Earlier that morning, after Gibbs dismissed them, Tony and McGee settled in to DiNozzo's car and headed towards Michael Coleman's former apartment.

"You look rough, McGee," the senior agent commented.

"Gee, thanks, Tony," Tim quipped. "You always know just what to say."

"I'm serious, Probie."

"I just didn't sleep well. It's fine. I'll catch up on sleep tonight."

DiNozzo did not answer, instead letting the conversation shift naturally. "If you say so. In the meantime, I think we're gonna actually get something useful out of this."

"What makes you say that?"

"My gut."

McGee snorted. "I don't know if the "Gibbs gut" is something you can learn."

"Ah, come on, McGeek. After all this time you can't not learn it. Don't tell me your intuition hasn't gotten better over the years. I know it has."

"...Alright, fine. It has."

Tony chuckled at the small victory. "Hopefully by the end of today we'll have more leads to go on."

"Yeah…" McGee glanced out the window before looking back at his friend. "Do you think Moore and Coleman's murders are connected?"

DiNozzo paused. "I don't wanna make any declarations, but like you said earlier: Rule 39. There's no way it's a coincidence. At the very least it would have to be a freak accident that two flightlings were killed. But it wasn't an accident and it wasn't a coincidence."

"Gibbs is right, though," Tim said, a bit dejected, "we don't have any physical evidence to make the connection and no leads to follow up on it."

"Hey, Ziva might find something with Ducky or Abby. Who knows. The day just started."

"You're right. I just…this one's bugging me, Tony. We need to solve this one."

"We will," the senior agent affirmed as he pulled on to their intended street. "You got that map of Coleman's route that I sent?"

"Yeah, it's pulled up in my maps," McGee got out his phone, suddenly brightening up. "I forgot to tell you- I looked at the running app on his phone and I can see where he stopped running. I'll be able to track his pace and where he was stopped." They parked and got out, but after a minute of blinking at the sun, both agents shared a look and took off their blazers, leaving them in the car.

"God, it's hot," Tony complained. "If we weren't in public I'd have you get out your wings and make us some shade."

"Luckily for me, we are in public and I can still say no."

"Come on, McGee. What's the point of having wings if you can't use them?"

"Well, flying, for starters. Fighting…general equilibrium and protection…those are all good uses."

"Shading us from the sun is protection," DiNozzo bantered back. Tim rolled his eyes even as his lips quirked a bit. He then focused on their route and started down the street.

"Coleman ran all this distance every day?"

"According to his roommate he was training for a half marathon or something," Tony said, orienting them as they passed in front of Coleman's building. "So he started here…there's the CCTV camera," he gestured to the little gadget fixed to the side of the building far over their heads. "And the van was parked…there," he nodded down the street. "Coleman goes that way, and the van goes after him."

Tim nodded. "Here we go."

The two agents made the trek, taking note of every surveillance camera positioned on private properties along the running path. There weren't many, but the idea was that (hopefully) they could go back and get the footage from each camera and see Coleman running. And presumably, see the van following behind.

"Ok, so he was about to cross the street here," McGee noted at a crosswalk. "But he stopped for a while. Long enough that the run paused on the app for a minute."

"I can't see a whole lot of traffic being here late at night," Tony mused. "Wonder what made him stop."

Tim looked behind them at a camera on the corner shop. "Hopefully that one got whatever it was."

They kept on for another half mile, until the app brought them to the spot in the park where Michael Coleman had been found.

"Huh. So it all did happen right here," McGee said. "I thought maybe he might have been snatched and then dropped off at this place. This is where his phone was dropped and where the app officially ended the run."

He looked at the road that ran through the park and circled around a fountain before heading back the same way. "If the person in the van did attack Coleman, he probably had to drive it to its dead end and go back the same way afterwards."

"Good thinking. Alright, well…four cameras? I counted four," Tony said. "Let's go back and see if we can get a look at any of them."

Some of the people they asked were more helpful than others. The two individuals who answered the door to their private homes flat-out refused to help and closed the door on the agents' faces. However, the shopkeepers that owned the other two cameras were much more open to sharing their footage.

The little shop on the corner was closest to the park, so they stopped there first on their way back to the car. When they flashed their badges and explained themselves, the barista at the cafe retrieved her manager, who immediately offered to help. The manager pulled up the recording from the evening they needed, and Tony and McGee watched as Michael Coleman jogged into view. He made it to the corner of the sidewalk, paused to look both ways, and when he didn't see anyone, kept going. However, just as he was about to step into the street, the big windowless van whipped around the corner, startling the young man and causing him to jump back onto the curb. The agents saw the kid watch the van go down the street and bend over to get his disturbed breathing back on track. Then Coleman straightened up and jogged on, not realizing that he was running towards the place where he would shortly be killed. Then they fast forwarded the video and stopped it when they saw the van then come back the way it came.

"You were right," DiNozzo said. "It turned around in the park and went back down the street."

"Well, we can pretty much say for sure that whoever was in that van killed Michael Coleman," McGee nodded. "But the picture is fuzzy here, too. Not clear enough to get the license plate."

They thanked the cafe workers and continued back the way they came. When they got to a warehouse where the first camera was hooked up, they stopped short.

"This place looks abandoned," Tony looked up at the building in front of them.

"That camera doesn't even look like it's on," the junior agent added. "I didn't notice that the first time we passed it."

"Still, let's go in, see if anyone's working here that could help us."

Tim followed the senior agent into the door. Neither of them felt their confidence boost once inside the warehouse, which seemed to be devoid of life. Rusty scrap metal and industrial equipment was strewn about. Everything was coated in dust. At the far end of the structure, old totaled cars were here and there.

"Damn," Tony muttered. "Well, it was worth a shot. Let's…" he trailed off as his eyes fixed on one of the cars. The only vehicle that was not dusty and busted up happened to be a large, windowless, dark blue van.

McGee followed his line of sight and his own eyes widened at the scene. They didn't hear anyone around, but slowly and silently approached the van.

The hood was up, as if someone had just been doing work on the engine.

DiNozzo paced around the van, careful not to touch anything but looking for anything of note. Tim took his phone back out and snapped a picture of the license plate to run in the database once they returned to NCIS.

The older of the two agents was gazing at the door to the driver's seat, trying to decide if he should try and open it or to wait. Before he could make the decision, McGee's head snapped up. DiNozzo could tell that the younger man heard something and examined the junior agent's face for a hint at what he was listening for.

Tim for his part was struggling, because he couldn't quite tell how far away the footsteps he heard were. Every little sound echoed with the high ceilings and distorted his ability to determine what was nearby.

He eventually decided that he heard the footsteps coming from another room in the warehouse, to the right. They were getting closer and the agents were about to decide whether to hide or wait for the person walking towards them. However, the echoes did indeed throw off McGee, because he thought the approaching visitor was much further away than he was. So the two men weren't prepared when the small figure rounded the corner and saw them. The figure froze, half his face covered by a small mask that he'd undoubtedly been using while working amongst the dust.

"Hi, how're you doing?" Tony said, having no choice but to try and act casual now that they were discovered. But the person did not answer. Instead, he turned and bolted back through the door and into the side room.

"Hey! Stop! NCIS!" DiNozzo shouted. He and McGee immediately gave chase, sprinting after the figure into the next room, which was simply another cavernous space full of junk. The messiness helped the unknown person, who seemed to be familiar with the layout. Meanwhile, Tony and Tim had to watch their step so as not to tread on a loose piece of scrap and twist their ankles or break something. They'd both just leapt over a small obstructed area when DiNozzo noticed that the man had stopped to reach into his waistband and pulled out a firearm.

"Gun!" Tony yelled, drawing his own SIG Sauer and skirting behind a large nearby heap of scrap metal. McGee ducked behind an old, abandoned car that provided him with a good vantage point to see where the man was running, and drew his weapon as well.

If Ziva and Gibbs had been there, the team could have done their oft-played strategy of having one agent cut off a fleeing suspect from behind the building. However, it was just the two of them. So direct pursuit was all they had.

The unnamed man turned to fire at the agents, but when he saw that they were taking cover, he changed his mind and kept running. The two partners went after him again.

The back of the warehouse had a large rack of chains standing out by itself in the open. It seemed like the last person to use this rack had just strewn the chains all over the rack without sorting them, and so they hung down like a bead-curtain made for a fan of heavy metal. Unfortunately, the mysterious person ran through the chains without issue, his figure now a bit obstructed by the chains. Tim pushed ahead of Tony, using his strength to send him further forward with each stride, hoping they could reach the perp before he got away.

And then he hit the chains.

In this fast-paced pursuit, McGee hadn't stopped to consider what would happen if he were suddenly to find himself held back and weighed down by chains. Just the day before he'd had to be removed from a meat locker because it was too much; why wouldn't this evoke a different reaction?

Well, to be fair, it did evoke a different reaction. The problem is, it was a worse reaction.

He might have made it through alright, but a loud bang caused him to stop in his tracks just as he felt the irons on his shoulders and arms. And suddenly he wasn't in the warehouse anymore, and all Tim could feel were his wrists locked in manacles and the stretch in his arms as he was tied to the floor, which was several feet below him and he could smell his blood and hear it rushing in his ears and there were muted, fuzzy sounds of pain which were coming from him and god was his vision blurry and everything hurt and he felt like he was on fire and his wings were in absolute agony. He was going to be sick, he was going to pass out, he was going to die, he was going to die, he was going to die.

…..

DiNozzo, for his part, had fallen a few paces behind McGee in their pursuit. He would have made some quip about how when they first started working together he could've outrun Tim any day of the week, but things took a turn for the worse very quickly and those thoughts were immediately swept from his mind.

It wasn't like they had never gone after perps with guns before. It wasn't even like they'd never been fired at before. But never had things gone this superbly badly on a normal case-related, on-foot chase.

In front of the senior agent, their subject had run through what looked almost like a wall of chains. But, he could vaguely make out through the spaces that there was a back door to the warehouse on the other side. Luckily, Tim was gaining on the guy, and if they could keep it up for just a little bit longer then they'd get him.

However, a sudden bang echoed around the high ceiling and although it caused the senior agent to jump slightly, he only broke his pace for a second before he was back up to running at full speed. But he quickly stopped short when he noticed that McGee had halted in his tracks. As he'd always been trained to do, Tony ran past his friend, but he was far enough behind that when he turned the corner to the outside of the building, the unnamed man was nowhere to be seen.

While part of him wanted to keep running, he knew it wouldn't help at all. And besides, his concern for his best friend would always supersede suspect-chasing, whether DiNozzo would ever admit that or not.

It was a good thing he decided to turn back, too. Because when he reentered the warehouse he immediately saw Tim twitching and breathing harsh, empty breaths. He was still on his feet, still amongst the chains, but his head was down and one hand was clenched tight on his firearm. The other hand was hovering over his head, as if he were about to grab it from a painful headache.

"Woah, hey, McGee-" the senior agent approached quickly, his own hands slightly up and out in a gesture meant to calm, even though the younger man wasn't looking at him. "McGee, talk to me."

But Tim looked up and it was clear from the distant, almost vacant look in his eyes that the junior agent did not see Tony. In fact, it was pretty clear he didn't realize where he was at all.

DiNozzo had seen a lot of terrifying things over the past year. He'd seen his loved ones, including and especially McGee, injured within an inch of his life. All throughout their awful adventures, whenever he was nervous about Tim's remaining humanity, he looked at his friend's face and saw in his eyes that McGee was still there. But this?

His fear for a while had been that he'd look at his friend, newly changed into a flightling, and one day he wouldn't see that man anymore, but a killer. This look was somehow far more frightening, for when Tony looked at his friend now, he saw that Tim was gone. He was off somewhere else, trapped in some corner of his mind, seeing and experiencing horrors that DiNozzo had only seen the aftermath of in real life.

Tony had very little knowledge of psychology. But the words "trauma" and "flashback" flickered somewhere in the back of his mind and he knew that McGee could neither hear nor see him, that the younger man was in trouble, and, even scarier, that the junior agent was still holding his gun.

DiNozzo stepped off to the side so that even if the firearm were to go off, it wouldn't hit him. He knew that suddenly touching McGee wouldn't help, and in fact might make things worse, but he had to get that SIG out of his friend's hand.

Slowly, cautiously, Tony reached out. "Hey, Tim, it's me. You're safe. I'm just going to take this away for a sec, okay?"

He put his hand over McGee's, and although the younger man didn't panic any further, he did jump a bit at the touch, still staring out into space. The senior agent then used his other hand to gently pry Tim's fingers off of the weapon….

Success. With a small breath of relief, DiNozzo drew the SIG Sauer closer and quickly removed the magazine, before sliding the gun away and putting the magazine of bullets in his back pocket. With this concern neutralized, he could finally put his full attention on attending to his friend.

"McGee, look at me," this didn't work, but he said it anyway, "you're in a warehouse. You're not in Italy, you're safe. You're safe. You just ran into some chains, that's all. McGee…"

This didn't seem to be working. Tim was still locked in a frozen, still position, the metal still all around him, clinking, running across his shoulders and his back.

"Tim, I'm gonna move you back a few steps, okay? Out into the open. No chains. You're safe."

He gently put pressure on the younger man's arm until they were both backing up out of the tangled web that had put them in this situation. It looked like they were almost going to make it out without issue. But a lose couple of links must have brushed against McGee at the last second, because he suddenly jumped, and his wings flew open with a snap. Unfortunately, he wasn't wearing clothes altered to accommodate his wings, and his shirt tore apart from the strain. They didn't fly off of him per se, but his clothes were now in bunched rags around his shoulders and arms, his back exposed to the open air. And still, Tim did not snap out of it. In fact, now that his most valuable weapons were out and accessible, things got worse. The big feathery appendages arched slightly up and around their owner in a protective posture, almost as if the wings had a mind of their own and only sought to defend their owner. This movement caused DiNozzo to stumble back a step, and yet McGee still had that absent, trapped, terrified expression on his face. The younger man let out an inhuman hiss. Tony had heard this before, but only in the most stressful and dangerous of situations. It was pure instinct when Tim made that sound, and to be honest, it made the senior agent all the more stressed. But nothing compared to the fear he felt when the now-raggedy shirt slipped off of one shoulder to reveal, plain as day, that not only had their suspect fired his weapon, but that McGee had been shot.

...

A/N: thanks for sticking with me, guys. I promised I'd pick up the pace soon, didn't I? let me know what you think!