Haunted

Kate and Tony's genius son and daughter, Stefan and Fiorella, create a time machine. But something goes horribly wrong and they end up in 2006, in a world where Kate died.

Chapter Two: Interrogation

"Ella, I don't understand," Stefan began in a low whisper. "How can we exist if Mom is dead here?"

Fiorella shrugged, unsure. "If we could find the disc, we might know."

"But you don't have any theories?" Fiorella hesitated. "Ella? What is it?"

"Well, you do remember when we were doing research on time travelling, we found heaps of stuff on alternate universes?"

Stefan nodded. "Something about travelling through time somehow causing a shift in the balance and ending up in an alternate universe?"

Fiorella nodded, and whispered her theory to him. "Something like that. I think that may have happened. And if it has, I don't know how to get back to our universe."

"Couldn't we just do the same thing again?"

Fiorella shook her head. "No way of making sure that we get back to where we were, for one, and we don't know exactly what happened… we have some idea, but that's not enough, Stefan."

Stefan nodded, and a tear escaped his eye. He wiped it away hurriedly, glaring at Fiorella, daring her to mention it. She didn't.

Stefan composed himself and they walked back to where Abby was, and stood proudly in front of her. "What do we do?"

Abby thought for a few moments. "You can stay with me until we figure something out properly."

Fiorella finally sniffed one last sniff. "You sure, Aunt Abby?"

"Totally. It'll be so cool! You guys can tell me stuff about the future!"

Fiorella was about to point out that everything would be different, for one, a Time Machine would not be invented as they would not exist, but she suddenly realised something. "Where is Maria?"

Stefan gulped. "That's her ribbon." It was stuck in the elevator door.

"We should have never taught her how to use obsolete technology, should we?" Fiorella asked rhetorically, before dashing toward the lift herself.

"Obsolete technology?" Abby asked, and Stefan nodded, getting down on the floor. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for the Time Machine! It's got to be around here somewhere," he said, almost begging in his mind that he was right.

Maria had, in the meantime, made her way toward the bullpen. "What the hell is that kid doing here, Boss?" McGee asked.

Gibbs looked. "I have no idea."

At that point, Maria spotted Tony and her whole face lit up. "Papa, oh Papa!" Everyone looked confused, and wondered who the girl was talking to.

"Di chi sei figlia?" Tony asked.

The five year old's face crumpled. "Papa?" she asked, "Sono Gabby. Non ricorda hai?"

Tony shook his head slowly. "Come ti chiami?"

Fiorella came bursting in and covered Maria's mouth before she could answer that question. "Sorry!" she smiled. "Gabby really does get into a lot of awkward places, doesn't she? Come on, Gabriella." Fiorella let out an awkward laugh, and tried to direct her toward the exit.

Maria pulled away. "How many times do I have to tell you, Ella! Only PAPA can call me Gabby!"

"Then only Stefan can call me Ella," Fiorella countered calmly. "Now come along."

"Hold it," said Gibbs. Fiorella stopped and looked up at them, brushing her hair away from her face. Tony looked at her and his mouth went dry. Kate. His Katie. Gibbs continued, unaware. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

"You know, that's a really long story…"

Stefan and Abby presently came dashing into the room. "Ella! I found half the Time Machine!"

"You know," Ziva spoke up suddenly, echoing Tony's earlier thoughts. "That Ella girl looks an awful lot like Kate."

"Who're you?" Stefan said bluntly. Gibbs looked back and forth between Stefan, Fiorella, Maria and Tony. Everyone started talking over top of each other, each only getting in snippets of their sentences in.

"Alright. Everyone: SILENCE!" Gibbs finally said. "Abby, ab ovo, okay?"

"Okay boss," Abby started, taking a sip of her Caff-Pow. "It started like this: You know how I'm always the first one in the lab, right?"

"Abs."

"Right. Well, when I walked in this morning, there were the three kids, sleeping in my lab. Maria woke up–"

"Maria?"

"Gabby," Fiorella interjected.

"Yeah, Maria woke up, and I thought it was one of those really weird dreams where – um, anyway…"

Abby talked for a good ten minutes, managing to get off track a fair few times in the process. She managed to leave out everything that told anyone that they were Tony and Kate's children. Eventually she finished with, "…brings us to now."

"Okay." Gibbs said. "Why exactly did you believe their story about Time Travel so quickly?"

Abby shrugged. "I've been doing some research in my personal time, Gibbs, and I really think that it's possible, so I figured that if these kids knew me then maybe I had helped them with the design."

"You didn't," Maria informed her. "They're geniuses. It was three years of work."

Gibbs ignored her and turned to look at Fiorella. "Well? Lets assume for a moment that you are Time Travellers. Why did you purposely ignore Abby's warning and why did you come back so far, or, at all?"

Fiorella looked at Stefan. Stefan nodded. "It was stupid, really." Fiorella began. "Mom and Papa were fighting too much, and not the kind of nice fighting that they used to do. Stefan and I thought that if we went to the past to when they started dating, that maybe we could fix their marriage. The Time Machine was only designed for two people, me and Stefan. It had our DNA coding in it. We didn't want anyone else to use it. But Maria tried to take it off us when we had it set for 2006, and because she has a similar genetic makeup to us, when we pressed the button it sent us here. If Maria hadn't come, I'm sure that it would have worked properly. Stefan?"

Stefan handed her half the disk. It was making some strange crackling noise and emitting a yellowish light.

"This is the disk, or at least part of it. It's broken right now." Fiorella looked at it, fingering it and using her fingernail to push a wire into place, before she continued "It works by demagnetizing all the particles in our body. It's very similar to a tele-disc, but this one can travel through time as well as space. We set it to just take us to the same place as we already were, though, because we didn't want to make it too complicated for our first travel. The travel through space feature needed to be refined anyway. I think that maybe having Maria come with us, we activated the space feature as well."

Fiorella looked back down at her disc, frowning with thought. Looking around, she grabbed a pen off McGee's desk, and Tony's cell off his desk. Using the pen, she cracked the phone open.

"What!" Tony gasped. Fiorella took no notice, and Gibbs only hit him over the back of his head, watching with interest.

She looked at the disk again, then at Tony's cell, before dismantling it even further. "Dio! What is with the past and outdated technology?" she screwed up her nose.

"Ella, it's the past. Here." He handed her a pocket knife that flashed blue and green.

"Thanks," she smiled, pressing a button which produced a laser. She played with a dial before turning the laser on the cell, which melted parts of it and allowed her to access some important chips. She popped them out with a fingernail and dropped them in her hand. Tossing Tony his now useless cell, she fiddled for a few minutes with the chips, eventually squeezing them into place.

"Please state your full name and date of birth. Please state your full name and date of birth." The machine spoke mechanically. Fiorella looked at Stefan.

"Do it," he nodded. "It doesn't really matter anymore. Nothing really matters anymore, Ella."

Fiorella jerked her head in a semblance of an agreement. "Got it." (please state your full name and date of birth). "Fiorella Angela DiNozzo. 27 January 2008." Fiorella didn't look to see what the reactions of her father and his colleagues were, but if she had, she would have noticed Tony standing agog and Gibbs glaring intensely, and heard him hiss something about Rule 12. Abby could hardly bite back her comment on what Tony looked like, but managed to refrain. Fiorella simply continued to listen to the half built Time Machine.

"Processing results. Please wait. Please present for retinal scan. Please present for…" Fiorella held the disc up at eye level and allowed it to scan her eyes.

"Processing results. Please wait. Please place your left pinkie on the print scanner. Please place your left pinkie…"

Fiorella did as she was directed, pressing into the small pad of gel for a few seconds with each finger while a blue light flashed.

"Processing results. Please wait. Please present your DNA coding."

Fiorella used a needle that had suddenly shot out from the Time Machine to prick herself and withdraw blood.

"Processing results. Please wait. Results processed, identity confirmed. Awaiting reprogramming."

"Si!" she exclaimed, pumping a fist into the air. "Stefan, we're back in action!" she hugged her brother tightly and twirled her sister around, before dancing off into Abby's lab, oblivious of what reactions she had just sparked in the teams. Abby hurried after her, before heading back to grab her forgotten Caff-Pow, then running out again.

"She's even better than me with computers," McGee commented. "I wouldn't have been able to make a Time Machine with Tony's cell."

Stefan corrected him quickly. "We haven't exactly got a Time Machine, per se. We need to put some things that we lost in the journey back on, a few of which haven't yet been invented."

"I guess that's not a good thing, is it?" Gibbs sighed. Abby, McGee and Stefan all shook their heads as one.

Authors Notes: Constructive criticism is VERY much appreciated. Although it will probably not affect anythign in this story, since the writing process is finished, anything that will help me in the future is good. Also, sorry that this is late, but I couldn't log in on Friday... I got it to you as soon as possible. Hope you enjoy.