ignoring the 92 unread emails from the last few weeks and searching for his agent's name.
The last email McGee had sent him was from two weeks ago, the results of a computer analysis on one of their suspects' computers.
"Alright." He shut off the computer, ignoring the small voice in his head that sounded like a screaming McGee. He knew he was supposed to follow some format or another in properly shutting the damn thing down, but didn't really care. "Go to his apart- Abby." He broke off his orders as his forensic scientist slowly made her way into the bullpen.
She was dressed in her usual style, a short plaid skirt and a skeleton t-shirt, both of which were 'decorated' with chains and partially obscured thanks to her lab coat, as well as the clunky boots that made her almost as tall as him.
"Hey, Gibbs." She smiled at him, nervously wringing her hands. With her hair up in their usual ponytails and her guilty expression, she looked like a little girl.
She was definitely hiding something from him.
He instantly stood, his expression fierce. "Hey, Abs. What are you doing up here?"
"I can't come and visit?" She asked, pouting up at him.
He wasn't about to be taken in by that expression however. She never did anything without a reason. "Abby." He said warningly.
As usual, she failed to comprehend or at least acknowledge the threat behind his words, turning instead to look sadly at McGee's empty desk.
Ah, that was far more promising a lead. "Abby," he gently grabbed her by her shoulders and turned her back to face him. "Do you know anything I should about McGee?"
Her bright green eyes momentarily reflected panic, but even as he realized what he'd asked, she smirked. "Oh, I know a lot about McGee, Gibbs. You might be interested in some of it." She teased, winking as her usual humor kicked in.
He resisted the urge to headsmack, fiercely reminding himself that this was Abby. "Abby." He growled. "Do you know where McGee is right now?"
"Um…" She bit on her bottom lip- painted rather disconcertingly in black- for a moment before brightening. "No! I don't." She declared proudly. "Timmy's location is completely unknown to me at this current moment," she specified.
Oh, God. Gibbs rolled his eyes. It was going to be a long day. He hated when Abby got literal on him. It took so much longer to get anything done.
Luckily, before he could get too angry, his team finally decided he needed some backup and joined the conversation, coming to stand on either side of Abby.
"So, you're saying you do know something?" Tony demanded before she could answer, crossing his arms menacingly.
"Um…" Abby bit her lip.
"And you did come up here to tell us, right?" Ziva asked, arching an eyebrow.
"Well-"
"After all," Tony threw in the kicker, "you wouldn't lie to us, would you, Abby? Because you know we're highly trained investigators. We know when you're lying."
Abby whimpered softly, looking to Gibbs as if for help.
He took a step back, content to let his team do what they did best. He did keep them around for something, after all- they occasionally came in handy.
"I can't tell you!" She exclaimed after a minute, hugging herself. "I promised Timmy!"
"Abby, McGee would want us to know." Ziva assured the other woman.
"You wouldn't want him to be in danger, would you?" Tony threw in helpfully.
"He told me not to tell you guys." Abby reached into her lap coat's pocket, pulling out a piece of notebook paper. "He was very specific." She added, opening the paper. "I'm not allowed to tell Gibbs, Tony, Ziva, Ducky, Palmer, any of my machines or any of Ducky's corpses what's going on. I'm not allowed to use verbal language, written or typed language, sign language, mime or psychic powers like telepathy to let you guys know what's going on."
She handed the paper to Tony, who had to raise it above his head to keep Ziva from stealing it. When she elbowed him in retaliation, he brought it down so that they both could read it, while Gibbs rolled his eyes.
"So, why are you here then, Abs?" Gibbs asked, not bothering to read the note. He knew from long experience that Abby's handwriting was ridiculously small and he wasn't entirely sure where his reading glasses were. Besides, he knew the young computer geek that worked for him. If McGee wanted to make sure Abby didn't tell anything, he'd take care of every angle. He'd had years learning how to work around Abby's moods- he was almost as good at it as Gibbs himself was. "If you're not going to help us," he added critically.
"Gibbs!" She frowned, jutting her lower lip out. "I can't! It's Timmy! I can't defy his wishes- he always knows when I do! And then he gets so mad at me! He stops talking to me and I hate it," she whined.
"She's here for his computer." Tony pointed towards the top of the notebook paper. "He wants Abby to do what she "always promised she'd do in an emergency". Why do you have 'computer' written next to that?" He asked curiously.
"Well," Abby began twisting her hands anxiously again. "A lot of hackers have a…contingency plan. In case they get caught or have to leave in a hurry. They have a partner- someone they can really trust. If anything should happen, their partner is supposed to… wipe their computer." Her words faded as she spoke, so that her last phrase came out as barely a whisper.
Still, they were highly trained investigators, with keen minds. They all caught the meaning of her words quickly.
"McGee has been caught doing something?" Ziva asked, shocked. "He is on the run?"
"I dunno." Abby shrugged. "All he said was that the past was coming back. He was going to miss some work and that I was supposed to do what I promised. And, he promised he would be okay." She bit her lip again. "D'you think he meant it, Gibbs? Timmy wouldn't lie to me…right?"
"Nah, of course not!" When Gibbs didn't speak up, Tony did, slinging his arm around Abby's waist and pulling her in for a quick hug. "You know Probie- can't lie worth a damn. But, what does his computer have to do with his past?"
"Nothing." Gibbs was still working out the implications. "But, with him going missing, they may investigate. He has done more than a few things that weren't exactly aboveboard."
"No, Tim's not worried about that." Abby shook her head, ignoring Tony's flinch as her pigtail hit him. "He specifically told me not to worry about his work computer. I came up here to get his laptop and his flash drives."
"Probie takes his laptop with him."
"I know." She said, going over to Tim's desk and pulling out his collection of flash drives. "But, I got that call from him around midnight and I've been trying to figure a way around it all night. The best I could come up with was subterfuge. I thought maybe if I came up here and was suspicious, maybe one of you would follow me!"
Tony laughed. "That's all well and good, Abs, but doesn't help us out. We wouldn't know what you were doing with a computer anyways. It's not like we could stop you."
"Oh." Abby's hopeful face fell. "I hadn't thought about that."
"Do you know where he is?" Ziva asked curiously. "I do not see how his computers could help us anyways- we would need him back to uncode them."
"Oh." Abby frowned. "Okay, I really didn't think that out. I don't actually know where he went. The only other thing he told me was not to tell Sarah anything and that when his parents called I was to tell them he was out of town."
"He thinks charges are going to be placed on him." Gibbs said, trying to find McGee's mindframe- always a hard task for him as they were so different in some things. Not in many though, not where it counted. "He wants his family protected- his actual family as well as the team. Who knows what McGee gets up to on his computers. Is it worth saving, Abby? You could save the hard drive, right? That wasn't a rule?"
She snatched the paper back from Tony, furiously reading through it. "I'm not allowed." She shook her head sadly. "No copies are to be made of any part of his computer, including the flashdrives, which I'm supposed to destroy. I know he has other copies though- I'm not worried about him losing anything important."
"Hm, no help there." Gibbs rubbed at his chin, trying to decide what to do. "I really don't want you to wipe that computer, Abs." He said honestly. "Something spooked him. What if it's on one of his computers?"
"What about his email?" Tony snapped his fingers. "Probie answers emails more than phone calls- except when you call, of course, Boss." He quickly added when Gibbs glared at him. "He answers dozens of them every day. He actually has quite a contact list, considering his background. Some of them come in handy- I know he uses them on some cases."
"I know his password." Abby offered helpfully. "And, email is on the Internet, so technically I'm not copying anything!" She added, smiling in delight. "Let's see."
She quickly headed over to Tim's desk, the others crowding around her as she took his seat. It only minutes, she was in his email account. "Uh-oh. He's already been through his email." She said, frowning. McGee was a man who kept a lot of his emails, for reference. His inbox was empty, for the first time since she'd met him.
"Can you get any of them back?" Tony leaned over her shoulder, pointing to the trash bin on the email account. "He was in a hurry, he didn't delete the trash. Probably figured they'd be automatically deleted when he logged off. Sometimes they don't though."
"Ha!" Abby grinned triumphantly, as she saw what Tony did- the trash did still have old emails in it. "I can. We really need to get that program fixed," she mused, even as she took advantage of the error.
"Okay, here are the last three messages he received." Abby quickly recovered the only messages from the previous day. "One is from someone in Cyber Crimes- he still helps them out from time to time. Another is from his publisher… that mean woman is yelling at Tim again about deadlines! And this one-" She froze in her editorial comments, squinting at the screen. "Is not in English. Is that Latin? Who sends an email in Latin?"
"That's not Latin," Tony grabbed the clicker, sending the image on the computer to the plasma screen. "McGee has shown me this before. This is Klingon!" He exclaimed, laughing. "See how some of the letters are capitalized- even in the middle of words? That's not some stupid font- that's how the alphabet works. He speaks it- remember, Boss?"
"Yeah." Gibbs remembered that dreadful Halloween, however much he tried to forget it. Though he had been amused to find out just what languages McGee knew, he was still not happy about being insulted in a language he didn't know. "I remember. He said he wasn't fluent. Did he reply to this message?"
"Um…no." Abby said, quickly looking into the Sent folder. "But, look at the timestamp. He opened this letter at 2355 last night. He called me just minutes later. It couldn't have been more than ten minutes."
"Translate that." Gibbs ordered, glaring at the
letters. "There has to be an alphabet out there somewhere."
"It doesn't work like that, Gibbs. Klingon is a real language." Abby admitted, cringing slightly. "It's not just letter substitution; they had a linguist create an actual language. I would need a dictionary."
"You're kidding me?" Gibbs rolled his eyes. "Well, get a
dictionary then. Now." He ordered impatiently.
"Gibbs, it isn't that easy!" She protested.
"Um, actually." Now Tony had to step forward. "McGee brought one in and I…well… appropriated it." He stepped over to his desk, quickly opening one of his
drawers. "It's funny; I use it from time to time. Send him emails just to keep him up to date on his language skills…"
He trailed off as the team suddenly glared at him. "I didn't send this one!" He protested. "It's only ever about stupid stuff- that crap takes forever to type out. And the grammar's all backwards, but he won't answer if I get it wrong, so I have to make sure I don't get it wrong. It's way too annoying to do too often."
"Although…" He handed the well-thumbed dictionary over to Abby and leaned against the desk. "This does explain the text I got from him."
"You got a text from him?" Gibbs seized the new information. "When? What did it say?"
"Uh, it was around 0100 last night." Tony cringed, realizing he'd lied to Gibbs earlier. "I'm sorry, Boss! I wasn't lying- I forgot about it. All he was if I had sent him an email and I texted back 'no'. He didn't reply, so I assumed he'd found out who really sent it."
"You didn't think that was a little odd?" Gibbs resisted the urge to smack his senior agent.
Tony looked down, really hesitant to answer. "Um, well, no." He admitted when Gibbs glared at him. "Boss, he didn't want you to know- didn't want anyone to know, but he still gets crazy fan mail from time to time. Sometimes it's in email form. I only know because the first time it happened, he thought it might be a joke I was playing on him."
Gibbs growled impatiently. "I warned him about those emails! If this is about one of his books again, I'll slap him so hard…"
"Gibbs, Gibbs, Gibbs," Abby broke through his words, tugging on his shirt. "It's not about his book. It says, All is discovered, flee at once. What kind of stupid message is that? Why did it scare him?"
"Is that all it says?" An actual language or not, there were still a whole lot of words on the plasma for such a short message.
"No," Abby shook her head. "That's the first sentence. There isn't any punctuation, but I think that each line is a separate sentence. Maybe. Possibly."
"Get back to work then." Gibbs said, even as he patted her on the shoulder. "I want that message as soon as I get back."
Without giving any member of his team a chance to question him, he turned, walking out of the bullpen and up the stairs to reach the top floor. As he'd known, Vance was there waiting for him.
"I wasn't aware that Ms. Sciuto had decided to become an Agent. Am I going to find McGee down in the lab?" Vance asked mildly, an eyebrow raised in query.
Gibbs resisted the urge to roll his eyes. This man was, after all, his boss. Theoretically. "Something has come up. McGee is on emergency leave," he lied without a qualm. "Personal business."
"I know." Vance smirked the slightest bit at seeing Gibbs' surprise at his words. "He sent me an email with almost that exact wording. Very odd. And so you decided to TAD Ms. Sciuto?"
"Something happened to McGee." Gibbs didn't have time for the usual cat-and-mouse game with Vance, as much as he did enjoy them. "He took off late last night, leaving Abby with a list of instructions that she won't break." He added, looking around to make sure no one was close enough to overhear them. "We're trying to work our way around them to help him."
Vance's smile faded as he straightened to his full height, proving that every once in a while he could still be a decent person. "McGee is in trouble?"
"We don't know." Gibbs confessed, quickly filling Vance in. "Someone sent him a cryptic message and then he contacted Abby and told her to destroy all his files and his laptop. He practically lives on that thing. There's nowhere he doesn't take it."
"Except this time." Vance said, turning and heading down the stairs. Gibbs followed him, a little confused, but Vance didn't stop until he was in front of Abby. "McGee's orders?" He asked, holding out a hand.
"Uh," Abby froze until she saw Gibbs nod behind the Director. "Here you go, sir." She said, handing it over and quickly turning back to the dictionary.
It didn't help. Gibbs smirked, realizing he'd caught Abby
out for once. "What've you got, Abs?" He asked.
She saw his smirk and was not amused. "I don't see a Caf-Pow." She said, deliberately ignoring him.
"Abby!" Gibbs glared at her, unamused by her behaviour. "If you ever want to see a Caf-Pow again you had better-"
Abby grinned suddenly and with a quick burst of typing, keyed up the plasma. "All done, el jefe." She said, beaming at him. "The rest of the message, as ordered,
Sir." She lazily saluted, as usual, with her left hand.
Gibbs rolled his eyes, ignoring her antics, and turned towards the plasma, but Vance, still new to the team dynamics, couldn't help himself. "Ms. Sciuto, you work for Naval Criminal Investigative Services. That implies military- how can you not know which hand you salute with?"
She winked at him, as unfazed by his glare as by Gibbs- he needed to spend a lot more time in front of a mirror working on it if he wanted to get to Gibbs' level and even at that level, if the original didn't scare her than why should his? "Sorry, sir!" She said, straightening up to attention and switching hands to snap off the correct salute that Gibbs had made her spend hours practicing her first year at NCIS.
Vance looked more shocked than they'd ever seen him. "Very well then," he said uneasily after a moment. "Back to work then, Ms. Sciuto."
"Sir, yes sir." Abby grinned gleefully before turning to Gibbs. "Gibbs, the rest of the letter makes a little more sense. It says, This was a game that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle played one time that resulted in a man fleeing his life. What would you do if your secret were revealed, big brother?"
"Sarah McGee." Gibbs said, frowning. "She sent it. Abs, get me a print out of that."
She nodded, quickly tapping in some keys and quickly a paper printed. Gibbs read it over once and quickly pocketed it.
"Why would that send McGee into hiding? Surely he would have gone to verify any issue with his sister." Ziva said, brow wrinkled in confusion. "If she was in danger, he would have come to us for help, yes?"
"Not if he felt he couldn't trust us." Tony was looking at the Director as he spoke. "I mean, it's not like his life was just getting back to normal or anything after being so rudely upheaved- oh wait."
Gibbs reached out and slapped his Senior Field Agent. He was the only one allowed to sass the Director, as he was likely the only one to get away with it. "DiNozzo!"
"Thanks, Boss." Tony said, flinching slightly.
He didn't apologize to the Director, Gibbs had long since trained him out of that behavior, but at least the Director looked mollified, which was what Gibbs had been going for.
Satisfied, Gibbs gave out orders. "Okay, Tony and Ziva-"
"Find Sarah McGee- on it, Boss." Tony snapped off the order without missing a beat.
Gibbs nodded as the two scurried back to their desks for their backpacks, satisfied that at least one part of his team was functioning correctly.
"Let Ziva drive, we need this done quickly." He ordered as they headed towards the elevators. "And bring back coffee!"
"And a Caf-Pow!" Abby ordered, jumping up and waving at Tony. "Two of them!"
Ziva grinned, slipping into the elevator, but Tony had to get his Boss's confirmation. "Get her a Caf-Pow." Gibbs conceded. "One."
"Aw, Gibbs." Abby pouted, crossing her arms.
"I could make a Mini-Pow." He threatened. Not that he would ever do that to her, if he had the choice, and Tony was already gone anyways.
But she still quickly backed off. "No, no, one's fine." She said, nodding rapidly.
"Good girl." He said. "Now, what can we do about McGee's orders for you."
"I don't see a time frame on this, Ms. Sciuto." Vance joined the conversation, waving the paper slightly. "He asks that you do as he asked, but he didn't say it had to be today. I would assume he wanted it done before we started investigating."
"Uh, well, yes sir. I guess." She said, nodding. "Before it would put him in danger."
Vance smiled. "Well, in that case, you have my permission to leave if we start investigating McGee. You may stay up here to monitor us."
Abby's eyes lit up. "That would work!" She exclaimed, clapping her hands. "The files only have to be deleted before you find them. Okay, I'll just stay here, out of your way."
"I'm going to talk to Ducky." Gibbs said gruffly. "Director…" He trailed off, unsure of what to do with the other man.
"I'll be in my office, where Sarah McGee will be brought when she arrives." Vance said firmly, before walking away.
"Works for me. Abs, send for me when they get here." He ordered before heading for autopsy.
"Hey!" She exclaimed, looking up from the computer she'd been playing around on- it was always fun to tweak with Timmy's computers, as it flustered him so- to realize she was alone in the bullpen. "Where'd everybody go?"