Disclaimer: I own neither NCIS nor Dark Angel.

A/N: Okay, there's a bit of pseudo science in this which I made up because it works so well and I'd say it's probably about as realistic as anything in the Dark Angel canon. If you happen to know a more believable explanation of how any of this is possible, feel free to let me know; otherwise keep in mind that this is science fiction, with a strong emphasis on the fiction bit.

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Seeing Eyes

Chapter 14

by marbleglove

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They'd been up all night, and Logan was working on putting together a computer communication system so that they could talk with Abby via video rather than a cell phone that was short of power. It was decidedly odd to see Tony, of all people, working competently at fixing up a computer system. Gibbs liked computers just as little as he ever had, but Logan seemed to really understand them.

"I can see why you have trouble with Alec." Gibbs spoke casually. That really should have been Logan's first clue. Gibbs didn't really do casual conversation.

"He's an ass."

"Hmm. He reminds me of this guy I used to work with: Tony DiNozzo."

Logan gave an offended squawk. "He does not!"

Gibbs smiled.

Logan gave him a suspicious look but then abruptly and with no subtlety what-so-ever changed the subject. "We should be able to talk to Abby now, and she should have received the stuff you sent her."

Back to business, Gibbs tucked his humor away. "Connect me through."

A few minutes later, a wavering image of Abby in her lab stabilized into clear and lovely definition. Abby looked up with a big smile.

"Tony! It's so good to see you!"

"Hey, Abs. You, too. You look wonderful. I love the new tat." Logan was in full charm mode. Max was looking decidedly jealous but Abby knew better than to be distracted by a bit of flirtation.

"I've been so worried, especially since I realized, well, that you do what you do, and then I analyze the pictures, and Tony, you're all you but different now."

"Yeah, I'm Logan now, Abby. Not Tony."

"No, you're Tony. You have to be. You—" Gibbs cut her off at that. If left to her own devices she could go on a five-minute rant and Logan would probably let her.

"Abby. Did you get the samples?"

"Hey, Bossman. Yes, I did. But we're not through with this, Tony."

"Yes, you are." Gibbs stated. "What did you find?"

"It's weird. The blood samples you sent me are all weird because, hello, transgenic, but weird even for that. Jimmy's been helping me go over them, but I actually recognize a lot of it. Gibbs, I they were using my research. I never should have accepted that contract. I thought we'd fixed everything when you put Sergeant King in jail, because then none of the bad guys got a hold of it. But the US still had it and now they're the bad guys, and, and Gibbs, it's my research! They were using my research to do bad things to people!"

"Yes, Abby. I know. But we're going to use it to save people now."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. Now tell me about the weirdness."

"Okay, since there hasn't been much time, I've just been comparing the blood samples to each other and to a couple of samples of base human. There are a couple of genes that all the transgenics have and that none of the base humans have. I focused on those. One of those genes is treated the same way by all the transgenics except for the one labeled Max."

Logan smiled. "Excellent. We have evidence that while all the transgenics are immune to a particular disease, Max was actually made to carry an inoculation."

"That's what I thought. It's odd because, well, people don't generally come with things made that easy, but well, it was the only explanation I could come up with for the way that particular gene was treated in Max. But…" Abby trailed off.

"But?" Gibbs prompted her.

"So there's an artificial gene that's been tacked on to the original gene. Well, mostly tacked on to the carrier gene that's holding the original gene. And wow, that sentence got a bit involved."

"Yes, it did. Why don't you try saying it again."

"Well, see, the one gene, I'll call it the immunity gene, see all the transgenics have it, right?" Abby didn't wait for a response, just took a deep breath and continued. "In Max, it's attached to another gene, that's the one I worked on. It's a carrier gene, something that would allow anything that's attached to it to be spread. Right? So it's dangerous but it doesn't really do anything on it's own, it just allows other genes to tag along. Are you with me so far?"

She actually waited for a response this time. Gibbs was almost tempted to see how long she'd wait because she was practically vibrating. However long experience told him that she was hopped up on enough caffeine to kill a herd of elephants and if he wanted her to continue working, he'd better not push her too hard. "Got it."

"Well, there's another gene attached to the carrier. It's not present in any of the other transgenics, and it actually seems to be some sort of artificial virus. I'm not sure what it's supposed to do."

"Hmm." Gibbs considered that. "Did Juarez send you what he got?"

"Yeah, but it's messy. A bunch of random papers. It shows that they were doing research regarding the immunity gene but don't really have enough to figure out what they were doing more specifically. I haven't found anything regarding the second gene, though."

"Can you remove it?"

"Gibbs! You should be amazed that I've even been able to find it. The fact that I've identified three different genes in a single night; it's miraculous. Hanging out with nuns has clearly helped my karma. I've got serious know-how but what you're asking for is impossible. Or maybe not impossible but really, really hard and time-consuming. Hundreds of man-hours. And we're on a tight schedule here. Days! I can't do that in days. No one can. Not even one of the major labs."

Logan finally spoke. "Don't worry about it. I know what the extra gene does."

"Really? What? Cause Jimmy has been muttering and banging his head against the wall and I finally had to kick him out of lab because of that gene."

Logan smiled, but Gibbs had a feeling that there was something off about it.

"I'll bet. Max was designed specifically to be an inoculation. The bad guys sort of piggy-backed off of that. They gave her a specially designed virus coded to a specific DNA. A lot of man-hours spent on an assassination: Ziva would definitely have disapproved. But we know it works."

"Logan!" Max had stopped looking jealous and now looked furious. Gibbs wondered who had been assassinated that way. He tried not to think about what it would be like to be used as an assassination tool as she had been.

"Not now, Max. Abby, I'm sending you some more research. Just see what you can do about making the carrier gene airborne and capable of being released to the general public." He typed something, obviously emailing her some more documents.

"Tony, that's, well, that's sort of terrorist activity. Making an airborne pathogen…"

"I know. But it's the bad guys who are making the pathogen, we're just spreading the inoculation."

"Can we just make it a regular inoculation and send it to the hospitals?"

Gibbs answered that. "No time, Abs. The bad guys in this case are highly placed, they could stall this until it's too late."

"I guess."

"You can do this. Hurry."

"I can do this. Yes. Of course, I can do this." She nodded once with military determination, clicked her heels, did an about-face, and marched off to another area in her lab space.

Logan smiled fondly before breaking the connection.

"Logan," Max sounded agonized. Gibbs stayed still and silent, wondering what he had missed, hoping that he was about to find out. Luck was with him, as Max didn't even glance in his direction. "Don't do this. You can't."

"With the whole world at stake? Or at least regular old humanity? That's several billion people, you know. And you shouldn't care about what I do. Isn't that what you said? I lied to you, I hid my past. You don't know me, so how can you care?"

Logan was obviously quoting her words back to her, and it came across like a slap to the face. Even Gibbs knew better than to do things like that to an upset woman. Tony should know that that was a sure fire way to drive a woman away.

"Yeah. I shouldn't care. You'll find you're death one way or another. Not my problem!" She turned and walked away with studious casualty. Gibbs recognized the style: his fourth wife did that. The argument was similar too. Tony would know it was sure to drive Max away.

Gibbs finally spoke up. "Logan."

"Yes, boss?" Gibbs let the 'boss' part slide. He had been Tony's boss, not Logan's.

"You made Abby think the assassination attempt was successful."

Logan dragged his eyes away from where Max had stormed off and turned to look at Gibbs. "Yes, I did."

"But you're the target, aren't you? You wear medical gloves whenever you touch Max. You're asking Abby to kill you!" The more he thought about it, the angrier it made him. Abby would be devastated.

"Tell me then, Gibbs. What are my other options?" Logan looked him dead in the eyes, serious and challenging. Tony had done that sometimes. It had been rare but always important.

They needed to distribute this antidote as soon as possible. They didn't know when the plague would be released and they couldn't stop it. They needed to released the antidote and give it a chance to spread through the entire world population before the plague did the same thing, killing people as it went. It all needed to happen yesterday if not earlier.

There weren't any other options and they both knew it.

Gibbs walked away.