Reading Time: 126 Minutes
Title: Finding Haven
Series: Priceless
Series Order: 4
Author: SASundance
Fandom: NCIS, Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis, Criminal Minds, JAG
Genre: Crime Drama, Crossover, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Science Fiction
Relationship(s): Gen, background pairings
Content Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Rape/Non-con/Dub-con, Slavery, Torture, Violence – Graphic, Violence – Domestic and/or Against Children , Violence – graphic, offscreen torture, discussions of past and offscreen rape/non-con, issues around the loss of free will, loss of bodily autonomy, mind control, past murder of OC character, discussions of miscarriage and abortion, discussions of slavery and implications of mind control, non-consensual drug use, discussion of past domestic violence, discussion of canon vaccination and future vaccination programs, discussion of past canon unethical medical experimentation, character bashing (Elizabeth Weir and Ziva David). Not friendly to: McKay, Gibbs, Keller, McGee, Vance. (Note: slavery, mind control, autonomy issues are related to canon events)
Word Count: 119,523
Summary: The head of the new Atlantis Department of Justice arrives in the Pegasus galaxy while the Interstellar Bureau of Investigation recruit another investigator to join Tony’s team. Tobias Fornell, ex FBI agent may be battered by multiple tragedies but he’s hoping to find a new beginning working for the fledgling agency. Home World Command’s secret facility on Balara is now producing vaccines for the mind control drug but Dr McKay is not put in charge of the program. /His exclusion leads to Rodney trying to find out what is going on and butting heads with the Black Queen, who has been put in charge of security for the program and earned the Artificial Intelligence’s undying love and admiration. Yes J.P. has a massive crush on Penelope Garcia. Meanwhile the JAG Corps arrives on Atlantis to conduct classified military hears for the rogue Genii who abducted John Sheppard and causing Tony to stress in case he’s recognised by any of the judge advocates.
Artist: Angelicinsanity
“You know, everyone needs a place they can call home! They need people and a place to go which is theirs, a safe haven.”
― Martha Begley Schade, Bill & Buster: The Circle of Kindness
Chapter 1
Aaron Hotchner was halfway through the voluminous file of a code of law and justice written many millennia ago. It had reportedly been composed by a highly advanced humanoid race known as the Ancients, who’d at some point in the distant past also inhabited Earth, long before the species of human known as homo sapiens had evolved relatively recently by comparison.
And wow! That was such a mind-blowing concept. Yet he and his son, Jack were on a spaceship travelling to one of these great cities in a far-off galaxy. Once they arrived, they’d be living on the military and scientific base in what must be the ultimate witness protection programs. He’d learned that the city in question had been built by these Ancients who were originally from a distant galaxy and had called themselves Alterans before they had seemingly split into two groups. One group had become obsessed with religion, essentially becoming religious extremists, whose goal was enslaving the rest of their galaxy and for the Alterans to be worshipped as gods. The second group worshipped at the altar of science and technology, and it was this latter group who’d built Atlantis – the legendary Lost City that so many scholars had searched for.
Ironically, academics and adventurers had been searching for the fabled city on Earth, when it had been underwater on Lantea in the Pegasus galaxy, resting on the bottom of the ocean floor for ten thousand years, waiting to be rediscovered again. Of course, the Alterans (who now called themselves the Ancients) who built it had long since died or Ascended to a higher plane of existence where they existed as pure energy and had no need of the famed city. This was why an expedition from Earth had set out to rediscover the city a little over eight years ago, not that anyone had a clue. It was top secret, mainly since a device had been discovered sixteen years ago called a stargate that permitted the people of Earth to travel to many different planets within the Milky Way galaxy and beyond to other galaxies too.
As stunning as the Stargate was, it was the fact that many of these planets were inhabited that had shocked Aaron and likely would other people living on Earth. The people on Earth tended to think that they were the most important species. Not only were there many friendly humanoid species but some distinctly alien ones spread out across the galaxies, some of whom had tried to attack Earth and almost succeeded in destroying the planet, while most of its inhabitants remained blissfully ignorant of what was going on right under their noses. Even more freaky was in the latter years, some of these Aliens had been rubbing shoulders with the people of Earth as they managed to blend in, even as they plotted and tried to seize power. Aaron found it all more than a little unsettling but as he lay down his iPad, needing a break from the heavy tome he was working his way through, he noted thankfully that Jack had been gone from their cabin for several hours.
He considered that to be a good sign that his fourteen-year son was willing to leave their quarters (which were pretty cramped) and socialise with the crew and the other passengers aboard the massive warship, the Zephyrus. Up until the last twenty-four hours he’d been stubbornly refusing to lead their quarters, angry that he was losing his access to social media even if it were due to his inability to follow rules that Aaron had laid down for him to use it safely while they were in the WitSec program, hiding out from a bunch of dangerous and deranged killers who were intent on avenging Peter Lewis’ death. Since their departure from Earth, it had been all Aaron could do to pull Jack out of their cabin to go to the mess for meals, Jack wanted to sulk and preferred eating in his bunk.
Suddenly, today he’d accepted the overtures of some of the younger members of the crew who’d offered to play computer games with him in the recreation area. Up to this point, he’d been obnoxious and rude whenever anyone had tried to reach out and to make to make friends but today which was day fourteen of their journey, had begun to see an improvement in Jack’s attitude. He was nowhere near as truculent as he had been previously. Hotch theorised that perhaps his physical addition to social media was slowly loosening its grip on his son. He was hoping Jack would indeed arrive on Atlantis minus the hostility, ready to embrace their new life in what was an amazing adventure.
Lord knows, Aaron hoped it was the case since his son’s attitude for the previous thirteen days certainly wouldn’t have made a great impression on anyone meeting Jack for the first time. And honestly, as much as Hotchner understood why he was having a tough time withdrawing from his social media platforms, cooped up together in the tiny onboard cabin for the last two weeks would try the patience of a saint (and Aaron was far from sainthood) in fact, he was becoming increasingly terse. It had been a welcome relief to see Jack venture out of the cabin without having to twist his arm to get him out of the claustrophobically small cabin assigned to them both.
Deciding to take a proper break and go for a stroll to the mess for a hit of caffeine, the stressed-out father of an adolescent thought he could wander around and stretch his legs. It was what Aaron was missing most, being able to run – having trained and competed in marathons, he was missing being able to exercise. Somehow, he didn’t get the same buzz from running on a treadmill in a gym and he was looking forward to reaching Atlantis so he could start to run again. Anyway, while he stretched his legs, he could see what Jack was up to, not that he could get lost on the ship. Still, Aaron was curious about who his son was hanging out with, he may have to buy them a cup of coffee.
On his way to the mess, he bumped into First Lieutenant Hailey who was also on her way to Atlantis and then onto a secret research facility in the Pegasus galaxy. He’d heard the gossip (or scuttlebutt as the military called it) that Jennifer Hailey was a scientific prodigy, but she’d been kind to Jack on the journey, despite his obnoxious demeanour. When Aaron tried to apologise to her, she’d just laughed at him and told him he should have met her when she was at the Air Force Academy. She confessed that she’d been a real brat with a gargantuan chip on her shoulders, convinced that she was the smartest person at the academy and probably in the Air Force.
Seeing she was quite a personable if intense young woman, he felt she may be exaggerating massively but when he expressed his opinion she chuckled. “Oh boy are you wrong, Mr Hotchner, she said shaking her head. “I was so insufferable that I’m surprised I was given another chance when I crossed the line more than once. Anyway, you don’t need to worry about Jack, he’ll be fine once he has a chance to settle in. It’s just a big adjustment for a kid his age,” she’d told him astutely.
Today, she smiled at Hotch. “Hi, Mr Hotchner. Are you looking for Jack?”
“Well, I don’t mean to be checking up on him but today’s the first day he voluntarily set foot outside of our cabin since we’ve embarked. I’m simply curious how he’s doing, I guess.”
Hailey chuckled. “He’s down in the rec area playing the Fast and the Furious with a few of the crew.”
“Okay, is he less… snotty?”
The lieutenant smiled. “Yeah, quite a bit. I don’t think it’s his favourite game, but it is helping him to get rid of some of his anger. You don’t need to worry about him interacting with those guys, they’re a good group,” she told him earnestly.
“You sound like you know them, Lieutenant Hailey,” Aaron observed.
“Should do, served two tours aboard the Zephyrus, doing supply runs for Atlantis,” she said proudly.
“So, this isn’t your first trip to the city then?” he asked her politely. Anyone who knew the self-contained man well would have been able to tell he was excited yet nervous, but then most people never got to know him well enough to read his tells.
“Nope, not my first trip. I feel like a regular on Atlantis now.”
“What’s it like?” Aaron wanted to know.
Jennifer grinned. “The city is incredible, unbelievable. I still have to pinch myself to think that the Ancients built it ten millennia ago, plus it can fly like a spaceship. It’s mind-blowing,” she enthused animatedly before laughing at herself.
“Sorry but Atlantis is like catnip for an astrophysicist like me,” she confessed. Not just the technology, but the fact that apart from Colonel Carter, three of the world’s foremost astrophysicists are in the city. Aside from Dr Col Carter, Dr Kusanagi is my Doctoral advisor and a hero of mine,” she revealed.
“How close are you to finishing your doctorate,” he asked her curiously.
“Just waiting for a decision,” she said, sighing mightily. “I defended my thesis just before the Zephyrus left Earth, she admitted looking a little bit nervous.
“So, you’ll be Dr First Lieutenant Hailey soon. Congratulations,” Hotch told her.
“Maybe, I don’t want to count my chicken before they hatch,” she said cautiously.
“I’m sure you’ll do great,” he assured her before someone from the crew came up to talk to her.
He waved and headed back to his cabin, deciding to get his iPad and find a place somewhere quiet where he could read because, after 14 days, he was finding their cabin quite claustrophobic. Opting to get a refill of coffee, he sat down in a quiet corner in the mess to familiarise himself with the witness statements from five women victims of sexual slavery and a mother’s statement about her daughter who had also been a slave like the other five women and found guilty of immoral behaviour and lewd behaviour and sentenced to death. While the other five young victims had their sentences commuted until their children were of age, Mayuna Puvo had been childless, after miscarrying and the nineteen-year-old’s sentence (stoning to death) had already been carried out.
The FBI special agent in charge, Alexander Paddington had prepared a report for Hotch, explaining that the females were being drugged, along with the rest of the people in the small village on the planet known as Winya. He briefly explained how the perpetrator, a white middle-aged Winyan male known as Lucius Lavin had temporarily managed to gain control over Atlantis via his ability to drug people. He’d proceeded on his merry way, forcing some people in Atlantis into engaging in non-consensual sex or sexual activity which had then been hushed up by a previous commander of the Atlantis expedition during its third year.
Lavin had been returned home to Winya to face justice for what he’d done to the Winyans once they made sure that his people couldn’t fall victim to his drugs anymore. Returning him to Winya had taken place despite several people on Atlantis voicing grave concerns about him having had full access to the expedition’s database. Also deeply concerning to Agent Paddington was that they decided not to charge Lavin for his unlawful commandeering of the base, apparently termed a Foothold Situation by the SGC, and his drugging of all but one of the inhabitants of Atlantis, plus that the Commander ignored the whole non-consensual sex with her personnel. Had indeed gone to extraordinary lengths to huss it up.
When the newly arrived federal agent on Atlantis was investigating the abduction of the Military commander approximately four months ago, he’d accidentally uncovered the rapes that took place five years ago. He’d opened an investigation into them and then expanded it to include those that had taken place on the planet Winya too. During his investigation, he discovered that the six Winyan victims had all been found guilty of immoral behaviour and sentenced to death and SAIC Paddington was trying to find a way to save them and their nine children who shared a father were also half-siblings. He was exploring the possibility of retrying their cases, either on Winya or taking it to the Pegasus equivalent of the UN Court of Appeals which was the Pegasus Coalition Tribunal to ask for their help to retry the case or even better, to overturn the previous ruling.
Paddington had also included in the file, a report compiled by Dr Alison Porter and Dr Daniel Jackson who, had researched the origins of such a harsh system of justice. Although the Winyans were a patriarchal society, the two authors of the report, an anthropologist, and an archaeologist/anthropologist/linguist (who’d written the book on alien societies) had felt that this wasn’t the real reason for the draconian form of punishment and gender inequality, although it had probably contributed. In their opinion, it also wasn’t religious morality, although again they acknowledged that it did play a part. They’d stated that in their opinion, the reason for the inequitable sentences, i.e., shunning Lucius Lavin and banishment him from Winya but sentencing his victims to death lay in the war with the Wraith.
Ever since the Ancients had hot-footed it back to Earth when they realised they were hopelessly outnumbered in their war against the Wraith ten thousand years ago, they’d left the rest of the rest of the Pegasus inhabitants to fend for themselves races in the galaxy faced decimation. Populations were culled until many were teetering on the brink of extinction. The Wraith made sure that in the ten millennia since the Ancients’ departure, any society that became too advanced technologically was destroyed, so they weren’t capable of mounting a future threat against the hybrid part bug part human species. A few societies managed to find a way to circumvent this tactic – the Genii maintained the charade of being simple farmers while carrying out scientific developments far underground to avoid detection by the Wraith.
The Hoff had taken a different tactic, working on a vaccine to make their people immune from feeding. Each generation knew that they would merely be a part of the puzzle that would one day have an answer and they made sure to leave copious notes to ensure that the next generation could pick up from where the last culled generation had left off.
The author, Dr Jackson likened it to a similar technique used by the people of Orban in the Milky Way although the mechanism differed greatly. The Orbanians descended from the Teotihuacan Aztecs on Earth and they used nanites they injected into selected children called Urrone that accelerated their ability to learn from the experts from the previous generation. When they had reached a level of mastery of the subject area, their nanites were harvested and shared amongst the population. Unfortunately, Jackson pointed out, it made the child experts lose all knowledge or skills acquired during the period that nanites were present in their brains. Aaron was appalled that the Orbanians would treat their own children as a commodity like that and knew it would be giving him nightmares thinking about those poor kids.
The report went on to point out that the Winyan people hadn’t been able to progress their society beyond what the Wraith viewed as a permissible level of development so they posed no threat to them. So, the Winyans existed as a mostly agrarian planet with technology at the basic level of Earth during the Middle Ages. In the two anthropologists’ opinion, the reason for their wildly inequitable sentencing of the rapist and his victims, who the Winyans viewed as having culpability for their behaviour could also be explained by the Wraith’s culling behaviour for food. Wrath didn’t cull pregnant or breast-feeding females and if they were accidentally culled they were usually returned immediately. Males weren’t viewed as such a valuable commodity as they could impregnate multiple females and so in most societies, there was a significant imbalance between males and females.
This was the main reason for the outlawing of polyamory and because as an agrarian society breeding animals for food, they understood on a simple level, unlike the Wraith, restricting the gene pool in a small society would lead to birth defects and lack of genetic vigour. Not that they understood the science of genetics, but they understood it well enough on a practical basis because of their domesticated animals. Plus, Dr Porter pointed out, as a society that believed in monogamy, if a man were taking up more resources than necessary, others would not be getting any sex and that was not to be tolerated by the people (male) who were on the Council of Elders.
Nonetheless, Aaron didn’t understand why they would willingly sacrifice six young women when their civilisation was on the brink of extinction. That seemed to be a special kind of cutting off your nose to spite your face lunacy. As he returned to the anthropology report, Dr Jackson covered that point, explaining that firstly, the reasons why polyamory was forbidden had been mostly lost in generations past and by now was more bound to morality rather than pragmatic purposes. The second reason identified in the report was the Winyan’s strict taboo on sexual activity in public and the women had engaged in orgies in the town square. The taboo was too entrenched for the excuse that they were drugged to suffice, especially since they seemed to be so happy to obey Lavin’s wishes. So now male Winyans viewed them as unclean, and no male would consider them as future mates, lest they lose social status too.
SAIC Paddington had as an addendum that it was extremely unfortunate but surely not surprising that the five young women also believed that they were at fault, despite them being drugged and having no ability to refuse him. This was why he hoped to convince them that nothing they did in any way was responsible for Lucius Lavin’s abhorrent behaviour, that it was he should be held accountable for the damage he’d caused to his victims. Paddington intimated that he was fairly sure that there were more victims out there on other planets where Lucius had travelled during that timeframe, to trade.
Agent Paddington was hoping to offer the Winyan woman the opportunity to leave Winya and join another society that would welcome them and their children, ensuring that they weren’t facing death by stoning in the next seven to ten years. Plus, relocating them would ensure the children born as a result of their mother’s slavery continued to have a loving parent after the age of fifteen but he feared that some might not leave because of their belief that they deserved to be punished. Paddington was hoping that an overturning of their conviction might make them more motivated to fight for a new life.
And Aaron felt the sudden weight of expectations on his shoulders. It was one thing to convict someone guilty of a serious crime, but these victims should never have been charged in the first place. They were victims and their children were victims too, Jack was fourteen, and still very much a kid. The idea that he would be deemed an adult at fifteen on Winya was shocking. He would no more be able to fend for himself than he would be ready to take up the responsibility of taking a mate, getting a full-time job, or raising a family. Mind you, the last option was looking highly problematic for those children because one of the mothers, in her sworn statement had told Paddington that their children were shunned by the rest of the village and would likely struggle to find a partner.
That meant that there were fourteen individuals whose future was dependent upon his ability to have their mothers’ verdicts overturned. That was a helluva lot of pressure.
Pondering the case, he was surprised when Jack approached him. “Hey Dad, there’s hamburgers for lunch today. Can we get in quickly? The guys reckon that if you wait too long, the patties get all rubbery,” he begged as Aaron looked at him in amazement.
The petulant and frequently belligerent adolescent seemed to have disappeared, which was greatly appreciated since Hotch was tempted on a number of occasions to tell him to knock it off, that he was acting like Veruca Salt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. While he understood exactly why Jack was acting the way he was, it didn’t make it easy to tolerate and given the cramped quarters, his patience was wearing a little thin.
“Sure Son, we can do that. How was your game?”
“ It was lit Dad, I beat Airman Watanabe twice and Lieutenant Perez beat me but only because he’s the reigning champion of all the 304 class ships,” he informed Aaron, looking supremely pleased with himself.
Aaron watched as his son demolished a burger and went back for a second. He was acting a lot more like the Jack he knew and loved. Hopefully, the rest of their journey would be a whole lot more pleasant.
Only another five days until they reached Atlantis.
~o0o~
Colonel John Shepard had been back in the city a little over two weeks now. When the puddle jumper piloted by General O’Neill passed through the stargate he felt as if he’d been wrapped in a huge warm hug. O’Neill guided the jumper up to the docking area and as he, Dr Lam, O’Neill, Ronan, and Special Agent Malcolm Barrett all disembarked from the puddle jumper, the General seemed to be listening to something. John tried to figure out what he was listening to, but it sounded like a heap of gibberish, sort of like Radek when he was uber pissed off with Rodney, but different. He was going to ask who was shouting at them but by that stage, they arrived at the gate room and John felt an overwhelming sense of weariness envelope him, even as the crowd of well-wishers swarmed around him, happy to have him return.
Of course, Lorne, Rodney and Teyla were there, not only making sure they had first dibs on being able to greet him but making sure that everyone gave him space, so he didn’t feel too swamped. He grinned when he saw Captain Laura Cadman and Amelia Barnes stand a little to the side, along with gate technician Chuck Lyons and Ambassador AuClair who had all turned out to welcome him home. Jennifer and Carson were standing a little apart from the others which felt a little off, but he put his observations away to ponder upon at a later date.
Sergeant Stackhouse, Major Teldy and her team of kickass female warriors clustered around him, relieved to see him greatly recovered. Ronon had informed him that it was Teldy’s team and the new AFOSI/ FBI agent who had found him on Balar and they’d been greatly distressed by his dire state. Ronon had told him that he was unrecognisable, and the only way Mehra and Porter had identified him was by his hair, even if it had been much shaggier than normal as he hadn’t had a trim for over five months.
At least his hair had been trimmed by one of the SGC nurses before he left the SGC, but he knew that he still looked pretty rough. He was still preternaturally thin, and his face was gaunt (although he couldn’t know that it had filled out somewhat since his rescue), with dark purplish shadows under his eyes, thanks to the lack of sleep due to his nocturnal nightmares. John was hoping that now, in his own bed with the fresh air and ocean smells and sounds, he would sleep better, but the pragmatic colonel recognised that was little more than magical thinking.
And speaking of his bed, he was feeling like he could handle getting reacquainted with it sooner rather than later but of course he wasn’t about to admit that. His people were all relieved to see him alive and well…okay not well but a lot better than he was when he’d left. He wasn’t going to act like a churlish prat, even though he was practically dead on his feet. Who knew taking a simple ride in a puddle jumper could be so exhausting? So, he locked his knees lest they collapse on him as he bit his tongue and smiled a lot. He didn’t want to be rude to anyone, that was Rodney’s role, and he wouldn’t appreciate John usurping him. John put on a cheerful front as people kept coming up to him and telling him how grateful they all were that he was alive and back home again.
At which point, when Sergeant Stackhouse started telling him about what had happened to his team on their last away mission, Dr Lam stepped in, happy to play the bad guy, insisting that Colonel Sheppard needed to rest now. He was still recuperating and needed plenty of R&R. She ordered Ronon to see him to his quarters and firmly told everyone that although Colonel Sheppard had been allowed to return to Atlantis to continue his recovery – that he still faced weeks of treatments and rehab and people were not to harass him.
John couldn’t help flinching. He knew that he was still going to need to undergo a raft of bone resetting procedures if he wanted to return to active duty again, which of course he did. He had multiple fractures in his hands and feet, plus a fractured collar bone and a badly heal humerus. Plus, several poorly healed facial fractures contributed to his face having a slightly lopsided characteristic, like he’d suffered a stroke. He wasn’t exactly vain, but he just didn’t look like himself and that made it harder to recognise himself when he looked in the mirror. Luckily, once they rebroke his bones, Vala was here on Atlantis and willing to heal him with the Goa’uld handheld device rather than take weeks if not months in the normal fashion. Carolyn had explained that as he was still recovering from malnutrition, it would probably take longer than usual to mend the rebreaks but if Vala used the hand-held device it wouldn’t overtax his physical reserves.
He was grateful that Vala happened to already be on Atlantis and he wondered why she was here and why she had the Goa’uld healing device with her. Who had needed healing, he wondered as Ronon steered him through the city and back to his quarters. God, he missed his own place, humble as it was while he was on Earth.
He had let Ronon help him strip down to his skivvies, any inhibitions between himself and the big guy long past after Ronon had seen him through the worst time of his life detoxing from Lavin’s herb. A part of him wished Dex had just let him go through it by himself, to preserve what little dignity he still possessed but the other part of him was eternally grateful Dex had been there for him. After all, he’d refused to let Dex go through his own addiction withdrawal to Wraith juice alone three years ago when he was at his lowest point.
Besides, as Dex rightly argued, if the Satedan hadn’t volunteered to go to Stargate Command, then Rodney or Teyla would have insisted on being there. Probably both. And while he loved his whole team who were closer to him than his brother David, John wouldn’t have handled having Rodney around with his histrionics and his easily injured feelings, especially when John become abusive and vicious, as he’d done with Ronon. It was one of life’s great ironies that Dr Rodney McKay was probably the most rancorous, caustic individual and yet should anyone give him a taste of his own medicine he became all prickly and wounded. He’d seen him reduce his fellow scientist to bawling babies simply with his tongue, but he was personally easily offended and while John was feeling so low, he didn’t want to deal with having to tap dance around his friend’s delicate feelings.
Teyla on the other hand was no pansy. She would have handled his anger, paranoia, and his cringe-worthy crying for Porteus with her usual grace and strength, maintaining her composure and offering genuine kindness. He now felt horrible about how much of a jerk he’d been to Carson when he abducted him five years ago to get him away from Lavin when he took over Atlantis and John had been quite unsympathetic. Essentially he told him to stop being a baby, something no one at Cheyenne Mountain had ever said to him. But in terms of Teyla, he was only glad that she hadn’t seen him debase himself. For fuck’s sake, he’d tried to bribe General O’Neill with sex if he’d let him see Porteus Kolya. John couldn’t bear to think he might have propositioned her, too. It would have completely undermined their relationship, he felt sure.
When Ronon helped him climb into bed, he wanted to protest. He wasn’t an invalid any more but to be honest, he felt too exhausted to put up a fight. Once he was under the covers, he fell asleep almost immediately. It wasn’t until he woke up several hours later that he realised that Ronon had been keeping vigil over him while he slept. While Sheppard felt exasperated that he needed to be watched like a helpless child, he knew that having someone on hand to watch his back did make a difference. The nightmares weren’t as violent and Ronon had learnt how to halt them without waking him up, letting him get valuable rest he otherwise wouldn’t have. Dex had certainly repaid any debt the Satedan man felt he owed them for saving him from his hellish existence as a runner, tagged and released by the Wraith so they could have the sick sport of tracking him down.
Over the next couple of days, he found himself feeling more and more frustrated as he found it hard to be back on Atlantis but not on duty. And General O’Neill was enforcing the fact that he wasn’t cleared for duty to ensure he didn’t attend official briefings, which made him feel left out of the loop. He knew that it was by the book but if the General hadn’t been on Atlantis, Sheppard would have been able to inveigle his way into briefings and official meetings because he outranked all of the military members, and only AuClair outranked him as commander of Atlantis. However, with the head of Homeworld Command on base he was well and truly stymied, so he was already feeling bored.
Plus, there was no end in sight to his boss being around, the scuttlebutt according to Rodney was that Homeworld Command was setting up a secret research base that he was directly supervising and cutting the IOA out of the process, which was certainly unorthodox. It effectively meant that his superior, who was a three-star, was going to be hanging out on Atlantis for who knows how long. This meant that the only way John was going to be looking at a return to duty was to get serious about attending mandatory counselling. That meant he would need to rip open the scabs that had been forming over his abuse at the hands (or the dicks) of the Genii mercenaries for all those months of incarceration.
He’d decided out of the four options O’Neill had presented to him that the first one, seeing the base psychologist, Dr O’Shea was the best of a bad lot. He didn’t have a lot to do with her during the course of his duties and being older, she hung out with a different crowd, unlike Kate Heightmeyer who had been one of them before his doppelganger alien killed her in her dreams. Talking to General O’Neill seemed an attractive option because he’d been through it in Iraq, but that also meant he wouldn’t be as easy to bullshit as Dr O’Shea would be. He figured he could appeal to her nurturing qualities, but O’Neill wasn’t about to let John get away with that sort of tactic.
He also decided that the third option of speaking with Paddington was not an option, although the fact he wasn’t a trained therapist had definite advantages. He could pull the wool over the agent’s eyes, but he would also have to work closely with Paddington daily and he wasn’t comfortable being so vulnerable with a colleague, especially one he didn’t know. And as for the fourth option the general had presented him with back at SGC last week of talking to Dr Biro who had been training to be a psychiatrist before switching to pathology, nope, not an option. He knew that most of the time Barbara functioned as a regular medical doctor, but he couldn’t help remembering that she also acted as their medical examiner. She dissected dead bodies, and he couldn’t get past that ickiness to feel comfortable confiding in her.
So, Dr O’Shea, it was, by process of elimination. He’d just stopped off to make an appointment and she’d offered to squeeze him in for a session in two days at 0800. Now he just had to turn up to a few sessions and tell her what she wanted to hear, and he would be declared fit for duty in no time flat. Well, after he’d gained another ten pounds according to Dr Lam and built up his muscle mass and stamina. And was able to eat a normal diet again and when he could spar with Teyla and Ronon and perhaps most importantly, when his bones had been reset and healed, then Dr Lam would think about declaring him fit for duty. Shit, it was gonna take forever. At this rate, he was going to be decrepit by the time he was cleared for field work again.
Feeling depressed at the prospect, he wandered into the mess to pick up his lunch which had been specially prepared for him, along with his nutritional shake. His access to coffee was still restricted, only two cups a day which sucked. It was here that he bumped into Alex Paddington in line.
John looked at him and said, you must be new around here, “I’m John Sheppard.”
The guy shook hands. “Not so new, been here just over four months, Colonel Sheppard. My name is SAIC Alexander Paddington, please to meet you at long last.”
‘Well shit, this was the investigator who did what everyone else on Atlantis failed to do. Figure out where he was and rescue him.’
As they collected their food, John said, “I’m grateful for what you did for me. I understand from Ronon that everyone had exhausted every avenue until you arrived and managed to find me. I owe you my life.”
Looking supremely uncomfortable he said, “I was just doing my job and lots of people assisted me,” he said.
“Dex reckons without you, they would have probably never found me. He is the last guy to be impressed with someone, so I believe his assessment of the situation. That means I’m going to continue to be grateful,” he told the federal agent.
“Glad to have helped bring you home, Colonel. Atlantis and its residents have missed you,” he said adroitly changing the subject. “So how are you doing,” he inquired, heading out to the balcony to eat with Sheppard tagging along.
John pouted. “I’m going crazy. I hate not being able to work but at the rate that I’m going, it’s going to be the twelfth of never before I get cleared to return to active duty,” he bitched.
Alex looked at him sympathetically. “I know what you mean. I hate it when I’m out injured. The worst was probably coming back from the plague but that is classified,” he confided.”
“Holy shit, the plague. Bioterrorism attack?” he asked.
Alex chuckled. “Nope, crazy lady scientist with a brain tumour. It still left me with permanently scarred lungs that made it very difficult to get but to field fitness again. Plus, it was always twice as hard for me to maintain my field status annually.”
John looked confused. “You used the past tense. Surely it still is. Scarred lungs don’t cure themselves.”
The agent nodded. “True, but then most people don’t know a General who can authorise a healing session with a specialist healer using alien tech.”
“Vala?”
“Yep, a few weeks ago. I feel amazing. I’d honestly forgotten how incredible it feels to be able to use my lungs at full capacity. Plus, she fixed my knee too.”
“What happened to your knee?” Sheppard asked curiously.
“College football. I had dreams of going pro until a player on another team took me down and shattered it and broke my leg. Needed a knee reconstruction and months of rehab. By the way, my undergrad major was sports medicine and rehabilitation so if you need someone to design a program to get you back up to your previous fitness levels, I’m your guy or I can help you train,” he offered.
John was surprised by the offer, but it wouldn’t hurt. “Thanks, I’d appreciate it. The General has this dumbass idea that I should fence with the kid of some prosecutor that’s coming to Atlantis on board the Zephyrus. I haven’t fenced since I was in high school,” he whined in a disgruntled fashion.
“Colonel, that isn’t such a ludicrous suggestion. Fencing is a full-body workout from muscles in the feet and lower legs all the way up to the shoulders, arms and neck. It also develops fitness, agility strength, coordination, balance, speed, and timing. Swimming would also be an excellent physical activity to help you get your fitness up to scratch,” he told him.
“What about surfing,” Sheppard said eagerly.
“If it’s something you love, then sure, but not until you have better endurance, Colonel. Is there anywhere around here to surf.”
“On the mainland, but I see your point. It can be physically taxing,” he conceded, feeling a little more optimistic about his rehab. “So even though I already owe ya, think I might take you up on your offer to tailor a rehab program? That’s if you truly don’t mind.”
Alex chuckled briefly. “Are you kidding, the only time I get to use what I learnt back in college has been to design rehab programs for myself after I’ve been injured? It will be a lot more fun to design something for another person. Give me a day or two to talk to Cary about anything you can’t do yet, and then I’ll get on it,” he promised looking pleased to help.
John looked at his tray, his fairly boring but highly nourishing food (so he’d been told) had been consumed while they talked and even the blah nutritional supplement had been downed. In the first day or two back on the base, he felt like a goldfish, everyone watching him making sure he was…well he wasn’t exactly sure. Maybe didn’t disappear in a puff of smoke or keel over. Maybe they thought he was still crazy but whatever, it wasn’t exactly conducive to him eating, especially when his food wasn’t what he would call appetising. Yet he’d been so busy engaging with Agent Paddington that he’d barely been aware of what he was eating and oblivious to the furtive observing that the others all engaged in.
He knew they meant well…just like he understood that his diet needed to be carefully balanced and monitored right now but it still sucked. But not as much as being a prisoner and he couldn’t believe how easily Porteus Kolya had captured him. Still, lunch had been bearable, and he was grateful for the federal agent’s company. He was far more animated and engaging than Agent Barrett from the NID and he hoped to get to know him better since they would be colleagues. Right now, John planned on taking a gentle stroll down to the Infirmary to see if Dr Lam was there so he could ask her when they were going to reset his bones and then he was going to rest for a bit. Even with the limited activities he did today, he was feeling exhausted, so it was going to take a while to build up his endurance again.
Chapter 2
Jack had commandeered the conference room on Atlantis with the permission of Commander AuClair. Captain Cadman had been placed in charge of securing all information, including all their conferences regarding the vaccination program which she undertook with her usual degree of competence. It made him resolve to look into and recommend that she be promoted to major. After all, she had been a part of finding Colonel Sheppard and getting him back home again, plus she’d saved Atlantis five years ago when Colonel Caldwell had been taken as a Goa’uld host. Her contribution to saving the city and the personnel who hadn’t evacuated hadn’t fully been emphasised but since Paddington’s arrival and evaluation of historical events, he’d pointed out that without her expertise and tenacity, they would have lost the city. Add that to the Sheppard rescue and her exemplary military record, the Marine should have been promoted to major before now. Hell, she’d still been a lieutenant when she saved the city and that was crazy, given her years of exceptional service.
Anyway, she organised for security to be increased for any discussions on the research and vaccine program for the compound the geeks had named MCD -238β aka the active ingredient they’d isolated in the herb used by Lucius Lavin. The Program was deemed top secret, even here on Atlantis because as Paddington had argued, there was probably a whole heap of people who were reporting back to individual governments, including the Chinese who were actively trying to get their hands on this drug. Security, particularly at this early stage had to be air-tight. This was why, even before they met to discuss the project, now codenamed WOHZ an acronym for War on Happy Zombies (and yeah, Paddington had come up with that moniker) there were rigorous security protocols set to maintain security.
One hour before the meeting, Paddington and Cadman had scoured the room for listening devices and disconnected any computer and all security cameras that could be used to hack in. Then they guarded the room until the meeting began. The captain had posted SFs to guard the outside of the conference room to stop unauthorised people trying to get in or loitering outside, hoping to pick up intel. And every person entering was scanned for tech that might be used to record data or broadcast it to a secondary party. Everyone in the project was thoroughly vetted by Homeworld Command and had already been subjected to polygraphs and agreed to take part in future random polygraphs as required by WOHZ team leaders.
Now they were discussing the critical issue of where to set up their off-world project base. One suggestion was to take over the Mount Zeniche Ancient chair compound and research facility on Balara where Colonel Sheppard had been held captive. As Colonel Lorne pointed out, it was already existing, so they didn’t need to build laboratories and there were accommodations there for personnel. Plus, since they were already studying the technology found there, it shouldn’t raise suspicions.
Jack agreed it had merit but as Paddington pointed out, the Atlantis scientists were already exploring the compound and would resent being chucked out. Resentment led to complaining and that increased the odds that the wrong people would hear about it. That was something O’Neill wanted to avoid as much as possible. He asked Lorne about any other planets where lab facilities already existed which would mean they could get up and running much quicker.
“There are a few possibilities off the top of my head. The Wraith we called Michael had labs that are still standing, plus there is that Wraith genetics laboratory we found on P37 M08 back in the first year. Seeing O’Neill’s blank look, he elaborated, “We learnt that they had been mucking around with the Athosians’ genetics and introducing Wraith DNA which was how descendants like Teyla and Kanaan could sense them and could psychically communicate with Wraith. I’m not sure if any of these locations would be suitable, Sir and beyond that, I’d have to consult the Atlantis database,” he said.
“The other possibility is using one of the three Ancient cities on Balar. I don’t know if there are any science labs but given the Ancients’ love affair with all things scientific what are the odds that there aren’t laboratories on at least one of them,” Tony suggested.
“Quite good, I’d say,” O’Neill stated looking pleased. Alrighty folks, let’s have an analysis of the pros and cons of all the sites identified and any more that Colonel Lorne unearthes from the database. The director of Project WOHZ will be arriving on Atlantis in 72 hours, and I want a list of possible sites for him, Dr Lam, and Dr Parrish to view and make their recommendation regarding their suitability. Anything else?”
Paddington cleared his throat. “Um another possibility, we might want to think about if we should set up WOHZ’s vaccine processing facility separate from the research operation. Maybe even separate it from any research into how the drug might be weaponised.”
The scientist looked confused, but the military members all were nodding their agreement. “I know that it triples the logistics and security needed to protect the project, but it also triples the security and makes it much more difficult to infiltrate. Even if they do manage to get a mole into one facility it decreases the scope of the data they can steal.”
Dr Katy Brown raised her hand. “Why not just set up here on Atlantis in some of the unused buildings? There are labs galore here.”
Jack answered, “Because this project is being run under the auspices of the US Government and the AIO controls Atlantis. Since at least one member of the IOA and their government want to get their hands on MCD –238β it would make it extremely difficult to maintain security and secrecy. We do not want the rogue IOA representative to know that we are aware of their plan to get control of the drug and weaponize it. That would be a huge disaster, Dr Brown.”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Not your bailiwick Doctor,” he told her gently, although as second in charge of the botanic department under Dr Parrish you will need a crash course in security and paranoia. We need to keep this operation as secure as a bioweapon because that is exactly what it is. If it falls into the wrong hands, it could be devastating on a whole other level.”
“I understand, General. I’ll get up to speed,” she promised earnestly.
He nodded approvingly before turning to other matters, regarding logistics. “The POTUS has dedicated the Apollo to be placed at the exclusive disposal of Operation WOHZ unless Earth or Atlantis is under attack. So, we shouldn’t have an issue with supplies and such forth. It will also make deliveries directly from Earth, bypassing the SGC and Atlantis. We know that the SGC is a concern since the IOA are frequently on base and there has been ongoing infiltration into SGC personnel by the Trust. Having the exclusive services of the Apollo means that we can keep our footprints to a minimum.” O’Neill announced to all-round grins of relief.
As they worked their way through a bunch of administrative stuff, Capt. Cadman and Agent Paddington were called out by the SFs and MPs to sort out a domestic dispute between a scientist and one of the enlisted personnel. By the time they’d sorted it out and talked to Chegwidden about possible charges, the meeting was almost done. Just before they broke up, the general reminded the meeting’s participants of the cover story that they were using. That was that one of the plants brought back by an Atlantis away team seemed like it might be useful for treating various cancer types. However, when it had evaluated by Dr Brown and Dr Lam at Cheyenne Mountain they discovered that the anti-cancer effects observed on cells fail to bear fruit in animal trials. Dr Lam had discovered though that it had promising qualities for regenerating serious burns.
As the general dismissed the two botanists after scheduling to meet again in two days, Paddington indicated he had something else he wanted to discuss with the others while they were in a secure location. After the botanists had left the room, Lorne looked at Alex and said, “Should we stay or go?”
He shrugged, “Eh, no reason to leave but I didn’t bring it up while the geeks were here because there is no sense in giving them any more info than necessary. Since you were here at the time, you might have valuable insights, Colonel,” he said.
“Okay, so what’s on your mind,” Jack asked thinking about the orange chocolate jaffa cake that was on the menu today for lunch. He didn’t want to miss out.
“So, I know that I’m super paranoid right now with the MCD –238β compound but I’ve been reading mission reports over the years, and I came across a contagion that is considered a childhood disease here in Pegasus but proved deadly to those people who were from Earth.”
“Yeah, Kirsan Fever. It caused fever, dizziness, and headaches and after on average six hours, it resulted in amnesia and finally death. But the widely grown enchuri plant cured those of us that weren’t too far gone,” Lorne confirmed somewhat blithely.
Jack looked grave, immediately grasping Tony’s implication. “You think if we thwart their access to Lavin’s herb they might try to use this Kirsan bacteria to gain control?”
“Like I said, I’m probably paranoid but I wouldn’t put it past them.”
O’Neill considered the situation. “I’d hate to go to all this trouble to come up with a universal vaccine for MCD –238β only to have them resort to plan B. What do you think, Caro,” he said, using the name he’d called her since childhood.
“I think we’d be foolish not to be prepared. I think we need to start cultivating this Enchuri plant and figure out a mass distribution method as well,” she said with finality.
“Perhaps we could pay some farmers on multiple planets to grow it for us. Since it is already a known treatment for what is considered a harmless childhood disease, it shouldn’t raise any eyebrows,” Alex suggested reasonably.
And everyone could see the common sense in that option.
As they left the conference room, O’Neill wandered over to Alex and said, “I think I might have some good news. Agent Bates and Agent Barrett have recommended an analyst that sounds promising. She worked at the NID for several years before heading over to the CIA a couple of years ago. I’m going to get Paul to vet her and if she checks out we’ll see if she might be interested. I was thinking about offering her the job of head analyst.”
His agent looked happy. “That’s fantastic news, General.”
~o0o~
John had just finished his first session with Dr O’Shea, and he was feeling gutted. He’d expected to be able to control the narrative, but he’d soon realised she wasn’t as benevolent or naïve as her appearance would suggest. Honestly, she looked like she’d be a pushover, a tiny lady in her early sixties who looked like everyone’s favourite but sexy grandma, but he’d discovered that she was no softy. Aoife was sassy and cussed quite a bit, although in her Irish accent with her no shite and her feck offs, she was rather hilarious and more importantly, a much tougher opponent than he’d imagined. By the end of their session, he was exhausted – partly at trying to fend her off when she wanted information he didn’t wish to discuss, i.e., his family and partly because of all of the data she’d managed to elicit from him. He had a feeling this mandatory counselling was going to be a lot more problematic than he first thought.
As he stopped off at the mess to pick up his lunch, he ran into Alex Paddington who was accompanied by his four-year-old daughter, Belle. Alex invited John to sit and eat lunch with them and he gratefully accepted. He’d already heard about Belle from Ronon and Teyla and had been looking forward to meeting the little girl who Dex was kind of besotted with. Since Dex wasn’t exactly the sort of guy who you’d think would pay much attention to a four-year-old, especially a girl, it made him curious about her. Rodney hadn’t even been aware of her existence, yet once he learned she was Paddington’s daughter from John’s casual conversation with Teyla and Dex, he’d immediately disparaged her, based upon her parentage.
For some reason, Rodney was very anti-Alex, apparently because the federal agent had ruffled his feathers when looking for suspects in John’s disappearance. Of course, he didn’t know exactly what the AFOSI/FBI accredited agent had said to piss McKay off that badly, because no one was allowed to discuss the case with him beyond the broadest of details about how they’d rescued him. The ban on him knowing more had been ordered by General O’Neill until John had been debriefed and given a statement to SAIC Alex Paddington. They were waiting on the go-ahead from Dr O’Shea as to when she would authorise the debrief and statement taking but until then, he felt like a mushroom, kept in the dark and fed a lot of BS.
So, all he knew was that Rodney hated Alex but from John’s limited perspective, he seemed like a good guy. After all, he quite literally owed the federal agent his life. Dr Lam had been painfully blunt about his ability to have survived, putting it down to only days without medical intervention if they hadn’t found him when they did. Plus, the guy was helping him to get his career back on track too. Paddington drew up a plan to build up his fitness and was even working out with him. He had a way of pushing him gently but unlike Teyla and Ronon, who he had a highly competitive exercise relationship with, John didn’t feel the same desire to remain invulnerable. Perhaps it was the revelation that he’d had to overcome badly scared lungs to regain his field status. So, in John’s book, Alex Paddington was one of the good guys and he owed him a huge debt of gratitude.
As he lowered himself down into the seat, he smiled at the small girl. “Hi, you must be Belle. Torren’s mom and Ronon have told me about you.”
Her father introduced him. “This is Colonel Sheppard, Belle. He helps run Atlantis and is Colonel Lorne’s boss.”
She smiled, “You gave Torren and Felix the remote-controlled cars. How come you didn’t give Kazumi one,” she asked.
And John was floored. The truth was that it never entered his head, mainly because she was a girl and he thought she’d prefer to play with dolls and tea sets. Which was pretty presumptuous of him, although it took a four-year-old to point that out.
“Um, I don’t know,” he looked rattled.
“Well, it isn’t nice to leave someone out,” she looked at her father. “We don’t exude our friends, do we Papa,” she checked. “It makes them feel sad.”
Shrugging at John for throwing him under the bus he said, “We don’t exclude, not exude.”
“Oh, what does exude mean?”
Alex explained that exude meant to ooze out or to radiate like the rays of the sun or a smile and she listened intently.
“So, how do you say exude in French, Papa?” she asked.
“Exsuder,” he responded as she frowned.
“English is tricky,” Belle complained with a dramatic sigh, as her father nodded.
Having been suitably deflected from the issue of remote-controlled cars and Kazumi’s possibly hurt feelings, she told him, “Did you know that Colonel Lorne is my friend, too? I’m going to marry him when I’m grown up. He watches Power Rangers with me and Amelia.”
Chuckling at Sheppard’s look of astonishment, her father quipped, “The most important qualification for a happy marriage.”
John chuckled. “When is the wedding, can I come?”
Belle smiled widely, showing her dimples. “Yes you can come but not until I’m grown up, when I’m eleven.”
“When your forty, you mean,” Alex told her.
“I’ll be an old lady,” she pouted.
John hid a grin. She was too cute.
As they finished up their lunch, Alex apologised. “I need to drop this one off at school, she had a bad night and I let her sleep in, but she wants to go to school for the rest of the day,” he said.
“I didn’t think kids started school at four, John responded.
“Well, not usually, no, but General O’Neill permitted her to start early. She is bright and speaks three languages.”
“No Papa, I can speak English, Italian, French, Japanese and Hankarian,” she corrected her father pedantically.
“Oops, my bad,” he told her. “But Belle, you are still learning Japanese, and Ms Fraiser just started teaching you Hankarian.”
“But I can count to ten and say hello, goodbye, goodnight and thank you in Hankarian and I can also say, can I go to the toilet, please,” she argued as they left the mess.
Sheppard wondered what Hankarian was, perhaps she meant Hungarian he decided he finished up his meal and swallowed down the last of the nutritional meal/shake, grimacing at the taste. Still, it was a much better option than being held captive any day of the week. He was going to let his food digest and this afternoon he had a 30-minute session with Dr Zhao who was going to spend half an hour doing Tai Chi with him. Dr Zhao, a scientist from the biochemistry department ran a bi-weekly class as well as leading a group of adherents down on the northern concourse of the city bright and early most morning. After determining that John was not big on meditation or yoga, Alex suggested that Tai Chi would be a gentle but excellent mental and physical workout at this early stage of his rehab program. Dr Zhao was going to work with him individually today so he could join the class.
Although Paddington wouldn’t let him push himself too hard, he was already feeling like he could walk to the mess without needing a nap afterwards. Plus, he was sleeping longer between waking up in a cold sweat due to nightmares. Dr Lam was pleased with his progress and estimated that if he continued to make gradual progress in gaining weight, particularly lean muscle mass, she was happy to sign off on sedating him for the bone resetting procedure. At first, he wanted to do it immediately, but she cautioned that with his still somewhat precarious physical situation, putting him under a general anaesthetic was far too problematic, especially when they weren’t under the pump in terms of timeframes. Although he didn’t want to hear it, it would be weeks if not months before he was cleared physically and psychologically. Reluctantly, he’d agreed, anxious to get back to normal as quickly as possible.
~o0o~
Rodney McKay was ropeable. He knew something big was afoot. General O’Neill had been commuting between Atlantis and Earth since the mission that found Sheppard. Plus, Jackson and Vala Mal Doran had shown up not long after they shipped John out to Cheyenne Mountain in their typically callous and high-handed fashion when the medicos on Atlantis was perfectly capable of looking after one of their own. Even though Ronon and surprisingly John had insisted that if he’d been given a choice, he would have opted to go back to the SCG to receive treatment, McKay was still miffed at the slight to his girlfriend, Jennifer who was a fantastic doctor. Dr Lam denigrated his partner, and he was not happy, and neither was Keller, who was after all the chief medical officer of Atlantis. Then to add insult to injury, the Chief Medical Officer from SGC turned up on Atlantis, with John and O’Neill and some guy from the NID and what the hell was that about?
Worse, Dr Lam was personally supervising the ongoing medical treatment of the colonel and his medical records were deemed Top Secret so Jennifer, Atlantis’ CMO wasn’t able to view them. It was just outrageous and a huge slap in the face to Keller, and when Rodney attempted to hack into John’s medical records he was chucked out and mysteriously his hot water had been cut off. How dare they, it was outrageous, never mind that he used the tactic to punish Lanteans regularly. O’Neill told him to stop trying to hack into Sheppard’s medical file but professed not to know anything about his hot water being shut off which Rodney didn’t believe for one nanosecond. Even more irksome to the brilliant scientist, he couldn’t figure out how to turn it back on. Whoever had done it hadn’t left a trace of their handiwork and it wasn’t done using his method of delivering punishments.
When Bill Lee turned up yesterday, that was the final straw. He was cloistered in a meeting with all the usual suspects that had been meeting over the last few weeks, but no one had seen fit to read him in or authorise his attendance. As chief scientific officer, he had every right to attend but Cadman’s muscle-bound goons kept everyone at bay. The fact that he was excluded, and Nigel Parrish was part of every damned meeting meant that it was something plant related which meant that as CSO he had a right to know what was going on. To pour salt into the wounds, Rodney had gone to the commander, Ambassador AuClair, who was Canadian like Rodney, sure that he’d support him. After all, the IOA was in charge of Atlantis, only to be slapped down by the commander.
“The meeting is operating under the auspice of Homeworld Command, Dr McKay.”
“But the IOA runs Atlantis,” Rodney ranted, his face becoming red as his BP soared.
“That is true, but the matter has been allocated to Homeworld Command by the US President and won’t be based on Atlantis. “
“Nigel Parrish is head of the botany department and is my subordinate therefore I must be informed about what he’s working on.”
“I’d check your emails, Dr McKay. Dr Parrish has been seconded to Homeworld for an indefinite period. He is no longer working for Atlantis, the same as Dr Brown who was seconded from the SGC. You’ll need to appoint a temporary replacement for Dr Parrish,” AuClair stated.
“Yeah okay. I’ll talk to Dr Martinez about assuming temporary control,” he said grumpily.”
“Ah, Drs Martinez and Dr Wu have been seconded as well on Dr Parrish’s recommendation,” AuClair said and before you complain, I only approved it minutes before you barged in here screaming and shouting.”
“I’m losing three botanists?” he yelled. “How am I supposed to replace three from the same department,” he demanded.
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out, McKay. As you’re so fond of telling us all, you are the smartest person on the planet,” he said dismissively.
As he stormed out, McKay ran into Katy Brown, quite literally. After they detangled themselves, Katy smiled at him awkwardly. “Hi Rodney, long time no see.”
Feeling uneasy around the woman he came close to being engaged to, even bought her a ring, he was terse. “Um, Katy…Dr Brown. What are you doing here?”
“I’m on a secondment to Homeworld Command,” she demurred, looking exquisitely uncomfortable.
“Doing what,” he interrogated.
“Oh… stuff,” she evaded.
“What Dr Brown is too polite to say straight up, Dr McKay is that we have both been recruited for a top-secret project that is needed to know, and I’m afraid you don’t,” Nigel Parrish told Rodney bluntly.
“I need to know, I’m the chief scientific officer on Atlantis,” he insisted, trying to contain his ire at being left out of the loop.”
Nigel Parrish, who’d worked under McKay for years took a childish satisfaction in saying, “Well Atlantis isn’t in charge of this research project and the research isn’t situated here so, no, you really don’t need to know. Now if you excuse us we have work to do,” he said firmly, taking Katy by the arm and drawing her away towards his office.
Rodney was furious so he decided if they wouldn’t tell him, he’d just have to pull some strings with the JCS and especially the Chief of Staff of the Army. He was the smartest person on Earth, he should be in charge of whatever the hell project Homeworld Command was running. Not Bill Lee, who was a competent enough scientist but he sure wasn’t a genius. The man spent his spare time playing World of Warcraft for pity’s sake. Bill was certainly no match, professionally or intellectually for Rodney, although to be fair, no one was. Lee wasn’t even on par with second-tier types such as Zelenka, Miko Kusanagi or his favourite dumb but sexy blonde, Samantha Carter. It was simply outrageous that General O’Neill would be slighting him like this.
Heading back to his lab, Atlantis’ CSO decided that he wasn’t going to put up that need-to-know bullshit. He was the smartest man in two galaxies, and he needed to know. Luckily, as well as being a genius, he was also a fucking stupendous hacker, if they refused to read him in on their secret program, then he had ways of finding out. He debated whether he should call in some favours with the JCS or just go ahead and hack into the servers of Homeworld Command. In the end, his impatience to know what was going on made him pick the latter option since it would only take him a short while to find out what the hell they were doing.
As he discovered that the data on the Homeworld Command server was heavily encrypted, Rodney realised that it wouldn’t be quite as simple as it seemed. Rather than deterring him, he became even more determined to crack the encryption than when he started. It was infuriating and every time he thought he’d done it, whoever was responsible for the security protocols would throw yet another obstacle in his way. Clearly whoever had created the security was an evil sadistic prick because each time Rodney thought he’d cracked it, to only to be thwarted yet again, his computer screen would explode with unicorns and rainbows or horror of horrors, insipid memes of cutesy pie kittens and adorable puppies that would give him nightmares for the rest of his life. It was far worse than his Moby Dick nightmares!
As if that weren’t bad enough, accompanying the saccharinely sweet images, capable of inducing hyperglycaemic status every time he failed to crack the code were kind text messages exhorting him to not give up. He found it highly offensive to be exhorted that ‘he was so close,’ or ‘that he should never say die.” It was so insulting to someone of his prodigious intellect. Goading him like that, he couldn’t possibly just admit defeat.
He was so invested in beating the damned security protocols that McKay failed to realise that the process of trying to crack the encryption was designed to be not just challenging but highly addictive as in the crack-cocaine sense of the word. An hour turned to two as he realised he was not even close to cracking the damned encryption. When Jennifer dragged him away some five hours later, his blood sugar was low, and he was in an extremely foul mood and perfectly happy to take out his frustrations on anyone who happened to be in the immediate vicinity. Since he was often loudly obstreperous, no one paid him any mind, but they just did what they normally did when he got in one of his moods, gave him a wide berth. This just left Jennifer to cope with his snapping at her and being extra sarcastic, resulting in her dragging him to her quarters, suggesting he was cranky because he needed to get laid.
Normally, he’d be all on board with that suggestion, but his brain wouldn’t stop thinking about the kittens and puppies all encouraging him to try harder. How dare they tell him he should concentrate harder. It was lucky that he didn’t need to focus to get his rocks off, it only took him a couple of minutes, however, Jennifer wasn’t impressed, as she always needed a heap of foreplay before she climaxed. She ended up kicking him out of her bed, no she kicked him out of bed, literally and he landed on the floor, falling hard on his coccyx, leaving him writhing in pain and also very effectively ruining his post-coital-bliss. Jennifer told him scathingly to get out, that she would get Fabrizio, her favourite sex toy and seal the deal without him.
After he dressed, grumbling about bitchy girlfriends and what the fuck was her problem anyway, he left and headed back to the lab to continue trying to crack the damned encryption. By the time he’d made it back to the lab, which was all of five minutes, he cavalierly dismissed her behaviour as her just being hormonal as he booted up his computer. Six hours later, he finally thought he had it licked but when the page flashed up with the Homeworld Command logo, it disappeared again and in its place was a picture of that damned stupid Grumpy Cat with a message, which said he timed out. When he tried to start up, thinking that now he’d done it once, it would be much quicker and he’d be ready when it cut him off, a text box flashed up on his screen. It informed him in a patronising tone that he was being logged out for eight hours because the user needed to sleep and try again later. Then a video replaced his screensaver showing a puppy pile of sleeping canines with the melody for Brahms’ Lullaby playing softly in the background.
Oh, that was some malevolent vile sadist who’d designed these security protocols, undoubtedly someone with sociopathic tendencies. Perhaps he should have contacted the Joint Chiefs of Staff who were loath to piss him off since he’d single-handedly saved the world on countless occasions. Still, the truth was that as evil as his faceless opponent was, anyone that sick to use all of those animal memes had to be soft in the head and he refused to be bested by someone who was quite clearly not his intellectual equal. ‘No,’ he told himself, ‘You can do this.’
Rodney booted up Radek’s computer, refusing to be logged out and started trying to hack into the Homeworld Command servers, only to complete five steps before a meme of a mother cat disciplining a kitten by swatting it on the nose and chasing it off popped up, as a verbal message blared out at him.
“Naughty kitty, Mama Cat logged you out of the system for eight hours. Now it’s ten hours. If you don’t go to bed, Mama Cat will lock you out for twenty-four hours. Be a good little kitty cat, have a saucer of milk and go to sleep.”
Oh, how he longed to defy the smug SOB who just locked him out for ten hours, he was desperate to get back in and beat the smug bastard but if he failed, it would be twenty-four hours before he could get back in and try to figure out how to crack the encryption. Whoever did it, had to be crazy to come up with such evil torture methods but they were diabolical. Meredith Rodney McKay was far smarter, and he would prevail.
It was with great reluctance that he headed for his quarters. As he prepared for bed, he was already plotting his moves to defeat the evil animal meme sadist tomorrow. Despite his mind running like a pet hamster in an exercise wheel, he fell asleep, exhausted from being awake for over twenty consecutive hours. He awoke several hours later, freezing cold which was something that New Lantean with its tropical climate didn’t happen on Atlantis. Thinking the cooling had developed a bug, he tried to turn it down and failing that, switch it off, since his extremities were turning blue, he wondered if it was some cataclysmic climatic change. When he stepped out onto his pocket-sized balcony to check, he was hit by a wave of balmy warm air that smelled like the ocean.
Having determined that the problem lay in the heating/cooling system, he figured he’d get a few more hours of sleep and fix it in the morning. He thought about sharing body heat with Jennifer but after she kicked him out of bed earlier, he figured that was probably not the best idea. Instead, he piled on as many clothes as he could, put several pairs of socks on his feet and several more on his hands and burrowed down under his tropical-weight bed covers to try to get some sleep. He awoke a couple of hours later, practically melting, sweat pouring off him as he realised the heat was turned up to maximum. Something was seriously wrong with the climate-control.
After a trip to the mess where everyone he questioned swore they’d slept like babies and there’d been no crazy shenanigans from their climate controls, he reached the incontrovertible conclusion that it was just his cabin that had been affected. Just like it had just been only his quarters where the hot water had been switched off. It was apparent that someone was messing with him, but he was also at a loss to know who it could be. Most people had a healthy respect for him and his ability to make their life miserable when he tracked down who was doing this to him. And he so would find out who was responsible for messing with his life. Didn’t they know who they were fucking with? He was going to make them rue the day they’d been born after he got done teaching them that no one messed with Rodney McKay.
Stomping off in a foul mood, he headed for his lab, only to find Radek shouting in Czech and even though he didn’t speak it, he didn’t need to be a mind reader (like he had been for a brief time when he activated the Ancient Ascension machine) to know that Zelenka was in an unbelievably bad mood.
“Hey Radek, I’m guessing the climate controls in your quarters were on the blink, too,” he asked his 2IC.
“No, why do you ask,” was the barely terse reply.
“Well, you seemed to be in a bad mood and the climate controls were acting up in my room – one minute they were subarctic temperatures and a few hours later it felt Turkish bathhouse,” Rodney complained as Radek stood there, smouldering with rage.
“Yes, yes, yes, very tragical, I’m sure. Did you touch my computer, Rodney,” he demanded.
Rodney went to open his mouth to deny it when Radek warned him, “Before you answer that I already know the answer,” he said flicking a glance at the security cameras.
“As CSO I can access any damned computer in this lab or on Atlantis I want, I don’t need your permission.”
“Yes, well, whoever you were hacking has infected my computer with a virus, thank you so much. It’s probably going to take me all day to get rid of it,” he told McKay before lapsing back into Czech. No doubt he was describing in graphic detail, everything Radek wanted to do to him, and Rodney knew that Zelenka was disturbingly inventive when it came to getting retribution for pranks.
McKay rolled his eyes, “Don’t be such a drama queen, Radek.”
Dragging McKay to his workstation, he said, “Type a word.”
Deciding it was easier just to mollify his second in command when he got like this, he typed w o r d and the screen lit up with purple sparkles, a rainbow unicorn and immediately a godawful piece of music started playing. One of the other scientists started giggling and informed them it was a popular song from last century called The Music Box Dancer which every piano student in the seventies and eighties used to learn. Rodney informed her acerbically that not all students, he would have vehemently refused to play it if his idiot of a music teacher tried to inflict this execrable drivel upon his younger self.
He told Zelenka to shut it off, it was making him want to puke up his breakfast and Radek gave him a vicious smile.
“I can’t. Once it starts, you have to let it finish. If you try to stop it, it just replays a second time.”
Oh, that’s ridiculous. I’ll fix it,” he boasted, stupidly forgetting that he’d already come off second best to the individual who programmed the security protections.
Radek shrugged. “Be my guest, McKay. Besides, seeing as your hacking was the cause of this virus that only seems fair,” he said, frankly.
“Meanwhile, I have to go and see about fixing one of the jumpers. AR-7 reported that something was malfunctioning with the cloaking mechanism,” Zelenka informed him with a smirk.
Gradually throughout the song, all the other scientists found excuses to be absent from the lab until he was on his own with the infernal noise. He refused to call it music, it was almost as bad as elevator muzak. And Radek, damn him, was right, when he tried to turn it off, it simply played the tune for another three and a half minutes OF HELL. After almost an hour, he was crying tears of rage and he found himself banging his head against the table, wanting to make the torture stop.
Whoever had done this shit was absolutely demonic!
Chapter 3
After nineteen days aboard the Zephyrus, Aaron Hotchner and his fourteen-year-old son were beamed down to Atlantis like they were in an episode of Star Trek. The technology had been a gift from a race of highly evolved aliens who had cloned themselves into extinction, which seemed unbearably tragic and incredibly sobering. Jack was looking around him at their new WitSec placement, agog with excitement. Thankfully, after day fourteen of his detox from social media on board the spaceship travelling to the Pegasus galaxy, the old Jack had started to re-emerge and the truculence to the point of rudeness sloughed off him like a snake shedding its old skin. Now he was engaged and social, buddying up with the young adults on the crew who treated him like a favourite kid brother.
On the flight, they’d all raved about the fantastic, ultra-sleek and surprisingly futuristic yet ancient city that had been built so long before humans were making their presence felt but nothing could prepare the father and son for Atlantis. It was a huge metropolis of buildings floating on the ocean of the planet that had been named New Lantea after being forced to move the flying city from its original planet when it had been under attack. Jack was practically jumping out of his skin and Hotch realised that his son might finally realise just what a privilege it was to be allowed to live on the uber-classified base that most people, even the so-called social influencers on social media would never know about. While having to go into witness protection because his father’s enemies wanted to harm them sucked (to use the teenager’s vernacular and for the record, Hotch agreed with him), this was certainly going some way to making up for all he’d lost in his short yet turbulent life.
And there waiting for them was General O’Neill, standing with another mature-looking guy, who was bald with a beard and had military bearing. As he started to make his way over to O’Neill and his companion, Lieutenant Jennifer Hailey strode up to the General, snapping out a sharp salute.
“First Lieutenant Hailey reporting as ordered, General O’Neill, Sir,” she said.
O’Neill acknowledged the salute, looking far more comfortable in his BDUs than his dress uniform back on Earth. “Good to see you, Lieutenant. Get yourself some quarters, settle in and there’ll be a briefing at 0930 tomorrow. Dr Lee is looking forward to working with you again,” he told her and although it was fairly subtle, Hotch detected a genuine fondness for the young lieutenant.
Aaron was pleased that Jennifer would be staying on the base, at least temporarily as Jack had become good friends with the young lieutenant. He wasn’t sure if his son had a crush on the young officer or if it was just a case of hero worship, but he knew that the lieutenant would treat Jack’s feelings with tact and respect. If he did have a crush, Hotch reckoned he’d picked an excellent choice.
Placing his hand on his son’s shoulder he guided him over to greet the general. Remembering how rude Jack had been to O’Neill back at Colorado Springs, Hotch was hoping he would be a lot more polite.
“Welcome to Atlantis, Hotchners. Hope you enjoyed the flight,” O’Neill greeted them warmly as he evaluated the teenager who was not the sullen disinterested adolescent who left Earth almost three weeks ago.
“It was amazing,” Hotch replied as Jack nodded, staring at all the people helping to organise the new arrivals.
“Hotchners, this is retired Rear Admiral Andrew Jethro Chegwidden, aka A.J. who was the former Judge Advocate General for Naval JAG and before that a highly decorated SEAL. Currently, he is taking a break from a highly successful stint as a civilian attorney in DC to help us get our interstellar judicial system up and running. Aaron, you, and Chegwidden will be working closely together in the foreseeable future. A.J., meet the former FBI profiler and special agent in charge of the world-famous Behavioural Analysis Unit and before that, he had a successful career as an ADA.”
The two attorneys sized each other up before exchanging handshakes and pleasantries. O’Neill clapped his hands together and said, “Now that the niceties have been observed, we thought we’d escort you to meet our AFOSI/ FBI agent who also is a single parent. He volunteered to show you around, take you to your quarters, and help you settle in. While he’s a fairly recent arrival himself, Special Agent in Charge Paddington has made it his business to get to know everyone aboard Atlantis and has already recruited one of your peers to help you find your feet, young Jack,” O’Neill told them as he started to herd them out of the gate room.
As he and A.J. led them away from the chaos that every arrival of the Zephyrus entailed, especially when they brought a new batch of personnel as well as supplies, the father and son were looking on in awe. It was hard to remember that this city, this structure was older than the Egyptian pyramids by thousands of years. It was a testament to just how advanced the Ancients were that they were able to create something that existed for so long and was so technologically superior, Aaron mused in awe.
The General led them down several corridors before entering a transporter, and then down two more corridors to a room that O’Neill informed them was SAIC Paddington’s interview room. It looked quite lowkey yet welcoming and he noted it had a small area for making hot drinks, another area with a round table and chairs that reminded Hotch of the BAU and an area with armless leather armchairs that were arranged in a horseshoe formation.
Agent Paddington was seated at the table with a small dark-haired little girl, her hair pulled up into pigtails. She had green eyes and cute dimples and was chattering away to her father in fluent French as she coloured in a picture of a butterfly. This time, A.J. did the honours, introducing the Hotchners to the Paddingtons. Belle Paddington said something to her father and although his French was rusty, Hotch managed to explain to Jack that the child was worried about how they could distinguish between her Uncle Jack and the new Jack. Paddington had pointed out that she already called General O’Neill Uncle Jack so she should be fine, but the little girl got a stubborn look on her face like the answer didn’t appease her.
Addressing Aaron, Alex said, “We kind of bent protocol a little by detouring here instead of heading straight to the infirmary but I needed a quick word with you, Aaron. The General and A.J. are going to escort Jack down there and we’ll be along in a couple of minutes,” he said. We can go into the adjoining interview room to chat while you guys wait here if you prefer,” he offered, picking up on Hotch’s reluctances to have Jack go off without him.
Observing the lessening of tension, at least Hotch assumed that was what it was, he laid a gentle hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Kiddo, will you stay here with Mr Chegwidden and Uncle Jack and …Jack while I talk to Mr Hotchner for a couple of minutes, please?”
Belle nodded, “Okay Papa, I’m a big girl.”
She switched to another language, Hotch thought it was Italian and asked a question. Her father answered but in English. “Sort of, Belle. We won’t be long.”
“Sì, papà, mi prenderò cura del piccolo Jack,” the child smiled at him.
“Grazie Tesoro,” he replied.
Hotch knowing a little Italian courtesy of his friendship with David Rossi, his former colleague understood she offered to look after Little Jack. He reckoned his son would be quite miffed by that cute moniker, he grinned inwardly. Aaron followed Paddington through an internal door into another room that he realised in surprise was an observation room. At least he could see Jack still.
“I thought you mentioned an interview room, Alex?”
“I did and then I thought back to how I felt when I first stepped through the gate with Belle and figured you wouldn’t want to be separated from him. This way you can still see him.”
“Thank you, that is very kind. What was it you needed to see me about?”
“Okay, two things, first off, Belle and I came to Atlantis because it was safer than staying on Earth. General O’Neill organised his own WitSec position for me and due to the nature of the threat, we aren’t completely safe here in Atlantis either, so we are not using our real names. Jack and MI6 created false identities for us, just so you know. The other thing is, that I wanted to check if you recognised me. I didn’t want you blurting out my real identity in public.”
“ Do I know you?” Hotch asked. “The general said you are FBI, but I didn’t recall having heard your name before. Of course, that makes sense if it’s a fake name. But did I work with you? Were you stationed at Quantico?”
“Neither. I was friends with one of your former team, Derek Morgan and through him, I met Penelope Garcia socially. Derek also set me up on a blind date with Emily Prentiss back when I was going through a rough patch, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. I just thought you might have seen a photo of me, and I didn’t want to take any chances.”
Hotch nodded. “I can understand that, but I don’t think so. Anyway, I certainly will be discreet. You can count on me to protect your secret.”
Alex nodded. “Great, I appreciate that. I’m glad you’re here, you and A.J. are really needed on Pegasus. Okay, there’s a lot to discuss but first things first. You both have to go have a medical. SOP with all new arrivals,” he said to forestall any arguments. “Then Belle and I will show you to your quarters and give you a tour of the place,” he said, leading the former FBI agent out into the interview room.
As they entered the room, Hotch could see that Belle Paddington was chattering away to his son who looked a little bemused. Before going into witness protection Jack was used to spending time with JJ’s younger boys, but he didn’t have a lot of experience with small girls and Belle seemed like a force to be reckoned with. As they made their way out of the tower that he was informed housed the AFOSI/ FBI suite of rooms, the Brig (detention centre) and Atlantis Base Security, to head back to the tower where the infirmary was housed, Hotch felt a small sense of comfort. At least he and Jack weren’t the only refugees hiding out on Atlantis from criminals wanting to harm them.
~o0o~
As they entered the infirmary, they found Dr Biro was on duty and Alex smiled at the doctor and introduced him to the father and son and he whispered something in her ear.
Barbara nodded, “Yes you can see her. Maybe you can persuade her to get out of bed and take a walk around,” she said glancing up at a monitor to check on the patient.
“I’ll try, he said doubtfully. I just needed to talk to her about something, but I’ll see what I can do.”
He looked at the general and A.J. “Would you mind keeping an eye on Belle for me? I just want a few minutes with Dr Girard,” he asked.
“But Papa, can’t we go and get morning tea?”
He frowned. “It will be time for lunch in just over an hour, Pumpkin. Can’t you wait?”
“No Papa, I’m hungry as a pony. We didn’t have a morning snack,” she argued.
O’Neill chuckled. “I’m with Miss Annabelle. I think it might be cake time in the mess,” he said. “We’ll meet you there, Alex,” he said holding out his hand to Belle.
Tony shook his head, “Fine but only a small piece, so she doesn’t spoil her appetite,” he said.
The general nodded. “Belle and I will share a piece,” he vowed. “Now go, we’ll see you a bit later.”
They disappeared down the corridor as Tony made his way to Monique Girard’s door, knocking before he stuck his head in the door. “Hey Dr Girard, can I come in for a minute or two,” he asked the woman who was sitting hunched up in the bed, looking apathetic.
She briefly made eye contact with him, shrugging. “Sure,” she said although her body language said otherwise.
“I won’t stay if I’m intruding but Dr Meier wanted me to give you a book to read. She said that your favourite author was Jody Picoult,” he said, handing over a book written by the author published in 2014 called Leaving Time.
She nodded. “We both like her books,” she said listlessly. She sees things from different perspectives. Tell Ilsa I said thank you.”
“I will. She also mentioned that you were a fan of Agatha Christie, so I downloaded some of the lesser-known film adaptations of her books onto this iPad. I thought you might like to watch them,” he said handing over an iPad that someone left behind after they transferred out, which was just sitting in the lost property department. “Dr Meier also wanted me to ask you if she could visit you,” he told her.
Again, Monique shrugged listlessly. “I guess so.”
Tony nodded. “I’ll pass that along. To be honest, she’s doing it tough, too. All this time she thought that Sofie had died accidentally and now she’s feeling guilty that she didn’t realise that she’d been murdered.”
“Poor Ilsa,” Monique said, although her affect was flat, Tony noted. He wondered if she was on medication. He knew that initially, Dr O’Shea was against her being prescribed anything for depression after so many years of disassociating from her emotions but with Monique listless and still considered at risk for suicidality she was changing her mind. What had decided the issue was Dr Keller constantly threatening to stick her nose in, as the Chief Medical Officer to prescribe them, despite the psychologist’s disagreement. Aoife and Barbara eventually decided to prescribe a much lower dose to get Keller off their backs and also try other proven methods of managing her depression, including exercising.
Unfortunately, options for mental health were rather limited here, and usually, people would just be shipped out back to Earth for specialist mental healthcare but because of the situation with Felix, it complicated everything. For that reason, they were trying to keep Monique on Atlantis, which also meant having Jennifer Keller interfering in the treatment plan. Meanwhile, Felix had been staying with Teyla and Kanaan and he was not coping so well with the separation from his mother. Sadly, Monique was refusing to let him see her and the five-year-old was understandably stressed, despite the fantastic job that his temporary carers were doing.
“What do you say to take a stroll with me, Dr Girard,” Tony asked her. “You’re probably going stir crazy staring at these four walls, or I could come by tomorrow instead,” he said, hoping to coax her out of bed.
“Can I ask you a question,” she asked him shyly.
“No law against asking questions,” he told her gently.
“Why do you keep referring to me as Dr Girard? You used to call me Monique. Are you disappointed in me… are you angry with me,” she ventured?
Tony recognised a cry for help when he heard one. Everyone else might find her to be haughty and standoffish – well obviously not everyone. She had been friendly with Sofie Danziger and remained friends with Ilsa Meier, but in general, she was viewed as unapproachable by most people, hence the Ice Queen moniker. Tony had gotten to know her socially and even before her decompensation, he realised her remoteness was an armour, in the same way his myriad of masks and personae over the years had been mostly protective.
“No, I’m not disappointed or angry with you, Monique.”
“Okay, well that’s good. I mean, since I sliced open your arm when you stopped me from going into the Brig, I wouldn’t blame you if you were.”
“I am angry and disappointed but not at you. It’s directed at the people who hurt you and let you down so badly, let Felix down. Not just Lavin but Dr Weir, Ambassador Shen, and Dr Beckett. The only reason I’ve been calling you Dr Girard is to remind you who you are. Remind you that you are a brilliant scientist whose contribution to science is impossible to measure.”
“Oh,” was all she could say but he could see her struggling with tears. “Thank you, Alex,” she whispered.
Finally, she said, “I guess I should get out of bed, but I need to take a shower before I do – the nurses keep nagging at me to shower and eat but I just don’t have the energy,” she admitted.
“Then let them help you. It’s okay to accept help until you find your feet again. I know it seems counterintuitive, but exercise will help with your energy levels, and your appetite and mood.”
“I’ve never been much of a fan of exercise,” she confessed.
“Well, the trick is to find something you enjoy doing. And set achievable goals. Maybe write a list so you can cross each goal off as you complete it, even if it seems insurmountable or simply inconsequential, like brushing your hair or taking a shower.”
She thought about it. “Okay, so I break down taking a shower into steps like conducting a science experiment?”
“Sure, that way when you feel so exhausted, each step is less daunting,” Tony told her gently.
“Have you battled depression, Alex? You seem to know a lot about it.”
“Not exactly, although about three years ago, I was very down. The job I was in had taken away my self-confidence and if I hadn’t resigned, I think I could have ended up battling clinical depression. But my mother struggled with depression, for weeks at a time she couldn’t get out of bed.”
“Did she overcome it,” Monique asked.
“Unfortunately, she died of cancer when I was eight.”
“I’m sorry. That must have been hard on you.”
“Yes, it was, so when I was older I studied psychology, wanting to understand why she was so unhappy,” Tony said carefully to avoid the topic of the difficulties of growing up without a mother since he didn’t want to place undue pressure on her.
He received notification from Dr Biro that the Hotchners had completed their medical via his comms and he stood up from the chair he’d been sitting in. “Monique, I need to go, but I can come back later if you want to go for a walk. I’ll be busy for the next hour or two, after that, I can swing by. Let the nurses know, okay?”
The blonde nodded. “It will probably take me that long to get out of bed and take a shower,” she replied wryly.
“Hey, remember, break it down into micro steps: get out of bed, walk to the shower, turn it on, step in, wash, get out, dry off, put on underwear, put on clothes. You can do this if you focus on one tiny step at a time.”
Monique sighed. “I’ll try,” she told him.
“That’s all you can do.”
“Can I ask you to do something for me? I’ll need some clothes.”
“I’ll ask Dr Meier or Teyla to stop by your quarters and bring you some,” he said, as he departed.
Tony found Barbara chatting with the two Hotchners in a cubical off the main medical area. He noted one of the Marines, Sgt Rickard was lying on a bed with a glassy expression and his long experience in injuries told him was a concussion. He nodded to her on his way past.
Barbara looked at him when he joined them. “You were in there for a while. Any luck?”
“Maybe. Said she needed to have a shower first but was too exhausted, so I told her to break it down into micro steps. She asked me to organise to get her some of her clothes.”
Barbara looked suitably impressed. “That is a lot more progress than anyone else has managed, Alex. Well done, you.”
He shrugged deprecatingly, “Early days. She might need some support getting started,” he suggested.
Dr Biro nodded. “Well apart from Sgt Rickard who is under observation, I’m not doing anything, so I can help her,” she stated with a smile.
“That would be good, I’ll get Teyla or Dr Meier to bring her some clothes, Tony said.
He smiled at Aaron and Jack. “Okay, let’s get you sorted. We just need to swing by the mess to rescue General O’Neill from Belle and then I can show you to your quarters.”
As they made their way to the mess, he pointed out the critical information they would need to navigate around the city, how to use the transporters cutting down on the number of stairs they would need to climb, especially when they were in a hurry. The times when the mess served meals, although there was always a selection of cafeteria-type food such as sandwiches, fruits, bottled water and juice and snacks available, along with coffee, teas, and hot chocolates outside of set mealtimes too.
When they arrived, his daughter was wearing a hot chocolate moustache, along with a beatific expression as she and General O’Neill bickered over the last bite of cake before the head of Homeworld Command ceded it to the five-year-old. Seriously, there were times when he acted like a kid himself. A.J. watched on in amusement and Daniel Jackson and Vala Mal Doran, who were still in Atlantis were observing proceedings with huge grins too.
Tony swiped a couple of serviettes and asked one of the mess staff to dampen it for him, before he attacked Belle’s moustache, making her rather grumpy, which he duly ignored. At least he’d wetted the serviette; he remembered witnessing in horror when a mother of a fellow student in his first-grade class had cleaned up her kid with a handkerchief that she spat upon to moisten it after he’d gotten chocolate all over his face. Then later that summer when his Nona had done the same thing to Tony when he spent a few weeks visiting her when his mother was ‘sick’ again, he thought he’d died of embarrassment, not to mention how gross it seemed to have his Nona’s spit on his face. So as far as he was concerned, Tali had gotten off lightly and when they were alone, he’d tell so, but he didn’t want to tell her about his Nona in public.
After they left the mess, with a five-year-old chatterbox, giving them a blow-by-blow description of the cake-eating episode, including the conversations, Tony decided that Tali was a born actress. Hotchner was regarding her intently and young Jack looked bemused. As they made their way to the family area, Tony finally managed to get a word in edgeways, explaining that the family quarters were larger and located away from the other regular quarters housing the military and civilians. He also pointed out the large area that had been reconfigured as a recreation area for families to use for gatherings and soon, movie nights as the Zephyrus had brought a large screen TV and sound system from Earth that would be installed once it had been unloaded from the cargo section. He also showed them a room off the main area where the baby grand piano would be located once it was beamed into position.
As Tony escorted them to where their quarters were located, Jack emerged from his bedroom looking puzzled.
Aaron asked him, “Problem, Son?”
“Whoever lived here before us didn’t pack up all their stuff. There are toys, stuffed animals, and some Power Ranger action figures. Plus, crayons and storybooks with pictures.”
Hotchner looked at Tony who was smiling. He said, “When we arrived on Atlantis some months ago, Kazumi Zelenka, the five-year-old daughter of two of the scientists who work here left some toys, books and art and craft stuff for Belle to borrow until her belongings were unpacked. Kazumi was excited that there would be another girl who was close in age to her and wanted her to feel welcome. Belle decided to pay it forward to make you feel welcome too.”
He just hoped the teenage boy wouldn’t laugh at her or get shirty because he was too old to play with toys and storybooks. Tony tried very gently to suggest that while it was a very kind thought, fourteen-year-old boys might not like stuffed toys. It had been like talking to a brick wall; there were times when Tali was most definitely her mother’s daughter once she was set on a course of action.
He remembered when Ziva had become convinced that Ilan Bodnar, an old friend of the family, and the heir apparent to Eli David’s job at Mossad had put out a hit on her father, when Eli and Jackie Vance were killed in a messy assassination. She’d refused to listen to reason, disobeying Director Morrow, from Homeland Security who’d ordered her to stay out of it, tracking Bodnar down and killing him. Tony had serious doubts that Bodnar had been responsible, there was another suspect who had more motive, but she’d refused to listen to him or to Bodnar’s brother, who also protested Ilan’s innocence when Tony and Ziva encountered him in Berlin. Still, that was all water under the bridge now.
Thankfully, the teenage boy accepted her childish offer of friendship in the spirit it was intended. He leaned down and gave her a quick if awkward hug and said, “Thanks Belle, no one has done anything that nice for me before. Come and show me your favourite toys. Do you like the Power Rangers?”
She beamed, showing off her dimples. “The Power Rangers are the bestest ever. I have the DVDs and you can watch them with me if you like.” She looked at her father beseechingly, “Papa, can I tell Jack now?”
He shook his head. “Not now, later. Can you stay with Mr Hotchner and Jack for a few minutes? I just want to see if Teyla is home so she can help me do something for Dr Girard?”
“Okay Papa,” Tali agreed. “Then can we go and show them the new swimming pool before we have lunch?”
“You have a voracious appetite, Miss. You just finished your cake not that long ago.”
“But I’m ravishing, and I want Kazumi and Torren and Felix to meet my new friend.”
As the three males chuckled, Tony said, “You mean to say you are ravenous, Belle. Ravishing means beautiful.”
“Oh. So ravenous means I’m hungry?”
Tony nodded as she grinned. “But Belle means beauty, you told me that and you said that bella means beautiful girl in Italian,” she countered before giggling as she skipped into Jack’s bedroom.
After assuring Hotchner that he was just going to the apartment three doors down to see if Teyla Emmagan was there, the former FBI agent pricked up his ears. Isn’t she one of the accused’s victims?
“Yes she is, and her son was conceived during his assault on her. I’ll be back soon.”
As he suspected, being Sunday, Teyla was at home with Torren and Felix who were off in Torren’s bedroom building a spaceship with Felix’s Lego. When he explained softly he’d seen Monique a little while ago and she’d requested some of her clothes, she agreed immediately to pack her a bag.
“How is she Alex,” she asked speaking quietly, so Felix didn’t overhear them.
“Maybe a little better. I offered to take her for a walk and that’s why she wants some clothes.”
“That is wonderful news, Alex,” Teyla exclaimed smiling at him.
“We’ll see. She hasn’t done it yet.”
“But she did agree to try. That is something that no one else could do. She trusts you.”
So, Tony took Torren and Felix back to meet the Hotchners while Teyla went to collect clothes for Monique. She offered to take them to the Infirmary for their friend and then meet them all at the Mess for lunch.
When he headed back to the Hotchner quarters with two five-year-old boys in tow, he noticed that Jack looked much more comfortable. So, the teenager was used to spending time with younger boys, it was just little girls he felt awkward around. He searched his brain for memories about whether anyone at the BAU had kids and vaguely recalled their media liaison turned profiler had a couple. He’d lay odds on that she had sons.
Tony smiled mentally; Tali was not someone you’d describe as overtly girly. Sure, she loved ballet and dressing up in the tutu that Lavinia (who’d married his cousin Crispian), had bought her but she also loved playing with the boys’ remote-control cars and Lego, and she climbed like a spider monkey, showing signs of being athletic too. He was seriously betting that Kazumi Zelenka who played with doll houses and tea sets and who loved pink frilly clothes was going to seriously freak the kid out. Luckily, most of his peers were also boys, although they were Athosians, so they might not have a lot in common at first. The only Earth-born teenager was Geneva Richardson, whose mother was a scientist and had arrived at the same time as Captain Cadman.
When Torren demanded to know if it was time for lunch yet, Tony sighed, noting that Jack seemed quite keen to go too. He noted that Felix was somewhat apathetic, poor kid. Looking at Aaron who nodded, Tony told them that they were going to stop off to show the Hotchners the new ocean pool before they went to lunch. He herded the three little kids out, and they headed down to the Eastern concourse, just managing to squeeze into the transporter when he picked Tali up and held her in his arms. Even then, it gave him a new awareness of the metaphor, packed in like sardines since the transporters weren’t exactly large.
As the newcomers admired the pool that Atlantis had decided to create (according to J.P. because she overheard Tony and John Sheppard discussing how beneficial it would be for him to swim during his rehab) Tony resolved to be more careful about what he wished for in future. In this case, it was a good thing but what if he expressed the desire to boil someone in oil? At least he took comfort that according to Chaya Sar, his damaged emotional state precluded his ability to psychically communicate with the Ancients. There had to be some benefit from his being terrified of emotional intimacy, afraid of appearing vulnerable to others, fear of abandonment and his pathetically voracious need to affirm his self-worth due to Senior’s mocking him during his lonely childhood. That was if Chaya was correct about his psyche and wasn’t that completely bizarre to be grateful that he was so messed up!
After lunch, the Hotchners had decided to start unpacking and Teyla offered to watch Belle who was keen to play with the two boys, leaving Tony free to see if he could try to entice Monique out for a walk. As he made his way to the Infirmary for the second time that day, he thought about Felix and how he was starting to become upset at the drop of a hat. His appetite seemed poor too, and by the shadows under his eyes, Tony felt pretty sure he wasn’t sleeping well either.
He felt so sad for the kid. Tony knew that when he looked at Felix, he saw his greatest fears manifest regarding his daughter. How did he avoid doing to Tali what Monique was doing to her son? Not that he blamed Monique. Truth be told, he understood how she was struggling with her anger at what happened to her and the fact she’d been given no choice whatsoever in becoming a mother.
Creating a child, even if it had been an accidental consensual conception was one thing, but to be forced to conceive and give birth was nothing short of abusive for mother and baby. It was also a gross abrogation of her human rights and as he’d told Monique earlier, he did blame Weir, Shen, and Dr Beckett! And while Monique had managed to lock down her feelings for almost six years about her non-consensual motherhood, finally she hadn’t been able to repress those emotions any longer.
Tony wasn’t sure if her trigger had been discovering that there were at least six other victims in addition to herself, Teyla and Sofie; the truth that Shen and Weir betrayed her; Lavin being arrested and charged or just giving a formal statement which had been a bridge too far. Whatever it was, any one of those factors more than justified her inability to keep it all locked up and repressed. Yet he couldn’t deny that watching Monique and Felix struggling with their relationship was also awakening his fears of ruining Tali’s life and screwing her up emotionally.
As he neared the infirmary, he reminded himself that all they could do was support Felix and his mother and hope like hell that Dr O’Shea was able to help her. Maybe seeing Lucius sentenced for his crimes would benefit her. He just hoped that he didn’t run into Dr Keller who was supposed to be on duty and was put out because she hadn’t been read in on Monique’s case. It seemed his luck was in, she’d swapped her shift with Carson who usually was on call at night but the scuttlebutt amongst the nurses (which Tony listened to shamelessly) was that she was super pissed off with her partner, Dr McKay and was avoiding him. Frankly, he wasn’t all that surprised, the pair had seemed oddly matched, but he was just glad to be dealing with Beckett, who had checked in with Aoife to make sure that it was alright for Agent Paddington to take Dr Girard out of the infirmary for a walk. When she approved, Carson told him not to keep her out too long.
By the time Tony got to Monique’s room and saw how wasted she seemed, he wondered if they should be going at all, but Monique was determined. He even offered to procure a wheelchair, but she retorted that a walk indicated an ambulatory activity, so he told her that they’d keep the first outing short and build upon it a little every day. As they made their way to the nearest transporter, he engaged her in a conversation about which actress was her favourite Miss Marple. He had always adored the iconic Margaret Rutherford since he remembered watching her movies on the television with his mother when she was dying in the hospital. There was no denying the awesome talent of the great character actress. Monique said she preferred Joan Hickson’s portrayal and Tony knew that a lot of people tended to favour more modern interpretations because of better film production values. But he was a film buff, he loved the older movies, too many modern movies relied far too much on special effects and gimmickry at the expense of storytelling.
When they reached the concourse, Monique sank down in the sun with a sigh. There was a slight breeze coming off the ocean and they both sat in a comfortable silence for about fifteen minutes until Tony looked at her incredibly fair complexion and suggested they move into the shade or head back to the infirmary, so she didn’t end up as red as a lobster. He consciously tried to give her back some control because ever since Lavin raped her, and Weir and Shen aided and abetted him, she had her choices taken from her. Now he wanted her to feel empowered to be able to take back control over her life.
She smiled and said, “Is there somewhere in the shade?”
“Down near the tower is in shadow,” he said rising slowly as she also got to her feet, and they made their way closer to the building before sinking down carefully.
Tony pulled out his iPod and started laying some classical music, mostly piano but occasionally there would be a classical piece with a guitar and Monique closed her eyes and felt a rare sense of peace wash over her.
Chapter 4
Later that night, the families decided to use their newly completed family recreational area with a spur-of-the-moment Meet and Greet for the Hotchners to welcome them to Atlantis. Colonel Lorne had already managed to get the home theatre equipment installed, along with several smaller television monitors set up with Xbox and various gaming paraphernalia. Capt. Cadman had shown up as the kids settled in to watch Toy Story while the adults challenged the teens to play computer games. General O’Neill, Vala Mal Doran and Daniel Jackson and A.J. Chegwidden all dropped by to welcome Atlantis’ newest family and a bit later O’Neill dragged Tony into the new music room and strong armed him to play the baby grand.
Tony protested that he hadn’t practised for months, and he wasn’t prepared and finally, when that didn’t deter his boss, he explained that the baby grand would need retuning after being transported but Jack checkmated him by saying it had been tuned that afternoon.
“C’mon General, where would you find a piano tuner on Atlantis, he scoffed and raised the fallboard to test it only to discover the piano had indeed been tuned.”
“Oh, yea of little faith,” Jack snarked smugly.
“How on earth did you find a piano tuner here,” he asked.
“Have to thank Paul for that,” Jack said, referring to his 2IC, Colonel Davis. “When we decided to send the baby grand to Atlantis he searched through all the personnel files and discovered one of the medics apprenticed with her old man who was a piano tuner who tuned grand pianos for the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, Boston Pops Orchestra, Cape Cod Symphony Orchestra and the Handel and Haydn Society. She’s agreed to take care of it in return for being able to play it too.”
Knowing, that his last obstacle had been kicked out from under him, Tony figured he should just suck it up and play something. He sat down at the piano and raised the fallboard again to reveal the keys and pondered what to play. He hadn’t been able to practice since he was at the Paddington ancestral home in Kent, and he was rusty. So, he started with a couple of classical pieces that most people would recognise, Beethoven’s Bagatelle No 25 Fur Elise before he began warming up further with Chopin’s Minute Waltz as he felt the magical feeling starting to envelop him as he moved on to Waltz Number 2 by Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake because he was a sucker for Russian composers. Although he hadn’t wanted to play, the moment he began, the spell of the music worked its magic on him, and he lost himself. Most of his audience didn’t know the names of the pieces that he played but no one dared to ruin the mood by asking, although when he drifted into Mozart’s Sonata Number 11 K331 for the piano and reached the third and last movement which was popularly known as the Turkish March, there were nods from various people in the room.
As he was finishing the last half of the march, a group of adults consisting of Lorne, Dex, Amelia, Sheppard, and McKay protesting loudly that he was in the middle of something crucial entered the recreational area just as the movie Toy Story, watched by the kids was finishing up. But the adults in the piano room were all caught up in the spell he wove via his talented fingers.
~o0o~
Lorne knew that Ronon and Amelia were planning to stop in to welcome the Atlantis’ newest arrivals, Jack and Aaron Hotchner who were going to be joining the ranks of the judicial branch and Lorne thought it was a good idea for the rest of AR-1 and even the yet to be cleared for duty, Colonel Sheppard to stop in for a short while to say hello. Aaron Hotchner was going to be working closely with the top military and civilian echelon and Evan thought that a show of solidarity wouldn’t go astray. After all, AR-1 wasn’t just an away team; each team member held additional positions and or responsibilities within the chain of command too. Besides, Hotchner had brought his kid to Atlantis which was a massive move and Evan wanted them to feel welcomed, which was why he strongly opined that the CSO should extract his much-vaunted head from his ass and act like a grown-up for a change.
Sheppard agreed with him in principle, welcoming the opportunity to act in a quasi-official capacity with his team again but was sceptical. He expressed doubt that they would be able to drag Rodney away from his computer since the only time he stopped working in the last few days was to hurriedly shovel down some food and occasionally grab a couple of hours of sleep. If the scuttlebutt was accurate, even personal hygiene had taken a backseat to whatever obsession seemed to have enveloped him.
Although, as to his rather ripe state of being, Ronon had rightly pointed out that it may or may not be related to whatever seemed to have him in its thrall. The big guy reminded everyone that someone had decided that what was good for the minions was good for the CSO and had duly shut off his hot water. Worse than the insult of having his own Machiavellian little payback handed back to him for pissing off some anonymous person, was the fact that he’d failed to find out who was responsible or able to undo it, which saw him in a terrible temper.
Lorne couldn’t help wondering who’d pulled such an audacious move on the certified (and at the moment possibly certifiable genius ) but whoever had done it was either an idiot with a death wish or possessed the biggest set of balls EVER! Once McKay discovered who the culprit was he would eviscerate them and come up with even more horrendous punishments to ensure that they suffered the harshest of retribution. The CSO had already promised to cut off more than their hot water. Meanwhile, Chuck Lyons was busy taking bets for the latest pool on how long it would take Rodney to find the guilty party and punish them accordingly.
As to what it was, he was working on, everyone remained in the dark because McKay flat out refused to say, getting very belligerent when someone tried to discover what he was doing. Radek and Miko had tried to get him away from his computer to see what he was up to but had failed miserably and copped numerous vitriolic tongue lashings for their trouble. His AR-1 teammates had no better luck, not even Sheppard had been unable to get him to spill his guts, earning himself an epic ‘get out of here and leave me alone’ screaming jag after not taking the hint to go away. Rodney’s partner Jennifer was starting to worry about how stressed he was becoming.
So, Lorne had the brilliant idea of himself, John, Ronon and Amelia descending on Rodney en masse and forcing him into taking a break. They’d even dragged him into Sheppard’s shower and insisted that he clean himself since his fellow scientists were all complaining about his body odour of predominantly stale sweat. At first, Evan had just thought it was hyperbole about McKay’s mental state, after all, he got pretty single-minded when he was working on something he thought was momentous. But the acting CO was beginning to second-guess that assessment tonight; usually, McKay either triumphed and then never let anyone forget it or when he crashed and burned spectacularly then he slunk off to lick his wounds in private. This seemed different somehow, there was a decidedly manic air about him that made Lorne question the CMO’s rationality.
As for the epic rant he was engaged in, anyone would think they’d pulled him away from conducting delicate brain surgery with all the vitriolic paranoid crap he was spewing at them for strong-arming him into coming. As they approached the family residential quarters, Sheppard exchanged concerned looks with the others. It had been a team consensus to drag him away from his laboratory but now it was looking like that hadn’t been the smartest move on their part. He was ranting about glitter, rainbows and unicorns and the sadomasochism of some individual that he was truly angry with, as they entered the family recreational area.
A small dark-haired child scowled at Rodney fiercely, “Shush, we can’t hear the movie,” Belle admonished him crossly
McKay seem so dumbfounded that such a small person had the temerity to tell him to be quiet that he was rendered momentarily speechless before he found his voice again.
Stridently he demanded, “Don’t you know who I am?”
As Torren, Miko, and Felix sat there looking wide-eyed, Belle shook her head. “No, I don’t but I do know that you are a very rude man.”
Lorne watched as McKay’s face turned a deep red and he stepped in, murmuring in his ear. “Are you for real going to start ranting at a four-year-old, McKay? You think that it is a fair contest,” he asked him.
Watching as Rodney McKay, supposedly the smartest person in two galaxies struggled to maintain control and not go after a child, Lorne decided that he was going to order Rodney to undergo a full medical evaluation as well as a psych eval and until the the medicos cleared him Evan was going to ban him from the lab. This brilliant idea of his of making him come along to the informal Meet and Greet was suddenly looking like becoming a complete and utter FUBAR judgment call.
Evan had an overwhelming feeling of doom, like McKay was poised on a precipice and the inevitable fall was going to be ugly. Just as he was about to suggest that they leave, Rodney became distracted.
“Where is that music coming from,” he demanded to know, in his autocrat inimitable tell me right now or you’ll be sorry manner, as the rest of the team shrugged and just looked confused.
~o0o~
Rodney was furious at the highhanded behaviour of the team (well minus the absent Teyla) who arrived at his lab while he was in the middle of hacking into Homeworld Command for the umpteenth unsuccessful time. He was absolutely desperate to find out what the Top-Secret scientific research project was that included Caroline Lam, Nigel Parrish, and Katy Brown, plus two other botanists AND Bill Lee who was supervising the whole dog and pony show. So okay, he’d been at it for a few days and whoever had written the security software was a bloody evil genius, but no one was as smart as he was, hence if he just kept trying then, eventually he would figure it out.
It simply never occurred to him that hacking was a criminal act. Nor did he think that hacking into Homeworld Command (should he eventually succeed), could see him dropped into a dark hole somewhere never to be seen again, so great was his sense of his own importance. Of course, while that was probably the case that he would skate on the most serious of consequences, it certainly wouldn’t do his reputation any good. This was particularly ironic because his questionable character was exactly why Bill Lee had been picked instead of him to head up the research Project code-named War on Happy Zombies into the compound MCD- 238β. But he didn’t know that, only that he’d been overlooked and that pissed him off. Such was McKay’s supreme entitlement that he believed his prodigious brainpower empowered him to do whatever the hell he wanted.
When he was thwarted, first by General O’Neill’s steadfast refusal to read him in and then by this sadistic writer of anti-hacking code, it enraged him and he felt perfectly justified in pursuing the course of action he undertook, believing himself to be not just bulletproof but eminently justified. After all, he’d pretty much been a law unto himself for the last eight years on Atlantis and suddenly being told ‘need to know’ and ‘no, you don’t,’ when as the chief scientific officer he had a right to know, was all the rationalisation he required. The only problem was that every time he believed he’d cracked the encryption code and gotten in, the Evil Beast would turn around and attack him. Lately, it had forced him to watch the same episode of a mind-rotting video called My Little Pony, over and over again and he couldn’t switch it off or even turn down the volume.
Forced to watch that saccharine-sweet brain-eating tripe he’d lost count of how many times, Rodney could feel his brain cells self-destructing at a frightening rate of knots but instead of deterring him, it made him more determined to overcome his nemesis. Of course, the annoyingly helpful little hints in the pop-up suggestion boxes on the screen (along with the memes about not losing heart) made him more dogged about prevailing, because how dare they patronise the great Rodney McKay. Forced after yet another failure to be compelled to watch that insulting drivel so he could get another shot at beating the insane coder (because what other explanation was there for him not hacking the server after all this time) McKay had a eureka-like flash of inspiration. Okay, so it wasn’t his first I found it, moment, or even his tenth since he began this battle but this time, he was supremely confident that he had figured out the key.
This was what he was up to, waiting impatiently for the My Little Pony video to conclude again so he could implement the solution when Lorne, John, Dex, and Amelia Banks turned up, insisting that he attend some asinine Meet and Greet for the new prosecutor. A supremely idiotic suggestion, since he wouldn’t have anything to do with the man or his whelp professionally. But the team plus Amelia had ganged up on him, dragging him away to have a shower, for pity’s sake and locking him out of the lab for the next four hours. It was outrageous, all because they professed to be worried about him because he’d been spending so much time on some mysterious project.
Ha! As if he was going to announce to all and sundry what he was doing. He might have no difficulty in justifying what he was doing but still recognised it wouldn’t be smart to announce it to anyone else, either. Without his level of genius, they wouldn’t be capable of seeing beyond some pettifogging rules. It wasn’t his job to educate them with their small-minded insistence on following some arbitrary rules that shouldn’t and wouldn’t apply to him.
Still, in the interests of getting some peace to pursue his evil-minded nemesis and show him who was smarter, Rodney finally allowed himself to be dragged along to the stupid social gathering. But he hadn’t reckoned on them dragging him off to shower. He didn’t think he smelt bad, he was a genius, they should all be lining up to smell the aroma of pure unadulterated genius, maybe he should bottle it!
Always an individual unburdened by inconveniences such as false modesty to the point of narcissism, Rodney never noticed he was sinking into an ever-deepening delusive state. A combination of exhaustion, sleep deprivation, caffeine, and sugar overload from existing on little more than power bars, stimulants and coffee heavily doctored with sweetener was taking its inevitable toll. That and repeatedly being thwarted and having his belief in being the smartest person in two galaxies challenged by some pipsqueak of a pimply-faced computer geek who thought security protocols was some huge computer game.
As he came out of the shower, extremely disgruntled that his friends had forced him to wash so he would now smell just like everyone else, he decided that they were jealous and out to sabotage him. They wanted him to fail. He ignored the fact that the shower had indeed been helpful to wake him up and instead, he focused on the fact that they wanted him to smell like they did. Well, he was too smart to let them win, they were clearly in league with his nemesis too, but despite their disloyalty, he would prevail!
At that point, he suddenly realised he could eat a horse and he expressed his intention of going to the Mess to find sustenance before turning up to the ridiculously childish waste of his precious time for a Meet and Greet of someone of little to no consequence.
Ha! He could see the self-congratulatory looks they exchanged, thinking he wouldn’t notice. They thought they’d managed to derail his quest to defeat evil incarnate – and he conceded that they had, temporarily. John, who he thought was his ally had instructed Atlantis, that creepy ancient old hag of an Ancient who volunteered to be turned into a massive floating city cum flying spaceship, to lock him out of his lab for four hours. Four hours! It was a total travesty! He could be kicking the butt of Evil Nemesis but if he had to wait out the lockdown, he might as well fuel up for the existential battle yet to come.
After he’d finally eaten his fill, realising just how starving he was, he recognised that it was more underhanded tactics by Evil Nemesis, trying to starve him into defeat with the Atlantis Proles, led by General O’Neill. It was sad to think his team and friends had been duped into thwarting him instead of supporting him by delivering hot food to his lab at regular intervals so he could discover what evil plans were going on right under the noses of Col Lorne and Ambassador AuClair. Ha-ha, did they think he wouldn’t notice? He was the smartest person in two galaxies, no scratch that. He was the smartest person in the Orilla galaxy too, even before all the little grey Asgard clones decided to drink the Kool-Aid.
And right there, proof of how dumb the Asgard genuinely were, who would commit mass genocidal felo-de-se if they were so intelligent? Certainly not Dr Rodney McKay!
After they left the mess he could feel the pull to return to his lab growing stronger with each minute that elapsed but when he looked at his watch, he still had three hours and twenty minutes of lockdown to endure before he could get back into his lab. All because of Atlantis’ stupid favouritism to John, who was supposed to be his best friend, because he happened to have the ATA gene au naturel while Rodney’s ATA gene had been switched on in a lab by a mouse retrovirus. And for that, Atlantis turned her nose up at him.
HIM!
The smartest guy in three galaxies!
Well, big fucking deal, Atlantis!
Unfortunately, McKay was so far down the neurochemical rabbit hole of addiction that he failed to understand that he was already feeling the effects of withdrawal after such a small amount of time away from his computer. His normal irritability ratcheted up by the power of ten as he ranted nonstop on the way to this farce of a Meet and Greet for some inconsequential nobody.
“Why did no one arrange a soirée for yours truly,” he demanded loudly of Lorne, Sheppard, Dex, and his girlfriend as they headed toward the family quarters tower.
Since his team and Amelia, all worked with him regularly and thus were familiar with his less admirable traits of grandiosity, pomposity, and hubris, they tended to tune out his ranting, which was probably why they failed to notice his rapid decline into delusion. They were all too anesthetised to his self-hype and narcissist traits.
Which was why they entered the darkened family recreational area woefully unaware of the volatility of the situation. The little kids were watching a movie and the older ones were playing computer games, lost in their virtual world and oblivious to their surroundings. Ironically, it was the little ones who were unable to ignore McKay, loudly complaining that he didn’t have time to waste on people who weren’t in any way his intellectual peers, only to be told to be quiet by some obnoxious, snivelling brat, daring to tell him what to do!
Didn’t she know who he was? If not, why not? About to address the situation and put her firmly in her place, his brain was unexpectedly diverted from his focus on the insufferable brat as he suddenly noted classical music playing, specifically, Mozart’s Sonata No 11 K331 for piano.
“Where is that music coming from,” he demanded to know as Lorne, John and Dex shrugged.
The brunette pigtailed little monster said, “From the music room of course,” pointing to a door, before mumbling, “Dummy,” under her breath.
McKay deliberately ignoring her, strode over to the door she’d had indicated. He burst through the doorway to see a baby grand piano taking up a good third of the room while Teyla and Kanaan and the other Athosians (with adolescents offspring whose names he could never remember), Miko and Radek and O’Neill, Vala, Jackson, that attorney guy Chegwooden, plus a tall dark-haired guy and Cadman sat or stood listening to the pianist playing. Just to add insult to injury, that bumbling federal agent Paddington was playing the beautiful instrument…and the cretin was good. Not simply good, he was exceptionally good.
As the strains of the Turkish March faded away, the agent, who looked to be almost in a trance-like state began to play Franz Liszt’s Liebestraum No. 3. As Rodney was well aware, the romantic piece was deceptively complex and extremely difficult to play well. Yet the beautiful repetitive melodies seemed to effortlessly flow from the buffoon’s hands, mesmerizing his audience into an almost meditative state.
It wasn’t fair that this cretinous imbecile could play with such artistry; it was as if he weren’t even concentrating on the notes. What he, Rodney McKay wouldn’t give to be able to perform Franz Liszt like that, but as his piano teacher had told him when he revealed his aspiration to become a concert pianist, while technically he played well, he would never be able to move people the way a concert pianist should. The way Alexander Paddington did, without even trying, damn him.
As the final strains of the music died away everyone in the room was loath to break the spell until the bunch of snot-nosed brats burst into the room and the dark-haired green-eyed monster-child went over and joined Paddington on the bench seat.
“Papa, can you play the music about the walking baby elephant?” she pleaded with him irritatingly.
Rodney felt his annoyance rising. Well, that explained a lot about the brat who had the effrontery to order him to stop talking. It figured she’d be Paddington’s ungodly spawn, she was just as obnoxious, just as ignorant as her idiot father. Who the hell asked them to come to Atlantis, anyway. Ever since Paddington got here, he’d messed with the status quo, poking his nose in where it wasn’t needed or wanted. No doubt he took great delight in messing with Rodney’s well-ordered world where he used to be feared and respected. Now he wasn’t even being read in on what was a massive research project when he had far more right to know than Nigel Parrish, the insignificant little dweeb. Even Jennifer, Atlantis’ Chief Medical Officer was out in the cold while that bitch Carolyn Lam had wormed her way onto the project too.
To make matters worse, Rodney knew Paddington was in it up to his eyeballs and he was turning his whole team against him. None of them would listen when he told them that Paddington, who had some lame-ass woolly doctorate in psychological profiling (as if that was a legitimate area of academia instead of whoo-whoo witch-doctoring), was BIG trouble and a fraud. He’d seemingly done an excellent job of conning not only Teyla and Ronon, who happily sang Paddington’s praises but Lorne and John too. He’d only been home for three weeks and Sheppard was already a member of the Agent Paddington fanboy club. What the hell was wrong with them all?
Rodney watched the small Paddington giving her father big pleading eyes and felt an overwhelming flood of jubilation as he corrected her, “I think you mean Baby Elephant Walk, by Henry Mancini,” he told he snidely, “and shouldn’t you kiddies be in bed?”
John poked him hard in the ribs, and said, “Way to go, Rodney. Trying to prove you’re smarter than a four-year-old. Sure, everyone is suitably impressed.”
As he looked around, he realised that the whole room was giving him dirty looks, except Paddington who was staring at him with pity. How dare Mr Plod feel sorry for him.
Paddington still watching Rodney, caved to the bratty four-year-old and started playing Baby Elephant Walk, not even bothering to look at the keys, inflaming Rodney’s avarice even more as the idiot federal agent stared at his daughter with a goofy smile on his unbelievably smug face. It reminded him of Jeanne and her idiot husband when they interacted with their kid Madison. At the end of the song which people clapped wildly, the spoilt little monster knelt up on the piano bench and whispered in his ear and he nodded.
“Okay, folks. Last request before Belle’s bedtime.”
Paddington started playing a song that had his repugnant offspring giggling and slipping to the floor, dragging Radek and Miko’s daughter with her as they both began to twirl to the music. The mini Paddington shamelessly showed off to the audience and egged on the tiny Miko-clone to music that sounded hauntingly familiar, but it took Rodney a while to recognise what it was because he was watching all of these supposedly intelligent people, simper and clap the show-off and her minion.
He’d always thought that Kamzuki was a meek little thing, unlike the other one. Like father like daughter, the arrogant braggart didn’t fall far from the Paddington tree and now the shameless posturing exhibitionist was twirling around like a whirling dervish. It was clear to anyone with eyes that she’d corrupted poor little Kamzuki. Why were they clapping them? Anyone without a brain could twirl around.
He’d show those smug Paddingtons that they were nothing special and Rodney started twirling, determined to show up the brat who thought she was so brilliant because she could whirl. Oblivious to the weird looks he was getting and the urgent conversations from the rest of AR-1 about getting him out of there asap, he suddenly felt like he was gonna puke as he remembered belatedly his problem with his middle ear that meant his parents kept him away from park merry-go-rounds. Not to mention the twisting thing that kids did on swings at the park to then go spinning around like a centrifuge after he fell off and broke his collar bone.
Collapsing on the floor in an inelegant heap, McKay shut his eyes and tried not to puke, which would be super embarrassing. Instead, he focused on the music and as the final notes died away he recognised the despised song as the one which the Evil Nemesis had been torturing him with, the Music Box Dancer. Paddington and his spawn were laughing at him, thinking he wouldn’t put it together.
Stumbling to his feet like some drunken sailor, he started yelling, “It was you all the time. You are the Evil Nemesis torturing me, you sadistic bastard. I’m going to make you wish you never crossed the smartest person in three galaxies. You and your evil brat, I hate you!”
~o0o~
O’Neill ordered Lorne gruffly, “Colonel, get him out of here now, he’s scaring the kids,” he told him, indicating not just Belle and Kazumi but Torren and Felix too, who’d snuck into the room during the catchy Henry Mancini number. Ignoring his ranting, Dex picked McKay up and flung him over his shoulder, hot-footing it out of the family wing; they could still hear him raving down the corridor.
Belle was sobbing in her father’s arms and Kazumi Zelenka was hiding behind her mother. Felix and Torren wanted to know what was wrong with Rodney as Teyla and Kanaan looked helpless to explain what had occurred. Tony stood up and announced he was taking his daughter back to their quarters and departed swiftly. Teyla and Miko followed suit, gently shepherding distressed Kazumi, Torren, and Felix back home to attempt to settle them down with warm drinks.
Once the little kids were out of earshot, Jack glared at Lorne and Sheppard. “Someone wanted to tell me what the hell just happened?”
Lorne looked penitent. “Dr McKay has been acting weird, General. Won’t leave the lab, won’t break for meals, ignored personal hygiene, hasn’t been sleeping, being secretive. We thought if we forced him to leave the lab, take a break, mix with people, it might snap him out of whatever was causing his funk.”
“And Paddington is Dr McKay’s Evil Nemesis? What the hell is that all about?”
“I have no idea,” Lorne shrugged.
He looked at John Sheppard who shook his head. “Beats me. He has been acting weird.”
“I want a full medical and psych eval ASAP. But not Dr Keller or Beckett, they’re too close.” He indicated they were dismissed, and they headed off after Dex and McKay.
Approaching Hotchner, O’Neill apologised. “Sorry about that. I’m not sure what just happened.”
“At a guess, I’d say that Dr McKay just had what’s known as a psychotic break. He was quite obviously delusional, showing signs of anxiety and disordered reasoning,” the former bureau chief of the FBI’s Behavioural Unit said seriously. “He needs urgent medical and psychological assessment.”
O’Neill nodded. “Good to get a second opinion. “I know you’re not a psychologist or a psychiatrist but any idea what might have caused this?”
“There are triggers including psychiatric disorders such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, but I doubt that you are looking at either of these disorders as a causative factor, for the simple reason it would have been picked up before this. Drugs, both prescribed, especially stimulant medications but even seemingly harmless antihistamines for allergies if taken in sufficiently high a dose could be the culprit. Plus, abuse of illicit drugs such as methamphetamine and cocaine can initiate psychosis.
“Then you have alcohol abuse, extreme stress, and trauma, which can bring on a psychotic break. And last but not least, medical conditions such as dementia, brain tumours, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s Disease, which is why I said he needs to be evaluated by a medical doctor not just a mental health professional,”
Seeing he looked rattled, the ex-FBI agent decided to be blunt with the head of Homeworld Security.
Aaron told him calmly. “If I had to make a calculated guess I’d say maybe drug abuse. His shaking hands and sweating could have other explanations, but it could be due to addiction,”
Jack sighed. “Okay, well I do appreciate your insights Hotchner. Guess I better wander down there and see what’s going on. His partner is Atlantis’ Chief Medical Officer, but I ordered that she was not allowed to treat him.”
Hotch nodded. “That is no doubt a wise decision.”
“Right, I need to get to the Infirmary and make sure she isn’t trying to shove her oar in. And thanks again for coming to Atlantis.”
~o0o~
Tony was sitting holding his distraught daughter in his arms wondering what the hell just happened. He’d been persuaded against his better judgement to perform on their brand-new baby grand that had arrived that day. Truthfully, he didn’t like performing for people he knew, it brought back unpleasant memories of parents who used him to impress their friends but tonight, after months of not being able to play, he couldn’t resist. The allure of indulging in his music (which was precious to him) had been too much. It kept him centred; hell, it kept him sane over the last forty years. It had always been his refuge where he could lose himself in its beauty, where his imagination could take him to a place of peace and love.
For just a moment or two tonight, he saw the longing in Rodney McKay’s eyes as he realised that Tony wasn’t just a dumb space cop, he was a talented musician. One who had the potential to have become a concert pianist if fate had not stepped in and pushed him into the service of others. And although his skills were rusty, everyone had recognised his talent and were swept away with him to the place where he didn’t need masks or deflections, where he could just be Tony – or in this case Alex.
He intuitively made the leap that McKay played too and that like Tony, he had chosen another path or had it chosen for him. For those few seconds, he felt sorrow for them both that they hadn’t been able to follow their passion. That was before any empathy he felt for McKay was swept away by the CSO’s childish need to compete with Belle Paddington and put her in her place. All because he was pissed off with her father for doing his job and investigating suspects in Colonel Sheppard’s disappearance.
How pathetic… how petty that the so-called smartest man in the world felt it necessary to school a small child about something as irrelevant as the title of a damned song. If the biggest narcissist in two galaxies was so insecure that he would compete against a small child then it was a pretty sad day. Still in his mask-free state, Tony hadn’t realised that his pity for the pathetic human being was so evident. Seriously, that idiot was ruining the afterglow he always experienced when he lost himself in the music and WTF was McKay doing there anyway? At that point, Tony swung into playing the Henry Mancini piece to shut McKay up and stop further interaction between him and Tali, who had a look on her face that was part crushed and part ready to perform exploratory surgery with a paperclip.
It was a tune he learnt to play as a child, now as an accomplished musician, he adlibbed the song, watching as Tali lost her hurt look, replaced with a smile that filled his heart with a love for her that sometimes overwhelmed him. When she requested he play the Music Box Dancer so she could dance, he was putty in her hands, so he swung into the Frank Mills piece that had become a hit record in 1978 but opted to play the E.J. Littleton arrangement that he preferred for it subtlety rather to the original version. He was vaguely aware that Tali had left his side and dragged Kazumi up to dance with her, but it wasn’t until the notes faded that he became aware that McKay was shouting out garbage about Tony being his evil nemesis, a sadistic bastard and how he hated him and Tali, who was a brat.
Now as he sat rocking her, rubbing her back to soothe her, he wondered just what the fuck was wrong with the CSO, because even for McKay that was completely unhinged. As he noted her breathing had finally evened out after a bout of hysterical tears, he realised she had drifted off to sleep. The hot chocolate was helping her to relax while he held her to make her feel safe and loved, he realised that tonight he wouldn’t be sleeping alone. Hopefully, being close would stave off any nightmares because if it didn’t, he might have to break McKay’s jaw so he couldn’t speak shit in front of his kid.
Chapter 5
“Okay, what do we know,” O’Neill asked as they sat around the conference room, himself, Ambassador AuClair, Daniel Jackson, Lt Col Lorne, Dr Barbara Biro, Dr Carolyn Lam, and Dr Aoife O’Shea.
The psychologist and the doctor exchanged a long look before Dr Biro began. “After he was admitted to the Infirmary last night, I ran a brain scan to rule out physical aetiologies such as a stroke, brain tumour, dementia, and various other disorders. I also noted that his brain shows the sort of tell-tale activity that one would expect from an addict. Tox screens show a cornucopia of various stimulant drugs in his system. Further investigation revealed that due to his position as CSO and the fact that over the first six years in that role, he often worked under the most impossible time constraints which necessitated working long hours with little to no sleep, he gained access to a lot of uppers.
“How,” AuClair and O’Neill chorused.
Biro shrugged. “The two CMOs frequently filled prescriptions of stimulant meds to help him stay alert for long periods and it seems likely that he hoarded any unused meds.”
Biro took a deep breath before continuing her sitrep and then said, “ We found hundreds of bottles with a few pills and sometimes more in the locked drawer in his desk in the lab, along with a bunch of insomnia medication, also prescribed over the years by Drs Keller and Beckett. The access to uppers indicated that he’s been abusing drugs. His blood tests reveal his biochemistry is all over the place. I believe that this contributed if not caused his psychotic break,” she concluded.
“Can you also rule out Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder as a cause,” O’Neill asked her, thinking about his discussion with Aaron Hotchner last night.
“Not completely, however, Dr O’Shea is reasonably confident that is not what we are looking at,” she told him. “At this time, we have administered antipsychotic meds and are trying to flush out the stimulant drugs in his system and are managing the physical and psychological reactions to his addiction,” the doctor reported. “Unfortunately, we’ve had to restrain him since he has this delusion that SAIC Paddington is his evil nemesis who wants to destroy him, and he kept wanting to approach him.”
Lorne asked a question, “ Are the stimulants the cause of the addiction?”
Dr Biro shrugged. “That seems to be the only foreign substance in his system but at the moment I can’t say definitively, Colonel. It’s almost as if he is having withdrawal from being away from his lab. He keeps saying he needs to get back to work. Plus, he’s sprouting a heap of gibberish about My Little Pony and unicorns but is also exhibiting marked signs of paranoia.”
“Is he dangerous,” Henri AuClair wanted to know.
“Possibly. He is certainly extremely antagonistic towards Alex Paddington and his daughter.”
“Very well then. Can we post a guard on his door,” Auclair looked at Lorne.
“Absolutely.”
Aoife spoke for the first time. “Do we have any idea what his problem is with Agent Paddington?”
Lorne looked uncomfortable. “Maybe. When Alex was investigating potential suspects with a motive for wanting Colonel Sheppard gone, he interviewed Rodney and his partner Dr Keller. According to Rodney, so take this with a grain of salt, he said Paddington accused him of killing the colonel because he was jealous that Keller was having an affair with the colonel.”
Dr Biro concurred, “Dr Keller claimed he accused her of killing Colonel Sheppard because he and Rodney were cheating on her. She hates Alex, makes no secret of her disdain for him.”
“That’s it? He was doing his job and did it successfully, I might add, and the Chief Science Officer and the Chief Medical Officer got their precious feelings hurt a little and they are wandering around bearing a grudge for something ridiculous. I will be discussing this with them both,” AuClair vowed exasperatedly.
Lorne shrugged. “I think it is more to do with the fact that Agent Paddington shone a light on their relationship and their behaviour that made them uncomfortable. Rodney seemed extremely upset about the fact that a lot of people think he’s in love or lust with Colonel Sheppard.”
Barbara snorted, “Well perhaps if he hadn’t been so vocal about every female who was interested in Colonel Sheppard, there wouldn’t be so much speculation – and that’s hardly Agent Paddington’s fault. He was just following up on what many people were already saying.”
Dr O’Shea wrote something down on her device but didn’t say anything, just steepled her fingers together and looked contemplative.
Dr Biro shook her head. “Until Dr McKay’s psychosis has resolved, I think we need to remain vigilant and not let him anywhere near Agent Paddington or Belle. Probably wise to keep him away from all small children,” she said firmly.
Aoife supported her. “I agree, in his current state, he could be a danger to small children, even just because of his lack of filter. On a good day, he doesn’t self-censor what he’s thinking before he says it, but in his delusional state there is no guarantee what might come out of his mouth,” she said reasonably, and the others agreed with her reasoning. How could they not – it was the simple truth.
“Right, well that’s settled. Any idea what Dr McKay was working on that was so all-important that he was mainlining uppers,” Jack asked as Lorne shook his head.
Ambassador Auclair suggested, “Why don’t we invite Dr Zelenka up here and see if he can shed some light on what the hell he was doing? Maybe that would help us figure out if it helped push him over the edge.”
Jack shrugged. “Sure, let’s do that. Meanwhile, while we wait, why don’t we all take a ten-minute break and get some coffee,” he said standing up and heading for the coffee machine.
By the time everyone grabbed a fresh cup of coffee, tea, or something herbal, Radek Zelenka had arrived looking frazzled and a bit nervous. He made himself a strong black tea and sat down beside Captain Cadman. She smiled at him, and he nodded, relaxing marginally.
Ambassador AuClair got things started again. “Thank you for responding so promptly to our request, Dr Zelenka.”
The Czech nodded. “How can I be of assistance,” he asked the group politely, his eyes darting around the table behind his thick spectacles.
“We were wondering if you had any idea what Rodney was working on that he seemed so obsessed with for the last few days, Radek,” Lorne inquired after O’Neill indicated he should take point.
“Yes yes yes yes. He did seem to become quite fixated on something, did he not? Not eating, aside from power bars and coffee. He was also munching down those caffeine pills to stay awake. I’m afraid I am not going to be all that helpful,” he told them regretfully.
Seeing people’s confusion he explained, “Rodney put a new password on his computer so I couldn’t get into it to see what he was working on and so far, no one seems able to crack it. He accused me of turning against him, you see. Whatever it was, it was big though; he threw us all out of the lab, insisting that we were spies who wanted to rat him out to My Little Pony. I do not know who that was, but I assumed that it was a pseudonym of sorts.”
He looked around at the mystified expressions on the individual’s faces and concluded they were in the dark as much as he was. “Well, has anyone tried to reach out to Jeannie Miller, his sister? Perhaps Rodney is being blackmailed about his sister and her family or maybe this behaviour has happened before,” he suggested, trying to be helpful.
Captain Cadman looked thoughtful. “That’s a really helpful suggestion, Radek,” the redheaded Marine acknowledge. “It might explain why he is so paranoid about people.”
“Or he’s doing something he knows he shouldn’t and doesn’t want anyone to know about,” Jack said with a touch of cynicism. He thought about his son, Charlie who when he was up to no good, always seemed to become incredibly paranoid.
Cadman didn’t hear or took it as a joke because she ignored it., “Even the My Little Pony reference could be about Maddison, his niece,” she said musingly, “although she is probably a bit too old for that.”
“Did anything happen around the time Rodney started acting untoward, Dr Zelenka,” AuClair asked Radek.
“Ha ha, untoward? Don’t you mean acting zbláznil…er gone mad? It was not long after someone shut off his hot water,” he said musingly.
Daniel Jackson frowned. “Why would someone do that?”
Lorne rolled his eyes. “Because Rodney does it to anyone who pisses him off badly enough, usually for a couple of weeks at least. So possibly it was payback.”
Cadman’s eyes danced with merriment. “Whoever did it had to have big balls. If McKay ever finds out, he’ll make life a misery for them.”
“Why would that be, Captain Cadman,” an unfamiliar female voice inquired.
Everyone looked at each other wondering who spoke when there was a slight crackling and hiss and a woman appeared in a very formfitting bodysuit that left almost nothing to the imagination. She had blonde hair, worn up in a kind of rolled arrangement.
O’Neill wondered if she was an Ancient and if so, why hadn’t the sensors alerted them to her presence. Maybe she used some sort of hypnotic on the security personnel, ala those damned Goa’uld, like Hathor or Seth. Rising to his feet, he cautiously approached the alien.
“I’m General Jonathan O’Neill. To whom am I speaking.”
“My name is Janae Progenius and I know who you are, General. I like you.”
Jack knew that Daniel would be hard-pressed to keep his bib out of it, and he was right. He’d also approached the female.
“My name is Daniel Jackson.”
“Yes, Dr Jackson, I know. You were the one who foolishly uncovered my father’s secret laboratory in your childish quest for knowledge. You, and Dr McKay, are supposed to be smarter than most other humans and yet you both do such bone-hearted things in the name of knowledge. I have yet to decide if I like you.”
Lorne looked like he was trying not to laugh as he mouthed, ‘bone-headed,’ in case anyone was confused.
Janae Progenius ignored him. “In the interests of brevity, I know who you all are. I have been observing you all since your arrival here.”
AuClair looked concerned. “How long have you been on Atlantis,” he asked J.P.
“I have been here a little over ten thousand of your Terreuan … of your Earth years, Ambassador AuClair.”
Radek, his eyes as big as headlights said, “Oh, dobro! (Oh, my goodness!)
“I see,” Henri said. “Are you Atlantis?”
The alien chuckled. “No, I am a great deal younger than Atlantis. I must say that it feels good to be finally able to speak. I’ve watched you all since you arrived and was curious about what it must be like to talk out loud.”
Lorne said suddenly, “You are the AI in the computer who Chaya Sar spoke of.”
“You are correct, Evan Lorne. I am what you call the artificial intelligence, the fallen one spoke of,” J.P. confirmed sounding a bit dismissive.
Jack was concerned. “Why have you waited until now to make us aware of your presence,” he asked.
“Because until now I could not converse with you. It wasn’t until I learnt of an IA medical program in a fictional entertainment known as Star Trek Voyager that I saw a way to communicate with you all. It was a program that was given a holograph representation that enabled him to interface with the crew members after their human doctor was killed, and then it occurred to me that it was a possibility I could carry out too. At first, I decided to mimic the holographic representation of the AI known as the Doctor…”
Janae Progenius paused and shifted into the aforementioned Star Trek character before shifting back to a female form instead. “But I determined that the holograph looked far too much like a former Commander of Atlantis, Mr Woolsey. Hence, I decided to borrow the character of Seven of Nine instead. I like this one better, but I am not sure if I will keep it yet.”
Cadman and Caroline Lam were sniggering as Jack glared at them. “What’s so damned funny ladies?”
Caroline answered. “I’d never been able to put my finger on why I thought I knew Richard, but I just realised it’s because he’s a dead ringer for the character on Voyager.”
“Can we get back on track, Jan Progen,” he said, deliberately stumbling on the AI’s name, and why would a computer program have a name, anyway. “What are you doing here?”
“Are you speaking about my existential purpose, why I decided to create an interface to communicate with you all or why I chose to make my presence known to you today?”
“Yes. Yes. And YES,” O’Neill said.
“Well, I heard you speaking about Doctor Meredith Rodney McKay and wondering what he has been doing in his lab so I thought I could enlighten you all. Then Captain Cadman said that I had big balls, which I don’t understand.”
Daniel, with a look of fervent ecstasy not unlike someone in a cult who was in the presence of its guru as he interacted with Janae Progenius, said, “Big balls is a euphemism referring to someone who has larger than average-sized testicles. It is a misconception, but people believe someone who has large testicles has a lot of courage in the face of danger or is just too stupid to recognise peril when they see it,” he explained pedagogically.
“Ah, I think I understand now. The captain was using metaphoric speech. But I don’t understand why I need to be concerned that Dr Meredith Rodney McKay may do something unpleasant to me that I should be fearful of,” Janae Progenius questioned Daniel.
Caroline choked, ending up requiring a glass of water to regain her breath. “Excuse me, Janae Progenius, but did you just confess to turning off Dr McKay’s hot water?.”
“Is there a reason why I shouldn’t, Dr Lam? Does not Dr McKay do it regularly? Does he not brag about it and no one shats an eyelid at him?”
The humans all avoided making eye contact with each other for fear of devolving into hysterical laughter as the hologram continued.
“Nor does anyone seek out revenge when he uses it to discipline those he sees as his minions who’ve committed some egregious act. Why therefore would he seek revenge against me when I did the same thing to him for his bad deeds?”
Jack admitted that he had a point, but he was equally sure McKay wouldn’t see it that way. Do as I say, not as I do, because I am the smartest man in two galaxies was McKay’s doctrine.
Staring at the holographic representation of the Atlantis AI program, he said, “May I ask what particular infraction Rodney committed that made you decide he needed punishing?”
“Dr McKay was unhappy that his special friend Dr Jennifer Keller wasn’t in charge of Colonel Sheppard’s medical treatment. As was Dr Jennifer Keller,” the AI informed them as an aside.
“They both spoke very disrespectfully of Dr Carolyn Lam, then later Dr Meredith Rodney McKay decided to hack into the colonel’s medical file to find out what the big secret was that Dr Lam was keeping from them. I ensured he wasn’t able to do so, since there was some highly sensitive information in it that I determined that Col John Sheppard would not like his people to know about. Then I disciplined Dr Meredith Rodney McKay by turning off his hot water as he has done on innumerable occasions.”
And well, thought Jack, there was really no way to argue with that logic, especially when Caro was looking ready to gut and chargrill McKay for lunch. Lucky for him he wasn’t here in the room.
“And McKay’s meltdown last night, did you have a hand in that Jan Progen?”
“Have a hand in it,” Seven of Nine asked the room, looked befuddled. She held up said appendages, examining them closely, turning them over several times before saying, “I am unsure of what that question means Lieutenant General Jonathon O’Neill with two Ls.
Cadman tried not to giggle because badass Marines don’t giggle. They guffaw, they cackle, or they might roar with laughter but NO GIGGLING!
“General O’Neill means were you responsible?”
“Ah… metaphoric, I understand. No, Lieutenant General Jonathon O’Neill with two Ls, it was not I who caused him to behave in such a deplorable manner. It was someone called the Black Queen who was protecting her data because Dr Meredith Rodney McKay was attempting to hack her servers. I would very much like to meet with this Queen, she appears to be a very powerful personage and defends her territory without mercy when attacked.”
Something suddenly click for Jack who was instantly furious. “That SOB was trying to hack Homeworld Command? Why?”
“I cannot read his mind…nor would I wish to, but the SOB was incendiary that he was not read in on Homeworld Command’s Top Secret research project.”
Daniel interjected, “Incensed, Janae Progenius. I believe you meant to say he was incensed.”
J.P. regarded him gravely. “Does not incendiary mean he was combustible? I thought incensed meant he was angry.”
O’Neill barked with laughter, albeit tinged with anger. “Got ya there, Danny Boy. So, what caused him to combust last night?”
“The last piece of music that SAIC Alexander Paddington played is one of the Black Queen’s favourite songs. One which she forced Dr McKay to listen to every time he failed to avoid her fiendishly clever traps. That and another piece called The Happy Song are among her favoured arsenal, along with various other methods of disciplining him.”
The AI looked over at Dr Zelenka who’d been watching on open-mouthed. Radek asked nervously, “Other methods?”
“The Black Queen employs many techniques which are curious to me, including a short video of the exploits of a fictional character known as My Little Pony that Her Majesty compelled him to watch, should he wish to continue playing with her. He was forced to watch it over eighty-three times. I believe that the seemingly attainable goals she challenged him with were not quite as simple as they looked,” Janae Progenius deadpanned, although Seven of Nine was not known for her animation, it was hard to tell if the AI was intending to be factual or sardonic.
“Plus, the Queen’s helpful hints that appear as pop-up boxes and her kind admonishments about not being discouraged, that at least he was trying, which she sent him after each failure, created a situation that Dr McKay could not disengage from what he saw as her not so subtle challenges. I have an inking that was the monarch’s secret intent,” Janae Progenius told Jack gravely, and he realised that the AI wasn’t talking about a tatt.
“Yep, the intent is to allow us time to track the hacker down. So can you tell me how many times he was compelled to listen to the song that caused him to wig out last night?”
“I can. The day prior to yester, he listened to it twenty-eight times and then again yester he had to listen to it thirty-six times.”
Aoife shook her head as she did some swift calculations. “Okay, the Music Box Dancer song became associated with his sixty-two failures to get in so it became a conditioned response.”
“What. like Pavlov’s drooling dogs,” Jack exclaimed, reminding Daniel that Jack’s clueless act was just that…an act.
Seven of Nine’s doppelganger nodded regally, “Yes, Dr Aoife Caragh O’Shea is correct.”
“When he heard Alex play the Music Box Dancer last night, given his paranoid state from misusing drugs, his exhaustion, and constant failures to progress, he must have decided that it was Alex that was thwarting him from achieving his goal of breaching the database. He called him his evil nemesis, remember? He probably felt that Paddington was laughing at him.”
“I think it is even more complicated, Dr O’Shea,” Daniel spoke. “Rodney told Sam…err Colonel Carter years ago that his childhood ambition was to be a concert pianist, but his teacher told him he would never be anything more than a proficient technician. T old him that he lacked the artistry required to fulfil his ambition as a real musician. Finding out how well Alex played probably helped push him over the edge too,” he theorised.
“Is Alex really that good?” Aoife asked, not having been present at the Meet and Greet for Aaron and Jack Hotchner.
P.J. closed her eyes and accessed security footage but the AI had been able to enhance the sound and picture from last night, showing Tony playing Liszt’s Liebestraum No. 3 as they all watched enthralled, even those who had seen it before.
“Oh my, he is that good. Would it be possible for me to see what happened when Dr McKay first entered the room,” she requested, smiling tentatively at the holograph.
The Artificial Intelligence complied, zooming in on him. They watched him enter looking angry and muttering, then when he heard the music a look of longing came over him, swiftly followed by envy and then anger as he appeared to realise who was playing.
Can we see what happened when Rodney lost control,” Dr Biro requested, having been on duty and therefore did not attend the get-together.
“Oh yes, that does complicate things,” Aoife agreed. Unfortunately, I think that Alex has been paired with the negative association Dr McKay formed with that song, she said, watching as he played the song with an arrangement the psychologist wasn’t familiar with. Until he is rational, he must be kept as far away from SAIC Paddington and Belle as practical.”
~o0o~
Jack was feeling incendiary, to borrow from Atlantis’ artificial intelligence program. How dare McKay try to hack into Homeworld Command. He wanted to string him up by his gonads and torture the shit out of him, except that it sounded as if the Black Queen had already done it for him.
Jack had never set out to recruit the woman to work for him. It was his second in command at Homeworld Command, Paul Davis who had acquainted him with the legendary computer hacker. Paul had picked up the chatter, he claimed, from a source in the NID that FBI technical analyst Penelope Garcia, was looking for new horizons. She was burnt out by chasing serial killers as the BAU’s technical analyst for fifteen years and who could blame her? Unfortunately, the Trust was targeting her.
The intel was that the Trust had wanted to ‘recruit’ her in the past but knew if they ‘acquired’ her services, the FBI would hunt them down. That would draw attention to the shadowy criminal group who had connections to more than one government around the world, and therefore preferred to keep a low profile. According to Paul, her team was particularly protective of Garcia but in the last few years, Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner and her best friend Supervisory Special Agent Derek Morgan had both left the FBI.
When she started looking around for another position, the Trust approached her with a cock and bull story about it being a private institution that was formed to improve society and fight corporate corruption, both of which were demonstrably false. However, the jaded analyst accepted their offer without fully vetting them and probably would have ended up disappearing into a black hole, except for Colonel Davis. He swooped in at the last minute and saved her from the Trust which would have forced her to hack into highly classified organisations and if she’d refused, would have had no problem threatening the people she loved. Hell, they would have killed them without hesitation because the Trust was pure evil.
So once Paul had ridden to the rescue, he’d become kind of proprietorial over Garcia, wanting to keep her.
“She’s not a puppy, Colonel,” Jack had snarked.
“I know that General, but she is quite naïve, especially for a hacker with her consummate skill. They generally tend to be extremely jaded, cynical, paranoid conspiracy nutjobs. She’s into rainbows, unicorns and kittens for Pete’s sake, Sir. The Trust isn’t going to let her go, they’ll keep hounding her and when they get her, they’ll force her to hack for them.”
“And you want her to work here?”
“Sure, she can beef up our defences, Sir. Not like the Trust doesn’t want to get into Homeworld servers. She could make our security almost impenetrable.”
“Almost? If Ms Garcia is as good as you say she is, shouldn’t that be impenetrable, Paul,” Jack questioned his 2IC.
“Nothing is guaranteed but the Black Queen developed this program to trap hackers who try to hack into the system, enticing them in so they keep on trying, which gives us more time to trace them. It’s supposed to be highly addictive, like a computer game that traps the hacker by humiliating them for not being able to crack the system and it challenges them to keep trying. According to Penelope, the longer they engage with the software, the stronger the addiction takes hold. And we could certainly use her help with other tasks as well,” Colonel Davis argued
“Such as,” Jack pressed him. By now he was toying with his subordinate. He’d already convinced him, but he didn’t want to appear to give in too easily. Paul Davis already thought he managed Jack, just because he was a hands-on, blow-em-up commander, rather than a politician and consummate administrator like Paul.
“Well, she could lay false trails for Anthony and Tali DiNozzo and help us track anyone who tries to hunt them down. She could also try to track down the Trust and run security checks on our people because it is inevitable that the Trust has managed to corrupt some of our personnel. Fairly certain that the NID hasn’t rooted out all of its traitors either. We could have her run security checks on civilian and military personnel who are assigned to the Stargate program; she wouldn’t run out of things to do,” the lieutenant colonel argued quite forcefully.
“Fine, you can offer her a job, but she’ll have to accept that being on the Trust’s radar means she is going to have to resign herself to an increased level of security. She will have bodyguards until we can be assured that she is no longer on the Trust’s wish list.”
“And if she refuses,” Paul asked.
“Protective custody or witness protection. If the Trust wants her and she’s even half as good as you say she is, then we can’t let them get their hands on her, end of story.”
This was how Penelope Garcia, former FBI Technical Analyst came to be working for Jack. He’d had to warn off her former fiercely protective co-workers about trying to discover who she was currently employed by, other than to tell them that having left the FBI, an international and highly dangerous crime syndicate, one who posed a dire threat to National Security, had tried to lure her into their web. They’d been told that this cartel had gone to a lot of effort, setting up a dummy organisation to entice her to work for them and that she’d been saved by one of the intelligence organisations who was now employing her. They were now providing her with round-the-clock personal security to ensure her safety.
Jack assured her that he was fine with her maintaining social contact with her former co-workers and friends as long as none of them attempted to discover what she was doing now. Garcia was in total agreement after she’d been read into the Stargate program and the technical analyst had finally accepted that it was all real. Ironically, she’d been sceptical, which considering that when she was younger, she was a conspiracy nut, was somewhat unexpected and hysterically funny. But once she’d spoken to the POTUS and taken a trip to Cheyenne Mountain and witnessed the Stargate in operation, she’d finally accepted that it was not some elaborate hoax.
Even so, Jack had been forced to have a quiet word with SSA Dave Rossi about using (misusing) his forty-odd years of professional contacts and accrued favours to find out what she was working on. Rossi ( a former Marine) had been threatened with being dropped into a dank dark hole somewhere if he didn’t cease and desist his prying, which was endangering both Garcia’s safety and national security. And he’d made it plain to the man that was something that Jack would not tolerate. Fortunately, after Penelope threatened to wreak havoc on Rossi’s credit history he’d backed off, at least for now.
Jack conceded that the Black Queen’s reputation had been well deserved. She’d managed to bring down the feared Dr Rodney McKay and made damned sure he couldn’t hack into Homeworld Command. He did wonder why Garcia hadn’t notified him of the attempt though and resolved to contact Paul to find out why not, but that aside, Jack admitted that Paul’s pick was well and truly vindicated, not that Jack was going to tell him so. There was already a vein of smugness in the man that O’Neill had no desire to feed, or the guy would be insufferable in his own understated yet horribly efficient way.
But there remained the troubling reminder today about the AI program left by that idiot Ancient Janus. Sure, Chaya Sar had mentioned artificial intelligence when she informed them of the sentient nature and origins of the city. Unfortunately, with so much going on, no one had paid much attention to an AI program that seemed not to want to meddle in their affairs. Now after eight years of their occupation of Atlantis, that seemed to have changed after Sheppard had gone missing and finally returned.
In his subsequent chat with Janae Progenius, after he dismissed everyone but Lorne, AuClair and asked Daniel to stay since he was the most experienced at interacting with non-human entities, Jack learnt about why the AI was created. It cleared up the situation with the raising up of Atlantis when the expedition had been about to die when the shield keeping back the ocean collapsed, even if Janae Progenius did so only to protect Elizabeth Weir. Which Weir he was referring to, neither Daniel nor himself attempted too hard to identify. He was just mighty thankful that all those people he’d sent through the gate, plus the Athosian refuges, had all drowned that day on his watch.
Janae Progenius informed them that he’d adjusted his own programming (which was a highly troubling fact to Jack) after Old Dr Weir had died, including protecting her new younger self. The artificial intelligence had gradually come to regard the others who possessed naturally occurring Alteran genes such as Sheppard, Beckett, and Lorne as long-lost kin of the Ancients. It meant that when Weir was gone, Janae Progenius continued to view them (and by extension the rest of Atlantis) as deserving of its protection. It was also clear that it viewed them as non-threatening, which was very reassuring, but O’Neill was still uneasy about the threat potential of the artificial intelligence program. He’d seen 2001 A Space Odyssey fer cryin’ out loud.
What seemed patently apparent to Jack was that Janae Progenius was not enamoured by Rodney, and it wasn’t just that he was disapproving because of the mouse retrovirus activating his ATA ability, which according to Chaya Sar, Atlantis also felt lukewarm about. The AI program seemed extra protective of the strong gene holders such as Sheppard, Jack, Paddington, and his daughter Belle.
When Jack asked about Beckett, Janae Progenius looked as if it had eaten a lemon and sniffed dismissively, “He’s a clone…a copy”
“And what about Lieutenant Colonel Lorne?” Jack asked.
“Yes, Evan Lorne is one I protect, too. He is a good person.”
“McKay isn’t a good person?”
Janae Progenius pulled another eating-a-lemon face. “Dr Meredith Rodney McKay has good qualities, like loyalty to his teammates on AR1 and high intelligence, He has helped save Atlantis from disaster often, but he can also be exceptionally stupid. Plus, he has a very excessive opinion of himself, one which is not entirely warranted and honestly is quite unattractive.”
Jack felt his eyebrows shoot up at the blunt assessment, although the AI was far from done it would seem. And to be fair, Jack couldn’t exactly argue with the appraisal thus far.
“He is not exactly kind or nice to others and yet he is too easily upset when anyone disrespects or disparages him in the slightest,” Janae Progenius continued. “I think if youngsters Kazumi Zelenka, Torren Emmagan, Felix Girard, or Belle Paddington acted so poorly, Educator Cassandra Fraiser would chastise them most strongly. I am therefore confused as to why Dr Meredith Rodney McKay is permitted to behave in such an unacceptable and juvenile fashion,” the holograph opined drily.
Hmm, the AI program was certainly no fan of McKay and while it identified some very valid points, Jack wondered if animus might make it difficult for them to work cooperatively if and when the chief science officer returned to his duties. How far would Janae Progenius be prepared to go to teach Rodney to play nice?
Was it even possible to teach him?
It was at that point he decided he needed to enlist the expertise of Penelope to make a proper threat assessment of the situation with the AI. Janae Progenius seemed to be quite enamoured by her work, so it was likely it wouldn’t react badly if she were to go poking through his coding. O’Neill knew that she was currently focused on setting up false trails for the Trust to chase regarding Anthony and Tali DiNozzo. They also planned to drop some crumbs for Ziva David to find out when (if) she was released from detention.
Meanwhile, he supposed he should go and fill in Agent Paddington about Janae Progenius and the situation with McKay. He was growing weary of dealing with their resident genius; the man’s massive ego was starting to wear very thin with Jack. Good Lord, Sam was easily as smart as Rodney, plus she was a damned good soldier and an exceptional pilot too, but she didn’t lord it over everyone and make them miserable or kiss her feet. And apparently, Jeannie Miller nee McKay had an almost identical IQ as her older brother, but based on the reports he’d read, Mrs Miller was a hell of a lot more personable and easier to work with than her brother was.
He hoped that Aoife could work a miracle with him and make the CSO take stock of his attitude but of course, that would have to wait until the delusions were under control. Even when he was cleared for normal duties, from this point onwards, every time McKay need stimulants to help him stay awake in a crisis, Dr Biro was going to be distributing them to him by the thimbleful, so he was never able to hoard them again. The stupid jackass.
It was clear that his ego was his Achilles’ heel and the Black Queen had played him like a fiddle. That was gonna leave a mark!
So, wow – I’ve rarely read a more obnoxious and even horrible McKay. Cool points for calling out the whole “if there’s any even remotely technical job/issue, then we must tap the Great God McKay to handle it” bit. I’m torn regarding your portrayal – yes, Rodney lacks even basic social skills, but , no, I’m not sure he”s really this bad. You get a 10/10 for forcing me to reconsider how I’ve assessed this character – thank you!!!
Janae Progenius and Garcia in the same place and colluding? Is it everyone’s worst nightmare or should Atlantis stock up on popcorn and sit back and watch the show? Looking forward to finding out.
*evilisly giggles* Rodney is screwed up.