Chapter Eight
Desperate Measures
Abby Sciuto knows the ground and lower levels of NCIS Headquarters even better than the upper floors, and prides herself upon being able to find her way blindfolded, depending solely upon ambient sounds and smells. She knows this because she's done it, frequently, late in the night, sometimes moving very fast from one point to another. The blindfolds were because, deprived of the sun, she might well have to escape in a blackout.
The running - okay, really double time walking - was because she might have to escape following explosions or fires.
To date, she hasn't had to use that particular skill, but she's particularly glad her familiarity extends to the locations of all the security cameras.
While there's no justification in believing that this will work in this bizarro world, she has noticed that so far everything in the building is where it's supposed to be.
It's the people who are different.
x
While she knows it's impossible to avoid every camera, she does manage to confine her very hurried walk to the less frequently used, therefore less diligently monitored, corridors. At least that's what she knows of Earth-Prime.
Of course, once the alarm is sounded, every camera's record will be scanned until she's found. Nevertheless, she does manage to access the Fire stairs in the rear of Autopsy and come out beside the store room of her lab.
Jimmy is in her - his - office and looks up as she bursts in. "I'm about this–" she presses thumb and forefinger together "–close to being arrested! Probably worse. Tell me you've got something."
"I've got something."
"Thank God!" She puts the Sig down on the table. She doesn't want it and is afraid that, if cornered, it may inspire one of her anti-friends to shoot her.
Jimmy's eyes lock on the weapon, then he forces himself to break that contact and look up at her. "You're not going to like it."
"I already don't like it. What is it?"
x
He rolls the chair back so she can get close and see the diagram on the left side of the screen and the rows of calculations on the right.
"This is your work?"
"Of course it's my work. Who else's would it be?"
She doesn't want to get into anything with him. Instead she examines the diagram on the screen. She'd seen the real thing a few weeks ago. In the sub-basement of her NCIS - this obviously supports her theory about the buildings - 4 huge generators provide power for this building with much to spare. Their output is so high that even if two of them were destroyed NCIS could operate at full power consumption for several days.
Normally NCIS relies on city power but these four monsters are held in full readiness for any emergency. One, always active at minimum power, is programmed to trip over the instant city power is interrupted while the remaining three rev up to handle any conceivable load.
"You're right," she tells Palmer. "I hate this plan."
x
"What are those monsters rated at?"
"Together, 1.18 terawatts." He looks up into her scowl. "You didn't tell me how powerful that lightning bolt was."
"I had no idea. The window was closed and it was still enough to throw me halfway across my living room."
"How far away from you did it hit?"
"Well, I was leaning on the window sill and it hit the fire escape. Say 12 - 18 inches and– OH MY GOD!" She backs away from him. "OH MY GOD!"
"What?"
"OH MY GOD!"
"WHAT?"
"Sammy! She was leaning on the window sill too!"
"Who?"
"Sammy Sky!"
Much of the color drains from his face. "Did you see her since you're here?"
"Yes."
"Well, did she transfer with you?"
She flashes back to that encounter with this world's Samantha Sky, one she never wants to have again. "No."
"We didn't have a storm here, and since Samantha is as likely to be in your apartment as..." Comparisons fail him. "Then the only ones in your apartments were you... and you."
"But what happened to Sammy?" She can only wonder to herself, doesn't have any courage left with which to ask him. Unfortunately, he has an answer.
"A billion electron volts? She was probably electrocuted."
"Oh, God."
"Come to think of it, you were probably electrocuted too. Only your mind transferred, in which case..." He halts, totally motionless, and when he can act again only his lips can move. "In which case my Gail is gone."
x
"Hey, this is not over, and it's not going to be over until I say it is. Now McGee's wife, my McGee's wife, is a priest and she'd say God doesn't permit things to go so badly wrong they can't be fixed with His help. Now I firmly believe that and you'd better believe it too, mister, because we're going to do this thing. I'm going home and she's coming here-" she slaps her chest "-because that woman's got a mountain of trouble for her to ask for God's help to fix. Now gather what gear you need and let's get to the Batcave."
She'd expected him to jump on her McGee being married to a priest; most Roman Catholics do, but he doesn't even jump at the 'batcave'. Instead, she thinks he's probably thinking of two bodies sharing a lightning bolt versus a terawatt for her alone. He certainly looks no happier than she feels.
"I hope 1.18T will be enough," he muses.
"Any more and my bones will be the only thing you bury."
She wants a contradiction to her hyperbole. It doesn't make her feel better that he nods, grim faced, before turning back to the screen.
x
He rolls the chair forward and she must pull back to make room.
"Fortunately I have access. Some of the experiments I have to run require a lot of power." He looks back and up. "That's where the code words were inspired, the ones I use with you... With Gail."
"What?" She smiles. "Is she into electroplay?"
He stares at the screen, and when he answers his tone is dead. "No."
She wants to reach out to him. He sounds so lost. "I'm sorry."
"It's really starting to hit me that I'm about to shock you with a billion volts during an unpredictable solar storm and there's only a trillion to one shot that this'll work."
"Then we've got to make this work. Come on."
xx
They leave by the Emergency door and staircase, descend past the Autopsy level, the garage level and come out in the sub-basement. Down here there are fewer cameras and Security may or may not be attentive to activity deep in the bowels of the building, but Abby's too aware that upstairs Nikki Jardin is certainly conscious by now. Has she been heard? Found? Is the APB or BOLO or whatever Bizzaro World uses already out for the fugitive agent - and her accomplice?
The only thing that might help them evade the coming hunt is that they may think she'd try to escape, not dig deeper into the bowels of the building.
A long run down a cement block lined corridor, through a red painted steel door and Abby halts. She feels this would be like coming face front to the Starship Enterprise.
The four monstrosities extend from floor to ceiling, four identical generators. Granted she saw her own building's power source a few weeks ago, but these are nothing like them.
"This is more than NCIS needs."
"NCIS? In an emergency these can supply power to this quarter of the Yard and still have juice to spare for my experiments." He pulls a device that resembles a compact Geiger counter from the pocket of his white lab coat.
"Where did you get that?" Her equipment includes a Geiger counter, but this isn't one. It's way too small.
"I told you, my hobby. It measures solar radiation. I use it to help me with Radio Telescopy."
"Wait a minute! This place has a Radio Telescope?" She'd seen no such installation on her way in and can barely imagine why the Navy Yard would have one.
"You kidding? We're lucky this place has reliably working bathrooms. And this thing is little more than a toy - until now." He presses a button and the unit instantly bursts out in static. "Hear that? It's only because space is so flooded with dynamic energy from the sunspots that there's no use in trying to tune it in to anything. Normally I use this to supplement readings for my own use when I tie in with NASA's systems on a secure channel."
"Boy, I have got to get to know my Jimmy better."
"Perhaps so.
x
Jimmy sets the loudly crackling counter beside the computer and goes to a storage cabinet on the left, yanks out some long thick cables. "I'll need help with these, they're heavy."
She bends to grab two of the long cables. On each end is a rounded unit similar to a long plug.
"They go into those slots in the front right of each generator."
Hefting them, Abby is struck with the reality, or audacity, of this plan. "Oh, I'd kill for a 'Caf'Pow!'" He turns to her. "Never mind."
"While you insert these," he says, dropping his two cables before the third and heading back to the second generator, "I'll slave these four into one so that from here I can cause a simultaneous burst from all four units."
Plugging the ends in takes only a few seconds, allowing her to join Jimmy at a somewhat more sophisticated computer panel than she'd expected. "I see why you like to use these."
"They have advantages over the old ones. Okay," he presses a final few buttons. "They're ready. Throw this switch and–" He can't finish. The reality of this situation is too plain.
"Either the current sends me home or burns the flesh off my bones before I realize it's happened."
"Sure I can't-?"
"Don't think it. I'm going home. And you want Gail back."
"Just that if you don't do this, you don't die."
"I don't turn into Gail either."
"Good point."
x
He leads her to the middle of the room, lays down one cable and works to remove the plug, exposing the bare metal. She scoops up the other while he goes to retrieve the other cables.
"This system lets the generators share power so the output remains steady over many hours. But I'm not going to feed one to another; you're getting the output of all four."
Kneeling before her with two of the thick cables in his hands, he positions them before her feet. The noise of the counter continues undiminished.
"Electricity through a wire travels at the speed of light."
"Tell me something I don't know," she says, tension bringing out her testy side.
"Okay. I'm setting these twelve inches from your feet but six inches apart." He arrays the four in a close arc before her. "Just like the lightning didn't touch you, the current from these mustn't either. What we need to do is create a burst near enough to you to interact with the intense gamma radiation and other energies presently bombarding the Earth to create a field that will transpose you back to your own world - mentally - without frying you to a cinder.
"The burst will be one half of a second long. When I throw the switch the currents should arc between the ends of the cables and the charge, together with the radiation, should reverse the accident that sent you here. However, if the charge arcs to you instead of to the other ends," he looks up, meets her eyes, "you'll be dead before you hit the floor."
"Nice."
He looks up from measuring off the last two cables, then glances to the still crackling counter. Is the noise still as intense as it was a minute ago? "Remember, at best there's only a one in a trillion chance that this'll work. If you want to change your mind, it has to be now."
"I told Gibbs once that when I go, I want it to be spectacular. What better way than riding my personal lightning bolt?" He doesn't look any more confident. "Let's do this."
x
He gets to his feet. "Remember, you do not move from this spot."
"Aye, aye, Admiral."
He looks momentarily bewildered, but then steps over to the control. There's no doubt in her mind now, the sound of the radiation meter is definitely not as intense as it was a moment ago.
"Damn, solar activity is still slowing down."
There's no way to predict what will happen. The radiation might rise in the next two seconds or die completely before he reaches the control.
She looks at the four metal ends arrayed one foot from her toes. "No long goodbyes, Jimmy. Do it now."
He reaches for the control
"Get away from that switch!"
x
The scientists look toward the door and Abby feels her eyes bulge. "McGee!"
Sergeant Timothy McGee stands within the doorway, his Sig trained in a two handed grip on Palmer.
She realizes too late that he'd naturally be the one to find them. When the alarm was raised he'd check Security films and trace her step by step.
"McGee, wait! You don't know what you're doing."
"Stopping him from killing my wife!" He glances at the black cables snaking across the floor to her feet. "You think I don't know what you think you're doing?"
"This is the only way!"
"The only way for what?"
"I explained the Brane Theory."
"Knock off that damned nonsense! Get away from those things."
"I can't."
"Sergeant McGee–"
"You shut up! You, get away from those!"
The staccato noise is gradually fading.
"Tim, there's no TIME!"
"Are you crazy? I'm not going to let this happen!"
"Tim, I have to get home!"
"Enough of this fantasy. I love you and I'm not going to let you hurt yourself!"
"You still love me?" His stunning words almost make her forget who they all are, but she remembers he doesn't love her, not after- "After hurting me–?"
"It's because I love you that you drive me crazy. You frustrate me so much." Jimmy inches closer to the controls. "Stay away from those!"
The sound continues to diminish.
"Sergeant, we're running out of time."
"McGee–!"
x
Tim's eyes flicker to her and Jimmy turns, reaches for the switch. The gunshot reverberates in the chamber as Jimmy's knocked forward, a burst of blood high and spreading over the back of his white lab coat.
"JIMMY!" Abby screams.
Palmer pushes himself up off the panel and turns, falls back against it, disbelief chiseled on his face.
"McGEE, STOP IT!"
Jimmy reaches for the switch beside him and another blast fills the chamber. Blood explodes from his chest, the red stain spreads quickly over his white shirt.
"NOOOO! GOD, STOP IIIIIT!"
Jimmy's knees buckle and his hand holds the switch as he slides down, Abby's shriek filling the room.
SZR-AAKKT