CHAPTER 10

(Author's note: I'm just wondering if anybody picked up the third television show Easter egg in Chapter 4.

Dang! I just looked at the word count on this thing. I was supposed to be writing this for fun and as a "palate cleanser" before starting a new project, but just realized I've crossed the official line into novel length!)

This whole situation felt off to Steve. A single emerald might have been left behind by mistake, but he didn't think so. Furthermore, there had been no thefts of the other components needed to build the phase lock magneton shield. He needed to talk to Apploy, no to be honest, he needed to talk to Shalon, but that wasn't possible. If they awoke her now, she'd die from the radiation poisoning that Nedlick had caused with his rebellion years ago. Next in line to talk to would be Gillian, but again, that wasn't an option for obvious reasons.

He really wasn't sure who he could turn to at this point. Rudy was gone, York was so specialized as to be useless outside the field of biomedical engineering, and there was nobody in the OSI who was working on anything like that anymore. That was one of the problems of being buried so deep: funding was hard to come by. He sat back in his chair at the desk and considered his options very carefully. He hated the idea of going outside the agency any more than he already had.

Two hours later, he was no closer to solving the problem when his secretary announced that Jim Castillian and one of Apploy's men were wanting to see him. Telling the woman to send them in, Steve stood and went to the corner window that overlooked the capital, trying his best to channel the spirit of Oscar Goldman.

"Colonel Austin," Jim said. "Geffin has some information that I think you need to hear."

"Go ahead," Austin turned to the other man.

"Nedlick can't build the shield generator," the man said simply.

"Why?" Steve asked.

"Because he doesn't have the power converter from our home base. He could have all materials he needed a hundred times over, and it wouldn't do him any good. That power converter is key to making the phase lock magneton work."

"Could he use another source?" Steve asked. "Maybe nuclear or hydroelectric? He was using geothermal before."

"He was using geothermal for raw power. Raw power won't help him. He needs the power converter to turn the raw power into an energy field. He doesn't have that, and there's no way he can get that."

"Could he make one of his own?" Steve asked.

The man shook his head and said, "No. Not without several alloys and materials not readily available on earth, and at this point you still don't have the infrastructure to manufacture," the man told him.

"So the emerald was a ruse?" Steve asked.

Geffin took a deep breath and said, "Nedlick does not see your people as advanced enough to understand the nuances of his thinking. His attitude is that you are barely more advanced than Sasquatch's species."

"We call people like that narcissists," Jim said.

"So I'm told," Geffin replied. Steve kept to himself what other group of people he thought fit that bill.

Taking his own breath, he asked, "So what would Nedlick's fall-back position be?"

"He's lost most of his forces in head-on attacks. He's throwing away his own people with abandon. Since a head-on attack is not accomplishing what he wants, he may fall back onto our original mission here."

Steve nodded and said, "Apploy told me that this era closely paralleled a similar period in in your own history. That you were here to study it in order to better understand your own history. I believe the term he used was violent."

Geffin nodded and said, "Exactly. It would seem that Nedlick isn't above the same kind of violence."

"But what does that have to do with his next move?" Steve asked.

"One of the problems that plagued our world and yours is radicals who are willing to use weapons of mass destruction to make their points."

"But I thought you said you don't have any weapons on Earth," Steve said.

"We don't," Geffin replied. "But you do. And, with his TLC he would very easily be able to get past whatever security you might put into place."

"So, he's likely to launch a nuclear weapon at the city just to kill my grandkids?"

Geffin considered Steve's question and shook his head, "i don't think he'd resort to anything that could set off a war. I think he's more likely to create a disaster that can be blamed on an accident." He stopped and said, "Like what happened at your Chernobyl."

Steve nodded and thought about what he said. "Wait a minute, the closest nuclear power plant to the city is Calvert Cliffs. That's downwind of not only the capital, but is also outside the kill zone for that kind of disaster. It would hit Delaware and Maryland but miss the city."

"Colonel Austin," Jim said. "Don't forget that there are several nuclear powered vessels at dock."

Steve nodded and said, "He would still need to come and go. You just can't set a nuclear reactor to blow and do what he wants it to do. He's going to have to infiltrate the ship, disengage the reactor's safeties, ramp the power up and keep the crew from stopping him before he got off. That's not going to be easy."

"Nedlick is very resourceful," Geffin said.

Steve nodded and asked, "Have you told anyone else about this?"

Geffin shook his head and said, "No. Agent Castillian thought it best to bring it to you first."

Steve replied, "Good. Now I want you head over the Navy Yard and inform Director Vance and his MCRT about your theory."

"Do you think he'll listen?" Castillian asked. "He wasn't very happy about the way we do things."

"He'll listen if it'll save lives. Just make sure that Agent Gibbs knows to."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to send Kate in to do some snooping around," Steve said.

Jim nodded and said, "Good luck."

"Isn't that what I'm supposed to tell you?" Steve asked with a slight smile.

"I'm not the one dealing with Kate Goldman," he said.

"I see your point," Steve told him. "Now get out of here."

Okay, it had been the strangest couple of weeks Tim had ever been through. And halfway through it all, much to her chagrin, Mrs. Austin once again found herself in the role of teacher and counselor as she slowly put Tim through his paces. Kate Goldman had been called off on assignment to investigate something for Director Austin, so Mrs. Austin had been drafted. Of course they, along with Doctor York had been forced to use borrowed Time Line Converters from Apploy's people to see that he was up and around as soon as possible. It was during this second week that he finally met Jim Goldman, nephew of the late Oscar Goldman, the former Director of the OSI.

Jim was a tall fit man who liked to run. Tim remembered the man having been in line for the gold at the World Unity Games, but a boating accident had temporarily put him in a wheelchair. The rest of the information was classified, and Tim had never felt like digging for it. What he discovered however was that he had a wicked sense of humor. The slightly older man had managed to cheer Tim up several times over the past few weeks when he thought he was going to sink into despair.

The whole time compression was strange to him, and he knew it was probably going to cause him some difficulty when he got back to the Yard. For one, he realized that intellectually, he was going to be farther along in the grieving process than the others, not only for his friends, but for his failed relationship with Delilah. That was going to cause some problems.

Tim had started keeping time with two watches. He kept his sports watch on him which kept what felt like normal time to him while using the TLC. He kept his old gold and silver wristwatch on the table by his bed so that he could keep how much time was passing in the world around him. From his best estimates, his TLC was set to allow him to experience a week for every sixteen hours. He had no idea how long he'd been under its influence while in surgery or recovery. It looked like about two and half maybe three days had passed since the night of the fight in the Austin house.

Coming back from a run with Mrs. Austin, he sat back down on the bed and watched the people frozen in time around him. "This feels so strange," he told her. "And I keep getting this buzzing sound. I don't know if it's in my head or part of the nyosynthetic augmentations."

The older woman gave him a grave look and asked, "Have you spoken to Doctor York about it?"

Tim nodded and said, "Yeah. He can't find a problem. Even Apploy checked it out and couldn't find the source."

Jaime gave him a stern look and said, "Listen to what I've got to say very carefully, Tim. Anytime, I mean anytime, that your bionics don't feel right, or you get some kind of interference, you need to report it to Doctor York immediately. I can't tell you the number of times some interference in our bionics has been a clue to resolving the mission."

"Really?" Tim asked surprised.

"Oh yeah," Jaime said.

"Such as?" Tim asked.

"Well, there was Doctor Franklin's Fembots. The first series caused an interference with my bionic ear. Before, during the rescue of Athena One, Steve almost lost all power to his bionics. That was the real reason Major Kelly had to pilot the rescue vessel back. Steve's bionics were seizing up on him. That's not to mention the problems we had when our bionics had been infected with a computer virus." She smiled at him and for some reason, she reminded him of Ellie. "So yeah, that's one of the most important things about being bionic. You have to tell someone when there's a problem. You never know what it might mean."

"Yes ma'am," Tim said.

She looked at him questioningly and asked, "Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

He shrugged and said, "Go ahead."

"You know that Steve, and I both went through a difficult period of adjusting to being bionic. Even Kate did. But you seem to be having little problem adjusting. What gives, kiddo?"

Tim shrugged and said, "I guess because I've known about bionics for so long that the idea seems kind of normal to me. Furthermore, like Kate, I got to keep my original parts. I just got some new accessories."

She nodded to him and said, "Makes sense, I guess."

Before Tim could reply he felt that buzzing again. "There it is. Did you feel that?"

"Feel what?" Jaime asked. "Do you want me to get Doctor York?"

"It's gone now," Tim told her. "For just a second, it felt like my brain was itching."

He watched as the woman got up and went over to check some of the readouts on the equipment. She ran a scan backwards a bit and then printed it out and circled it. "You've had a significant spike in alpha wave brain activity."

Tim gave her a confused look. "My eyes weren't closed."

Jaime smiled at him in surprised, "I guess I should have known that you'd understand what Alpha Waves are."

"Any idea why the spike?" Tim asked.

The older woman shook her head and said, "None."

Tim sighed and then looked at her, "It doesn't seem to be interfering with my bionic interface, it's just annoying, and it's not all the time. So when can I get out of here and go back to work?"

"We're just wrapping things up now, Agent McGee," Doctor York said coming through the door. Tim glanced down and saw the TLC the doctor was wearing was set to the same speed as his and Jaime's. He was a tall thin, handsome man in his late forties early fifties. His blond hair was just starting to silver at his temples and his gray eyes were bright and alert behind the black glasses he wore. He was dressed in a white lab coat that hung over his white shirt and blue tie like a tent.

"That means?" Tim asked.

"That within two hours... " he looked down at the TLC setting, " ...'our time', you'll be released from this facility. They're going to need you at the Yard. Geffin has a theory that is quite frankly terrifying."

"What?" Tim asked.

"I'll wait and let Agent Gibbs tell you," York said. "But he's going to need your expertise."

Tim nodded and asked, "And what should I tell my coworkers about what has happened to me?"

"They're cleared for information on bionics, Apploy's people, Sasquatch, and neotraxin. Tell them as much as you are comfortable with. They understand security," Jaime told him.

Tim nodded and said, "Well, let's get this show on the road." He looked over at Jaime and then back to the doctor and added, "Jaime said I should tell you about anything unusual I'm sensing with my bionics."

"That's a good idea," York said with a smile.

"Well, I've had periods when I feel like my brain is itching," Tim told him. "Show him, Jaime."

With a nod and a smile, Doctor York looked at the readouts. Then going over, he checked the watch that Tim was using to keep time in the outside world and ran some quick numbers through the calculator mounted on his clipboard. With a nod he pushed his glasses up on top of his head and said, "I'm not worried about this right now. If it becomes a problem, let me know and we'll see what we can do to block it. But to be honest, this is an unexpected side-effect of your more advanced bionics. Actually, it's a rather good one."

"My brain itches and it's a good thing?" Tim asked.

"In this case, I'd say yes," the doctor told him.

"What is it?" Tim asked.

The doctor smiled and said, "I think I'll let you figure that out for yourself."

Gibbs watched the three children followed by Bishop, as they came down from upstairs for breakfast. It felt good to have children around the house again, even if it was under such horrifying circumstances. With a smile he set down on the table a pile of bacon, a large bowl of scrambled eggs, white gravy, and homemade biscuits. Damn it had been a long time since he'd cooked like this. "I hope you slept well."

"Yes sir," Haven said quietly. Then looking at the table she said, "Breakfast looks good. Thank you."

The child looked over at the other two and said, "Thank you from all of us."

Gibbs smiled and said, "It's my genuine pleasure. Now eat up. Agent Bishop is about to go off watch, and Agent DiNozzo will be here soon. Least I can do is send her to the Yard with a full stomach."

Bishop smiled and slid into the chair next to them, "Thanks, Gibbs. Any word on McGee?"

"Doctor York called and said that he should be back at the Yard by noon."

"I dreamt of Uncle Tim last night," Haven said. "He was getting better."

Gibbs grinned at the child and said, "I'm sure he is. Your grandfather said that the serum they gave him will make him better much faster."

Harper nodded and said, "The neotraxin. It's very powerful stuff."

"That's what they tell me," Gibbs replied.

"So, still no school today?" Haven asked as the front door opened.

"Did I just hear a kid complain about no school?" Tony DiNozzo asked as he picked up the NCIS bullet-proof vest from the table by the door and began to put it on. "You sure you're not blood related to McGee?"

"We're sure, Agent DiNose-tho," Bethany said, the last syllable whistling through her missing front teeth and distorting the name.

The senior agent gave the little girl a strange look and then said, "Director Vance wants you both at the Yard as soon as you can get there."

"I know," Gibbs said. "I've already been briefed." He then turned to the kids and said, "And don't forget. If there are any problems, you are to head straight to the basement. Your friend is down there and will help take care of you."

Bethany nodded to Gibbs rather seriously. But Jethro noted that both Harper and Haven were a bit hesitant.

"I mean it, guys. We're talking about your lives here. Don't do anything stupid."

Again, the twins looked at each other and then nodded to Jethro and said, "Yes, sir." Gibbs felt his mouth draw into a taught bow of a frown, and he knew this was the best he could get out of the twins right now. They wanted revenge, and were willing to put themselves in danger to get it. He gave DiNozzo a knowing look. The other man nodded understanding.

"Good," Gibbs finally said.

Tony looked at the table and said, "Boss, I didn't know you could cook like this."

Gibbs just shrugged and said, "Some skills a man's got to learn on his own."

Tony just nodded and said, "Got it, Boss." Then looking around, he asked, "Anything I should know?"

"Agent Castillian will be with you a little later. The OSI is giving us as much help as we need, and Director Austin wants two agents on Duty at all times."

Tony nodded and said, "Got it."