Ok guys, I managed to get on my dad's laptop for now. My computer is still hinky and I'll do my best to fix it. Till then, here's this. This story will get much longer, but I felt as if I had to reveal a vital part of the puzzle to you. It's about time, I've delayed it for four chapters, eh? So please read and review; the more reviews, the faster I'll try to get another chapter up. Your reviews are fuel for the flame… or whatever… *Ziva moment*

On with the show!

Their voices tortured her. With each word she felt the need to reach out and speak to them, but something was holding her back. It felt as if she were detached in a lonely place, and it was beyond frustrating. Why couldn't she speak? Where was her mouth? Her hands? Where was anything?

Most importantly, where was she?

There was beeping, that much was evident. A steady rhythm was going, but she could barely hear it over the familiar voices echoing in the room.

"Do we know what happened?" she heard Gibbs ask. All she could do was listen. It was better than sitting there and listening to the torture of the beeping.

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

"Do we know what happened?" Gibbs found himself saying, sitting in a dark red plastic chair that sat off to the side of Abby's bed. The room smelled of various medications, giving it the classic hospital smell. Gibbs found himself disgusted with it, but given the circumstances, there wasn't much he could do.

The second thing that annoyed him the most was that everything was white. Why white, of all colors? It was blank, neutral, hopeless. It didn't provide comfort or shelter, or even any promises, so why white? The walls were white, the floors were white, the bed was white, the blankets were white, every little damn thing. Plus, Abby didn't like it. She didn't like hospitals. She didn't like the smell, or the feel, especially the look. It made Gibbs want to shoot he wall, but he was able to resist as he focused on Ducky, the Medical Examiner sitting next to him on another similar chair.

"No, not until the blood tests come back, Jethro," Ducky attempted to console, resting his hand on Gibbs' shoulder, who then looked away. "All we know is that she's alright."

"Can't you take a guess?" Gibbs pressed anxiously, but masking it with anger. Her symptoms might have been blamed on a fever, but the severe abdominal pains gave her away.

On the drive to the hospital (nobody was patient enough to wait for an ambulance so they all piled into two cars and sped off to the hospital where she was instantly admitted) the woman had woken up briefly in the car with Gibbs at the wheel and Ziva and Jimmy in the back with her.

She had looked distant, and not even a bit afraid. Foggy, even, as if her senses were being dulled. Ziva had later pointed out she didn't seem to be looking at any of them, but they paid no mind. With a pained gasp, she had admitted, though strained, her headaches, dizziness, nausea, drowsiness, and finally, the excruciating pain she had experienced in the interrogation room. When they tried to coax more answers out of her, the car cut a corner and she passed out again.

Now, she was lying still in her hospital bed, all of the makeup wiped off and any signs of any distress gone. She didn't necessarily look sick, or disturbed, or hurt in any way, which was a relief. Tony had quietly admitted to Ducky earlier that he wouldn't have been able to stand seeing her in obvious visible pain.

"Not without the proper tools, Jethro," Ducky sighed, "as much as I wish I could help. She is not my patient and I have no right in doing anything without her doctor's permission."

Gibbs stood up impatiently, quickly followed by Ducky. Everyone had previously visited Abby, but there wasn't much to say. They knew she could hear, but not much else was known. The doctor's reported she was in a light coma and her blood was being sent for testing, but nothing had come back quite yet. The team was more than impatient, so the agents, plus Jimmy, had headed back to the yard so that they could try to continue investigating the mysterious "jigsaw puzzle case" of Sean Schiuto. At least it kept their minds focused on something progressive, so neither Gibbs nor Ducky stopped them. Even Jimmy was helping out where he could, though he didn't really have any expertise in this branch.

An hour later, at the present, it was about time that Gibbs and Ducky pitched in as well. Ducky would sweep Jimmy off to the autopsy room as soon as he got back so that they could further look into Sean's injury. It was definitely possible they might have overlooked something. It had happened before, everyone messed up now and then.

They found their way back down the white hallways of the hospital until they quickly ran into Abby's doctor, on his way to meet up with them. They looked at him expectantly as he delivered the news they had received.

"Agent Gibbs, Dr. Mallard," he addressed them, but when Gibbs shot him an impatient look he cleared his throat and continued. "We got an email back from the lab."

"Well?" Gibbs demanded as if the doctor were one of his agents. The doctor didn't dare question him though and instead continued with a sigh.

"They reported that there was a fire and they'll be unable to do any tests on her blood for a few days at the least."

Gibbs looked ready to burst when Ducky stepped in. "Is it possible I could conduct a blood test?"

The doctor looked at him suspiciously, but then again, he wasn't called Dr. Mallard for nothing. Besides, with her strange symptoms and no diagnosis, he recognized the significance of the situation. In a normal circumstance he wouldn't allow anyone to do this.

"Keep quiet about it. I'll get you a blood sample," he said in a hushed voice, quickly sweeping past them, pushing his framed glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. Within a second he disappeared into Abby's room and the door swung closed, as if to protect her privacy.

The two men looked at each other as they were left abruptly in the middle of a hospital hallway as a nurse rushed past with a tube of what looked like some clear pain medication.

Unsure of what to say, they waited uncomfortably, their eyes trained on the door. Finally it swung inwards and the doctor emerged, a clear tube filled to the middle with a red liquid in hand, but it was only visible for a brief moment. The doctor dropped it in a brown paper bag that looked like it contained someone's lunch or something along the lines of that, not a girl's blood.

The doctor double checked the halls before sweeping over to the two and dropping the bag in Dr. Mallard's hands. "Listen," he said quietly. "I'm not supposed to do this and I could lose my job over this, do you understand? But with this case, with no clear diagnosis and not even a clue, I'm going to have to trust you."

The doctor fished in his lab coat pocket for a moment before coming up with a small business card, which he slipped into the bag with the blood. "Email me when you get the results," he ordered. Gibbs just looked at him, astonished. This wasn't the outcome he had expected.

Ducky felt similarly, but they weren't ones to complain. With anything possible on the line here, they were willing to take what they could get. And if there was even a remote possibility that these symptoms of Abby's were connected to her brother's murder, it was all the more important that they figure it out. Lastly, it was best that they were the ones to figure out the results of the blood test and no a doctor, who might not be able to convey to them the full details.

"Thank you, Doctor," Ducky said quickly, rushing down the hall with a speed-walking Gibbs.

"I'm driving," Gibbs announced, swinging his car keys on his finger as they crossed through the lobby without suspicion. The doctor behind them watched them go from the hallway before disappearing down it once more.

"Just be careful not to break anything," Ducky warned, receiving a half hearted smile from Gibbs.

Gibbs unlocked the car door with a quick yank and slid into the driver's seat and did his seatbelt. Ducky did the same in the passenger seat, or "shotgun" as Tony would call it. The brown paper bag was secure in Ducky's lap.

"Let's ride," Ducky chuckled as Gibbs turned the keys in the ignition and sped forward with a small screech.

Gibbs trained his emotionless eyes on the road in front of him as he drove without thinking, automatically dodging cars and making his way back to the yard. As sad as it was to admit, he had made this path plenty of times before, so it was more automatic. Ducky stayed silent at his side as blurred cars and buildings whizzed past.

x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x x

Gibbs and Ducky walked into the building with the brown paper bag still in Ducky's hands. While Gibbs sat behind his desk the medical examiner hurried on, taking the elevator down to autopsy with Jimmy right behind him.

Ziva, Tony, and McGee looked up expectantly at Gibbs for any good news, but he just shook his head. Gibbs found that it might be best not to share with them that the doctor had given them illegal permission to perform a blood test. They would become alarmed to the fact that her blood wasn't being processed soon enough. It would take a bit longer here, but it was sooner at least than a few days.

A cold voice in Gibbs' gut called to him, "What if she doesn't even have that long?"

But he ignored it because he believed in his young lab rat. Surely there was nothing wrong, some food poisoning maybe, nothing major. Nothing bad ever happened to Abby. At least, nothing life threatening, other than a tight situation. Besides, the tightest she had been in was when she was in a car with a hit man hired to kill her and when the ax was swung at her neck and when McGee's obsessed fan held a gun at her head…

Gibbs shook his head again as he tried to focus. "Does anyone have anything?"

"Actually, yes, boss," McGee called from his desk, standing up to display his findings onto the plasma screen TV. Ziva and Tony stood up along with Gibbs to get a better look while McGee stayed at the controls.

"I ran a test on the blood found in the message in Abby's lab," McGee reported as the computer speedily ran to find a match. "You know, just in case it wasn't Sean's."

The computer popped up with Sean's driver's license and a shudder ran through all four of them. His smiling face looked like a mirror image of Abby's, ominous and eerie in a way.

McGee gulped and continued his findings when none of the other agents said anything. "It was. The message was written in Sean's blood."

"Way to go, Captain Obvious," Tony scolded. "We already knew this!" he shouted, frustrated and angry. This was connected to Abby and it was scaring Tony, even though he knew it was scaring all of them, even Gibbs.

"Wait a minute," Gibbs interrupted, narrowing his eyes at the screen. "What did you say?"

McGee gave him a strange look before quoting himself. "I said, the message was written in Sean's blood."

Ziva caught on to Gibbs' look, although she might have completed the thought before he did. "But it wasn't entirely his, yes?"

"What do you mean? It came from his body, Zi-va," Tony taunted, impatient with his team. McGee shared the same puzzled look, but Ziva went on.

"It came from his body," Gibbs clarified. His agents were going to need to be able to piece this together on their own if they had any hope of figuring out who Sean's murderer was, thoughts of Abby pushed reluctantly to the back of their minds.

"But what does he share in common with Abby?" Ziva asked, turning around to look at both McGee and Tony, who just stood there.

McGee snapped first. "They share the same blood!" McGee shouted excitedly as a piece came together in his mind.

"Correct," Ziva helped him clarify. When nobody finished the last statement, Gibbs did.

"This message was written in Abby's blood."

"Boss," Tony piped up, coming up with his own theory. "Is it possible that her brother's murder is connected with her being sick?"

"But being sick doesn't cause any blood loss," McGee pointed out.

"Then he's not done with her, if this was the case," Ziva concluded as they all seemed to tense up. But while Abby was in her current condition, there was nothing much they could do except hurry up their attempts in finding Sean's murder.

"There's no guarantee here," Gibbs reminded them all. "This theory might prove to be wrong yet."

When they all seemed to freeze to try to comprehend what was going on, Tony felt as if this were too much. Waiting here wasn't doing anything for anyone and it was starting to frustrate him. Then he remembered Ducky running into the elevator with Jimmy.

"Where did Ducky go?" Tony asked, grabbing the attention of his fellow agents.

Gibbs, still reluctant to give them the answer they were probably looking for, instead simply responded, "Abby's lab. Running a blood test." It was obvious he wasn't offering any further explanation.

"Shall we go see how they're doing?" Ziva suggested as cheerily as possible. It was a team effort to get all of their minds off of the possibly threatening message, much beyond appearance. One tiny voice kept nagging them though, that it might not be true. There was a possibility, a hope, that it was all just a coincidence.

Gibbs didn't believe in coincidences, and neither did his agents.

Without another word they all filed tensely into the elevator and stood around while it sped downwards towards Abby's lab, "Labby."

They all awkwardly looked away from one another until the doors open and, relieved, they filed out and headed into Abby's lab, the door swinging open for them. At her computers, instead of a smiling Abby with black pigtails all tied up and wearing strange clothing and a dog collar, was the back of Ducky's and Jimmy's heads.

Since Ducky was still somewhat of a slow typist, Jimmy had taken over the computers themselves, typing in the commands he had learned from Abby to find traces of anything in her blood. So far, there was nothing alarming or even out of the ordinary. Ducky was taking up his place looking at a small sample of the blood taken under a microscope he had found sitting quietly on Abby's desk.

"Nothing yet, guys," Jimmy reported when he heard the multiple footsteps walking in.

That quickly changed though when the computer flashed. "Oh, wait," Jimmy altered, fishing around, trying to figure out what it was that the computer had picked up on. It was towards the end of the test, meaning it was the only trace of anything dangerous found in her blood sample.

Once the report came up on the monitor, Jimmy spoke. His voice was shaky. "Doctor, you might want to take a look at this."

Ducky stood up and joined him at the computer screen, blocking the team's view as they waited nervously for the report. Anything was possible, they had to remind themselves. Absolutely, positively anything, and always be prepared for the worst.

"What did you find, Duck?" Gibbs consulted somewhat forcefully when neither of the medical examiners responded, instead focused on the screen.

Ducky was the first to snap out of the trance. "Methanol," he responded softly.

"What—" Tony started to say, but was cut off by a stumbling McGee.

"That's poisonous," he managed. Before anyone could say anything, Ducky added,

"And fatally. We must get back to Abigail now," he said, unease behind his tired voice as he strode out of the lab, quickly followed by the rest of the team and Jimmy.

"When will the poison take effect?" Ziva asked as they all collectively ran up the stairs, making the strongest attempts to pick up their feet and rush to Abby's aid.

"Let's just say," Ducky started as they rushed out of the building.

"She should be dead by now."