Mirrors: An NCIS-1 story

by briwd

Sequel to Countdown to Looking Glass. Gibbs and the rest of his NCIS team from Earth-17 have fled the threat of Armageddon for the safety of the familiar and strange world of Earth-1. As the team becomes familiar with its surroundings new threats arise, from the halls of the White House to the streets of Washington, D.C.. New allies within NCIS and the intelligence and metahuman co

3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Good men must die, but death cannot kill their names.

-Unknown

3:15 p.m.

Silver Spring, Maryland, U.S.A.

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Juliana Fern Todd was sound asleep on her couch.

The Senior Special Agent for NCIS's Major Case Response Team based out of the Navy Yard was supposed to be taking the day off. The NCIS Chief Psychologist called it her mental health day; Julie told anyone who asked "it'll be my Me day. Just me, a nice glass of wine, a warm bubbly bath and my kids to keep me company."

Her Me day started with a broken water pipe, followed by her four four-legged canine 'kids' running four blocks down the street (she caught up to them another block away) and by a weirdo who insisted on talking to her about the benefits of the Vulcan IDIC (Julie has always been Team Star Wars, not Team Trek). Julie's Day From Hell continued with her alarm system going off accidentally (the cat tried to pry herself through a window), a neighbor who wouldn't quit ringing her door bell until she was assured Julie wasn't dying (Julie assured her "no, Alma, I'm not dying nor do I plan on doing so anytime soon") and culminated in an argument with another neighbor over the height of the grass on her front lawn.

All that, as of mid-afternoon. It was no wonder that Julie, too tired to continue, collapsed on her couch and fell asleep.

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Julie's "kids" – a Jack Russell terrier named Toni; Abby, a black cat; Jethro, the big German shepherd; Claude, the basset hound; and a golden retriever she named after herself – kept her company.

The basset hound was his – Marcus's. The others were hers, although they all belonged to her, Marcus and the rest of the team.

They had been fed and watered, she was pretty sure, before she fell onto the couch; she'd get up and take care of them, again, after she got up. Given how the athletic, blonde, 41-year-old-going-on-29 felt, at the moment, like total crap, they'd probably be eating dinner around sunset.

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Only the Second Coming, or the incessant barking of her "kids", could wake Julie from her slumber – that, and the ringtone on her NCIS-issued smartphone.

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"I hear it, I hear ya," she muttered, as Julie the golden retriever began licking her face. Julie the dog had woken up Julie the human that way several times; sometimes Julie the human wiped her face afterwards.

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"C'mon. Stop it," she said, as she fully woke up, realizing all of her kids were next to her, and that her phone was ringing.

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The phone would not stop ringing, she decided. Whoever was on the line could be anybody. Whether she was 'fake-nice', snarky, or in an ass-kicking mood depended on who was calling her without leaving a voicemail.

She hit the green button on the screen and put the phone on speaker. "This is Very Special Agent Juliana Rose Todd," she said in a mock-happy voice.

"Julie. It's Marcus," said Marcus Stewart, who was the last man she wanted to talk to right now.

"Damn it," she swore, under her breath. "Hey, Marcus. I, ah, can I call you back—"

"We caught a case," he said, and this time she swore for real, glad her mother wasn't there to hear her use the f-word. As always, he took Julie and her quirks in stride. "How soon can you be ready?"

"A case? We have the day off," Julie said, as Toni the terrier jumped in her lap before she could get up and stretch. "Rock Creek Park or Norfolk or whatever, Balboa can handle. He came back for stuff like that—"

"Julie, it's not that kind of case," Stewart replied, filling her in on what Katie Yates had told her. "Here's the thing…Katie tells me the people are different."

A chill shot up Julie's spine. "'Different'."

"This isn't the team that could have been that we met in 2014. This is the team that could have been from…if Haswari hadn't done what he done."

Julie figured out the implication moments later. "Marcus. Is she—"

"Katie says she is. Katie talked to Abby. Katie saw them all. Including David. She saw Mike Franks. Katie saw her—"

"Kate."

"Yeah."

"My twin sister is dead, Marcus. They're all dead. All dead."

"These are..alternates, doppelgangers," Marcus said. "Just like three years ago. There are thousands of people at that stadium. We need to get there, and find our people—"

"They died 12 years ago, Marcus," Julie said, with an eerie calmness. "The ones from that other world, weren't them. Neither were those zombies that Black Hand creep threw at us—"

"You're right; they're not the people we lost. But they're like them, and I want you and Brooke and everyone else at RFK to find them before the DEO or Luthor or someone in this damn city gets the same idea."

"Marcus…you say Katie told you Kate was there."

"Yeah," he said a moment later. "If you leave now, Brooke and the others should get there about the same time. I'll call Brooke, then the—"

"How are you gonna get there?"

"I'll ask the director to send me a Marine copter, after I talk to Brooke—"

"I'll call Brooke. You call the director. He doesn't like it when we talk to each other before we talk to him."

"'Better to seek forgiveness than ask permission'. Just tell her to get there."

"After I explain to her what's going on?"

"I'm watching live video on the ZNN app on my phone, Julie. She already knows."

-California Governor Jerry Brown has declared a State of Emergency, following the lead of the governors of four other states: Georgia, Kentucky, Puerto Rico and Texas. During his brief address broadcast this afternoon, Brown said FEMA and state authorities estimate over 3 and a half million people appeared through the wormholes—

-the Dow has not closed, but is down 62 points since news of the wormholes first broke hours ago—

-GBS News has confirmed the Justice League branch operating out of Detroit is assisting local police and FEMA in setting up an estimated 60,000 refugees at Ford Field and another 15,000 at Little Ceasar's Arena. Comerica Park, which was set to host a baseball game between the Detroit Tigers and the Coast City Pilots, is now accommodating another 10,000 refugees—

-taking Superman's suggestions and opening up convention space in downtown Atlanta, along with Philips Arena and the soon-to-be demolished Georgia Dome—

-some surprising news here in London: two men claiming to be the late John Lennon and Freddie Mercury have met with Sir Elton John and Sir Paul McCartney—

-the liberal news media won't give my guest the time of day, but I will! He's asking a very good question: are these 'refugees' aliens in disguise? Perhaps, Appellaxians? HMMMM….-

-the White House has no comment yet on the developing story other than 'President Luthor is monitoring the situation and will address the nation at 6 p.m. Eastern'-

3:24 p.m.

Washington, D.C.

The Navy Yard

NCIS Headquarters

After stepping back, Commander Will Coburn took in the six-foot high base of the copper statue, and the life-sized figures atop its base.

Coburn stood just two inches above the base, and despite his large, solid frame and the intense personality that helped him both as the former commanding officer of the USS John F. Kennedy, then as the Special Agent in Charge of the NCIS field office operating out of Camp Lejeune near Wilmington, North Carolina, felt small.

Just over 12 years ago, an entire NCIS team – the Major Case Response Team based here in Washington at the time – were murdered over the course of four days by a rogue triple agent. The statue commemorated their lives and their sacrifice, and represented so much more.

Ari Haswari, whom the FBI and the Israeli security agency Mossad both thought was working for them spying on Islamist terror organizations, was actually working for the head of the infamous Task Force X. Coburn knew what came afterwards – two months of pure hell that made the events of 9/11 look like child's play. The Siege ended with over two million dead, including a sitting President of the United States, and the psyches of the survivors scarred to varying degrees.

Coburn was still on active duty serving aboard the John F. Kennedy when The Siege went down. The Kennedy came across a civilian ship that wouldn't respond to hails; Coburn saw the butchered bodies of the civilians on board, and the hand of Haswari and Task Force X in causing their deaths. Even after relying on his own Christian faith, Coburn still lived with the occasional nightmare from that day.

Never Forget, said a part of the inscription on base. No one will forget The Siege, thought Coburn. I hope no one forgets them.

The people leading the current incarnation of the Washington MCRT certainly wouldn't.

Coburn showed his ID at the entrance into the NCIS building and glanced at the video monitors on the walls; CNN showed host Wolf Blitzer, msnbc a table full of hosts, Fox News the Senator Mitch McConnell, LexNews someone from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. More talking heads, he thought. Probably the same old, same old.

He briefly pondered checking his Compaq Phone for messages, but since he had set it to receive only work-related texts and calls – and it had been blissfully silent for the past four hours – Coburn left it in his pants pocket. He stepped into the elevator – alone - that would take him to the third floor, and to the MCRT's bullpen.

Looks like it'll be a nice, quiet day, he thought, as the elevator made its way upward. Haven't had many of those in awhile.

The doors opened onto a third floor in a state of frantic activity; three people brushed past him without excusing themselves, all talking on their mobile devices. He stepped out as four more people hurried past him into the elevator, and he took in the scene: anyone on the floor was either talking on a phone, or into a monitor, or looking at one of the video monitors.

Coburn turned to the large monitor to his left, the one above the portraits of the criminals making up the NCIS Most Wanted List – among them Ari Haswari, Ra's al Ghul, the second Joker, Paloma Reynosa, and Marcel Janvier – and thought it odd NCIS was showing a science-fiction video show. It showed what looked like an ABC News special report, and a wormhole appearing in the middle of the Navy Pier in Chicago.

"Commander!" he heard; Coburn turned to his right to see one of his team members: Chief Petty Officer Remy Gautreau, who had come to Washington with Coburn to shadow the MCRT members working today.

"Why is that monitor not on the news?", Coburn asked.

Gautreau – a tall, lean and muscular African-American and a former Navy SEAL - looked at the big monitor. "Boss, that is the news."

"What?"

Gautreau filled him in. "This is happening all over the world."

"Not just the country?"

"No. It started happening about four hours ago. Things blew up within the last half-hour."

"Why wasn't I texted about this?"

"It hit a whole lot of people by surprise. And a lot of people weren't told what was going on. We think the big man was one of them."

Coburn turned around and looked towards the stairs, and the Multiple Threat Assessment Centre at the top of them, and towards the office of Director Maurice Drake he knew was in the hallway past the MCRT. "He usually is on top of things."

"He may be on top of this too, or he may be trying to catch up. He's walked in and out of that MCRT upstairs three times in the past hour."

"Walk with me," Coburn said, heading towards the MCRT bullpen. "You hear from Agent Stewart or Agent Todd?"

"Brooke – Agent Conners," Gautreau said, catching himself; he knew Coburn preferred referring to other agents formally as 'Agent' and by their last names, not informally by their first names. "She's talked with Stewart. She and Agent Dorneget are up in MTAC now. Agent Long left, and said he'd be right back."

"Let's wait for him, then," Coburn said, as they arrived at the bullpen. The main monitor showed ZNN; two smaller monitors showed CBS and CNC. All were focused on the ongoing event. "What about the rest of our team?"

"On their way here. Shel will have to put his dog in the facility's kennel. Maggie's bringing her mother and Estrella her kids to the visitor's lounge first. I told Nina to drop her husband and kids off there, too."

"Good. The director ask about me yet?"

"No. He knows we're here, though," Gautreau replied.

"Then, while we wait – we text our people."

Two minutes later, while Coburn was texting his entire team, Special Agent Carlton Long – a 6-foot-5 African American who looked like he could play linebacker for the Redskins or dominate the UFC's heavyweight division in addition to taking down a dozen hostiles without breaking a sweat – walked off the rear elevator. "Commander Coburn," he said.

"Agent Long," he said. "Any word on NCIS's response to…whatever is going on here?"

"Director Drake's upstairs coordinating things with some of the assistant directors: Larkin, Mosley, Ochoa, I think."

"Assistant Director Larkin upstairs?"

"He's at Quantico; we've got an office there. Brooke and Ned's upstairs talking to Mosley; she's out of L.A.—"

"Running the West Coast Office of Special Projects. We're more familiar with Assistant Director Ochoa."

"He oversees the OSP's Miami office?" asked Long.

"Worked a case with them," Gautreau said. "Pretty insane – not as insane as whatever's going on now. This is Justice League territory, homme."

"I hear ya, bro, but this thing's turned into everybody's territory—"

"Agent Long," Corbin interjected, "when the rest of my team arrives, they're to gather here. You hear from your C.O.?"

Long knew Coburn referred to Stewart and Todd. "Marc—sorry, Agent Stewart's reaching out to Agent Todd. Brooke—sorry, Agent Conners—told me to hang tight until we hear from him and Agent Todd."

"I'm going upstairs," Coburn said. "When the rest of our team gets to the Navy Yard, Petty Officer Gautreau, tell them to report here to the bullpen. I'll speak with Agent Conners, then contact Agents Stewart and Todd."

Coburn sprinted up the stairs. "He always that formal, Remy?" Long asked.

"Not always. Just when there's a case."

"This is one hell of a case."

Coburn walked straight to the entrance to MTAC, looked at the iris scanner that he expected would buzz him inside and…nothing. Thirty seconds later, he headed towards Drake's office.

3:34 p.m.

Manassas, Virginia

Intersection of Prince William Parkway and Balls Ford Road

Stewart pulled his jeep over to the side of the road, watching the NCIS-requisitioned Hughes OH-6 Cayuse light observation helicopter land in the intersection, with four Manassas Police vehicle blocking traffic in all directions. He saw a Marine run right towards him, grabbed his go bag and ran out, meeting the Marine halfway.

"Lieutenant Juan Montano Jr., sir, here to take your keys and drive your vehicle back to the Navy Yard," the Marine said as Stewart handed him the key fob. The OH-6 had not powered down.

"That thing behind you looks like it came out of a M*A*S*H episode," Stewart said.

"That may be, sir, but she's good and sturdy and gets the job done," the lieutenant said.

"Don't wreck my jeep, and enjoy the weather; it's a nice day out," Stewart said, running to the OH-6. "The way traffic looked going into D.C., we may actually beat you there."

He got inside the vintage helicopter, and shook the hand of the pilot, Lieutenant Erin Turner. "Thanks for the ride, Lieutenant, though I've got to admit I expected something a little newer."

"Don't let appearances fool you, sir. 'Jessie' will get you where you need to go safe and sound – and fast. We'll land near the FEMA camp near the north end of the stadium, Agent Stewart," she said as the copter lifted off the pavement and headed east. "ETA" – estimated time of arrival – "is 30 to 35 minutes."

"We are a long way from Washington," he said. "But a half-hour?"

"Jessie may be…seasoned, sir, but she can go, up to 175 miles an hour. We won't go quite that fast, but just about."

"Do I want to ask?"

"Let me put it this way…if she was a stock car, Jessie'd wake them boys and girls up and give them a race."

3:39 p.m.

RFK Stadium

While his team talked amongst themselves on what their next move should be, Gibbs looked at the stands, in particular the press box. There was something….different about it, from when and DiNozzo went to the RFK Stadium they knew to see the Redskins play.

He thought he remembered the press box hanging over the lower deck. The press box he was staring at didn't have club seats directly underneath it, like the ones the Redskins built in…

My world.

He noticed five different types of people in the club seats and press facilities, but he only was interested in the one person who had been watching his people and himself since they had arrived.

"Boss? Boss? Where are you going?", DiNozzo called out as Gibbs walked away. DiNozzo, Kate Todd, Mike Franks and Jimmy Palmer began to run after him when Gibbs stopped, turned around 180 degrees and held his hand out.

"You stay here, no matter what," Gibbs said.

Kate sighed in frustration as the dogged ex-Marine made his way through the crowd, away from she and their team. "Why does he always do that?", she said to no one in particular.

"Maybe I taught him a little too well," Franks said to her. "What in hell is he up to?"

"I think we ought to find out," she replied.

"We stay here, keep everyone together, just like Jethro said," Franks replied. "That doesn't mean we can't watch."

"Watch him," she said. "What's he up to?"

Katie Yates made her way into the stands, trying to stay incognito, trying to adhere to that rule that Marcus and Julie had about not letting 'them' see you while you're watching them. She felt strongly she was doing badly, but couldn't come up with a solid reason as to why.

She looked around for an empty seat to sit in, but every seat in the stadium was taken and more than a few people were sitting on the steps between sections. From what she had heard, hundreds of people had been put up in the concourse.

Some of these people looked familiar. They weren't anyone she knew or worked with personally; they were people she had seen at the coffee shop, a restaurant, or the bookstore. She suddenly realized she hadn't thought about the people in the stands; who they were, where they were from, how confused many of them were, how upset some others were.

What had happened wherever it was that they came from?, she thought. What was it like to go through that wormhole that the FEMA people had specifically instructed 'volunteers' like her NOT to discuss with anyone?

Like most people who worked for the government, Katie had heard whispers of cases of interactions between the Justice League and military personnel with people from parallel universes. Could those people who looked like Gibbs and Julie's sister and the others – could all of these people – be from one of those universes?

Omigod. That has to be what's going on.

For the moment, Katie put the issue of the Gibbs team lookalikes – and the origins of these 'refugees' - aside. She looked around the crowd, this time for who else was here. She reckoned that there were about 3,000 FEMA people here – and not all of them looked the part.

So who was Agency? Bureau? Homeland? DEO? There's nobody from NCIS, just me.

She looked around again, and decided Marcus and the rest of her team couldn't get there soon enough. She'd stay where she was, sitting in the aisles, and decided to resume looking for the Gibbs lookalikes.

"Haven't seen this many people here since my buddy and I saw the 'Skins play the Meteors," she heard a man say, sitting in the aisle seat right next to her. "Came back the next year, when they played the Cowboys."

Katie realized she had a golden opportunity fall in her lap: talk to somebody, figure out who they are, where they're from, anything else that the FEMA people didn't mention in that meeting yesterday. Like Dwayne Pride said, 'learn things'.

"I'm not much of a sports person myself," she said, looking out at the crowd. "I've been to a few concerts – me and my girlfriend saw Shania Twain here last August."

Then she realized how rude she was, staring at the crowd and not talking to the man next to her. She turned to her left to introduced herself, and gasped a moment later. "Oh God."

"Nope, just an NCIS agent," he said with a smile, attempting to put her at ease while reaching for his ID badge in his back pocket. He showed it, and she stared at the name next to the photo:

Leroy Jethro Gibbs.