Tim had watched Tony stride off - not running, but certainly hurrying - with the sergeant who had escorted him to lunch. Tony hadn't even glanced back over his shoulder. When he looked at Gibbs, he saw that his boss appeared unconcerned.
"Uh - Boss?" Tim ventured.
"Yeah, McGee?"
"You're just -" Tim heard the accusation in his voice and cut himself off. He started again, this time keeping his tone to merely inquiring. "Why are you just letting him run off like that? Shouldn't he share what he's found?"
"You heard him," Gibbs said. "He doesn't know what he's found, and won't until he follows rules three and eight. Meanwhile, he's not wasting our time with it."
"Huh. I see." Only he didn't - or maybe that was just that he didn't see whatever Tony might have seen, whatever could've possessed the other man to dash off in the middle of dinner.
Speaking of which… A glance at the table confirmed that Tony had barely touched his food, and for a moment Tim debated with himself, finally deciding to go to the service line and ask for a to-go box. Tony was always easier to deal with on a full stomach - both his and Tim's.
Surprisingly, Gibbs lingered over an after-dinner cup of coffee. Tim wasn't sure whether he should go back to work, or whether - please God - Gibbs might call it a day, given that it was pushing nine p.m. local time, which meant their bodies felt like it was already eleven.
Still, if Gibbs lingered, then he could, too - although there was no way he could drink coffee right now if he wanted to sleep at all tonight. If he'd sleep at all tonight, he corrected, knowing that depended on how the case played out.
Then Gibbs was draining his cup, and Tim figured it was back to work for them. He bussed their meal trays and caught up to Gibbs just as the other man was heading for the door.
Their escort met them there and guided them back to the conference room - where Tony and Colonel O'Neill waited for them.
"Go on, Sergeant," O'Neill told their escort. "I'll escort them to their quarters when we're done."
"Quarters?" Gibbs asked - asked, Tim noted, not demanded. This was a side of Gibbs he hadn't seen before, and while it wasn't quite as unnerving as the nice Gibbs he'd seen in the aftermath of Ari Haswari's assault on NCIS, it was still a side Tim hoped never, ever, to see again.
"Don't think you'll be able to concentrate after this," O'Neill said casually and gestured them to take a seat.
Tim did, wondering what this might be. Gibbs, though, just studied Tony.
"Rules three and eight?" he asked.
"Oh, yeah," Tony said. "Not that I expected it to pan out."
O'Neill frowned. "Rules three and eight?"
"Never believe what you're told," Tony said. "Always double-check. And eight is never take anything for granted, or never assume."
"Variations on a theme," O'Neill said.
"Necessary in our line of work," Gibbs countered.
O'Neill nodded. Then he took a breath. "I shouldn't have to remind you of the nature of this base, and this project, nor of the oaths you've taken, nor the punishments awaiting you if you break those."
Gibbs grinned, just a little. "You just did."
"Necessary in this case." O'Neill studied Gibbs and then Tim, and Tim found himself straightening in his seat. Growing up with a career-Navy father, now an admiral, had instilled both a respect for the military in general and a somewhat insouciant attitude toward its requirements. Somehow, O'Neill's scrutiny burned through that attitude.
"You know Tom Morrow as an assistant director of Homeland Security," O'Neill said. "What he really is, is Director of Homeworld Security."
"Homeworld?" Tim repeated, feeling his forehead crease into a frown. "But that makes no sense."
"It implies a danger from other worlds," Gibbs said slowly, carefully.
Tim blinked at him, not sure whether he was more surprised by the suggestion or by the fact that Gibbs had made it.
"We're the first line of defense," O'Neill said, and while he had a streak of sarcastic humor to rival Tony's or Tim's own, in this moment the colonel was absolutely serious, and Tim sat forward.
"You're talking about invasion from another world," Tim blurted. "You're talking about aliens."
"I am."
"But that's not possible," Tim said. "The Fermi Paradox -"
"Fermi was brilliant," O'Neill said. "But in this case he was wrong. Drake's right."
"Do either of them have anything to do with this case?" Gibbs almost snarled.
"Uh - no, Boss. Not really," Tim said before focusing on O'Neill once more. "I want to see one."
He forced himself to ignore Tony's grin in favor of Gibbs' approving grunt.
"Rule three," Gibbs muttered, then he, too, looked up at O'Neill. "Or, as Sagan said, extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence."
O'Neill looked between them, then rolled his eyes. He opened the conference room door, leaned into the hallway, flagged down the nearest passing person - Tim was certain O'Neill didn't care whether said person was officer or enlisted - and spoke quietly to them.
"He'll be here in a minute."
Gibbs picked up on the pronoun immediately. "He. So there's only one on base?"
"At the moment," O'Neill said. "He works with my team primarily and offers assistance to others when needed."
"You know I have to ask," Gibbs said.
Tim wondered what Gibbs had to ask, but O'Neill apparently understood the unspoken question. "He's saved my life a handful of times, and I've saved his about as many. He's earned my trust."
"I hope it's not misplaced," was all Gibbs said.
The silence that settled was … not comfortable, exactly, Tim decided. Rather, it was expectantly neutral, or maybe neutrally expectant. He rolled both phrases over in his mind. One of them would make it into his next book.
Thanks to years, decades even, of getting lost in video games or programming, Tim's internal time sense sucked, so he had no idea how long it was before the conference room door opened and a tall, bald man apparently of African-American ancestry strode in.
Tim couldn't help staring at the gold oval raised tattoo on the man's forehead, only tearing his gaze away when the man's eyes landed on him - not judging so much as accepting. Then the newcomer looked at the colonel.
"You wished to see me, O'Neill?" The man's voice was rich and resonant, though he clipped his words in a way that Tim had never heard before, not even from Gibbs.
"Yeah, Teal'c, c'mon in."
The man called Teal'c stepped into the room, allowing the door to close behind him.
"This is Teal'c," O'Neill said. "Teal'c - the NCIS investigators looking into Majors Thomas and Morgan's deaths."
"You said that I am not to associate with them," Teal'c said.
"Yeah, I did," O'Neill admitted. "And then this one -" he jerked a thumb toward Tony -"figured out you're an alien."
Teal'c took two large steps and towered over Tony. "How? We barely saw each other in the corridor earlier."
Tim wanted to back away from the man - alien, whatever he was - and he was across the conference table from him. Tim could only assume Tony felt the same, but as always, Tony covered whatever he really felt with humor and misdirection.
"To be fair, seeing you was only the last piece of the puzzle," Tony said. "There were a lot of others already in place."
Teal'c scowled, and Tony shrugged. "I already went through every step for Colonel O'Neill. How about I just say there's something off about you - you're not like the rest of us, and I don't mean that in a bad way. But when I tried to figure out what it is that was off about you, I got to alien."
"How?" Teal'c demanded again, and Tim could only hope Tony had all his affairs in order. The other man - the alien - looked ready to kill.
"He's good," Gibbs' voice cut into the silence. "Best investigator I've ever worked with."
Tim blinked at the compliment - less at who it was directed toward than that it was given at all. But Teal'c still looked ready to kill, and if anyone was going to kill Tony, it would be Tim. Or maybe Gibbs, he added silently. In either case, no alien was going to kill Tony on his watch.
"So, if you're an alien," Tim said, "what planet are you from?"
Teal'c straightened and regarded him impassively. "Chulak."
"But you look human," Tim continued, remembering rules three and eight, even if Tony had theoretically already followed them.
"The peoples of many planets look like Earthlings," Teal'c replied.
"It's a long story," O'Neill put in. "But the short version is, a lot of ancient humans were taken to other planets a long time ago."
"Funny," Tim mused. "I always thought aliens, if they existed, wouldn't look anything like us."
"Count yourself lucky, Probie," Tony said. "The colonel told me about other aliens that look more like snakes - nasty snakes."
Tim felt his eyes widening. "Them, I'd have to see to believe."
"Very well." Teal'c turned to face him and before Tim could speak, Teal'c tugged the hem of the black T-shirt he wore up almost to his pectoral muscles, revealing an X-shaped incision or slit in his abdomen.
What the…?
Tim could only stare, transfixed, as the slit opened like flower petals, and from the pouch concealed beneath it emerged a pinkish snake - or something like a snake, Tim corrected himself. It had two lips, that also opened in an X-shape, revealing long spiking tendrils emerging from its mouth.
"Jesus," Tony whispered. "You said snakes, but I never expected that."
"Neither did I," O'Neill's quipped dryly. "That's more than they needed, Teal'c."
"But exactly what they requested." Still, the snake-like thing retreated into its … Tim could only call it a womb.
"Did you kill Major Thomas or Major Morgan?" Gibbs' question pierced the silence like a bullet from one of the man's sniper rifles.
"No." Teal'c's voice never wavered, and neither did his gaze. Tim noted these details thanks to his training, but otherwise he was focused on one thing.
"Those … snakes," he said.
"Goa'uld," O'Neill supplied.
"Yeah, those," Tim agreed absently. "Those … fangs? Whatever you call them. They look small."
"Less than a millimeter in diameter," O'Neill agreed.
Tim swallowed hard, but met O'Neill's gaze. "Ducky - our medical examiner - found two holes, less than a millimeter in diameter each, in Major Thomas's brain. Could one of those gah-olds have made them, somehow?"
Just thinking of the possibility, let alone speaking the words, had bile rising in Tim's throat. To have something like that inside him, poking into his brain… Tim shied away from the thought.
O'Neill didn't, though, not if his serious expression were anything to go by. O'Neill turned to Teal'c. "Could one have gotten past the screening?"
Teal'c didn't hesitate. "Any security measures can be breached."
"Gotta ask the obvious," Gibbs said. "You sure the one inside you didn't kill them?"
"It is not possible," Teal'c said. "Only a mature goa-uld is capable of invading a body. The one I carry is not yet mature."
"But what about Major Morgan?" Tony asked. "Those things don't look like they can wield a knife."
"They cannot," Teal'c agreed. "But their host bodies can."
"Host… bodies." Tim barely recognized his own voice, as weak as it was. But at least he wasn't stuttering.
Tony looked between Gibbs and O'Neill. "What was Major Morgan working on when she died? Anything that might have threatened the thing inside Thomas?"
"I didn't see any notes in her case files," Gibbs said. "Was planning to read her journal tonight."
"She hadn't come to me with anything," O'Neill added. "But she might not've - not if she wasn't sure, or not if she suspected I'd been compromised."
"Are you sure you're not?" Tony asked, and Tim wondered that his teammate seemed to be taking this in stride. Then again, Tony had figured out that they were dealing with aliens in the first place - how? Tim resolved to ask him when this was over.
"Pretty sure," O'Neill replied. "Ever since one of them took over Kawalsky, we've had mandatory screenings when we return from missions. Besides, I still feel like me, I still talk like me. When one of them takes you over …"
"The host is lost," Teal'c finished.
"Rule thirty-five," Gibbs said, and Tim racked his brain, trying to remember whether he'd ever heard that rule before.
"Always watch the watchers," Tony supplied, and Tim breathed a silent sigh of relief. At least he hadn't forgotten one of the rules.
"In context," Tony continued, "when was the last time the screeners were screened?"
Whatever answer O'Neill might have made was cut off by the shriek of an alarm klaxon blaring through the loudspeakers.
"Alert - inbound traveler." The voice that followed the klaxon sounded remarkably calm. "Repeat - inbound trav-"
The voice cut off abruptly, and O'Neill and Teal'c barely exchanged a glance before they were tearing out of the room. Almost before Tim realized what was going on, Gibbs and Tony were following them.
Another second later, Tim's body caught up with his brain, and he pounded after his boss and SFA.