Rosenberg's Results

Willow stretched the kinks out of her back and focused back on her screen. So far, she had made only a small amount of progress since last reporting to Gibbs. Her reputation and pride wouldn’t allow for her to fail on so simple a task. Nearly thirty year old records, though, that was always a challenge. Nothing was documented on computer then, and nowhere near everyone had gone back and put everything online, even if it did get into a database somewhere. Thankfully, there were a few places to start.

Financial records however, were one of those areas that as long as you know what to look for, and could get to it, you can find it. Too bad there’s so much data to grind through. She dumped a half-dozen searches into the background. There’s nothing more to do on those until one of them spit something out. Thankfully she knew which account the payments were coming from, she just had to track the transactions.

The LA clinic revealed a major annoyance: nothing online except a public website, not even a company e-mail server. She’d even take a public email account at this point, but the only contact info was either a mailing address, driving address or phone numbers.

Wait a second. Phone records, definitely a long-shot, but who knows, perhaps she’d get lucky. Thanking herself again for dropping that backdoor in the California phone company’s server back in high school soon had customer records for the phone number. Sure enough, thirty years, still the same physical address. And another checking account number used to pay the bill. Dropping three more parameters into her background searches, she went back to looking into the more promising insurance claims.

Even if the clinic never put anything online, the insurance company had everything online, unfortunately, behind some of the nastiest security on the planet. As can be expected, not surprisingly, the supposedly “secure” phone company security had been easier to get around than the insurance conglomerates’. Some of that had to do with the fact that the phone company sells their customer contact information, but an insurance leak of even a small fraction of customer records would be both a huge publicity nightmare, as well as a financial disaster. So, they secure it with more hardware than anyone short of the NSA.

First, she set up a secure network connection to a site she had set up on one of her trips to Africa. Yeah, it was slow, but she knew the hardware in the central office there didn’t have the capability of tracking backwards on that old hardware. From there she went through several proxy connections, including using a recent router glitch that a router manufacturer hadn’t managed to fix quite yet. While it would only be there for a week or two more, while it was there, she was going to take every use of it. Hmm. Now, she just needed to pick a shadow host. Usually she went with the FBI, as no one wanted to mess with them, and they never exposed any security related information, but due to her new position with the government, she didn’t want to piss anyone off, if they somehow got through all her preparations. Ah. That would work! Sacramento had a hospital. Yep, Sutter General. Even if they did track it back that far, it would probably get lost there as a legitimate data search and they even used the right model of router.

She pulled up the practically ancient records related to embryo donation. All stored nicely and neatly by “anonymous ID” number, listed right next to customer ID, and records all right there at her fingertips. A simple query later and there it was.

“Rosenberg, Sheila” WHAT THE HELL? First off, what the heck was her mom doing donating embryos? Followed very closely by How the heck did Gibbs know that? Not to mention, why didn’t she know about this before?

Her investigation quickly fell in importance, her curiosity getting the better of her.
Why: OK, logical progression: Based on this, insemination was artificial, so wasn’t anything accidental. Research? Hmm. A quick search revealed that the doctors performing at that clinic hadn’t published any papers within a few years of that date, so that was out. Finances? A few moments looking into the history of her parents records found the other end of one of her search terms. Sighing, she stopped one of the background searches. Sure enough, six deposits, spread out over ten months. And major outlays in the same months, paying off her parent’s college bills.
So, there’s one answer. Her parents donated embryos six times, to help pay for their schooling.

How did Gibbs know? He couldn’t have planted this, record ID numbers in the database wouldn’t allow changing that far back, not to mention, anything even remotely this complicated would have taken far longer to set up than he had. Back to that ‘logic’ thing: he knew her? He knew her parents? He had more knowledge about her parents than she did? He … wait embryos, recipients. Gibbs didn’t seem to care where the embryos went… perhaps he already knew. Still, she wasn’t about to begin vigorously question her boss based on a hunch.

Due to what she was investigating, she decided to use only publicly available information for the next phase of her curiosity satisfying, starting with marriage records. Thankfully she quickly had four, count them, four marriage licenses, along with one record of death, and three records of divorce. The dates lined up for his first wife. The obituary for his first wife quickly showed that she was murdered along with their daughter. Backtracking, she quickly found a birth announcement. Comparing the timeline and…

Sure enough: Kelly Gibbs had most likely been her sister. A tear slipped down one cheek but was quickly wiped away before anyone could see. There were more possibilities out there, and her background searches would find them. She quickly set up a folder to put the results into without her seeing them first. She wasn’t ready for that yet.

Final question, of the initial barrage: Why hadn’t she heard about this before? Oh, wait, her parents. Of course they wouldn’t tell her. They were psychologists. Who knows how much knowing this would affect her development. She would have words. Oh yes. She would. Next time she talked to her mother, she would have to discover the logical justification, but most likely, it was that they didn’t think it important to tell her.

Now, how to put this into a report, so it all fits?
Ah, there. Cut off any data based off results after finding out why her parents did it in the first place. Printing off her report, she took a breath and went to face the music.

“Gibbs?”

“Yeah, Rosenberg?

“I’ve got the data you wanted.” Keep her voice from cracking.

“And?” Gibbs did not seem to want to be kept waiting.

“It appears that a Ms. Sheila Rosenberg donated six embryos and whoever the file you handed me belongs to received one of them.” ‘Keep a straight face.’ She told herself. ‘No reactions.’

He examined her face for any reaction “And?”

“And it appears that I have a genetic sibling or six out there. I’ve got a search going on that may allow me to find the names of their parents.”

“Come with me.” He picked up a folder and walked to the elevator. She followed as professionally as she could. Once in the elevator, he pushed a button for the basement, a moment later, he stopped the elevator. “Willow, I’m sorry to say that your sister was killed ten years ago.” He handed her the folder. “My wife and daughter were taken from me. While I’m not going to go any easier on you because of it, you do remind me of her a lot.”

“What?” She tried to put on a good act.

“My wife was the patient in the file I handed you. I thought you deserved to know about the connection. But now I have a question for you. Why do you have the political backing to get this job?”

Well, that was a change in gears. She took a breath to phrase her thoughts. “I spent several years working with an organization that was able to provide effective intelligence and support to several military teams, and they took notice. The organization matured into a political one and both Xander and retired, along with the top personnel there. They no longer valued our input nor methods. In short, we wanted to change things, but the existing organization was taken over by a more traditional mindset.”

“And as vague as it is, will that work come up in the future?”

“No, we have cut all ties, and will not be aiding them.” Willow still regretted the fights between the Slayers and the Scoobies. The younger Slayers unanimously demanded that the Slayers would be mentored one on one by Watchers, rather than treated as a group. She still didn’t understand how that had happened. Only Buffy and Faith had disagreed, having seen how useless a bad Watcher could be, but the rest of the Slayers could not be convinced.

It had resulted in Slayer/Watcher pairs being stationed across the world, thanks to a few years heavy recruiting for the Watcher’s positions, and by that point, Buffy and Faith were just two more Slayers. Buffy still helped occasionally, with Giles as her Watcher, but Faith had cut ties completely. Willow and Xander didn’t have the support of the council, but thankfully, the government still recognized their contributions.

“Alright then.” Gibbs flipped the switch allowing the elevator to continue. “Well, we should be up and ready later this week, I expect your shooting scores every week, by Friday, if we have a case or not. Understood?”

“Yes, S… Boss.”

“Good, now finish up, and get out of here. It’s getting late.”


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A/N: Wow. what a fun chapter. Hard to get through writing it in one sitting, but I think I like it. Let me know what you think! FYI, I have 15 chapters outlined, so, depending on how much time work and school take up, I should be here for, oh, the next century or so.

I also hope you liked the "better-than-Hollywood" "hacking" there.