These chapters are a bit Harriet-heavy, I know; it's just to move the plot forward. The rest of the team will make a reappearance soon.
I own nothing NCIS.
Oh, and just to reiterate - I'm making all the science-y stuff up as I go, while trying to make it at least sound plausible. Just ... don't think about it to0 hard!
For a few moments, Timothy just stared at Harriet in silence, half believing he'd finally cracked up. But the look on her face was hard to misinterpret.
Harriet's eyes were dull, almost lifeless. She looked exhausted, as if resigned to some terrible fate. The fight, the anger that had been all he knew of her was gone and had left in its wake a burnt out shell of a woman, staring at the floor instead of meeting his eyes.
"What?" His voice, when he finally managed to speak, was almost as hoarse as hers.
"It's real." Harriet's voice was flat and dead. "The Void is real. I've seen it. I've survived it. I know."
"Stop this." Timothy demanded, voice cracking whip-like through the still air. "Stop this right now."
A fear had ignited in his gut, blazing through him with an intensity he'd never felt before. For most of his time with STARs, he'd served either under or beside Captain Harriet Mason and, though she was not a woman it was possible to like, he trusted her and believed he knew her better than anyone.
She had always been more honest, more open, with him than with anyone else.
He had an image of her fixed firmly in his mind that kept him so sure of their power, kept him believing they could win this war. She was the immovable object and the irresistible force all combined in one volatile package and there wasn't a person in the whole Peace Force that wasn't glad she was on their side.
Timothy had only ever seen her as a warrior. Now, she looked like a little girl. Lost and afraid. Her hands, when she brought them up to rub at her eyes, were clearly shaking.
It wasn't the voice's threats that triggered the fear spreading through Timothy. It was the expression on Harriet's face and how she looked suddenly several inches smaller.
For the first time ever, Timothy saw the Captain as human.
It was terrifying.
"I'm not lying to you, General. The Void is real and it's coming for us." Still Harriet refused to raise her eyes from the carpet.
"Stop it!" McGee bellowed, making Kinoan and Gibbs jump a little. Harriet didn't flinch, though she did finally look up. "I don't know what you're playing at but you will stop this right now. That's an order, Captain."
"This isn't a game." There was a note of steel back in Harriet's voice now, although her eyes remained lifeless. "I'm not pulling any stunt. You need to know what we're facing or what the Void just threatened will come true, General. It will burn everything if we - if you - do not stop it. So I am telling you the truth. The Void is real."
Timothy ran both hands through his hair, looking around the room wildly as if hoping something there would provide a way out. He began to pace back and forth, a caged lion, unable to keep still as the rational part of his brain told him that Harriet would not lie about something like this. It was barely heard over the tumult of other voices screaming that it could not possibly be true.
He couldn't clearly understand the reason for his almost hysterical refusal to listen. Perhaps, after a week of one massive shock after another, this was simply too much for even him to process. Perhaps it was pride. How could he go before the Generals and tell them they were at war with something they all believed to be a fairytale?
More to the point, how could he lead an army against it? The Void, if it existed, had always been said to be more of a consciousness than a being; a mind without a body, driven mad by isolation, capable of just about anything. It was the personification of the perfect vacuum of deep space.
It couldn't be real. It just couldn't. What hope would they have then?
"My friend, you need to calm down and listen." Kinoan's voice cut through the din in Timothy's mind. Strong hands grabbed his shoulders and forced him to sit; Gibbs, Timothy realised, coming back to himself abruptly.
"McGee, snap out of it." Gibbs ordered sharply. He wasn't sure if this was the right thing to do. The Timothy he was beginning to get to know up here was radically different to the under-confident young man he'd ordered around so easily on Earth, and Gibbs had no way of knowing how he would react. "Pull yourself together and listen to us."
It seemed to work. Timothy took a few deep breaths, steadying himself, before nodding at Gibbs and looking again to Harriet.
Gibbs retreated back to his seat, Kinoan stood at his side, both of them eyeing Timothy warily.
"How can this be true?" Timothy asked quietly. The frantic energy that had seized him moments ago had faded now. He still didn't want to believe Harriet's words but the rational part of his brain was again dominant.
In war, he trusted Harriet more than anyone. He could not afford to ignore her now. If what she said was true, he needed to be prepared.
"I joined STARs around the time when the intergalactic travel attempts were being made. When rumours of the Void first began." Harriet spoke slowly, uncertainly. It wasn't a tone Timothy was used to hearing her use. "I was a nurse then. They sent me on one of the convoys to Andromeda. The trip there was fine, not too different from interstellar trips. Though we always kept the window shutters closed because looking out into the vacuum made everyone feel uneasy."
She was shifting uncomfortably in her seat as she told her story, refusing to meet anyone's eye. Timothy listened intently. He had never heard Harriet speak of her early days before - as far as he knew, no one had. Like Kinoan, it was hard to imagine a Peace Force without her. Imagining Captain Harriet Mason as a nurse was even harder. He almost wanted to laugh.
"But on the way back, we … we were a couple of weeks away from re-entry to this galaxy. That's when it came. The shutters opened. I was alone in the med bay at the time and for some reason - luck, I guess - I was able to close the shutters before-"
Harriet cut out once again, getting to her feet and pacing the room like Timothy had just moments ago. She, too, seemed as if she just couldn't bear to stay still.
"I heard screaming. Sudden, awful screaming from everywhere on the ship. I ran out of the med bay and I saw the rest of the crew … it was like they were possessed. They were attacking each other. Killing each other. I barricaded myself in the med bay for hours until the screaming stopped. I thought it never would."
It was clear, from the way Harriet's footsteps faltered and her voice cracked slightly, that she was reliving an incredibly painful memory.
"I took a scalpel and ran from the bay to the escape pods. We weren't far from the Aricon Radar Station, I knew I could make it. Even if we were still in the middle of nowhere, I couldn't stay on the ship. It was so dark, and so, so cold. Felt like everything evil in the universe was hiding in the shadows. Everyone was dead. The corridors were full of them, my shipmates dead, blood everywhere. I kept falling over. I was covered in it by the time I made it to the pods."
She stopped in her tracks and looked directly at Timothy, meeting his eyes for the first time. Her voice shook even worse as she continued.
"That's when he jumped out at me. The soldier from Isgul. I'd just treated him earlier that day for a broken ankle. He attacked me and I stabbed him in the throat. He died right there, in front of me, I know he did. I watched him die. Over and over again I watched him."
The last was spoken as a whisper, more to herself than the others. Again, she dropped eye contact.
"When I made it to the Aricon Station the convoy I'd been part of had vanished - all 50 ships gone. I knew - I just knew - the same thing had happened to them. I was the only survivor."
Nobody seemed to know what to say as Harriet finished her story; she sank shakily onto the couch and didn't say another word.
Several long minutes passed before Timothy found his voice.
"And that was the Void."
"What else could it have been?" Harriet said hoarsely. "Remember what it did to the civilian."
Gibbs scowled. Harriet had taken to calling him 'the civilian' ever since his release from quarantine. A strong enmity had grown up between the pair from almost the moment they met.
Timothy, however, felt the corner of his mouth twitch a little. She couldn't be that far gone after all.
"I believe her." Gibbs ground out. "Whatever this thing is, it got inside my head. When it called itself the Void, I could … feel it, almost."
At Timothy's alarmed look, Gibbs backtracked quickly.
"No, not like that. It was like I recognised the name. It felt right. Like it fitted the voice."
Timothy made no answer and, once again, silence fell over the group. It was a thick, uncomfortable sort of silence but nobody dared break it.
Eventually, Timothy cleared his throat and looked up at Kinoan.
"What do you think, General?" He asked. "Do you believe it?"
"I do not want to, old friend, any more than you do." Kinoan replied heavily. "But I cannot doubt the Captain's story. That and Agent Gibbs' experience has convinced me. The enemy we face, the enemy of prophecy, is the Void. Perhaps not quite as the stories tell of it, but real nonetheless."
It was Kinoan's agreement that settled it for Timothy. He nodded once, curtly.
"Fine. The Void was not lying. We are facing an enemy straight out of legend. With the power to control the minds of entire ships at once. That's what we have to fight."