Project 'C'.

Chapter 1

Callen woke up, checked the traffic report and got out of bed. He knew the route that Sam would take to pick him up as he located his GPS; he put coffee on and headed for the shower.

True to form as Sam pulled up Callen was standing outside with 2 to go cups of coffee.

"Morning." Sam said having stopped wondering years ago how he did that.

Callen grinned, "Morning, did you have a good weekend?"

"Not bad Michelle and I took Rachel up to Disneyland, you should have come. It was fun." Sam smiled.

Callen climbed into the car, "Yeah fun," he said his voice saying to him a weekend in Disneyland with thousands of screaming children was anything but.

"What did you do?" Sam asked.

"Read, played Chess, did some gardening…" Callen said.

"You could have got your reports done…" Sam laughed knowing how behind he was.

"No way, my house is a technology free zone." Callen said, "There's enough work at work I don't need to bring it home." He complained.

Sam nodded, he'd been trying to get Callen to buy a TV and a couch ever since he'd brought the house, wanting somewhere 'girl-free' to watch the games with, but Callen resisted every time.

Pulling into the parking lot at the side of the mission Callen grabbed his bag and walked inside.

"It's not my fault!" Deeks yelled as Kensi twisted his arm behind his back.

"Yes it is….you did something to it!" she snapped at him as she glared at her computer screen.

Callen dropped his bag, "what's going on?" he snapped, he was more tired than usual, and he felt a bit off.

"Deeks did something to my computer, it keeps showing a bleeding heart!" she cried, "Eric and Nell aren't in yet and he won't fix it."

"I didn't do it; I don't know what happened, maybe when you took it home this weekend it picked up a virus?" Deeks suggested.

"Yeah?" Kensi stopped and looked at him, "Or you sent me one, all I did was Skype with you!"

Callen walked over and looked at the computer hit a few keys and smiled, "All gone, now can we get back to work?" he asked.

Deeks and Kensi stared at him, "You…? You fixed it?" she asked awed.

"Eric and Nell weren't always here you know…before them we had to do this sort of thing, it's easy…" and for Callen it was. Computers had always…well as long as he could remember come easy to him, he could just look inside the computer, see where the problem was and figure out the right file path to fix it.

He figured everyone could do it.

He shrugged and walked over to finish his after action reports, most of which he'd done in his head in the car on the way to work.

He printed them out and handed them to Hetty.

"Thank you Mr. Callen, working hard again I see." She said.

Callen smiled, "Yeah…he headed to the Armory to work on his gun."

Hetty watched him go as her phone rang, she answered it and all signs of amusement were wiped from her face.

"When was he taken?" she said urgently.

She listened to the man on the other end and stood up and walked into the bullpen.