Disclaimer: I own neither NCIS nor Dark Angel.

A/N: Sorry for the long wait on this chapter. NCIS season 6 came out on DVD so, of course, I needed to purchase and watch it all. Yay!

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Seeing Eyes

Chapter 8

by marbleglove

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Gibbs had managed to fall asleep on the military transport despite the fact that there was a major terrorist attack threatening humanity at large and the fact that he would be seeing DiNozzo in a few short hours. One of the lessons learned in the Marines: sleep when and where you can, your next chance may not be for a long time.

He woke up ready for a new day, carefully hiding his smirk at his poor beleaguered—and now exhausted—team. Under the circumstances, he would take his amusement where he could get it, since that too would be unlikely to come again soon. But he would avoid rubbing their noses in it.

Having woken, though, he found he was just as glad for having missed any conversation as he was for the sleep. Landing on an Army base, NCIS didn't have quite the same pull as Gibbs was used to. The soldier escorting them actually tried to be chatty. Even worse for him, he started off a conversation with, "So, are you here to deal with those mutant freaks?"

Gibbs hadn't quite believed his ears. His own team all took a step back when he stopped where he was to slowly turn on the soldier. "What?"

The soldier hadn't realized the thin ice he was walking on. "It's in all the news. The mutant freaks escaped from some military lab. I guess it was a Navy lab, huh? Since NCIS is coming to deal with it. Although I would have thought they'd send a regiment or something to take them out."

Gibbs had enough experience with anger to have learned to speak through it. "What exactly are you implying, soldier?"

The soldier seemed to finally have caught a clue, at least. He started to look nervous. "Er, sorry sir." He was not nervous enough, though, since he kept talking. "Just everyone on base has been talking about it. Which branch did it, and who's going to be mopping it up."

Gibbs knew perfectly well that he had been angrier than he was now at various points in his life. With the rage currently filling him, though, it was hard to think of that. "Everyone on base is talking about who's going to be assigned to kill American soldiers?"

"Sir! They're not soldiers! They're transgenic mutants! They were built in a lab."

"They're soldiers, soldier. And if they were built in a lab, then they didn't even volunteer for it."

"But…"

"Let me get this straight, soldier: your suggestion of how to deal with a bunch of underage draftees is to deny them retirement?"

Agent Juarez apparently felt it was time to save the idiot. He interjected, "And were not given the right of informed consent to the enhancements made. Boss, Doctor Palmer just emailed me his first review of the research."

The news at least distracted Gibbs from his rage. "Well?"

"The DNA contains pieces from a lot of different sources, but each soldier had a base DNA that was pure human. He theorizes that the base human DNA came from the researchers on the project, so once we have samples from the transgenics, we should be able to track down who their, well, parents were." Juarez smirked at the soldier who had been blatantly eavesdropping. "So, solider, you may not want one of these mutants to marry your sister, but what if one of them is your sister?"

It makes Gibbs wonder what Logan Cale will think of Juarez. DiNozzo would have either loved him or hated him. "Anything else, Juarez?"

"Uh, yeah, Boss. Abby emailed a video file. She marked it as urgent but we'll need a computer to access it."

"Soldier. Computer, now!"

The soldier finally figured out his role, and took them where they needed to go without further comment.

It might—might—have gone a little way towards calming Gibbs down if the video from Abby hadn't been like a follow-up punch. She had sent him an Eyes Only video that had aired while they had been in transit.

For the first time in any of the videos, Eyes Only's eyes turned away from the viewer. His eyes flicked to the side, then his whole head turned to the side. "Alright people, this is the last you're going to hear from me for a while. Stay strong. Peace. Out."

By the time they finally reached Logan Cale's apartment the FBI had already been and gone. Looking at the evidence strewn site, bullet holes in everything, Gibbs thought that the FBI team had either been overworked or incompetent and most likely both. At least there wasn't any blood. Yet.