Chapter 6

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All around Tim is light…colorful light…

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The warehouse, in all its grime, looked like so many others that Tim had been in in his career at NCIS: devoid of colors, lacking generous light, floors and walls needing attention, and dark corners welcoming who-knew-what small creatures. Venturing in would always be distasteful, but he was experienced enough now to not let it get to him.

Except…in those other times, there was always someone at his back. For the first time, he was flying solo.

He wouldn't let himself think of that, or how angry Gibbs might get. That was not in his future. Once he'd solved the Kinsky case, they'd all get off his back; the entire team. He would be worth something in their eyes.

Tim stepped cautiously along a cold cement floor that was stained with forklift tracks, old oil puddles with scoops of sawdust, and the litter of packing material pieces that had escaped their containers. What caught his eye was a door in the far wall; one slightly ajar, with light coming through the crack. Quietly Tim made his way across the cavernous, dimly-lit room and then pulled the door open.

The sight inside made him stop dead. It was nothing at all like the rest of the warehouse. This large room was full of colorful things, from file folders to posters tacked onto corkboard to small toys on tables and desks. An enormous screen stretched nearly from wall to wall in the back third of the room. Faint, colorful lights played across it in meaningless shapes without a pattern.

Since the room was unoccupied, Tim moved inside, slowly, taking it all in. The warning bells in his mind urged him to proceed with caution, and one hand neared his sig…just in case. There were a number of computers in the room. Tim woke up one but found it to be locked. Of course. There wasn't time now to try to hack in; he was just looking for information that involved Kinsky. Many people really still did print out files onto paper. He might get lucky that way. He started looking through the first set of colored file folders that he came to.

Or…he could just look in the lone file cabinet on this side of the room, the one labeled 'Kinsky'.

"Oh!"

Tim jumped and turned to face the speaker.

"Congratulations, Agent McGee. You found us," she said simply.

"Sheila? Sheila Flynn?" That cute guide from Hamsel Rafting?

"Hi," she smiled, and then the smile dropped. "You're more clever than I gave you credit for. I thought our tracks were pretty well covered."

He shrugged, and tried to imitate a Tony poker-face. "NCIS always finds the answers. It's part of being good investigators."

"Oh, I suppose now you're going to tell me that the rest of your team, or maybe all 48 of you who came out rafting on the fourth, are right behind you and about to storm this building."

"I guess you'll find out the hard way," he bluffed.

She twirled one of her curls. "You probably thought I was some sort of hippie-escapee from an Ivy League school and suburbia; living a romantic life in the woods and the mountains while still young, didn't you? Someone avoiding 'real life' to play on the river all day."

He didn't answer that. She pretty much had read his thoughts, though. "What is this place?" he asked instead.

"Thanks for your interest," she said with a mocking smile. "The next tour begins in…" she pretended to look at an imaginary watch. "…right now, in fact!"

"I would appreciate hearing from you that this is all above-board, or government-sanctioned, and there's no law-breaking going on here," he said as his brain failed to halt his mouth. He swore silently,

"Whatever," she said. "Anyway, this is a research facility. Unfortunately, land doesn't come cheap in this area. This is the best we could afford. Sorry about the outer appearance; we're not leasing that space."

"Researching what?"

At that, she looked just a little disturbed, or frightened. "I like you, Agent McGee," she then said. "Look; can't you just get out, and pretend you haven't seen this place? I swear we're not doing anything bad here, but our work is top secret. If our competitors knew what we were doing, it could ruin us! So we have to be really, really careful. Come on." She took his arm and steered him toward the door.

"But…"

"Please?" her blue eyes were saucer-sized, and pleading. "I mean, I could throw you out. I'll bet you don't have a warrant to search this place, do you?"

"I can get one," he shrugged. "Be reasonable. I'm investigating the death of a sailor. I've traced a connection to him here. There's a file cabinet with his name on it, in big letters, just 20 feet from us!"

"That? No, that's for our founder, Jane Kinsky. She started this lab back in 1956, though not in this location."

"You are very glib," he remarked, and for just a second, turned his head toward the cabinet…

…and that was when she knocked him out with the butt of her gun.

He came to, strapped in a chair in front of that big screen. Electrodes were attached to various parts of his body, with several on his head, and he had the low-motion feeling that he recognized as being drugged with something.

"Is this what you did to Kinsky? Robert Kinsky, the sailor, that is?"

"He was a willing test subject, and we paid a reasonable sum for his clinical trials," Sheila acknowledged.

"Did you kill him?"

She didn't answer that. "Agent McGee, have you ever thought about how much of the brain's power is wasted? You men, for example, spend far too much time everyday thinking about sex."

"I wouldn't call that wasted, necessarily…"

"There are so many powers of the mind, waiting to be tapped. Telekinesis. Telepathy…"

"Spoon-bending?"

"…Teleportation, and many others. Other governments are leading in this research. This has been going on since before the Cold War. We're only trying to catch up."

"Wait! The US government is involved in this…stuff?" Then he remembered Trent Kort's actions over the years and decided he shouldn't be surprised by any revelations. "Say, do you know a guy, tall, bald, British accent…?"

"No. Hush. Bob Kinsky was a good study subject. We've been floundering now for a week due to his loss. Can I convince you to take his place? We can't pay much; in fact I'd prefer not to pay you much at all, since you already make a good salary. I shouldn't have paid Bob so much but I felt sorry for him; lonely and living on a pittance."

"You're asking me, and yet you have me tied up!"

"I was trying to be nice. Never mind that, then. You're our new subject."

He tensed. "What are you going to do to me?"

She leaned close to him, and whispered, "I'm going to bend your mind into 100 origami folds."

Tim cried out as a needle with something in it was jabbed into his arm.

It was after five when Gibbs, Ziva and Tony returned to NCIS. Tim's desk was noticeably unoccupied, even though there was still almost an hour left in the normal workday.

Gibbs picked up the leave slip on his desk. " 'Not feeling well. Going home,'" he read from the note with it, while Tony and Ziva looked curious. "Wonder when he left?"

"I believe you can tell, with the admin function on your computer, when he signed off on his, can you not?" asked Ziva.

"Good thinking…1:57 p.m." Gibbs pulled out his cell phone and called the agent on duty outside Tim's apartment building. "Pelletier, just checking to see that McGee got home safely."

"I haven't seen him since he left for work this morning, Gibbs. His car's not here."

"Dang. He's gone rogue."

"No answer on McGee's cell, boss," said Tony, clicking his own phone off.

"Get Abby up here. She can look at his computer."

"Yes, Gibbs."

"Tony, call Hamsel Rafting. See if they've seen him today."

"Calling now."

Abby came at a run. "McGee has escaped?"

"We want to find him. Can you tell from his computer what he was doing on it today?"

"The history? Easily."

"Wait; how can you log on without his password and PIN?"

She looked at Tony and snorted. "Tony, I could hack when I was 12. Piece of chocolate cake." Indeed, in seconds she had access. The others crowded around her. "Okay, Facebook…Twitter,,,look at all these attempts he made to find someone's account. Kinsky's, I'll bet. KIrideSends. Oh, that's good. Hard enough to not easily be found, if you want to hide. And here's something: an address in Norfolk. Looks like a warehouse. That's the last page he looked at."

"Come on!" Gibbs said. Tony and Ziva had to run to keep up with him.

All around Tim was light…colored light. It was beautiful, like pale gemstones. Pinks and light purples, blues, greens, yellows. It made him happy; that was his overriding feeling.

He didn't know what the colors meant, or where they had come from. They were just there, and that was enough. He knew that he wanted to look at them forever; to let their iridescent light wash over him, like the softest of blankets. Nothing else mattered.

A slight nudging feeling made him look up and to the right. He didn't know why, but he went along with it. Then it felt like he should focus on something. On what? Something. Out of the soup of colored lights evolved one light, one shape, that was darker than the others. It darkened even more, going from pale blue to a very deep blue in a matter of seconds. Tim whimpered. He didn't want to see this. He wanted the lighter colors back. That was all he wanted to see.

The dark blue cloud took a shape; like that of a man. A man in a…Tim didn't want to put his mind to this, but he did so anyway. The man-figure, with only a shadow for a face, was shaped like a seaman in a blue crackerjack uniform. Go away! Tim thought, angrily, and he strained against the harness holding him in place. Go away!

With a silent roar, the sailor shape disintegrated, leaving red spots and then a glowing trail of lights where it had been.

I did it! I got rid of it! Tim thought triumphantly.

Behind him, Sheila Flynn made notes on her clipboard, smiling. This one would do fine. He was a fast learner. The resultant radiation was powerful, but faded quickly. Oh, yes; our benefactors will love this subject. I just have to keep him going longer than Kinsky.