CHAPTER 10: AN INVERSION

A wormhole opened in the lab under the Fosse house. Out of it erupted Gibbs, rolling a stretcher that was supported by Kyle Davis. Laying on the stretcher was Jack, barely conscious and not moving. Luca looked up at their entry, and his eyes widened as he ran over. McGee lowered his book and rose to his feet.

"Jack!" Gibbs shouted. "Jack, can you hear me?"

Jack grunted. "I hear you."

"Okay," Gibbs said, relief sweeping over him. "Okay, that's good."

Theas was the last person to walk out of the wormhole before it closed behind him, and he observed Jack on the stretcher.

"Can you help him?" Gibbs asked Theas, somewhat aggressively.

"Let me look at him," Theas said, stepping forward. Gibbs and Kyle backed away, allowing Theas to aim his wristwatch at Jack.

Jack watched as the watch's scanner passed over him, and Theas examined the results.

Gibbs stared at him impatiently, and Kyle, Luca, and McGee all watched. "Okay," Theas said finally. "It doesn't look like he's in any immediate danger, but I'm not sure the Focal Inverter is the best option right now."

"What?" Gibbs said incredulously.

"I told you," Theas said. "Too much exposure to the Focal Inverter can cause a Chronology Rift. The injuries that the Inverter healed can all come back at once. But they won't kill you. Your body is torn apart and you're left to just lay there and suffer."

Gibbs held eye contact with him for several seconds with his jaw hanging half open.

"Then what do we need to do?" Luca asked. "If we take him to a hospital, that could lead to awkward questions."

"Shouldn't the boy's wife be here?" McGee asked. "Where are the girls at?"

Theas lifted his head, listening as though he had heard a distant call, and he said, "Actually, it looks like they're ready to come back now."

Theas typed on his watch, and another wormhole opened. In walked Sarah and Sloane, closely followed by Fornell. Fornell's eyes were wide, as though he had just seen a specter. He looked around at the lab as though he had entered an alien spaceship. He then spotted Gibbs, whose eyes widened as they held eye contact for several seconds.

Sarah spotted Jack laying on the stretcher, and she gasped in horror before running over to him. "Jack!" she called. "Jack, baby, what happened? Are you okay?"

Jack let out a soft, strained laugh, and he said, "It's cool. I'll be fine."

Sarah glared murderously at Gibbs and demanded, "What happened to him?"

Gibbs's eyes narrowed, but he didn't retort. He let out a breath and said, "Chala came. Shot him. She was too fast."

"Hey," Jack said with all of his remaining effort.

Sarah turned to him and knelt down next to him, squeezing his hand in both of hers. Jack shook his head and said, "It's okay. It wasn't his fault."

Sarah took a deep breath and nodded, and she then held eye contact with him. Jack squeezed her hand with all the strength he could muster to provide as much reassurance as he could. She then turned to Theas and asked, "What do we do? I'm assuming the Focal Inverter isn't an option, otherwise you would have done it already."

"He likely needs medical treatment," Theas told her. "You need to get him to a hospital."

"And how do we explain the massive hole in his side?" Luca asked furtively.

"We'll figure it out," Sarah answered firmly, examining her husband.

Luca nodded, and Sarah pulled out her phone. She dialed a call, bending down next to her husband while putting the phone to her ear. As she talked to the 911 dispatcher to get an ambulance there, Fornell stepped over to Gibbs.

"Well, this is a fun assortment of circumstances you have here," he said to Gibbs in a soft voice, albeit with a wry, playful smile.

"Yeah, you don't have any idea," Gibbs agreed, no trace of a smile.

"So, Jacqueline caught me up on a little bit of what's going on," Fornell said. "Would you care to fill in some of the particulars?"

"Later," Gibbs said, his eyes on Jack.

Fornell glanced in the same direction before looking back at Gibbs, and he nodded. The group of Anomalies were unsure of what to do or how to help as an ambulance arrived to retrieve Jack. Sarah had every intention of accompanying him in the ambulance to the hospital and blankly refused to hear anything to the contrary. Gibbs watched as Sloane caught up with Sarah just before the ambulance departed and placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder. They held eye contact, exchanged a few quick words, and Sloane backed away to allow the ambulance to depart.

Fornell stood by Gibbs the entire time, observing and analyzing every detail, gaining as much information as he could without asking.

Once the ambulance carrying Jack and Sarah were out of sight, the Anomalies tried to return to their regular activities, each of them unsure of what that meant here.

"Alright," Theas said to the group. "I know this has been a difficult time, but I need to return to headquarters. I'll catch up with you-"

"Hang on," said Admiral McGee, stepping forward. Theas looked around at him, slightly surprised. "I think we need to have a conversation," Admiral McGee declared.

"Oh. Okay. What about?" Theas asked, looking confused.

"About that thing," Admiral McGee said, pointing a finger at the pocket where Theas kept the Focal Inverter. "There hasn't really been a whole lot of clarity about how the damned thing works or when it can work. I think that's something that we all need to know upfront and have a right to."

All of the other Anomalies were looking agreeable to this, many of them nodding their heads and looking expectantly at Theas. Theas, looking around at them all, did some quick thinking before nodding. "Alright," he said. "Alright, that's fair. You do have a right to know that, so let's have that conversation."

McGee looked slightly surprised that this had worked, and Theas stepped over and sat down in a chair. The group of six Anomalies looked at him, waiting for his information.

"Alright, so the Focal Inverter is the pinnacle of Keeper technology," Theas explained. "You know how it works. It isolates injuries or lethal abnormalities and performs a reversion of time on them, bringing them back to their state of being before the event occurred."

"Why can it only be used when it seems like it's convenient for you?" Gibbs asked.

"That's a good question," Theas answered. "There are rules governing the use of the FI and weaknesses that have to be taken in mind. The most obvious is like I've already stated, if it's used too often on one individual, all of the things it's fixed can be reverted back to their state at once."

Kyle Davis listened to the conversation, entirely unsure of what to make of anything he was experiencing. Fornell maintained stoic silence, listening intently to every word spoken.

"How do you know when or if that will happen?" Luca asked.

"We don't," Theas answered. "We have no control over when it occurs, and that's kind of the problem. It's like not changing the oil in your car and then running it twenty thousand miles. You never know when the engine is going to blow, and the longer you go, the more risk there is."

"So, you said that if the Focal Inverter does backfire, that it won't kill you," Sloane observed. "Can you go into more detail on that? For example, if Admiral McGee's cancer returned, are you saying that it would never kill him?"

"Okay," Theas said, nodding to her, "so I misspoke a bit when I said that. It's not that it won't kill you. The shock won't kill you. You won't die immediately from your wounds. You'll suffer slowly until your system finally shuts down. So it will be a horrible, gruesome death. And there won't be anything stopping it."

He left this statement to hang in the air, and the Anomalies exchanged uncomfortable glances.

"So, you developed this, but you don't have a whole lot of idea how it works," Fornell commented, giving Theas a shrewd look.

"We utilized the technology, but we built it out of dark energy," Theas informed the Anomalies. "We're working on it constantly, but even we don't understand the nature of how the dark energy operates. It's still a great mystery of the universe." The impact of this statement polarized the room. Luca, Kyle, and Sloane nodded knowingly, as though this statement made perfect sense. The other half of the room, Gibbs, McGee, and Fornell, gained expressions anywhere from utter confusion to outright frustration.

"The FI is really only meant to be used for ailments that Anomalies have before they cross over. It's not intended for injuries sustained once they're on the other side," Theas explains.

None of the Anomalies enjoyed this, and they all fixed Theas with varying degrees of aggravation.

"I know it's not a lot of information to work with," Theas concluded. "Just know that we're going to do everything we can to keep you guys safe. That just means the Focal Inverter is only used when absolutely necessary."

No one looked particularly happy about this. Gibbs glared at Theas, who caught his eye but didn't say anything. Luca and Sloane were both working their brains furiously to process this information. Fornell looked rather stoic about the whole thing, and meanwhile Kyle, who still wasn't entirely sure how he got here, and Admiral McGee, looked positively baffled about the whole thing.

JACK FOSSE:

I was lying in a hospital bed, my hand resting over my gut near where Chala's weapon had hit me. I was looking out the window at the sun nearing the horizon. Sarah was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, texting on her phone.

"Everything okay?" I asked in a hoarse voice without looking around.

"Uh, yeah," Sarah answered, finishing her text. "Yeah, I just talked to my parents. They should be up here tomorrow."

I looked over at her with a half-amused, half-stern expression. "You guys know I'm not dying, right?" I asked.

My wife fixed me with a withering expression and said, "You know that if Chala shot an inch or so to the right, you would be dead, right?"

I chuckled a bit, although this sent a twanging pain across my abdomen. I grimaced and clutched reflexively at the stitches in my side, and I chose to ignore the worried look Sarah was giving me.

"Listen, Jack," Sarah said to me, leaning in. Catching the worry in her tone, I looked around at her with a raised eyebrow. "I don't know that we should keep doing this."

I tilted my head as I gazed at her, not sure if I was comprehending her. "What do you mean?" I asked her.

"Look at you," she said desperately. "You seriously could have died, babe. I know you really want to help these people, but I really have to ask if it's worth us losing each other."

I stared at her, and while I wanted to pretend I was baffled by her viewpoint, I wasn't. I had known this would be her reaction from the second I had been injured, and it was the conversation I was looking forward to least.

"Listen," I replied, "I know it's tough, and I know it's dangerous."
"Yeah, and I know these people genuinely need our help and that I'm being really selfish," Sarah conceded. "But I would take you over all of them anyday. It's no question, Jack."

"I know," I assured her. "And I feel the same way, I promise."

"Then I think we really need to reconsider how deeply we're getting involved here," Sarah told me, her voice rising a bit. "At what point does this end when we have no idea where to start? What happens if one of us gets killed? How are we supposed to live with that?"

I listened to her, and I knew she was letting out a lot of pent up worry she had been carrying since I first came home with Gibbs. There wasn't a whole lot I could say to console her at the moment, and I felt that trying would be overshadowed by the imagery of me laying here fresh from having almost bled to death.

"Look," I said to her. "I'm not going to pretend that I'm okay with just leaving them all out on the street."

"I know," she said in exasperation at the situation, "and I wouldn't have married you if you did."

"But I think there is a line," I told her. "I think when it gets to a point where we can't guarantee our own survival, we back out. We talk to Theas and get him to relocate the Anomalies. Is that fair?"

Sarah stared at me for several seconds, her eyes welling with tears. She then let out a laugh of relief, nodding and crying, and she bent down over me to give me a tight hug.

As she straightened up, wiping her eyes on her sleeve, a knock at the hospital room door made us both look around.

I let out a deep breath and said, "Time to check my vitals."

The door opened, and our faces fell as Sarah ran forward. She threw her arms around a slender woman with long, brown, wavy hair who wore a purple sweater with black pants. The woman hugged Sarah back just as tightly, and meanwhile a tall, heavyset man stepped around them and into the room. I gave him a wide smile, taking in his black leather jacket, light-colored jeans, and black cowboy hat.

"You doing okay, son?" the man asked in a low, gravelly voice. He took off his hat and placed it on a chair, revealing thinning, dark and graying hair.

"Yeah, dad," I assured him. "I'm doing okay. Sarah's making sure of it."

"Well, you bet your ass she is," my dad said, giving my wife an approving look. Both Sarah and my mom chuckled, and dad looked back around at me. "She's the best thing that's ever happened to your sorry-lookin' self, and you're going to do everything she says."

I laughed with the women, and my parents, Alister and Luanne Fosse, stepped further into the room.

IN THE EYES OF THE MULTIVERSE:

Gibbs was in his quarters, sitting at his desk with his rifle, which he was in the process of putting back together with a screwdriver. He didn't look up when a knock came to his door, and he called out, "It's open."

The door opened, and Sloane walked in. "Hey!" she said brightly, regarding Gibbs with a warm smile.

"Hey," he replied, finishing maintenance on his weapon. He set down the screwdriver and turned to face her with a smile.

"Theas has a mission for us," Sloane reported.

"Us?" Gibbs said, looking surprised but not disappointed.

"Well, technically it's for the ART," Sloane corrected, "but being as your whole team is incapacitated, Fornell and I were asked to assist you."

Gibbs nodded, looking satisfied. "Did someone else cross over?" he asked.

"No," Sloane answered, taking a step towards him and giving him a deep, affectionate look. "It's something we need to send back home. Fornell is waiting for us. You ready?"

Without hesitation, Gibbs grabbed his rifle off his desk and looked back at Sloane, giving her a pleased smile.