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NCIS meets KFB - 2012-0108.2323 [NCIS characters used in noncanon situation without copyright holder permission]

So Ducky and Abby were waiting for the DNA analysis, Tim was checking Biological Synthetics Incorporated's finances and foreign ownership, Tony was eying some femfurs for a personal interview, and Gibbs was slogging along talking with various foxie products.

He was getting tired of asking the same questions, and he didn't know that mixes didn't listen if they weren't involved, so he thought he had to do the interrogations one after the other instead of getting a skulk of foxes in a big room.

After he'd finished Betty she told him the kennel leaders would know more about what fox did what work, and she asked if he'd spoken to Kevin. R4G2/ Kvn47 was rather sly for an idiot fox mix, and he'd helped Betty as he grew up to surpass Betty as one of Kennel Nine's leaders.

Kennel Nine was for Canids and held coyotes, dingoes, dholes, foxes, house- dogs, jackals and wolves. Kevvy had rather enjoyed the herm Dhole sisters as he grew up, and frankly Betty had too. The leaders at the time, the Chrome Collar slave wolves Clarence, Chuck and Chauncey, had been confused, but they were older and had less mind.

Kennel Two had the Felids. Lions, Tigers, Leopards, Jaguars. Cheetahs, Cougars, Ocelots. Servals, Caracals, Margays, Clouded and Snow Leopards. House and Wild cats.

And then the Herpestids, the Mongooses and Meerkats. The Vivverrids, the Civets, Palm Civets, Linsangs. The Mephids, skunks and badgers. The Mustel- ids, weasels, otters.

So many fun fur species mixes! Rodents like mice, rats, gerbils, capybaras, beavers. Lagomorphs like rabbits and hares. You'd be surprised how many rich bored men paid for cross-hybrids to get different fur patterns and body parts for their servants.

~

All these furry animal-people on their knees gave Gibbs a headache. so many ... things ... to talk to, so many stories to correlate. He needed Tim and his wonder-computer to sort out what had DNA like a fox, what could have served Dani in Room 103.

Because he'd figured out that just because the compound's records said Dani had only rented Ginger and Roger Wolf and always taken them to Room 103, it didn't mean no other furtoy had been there to clean and destroy evidence.

He still thought they were missing something, a nagging suspicion there was a breakthrough in the case just barely out of reach. He'd run this investi- gation by the book, and it almost always worked out.

But there were a few cases where the book didn't quite cut it, and this was shaping up as one of them. These fur slaves were so submissive they'd agree to anything a human told them, unless it wasn't their training.

Then they'd stop you to ask 'what word' or say "I don't know what you mean". Always with "Master" to be obedient. But it was damn hard to get any of the idiots to just make an assertive statement, to say "I'm sure this is what happened."

R4G2/KvN47 Kevin was different, and that annoyed the heck out of Gibbs. What had Mel Thompson been thinking when she made him in Lab Four? Maybe it was the fact she'd had a bad car accident, and got fixed up with some animal DNA to make better, stronger, faster organs and muscles.

Or she got really bored with the KawaSuki AutoSynths just stewing stinking DNA soup, so when she saw Alysa Benton's order for a Fox domestic servant and pleasure slave Mel went outside the box and gave the idiot beast something special.

Mel Thompson gave Kevin more of a mind than most mixes. He didn't really need it as a furslave, and a mind would interfere with his duty as a product, so she hid stuff in him. Maybe she just wanted to see if the electrochemical goo becoming a Foxboy's mind could handle it.

~

Foxes are considered sly and mischievous by several human cultures. Maybe Mel just wanted to push the envelope with Kevvy. The knowledge she hid in his brain poked out at unusual times. You couldn't just have the beast pull it out on command.

But he'd been poked to offer help to a Mouseboy and the Foxgirl Betty when they were injured. He wasn't bright enough to know the medical terms, he just acted as if someone was pulling puppet strings. He stopped a wolf fight when it wasn't his place, and who ever heard of a Leather-Collar slave striking Chrome wolves with a neck-chain?

Kevin was sly enough not to blab these things, but he wasn't able to evade Gibbs' direct questions. Submission was quite literally burned into his mind, and he simply told the truth, at least from his viewpoint.

Kevin was Alysa's property, but she worked for Hot!Tech and was at BioSyn's Butte Montana USA production facility because there were still glitches in the 'Synth controls. Alysa suspected it wasn't the machine, or her software, but the way other humans used the app.

Even Mel used it in a slightly screwy way, and she had PhD's in medicine and biochemistry, so she should've known better. But maybe the docs hadn't fixed her brain carefully enough. Or the animal DNA was goofing her around.

Mel was the head of Lab Four, but she and the other furtoy makers had a habit of starting the DNA sequence but then interrupting the control program, and sticking in their own codes or randomising character traits! OK for basic research, but bad for business, because it made the finished sequence less reliable.

~

Gibbs wasn't a science nerd, but he'd been a US Marine so he knew the need for discipline. He wasn't a geek like Tim, or been a cop like Tony. But he did know enough to realise he had knowledge limits and surround himself with team members whose fields complemented each other.

Gibbs remembered his high-school science classes in taxonomy, the system of classifying living organisms made famous by the Swedish botanist Linnaeus. Gibbs didn't remember the man's first name Carolus, the date he published his work 1735, or the book /Systema Natura/, but unlike Tim, Gibbs didn't get bogged down in the details.

The more Gibbs talked with Kevin Foxboy, the more he realised the FUBAR stuff that people just shrugged, "Life's frakked up, deal with it!" They kept to their own comfort zones, and had an unsettling ability to ignore whatever didn't fit into their preconceived notions.

Kev wasn't bright enough to throw evidence out. He saw the Masters do things, and he didn't know why, but it was his place to obey so he did. Betty had been hurt by Senator Harriman, but he just used her as a sex toy and discarded her. Exactly what she was made for.

Harriman wasn't being cruel. Betty was a foxgirl, made as a slave, so he didn't care she had feelings. Kevin knew she'd been hurt, and he learned it was called abuse if she didn't disobey. But he wasn't able to be angry at the Master. He was just acting as any Master does to any slave.

~

Danielle Roberts had just been relaxing with her wolftoys Roger and Ginger. They were trained to help, even do adult things for her, so they did. She was so relaxed she didn't wake when one of the human guards came in with a sexy hot girl fox.

Roger and Ginger noticed the foxgirl's scent immediately, and knew what it meant. The Master said OK, so the three canids practiced their training with each other. As the only male furr, Roger had more work, especially since femfurs last longer anyway.

So they played together in a furpile on the floor, and they were used to performing for humans' pleasure, so they forgot to pay attention since the Guard wasn't commanding them. They had better hearing than the humans, but they didn't pay attention as he injected Dani with drugs that made her feel really good.

Under her toenails so even Ducky missed the forensic evidence. Dani's body metabolised the drugs to destroy the evidence, and she didn't know she'd been slipped the first part of the binary drug in the wine she'd ordered.

Each part was innocuous separately, and even if mixed had only a mild effect. It was only when they were broken down that digestive juices formed a catalyst, making them react and form a deadly combination.

All the new drug did was interfere with the brain's serotonin, that carried electrical impulses among neurons. You get a similar effect with MDMA-zing, the party drug Ecstasy. It makes you feel very good, very friendly, very trusting.

But it also takes away your judgment, and very soon Dani was no longer able to realise she was in danger. The beasts had no idea what she was feeling, just that she was relaxing, and their tails wagged because Mistress was happy. They were too dumb to consider why.

And when the drug is done, your serotonin is depleted. The brain gets used to the drug handling messages, and slows down. Enough so the alcohol and other mind depressants interfered with signals to her heart and lungs, and the brain had become too confused to know it was slowly dying of oxygen starvation.

It took about four minutes for Danielle Roberts' brain cells to start dying, and by then her body had metabolised the evidence away. Even when she was clinically dead, her body cells soldiered on a bit, until they too suffered from lack of oxygen.

~

It was a very calm, quiet death that alerted no-one and no furslave, and would seem quite natural. That's what the guard intended, and while Dani was dying he felt her up a lot, exploring and enjoying her unmoving but still nicely warm body.

He discovered the key she carried and her documents. He had the furtoys move the bed, then go back to each other. As long as Mistress was sleeping and Master was calm and relaxed, they had no idea anything was wrong.

Reginald took the documents from Dani and the payment from the hidden safe. He simply walked out, down the hall to the lobby, and back to his post. At the end of his shift he just drove off.

The maintenance staff knew Dani had rented Roger and Ginger, and the beasts would know if anything went wrong. They were trained bed toys. The humans let Dani sleep and returned the three furtoys to the kennel to sleep. The morning staff beasts moved the bed back and let Mistress sleep undisturbed.

They were perfectly aware that her body wasn't warm, but they just added a blanket to the bed, because that was the limit of their training. Their minds were too idiot to check her, or to realise even they couldn't hear her breath- ing because she wasn't.

Dead humans were so far out of any mixes' training they wouldn't understand even if they were told. Even if one of the few who had seen dead mixes came in, they wouldn't connect Dani's changed scent with death.

Dead guests were also outside even the guards' experience. They were animal handlers, not doctors. It was only when the time Dani had rented the room and wolftoys expired that the human head of Housekeeping thought to check on her.

By then it was far too late for emergency medical technicians, and it was only when they called the Butte cops they found her Navy uniform, freshly cleaned and pressed by mixes who didn't know the big Human words 'ev-i-dence' or 'des-truc-tion'.

~

Fade, cut, return. The DNA Analyser beeped, and Abby was used to Major Mass Spec's tendency to lose results if she didn't react, so she plopped down at the display. What she saw surprised her, and she interrupted Ducky's latest stroll down memory lane.

Or perhaps the duffer was strolling somewhere else. He was a healthy human male after all, and he'd been playing absent-minded for decades as a ruse to lull suspects into a false sense of security.

And Sandy Kantor was a very healthy human female. Both NCIS agents were aware the other suspect Mel Thompson was enhanced, and her body showed it. Even Tim had definitely been interested in her, and of course Tony was a lecher. Abby occasionally wanted to hose him down. But Tony was probably kinky enough he'd enjoy it.

The results were in. The fur they'd found on Chief Petty Officer Danielle Roberts was Fox, R4G2, American Red, and male. And there was additional DNA that was human, Caucasian, male. In addition to Dani's human female DNA.

So what did the evidence point to? It couldn't say why the fur had other DNA with it, and there was more than one male American Red R4G2 fox around. But it pointed in another direction.

There had been another human in the room with Dani. And neither Fox Kevin nor Betty, nor Wolves Ginger or Roger had mentioned it. Kevin had kept steer- ing Gibbs' questioning away from foxes, as if he had something to hide. But he'd never said a Master was there.

Even if Kevin had been the fox close to Dani, it didn't mean he'd hurt her, or knew who had. And how could a mere slaveboy dare hurt a Mistress? Mel had been very sure no mix had the mind to feel anger at the treatment.

Heck, Abby had talked with Mel and seen the European Red Fox Red Fourteen. Abby had been horrified to see the ripped fur and bare skin of the spots that had healed on Red's back, even months after he'd been rescued from a human who beat him terribly just because it was legal.

Red had felt the pain and howled his inhuman throat raw. And still the man beat him. The owner had anger-management problems, was insubordinate at work, and was very angry at his boss for the performance review. He took out his frustration on Red.

Red was too dumb to know it was called abuse. He howled and hurt and almost died from internal injuries. But he was unable to blame the Master. A tech had made his mind that way, because humans wanted their slaves to just take it.

Mel had been angry at the man, and nursed Red back. But the fur would never grow back, and the throat was damaged beyond repair. Red was too dumb even to whimper and crawl, and beg for Hot!Tech organ replacements. They had worked on Mel's body after her car accident.

He didn't know that he wasn't kneeling at the feet of a natural human. Mel Thompson's body had not been healed, it was far too burned. Even her brain was damaged, her skull fractured.

BSI Labs had grown an entire new body for their broken employee, and the new Mel was actually a Mark One Mod One -- a Furson.

~

Fade, cut, return. Mixes didn't even have enough mind to object to abuse. But they were also too dumb to know if someone was just very relaxed from using furtoys or was drugged into unconsciousness. And they wouldn't know it was wrong to let a guard tie her down and inject chemicals into her to kill her.

As long as he was calm and commanding they'd submit. The beasts would watch a crime and never know that's what it was. As long as Mistress was relaxed and didn't object they'd remain on their furry knees, and it was Human activ- ity so it wouldn't even register in their fake minds unless a Human commanded their obedience.

So if you asked a mix what happened to the woman, they'd be honestly unable to answer. They wouldn't even know something *had* happened, and she was sleeping when the chrome came to fetch them. They'd never tell the Chrome the woman was held down and then released, and she'd never think to ask.

And then the obedient, submissive and totally dumb beasts would clean the room because they were trained to ready it for the next guest. They'd clean and think she was still sleeping, and no beast would dare disturb a Mistress.

The guard Reginald was foxy sly himself and had figured out the flaw in BioSyn's careful plans. Mixes were made and trained to kneel and crawl, and be attentive to human commands but not interfere by daring to listen.

Even Kevin would literally be unaware of what two humans were talking about, and he was about the brightest mix Mel had made so far. Perhaps her own DNA from various human and animal sources made conflicts in her new body, and she wasn't aware of the inherent dangers.

Mixes could be misused. Oh, they wouldn't dare attack a human, even on command like an attack dog. Unless one human attacked another, then they'd put themselves in the way. But so what? If you wanted to attack someone, just shoot the damn beast and get on with it.

Reginald liked testing the mixes. He frequently wandered into a kennel and asked the guard for a mix. Everyone knew what he meant, and it wasn't throwing Frisbees outside for the mix to fetch.

Mixes liked being tested, and they wanted it. Mel made sure to bend their beast brains that way. Reg simply ordered Ginger and Roger to play with each other, and he was calm and commanding, so they could relax and be sex slaves.

Only if Dani had been able to protest or call for help would they dare to interfere in what a Master was doing. The very concept of crime was so far above their limited minds they wouldn't know it when they saw it.

Reginald was perfectly safe from the wolves and fox. None of the beasts would realise he was killing Dani, because he wasn't pulling or biting her. Their dumb animal minds would know that was an attack, but they'd just pull back to avoid being the bigger predator's next meal.

If you asked a mix who'd been in the room, they'd say just Mistress Dani, because they were used to being led by Guards and left for a Guest. It wasn't exactly a lie, just incomplete, and no mix knew such a big Human word.

So there was no guilt, no thought of hiding anything. They just wouldn't think to mention the Guard who led the Foxgirl in. You'd have to know to command them to name every human and mix, and then you'd find out it was Mistress Dani, Master Reginald, Fred and Ginger wolf, and the new fox.

She was young and it didn't matter to the humans or mixes what her mix code was. She wasn't registered to the room since Reg had just led her in to distract Dani and the wolves, so the kennel records didn't show her.

That was perfectly true. The records just said what guest rented which mixes, and what room they went to. It never claimed to be a complete record of all the humans and mixes that went through the main lobby and entered the corridor to the playrooms.

The mixes were products with only enough mind to obey. Some of the older ones were trained well enough they'd beg a Guard to let them walk in and clean, but most would never think to be that assertive. Again, a big Human word they couldn't keep in their silly little minds.

~

Fade, cut, return. Maybe it's the end of the hour episode already, I dunno. While Tony was busy investigating the mink mix and the Deer lady, and Ducky was exploring Sandy, Tim was busy doing his Elf Lord thing on a Hot! Tech wifi link.

He was really enjoying the speed of the wireless link. He knew the keyclicks had to be arranged in an internet packet, like writing a letter and sealing it in an envelope (if you remember snail mail) or email going to a POP3 server then through SMTP to the addressed server, then to the email box.

He was used to wireless 802.11b's slow links or 11g's 54Mbps. There was a slight delay in his games at home while the game info was shot through cyber- space and an unknown number of intermediate relays to the game server.

This net was like it was his own private server and he wasn't sharing. He wanted to relax a bit because Gibbs was on his back as usual. The man was a damn Luddite, and even worse, he didn't want to even learn about the stuff Tim had spent years of his life learning.

He knew Gibbs had been a Marine sniper, and frankly what's the difference between a murderer and a soldier? The military kills on command, not their own feelings, so it's OK? Tim much preferred to do his killing in a virtual world with keystrokes or mouse clicks.

Elf Lord was currently involved in a virtual-fight-to-the-death against Ator57 and Rockjaw19. Actually it was a melee with about twenty avatars hacking away at each other, but Ator and Rock were skilled and gave Elf some competition.

Turn right, hack, parry. Left, lunge, avoid going off balance. Not enough time to really think, just keep turning, raise shield, deflect return blow, careful of your exposed knees. Rock was bright enough to swing for Elf's shin guards when he turned.

Luckily there were no teams, so the attacks were uncoordinated. There was a multicast link to talk with one or a few players, or the broadcast to everyone.

But really, what was there to say? Hack through your enemies and the castle defenders. Find the evil wizard's weapons (why would they be just lying around, hmmm?) Use the Sword of Sorrows or the Shield of Destiny to find the Cloak of Secrets and learn the castle's dark secrets.

To be perfectly honest, Tim had started playing Massively Multiplayer On- line Role Playing Games in his teens, and only later when he was learning tech stuff and computers did he discover IBM Corp's Report Program Generator computer language.

Now he got a chuckle when the boys and younger men played RPGs and didn't twig the older meaning of RPG. Or the military use of Rocket-Propelled Gre- nades. The people Elf Lord encountered were so self-centered they thought that the things they learned were the only ones that existed.

In a way the internet hackers and script kiddies were like these mix beasts who only knew what they were taught. Tim had curiosity and was eager to learn what other cultures valued. Those kids who just went to hackerDOTcom were just dilettantes, grabbing what someone else had spent effort figuring out.

Sure there were legitimate threats out there. But many online viruses are made by 'do-it-yourself-hacker' kits; the people didn't really know anything about tech, just made variations on what someone else did. They were like little kids spreading germs just because they could.

On the other hand, Tim was a cracker. That meant he knew enough about the assumptions tech makers made to infiltrate. Decades ago, the first 'phone phreaks' made free long-distance phone calls, because they figured out AT&T was using computerised switches, and the switches communicated with each other over the same phone lines.

They just used beeps and whistles that humans don't make when talking. But the phreaks made electronic boxes that made the same "I'm dialing a special access code" noises and tricked the tech.

Elf Lord had been one of the guys who made a box from Radio Shack parts and realised the potential for crime. He didn't hide in the bushes to overhear an ATM transaction and make his own unauthorised ATM withdrawals. But the box he made would have let him do so.

Now Tim used his ability to out-think the bad guys. It was easy enough to convert your voice to data and send it over the internet. Voice over IP (VoIP) had become a popular way to pretend to get around the phone company and its fees.

But Tim knew the real joke was on the kiddies, because VoIP uses an internet connection, so you're still paying. And phone companies run ISPs so you could be paying some phone company anyway.

Sure you could go to an internet cafe or another WiFi 'hotspot' and not get a monthly bill. But cafes charge for access, and if you think it's free because you don't get a bill, you're naive. You either pay up front or in inflated prices for the food you eat.

~

Meanwhile Ducky was pumping Sandy for information, and the man could go on and on when something new reminded him of a previous case. I'm probably rambling too. And Red Fourteen was kneeling on his fox pad wanting Mistress to let him pump her for her pleasure.

Red was an older mix, so he wasn't as bright as the new crop of seed mixes. Actually most of them were mentally challenged so they'd be obedient. There's a difference between remembering stuff stuck in your head, and being able to apply it to new situations.

For example, mixes were trained as servants, so they knew how to scrub floors and walls. But they wouldn't even know what to scrub *with* unless you told them. Then they would think that each floor cleaning product was separate. A human would know to make a choice and use their favourite.

What the Vet lady was telling Ducko about mix brains was fascinating, but here again she was distracting him from his goal, which was to determine if a mix could be an assassin. They seemed too dumb to think of it on their own, but if an assertive man commanded?

Actually mixes are slaves so they have an organic version of Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. A mix can't kill a human, it has to stop a human from being harmed; it has to obey orders unless they are to kill or harm a human; it can protect its own life unless it breaks a command or harms a human.

But R3G2 guards aren't that bright. They actually don't know that breaking a burglar will hurt him. They don't even know when they're hurt, they just tell their boss if parts don't work right. They're bigger, stronger, faster than humans so you have to train them to leave him alive for the cops.

It turned out that mixes wouldn't kill even to protect themselves. They'd shake if you made them choose to kill or let someone else kill. You couldn't just order them kill, but you could order attack.

Here was the crux. You could hold a pillow over someone's face and tell a mix to push down hard. They're too dumb to know pushing a pillow will kill, unless they'd been told so or the person struggled or called out. They know that struggle or cries for help mean the human's being harmed.

You could mix poison in someone's water glass and tell a mix to serve it. Even if the beast watched you, it would have to be taught to read to know the water would kill, and serving it wasn't killing. If the intended victim just accepted it, the beast would let you drink.

Oh, it'd try to help while you convulsed, but that just means it'd try to call for a doctor. Only if you asked, "What's this?" or told it to say what was in the water would it say, "water with some liquid added". It wouldn't know it was poison unless it was floor cleaner or bleach.

Mixes honestly don't know the word 'understand' and it's too big a word for their minds to grasp. They don't know something's dangerous to humans if it isn't dangerous to mixes, and mixes are stronger and faster than humans with stronger senses.

What they don't have is common sense, because it's common to humans, not beasts. What Ducky had discovered while Abby was drooling over the tech was the mixes wouldn't raise an alarm if the humans were calm. And mixes were too dumb to conceal facts, or know what *might* have happened. A fact either *is* or it *is not*.

Actually Abby was looking at more than the gleaming KawaSuki AuthoSynths in their sterilised lab alcoves. She was a Goth, and had some interesting tattoos she'd never shown the men. She also liked to wear a black leather dog collar, the spikier the better.

All the mixes were slaves, and wore collars just like the family dog. The young ones wore steel, heavy on their young necks. The older ones only needed leather to remind them to Obey, and the kennel leaders like Betty Foxgirl wore a chrome band on leather.

To be honest, Abby liked the look on the fur. The beasts were trimmed a little to make them obey a Human's whim, and if they were allowed up off their knees Abs could see the shape of the boy and girl parts hidden in fur. Every time she'd seen a boy mix led by she'd looked, and she was distracted by the older girls' bodies swaying and undulating.

There was another thing that distracted Abby, and that was the swaying tails on the furry beasts. She knew Tony only looked at the girl parts and wanted the fur out of the way. He wouldn't know who led the beast or who she was. Only the girl parts mattered to the lecher.

~

Some of Abby Scuito's personal kinks she kept hidden from the NCIS. The USA Navy had investigated only for possible security risks, and sleeping in a coffin was kinky, not a risk. If everyone knew, it wasn't secret, so nobody could embarrass her by threatening to expose the lifestyle.

However, Abby was quite certain of her kinks, and had rather enjoyed being investigated. I mean telling about the style, but she was quite adamant about keeping her personal life out of her job.

Sure she wore black clothing in the lab and blasted Goth rock on the radio. She sometimes thought problems through by lying on the floor, and sometimes her penchant for privacy led her to put superglue on the floor to trap anyone sneaking through the door.

The fact she also wore a dog collar at work never seemed to bother Gibbs. Tony probably didn't care to know about the Goth lifestyle, just the kink. Tim seemed perturbed about it, till she asked if he'd prefer she wear deep- plunge necklines like the fantasy heroines (why would anyone choose to fight practically naked and thus unprotected, unless it shocked or distracted opponents?).

Timmy'd seemed even more embarrassed, because he knew exactly what she was referring to. It was a blind spot in his own thinking that he'd thought it was kinda a nerd secret. Young men like seeing women's bodies, it's just a fact. It's still PG13 cause I'm not giving details.

Anyway, Abby noticed her breath coming quicker as she saw all these furrs led around on leashes, the steel links on the wide black leather collars, wrist and ankle cuffs tinkling musically as they walked, or knelt, or crawled.

She had to remember she was here to investigate a murder, not the furtoys. Abby was a healthy human woman after all, and these slaves were built to appeal to men and women. The psychologists knew their stuff, even if no beast could remember such a big Human word even if you told it.

See, that was another thing about mixes. They were made dumb, on purpose, to keep them low and submissive. They couldn't generalise, so even after you told them not to drink the sweet-smelling and -tasting cleaning liquid, they'd try the next bottle in the next room!

They would literally not know that it was all cleaning fluid you were warn- ing them about! If you told them to use one bottle in one room, then led them to another room, they'd look for the same bottle. If you didn't tell them the first time they'd just kneel patiently waiting for commands.

And even if you told them to go to the cabinet you'd have to say which bot- tle to get. They could see colours, but not as well as humans, and have trouble telling, say, which *shade* of pink to pick up. Cleaners are made for humans who can read, or at least learn the skull-and-cross-bones 'poison' warning.

Mixes don't know what skulls or bones look like. Their dumb animal donors probably do, cause they're either predators or prey. But dumb animals can't talk, so humans don't know what to tell mixes, so mixes never learn ...

Why this BS matters is because everyone involved, from SecNav on down the NCIS ranks, to Mark and Tom and the Biological Synthetics crowd, to Mel and Alysa, to Kevin, Betty, Roger, Ginger and all species of DNA mix fur slave, had their own mental blind spots which overlapped and messed up their entire way of thinking.

Instead of complementing each other's skills and filling in each other's blind spots, the Kennel honchos had left themselves open to the kind of manipulation Reggie the guard had exploited. The suits thought the records told all, the guards thought they'd be able to spot any problems, the staff stayed in their mental comfort zones.

The techs who kept the records didn't know how they'd be used and were too busy to care. The eggheads who designed and built the Hot!Tech computers had avoided the problems other machines had. But none of 'em stepped back long enough to see the essential flaw ...