Chapter Seven
Desperate Times

"Come in and shut the door, Corporal," General Caitlin Todd, Commander of this world's NCIS, orders her.

Abby can't stop trembling as she manages to close the door. She wants to burst out in tears, just collapse right here and cry until the world goes back to normal. Shock after shock, madness after insanity, blast her mind. She crosses the room without falling, though she's shaking so hard she fears she's going to faint. Barely in time, she remembers that she had better salute.

It's bad enough Tim's her ex-husband and fed up with her; bad enough Jenny's her Supervisor; bad enough Sammy's her worst enemy - so far; bad enough Jimmy's her replacement and fuck buddy; bad enough Gibbs is a glorified Receptionist - okay, probably Aide - but now her dead friend is boss of NCIS and if she's reading her body language and expression right Kate - General Caitlin Todd - is not her friend here.

Does Gail Sciuto even have a friend?

"Yes, ma'am," she says, stopping before the ghost's desk. The room is spinning around, the universe fragmenting and she wants to get off.

x

"Corporal Sciuto, explain this," General Todd, not Kate, commands. She touches a button on the laptop on her desk and the wall mounted plasma screen to Abby's right brightens.

The image is of the Evidence Vault downstairs, the stamp on the lower right says it's yesterday at 2136 and from the central cage she - no, Gail Sciuto - exits carrying three bottles in her arm.

Kate - General Todd- pushes a button and the image freezes at 2136:41. The image is too small and distant to read the labels on the distinctive bottles but she doesn't have to. There's a Jack Daniels, a Johnny Walker and a Kentucky Bourbon.

"Well?"

"Ma'am?"

"Have you gone deaf, Corporal? I ordered you to explain this."

"General, I don't understand."

It's obviously the wrong thing to say, for Todd had very evidently been holding on to very tenuous patience. "You are on film removing evidence from the vault without authorization. Why? And where is it?"

Things are bad enough, not for her but the woman whose body she inhabits. Nothing can be served by lying.

"They're in my apartment."

"Your apartment?" Todd asks, sounding faintly incredulous. "Why?"

She shakes her head. "I haven't a blessed idea." Now Todd is definitely incredulous. "I suppose she was conducting some kind of investigation."

"She?"

Abby wants to explain, but all she can think of is the ticking clock and the time it would take to explain - again. "Believe me, you wouldn't believe me."

x

It seems to Abby that she's rapidly exhausting her superior's patience. She wishes she could read General Todd as easily as she read Kate.

Kate would believe her.

"Corporal Sciuto, I doubt you appreciate how much trouble you're in."

"You have no idea of half of it."

Todd pushes a button on the corner of her desk, one Jenny doesn't have and Abby expects she's not going to be happy with what it does.

When the door opens behind her, she looks back and decides she's right.

x

Nikki Jardin stands at the closed portal, but she's not wearing the NCIS white and black. The shirt is blue, the badge is silver and the uniform is similar to Security in the real NCIS. The clothes, and her manner, scream Security anywhere in the multiverse.

She salutes her superior and Abby, thinking she is getting better at determining which of her friends like her and which do not, finds no bonhomme in this woman's eyes.

"Corporal, you will bring back those articles immediately, and then we shall determine your discipline."

Trapped, Abby can say no more than "Yes, Ma'am."

But she considers travel time to and from home and getting back to Jimmy against NASA's admittedly uncertain two hour estimate, which she has to believe as being all she has to go on. She can't help Gail Sciuto and save herself.

'Sorry, Gail, old buddy; whatever it is you've gotten yourself into, you're going to have to get yourself out of it.'

xxx

When they leave, Nikki walks a half pace behind her by the time they cross the MTAC bridge. 'At least this hasn't changed,' Abby thinks, though the woman's attitude definitely has. And Abby truly doubts that the 'real' Nikki's phobias are going to help in distracting this one. This Nikki Jardin doesn't seem like she has a problem touching anything, particularly the gun under her hand.

She's not walking with her or escorting her. Jardin behaves as though her charge is one step removed from being in handcuffs. Abby imagines that, on the return trip, she will be.

"If you don't mind," she tries, "I have to make a detour to the Forensics Lab."

"I do mind. You heard the General. You're to collect that evidence and come straight back."

x

They descend the steps and Jardin herds her to bypasses Operations, undoubtedly not going to allow Gail to collect any weapon from her station.

Abby doesn't look back as they head for the auxiliary elevator, not anxious to see any of her 'team', assuming they're even there or would step in to help her.

Jardin makes her board the elevator first, gets on herself but doesn't take her eyes off her prisoner as she presses the button for the garage.

At the instant the doors touch Abby rushes and body checks her, momentarily pinning the woman into the car wall.

Fists clenched but middle knuckles raised, she presses the joints hard into the carotid points at each side of the woman's neck.

Jardin can't push off from the wall before catastrophic loss of blood pressure makes her collapse, a dead weight, into Abby's arms.

xx

When the door opens to the garage, Abby drags her friend's doppelganger's body out and across the wide chamber. Jardin is stunned but her brain will recover in about three to four minutes.

She won't use the same technique on her friend a second time. Once can be dangerous enough.

Further, she's sure she'll never get the chance to do anything. Once Nikki recovers, if she's close enough to catch her, Nikki will beat the hell out of her.

There are two cars parked side by side and less than a yard apart and it's to these that Abby drags her friend/new enemy, laying her down between them. A quick search of the woman's pockets produces a set of handcuffs, a key and a handkerchief. She uses the cuffs to bind the woman's hands behind her back, then takes opposite corners of the handkerchief and fashions a gag.

It's an ineffective silencer, and the woman might either attract the attention of a passing agent or have a backup key and free herself, but Abby will not hurt her again.

She takes the Sig from Jardin's holster, not because she wants it but because she doesn't want Jardin to have it. Her own Sig is in 'her' desk drawer, and there's certainly no way she can go back for it.

Knowing she's certainly on a (hopefully unmonitored) security camera, she runs back to the elevator.

'Thank God this is Gail's body' she thinks as she uses the IRIS scanner to reopen the elevator.