Archive of Our Own ^beta

Most people thought Dr. M. Rodney McKay never let anyone see anything but the polished exterior. It was true most of the time, but Jack O’Neill had seen McKay in every kind of circumstance. Here, leaning tiredly in the door frame with his tie loosened, was the least of it, but more unbuttoned than most would ever see. Jack acknowledged him. “McKay.”

“General,” McKay said..

Jack looked at the clock: 21:38 “You’re here late,” Jack said. McKay managed to use only his eyebrows to shrug in response. “How’s it coming?” Jack asked, knowing the answer.

“It’s not working. You got that initial start, but it was only enough to tell us it was the right track.” McKay rubbed his hand down his face. “We can’t ask you to waste your time on hints, but none of us can make it work, sir.”

Jack leaned back in his chair. “You know he lived, right?"

McKay stared. “What? Who?”

"Sheppard. That detective from Las Vegas."

"How?" McKay said, eyes widening. O’Neill let a corner of his mouth turn up. It was almost impossible to surprise McKay.

"Transported to the Daedalus where Mitchell was waiting with a Goa'uld healing device."

"Probably the only good thing that came out of him getting snaked."

Jack only grunted, observing the light flush of anger creeping up McKay’s neck. No one needed to rehearse the events of the Cameron Mitchell Shit Show, least of all the person who'd probably suffered from it the most. Failing to say Mitchell’s name, and saying only that someone was waiting with a Goa'uld healing device would have been worse. If there was one thing Dr. Dr. Rodney McKay, Esq., hated, it was being coddled. Hell, he'd seen the man run to the gate with a broken arm and burns on most of his upper torso, and not drop the laptop with the critical download.

McKay took a few seconds to speak again, but the flush only deepened. His voice was cold. "And why the hell wasn't he recruited to the program after that?".

A swear word from McKay, delivered in that cold, rational, I am about to eviscerate you with my brain voice, was an indicator that he was both deeply shocked and deeply angry. Jack didn’t take a breath. He’d prepared himself for this conversation, but he wasn’t going to do anything to make McKay think he was being handled delicately. “You really think someone with his track record belongs in the Stargate program? Do you think I wouldn’t have to sweat bullets every time he went through the gate? He’s a loose canon. He was crazy and driven enough to chase down a Wraith on his own.”

“And crazy and driven enough to turn around and do the right thing. If he hadn’t gone back, sir, we would never have found that Wraith in time. The entire planet would have been turned into an all-you-can-eat buffet.”

“You’re projecting that other Sheppard on to him, the Colonel Sheppard you met in that alternate universe.”

McKay started to say something, and stopped himself. Instead he said, “I think you’ve brought this up now for a reason. What’s the reason?”

“He’s got the ATA gene. As strong as me. Stronger, actually.”

McKay froze at that. “Then, I repeat, why the hell did you not recruit him to the program?”

Jack tilted his head. “He said no.”

“We need him to say yes.”

Jack smiled. “We need him to think it was his idea.”

—

Whatever magic that spook agency had pulled to get John a job back on the LVPD, he was by turns grateful and annoyed. Today he was both, ducking under the police tape on a Sunday, called in for a murder in a motel room at the edge of the city. He absently scratched one of his faint bullet scars. There were seven of them, barely notable patches of skin, four in places where the bullets would have hit a major organ. Not dead. Back on the job after having met aliens and been on a space ship. Secret commendation from the President. Now a nice, boring murder. He could see it from where he stood at the door to the cheap motel room.

The knife was nearby, prints were clear in the blood. If the killer was in APHIS, they’d get an ID in a day or two. Tameka Jones, the lead scene tech, had everyone held back, waiting for him to look it over before they started collecting the evidence. John stepped up to the body while snapping on a pair of gloves, and crouched down. It was a middle-aged man, dressed in Dockers and a plaid shirt, typical Midwestern tourist clothes. Pink flecks of foam framed the lips, and blood from the mouth trailed to the floor, leaving a large pool behind his head.

Too much blood in that pool. John turned the head, feeling over the skull. There was an indentation that moved under his fingers, bone crushed and loose, and his gloved hand came back sticky with blood. Blunt force trauma to the head, enough to kill him. His eyes caught something else, bruising around the neck, caused by something thick, not hands. Two knife wounds were visible in the torso, one just under the sternum. From the blood John guessed it was angled up, destroying the heart. There was enough blood that he didn’t think the stabs were post-mortem.

Three potential causes of death. He looked back at the foam around the lips. Poisoning? Four? “Oh, shit.”

“What is it, John?” Tameka said.

He glanced up at the tech. “What day is it today?”

“Sunday.”

“Go ahead and bag the body if we have all the photographs we need. Tell the coroner to look for six causes of death.”

She shook her head, a rapid negation that made her curls bounce. “No.”

“Maybe. Don’t know for sure yet. Those beautiful prints on the knife. Want to make a bet?”

“They’ll turn out to be the victim’s own, right?” Tameka said, and crouched down next to the body, unbuttoning the shirt. She had barely parted the cloth when the livid color of the skin could be seen in the upper right torso below the ribs. “Ruptured internal organ? This could be the Six Ways from Sunday killer. I guess they moved east.”

“I guess they did,” John said. The single ruptured internal organ was the one that stumped everyone the most, on top of the other simultaneous injuries. Tameka finished opening the victim’s shirt, revealing a single bullet wound to the gut. He’d mistaken the blood on the shirt for another knife wound. “That’s six,” John said. “Guess we don’t have to wait for the coroner’s report.”

Tameka stood up and sighed. “If I may quote you, Detective Sheppard? Oh, shit.”

John nodded, as he stood up. “Yep.” That meant five more murders were likely, unless they could do what two other cities had failed to do and catch whoever was responsible. If this happened like the last ones, it also meant that the lead detective was next. “Well,” he said, turning toward the open suitcase on the bed, “let’s find out who he was."

—

When John came in on Monday morning, his door was open and a man in a suit sat at his desk, working at a laptop. John said, “Excuse me, I think that’s my chair.”

“Ah, yes. Detective Sheppard,” the man said, glancing up briefly.

John recognized the flash of the blue eyes and the broad shoulders, but all he said was, “And that’s my desk, not yours.”

McKay said, “Yes, well, you weren’t using it, and I had work to do while I waited. You’re late.” He kept his eyes on the screen. “Let me finish this thought.”

John reached out with one finger and closed the laptop on McKay’s fingers. “What do you want?” he asked as McKay made an indignant noise and pulled his hands back. John leaned on the closed laptop. “The last time I saw you, it involved alien space vampires, the Airstream trailer from hell, and multiple gunshot wounds. And get out of my chair.”

McKay leaned back, folding his hands across his stomach, and looked at John levelly. “How have you been? Wounds all healed?”

John straightened, hand going to his chest briefly before he could stop himself, so he folded his arms to look down at McKay. “Busy. Working on a case. That I need to be working on. At my desk.” John gestured for McKay to get up, and to John’s surprise, he did, but he picked up the laptop and moved around the desk as if he were doing John a favor. He stood aside for John to pass him, and then, instead of leaving, closed the door and sat in the chair across the desk.

McKay settled his laptop, closed, on his lap, and splayed his hands on top of it. From where John stood, the light gleamed off the wide band on McKay’s left hand, and John wondered momentarily about how a marriage would work for someone who lived in another galaxy and had to deal with space vampires. The thought was broken when John noticed the white in McKay’s fingernails, showing that he was pressing down. McKay probably meant to look casual, but his demeanor had shifted slightly. There was a very slight edge of uncertainty, a contrast to how John remembered him acting—like he was master of the universe, the lower-ranking personnel clearing the way when McKay walked through, standing at attention at the side of the corridors.

“I know you declined a previous offer from General O’Neill,” McKay said, looking at his hands, “but we have a situation you’d be uniquely suited to help us solve.”

Before John could open his mouth to say, No, his captain burst through the door.

“Why didn’t you call me immediately?!”

To John’s mild surprise, McKay stood and turned to face Captain Hendricks, his solid back blocking John’s view. “We’re in a meeting here.”

“I don’t care who you are,” Hendricks said, stepping around McKay to the side of John’s desk to look squarely at him. “You find a serial killer victim, and you don’t call me? If it’s who Jones says it looks like, you’re next on the list. You should have had a watch on you last night.”

John shrugged. “It averages a week between victims and he only kills on Sunday. I was fine. I was going to come see you when I got in, but…” He gestured toward McKay.

“It was still Sunday.” Hendricks said, then turned. “And who are you?”

McKay put the laptop on John’s desk, reached into his coat for his ID, and handed it to the captain, who opened it and looked for a long moment, his face darkening further. He handed it back as if he wanted it gone. “Colorado Springs Procurement Office,” he said sourly. “You’re the people that poached Detective Cadman.”

“And Evan Lorne,” McKay said, taking the ID wallet and slipping it back into his pocket.

“Lorne went to work for you?” John asked. He knew they had left the force, but no one really knew where they’d gone.

McKay nodded absently, his brows furrowing as he looked at Hendricks. “What list? What serial killer?”

“We don’t know yet for sure,” John started, but Hendricks cut in.

“Jones already talked with the techs at LAPD. It has all the hallmarks, and if this was a copycat, they would have to have practiced before. Pulling off six causes of death almost simultaneously is hard.”

“Could be a team,” John said.

“Time,” McKay muttered, so soft John almost missed it. “What is this about?”

Hendricks glanced at John, who tilted his head toward him. Better to let Hendricks tell it.

“The Six Ways from Sunday killer.”

McKay looked blank. “And?”

“What planet have you been on?” Hendricks said.

John barely contained a snort of laughter, and said, “Yeah. Don’t they have TV there?”

McKay tensed, nearly invisibly. “I do a lot of work overseas.”

John wanted to roll his eyes. That was a nice substitute for in another galaxy. “It made international news.”

McKay shot him a quelling glance. “Enlighten me. This sounds like a tabloid story.”

Hendricks snorted. “Twelve dead people—now thirteen—say otherwise.” He glanced at John. “It’s your case.”

Fine. He’d talk. “He kills on a Sunday, and every victim has six simultaneous causes of death: stabbing, gunshot, strangulation, blunt-force trauma, poisoning, and ruptured internal organ. He gets creative on the last two, with different poisons, different organs. We don’t know how he does the organ disruption.”

“And he kills six times in a city before moving on,” Hendricks added. “There’ve been two runs so far, and in both cases the lead detective was on the list. Third victim in San Francisco, and the second in LA.”

“No other detectives?” McKay asked.

“No, just the one involved in the first murder.”

McKay turned to John. “All the more reason to come with me.”

“Are you poaching another one?” Hendricks asked, his voice rising. “What the hell do you people even do?”

“If he comes to work for us, he’ll be out of the killer’s reach.”

“McKay, no!” John said. “It’ll just make the next guy the target.”

There was a tense moment of silence. McKay looked at John with a strange mix of annoyance and pride. Hendricks’s round face was drawn flat, eyes darting between McKay and John under lowered brows.

“What if we help?” McKay said suddenly.

He didn’t have to explain what he meant. Who knew what kind of weird stuff McKay had access to. “No strings?” John asked.

“No strings.”

“How can you help?” Hendricks asked.

McKay seemed to consider for a moment. He opened his laptop, and bent over to type, then held it up toward Hendricks. “It’s a touch screen. Sign there. You can use your finger.”

“What am I signing?”

“It’s a non-disclosure agreement. Our lowest level, but still.”

Hendricks looked at John. “Did you sign one?” John shrugged. Not one, but piles of them before they’d let him leave the space ship. Hendricks traced his finger over the screen.

McKay flipped it around to look, and set the computer down. “Before coming to the LVPD, both Lorne and Cadman worked at NORAD, Deep Space Telemetry.”

John blinked. So that’s where Lorne went after Afghanistan. And Cadman had been a Marine, an explosives expert. At NORAD. Right. That made no sense.

Hendricks said, “What does that mean?”

“Did either of them strike you as the type that sat in front of monitor screens all day?”

Hendricks folded his arms. “So I guess they’re not doing bookkeeping at the Colorado Springs Procurement Office.”

One side of McKay’s mouth turned up, but all he said was, “We have resources.”

“How can you help? Are you going to loan Cadman back to the department?”

McKay shook his head. “They’re overseas.” More like in another galaxy, John’s brain supplied, but McKay was still talking. “But we may be able to recall them. I can potentially bring in two specialists. We may have technology you don’t have access to, and they can also serve as personal protection for Detective Sheppard. That way you don’t have to deplete your resources.”

Hendricks looked at McKay and smoothed his mustache, then glanced at John. “What do you think?”

“No one else has caught this guy. If they can give us an edge that LAPD didn’t have…” John shrugged.

“And your protection?”

John looked at McKay, who met his glance, and nodded in a slight lift of his chin. John looked back to his captain. “I trust that he has his resources.”

Hendricks looked at McKay. “I’ve got questions. Does that NDA cover everything?”

McKay shook his head. “What you can know, based on that document, is that the operations under NORAD and the Colorado Springs Procurement Office are critical to both national and worldwide security.”

Hendricks snorted. “We always suspected Batman was black ops.”

McKay blinked. “Batman?”

“Lorne’s cadet nickname,” John said. “He wasn’t much of a cadet. Blew all the training stats.”

McKay dismissed the subject with a brief downturn of his mouth. “We’ll need to take you to Colorado Springs to orient you and introduce you to the team.”

“Kind of in the middle of an investigation, McKay.”

McKay ignored him and spoke to Hendricks. “I was here to ask Detective Sheppard for help on a problem we have. I already have the paperwork to have him seconded to us for the week. In the mean time, we’ll also look over any files you can get us from San Francisco and LA. We may be able to find something you missed.” McKay said the last with a smirk of self-confidence.

Hendricks looked at John, and then at McKay for a long moment. “You paying him for the week?”

“Yes,” McKay said, dragging out the word like it needn’t be said.

“Send me the paperwork. We’ll get the files together. You’ll have to look at them here.”

John cleared his throat. “I haven’t said yes.”

Hendricks smirked. “Yes, you did.” He turned back to McKay. “You can have him after lunch.”

McKay picked up his laptop and slid it into a bag that had been on the floor by the guest chair. “I’ll pick you up at your apartment at 13:00.” He shouldered the bag and stuck his hand out to Hendricks to shake. “Thank you, Captain.” He nodded to John, “Detective,” and was gone.

John looked at Hendricks, who barked out a laugh. “I had a feeling this was coming.”

“Yeah?”

“How do you think you got welcomed back here with open arms after your little resignation stunt?” John said nothing. “Anyway, it wasn’t my first non-disclosure, and if they have the resources to help catch this asshole, make it happen, Sheppard.”

—

McKay knocked on John’s door at 13:03. “You ready? Bag packed?” John hefted his duffel. McKay stepped in and looked around the apartment. Through someone else’s eyes it would look pretty spare. It wasn’t a home. It was a place to stay until he figured out what he wanted to do.

“They’ll need to decorate some,” McKay said. “It’s easier to hide bugs and cameras on the wall if there’s already something there.” "What are you talking about?" "Surveillance. We'll put it in while you're gone." He took out a small camera and turned to take pictures, without a word to John he walked down the short hall and John heard the clicks as he took pictures of the bedroom. John was glad he’d made the bed.

McKay strode out, and John followed him, locking the door, and stepping out into the desert sun. McKay opened the trunk of the rental sedan, so he put his duffel in, and walked around to the passenger side, pulling out his sunglasses. “I kind of expected a fleet of black SUVs.”

“Too obvious. If the killer has figured out who you are, they may already be watching your apartment. Better to stay low key.”

McKay said little on the drive to the airport. John hadn’t known him long, but it seemed unusual. He asked a few questions about the Six Ways from Sunday killer, but they exhausted that subject in about fifteen minutes, and McKay didn’t start another one. John tried once to ask about where they were going, but McKay just shook his head, pointing around the car, and then to his ear. The car was bugged?

When they got to the airport, McKay barely waited for the rental car receipt as he slung the laptop bag over his shoulder and grabbed a small valise from the trunk. John grabbed his duffle, and followed McKay into the terminal, the slam of old cigarette smoke hitting along with the sound of slot machines, their flashing lights diminished in the day-bright corridors.

“Even the airport’s a casino,” McKay muttered, and swept John along with him to the side of the security line, the one set up for crew members only. He held up his ID, and handed over some paperwork. The heavyset man in the blue TSA shirt—John guessed ex-Army—looked it over, then called for a supervisor over the radio. McKay stood still, an impassive, calm presence on the surface, but John felt like he could sense the vibrations underneath. Finally the supervisor arrived, looked at the papers, and said, “Sir, this way.” They bypassed the X-ray machines and scanners, earning both curious glances and glares from the other passengers waiting to be screened.

John stepped up to Rodney on the other side. “That wasn’t exactly low key.”

“It’s highly doubtful that your killer followed us to the airport.” McKay led John through the concourse, stopping finally at a crowded gate area and a flight that was just starting to board for Colorado Springs. He surveyed the crowd at the gate, the pulled out a hand-held device from his laptop bag. It was bigger than a phone, more like a Star Trek tricorder than anything else. McKay held it waist high, turning his whole body slowly and looking at the readout.

John watched McKay, not wanting to think about the fact that he was about to board an aircraft. He leaned over and said, “What are you looking for? Space aliens?”

McKay glanced up, a smirk on his face. “Traces.” He put the machine away as they called for boarding, and handed John his boarding pass. They boarded in the second group. John glanced at the cockpit as he walked by, just force of habit, but looked away as soon as he realized what he was doing. No pilot ever liked deadheading, but this was worse. They had seats in the exit row, with John against the window. He pulled the shade down and reminded himself that it was just a big bus. McKay was still not talking, and John put the shade back up and stared out the window feeling completely disconnected, the cool air inside the plane blowing down on him, even though he could see the heat haze on the tarmac on the runways. Even in fall, Vegas was hot.

John forced himself to relax as they began to taxi, his hands and feet almost twitching with the movements required for takeoff. He never liked flying when someone else was at the controls, or at least not someone he didn’t know and trust. McKay glanced at him a few times, but as soon as the tone signaled 10,000 feet, he pulled out his laptop and focused on a string of equations, stopping occasionally to graph them. John watched McKay’s hands fly over the keyboard, trying to follow the numbers as they appeared on the screen. He had a Master’s degree in aeronautical engineering, but that was years in the past, and this looked nothing like fluid dynamics. “What is that?”

“Mmm?” McKay said. “Nothing you’ll understand.”

“Non-linear dynamics I can see, but I don’t get what …”

“What do you mean you can see?” McKay said, turning to look at him.

“Didn’t you once tell me you knew exactly everything about me?”

“Passing courses ten years ago doesn’t necessarily translate to spotting chaotic processes.”

“So maybe you don’t know everything.” John liked the feeling that arose. He’d been trying not to react to this sudden upheaval, but this felt like a sliver of control.

McKay snorted. “Fine.” He turned the laptop to John. “What do you make of this?”

John stared at the numbers, reached out and scrolled up, then slowly back down. “It’s beyond what I know of quantum physics, but it looks like it.”

“But what do you think?”

John scrolled through again. “I think you’re making a leap based on a pretty big assumption here.” He pointed at one of the equations, and McKay made that interrogative noise again. “I don’t know how to fix it, but you should think about this.” McKay made a satisfied noise and turned the laptop back. “So what is it?” John asked.

“A non-linear, chaotic quantum system. This is not the place,” he said, tilting his head to indicate the airplane.

“That have something to do with the problem you want me to help solve?

McKay shook his head. “Later.” He ignored John for the rest of the flight. John found himself looking at McKay, the close proximity of the aircraft seating forcing them to occasionally brush shoulders, the movements of McKay’s typing causing even more unwitting contact. It was more than John had been touched in weeks. He pushed the thought aside, the ring on McKay’s left hand reminding him of one more reason to ignore an attraction he’d felt since that first interrogation room. Thankfully, McKay ignored him until they exited the aircraft, then took his elbow to lead him out of the gate area. John jerked his arm away, not liking the sudden contact, and shifted his duffel so that it hung between them. McKay huffed, but led them out into the waning day.

It was colder here, and John wished he’d thought to check the weather, and since when did a pilot forget to check the weather? When he’d been an ex-pilot for too long. But the morning had been a blur. There had been the report to finish, and then checking in with Tameka to make sure she knew he would be gone. That led to a half hour of going over the case, so he’d packed in too much of a hurry. It was overcast, too, and he didn’t have a reason to put on his sunglasses and hide behind the darkened lenses. He followed McKay into a waiting black SUV.

“This is more Men in Black,” John said, as he settled himself into the seat behind the driver. He didn’t want to think about where they might be going, and then McKay reached into the back pocket of the seat in front of him, and handed John a pack of spearmint gum. “Even better,” John said. “Got a bar in here?”

McKay shot him a look, but he said, “Now we can talk.”

“You finally going to tell me what you want from me?” John asked, unwrapping a piece and putting it in his mouth. He held the pack out to McKay, and was surprised when he took a piece. He didn’t unwrap it, though, just palmed it as he reached into the seat pocket again.

“This time I really do need you to sign it,” McKay said. “I still can’t believe they turned you loose after what you must have seen on the Daedalus.”

“I was on a space ship?” John asked, just to mess with McKay.

“You didn’t know?” John kept his face neutral. “You knew,” McKay said, an odd finality in his voice. “Can we not play these games?”

John resolved at that moment to play any game he could, but he shrugged and said, “I already signed a lot of things.”

“Then it won’t hurt to sign it again, at least this top one, so I can even take you on base.”

John took the pen, signed with a flourish, and handed the stack back to McKay. “What do you want from me?”

“You know about the Wraith. They’re from another galaxy, and we’d like to keep them there, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t threats closer to home. We mostly defeated the Goa’uld, but they’ve gotten sneaky, and are trying to take us over by stealth. There was the Ori, but we pushed them back to their galaxy, too. In the galactic power vacuum, plain old human thugs have been our biggest problem lately, but we think the Goa’uld are infiltrating there, too.”

“How do aliens infiltrate?” John put on his best innocent and confused expression. “Don’t they have, like, tentacles, or gray skin?”

McKay looked at him, and twisted his mouth. “Ha, ha. The Goa’uld are parasites. Symbiotes, according to the xenobiologists, but if they take over the host, I call them parasites.” McKay paused, and looked out the window. John saw a muscle in his jaw bunch, but then McKay went on. “They look a bit like snakes, and they can take over the nervous system. They completely control the host. They leave behind traces of an element called naquadah. I was looking for that in the airport.”

“They walk among us? Like the movie?”

“Actually, yes.”

“So if you can find them with that doohickey—“

“Doohickey?” McKay interrupted. “It’s a highly sophisticated sensor.”

“Whatever,” John said, before McKay could work himself up. “If you can detect this naquadah stuff, what’s the problem?”

McKay took a breath. “The Goa’uld normally have naquadah in their blood so that they can control their technology, no matter what host they have. One of the Goa’uld has managed to create clones without it. If they don’t need to control the technology because their job is infiltration, then we can’t detect them without a medical exam.” McKay looked out the window again, the muscle in his jaw bunching. This was personal for him. John noticed McKay fingering the wedding ring.

“And you need me why?”

McKay turned away from the window to look at John. “We think we found technology in Atlantis that can be modified to detect them, but it requires the possession of the ATA gene. It literally means Ancient Technology Activating gene. It’s fairly rare. You have it, naturally, in spades.”

“So I’m part alien?” That was weird. “I can’t be the only one.”

“No, not alien and not the only one. And we’ve made an artificial gene therapy that takes with a subset of people. It worked for me, but the artificial gene isn’t as good as the natural one, and some things won’t operate without a high expression level. Which you have.”

“So I’m an alien on switch?”

“You’re not an alien, and yes, at least at first.”

“And in return you’ll help me catch a serial killer before he gets to me?”

“That’s the idea. If you can initialize the instrument, we may be able to continue working on it while you go back to your detective duties. You’ll be well guarded. You’re too valuable.” McKay looked away suddenly, his right hand spinning the ring on his left.

“So why do you need me for a week? In case it doesn’t initialize?”

McKay didn’t look at him. “And to help you orient with the specialists who will go back with you. They’re not from around here, but they have skills, and there are things they want to learn. We also want to loan you some of our equipment, like a personal shield we discovered. If you’re next on this killer’s list, we’d like to help you catch him early, or at least make you impossible to kill.”

McKay didn’t turn from the window again until they reached the Cheyenne Mountain Complex. The driver handled security, clearing them to enter, and John felt something odd as the gate closed behind them, and another weight as they drove into the tunnel. The dark closed over him, and he glanced at McKay, who met his look and then closed his eyes before turning away again. John felt like, in the artificial light of the tunnel, he’d seen something true. He just didn’t know what it was.

—

Jack watched McKay on the security camera as he entered the outer office, Sheppard in tow. Sheppard looked completely unimpressed, but then his last interaction with the SGC had been on a space ship, where he hadn’t died from fatal wounds. Underground corridors were bound to be a let down after that. Sheppard had also spent the better part of a day with McKay, and he might just have information fatigue. No. As he watched, he noticed how carefully Sheppard kept a distance from McKay, but his attention was always on him. Jack reached over to the press a button to let Ambrose know to let them in. He stood, slowly, as they came through the door.

McKay said, “I think you may remember John Sheppard.”

Jack reached out to shake Sheppard’s hand. “Welcome back. Thanks for coming.”

Sheppard almost smirked. It was that shade away from insubordination that had driven all of his commanders up the wall. “Happy to be here,” he said, completely insincere. “After the space vampires, I hear there are parasitic snakes.”

Without thinking, Jack said, “Well, it was snake technology that saved your ass.”

“How so, sir?”

Jack would bet Sheppard wouldn’t realize he’d said sir. “Someone who’s had a snake can use their technology. We had a healing device and an ex-host.” As soon as he said it, he could see McKay tensing, but Sheppard surprised both of them.

“Cam Mitchell.”

“How’d you know?”

“We trained together. He came to see me in the infirmary, but the first time I thought I saw him he was just standing over me, holding out a hand.”

“Goa’uld healing device,” McKay snapped.

“Mitchell has a snake?” Sheppard asked.

“Had,” Jack said. “We got it out of him.” He glanced at McKay, who stood stiffly, and then at Sheppard, who had tensed up as well. It looked like they were tuning into each other, but he wasn’t sure either of them was aware of it. He used formality to soothe McKay. “Well, take Detective Sheppard to Captain Carter in the labs. Ambrose has quarters set for him. Tomorrow he can meet Liaison Emmagan and Specialist Dex.”

—

John followed McKay, again. Seemed like that was all he’d done since 13:00, and it was approaching 17:30 when they left the general’s office.

“Where to now?”

“You’ll meet Captain Carter, and we’ll introduce you to the doohickey,” McKay said, his tone stifling further conversation. John wondered what was wrong, but McKay had tensed up at the mention of the guy that healed John. He’d have to ask someone else about it, then, because he’d liked Mitchell when they trained together. If the man was a bit more of a Boy Scout than John, well, John had been more of a Boy Scout back then. A familiar face had helped him deal with the whole not being dead and being on a space ship thing. They hadn’t talked about much more than old times.

John looked at the hallways when they exited the elevator, noting the color codes indicating directions, the mix of people in lab coats and uniforms that stood to the side as they passed, the service members with their eyes front, and the scientists looking curiously at John. The smell on this floor was a bit different. Where the general’s office had smelled of ink and coffee and paper, this floor had a chemical overtone, and maybe a bit of ozone.

McKay opened a door without knocking, and John followed him in, glancing at the guard outside.

“Carter, thanks for staying late. This is Detective John Sheppard. His ATA levels are higher than General O’Neill’s.”

A blond woman stood, a crisp uniform under her laboratory coat. “Pleased to meet you, Detective Sheppard.” She didn’t extend her hand, so John kept his at his side, nodding to her, and then glancing around the room. It was full of computers, hardware, three rolling whiteboards, and lab benches. Captain Carter had been sitting at a low bench in the middle of the room, a box with a truncated cone on top sitting in front of her, wired to a laptop. The lines of the box were beautiful, burnished and catching the light in a way John had never seen before. The top piece looked crystalline, colors from brown to gold threaded through it.

“Let’s see if we can get this thing fully functional,” McKay said.

John couldn’t look away from the object. “What do you want me to do?”

Carter said, “Most Ancient technology is activated by touch, but not always.” John looked at her, to see her glance up at McKay, and him gesturing for her to continue. “We can’t find an obvious touch pad. Perhaps this has a more mental component.”

“So I just think on at it?”

“Perhaps.”

John tried. Nothing happened. He reached toward the device, and as soon as his fingers were within an inch, his entire hand seemed to buzz faintly, and he drew it back.

“What?” McKay snapped. “What just happened?”

“I could feel, I don’t know, something.”

“Did it hurt?” John shook his head. “Then try again.”

John reached out again, paused when the buzz started, then pushed through the last inch, laying two figures on the flat top of the crystal, and it lit up beneath his touch.

He was suddenly aware of every living thing that was near him, even floors above and below. He knew the people, the insects, the unidentifiable animals three floors down and to the left. His brain tried to sort the overwhelming information, but it was hard because of a background noise, rhythmic and low. Then everything focused for a flash onto one thing, one person, and he knew that body down to the steel screws in the long bone of the arm, the rising heartbeat and tension in the circulatory system, the remains of airline peanuts in the intestines, the soft dip into his navel, the burn scars on his shoulder, and the bright, flashing maze of lights that was McKay’s brain.

And then it stopped, and all he felt was the pressure of McKay’s broad hand on his, holding it away from crystal and its fading glow. John blinked and looked from the hand to McKay’s wide, worried eyes, and said, “How’d you break your arm?”

It was McKay’s turn to blink. “How—“ he started, and then let go of John’s hand suddenly. “What happened to you?”

Carter rolled a lab chair over to him, and John sank into it with vague thanks, his thoughts in a roil, but feeling both cut off and relieved. He looked over at the object, dark again, so that he would not have to look at McKay. McKay had once said he knew absolutely everything about John, but now John knew McKay—McKay’s body, at least—from the inside out.

Carter asked, “Can you tell us what you experienced?”

John scrubbed a hand down his face. “Maybe?”

“Start small,” McKay said, his voice neutral. “Use little words. It’ll work.”

“Right,” John said, not sure if McKay was being sarcastic or helpful. He took a breath, hoping it would help him re-orient. “It’ll work if you don’t mind the overload.”

“What do you mean?” Carter asked.

“You got more of a roach problem than you probably know.”

“What?”

“Everything. Every living thing.”

“Everything?” Carter asked. “Even microbial life?”

John shook his head. That would have been far too much. “Maybe it has to be big enough? That’s the best way to describe it. And what the hell are those things between a gila monster and a rabbit?” he asked, pointing down and to the right.

Carter and McKay shared a look. Carter said, “The locals on their planet call them giyun. You could sense them through the walls?”

John nodded. She said, “So you think this will help solve our problem? Can we detect Goa’uld symbionts with it?”

“Yeah, probably,” John said, still not looking at him, “but you’ll have to figure out a way to tone it down. Also,” he swallowed, “touch changes it.”

“How?” Carter asked.

“That’s how you knew about my arm,” McKay said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah,” John said. “For a second there, all I could sense was you.”

“You were moaning, distressed, so I grabbed your arm to pull you off.”

“Direct touch is different. Hell of a medical diagnostic.”

McKay tensed, took a breath, but didn’t say anything more. Carter filled the awkward pause, asking, “Was it painful?”

John shook his head no. “Just, you know, too much information.” McKay became even more still. John glanced at him before looking at Carter. “Why do you ask?”

“You were moaning,” she said. “In rhythm, like it was with your heartbeat, but it stopped when Dr. McKay pulled you away from the device.”

That must have been what John thought was the background noise. He’d been making it. “Not pain, just…” John gestured at his head. “Too much.”

McKay shifted. “What did you get on the readouts, Captain Carter?” He walked to the other side of the lab bench, and leaned over her shoulder.

John let the technobabble wash over him while he tried to make sense of what had just happened. He was pretty sure he would have been able to detect one of the snakes, Goa’uld, whatever, when he first touched the thing. He would definitely have known if McKay had one. The contact had been almost more intense than the first part, where he could sense everything that was there, but not much more about it than shape, size and heat. McKay, though… He could see everything, even if he didn’t understand it all. Someone with medical training would love this thing.

John glanced at his watch. It was after 18:00, and he hadn’t had much lunch. Pretzels on the plane hadn’t done much for him, either. “I need a beer,” he said.

McKay and Carter both looked up. He said, “It’s a military base. No beer.”

John figured, but it didn’t hurt to ask. John said, “Mess hall?” He wanted to say to McKay, You need to eat, but John didn’t want to let him know just how much he’d seen.

“Fine,” McKay snapped. “Fine. I’ll get one of the SFs to escort you.” He stepped to the lab door and spoke to the guard. John saw Carter roll her chair to one of the wall benches and open a drawer. She reached in to pick up something, and turned as McKay came back. “They’ll be here in a minute,” McKay groused. Carter handed him a power bar. “Oh. Thank you, Captain.”

“Perhaps you should go to the mess, too?” she asked.

“This will hold me.” He took a bite and nearly swallowed it whole before turning back to the computer. “I think we can do something with this, but we’ll need more readings.” John tensed. He wasn’t ready for that again. He was surprised when McKay said, “But it can wait for tomorrow. If we analyze these readings first, we’ll know better what to look for tomorrow.”

“Sir?” came a voice from the door.

“Your escort,” McKay said, glancing up, and just like that, after hours nearly in McKay’s pocket, John was dismissed.

“If you’ll follow me?” the SF said. It was a young man, a few years below the age John had been when he joined the Air Force, haircut and uniform rendering him nearly anonymous, Guttierez on his name tag the only real identifier. Even so, this young man made John straighten his back more than being in a general’s presence had done. Old habits died hard, both the habit of standing up for the airmen under his command, and standing up to his superior officers. Only his way of standing up to them had been to skirt every edge of insubordination.

It was also a little weird walking without McKay and the way everyone gave way to him. John was just another fish in the stream, following the young SF and dodging people who looked like they were on their way home. Guttierez led him out of the elevator, and John could smell the unmistakeable scent of military mess hall. He paused at the door, surveying the room quickly, and spotted Cam Mitchell. He was eating alone, about half way through his dinner. John hoped he would still be there after he got his food. At that moment, Mitchell looked up, eyes widening as he recognized John. They nodded to each other, and John followed the SF through to the chow line.

He took the meatloaf and mashed potatoes, because it was usually safe, industrial green beans, and a salad that looked more reasonable than he remembered them being. The SF followed him down the line, then flashed an ID while John got iced tea to drink.

“Sir,” Guttierez said, “if you’ll follow me?”

He could see Mitchell’s back, still seated, as they moved into the dining area. “I see an old friend. Okay if I eat with him?”

Guttierez blinked. “Of course, sir.”

John made his way over to the table where Mitchell sat, and he could see Guttierez hesitate. “I’ll be at the door when you’re ready to leave, sir.” John nodded, and stepped around the table to face Mitchell. He was wearing BDUs, but there were no insignia—not just a lack of unit patches, but no rank bars at his collar. John must have been truly out of it, or maybe just too overwhelmed with the idea of being on a space ship, not to notice that before. He put down his tray. “Mind if I join you?”

“Hey, Sheppard,” Mitchell said. His tone was a weird combination of subdued and overly enthusiastic, none of which was like John remembered from training or Afghanistan. “What brings you down here?”

Yeah, something was off about Mitchell, and John thought back to the conversation with O’Neill. Mitchell had had a snake in his head. The lack of insignia meant he wasn’t really Air Force any more, and John didn’t know what he was allowed to say. He sat down, deciding, Screw the rest of this spook agency. Cam Mitchell had been his friend, and had saved his life. “Well, seems McKay and I can do each other a favor, and I get to go first.”

Mitchell stilled, not quite a wince, at the mention of McKay. “What’s up?”

“Captain Carter has some device that can detect those snake things.” Mitchell had relaxed slightly at Carter’s name, but stilled again at the mention of snakes. Damn. There wasn’t a conversation here that wasn’t full of land mines.

“Goa’uld,” Mitchell said, using the last of his green beans to push the scraps of potato into a small hill. “I’m familiar. Hope you can get it to work. What do you get in return?”

“Use cool alien tech to catch a serial killer.”

Mitchell looked up at that. “Man, you do not live a boring life.”

John half shrugged. “Used to, until I met my first space vampire.”

Mitchell barked a laugh, and John noticed that it garnered looks, especially when Mitchell kept laughing. “If that don’t beat all,” he said, pulling himself back together. “Sorry,” Mitchell said, shaking his head. “I wasn’t ready for that.” John knew the joke would have made Mitchell laugh, back in the day, but this sounded like a man who hadn’t had a reason to laugh in a very long time. “So,” Mitchell said, “when did you leave the Air Force?”

“Six years ago. Went back to Vegas, joined the police.”

“Huh.” Mitchell sat back with that grin John remembered. “And you took off after that Wraith by yourself. I heard the story, round about.” He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Why didn’t they recruit you here?”

“They tried.” There was more to it than that. Mostly he wasn’t ready to go back into a military organization.

Mitchell raised his eyebrows, “So, what are you doing here?”

“McKay doesn’t take no for an answer, and if I can catch this killer…”

There was that freeze again at McKay’s name. “Look,” Mitchell said, his face shutting down, “if you want to have friends around here, you probably shouldn’t be friends with me.”

Yeah, John had figured that out from the looks they were getting, but he said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“They keep me around because I’m useful. I can use Goa’uld technology.” Mitchell was looking down, and now he closed his eyes. “Because…”

“I heard,” John said, keeping his voice as light as possible. “I don’t have a problem with that.”

“You heard what?”

“That you’d had one of those… things in you.”

“But not what I did.”

“I thought they were parasites, that they took over.”

“As far as they’re concerned,” he said, gesturing minutely with his head to indicate everyone in the room, in the complex, “they have to look at the face that killed a lot of people.” Mitchell swallowed, “Including McKay’s husband.”

Oh, crap, John thought. He didn’t know what to say. There was too much information packed in that sentence. John was ashamed of the brief flash of singleandgay and McKay, but it was quickly washed over with the thought of death. He wondered if the host remembered what the snake did, and didn’t know which would be worse. He let the sounds of conversation and cutlery wash over him, looking at his own half-eaten dinner. God, poor Mitchell. No one would even talk to him, and it didn’t look like they let him off base. “Screw ‘em,” John said, forking up a bite of meatloaf. “Got any plans tonight?”

Mitchell boggled as much as a well-trained pilot ever could, a slight widening of the eyes, and then he gave John a small grin. “Nope.”

“Me, neither. Play poker?”

“Yeah, no. I heard about you and cards, too. Still play chess?”

“Sure. Been a while.”

---

“You’re a little rusty,” Mitchell said, setting up the board for the next game.

“Been cards the last few years.”

“What you doing these days?”

John glanced up. There was something in Mitchell’s tone, but he couldn’t quite read it. “Being a cop, mostly.”

“Never figured you for law enforcement. You were always trying to figure out what you could get away with and not get kicked out.”

John didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t. There were a lot of things not to say. Mitchell picked up two pawns, scrambled them behind his back, then held out his fists. John reached out with his right hand, tapping Mitchell’s left. Black.

Four moves in Mitchell said, “You miss flying?”

“Nah.” John said, without thinking. Two moves later: “You?”

Mitchell heaved a sigh, placing his bishop just where John wanted it, taking the bait. “Yeah,” Mitchell said. John pretended to ignore the bishop, and moved his knight. Mitchell put his fingers on a pawn, but didn’t move it. “Miss the sky in general.”

“You live here full time?” John said, but it wasn’t a question. Mitchell’s quarters had pictures on the walls, dust on the frames. He’d been left standing at the door for a few minutes when they first got there, watching Mitchell rush around to try to make the room more presentable, neatening stacks of books, and tucking socks in from where they draped out of the hamper. It was pretty clear he didn’t have many guests, yeah, but from what he’d just said… “You ever leave the mountain?”

“No. I mean yeah. I mean,” Mitchell swallowed. “Home sweet home.” He shrugged. “The only skies I see are on other planets. When they need me.”

“Because—“ John gestured at his head.

“Yep,” Mitchell said, and moved the pawn. “They need me. Not too many former hosts.”

“Well, thanks for that. The healing thing.”

“Don’t mention it.” John took the bishop, and Mitchell grunted, then said, “How’d you end up a cop?”

“You mean how did I leave the Air Force?”

“Kind of all of a piece, I reckon.” Mitchell took one of John’s pawns.

“Had a mission that didn’t quite go according to plan.” John moved his knight.

“How so?”

John rubbed his hand on the back of his neck, and then dug his fingers into his muscles. He didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to think about it, and usually he could push it down, even when people asked. Sitting in the middle of an underground Air Force base, across a chess board from Mitchell, made it harder to keep the memories down, the screech of the rotors and the screams of people. John dropped his hand, but then didn’t know what to do with it. He glanced at Mitchell, who looked at the board. The pieces suddenly looked placed at random, the trap he’d been setting opaque to him now.

“Your move,” Mitchell said.

John held his hand over the board, trying to put his plan back together. Mitchell had taken the pawn. Right. Time to move the knight again, so he did.

The next four moves went in silence. Mitchell started to speak once, stopped himself, and then a moment later said, “I think I know something about missions going wrong.”

John nodded at that, and then took a breath, but didn’t know what to say. These quarters were so completely normal, this chess game so familiar, and there was Mitchell, so not the same as before, because he’d had a goddamn mind-controlling alien parasite in his head. Plus two years of confinement? It would many anyone buggy. John made his next move, and Mitchell sat back, eyes narrowing at the board, slid his bishop. John moved his queen, ruthlessly pulling his focus to the game. Three moves later, Mitchell tipped his king.

“So. Cop.”

“Detective, yeah.”

“And you stopped an alien invasion. Bet you never planned on that.”

“Not so much,” John said. It was another thing he hadn’t wanted to think about. In the months after he’d been beamed back into his apartment from a space ship, he’d done everything he could to just be a normal cop. He’d always done his paperwork, but, hell, now he even did it on time. “Didn’t plan on this, either.”

“What they got you here for?”

“I’m some kind of mutant. They said something about a gene and alien technology.”

“You’re ATA?” Mitchell said with a grin. “Oh, you gotta fly these cool gateships they have!” John could feel his face freezing. He never wanted to pilot anything again. Mitchell seemed to notice. “Or not. Want to tell me about this serial killer you mentioned?”

John did, giving the history of the Six Ways from Sunday killer.

“You know that sounds impossible, right?”

“Yeah, but every ME agreed that none of the injuries seemed post-mortem. LA even had some research group try to figure it out using dummies and pig carcasses.”

“Pig carcasses?”

“They’re about as hard to cut as human skin. A little harder, maybe.”

“Could anyone do it?”

“Even if you don’t count the mystery organ rupture, no. A team could do it, but it was hard to keep from getting in each others’ way.”

“And you’re next on the list.”

“McKay says he’s sending two specialists with me. Protection and help on the case, maybe.”

“Huh. Wonder who.”

“Guess I’ll find out. I’m here for a couple of days. I don’t even know where my rack is.”

“Rematch tomorrow?” Mitchell asked, getting up. Again, there was that weird mix of overeager and apprehension, and a clear signal for John to leave.

“Sure.”

Guttierez was waiting when John stepped into the hallway. He’d been carefully stone-faced ever since John had sat down with Mitchell in the mess hall. “You got a problem with my choice of company?”

“No, sir,” the SF said, in that way John knew meant just the opposite. “This way to your quarters, sir.”

“I trained with him. Served with him in Afghanistan. Hell of an officer.”

“I’m sure he was, sir.”

John let it go at that.

—

“Try again, please.” The words were polite, but McKay snapped them out.

John flexed his fingers around the flat, gray piece of ribbon cable that wrapped his hand. McKay had McGyvered it as a way to pull John’s hand off the device without touching him, and John appreciated it. That true inside knowledge of McKay’s body, down to his sperm count, had taken the blush off the vague attraction John had been feeling. The damn device was starting to remove his will to live. “Give me a minute, okay?”

Carter said, “Sure,” and then shot a worried glance at McKay, who stood looking over her shoulder, but he didn’t overrule her. He didn’t even look up.

“How the readings coming?” John asked.

She gave him a small smile. “I think we’ll have a lot to work with. We can see a difference depending on what you concentrate on. If you can focus in on things that are larger than a certain size, you might not get overwhelmed by the roaches I wish we didn’t have.”

“Believe me, I’m trying,” John said. He stood up to stretch his legs. He really wanted to stretch everything, to shake the sense of weight and confinement. He hadn’t been underground for a full day yet, but he was starting to feel claustrophobic. He glanced at his watch. 11:45. He’d been in the laboratory for four hours. “Look, can we knock off for lunch or something? You’ve got me for a whole week.”

John ventured a glance at McKay, who kept his eyes on Carter’s screen. “Lunch. Nap. Whatever you need to do. I have an idea, captain,” he said to Carter, dismissing John.

Carter ceded the chair to McKay. “Perhaps we should set a time for this afternoon?” she said.

“Fifteen hundred,” McKay said without looking up.

John nodded to Carter, and left the lab. Guttierez stood to the side of the door, waiting for him. Must have been time for shift change, because some other SF had taken him to breakfast and the lab. “Lunch, sir?”

At the question, John realized he needed something other than food. “Is there a gym on the base? Running track, maybe?”

“Yes, both, sir.”

And that was how the SFs had been so far. They answered exactly what he asked and nothing else. “Can I use it?”

“Of course, sir.”

They detoured by John’s room so he could grab his running shoes and clothes, then to the locker room. Guttierez stayed at a distance, giving John a bit more than the usual illusion of locker room privacy, and then showed him the running track, suspended over an open gym. There were a few other people on it, mostly what looked to be airmen and Marines, but one runner was a big man with dreadlocks, all that hair a stark contrast to the military cuts he’d been surrounded by since coming into the base. John took an inside lane, and began to jog, picking up his speed as he warmed up. The processed air was more humid than he was used to in Las Vegas, and the sweat stuck to his shirt rather than drying rapidly.

Down in the gym was a small group of what looked like Marines. They were practicing drills in pairs, attacking and defending with two slim pieces of wood. At first he thought it was escrima, but the moves were very different. He spotted a small woman in a bare-shouldered sports top, pink and turquoise bright against the olive and gray gym gear on the men. She moved up and down the line, correcting, teaching. The next time John glanced down, she was surrounded by three of the students, each of them twice her size, and she put them all on the ground before John could complete half a lap. He wasn’t sure how she’d done it. Three more stepped forward, and John stopped, stepping off the track to stand on the railing.

One of the three tried to attack from behind her, but her foot kicked out with deadly accuracy. The guy managed to dodge, but John suspected it was only because he hadn’t expected to succeed in his attack in the first place. One on the right came in just as she kicked, probably expecting to catch her off balance, but she used the momentum and swept her leg around in a spin to catch him behind the knee. Everything after that was too fast to follow.

“Yo, to your right. Don’t stop on the track,” someone said, running by.

“Sorry,” John said to his retreating back. He glanced up, and saw that the man with the dreadlocks had stopped on the opposite side of the track, leaning against the wall and watching him. John glanced back down the track, found it clear, and started running again. When he got half way around, the big man fell into step in the next lane, pacing him. After another half a lap, John tried speeding up, but he kept up. John felt hemmed in, irritated by the sweat and the stupid, humid air, and mostly just wanting to be left alone. “Do you mind?”

“Nope,” the guy said, and poured on the speed, leaving John to stare at the muscles in his calves and arms until he pulled around the corner. Within a few minutes he lapped John, with a rumbled, “On your right.”

“Oh, hell no,” John murmured, and sped to catch up. They paced each other for a full lap, John pushing himself harder than he had in quite a while, but he had to slow down. “You win,” he said, as he let himself drop back.

The big guy dropped back with him. “Wasn’t a game.”

“Then what the hell was it?” John snapped more than he meant to, but the morning had been trying, and the whole point of the run was to clear out everything from his head. He stopped abruptly, and when the guy was past him, jogged over to the side of the track. He was about a third of the way from a door, so he jogged in that direction, and glared when the guy followed. “Can I do something for you?”

“Noticed you stopped to watch the training.”

“So?”

“What did you think?”

“Whoever that is, she’s good.”

“Didn’t bother you that it was a woman? Didn’t think it was weird?”

“This place is all about weird,” John said, but he could see from the man’s expression it wasn’t the right answer. “It’s not something I’ve seen before, but, look, it’s cool. She’s good.”

The man nodded. “Come on. I’ll introduce you.”

“Wait,” John said. “I didn’t mean—“ but he was cut off by a big hand wrapping around his bicep and leading him to the door, past Guttierez, who John decided must have done something wrong to get the job of babysitting him. He expected the SF to say something, but he just nodded to the big guy and fell into step behind them.

John tried to jerk his arm free, but the man just looked down at him. “Come on,” he said again, and pulled John down an open flight of stairs to the floor of the gym to where the woman was wiping the floor with yet another Marine.

As they got close, John heard one of them say, “It’s not like we’re really going to go after her. I mean, they’re going easy on her, right?”

The big man dropped John’s arm, and shoved the speaker forward. “He’s next,” he rumbled to the woman.

The Marine raised his sticks, and John could tell he wasn’t terribly familiar with them. He circled the woman, feinted in a bit, and then landed with a thud on the mat. John hadn’t even seen it happen, but the woman had her slim bare foot on his chest. “Care to try again?”

“Send ‘em back to drilling,” the dreadlocked man rumbled. “Got our guy.”

John hadn’t a clue what was happening. The woman lifted her foot and stepped over the Marine, who grabbed at her back leg and twisted, forcing her down. He moved to get on top of her, maybe going for a pin, but she wasn’t there. She was already on her feet, behind him, and in a second she had one of her sticks across his neck in a choke hold. “You rely too much on your strength,” she said. “You assume that you are bigger and stronger, and therefore will win. You are wrong.” She let him go, and stepped over to the big man, looking at John. “This one?”

Her gaze was assessing, so he raised his eyebrows and looked back. “John Sheppard.”

“Teyla Emmagan, daughter of Tagan.” She inclined her head.

“Ronon Dex,” said the big man, offering a hand.

“Son of?” John asked, as they shook briefly.

Dex shrugged. “We didn’t do that on my planet.”

John took a step back. Planet. These were aliens. It wasn’t like the Wraith, inhuman and caged like a zoo specimen. He took another step back, his mouth going dry. The third step he bumped into Guttierez. “Sir.”

John turned and fled the gym, and Guttierez caught up with him just at the door. “Sir, it’s okay. They’re human, just not from around here.”

John took a breath and looked over at Guttierez, with his broad nose and brown skin, a shade close to that of the two aliens. Humans. “How far not from around here?”

“They’re from Pegasus.”

“The other galaxy. Where McKay usually lives.”

“Yes, sir.”

John shook his head. He’d spent the entire morning touching an alien machine that turned him into some kind of life signs detector. That’s what McKay had called it, lamenting the lack of a hand-held device. And now alien people. “This is… all a little new.”

“Would you care to return to the locker room, and then to lunch?”

John wasn’t sure he could eat, but he said, “Sounds like a plan.”

___

Mitchell was in the commissary, sitting with a dark-haired woman. She was talking animatedly, hands gesturing between bites, her bright laugh cutting through. John got his food and pointedly looked at Guttierez before walking over to Cam. “Mind if I join you?”

The woman glanced up at him, and then raked her gaze up and down. “Don’t mind if you do,” she purred, a contrast to her BDUs and dark, curly ponytails, but perhaps in line with the lace camisole peaking out at the neck of her uniform shirt.

John blinked, both at the non-regulation appearance of someone in a uniform and at the rapid switch from her joking with Mitchell to a cartoon sex pot.

“Down, Vala,” Mitchell said. “John Sheppard, meet Vala Mal Doran.”

“So very pleased,” she said, offering her hand across the table. John took it, and she ran her thumb over the back of his hand.

“Turn it off. You’re not his type.”

“How do you know that, Cameron?” she asked, pulling back her fingers and batting her eyes. It would only have been worse if she’d unbuttoned a few more buttons.

“Trust me,” Mitchell said, and glanced over at John. John swallowed, feeling his face go cold as the blood pooled to his stomach. He was pretty sure he’d never hit on Mitchell, even when drunk, and he was also pretty sure no one in the Air Force had known he was gay.

Mitchell looked at him and laughed. As if reading John’s mind he said, “We all knew, Sheppard. You never saw it coming with women, and you could barely make yourself look interested.” John felt his gut clench, but he tried to keep his face blank. “Even Nancy knew—” Mitchell started, but he stopped himself. “I’m sorry.”

John looked down at his lunch, a turkey sandwich, chips and fries. If this day threw one more thing at him, he was seriously going to find a way off base and into a bottle of bourbon. He tried a fry, but it wasn’t quite greasy enough to go down easy with how dry his mouth had become. “I need some ketchup,” he said, and rose to walk back to the condiment station.

When he returned, Vala was gone, so he slid his tray around to sit across from Mitchell. “She seems interesting,” he said, hoping to make sure the conversation didn’t turn back to him, or to Nancy.

“Yeah. She’s been off world for the last week. She’s ‘bout the only person here who talks to me when they don’t have to.” Mitchell shrugged and gestured at his head. “Former host. She gets it.”

“How come she gets to go off world if you don’t?”

Mitchell shot him a look, and John thought maybe her snake hadn’t killed anyone. Mitchell shrugged again. “Qetesh had already been removed by the Tok’ra before we met her.”

“Who are the Tok’ra?” John asked, but he already had a sinking feeling they were alien.

“Good snakes, supposedly. They helped get Mahes out of me, at least.” Mitchell concentrated on the last of his lunch, scraping up peas and gravy onto his fork.

John didn’t want to think about what that meant, so he forced himself to try a fry with ketchup. It didn’t go down any easier. “So she’s not from around here, huh?” he asked.

“Nope. We have a few of those on base. There’s Teal’c. He’s just back, too. He and Vala are on the same team. Can’t miss him. Big Jaffa, and has a gold tattoo on his forehead.” Mitchell circled his finger to indicate. “Then there’s the two McKay brought with him from Pegasus, Emmagan and Dex. Dex has the dreadlocks.”

“I met them,” John said. He could hear how flat his voice sounded, it went along with the numbness spreading inside.

“Hey,” Mitchell said, looking up at his tone. “You’re not mad at me for outing you, are you? I mean, no one said anything, but people knew not to bother trying to set you up with their sister.”

“No. It’s okay,” John said. “I get it.” He tried a bite of sandwich. No. There wasn’t enough mayonnaise in the world right now. “Look, I, uh, need to get back to the lab.” It was too early, but he needed out of here. “See you later.”

“Rematch tonight?” Mitchell said, and again there was that slight overeagerness.

“Maybe,” John said. “Not sure how the day is going to go.” He got up and bussed his tray, and Guttierez caught up with him at the door. “I need to go by my room.”

“Yes, sir.”

John followed him through the hallways, and when they reached his quarters he went in and stripped down to his boxers, and started with thirty pushups, a hundred crunches, and sixty squats before moving on to to the harder stuff. At 14:30 he took another shower, and tried very hard not to think about going back to McKay’s lab. He tried not to think at all.

---

“Can I just try something?” John asked, scrubbing his hand down his face. He was exhausted, and touching that that damn crystal thing was starting to feel like torture, like he’d almost rather have electric shocks. The over-reaching awareness of every living thing, in what they had determined to be about a fifty meter radius, made his skin itch even when he wasn’t touching it.

“What are you thinking?” McKay said. John glanced over. McKay’s eyes were on the screen, but Carter had looked up. She nodded.

“I can feel a buzz before I even touch it. Let me try not touching it.”

“We do see some activity before he makes contact,” Carter said. “Let’s try it.”

McKay only grunted, so John reached out, but stopped just as he began to feel the buzz, and then concentrated on the room. In his vision, McKay and Carter acquired a glow. He closed his eyes, but still sensed them, an awareness like an after-image. John shifted his focus to the door, and could sense Guttierez on the other side. There were three people in the office above. “Huh.”

“Huh how?” McKay said.

“If I don’t touch it, I can control it better.” John pulled his hand back, relieved, but washed out, like that last attempt had drained his energy.

“Oh, well let’s start—“ McKay began, but John held the hand up.

“Tomorrow,” John said. “It’s 18:30, and I’m done. I need to get out of this mountain, if at all possible, and I need a beer.”

McKay started to say something, but stopped himself.

“O’Malley’s?” Carter suggested. “You need to eat something more than Power Bars.”

“Because fried food is so much better for my health,” McKay said. John caught a movement, and it looked almost like she was nudging McKay under the table. “Sure,” he said, looking up at John. “I can, um, sign you out.”

“And what? Leave me on a mountain road?”

“No, take you for a beer. And dinner.” McKay stood. John nodded to Carter, and followed McKay out. Guttierez moved to fall into step behind them, but McKay waved him off. “I’ve got this. We’re going off base.”

“Yes, sir.”

The halls were slightly less populated than earlier in the day, but everyone parted for McKay, standing at attention against the walls as he swept by, not noticing. The elevator took them up a few dozen floors, and it took John a few seconds to realize what was weird. There was no change in pressure as they rose. Even in a 10-story building, John could feel the change, swallow to equalize the pressure. This was one more thing that was just wrong.

McKay checked them through the first layer of security, but they were still underground. Another of the black SUVs waited for them in the underground parking deck, an SF holding the back door open. McKay didn’t even ask, but he stopped at the door and stepped aside for John to get in first. Before John could slide over, the door shut, and McKay was getting in the other side, buckling the shoulder belt, glancing at John with a strange expression, his eyebrows slightly tight, the usual slant of his mouth evened out.

John glanced around the car, “Do you always get driven around?”

“Just when I’m on planet.” McKay sounded slightly embarrassed.

On planet. John let his head fall back and closed his eyes for a moment, then pulled it together. The best way to never let them see you sweat was to just not sweat it, but the last two days had held so much more than the usual bullshit of office politics and stupid perps.

“Sheppard?” McKay said. John grunted, not opening his eyes. “It’s a lot to take in, I know.”

“Understatement of the fucking century.”

“What do you want to know?”

“How do you…” John started, but he didn’t even know how to finish the question. “Can we just chill for a few minutes?”

“Sure.”

John felt and heard a change in the air, and opened his eyes. They were out of the tunnel, and he could see the hillsides and a bit of the sky. It was near sunset, and it wasn’t the sky he’d grown used to, the openness of the desert, but it was a relief from the concrete and the weight. He pushed the button to roll down the window, but it didn’t respond, so he just looked, watching the land go from the scrub of the base perimeter to the outskirts of town, and finally to a business district. John watched the people driving, walking, and he thought about how they had no idea there were people from other planets not even 10 miles away, aliens that were probably eating the mac and cheese he’d seen listed on the board for dinner. Christ, but he needed a beer.

The car pulled up to the front door of a restaurant. John didn’t pay attention to McKay’s conversation with the driver, just unbuckled his seat belt and opened the door. He stepped away from the car and breathed in, looking around and then up to the darkening sky. His whole chest felt drawn up and out as he thought about how many of the stars he could see might have worlds and people and parasite snakes and life-sucking vampires. He barely noticed the car pull away, but he felt McKay next to him, a bit too close but not touching. Instead of feeling weird, it was almost comforting until he heard McKay take in a breath to speak. He expected to be told to get ahold of himself.

“Pretty much everybody freaks out,” McKay said softly. “It’s okay.”

John breathed in, long and slow, just like he’d been trained and had somehow forgotten, but the calm that came in with the air felt like more than neurofeedback. It’s okay. It wasn’t, but it was probably going to be.

“Come on. There’s a beer in there with your name on it.”

—

The waitress set down the beers with a bang, interrupting their argument. “They’re both violent sports,” she said. “Hockey requires moving around on metal blades on slippery ice, which is harder than running on a field, but it has legal fighting. The other involves practical ballistics, which is harder because of the third dimension, and the fighting is highly stylized. Both can kill you, and both are wicked fun.”

John looked up at her, and saw the big B in the middle of a spoked wheel on her jersey. “Boston,” he said.

“Bruins and Patriots. Don’t you forget it. Can I take your plates?”

John leaned back and let her clear the table, and glanced up at McKay. He’d loosened his tie and rolled up his sleeves to eat the wings and burgers they’d ordered. His suit jacket hung on the back of the chair. He looked relaxed, and when he caught John looking he smiled, a small and genuine thing, almost flirtatious. McKay reached out, and John thought for a half second he was reaching for John, but instead he dropped his glance and picked up his beer. John looked away briefly, reaching for his own glass, and when he glanced back again, he could see a slight flush on McKay’s cheeks.

Dinner had been normal—completely normal—but their argument on the merits of football and hockey must have seemed a bit more heated than it really was. Now the waitress had interrupted it, and John wasn’t sure where to go now.

McKay cleared his throat. “Well, tomorrow is a full day. You’ll meet the specialists I’m sending back to Las Vegas with you, Teyla Emmagan and Ronon Dex.”

John felt the food in his stomach harden. “We’ve met.” At McKay’s questioning look he said, “At the gym.”

“Right. She’s training the Marines with bantos rods.”

“She some kind of warrior princess? From, you know, there?”

“She was the leader of her people, but now she’s one of our major liaisons among different pla— people. If you saw her in the gym, you know she’ll be excellent protection. I want her and Ronon to see what our world is really like.”

“Because protecting a detective from a serial killer is normal for our world,” John said, taking a sip of beer, and then wondered that McKay was speaking so openly. But he really wasn’t. Welcome to my world, a phrase John had said, or heard, how many times? And he shouldn’t be talking this openly either. He looked at his beer. It was his third, McKay’s second. He sat back and looked at the football game on the TV, Broncos and the Chiefs, Broncos ahead by five because they’d missed both extra points, one on a heroic block by Samuels on the Chiefs’ defense. And if they didn’t move that damn ball just four yards they were going to miss the first down.

“Sheppard,” McKay said.

The pass was long, but more across field than down, caught by an end that made it six crucial steps before being pulled down.

“John.” The sound of his name startled him, and John turned. McKay had one hand over his glass, fingers resting around the circle of the rim. The other was flat on the table, well across the the halfway point. “We won’t let anything happen to you.”

John glanced up at the TV again, but couldn’t follow what was happening at that moment, so he looked back at McKay, looked into the piercing blue eyes. For a moment he felt seen, oddly cared for, and then he remembered how those eyes sat inside the skull, seen so clearly when John was touching the device and McKay both, and how he knew about the small flaw in the retina of McKay’s left eye. John looked away.

McKay spoke, his voice pitched low. “I broke my arm when a burning piece of building fell on me,” he said, as if he knew what John was thinking. “I was holding a laptop that had all the tactical data we needed to track the movements of enemy ships. Yes, those kinds of ships, and the snake kinds of enemies. We’ve been fighting on two fronts for almost two decades now. It’s a lot to take in, I know.”

“Do you?”

“You’re not the first person I’ve had to brief on the program,” McKay said, sitting back. “Can you imagine what it was like to tell my husband?”

John turned at that, surprised that McKay had brought it up. “I’m sorry about what happened to him.”

“Thank you,” McKay said, fingering the broad gold wedding band. “I didn’t know how he was going to take it. I’d been in the program for a year, mostly at Area 51. He was Italian, and hated Nevada, so we were doing the long-distance thing, with him at University of Chicago in the Classics department. Turned out his areas of expertise in Anthropology and Linguistics was needed, and they wanted me to recruit him to the program. So I brought him to work one day, made him sign the non-disclosures, and told him what I really did for a living. Elmo—that was his name and yes, like the Muppet. It means guardian. The only thing he shared with the furry red guy is, well, he was immeasurably curious, and he was kind. Elmo jumped in feet first. He was the one that figured out the last connections we needed to find the address for Atlantis.”

“How did he…?” John didn’t want to say die.

“We were on the ramp, geared up to go to Atlantis, when Mitchell came down and announced he was joining the expedition. It didn’t make sense. And if he’d just wanted to go, he could have blended in with the Marines, or the scientists, maybe. Sneaked in. He wasn’t even geared up. He was grandstanding, and that was just not like him. The security forces tried to pull him back, and that’s when his eyes went…” McKay paused and dropped his voice further. John could barely hear it above the television. “Gold. A flash. That only happens if, you know,” McKay paused and gestured at his head, “snake.”

“Jesus,” John breathed.

“He threw off the SFs like they were kids, grabbed a weapon and started firing. Half the expedition was running to get our materiel through, because this was our one and only chance to dial out. The other half were trying to stop him. When he ran out of bullets, he just tossed people aside, trying to get to the gate. No one could get a clear shot on him. Elmo put himself between me and Mitchell. And Mitchell—I know it was Mahes—that’s the name of the Goa’uld that had him—but still… He picked Elmo up by the neck, and threw him.” McKay stopped abruptly.

John had no idea what to say. “I’m sorry,” escaped his lips, but it felt as hollow as he did.

“Elmo was almost two meters tall, and Mitchell just threw him. One of the Marines pulled me through the gate before I could do anything. But I knew he was gone. I saw the moment where everything went just ragdoll. He neck was broken, and he was probably dead before he....” McKay trailed off and looked at his beer, took a long swig, and said, “So that was how I ended up in city under water with failing shields and no way home.” McKay took off the ring, held it in his fist. “Four years ago.” He slid it back on his finger, and looked up at John, his mouth slanted in an odd smile, a look of self-deprecation that John would guess McKay rarely wore. “I’ve never really told anyone that. Awful story for a first date. Sorry.”

“This is a date?” John’s first thought was that that Vala woman must have talked after Mitchell outed him, but then he remembered that McKay had said he knew exactly everything about him.

“Maybe?” McKay said. “More like a thing to figure out if we could maybe date. While still keeping things professional.”

“I never see this coming.” This was the most normal surprise to hit John in the last two days. He stared at McKay, ready to laugh, but McKay showed a complex mix of his near-arrogant confidence, chagrin at himself for being so open, hope and attraction, all spelled out on his face. John had never seen him so unguarded, and it pierced into him, the surface attraction he’d always had for McKay growing sudden roots.

He watched McKay’s face close up again. “Like I said, keeping things professional.” He rolled down his sleeves and buttoned the cuffs.

“Dr. McKay,” John said, and at those words McKay’s face hardened, but John wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence. Of all the crap he’d been hit with since finding that impossible corpse, the crazy way that everyone under the mountain thought that aliens were just an everyday part of life, this was the most human thing he’d seen. John finally said, “I’m not kind.”

“I can see that,” McKay said, buttoning his shirt and straightening his tie. “I get it.”

“No. No, I mean, I don’t think I’m like him. Your—“ He swallowed. “Elmo. This,” John gestured in the air, meaning everything from the last two days, “this… I mean, did he really just say, Cool, and jump in? Because I’m not…” John trailed off.

McKay wiped the table with his napkin, set it carefully aside, then clasped his hands in front of him and leaned forward. “It’s not easy, and no, there was a full two days of Che cazzo and yelling with Elmo.” He looked at John for a long minute, but John couldn’t read anything from his expression. McKay leaned back, looking away, scanning for their waitress. “And we can forget the other thing.”

“Don’t,” John said, before he could stop himself. McKay turned back with his eyes narrowed and his brows pulled down. “Don’t forget it. Just, let me deal with one thing at a time.” John put a smirk on his face. “I’m still at che cazzo here.”

McKay snorted a laugh, and nodded. He looked again for the waitress, but now he seemed more relaxed. On the way back to the mountain they didn’t speak. John thought about what it must have felt like to watch the one you love die. He thought back to that first interview with McKay. Nancy had been dead before John was shot down trying to rescue her. He had loved her, in his way, but not like McKay loved Elmo, a ring on his finger even four years later. John had never even seen Nancy’s body. The Air Force had him too busy with a dishonorable discharge to let him go to the funeral. Her father—Senator Dad she’d called him—had sealed the records, made his discharge good on paper, thanked him for trying to save his little girl. But really, she’d been his cover, his way to hide, even from himself. It wasn’t like what happened to McKay.

John glanced at McKay from time to time, and sometimes their eyes met. Almost every time, McKay had a different expression, and John wondered what was going through his head. He tried to imagine what it had been like to watch his husband die, and then be stranded in another galaxy, to come back and look at Mitchell now. John looked out at the shadows of the landscape and the stars, simultaneously feeling guilty about Nancy again and wondering what it would be like to walk on an alien world.

—

Carter and McKay, crisply dressed as always, were deep in conversation over the laptop when John’s morning minder, an SF named Sloane, brought him into the lab.

“Good morning,” Carter said, smiling up at him. “You were so right!”

“Yes,” McKay said, his eyes on the computer screen. “That last thing you did. We need to do that again.”

“And good morning to you,” John said.

McKay blinked and looked up. “Oh. Sorry. Good morning.” He gave John a small smile, and the warmth in his eyes seemed to have more than scientific excitement behind it.

John looked at the device, the dull crystal of the tapered cylinder on the top, ready to light up and fill his head with too much information on the living things around him.

“Two things we want you to try, actually,” Carter said. “One is that last thing you did, where you didn’t touch it, but were close enough to activate it. The other is to ask it to stay on.”

“Ask it?”

“Or order it, or just think at it.”

“Can I look at the data, too?” John asked.

Carter looked at McKay, who looked at John thoughtfully. “Sure. We’ve had Jeannie look at it, and she found the patterns, but, sure.”

The morning passed more quickly, and when John could see the live readouts on the computer screen, he could use it to calibrate how he interacted with the device, what he could sense, and the kind of measures they were taking. Finally Carter said, “That’s the Goldilocks zone. Just right. Can you make it stay on right there?”

John thought at the device, and then pulled his hand away. Instead of fading, the crystal continued to glow. McKay glanced at Carter. “My turn.” He reached forward, closing his eyes as his fingers neared the flat surface, then suddenly gasped. “Oh my— Is this what you’ve been sensing? Huh. Can’t sense the roaches, though.” McKay reached forward and placed his hand on the top, and immediately stiffened, a moan escaping his lips, turning rhythmic with each panting breath. John grabbed McKay’s arm, careful not to touch the skin, and jerked his hand away. The sensation was duller compared to skin touch, but he still had a sense of McKay’s body, at least the surface of it, the scars from the burn, and the soft places, the dip of muscle at the small of his back.

McKay’s moan stopped abruptly, and John dropped his hold on the arm.

McKay looked into John’s face. “That’s what it’s like for you? Down to the roaches?”

“Yeah,” John said, thinking, and…

McKay turned to Carter. “One of the giyun is about ready to give birth.” He turned to John. “Why didn’t you say something?”

Before John could answer, Carter said. “It’s a life within a life. Spotting Goa’uld! We can do it!” She turned back to the computer, and McKay looked back at John. They stood a moment in silence, until Carter said, “Look at this!” John and McKay both moved to look at the computer. John spotted the pattern shift, right as McKay did. “We need to correlate exactly what you sense with these patterns, so we need you to tell us what you sense. I’ll add an audio track with your narration.

The rest of the morning passed in a blur.

—

John set his tray down across from Mitchell. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

“So, how did you react when you started meeting aliens?”

Mitchell grinned. “Freaked right the fuck out. Then you get to know them, and it’s not really any different from meeting people where you’re stationed.”

John nodded. “Okay, then.”

“You working on your freak out?” Cam asked. “I mean you’d already been on a space ship and met a Wraith, and those guys are way more freaky than Jaffa. Even Vala is human.”

John glanced up and saw Teyla Emmagan and Ronon Dex emerging from the food line. “You mind if other people eat with us?”

Mitchell froze momentarily, then said. “If they want to.”

“Be right back.”

John walked over to the two, suppressing an adrenaline surge. “Hi. I’m sorry about, you know, yesterday.” Dex grunted, and Emmagan looked encouraging. “John Sheppard. Care to join me for lunch?”

“Of course, Detective Sheppard. We were scheduled to meet with you this afternoon, but it would be a pleasure to speak first under less formal circumstances.”

He led them back to the table, and Mitchell stood when they arrived. John made introductions. They seemed to know who Mitchell was, but acted like this was the first time they’d met. John watched how Mitchell and Emmagan fell into small talk, tried to wrap his head around the visiting alien version. Have you been to our planet before? Did they let you outside the mountain? How does the gravity compare to your homeworld? Then he heard, “Yeah, Sheppard and I trained together.”

“Trained?” Dex said.

“Flight school.”

“Gateships?”

“No, conventional aircraft and helicopters. Sheppard here could fly pretty much anything.”

“Like to see him try a Wraith dart.”

“Never seen one,” Mitchell said. “Can’t even get him interested in gateships.” John cleared his throat, wanting the subject to change, and Mitchell looked up. His eyes widened slightly when he saw the look on John’s face. “Maybe he’s just too interested in being a detective.”

Dex looked up at that, his eyebrows raised. “What? Like Magnum PI?”

“Ah,” John said, and then stopped because that was pretty much the last thing he expected an alien to say. He was rescued by Mitchell snorting with laughter.

“Can’t imagine you in a Hawaiian shirt!”

John shook his head. “Not really. He was a private investigator. I’m in law enforcement. A policeman.”

“So more like TJ Hooker, then?” Emmagan asked.

This time John didn’t startle. “How do you know these shows?”

Dex shrugged. “We get a lot of Earth TV. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s real. I mean, you should have heard McKay when I asked him if that time ship had a flux capacitor.”

“Yes, and that led to the re-classification of the video library,” McKay said, walking up to the table. “I see you’ve met Specialist Dex and Liaison Emmagan, so—” He broke off, and John realized McKay had just noticed Mitchell. “If you’re about done, we can start our afternoon meeting.” He started to turn away, stopped, and said stiffly, “If you’ll excuse us, Mr. Mitchell.”

“Of course,” Mitchell said. McKay left, and Mitchell looked like he was trying hard not to stare after him, trying to contain some emotion John couldn’t recognize. “Those are the first words he’s spoken to me in four years.”

Emmagan looked puzzled, but John shook his head. He rose, reached toward Mitchell’s shoulder, and then patted it once. “See you later.”

Guttierez fell into step with the three of them as they left the commissary. “This way, sirs, ma’am.”

John felt awkward, but he knew he had to say something. “Don’t ask Dr. McKay about Cam Mitchell.”

“Okay,” Dex said, dismissing the subject, but Emmagan nodded.

“That was the man who had been possessed? The one who killed so many when your people came through the ring to our galaxy?”

“Yeah,” John said, happy not to be asked to explain.

“Rodney was very angry when we first met, but he put it under a cold exterior. It took a year for us to become friends, or for him to notice anything but his work. In fact, everything changed only after his sister’s visit to Atlantis.”

John didn’t know what to say to that, and they walked in silence, following Guttierez to a conference room, where McKay already sat, next to a woman with dark blond hair. She looked up and smiled when they came in, and stood to circle the table. “Teyla! Ronon!” Emmagan took the woman’s hands, and they touched foreheads, then Dex pulled her into a bear hug.

“We’ve missed you, Jeannie,” Emmagan said as they took seats.

“Yes, well, two McKays in one city was too much,” the woman said, managing to sound dry, but still friendly. John looked at the woman closely, then at McKay.

“My sister, Dr. Jean McKay,” McKay said, and John shook the hand she extended over the table. “We’re springing it on you, a bit, but this afternoon we’d like you to help Liaison Emmagan and Specialist Dex learn enough to blend in as your bodyguards and consultants. On Friday you’ll go back to Las Vegas together, and we will help you catch your killer.”

“I’m sorry,” John said, mentally stumbling over the idea that two people from another planet were going to try to blend in with cops, “but if you have Evan Lorne and Laura Cadman working for you, why not send them? Laura was a good detective, and Lorne used to be Air Force.” He looked over to Emmagan and Dex. “No offense.”

“None taken,” Emmagan said. She glanced at Dex, and then at McKay, who nodded. “Many of our planets have been kept to low technological states because of the Wraith. We have laws and systems of justice, but only some conventions when it comes to relations between planets. Few cultures have police forces that are formalized but not also military. We expect, with the help of your people, to defeat the Wraith. We want to learn how your planet has done as well as it has. You are relatively peaceful, advanced.”

“Not everywhere,” John said.

“No, but that, too, is a model for us. Some planets have more technology than others. The ideals of your United Nations are interesting to us, but large ideals and daily life… they can have differences.”

McKay cleared his throat. “Your problem created an opportunity for them to observe and participate. You’ve helped us a long way to solving our problem. I promised we would help you solve yours.”

Jean McKay opened a box and pushed it toward the center of the table, turning it so that it faced John. There was something in it that looked like a badge, the esthetics similar to the life signs device, but in green. “It’s a personal shield. You can’t wear it all the time, because you can’t even get food through it, but you can wear it on Sundays.” At John’s look she said, “Rodney told me about the case. And really, this thing works. We tested it. I even pushed Rodney off a balcony, and then I shot him!” She grinned and looked at her brother, who raised an eyebrow.

John looked at McKay, who shrugged. “In the leg, but the shield absorbed all the energy of the bullet, and it didn’t even ricochet.”

“Nice, huh?” she asked.

“I’ll wear it with pride,” John said, looking dubiously at the green gem. It was about the size of his palm. “Can I try it?”

“We only want to turn it on when we need it. We don’t know how much power it has left, but sure,” she said. “Just hold it to your chest and think on at it.” John did, and the gem glowed green. “You can let go,” she said. “It’ll stick.”

John didn’t feel any different, but Dex stood up and said, “Can I show him?”

“Show me what?” John asked.

“Just, trust me on this, okay?” Dex said, positioning John, and then taking a few steps away. “Relax,” he said, and then, with a runing start, slammed his hand into John’s chest and flung him backward against the wall.

Or at least that’s what John’s mind said should be happening. He couldn’t feel Dex’s hand as more than a vague pressure, and there was only a gentle but irregular sense of touch when he hit the wall and fell a few inches to his feet. John blinked, impressed both by Dex’s strength and by the fact that he wasn’t banged up. He turned to look at the wall. It was covered with plaques, but they were barely askew. The whole thing should have hurt, and the wall decorations should have been knocked down. “Whoa,” he said.

He looked at McKay, who had a slight smirk on his face.

“Cool, huh?” his sister said. “The physics hurts my brain, but the shield really works.

“You enjoyed that,” John said to Dex, who just smiled and retook his seat.

“Think off at it,” she said, reaching out for the shield. John did, and it fell into his hand.

He handed the shield to her. “Thanks, Dr. McKay.”

“Jeannie’s fine. You have one more session, possibly, with the life signs device,” she said, putting the green gem back in the box. “I’ll be spending the afternoon matching your verbal descriptions of what you could sense to the readouts, and Captain Carter is already starting on trying to make a version that doesn’t require a gene bearer. Then I’ll go to Las Vegas to go over all the case reports looking for the non-obvious patterns.”

“It’s something she’s very good at,” McKay said.

“So now what? Earth cops 101?” John asked, looking at Emmagan and Dex.

“We have seen many television shows,” Emmagan said.

“Which ones?”

“Many with letter names. CSI, NCIS.”

Dex said, “Magnum PI’s my favorite.”

“None of those are all that realistic, and especially not the private investigators.”

Dex said, “So I’m not supposed to wear a brightly flowered shirt?”

John looked at him, and saw the slight amusement in the crease of his eyes. Dex was yanking his chain. He could work with that.

“Yeah, no,” John said, and he heard McKay snort.

—

They ate dinner together in the commissary. John saw Mitchell from a distance, but Mitchell shook his head and sat alone. The four of them didn’t talk about anything consequential, but John fell into their banter easily. It felt like some weird hybrid of college study group, squad mates, and casual friends. After, McKay walked John back to his room, Guttierez trailing behind. “Tomorrow we should finish up what we need from you with the life signs device.”

“And the day after we go back to Vegas?”

McKay nodded, and the walked in silence until they reached John’s door. McKay paused. “Well.”

John wanted to laugh, because it looked like McKay couldn’t decide what to do to say goodbye. A handshake would be too formal, and a hug wouldn’t make any sense. A perverse part of John wanted to just grab McKay’s head and kiss him, if only to see if Guttierez would even react, so he let himself smile at the idea, and said good night.

John wasn’t sure what to do with himself after the door closed, still too close to dinner to work out. He remembered the copy of War and Peace he’d found in the drawer in the bedside table, so he took it out, wondering again as to why it was there. A page or two in, a knock sounded at his door. It was Dex and Emmagan.

Dex said, “Want to pick some cop shows to watch with us?”

John found himself grinning. “Sure.” They went to Emmagan’s room, a sterile VIP room like his own, Guttierez following wordlessly behind. She had a laptop, and McKay had set her up with a streaming video site. They didn’t have a broad selection, but John scanned the titles and found Dragnet. He looked further and there was Barney Miller. They were set for the night.

The next morning, John found Sloane outside his door, but they didn’t turn toward the commissary for breakfast. They stopped by a door with the Stargate Command symbol on it, and a sign saying Officers Mess. Great. That meant O’Neill, and probably more hard-sell on joining the program.

—

Jack watched the steward usher Sheppard inside, and Sheppard nodded his thanks before looking across the table to where Jack sat with a cup of coffee in one hand, and an open folder in the other. “Detective Sheppard. Have a seat.” He set the coffee down, but gestured with the folder. “I hear you’re to blame for the requisition of antique typewriters for the Pegasus galaxy.”

“Sir?” Sheppard’s face and voice were bland.

Jack knew the mask well from being a junior officer facing a superior he didn’t trust. Jack said, “Liaison Emmagan was quite taken with your discussions of old technology last night.”

“We were watching cop shows that are a little closer to actual police life. Someone let them think that NCIS was an accurate record.”

“What did you show her?”

“Dragnet, Adam 12 and Barney Miller.”

Jack laughed, a bit surprised. “I loved Barney Miller. Fish was my favorite detective. You look too young for that show.”

“Someone lent me the DVDs when I moved up to detective. They said it was the most realistic depiction of the day-to-day work.” Sheppard paused as coffee was poured for him. “They were right.”

“So what do you think of our friends from Pegasus.”

Sheppard looked away, a flash of shame or chagrin on his face. “Good people,” he said.

“Good.”

“Teyla asked a lot of questions about the technology. The differences. Thirty-five years. Two generations.”

“She’s thinking about the future.”

There was a pause as breakfast plates were set before them. Jack had his usual scrambled eggs and bacon, but he’d had French toast and link sausage made for Sheppard, his usual order at his usual diner in Las Vegas. Sheppard looked up at him. “Absolutely everything about me.”

Jack smiled. “I’m sure that’s getting tiring, but you you do have some secrets from us.” Sheppard raised his eyebrows under his shock of unruly hair. Comments about grooming showed up an inordinate number of times in Sheppard’s service jacket. Jack took a bite of eggs so that Sheppard could start to eat, swallowed and said, “But it’s not really true, and you know it. We can psych profile you six ways from Sunday—” Sheppard stopped chewing for a moment, and Jack wanted to kick himself for using the phrase. “Look, the thing is, we know about your dad, the gambling, the yo-yoing between rich and broke. We even know about that thing with the pole dancer and her boyfriend when you were seventeen.” Sheppard’s eyes widened, and he swallowed, a slight flush stained his cheeks. “We don’t know why you turned around and got yourself killed saving the planet.” Sheppard put down his fork. “You did save the planet, son.”

Sheppard shrugged and took a drink of orange juice, then went back to eating, plowing through his food and pointedly not looking at Jack.

“This is not the hard sell, okay? We will help you catch your killer, and I already sent one of our doctors to examine the body and take samples. She’ll share the results, no strings. And if, after this, you want to keep doing police work in Las Vegas, we’ll try to stay out of your way, but Atlantis could use a cop. You could keep the job you like; just do it somewhere else. Hell, you could set up a civilian police force from scratch.”

Jack watched Sheppard carefully. He’d slowed down his eating, but didn’t look up. “Something on your mind?”

Sheppard swallowed, and didn’t look at Jack. “Cameron Mitchell.”

“What about him?”

A muscle jumped in Sheppard’s jaw before he spoke. “I think he’s served enough time for something he didn’t do.”

“I see,” Jack said, but he wasn’t sure where this was going.

“He was a good officer. He might still be one if you hadn’t—“ Sheppard broke off.

“Shunned him?” Jack asked, mildly surprised that the words came so easily.

“That.”

“What do you propose we do?”

“Give him a real job. Put him back in training. Let him work with people who won’t hate him because McKay hates him.”

“You think that’s what it is? McKay’s been out of the galaxy for most of the last four years. He’s not the only one who lost people that day.”

“No one treats that woman any different.”

“You mean Vala Mal Doran?”

“Her.”

Jack looked at Sheppard, and after a second, Sheppard looked back. They held eye contact for several long moments, and Jack realized Sheppard wouldn’t be the one to back down. “You think we’ve been unfair.” Sheppard nodded. “And you have ideas about what might be the right thing to do about it?”

Now Sheppard looked away with a shrug, cutting another bite of the French toast.

“Think about what you might do with that on Atlantis,” Jack said, and went back to his eggs.

—

Sloane took John back to the lab, but no one was there. McKay came in right as John began to feel uncomfortable. “Good morning. We just have a few things to finish up, I think. I have some mouse cages placed in specific places, and I want to finish calibrating your range.” McKay looked at John a bit longer than necessary, then cleared his throat. “Well, let’s get started.”

The morning proceeded like the other days, although it was quieter without Carter, and without her as a chaperone, John had less to distract him from McKay’s nearness. But McKay kept to business, so John narrated his sensations, watching the readouts and noting where patterns seemed to synch up with what he could sense. At one point McKay turned the laptop so that he could type on it, his hands right in John’s line of sight, not three feet away. There was no way not to notice. The wedding ring was gone.

There was still an indentation, a lighter band of skin where the ring had been, and John wondered for a half second why McKay had taken it off. Then it hit him. John was the reason. He wanted to tell him to put it back on, the the whole idea of someone like McKay dating someone like John was ridiculous.

He made himself look away, and then McKay said. “I think that’s it. Carter?”

John looked up to see the captain walk into the room, a slight flush on her pale cheeks. “So the good news is that now other gene carriers can use it. The bad news is it may take several months to build something smaller and more focused.” Carter turned to McKay. “But we’re way ahead of where we were.”

“So we can send him back to Las Vegas earlier than we planned?” McKay asked. Carter nodded. “Well, that leaves us time for a little detour back to Area 51.”

John had no desire to go back to Area 51, where McKay had shown him a captive Wraith. “What’s there?”

“Something I want to show you. Then we’ll go back to Las Vegas, and I’ll leave you with Specialist Dex, Liaison Emmagan, and Dr. McKay, the other one, to solve your case. As soon as that’s done, we’ll go back to Pegasus. “

“And I go back to being a normal detective.”

“Of course,” McKay said brusquely. “If that’s what you want. Why don’t you go pack, and I’ll see if I can get us on a flight. It’ll probably be first thing in the morning, so be ready to be up early.”

It wasn’t a suggestion, so John stood and went to the door to find Guttierez. “I’m supposed to go back to my room and pack. You can go back to whatever you do when you’re not following boring cops.”

Guttierez nodded and led John toward the elevators. By now, John could have found his way alone, but he was pretty sure no one would let him move around unescorted in a facility that made most Top Secret places look like the set of Total Request Live. As they reached the elevator, one of the scientists trotted up, round face a bit red over a barely groomed beard. He peered at John through round glasses. “You’re Mr. Sheppard?”

Since Guttierez didn’t tense, John kept himself relaxed. “Detective, yes. Can I help you?”

“Sorry, Detective Sheppard. I was wondering if you could stop by my lab for a moment?”

Now Guttierez tensed, but John wasn’t sure why. “I’m not exactly a scientist, Doctor uh…” John looked at the embroidery on the lab coat. “Lee.”

“We’re on a schedule, doctor,” Guttierez said.

“Just this thing, then,” Dr. Lee said, pulling a small thing out of his pocket and handing it to John.

John took it without thinking, noticing only after he had it in his hand that Guttierez had moved to block the transfer. The object lit up in his hands, illuminating a smile on the scientist’s bearded face. “What does it do?”

“How should I know?” John said, but he knew, and the thing felt good in his hand, not overwhelming like the life signs detector. “It’s a remote control for something,” he said.

Dr. Lee snatched it back. “You didn’t think anything at it? I mean, if we don’t know what it controls, we can’t have it turning on things we’re not ready for.”

There was an awkward moment before the elevator door opened, and Guttierez ushered John inside.

“Next time then?” Dr. Lee said, and waited for John to nod before the doors closed.

“Any idea what that was about?” John said, not expecting an answer.

“There’s an entire room of Ancient artifacts that are low priority. He’s in charge of it, and hoping to find something that will get him some attention.”

It was the longest answer Guttierez had given. John looked at him, and saw that the normally flat expression on his face was tinged with something, but John wasn’t sure what. He walked ahead of his escort, if only to prove he at least knew where he was going. He heard Guttierez on his radio for a moment, the other voice indistinct.

“You and Dr. McKay have a flight out of Denver in the morning.”

“It’ll take me all of four minutes to pack,” John said, feeling edgy and contrary, thinking about how good that piece of technology had felt. “Why don’t we go visit Dr. Lee?”

Guttierez hesitated. “Would you rather see Specialist Dex and Liaison Emmagan?”

“How about you schedule me to meet them for dinner, and I give Dr. Lee an hour?”

Guttierez stepped away and spoke into his radio, waited for an answer. “Copy that,” he said, then looked at John and turned back to the elevators. “This way, sir.”

Dr. Lee looked up with delight when he saw John at the door to his lab. “I only have an hour,” John said.

Lee sat John down at a lab bench and brought over a box of devices. John fished out one and put it aside. “That one’s broken,” he said.

“How do you know?”

John stopped, his fingers hovering over the next thing. “I just do.” He picked up an octagon, green and bronze like the shield Jeannie McKay had shown him, but slightly larger, bigger than his palm. “Huh,” he said as it lit up.

“What does it do?”

“Good thing I picked it up right side up. It’s for preserving fresh food. Stick this on the side of a box and it keeps things fresh.”

“How?” Dr. Lee had his eyebrows scrunched together.

“No idea. Thought that was your department.”

Dr. Lee chuckled, running his hand over his thinning hair. “I guess it is.” He set down papers in a row on the lab bench, and scribbled Broken on the first one, Food Preserver on the second one. “No idea how it works?”

“Put it on something, and it slows down spoiling, I think.”

Lee pointed to John to set it down.

They spent the next hour working through three of Dr. Lee’s boxes. By the end of it, John was tired, but it had been fun. Each piece of technology felt so natural in his hands, none of it draining like the life signs detector, and Dr. Lee’s obvious enthusiasm was hard to resist. Eventually Guttierez knocked on the side of the door. “You have a lunch meeting, sir.”

That was news to John, but he stood and shook Dr. Lee’s hand.

“What’s my lunch meeting?” he asked Guttierez.

“General O’Neill thought you should sit in on some of the instructional sessions. This is what Dr. Jackson calls a ‘lunch and learn’. I’ve arranged for you to meet with Specialist Dex and Liaison Emmagan this afternoon.

John had lunch with a weird mix of military and eggheads, and to his surprise, he wasn’t bored. It was all about Goa’uld ship design, and John had no idea how those damn things could fly. Then there were two hours with Emmagan and Dex, answering their questions about police work. That led to sparring in the gym, and calling them Teyla and Ronon, and dinner, again rounded out with McKay. It had been only a few days, and he felt like he fit with them.

When they got up from the table, McKay begging work and the early flight, John spotted Mitchell. He made his goodbyes, and then went over. “Mind if I join you?”

“Please,” Mitchell said. Again John saw that momentary flash of too much pleasure and relief. John couldn’t imagine living so isolated.

“I’m leaving tomorrow. Want a re-match on that chess game?”

“Sure, I’m about done here.”

Back in Mitchell’s room, the board set up, they played quietly, chatting only a little. John took the first game, Mitchell the second. As they set up the pieces again, Mitchell said, “I’m going to miss having a chess partner. Hell, I’m going to miss someone talking to me.”

“I’m—“ He had started to say I’m sorry, but Cameron Mitchell had never been the type to want sympathy. John said, “McKay told me exactly what happened. At least as he saw it. I can’t imagine anyone thought that was actually you.”

Mitchell snorted, then looked grim. “Mahes,” Mitchell said. “That was the name of the snake they took out of me. He pushed me down so hard that I don’t remember anything, but they made me watch the surveillance tapes.”

“Shit,” John said.

“They can’t separate it, I guess. And some people blame me for getting myself snaked in the first place.” Mitchell shrugged. “I do.”

“Ever told anyone what happened?”

“Shrinks.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“Really?” Mitchell said. John couldn’t read his tone. He sounded skeptical more than hopeful, so John tried to look open, put on the face he used for reluctant witnesses.Mitchell said, “Not much to tell. On a mission. Got ambushed by Jaffa. Next thing I know I’m in a Tok’ra facility and turns out three months have gone by. Went from Golden Boy to pariah, and I don’t have any memories about it.”

“It sucks,” John said.

“Yep.”

They played in silence. Half way through the game Mitchell said, “It’s worth it.”

“Mmm?”

“Sheppard, it’s worth it. I wish they’d let me back out there. It’s the only reason I’m still here, putting up with this.”

John didn’t say anything, but he didn’t think Mitchell had the option to leave the mountain. Then he realized what Mitchell really meant by still here—still alive. “Not really planning on signing up,” John said.

“You don’t remember much about being on the space ship, but when they beamed me up to heal you, I …” Mitchell shrugged. “I like space. I like other planets. At least here I’m close to it.”

John nodded, not really understanding, and took Mitchell’s bishop.

—

John pulled the zipper on his bag. “Ready.”

“Dr. McKay will meet us at the security desk in ten.”

When they reached the security station, John was surprised to find Ronon waiting for them, dressed crisply in dark jeans and a white shirt. “Teyla’s on her way,” he said.

McKay stepped off the elevator a few moments later with a folder in one hand, and the valise in the other, a laptop bag slung crosswise, somehow not ruining the line of his suit. John looked at him, thought about his own wrinkled shirt and slightly oversized blazer, and slouched down a bit more. What a picture of opposites they must have made at dinner last night.

“Travel docs,” McKay said, gesturing with a folder. John looked at the hand that held the folder, the distinct lack of ring, and swallowed.

An SUV pulled up, and they only had to wait a moment before the elevator opened again, and Teyla stepped out. She wore a suit, more on the casual side of business, with knee-high boots that had a heel, but didn’t look restrictive. Only Ronon’s jeans kept John from feeling completely underdressed.

The hour-long ride to the Denver airport was surprisingly pleasant. Teyla fed the conversation in easy ways, and the silences never uncomfortable. John found it less excruciating than expected, but it helped that McKay was in the front seat, not squished in the back with the three of them. He found himself telling Teyla about Afghanistan, conscious that McKay and Dex were listening.

“My Pashto was pretty good, but they were talking fast, and in a dialect I didn’t quite know.”

Teyla interrupted him with a hand on his arm. “How many languages on your planet?”

John shook his head at the casual mention of his planet, like she had visited so many others. Then he realized she had. He said, “We have hundreds of languages. Maybe thousands? How do you speak English?”

“I came here through the Ancestor’s ring.”

“We don’t understand how it works,” McKay said from the front seat, where his face was lit by the glow of his laptop screen. “And it only works consistently in Pegasus.”

“Not always,” Ronon said. “Found two planets where they never used the Ring, so it couldn’t record how they talked.”

“But we have learned your written language.” She glanced toward McKay in the front seat, a small smile on her lips. “It was necessary for writing reports.”

“Reports are good,” McKay said, not turning around. “Reports are data.”

There was a pause, and Teyla turned to John and said, “You heard the voices. And then what happened?”

John realized he’d never intended to tell this story. Teyla would make a great interrogator. He swallowed back memories and said, “They took me prisoner,” he said. “I escaped.” He looked out the window to the mountains in the distance, his throat constricting, hoping they didn’t ask for more.

He heard Ronon huff a humorless laugh. “Been there,” he said. “Done that.” The tightness in John’s throat released, and he glanced over at Ronon, who shrugged. “You get used to it.”

“Indeed you do,” Teyla said with an amused expression. McKay only made a noise of annoyance from the front seat. John couldn’t quite imagine what it all meant, and he realized they’d spent all their time together talking about Earth. He had no idea what their life was like in Pegasus. He thought back to the easy dinners, the way the three of them slotted together so comfortably. He’d seen something like it before with Special Operations teams, and even a little with flight deck teams on aircraft carriers. These three had that, but they’d also made a space around him, including him as much as they could.

The Denver airport was easy to move in, and they once again went to the side of the security line. It took about five minutes for the TSA agents to look over their paperwork. This time they made a phone call as well, but in the end they were passed through without any further screening.

Ronon said, “We got time for Cinnabon?”

McKay looked like he was carefully not rolling his eyes. “Sure.”

With sweet buns and coffee, they waited at the gate, McKay discreetly using the machine John had seen before. Ronon stood behind McKay’s chair, seeming to focus on his cinnamon roll, but his eyes were everywhere. Teyla, was seated across from McKay, keeping watch the other direction. They were on guard, on a world that was alien to them. John closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair.

—

The desert air hit John’s lungs, familiar and calming, the traffic of the Arrivals lane quiet after the slot machines and smoke in the Las Vegas airport. He looked at the sky, needing the sense of space after days under a mountain and an hour rubbing elbows with McKay, pretending to sleep to the sound of clicking keys mixed with the constant engine noise. He didn’t know why they were going to Area 51, but it didn’t hold good memories. McKay joined him a few moments later, holding car keys and trailing Teyla and Ronon. “It’s about an hour over there.”

When they were on the road, John asked the question that had been bothering him. “Is that Wraith still there?”

“We took it back to Pegasus. We weren’t sure where it was more dangerous, but after your friend’s near miss phoning home, we figured it was better not to have one on Earth.”

“Okay,” John said, and settled back. McKay had rented an Impala, black, for which Teyla had thanked him. It was big enough to fit the four of them, but felt more closed-in than the official SUVs had. John could smell Teyla’s scent, almost like a pleasant woodsmoke. He could see the fine hairs below the crisp line of McKay’s haircut, a few freckles disappearing down into his dress shirt. Ronon’s hair took up a lot of space, and gave off a scent that was vaguely floral, the strong cords of his neck contrasting with the preppiness of his button-down collar. John found it all more comforting than strange, and he found that observation strangest of all.

Security at Area 51 was like most base security, but with a few more layers. McKay drove the car to a large building deep in the complex, and parked it. “Well, this should be fun,” he said, before opening the door.

They followed him, and had their IDs checked again at the door. It opened to a large hanger. There were bulks of odd shapes covered in tarps, hastily, John thought, because there was no dust on any of them. McKay led them through the shapes, but John didn’t need the guide. Something pulled him with a feeling like the Ancient tech in Dr. Lee’s laboratory. They walked toward the one thing that wasn’t covered, a shape that was both a bulk and somehow sleek, set apart next to an elephant door.

“It’s a gateship,” McKay said. It didn’t look like any kind of ship to John. The ends were slanted, a flat bottom with a top shaped more like a quonset hut than a fuselage. He walked around it, and the part that slanted back had a screen he could see into, with four seats arranged two and two. There were no visible controls. “Come here,” McKay called from the other side, and John walked around to find that the part that slanted inward had a ramp, open and inviting. Looking at that, the design started to make sense, but he still had no idea how it flew. McKay cleared his throat, gesturing for John to step up the ramp.

When his foot made contact, the lights came on inside, showing bench seats and storage in the aft, and an arch into the front compartment. With the second step he felt a pull to the controls, his heart starting to speed up, and he stopped himself, turning to McKay. “Gateship? Does it fly?”

“Yes. It’s designed to fly through the star gates. Only gene carriers can—“

“No.” John walked back down the ramp, his mouth going dry. “I don’t fly any more.” When both feet hit the concrete floor, the pull diminished, but it didn’t go away. He turned around, looking through the big cylinder of the ship, and out the front windows. It called to him, and he turned away, closing his eyes, a taste like ashes in his mouth.

“John,” McKay said, his voice almost a whisper.

John felt the warmth of McKay’s touch on his arm, and he didn’t pull away. He felt like he’d been poured in lead. “If you know absolutely everything about me, you know I can’t fly.”

“You won’t fly,” McKay said. “There’s a difference, and I know I’ve been in the air with you.”

John took a deep breath, bringing in the scent of strange machines, plastic tarps, and dust. He closed his eyes, remembering the awful screech of a rotor stuck in the side of a building, the swing and slam as the body of his helo hit the wall, twenty feet up, and the blades trying to turn until his bird fractured around him, the death screams of the machine and the people inside her.

He felt McKay’s other hand, and he was holding John now by both biceps, solid and grounding him and holding him here, not then. “Let me give this to you,” McKay said softly. “I didn’t think you’d— Just trust me, please?” John didn’t move. “Your mind, John. You half fly this with your mind. Let me show you. You’ll just be a passenger, like that commercial flight, okay?”

McKay stepped away, and even in the Nevada heat, John’s arms felt cold where McKay’s hands had been, feeling the loss. He heard the steady clunk and rumble of the elephant door opening, and even with his eyes closed he winced at the sudden bright. McKay was back, reaching into the inside pocket of John’s sport coat, and the settling his aviators on his face. It felt intimate, the warmth from McKay’s palms, and the soft hint of his close breath. “Come on,” McKay said. “I’ll fly it. You’ll see.”

John opened his eyes and turned, looking through the ship again. McKay’s hand landed gently at his left elbow, but he stood still. Teyla and Ronon slipped past them into the front compartment, settling into the back two seats like it was all familiar.

John followed them, and with every step of his foot the ship lit up around him, revealed information, more than he could make sense of. McKay ushered him to the co-pilot’s seat, and he looked at the near-blank panel in front of him, somehow knowing that the engines were beginning to warm up. How did anyone control this thing? Just think at it?

Before the thought was finished, a heads-up display formed in the air, with lines, circles and boxes floating. He started to reach for them, but McKay said, “Wait for me, tiger,” as he settled into the pilot’s chair. Without obviously hitting any kind of switch said, “Tower, this is Gateship 10. Can we be cleared for takeoff?”

A disembodied voice answered. “Destination?”

McKay looked at John, who raised his eyebrows and shrugged, so he glanced back to Teyla and Ronon.

“I would like to see the whole planet,” Teyla said.

McKay tilted his head up as he spoke to the control tower. “Straight up to L2, one orbit, and back down.”

“3 minutes, Gateship 10. ISS needs to clear. Don’t spook Space Station,” the voice said.

“Understood,” McKay said.

Through this conversation John looked at McKay, feeling his own eyes go wide. “Are you kidding me?” he said. “Space?”

“This is not one of your little puddle jumpers, Detective Sheppard,” McKay said, but he was smiling, slanted and mischievous, at John’s surprise.

The next minutes felt long, and then the controller’s voice said, “Gateship 10, you are cleared for takeoff.” McKay acknowledged, and John felt no movement as he watched the warehouse turn in front of him, the ship moving up and out the elephant door, and then straight up into the sky, barely pressing him into the back of the seat. He held his fists closed in his lap, and controlled his breathing as they streaked up, almost silently, toward the clouds.

“Inertial dampening,” McKay said, “and artificial gravity. Has shields, too, like that personal one we have for you.” The sky through the viewscreen slowly darkened, and John watched the stars come out, filling in the sky until they were thick and brilliant. “What do you think?”

John couldn’t take his eyes off the star field, the thick row of the Milky Way so much denser even than he could see in a desert sky. He shook his head, not trusting himself to speak. McKay’s big hand landed on his shoulder, a warm squeeze grounding John in the chair. “You want to take the wheel?”

“I don’t know how to drive this thing,” John said, but he knew the lie the moment it left his mouth.

“Whatever you want.” McKay rubbed his knuckles down John’s arm, then returning his hands to the controls, poking at spots in the HUD. John knew he was setting the heading for an orbit around the planet, just like he knew most of the rest of the workings of this ship, a mental connection familiar from the device in the mountain, but much more welcome. You would know, he thought to himself. In this ship you would know if something had frayed a control line.

He closed his eyes, remembering again, details that made his body tense in sympathy. The helicopter had slipped down and sideways, his stick only half responsive, something clearly wrong, but he hadn’t yet processed that they’d been hit. He had sprained his hand at the futile effort of trying to pull up and away from the ambush. He remembered every moment of the crash, of the Taliban pulling him from the wreckage.

John blinked the stars back into focus and glanced at McKay, who was looking at him. “Mind if,” John started, then swallowed back the lump. “Mind if I drive?”

McKay smiled his slanted smile. “Sure. Sky’s open, and Teyla wants to see the world. Why don’t you see what she can do.”

John lifted his hands to the HUD and started a barrel roll, the spinning of the stars the only indicator that anything was happening. It was so different from a helo, yet comfortable under his hands and in his mind. He cut the forward motion and turned the ship toward Earth, the shape of her colors sliding into view, half in shadow, the lights of cities visible. It took a few minutes to orient himself. The world was upside down relative to all the globes he’d ever seen.

The world. He stared down at it, barely noting how Teyla and Ronon had come forward to look until a big hand landed on his shoulder. “Looks like a nice place,” Ronon said.

“Yeah, I like it,” John said, wanting to sound flip, but the words coming out almost as a whisper.

“And thanks to you, it still is a nice place,” McKay said softly.

John couldn’t answer. He had never seen anything so beautiful in his life. He found the desert, started to try to find Las Vegas, but his eyes kept wandering back to the thin skin of atmosphere. It looked so very fragile.

The hand of a man born in another galaxy weighed warm on his shoulder, and his planet hung before him in space. Heat pricked behind his eyes. He could go back to a culture that didn’t even know this was possible, or he could have this.

“Can I…” he started, then swallowed. “Nice puddle jumper you have here.”

Rodney snorted. “Gateship,” he said vehemently. “It’s designed to go through the stargate. It is not a puddle jumper.”

“Puddle jumper,” John said, enjoying yanking Rodney’s chain. That earned him an exasperated look, which only made John happier, but he surprised himself with what he said next. “Where do I sign up?”

—

“Gateship 10, you are cleared to land.”

John took them through the atmosphere, putting up the shields with barely a thought and a motion, reveling in the beauty of the plasma forming around them as the dove through the shell of atmosphere, the feeling of bursting into the clear sky, the overview of the planet narrowing down to the flat desert next to the mountains. John maneuvered the ship down until it hovered over the tarmac outside the warehouse, where the elephant door stood open. Easier than a helo, he guided them in, and let the ship set itself down with barely a noise.

“Well done,” Teyla said. “The first time Rodney landed a gateship—” she started.

“We are not telling that story now,” McKay interrupted. His hands were up, going through the power-down sequence. John’s hands were in his lap, relaxed, his head tilted back on the seat rest. He took a deep breath, but wasn’t sure what to say. “So,” McKay said. “Glad to know my recruitment tactics worked better than General O’Neill’s.”

“Was he kidding about needing a cop in Atlantis?”

“Not really, no,” McKay said. “Not at all.”

Teyla said, “We would like to see your people… practice what they preach.”

“Get a lot of murders?”

“Most people die fighting,” Ronon said, “or are taken by the Wraith. Still have stupid stuff, like stealing. We need the whole thing. Small towns need a sheriff.”

John snorted at the word, sitting up and turning to face Dex. “Got cattle thieves? Do I get a badge?”

Dex smiled at him. “We don’t need no stinking badges.”

“What movies have you been showing them?” John asked McKay.

“All the classics.” He reached out to squeeze one of John’s hands. “And speaking of law enforcement, now we have to get you back to Las Vegas. You have an impossible killer to catch.”

“Too bad we don’t have that life signs detector,” John said.

A small compartment by McKay’s head opened, a shelf moving out with something that looked like a Game Boy in a protective case. McKay’s head turned at the noise. He looked at the thing and then up to John. “What did you do?”

“I don’t know.”

McKay reached up, took the device, and handed it to John. It lit up in his hand, showing four dots clustered together, three white and one red, and a glow toward the right side of the screen. He turned in the chair, and the glow moved to the top of the screen, the dots also keeping their absolute positions as the screen moved. “Ronon,” John said, “Walk away.” John listened to the boot steps toward the back of the gateship, watching the dot move with him. “Huh,” he said. “Life signs detector.”

“That’s been in here the whole time?! Oh we have got to get you to Atlantis and find out what else we’ve missed.” McKay made to grab for it, stopped himself, and said, “May I?”

—

Captain Hendricks looked up when John knocked on his door. “You’re back early.”

“It’s Friday,” John said.

“Well, they’re paying you for the whole week.” Hendricks lifted his chin in gesture at McKay, who hovered behind John. “You brought friends?”

John stepped into the office, to let the other three enter. “You remember Dr. McKay. Captain Hendricks, this is Specialist Ronon Dex, and Liaison Teyla Emmagan. They’ve been lent by the Colorado Procurement Office.”

“Oh, right. We’ve had one of their people down in evidence since yesterday, plowing through all the Six Ways from Sunday files from San Francisco and Los Angeles.”

“That would be my sister, Dr. Jean McKay.”

“Yes, indeed, Dr. McKay.” Hendricks got up from behind his desk and offered a hand to Dex. “Welcome.” To Teyla he nodded and said, “Ma’am.”

“She find anything?” John asked.

“I don’t know. She isn’t talking to us. I mean, she is, but it’s just lots of words.”

“Did she snap at you? That’s my sister.”

Hendricks flattened his expression, and John knew he was not pleased. “Well. We’ve got one more day before this person is coming after you.”

“Maybe.” John glanced at Teyla and Dex. “I’ll have company.”

“That’s just the thing. If you’re impossible to get to, they’ll probably just kill someone else.”

“Did they finish bugging my apartment?” John asked.

Hendricks looked up sharply at that. “What?”

“The, uh, Procurement Office.”

“We’ve had your place staked out to see if anyone was scouting it. We haven’t seen anything.”

“Of course they did it,” McKay said. “I hope you like the new decor.”

Hendricks walked back behind his desk, scowling. He handed John an envelope with a lump of key in it. “We did secure an apartment near yours for your two associates. We didn’t know… It’s only one bedroom.”

John glanced at Teyla, who looked confused. “Don’t worry,” he said, remembering a story she’d told about a mission with McKay, a tent getting smashed by an overly friendly furry animal, and all of them bunking together. “They’ve dealt with worse.”

“I suppose we have,” McKay said. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be waiting outside.”

John watched him go, pulling the little life signs detector out of his pocket.

“I don’t like staking you out like a goat,” Hendricks said.

“It’s the best way to catch him. Or them,” John said.

Hendricks shrugged, “Well if your spook friends have put in surveillance, can we have the feeds?”

“I’ll ask them.”

“Well, get to work then. Their other Dr. McKay is in the records room. Pleased to meet you Mr. Dex, Miss Emmagan.” Hendricks sat at his desk, dismissing them.

McKay sat in a chair outside the office, looking at the screen of the little device. He stood quickly and put it in his pocket when they came out. “John,” he said, “would you mind terribly if I worked in your office. Ronon and Teyla will want to see how things work around here. Maybe you could give them a tour?”

—

“That was sufficiently similar to the television stories,” Teyla said.

“You haven’t had the complete experience yet,” John said. “Cop coffee.” He took them to the detective’s break room.

“Is cop coffee like Marine coffee?” Ronon asked.

“I don’t know,” John said. “What makes Marine coffee special?”

“Black as sin, strong as death, and bitter as a woman scorned,” Teyla said with a small smile. “I have found it sometimes useful to drink.”

“Let’s see how this stacks up, and we’ll go check on the other Dr. McKay” He handed Teyla a cup.

She drank it and nodded. “Similar to Marine coffee, but I do not need such stimulation at the moment. I’ll bring this to Jeannie.”

Ronon snorted. “Maybe let Sheppard give it to her, so she doesn’t bite him.”

“She seemed nice to me,” John said.

“You didn’t interrupt her while she was working,” Dex said.

John led them to the archive room. Jeannie had files spread around her, earbuds in her ears. Behind her a white board was covered with words and diagrams. Teyla walked up to her, and touched her shoulder. Jeannie jerked her head up, scowling. John immediately held out the coffee, which made her smile.

“You’re my hero, and I don’t care what anyone else says about you,” Jeannie said, taking a deep swig.

“Okay,” John said. “Have you found anything?”

“Yes! But that’s not what’s interesting. Close the door and clear the room, but maybe not in that order.”

Ronon stepped away holding a gun John hadn’t even known he was carrying. It didn’t look normal. There was a red glow at the end, and the shape at the muzzle was unusual. Ronon held it at the ready, and Jeannie said, “We’re fine here Ronon. Just shoo out anyone else. We don’t need to scare them.” Ronon lowered the weapon and stepped behind a row of filing cabinets. When he emerged again, the gun had disappeared.

“We’re clear.”

“So,” Jeannie said, turning toward the white board. “These murders are not possible. There is no way one person could kill someone six different ways, all at the same time. And there’s no evidence there’s more than one person.”

“There’s no evidence of even one person,” John said. “Not a hair or a fiber, but they happen.”

“Yes, and only on Sundays. Why is that? It’s like someone needs to play an elaborate joke.”

“I read all the profiler reports before your brother showed up,” John said.

“And I think they’re wrong,” Jeannie said. “I said it’s like someone needs to play an elaborate joke, but I don’t think it’s a joke at all.”

“I don’t generally find dead people funny, either.”

“Detective Sheppard, these murders are not possible without alien technology.”

“Alien? But why?”

Jeannie shook her head. “Where’s Rodney?”

John had almost forgotten McKay’s given name. “He’s in my office.”

“Get him down here. I have reports back from Jennifer’s examination of the body, and looking at these police records, some of which are pretty shoddy, by the way, except yours—your Tameka Jones is good, and if it wasn’t for her, I might not have seen it, but I couldn’t say anything in front of her. It’s pretty clear this is alien tech, but it’s not anything we’ve seen before. Jennifer is pretty sure.”

John blinked, stunned at the onslaught of information. “Who’s Jennifer?”

“Dr. Keller. She’s one of our medical officers, and she’s had a lot of experience with exotic traumas.”

“That’s a phrase I’ve never heard before,” John said. “Exotic trauma.”

John heard Ronon snort. “Been there. Done that.”

“Rodney. Please. Now,” Jeannie said.

John turned to go, then turned back. “Ronon, Teyla. I, uh… Sorry. I’m not supposed to leave you alone.”

“But they’re with me,” Jeannie said, her eyebrows scrunching.

“We will accompany you, John,” Teyla said. She and Dex fell into step behind him, up the stairs, through the room of desk officers and into the detectives’ offices. John caught looks aimed their way all through the building. They’d walked through all this before on the impromptu tour, but their re-appearance seemed to cause more disruption than the first time.

John’s office door was closed, so he opened it and stepped in. McKay was sitting at John’s desk, and he looked up saying, “I’m sorry, Detective Sheppard isn’t—“ He blinked. “Oh. Detective Sheppard. Ronon. Teyla. What did I miss?”

“Your sister wants to see you. It seems she found something.”

“Ah. One moment.” John felt awkward just standing there while McKay packed up his computer, and then felt mildly irritated with himself for feeling awkward. It was his own office, after all. McKay was the guest. But the office felt smaller, plainer, than it had before. He looked at his poster of Johnny Cash, solitary and staring out. Other than the poster, the office didn’t feel like John’s any more. After this case, he would resign for good.

Thinking about space and other planets made the parade back down to the records room even stranger. They had eyes on them again, and Saavedra, one of the senior detectives, said, “Nice ducklings, Sheppard. They supposed to save you from the Sunday killer? It’s only Friday.”

John gave him a grim smile, but said nothing. When they arrived at the archive room, Jeannie was pacing, bouncing on her toes. “Oh, good. Okay.” She took a breath. “These murders are impossible, but they’re not, if you have time travel. That would even allow you to clean up. It would be even better if you had time travel with teleportation, which I think is a distinct possibility here. And Jennifer Keller got to do the autopsy of the latest body, and examined tissue samples, which was more than I could have hoped for, but they didn’t give us anything useful, so—“

“Jeannie!” McKay said. “Breathe.” She glared at him, but paused. “Did you figure it out?”

“Not yet.” She looked at McKay, pressing her lips together. He looked back at her, his face composed in an expression of calm expectation. Jeannie’s mouth started to twitch, and John saw McKay’s eyes crinkle, just barely, as they waited. It seemed like an old and comfortable game between them, and the humor in McKay’s eyes warmed him.

Finally half of McKay’s mouth twitched up in that slanted smile. “But what did you find?”

The words tumbled out “There is one pattern that the previous investigators missed. The people had no connection—all walks of life—and the places of the murders had little connection. Your guy was in a hotel room. Some people were in their homes. At least two were people in the workplace. Age, sex, nothing consistent.”

“I know,” John said.

She looked at him, as if surprised to hear him speak. “What you don’t know is that the absolute positions between the hands and feet, or feet and hands, or hands and hands, are always precisely the same. If you draw a line between the centers of mass of the hands and feet, around the body, it makes an irregular polygon where the sum of the line segment lengths is identical.”

John walked around to look at the crime scene photos that she had drawn on. She pointed at the most recent one from his case, and then at an old one from LA. “I only saw it because your crime scene tech, Mrs. Jones, came down and laid out all the pictures of the bodies that had been taken standing at the head end. I had to extrapolate a bit to make sure I had the scale. And calculating the center of mass of objects as irregular as hands is really more of a guesstimate based on overall body weight, but, regardless of the position of the body, the perimeter and area are the same. Within the tolerance based on necessary assumptions and errors. Three percent variance, maximum, and that may just be due to my need to infer because I only had photographs and overall body weight.”

As the avalanche of words washed over him, John could see it, now that she’d drawn in the dots. The four lines never made the same exact shape, but the short woman from San Francisco had her hands over her head, the tall man murdered the next week had them closer to his sides… “How did you see this?”

Jeannie blinked at him. “I just did. I mean, I thought I did, and it took some doing to make the first calculations but… I don’t have any idea what it means.”

“Is it a message, or a fetish?” John muttered to himself.

Jeannie didn’t pause. “I also have Jennifer’s report from your body! She was able to estimate the order of events, based on how fast each thing would take to kill you. Poison first, but it’s still not clear how it’s administered. Then the choke goes on for the strangle, because it’s always by something, not by hand, and strangling takes a while. The gun shot wound is always fatal, but not quickly so. It comes third, because it bleeds, but more slowly. Then they get the blunt force trauma to the head. The knife is last.”

“What about the destroyed organ.”

“Oh, well that’s really probably the next to last thing, because Jennifer says there’s sufficient internal bleeding to show the person isn’t dead yet when it happens.”

John thought about the pool of blood under the head of the victim in the hotel room. “It takes several seconds for most of the external wounds to give up enough blood to be what I saw. If the loss of blood pressure is so fast…” He trailed off, looking at the photos that Jeannie had drawn on, but this time looking at the blood.

“Then the only way one person can do this to another person is time travel,” Jeannie said.

John shook his head, but he had to agree. “And that’s not possible, right?” McKay cleared his throat. Jeannie kept her eyes on the photos. “C’mon, you can’t tell me…” John trailed off. “Well then why hasn’t anyone gone back and killed Hitler?”

“It’s not that simple,” McKay said. “Just, well, we know it can be done, but we don’t know how this person is doing it.”

—

They ate together that evening at a diner John liked, and when his usual waitress raised an eyebrow at him when he asked for a table for 5, he just smiled. She led them past his usual booth to a round table in the back with six chairs. John looked at the counter, at his typical spot, and finally at the laminated menu with a slight sense of unreality. Like his office, the diner seemed different, and this new view of it, looking out from the back instead of across the front, just strengthened the increasing tick of last time, last time.

Dex had no trouble selecting a burger—gorgonzola, fried apples and pickled garlic scapes. “It’s got the most things I don’t recognize on it.”

“What is a portabella?” Teyla asked.

“Big fungus,” McKay said, “like those ones on PX—“ he interrupted himself. “You remember. Uh, Crinya’s specialty of the house.”

“That sounds delicious,” Teyla said. “There have been so many animal products in our meals here.” She looked over at John. “I am not used to such wealth.”

John blinked. One of the harder things about coming back after his time in Afghanistan was the sheer ease with which most people in the US lived, taking for granted things like running water. Teyla had mentioned worlds at different levels of development. “Your home,” John started.

“Destroyed, but my people lived very simply. Ronon’s planet—“ She interrupted herself. “His home had cities, infrastructure. We were not so advanced.”

John glanced at McKay, who said, “They,” and with the emphasis, John knew he meant the Wraith, “they don’t allow development that could create any challenge for them.”

“Rodney! Your ring!” Jeannie said, suddenly. “Did you lose it?”

John froze at the sudden change of subject, but McKay’s right hand went to reach for where his wedding ring no longer sat. “No,” he said softly. “It was time.”

“It’s just, well, you haven’t… Wait! Did you meet someone?”

John couldn’t help but glance again at McKay, who kept his own gaze on his sister. “I meet a lot of people.”

She punched McKay’s arm lightly. “You know what I mean!”

Teyla said, “Jeannie, this is perhaps not the time.”

John kept a straight face, but he could feel heat on his cheeks. “Well, it’s just that it’s been years, and—” She looked at John and saw something that made her eyebrows rise. “Oh. So. New? Thing?”

John carefully didn’t look at McKay, but he heard him say, “Beginning of the exploration of something that might turn into a thing, but evidence is still lacking.” John heard Ronon snort. “Subject is closed.”

Jeannie opened her mouth to talk again, but Teyla put a hand on her arm. “Jeannie, now is not the time.”

The rest of dinner passed quietly, but John didn’t feel awkward, which surprised him when he thought about it. It was more a feeling of Jeannie not wanting to put her foot in it again, and not knowing what not to say. After dinner, McKay drove them all to John’s apartment complex, but John had him park several buildings away. “If the killer is watching, we don’t want him to see this whole crowd.”

“What’s the plan?”

John pulled the envelope Hendricks had given him out of his inside jacket pocket, noting the apartment number. “We’ll send Ronon and Teyla up to the assigned apartment. Maybe you can go with them, Jeannie? McKay can drop me at my apartment, since he picked me up. You’re going back to Colorado Springs, right? You can pick up your sister and take her back to the hotel by the station.” McKay nodded. John opened the envelope and looked at the apartment address, then gave Jeannie directions through the apartment complex.

She reached into her bag, and handed John the box he’d seen in the conference room a few days before. “Personal Shield. Wear it on Sunday.”

“Got it,” John said, watching as they took their bags and walked away. McKay drove to John’s building, parking next to John’s car.

The both got out, McKay handing John his duffel from the trunk. For a moment they both held the strap, John surprised by how long they held eye contact. McKay turned away, color rising in his cheeks. John smiled to himself, and said, “Beginning of the exploration?”

“Seemed like a reasonable way to put it,” McKay said, not looking up

“Second date sometime?” John said, feeling hesitant, not sure where McKay’s shy body language had come from. “After we catch this killer.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” McKay said. “I’m worried we missed something.”

“Personal shield, right?” John said, hefting the small box into McKay’s line of sight. “Your surveillance.”

“Yes. Right.” McKay said. “Maybe I should come up and see how they did.”

“Sounds like a plan,” John said, liking the idea of being alone with McKay, thinking about what he’d said at the diner about gathering evidence. “Here.” He handed the box with the shield to McKay, and took out his keys. “Come on up.”

John stepped into his apartment, remembering his vague embarrassment the last time McKay had seen it. He turned on the lights and started toward the bedroom to put down the duffle, but he didn’t make it more than two steps. His apartment had been transformed.

Sure, the uncertain couch was still there, and the TV was the same. The arrangement in the room, the framed posters on the wall made the place look like it belonged to someone else, someone with money and taste and care. It’s what John might have done if he had any of those three things. “Wow.”

“I, um, told them to use your file to pick things. They had a small budget, but, well.” McKay looked around, apparently pleased. “They were shooting for an ideal bachelor apartment. The surveillance devices are in all your new things.”

“My things? McKay—“ John started, his eyes darting from one new decoration to the next, but he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say.

“Rodney, please, if I may call you John.”

The formality of McKay’s tone made John turn to look at him, suddenly very conscious of the listening devices, and probably even cameras. He huffed a laugh, because of the irony of getting McKay alone so they could see how well the surveillance had been installed meant they were not alone at all. John said, surprising himself with how softly he spoke, “If I go with you, I’m leaving all this stuff.”

“Except the poster from your office,” McKay said, a hitch in his voice. “You’re bringing that.” John just gave him a puzzled look. McKay explained, and his voice was low enough that John had to take a step toward him to hear. “After you saved us all, I downloaded the complete Johnny Cash discography.” McKay—Rodney— looked down, and then up again to meet John’s gaze. “It, well, I’m a classical musician, and I’d never listened to that kind of thing, but he’s brilliant. And I kept seeing you in his songs. Not that other Colonel Sheppard that I met. He was almost a square-jawed hero. But someone who had walked through fire, and known doubt, didn’t always do the right thing. Except when it counted most.”

Neither one of them looked away. John couldn’t remember the last time he looked in someone’s eyes like this, really looking. He wanted to take the next two steps, to take Rodney’s face in his hands and try a first kiss, to thank him for showing John space, to thank him for things John wasn’t even sure he could name. But there were microphones and cameras, and this was not the time.

McKay broke the gaze, walking over to the small kitchen and setting the box on the counter. “You put this on before you go to sleep on Saturday night, and you don’t take it off.”

“Yes, sir,” John said.

McKay turned, and John saw his mouth slanting in a wry smile. “Those aren’t words that come easy to you.” John shrugged, reminded again of how much more Rodney McKay knew about him than he knew about Rodney. “We’ll be in touch,” Rodney said. “Ronon and Teyla—well, they’re my team. Take care of them.”

John was tempted to say Yes, sir again, but he nodded. “Will do.”

“Good night, John.”

John stared for a moment at the closed door, then checked to see if there was any beer left in the fridge.

—

Saturday morning John woke to the chime of the text noise. He looked at the time, 6:02, and then at the number. He didn’t recognize it. “Want to go for a run? RD”

Before he could answer, his phone chimed again. “Teyla wants to know if she can go swimming in the artificial pond. RD”

John wondered how Ronon had learned to sign texts. He picked up his phone and typed in back, “Yes and Yes” and almost pressed send, but added “JS”. Then he thought for a minute and sent, “Give me 15 minutes. Does T have a bathing suit?” They would probably know Earth time, but would Teyla know what a bathing suit was?

“15 is good. She says no. RD”

“Meet you at your apartment. Will take her shopping after. Need suit to use pool. JS” John stretched, and as he put on his running clothes realized he promised to do something he hated. Shopping with women was never his thing, but he hoped they could keep it to the point. Where would he even take her? Was there a store that sold only bathing suits, so she wouldn’t get distracted?

He jogged over to their apartment and rang the bell. Ronon greeted him, that strange gun in his hand but pointing at the door. Teyla wasn’t in sight at first, but when John stepped in, she came out from behind the door. “It’s just me,” he said, trying to smile harmlessly. Teyla’s answering smile was small but indulgent, like he was not quite smart enough to know what was going on. He watched Ronon put away the gun, and realized part of what he found so familiar about them: They were used to living in a war zone. He’d been back in the States long enough that many of those habits had dulled. If he planned to go with them, they would need to be sharpened again.

He nodded, if only to himself, and said, “So, run, breakfast, shopping, and swimming?”

“Sounds like a plan.” Teyla said. John blinked at the colloquial turn of phrase, but if she’d been living with American military, or even just Americans, she’d have heard that one before.

“Let’s go,” Ronon said.

John struggled to keep pace with Ronon’s longer legs and clearly better condition. They did four miles, a reasonable workout for John, but Ronon barely looked winded. They parted with a plan to meet in another half hour for breakfast. He didn’t take them back to the diner, but to a chain restaurant instead. Teyla had a fruit and cottage cheese plate, and Ronon ordered a crab and avocado omelette, and when it arrived, asked which part was crab, and which was avocado, but John thought he knew full well. John again noticed how easy it was to be with them, and he let them lead him into stories about his job. They knew Cadman and Lorne, who had gone from the LVPD to Atlantis, and Ronon smirked when John told them about Lorne approaching police cadet training like a special op and blowing all the stats. Teyla shared stories about Lorne and Cadman’s first days in Atlantis. Apparently Cadman had wasted no time becoming the Marines’ favorite civilian. Ronon cracked a grin. “They like explosions.”

After, they drove to a swimwear store in a strip mall. Ronon asked John to find him something appropriate, so he picked out a pair of brightly colored board shorts. They were decorated with a green sharks holding surf boards, saying Surf or die. Ronon raised an eyebrow at him, and reached for a red pair. John cracked a grin and put the novelty ones back, and taking the red ones from Ronon to check the size. He traded them out for ones he thought would fit.

That made him wonder if Teyla knew how to buy swimwear, but he glanced over to see her already in conversation with a salesperson. After a few more minutes, she disappeared into the back with a small armload of things to try. “It could be a while,” John said to Ronon. “You want to wait outside?”

They stepped out into the mild heat. Fall was in place and it took the edge off the desert scorch. They leaned against the wall next to the door to the shop, and John looked at the sky. He heard a car pull up to the minimart at the other end of the strip mall, and then Teyla’s voice. “I have made my choice.”

“That was fast.” They followed her back inside.

“The true options were few,” she said, glancing at the string bikini on a torso form above the counter. To John’s surprise, she pulled out a credit card and handed it to the person behind the counter. They finished quickly, and on the way out the door John heard a commotion from the other end of the strip mall. “Shit,” he said. “Robbery.”

Before he could react, Ronon had run past him, taking down a small man and standing over him with his strange gun drawn. Where the hell had he hidden that cannon? John didn’t have cuffs on him, although he did have his badge. When he reached Ronon, he could see a young man, caucasian, a gun on the ground near him, and a plastic grocery bag still clenched in one fist, the shape of money showing through the plastic. He kicked the gun out of the way, and looked over at where Ronon was sighting down the barrel of his own weapon, red light glowing above the grip at the back. John sighed. The paper work on this was going to be hell.

He pulled out his phone and called 911, identified himself as an off-duty officer, and gave the location. When he hung up, he said, “Ronon, put that away.”

“What happens next?” Ronon asked, relaxing slightly, finger moving off the trigger to rest alongside the barrel.

“We wait, and I really don’t want anyone else to see that shooter of yours.”

John heard that electronic whine as Ronon holstered the weapon somewhere at the small of his back, and swiftly picked up the scruffy man by the back of his shirt. “Stop!” John called, realizing that Ronon was cocking his arm, ready to slam the guy into the wall of the building. “We don’t do that. Not for real,” he said. “This isn’t TV. The next things that happen should be boring and calm. Officers arrive, everyone gives statements, and then they cart him off to a holding cell.”

The guy struggled, but Ronon didn’t let go. Another man came out of the store. “You caught him!”

“Yes,” John said. “Police are on their way.”

“This is the second time this bastard has robbed me!”

John really didn’t want to hear it. The more the guy talked, the more John was going to have to put in his statement. “Save it for the officers on their way. Good thing Ronon here was able to tackle and hold him.”

The scruffy man said, “He pulled a gun on me!”

“Did he?” John said. “I’m not sure I saw that.” He glanced at Ronon and Teyla, willing them to understand that they should say as little as possible. The last thing John wanted to do was explain Ronon’s weapon. He didn’t even know what it was.

When the patrol officers arrived, John showed his badge and gave a quick version of the story, true, but minus Ronon’s weapon. They cuffed the man and put him in the back of the car, took their statements, and let them go. Ronon and Teyla were quiet until the car doors were closed.

“Why would you not tell the complete truth, John?”

“Why didn’t you let me slam him up against the wall?”

“Look,” John said, addressing Ronon first. That stuff works fine in TV shows, but there wasn’t any reason to rough him up after you had him under control. Yes,” he said, “I know some cops do it, but it’s not what we’re supposed to do. Once you have the suspect in custody, you let the system work.”

“But why lie? If you lie, can the system work?”

John considered. “I made a judgement call. If they knew about Ronon threatening him, if they wanted to see that weapon, it might not have changed what happens to that guy. Or it could have meant he had leverage to get off, or he could have sued Ronon or had him arrested for aggravated assault, because Ronon is—“ John started to say a private citizen, but he had no idea what Ronon and Teyla’s legal status might be. “He’s not a cop.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Teyla said.

“Tell you what,”John said. “Let’s go swimming, and I’ll explain it by the pool.”

—

They had pizza in John’s apartment for dinner, and watched a game. John was surprised at how much Ronon and Teyla followed, although they kept making comparisons from football to hockey, and John figured that was McKay’s influence. They went back to their own apartment at about 11:00, and at 11:45, John’s cell phone rang. He didn’t recognize the number, but he recognized the voice.

“Detective Sheppard?” The voice was familiar.

“Dr. McKay.”

There was a pause, and John wasn’t sure to say after the formal greeting. McKay broke the silence. “Do you have the shield? Have you tried it on?”

John walked over to the box, lifted the green crystal, and thought on at it, placing it over his heart where his badge would be in a police uniform. It began to glow green, and it stuck to the fabric of his T shirt. “Yeah, it’s on now.”

“You’ll have to turn it off for, you know, personal care, so you’d best brush your teeth now, and get all that out of the way.” McKay sounded like he was trying very hard to sound clinical, but John thought he could hear a bit of embarrassment. He could feel his own face warming to hear McKay—Rodney—talk about getting ready for bed. It seemed like a jump in intimacy, which was weird considering how much the life signs detector had told him about McKay’s body.

“I’ll just get in my jammies, then.” His voice sounded huskier than he intended.

“John,” Rodney started, but he didn’t continue.

“Yes?”

“Be careful.”

“Nothing for me to do but sleep”

“Will you try to sleep?”

“In a bit,” John said. He was surprised at his reluctance to end the call. He usually hated the phone. Maybe it was just nerves about the next twenty-four hours, because he could feel something tense in his chest under the green glow of the shield’s gem. He glanced at the clock and saw 11:52. “Look, if I’m going to deal with, you know, personal care issues, I need to get to it.”

“Call me in the morning, or at least send a text.”

“Yes, mom,” John said in his best long-suffering teenager voice. They hung up, and John lay down on the bed, staring up into the dark for a few minutes before turning on the light and picking up the copy of War and Peace he'd nicked from the mountain.

—

Ronon’s text, inviting another run, woke John far too soon. It was a start to a boring Sunday. Hendricks told John to go about his usual routines, so he picked up groceries and beer, limiting the amounts because he wasn’t sure how long he would still be here. He watched the games he’d recorded, read five pages of War and Peace, met Ronon in the apartment’s weight room to work off some nervous energy while Teyla swam. Other than that, Teyla and Ronon stayed out of sight, trying to give the killer an opening, but nothing happened. John stayed up until midnight, tense and pacing, then turned off the shield and checked in with Ronon and Teyla first, then Rodney.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Rodney said.

“I’m not,” John bit out.

“What do you mean?” Rodney sounded genuinely surprised. “Your recent psych profiles showed much less self-destructiveness.”

John bit back something like Screw your psych profiles, and made himself take a breath before answering. “It means some other poor bastard has bought it.”

Rodney’s answer was a soft, “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, John.”

John couldn’t answer that, so he said, “I’ve got work in the morning, and Ronon likes to run at oh-six-hundred.”

Rodney didn’t let him go. “John, when you find the… the body.” He didn’t finish the sentence. “Look, I’ll be sending Dr. Keller down first thing. I’ll come with her.”

“I’m sure you’re busy,” John said.

“I want to help. I’ll bring the life signs detectors, the little and the big one. Maybe we can use those, too.”

“Okay,” John said. The reminder of the life signs detector made him think again of the patterns of Rodney’s scars, the round curves from his back to his thighs. Part of him looked forward to having Rodney nearby again. Part of him didn’t want to deal with it while he was under such surveillance. He glanced at a framed picture on his wall of an SR-71 Blackbird, the sleek lines of the spy plane against the clouds, put there by McKay’s people, and probably containing a camera and a microphone. “I’ll let you know when we find something.”

“John,” Rodney said again, “I am sorry.”

“Yeah,” John said. “Me, too.” He ended the call and then phoned the station, letting them know that nothing had happened, to be on the lookout for a victim, and to stand down the officers who were probably nearby. Then he tried to sleep.

—

He picked up Teyla and Ronon Monday morning, and went to the office. Ronon asked to ride along in a patrol car, and Hendricks allowed it. John made him leave his gun in a locked drawer in John’s desk. Ronon surrendered it too easily, which made John wonder what other weapons he had on him.

Nothing else happened on Monday. John went about his usual routine, Teyla a quiet presence. “Aren’t you bored?”

“I would like to learn more,” she admitted.

“Maybe I can get to you to shadow someone in Robbery. We were lucky on Saturday to be there. That doesn’t usually happen. You could see what happens when we have to do the harder police work.”

“That would be useful,” she said.

John called Hendricks and arranged to introduce her to Saavedra and his partner Whitford. They worked in Robbery, focusing on the Strip.

“Only one duckling today, Sheppard?” Saavedra said as they came down. His hawk nose tilted sideways as he looked up from his desk, then over to his partner. Whitford was round and dark, with a shaved head and a goatee.

John ignored Saavedra’s comment. “I assume Captain Hendricks called you?” he asked, putting on his best formal tones. “Let me introduce Liaison Teyla Emmagan.”

Whitford stood and put out a hand, and Teyla shook it. “Thank you for letting me learn about your work. I hope my presence won’t be too disruptive.”

John said, “I’ll meet back up with you at 5:00, but call me if you need me.”

“What kind of Liaison?” Saavedra asked, finally catching up and rising to shake hands as well.

John let Teyla handle her own cover story, and turned back to his office.

Nothing interesting happened the rest of the day, and Tuesday was similarly quiet. No bodies had been found. They fell into a routine—morning runs with Ronon, breakfast at different places every day, paperwork, and nightly calls with McKay.

The calls surprised him at first. He didn’t really like talking on the phone, but he didn’t have to say much. Rodney would talk about his day in oblique terms, lighting up when John asked a question. Wednesday night John found himself at his kitchen table with a pad and pencil, copying an equation as Rodney recited it. “Got it,” he said.

“So what do you see?” Rodney asked.

“It’s like that stuff you were working on on the plane last week.”

“Yes it is. Where do you think this goes next?”

John considered. “This reduces, doesn’t it?”

“To?”

“What is this, math quiz time?”

“Indulge me.”

John went through the equation, looked at the resulting, reduced values. It took a second before it hit, and then he laughed. He knew he sounded like a donkey when he laughed, but he couldn’t help it. Rodney was flirting with him via math. He could hear an answering chuckle. “Nice,” he said.

“Thought you might find it interesting,” Rodney said.

“Ball’s in my court, huh?” John was already trying to decide how to express his answer.

“Indeed,” Rodney said, and then he hesitated. “When you said, Where do I sign up, were you serious?”

John swallowed, “I thought you knew that.”

“Good, good. I’ll get the paperwork started. It will be great to have you in the city. You’ve already found things we didn’t know existed.” Rodney was skating close to what he could or should say.

“But only after this case,” John said. “We still haven’t found a body.”

“I know. That comes first. But there’s so much I want to show you.”

Rodney’s voice had dropped, moving dangerously close to open flirting. John cleared his throat and said, “Well, goodnight.”

—

Midway through Wednesday morning, his desk phone rang.

“My office,” Hendricks said, and hung up.

John took the stairs by twos, and found Hendricks’s door open, Teyla waiting outside. “What is it?”

“It seems,” she started, and then interrupted herself as Whitford walked up, looking a bit nervous.

“What’s going on?” John asked.

“Well, the EMTs say it’s just strained,” Whitford said. “Why didn’t you warn us she knew Jujitsu?”

John looked at Teyla. “What did he do?”

“He just goosed her a little,” Whitford said.

Teyla said, “There was no waterfowl involved. He gripped my buttocks in such a way that his fingers moved deep between my legs.”

“And you…?”

“Removed his hand.”

“Which involved pinning him to his desk,” Whitford said.

John’s answer was interrupted by Hendricks calling, “Come in!” They turned and trooped into his office. “Where’s Saavedra?”

“With the EMTs,” Whitford said.

“Seriously?” Hendricks said. “Don’t you think that’s a little dramatic?” Before Whitford could answer, the captain turned to Teyla. “What happened?”

Teyla stepped forward, smooth and unruffled. John admired her control. “I have learned a great deal from your detectives about how your police force functions. However, I have also learned that they consider themselves above other people, not in service to them, and that particularly seemed to apply to me. Your Det. Saavedra thought it appropriate to call me words related to sweet foods. I expressed today that I would prefer to be spoken to the way I speak to them, with their title and name.”

“And what’s wrong with you that you can’t take a joke?” Hendricks said.

Teyla raised her eyebrows and stepped forward, her hands on Hendricks’s desk. “I have been in negotiations between three warring groups and left with trade agreements and peace. I have never been treated with this level of disrespect.”

Hendricks twisted up his mouth like he was about to question her.

John had heard some of the stories, and said, “She’s not called Liaison for no reason.”

Teyla glanced at him with an eyebrow raised. John read it as, Don’t fight my battles. “Captain Hendricks, do you consider physical assault a joke?” she asked, her voice and posture entirely calm. She leaned in a bit, taking territory over the desk and cocked her head slightly, waiting for an answer.

Hendricks eyebrows came in. “I don’t. That’s why you’re here. You assaulted one of my officers.”

“Ah,” she said, straightening. “I simply removed his hand from somewhere it should not have been.”

“What, he just patted you.”

“No, Captain, he did not just pat me. If I may be so indelicate, he grabbed between my buttocks and tried to insert a finger, even through cloth. I could be more specific, if you’d like. Or provide a demonstration on you, if that would make matters more clear.”

Hendricks’s face went pale. “I see,” he said.

“So I ask again,” Teyla leaned further forward, her fingers splayed on the edge of the desk, “would you consider that a joke?”

“No.” Hendricks swallowed. John had never seen him so put off his game.

Teyla straightened. “Then I trust you will handle this according to the rules and processes I’ve been reading about.” She glanced at John. “I will meet you in your office,” she said, and turned, walking out of the room like a queen.

Hendricks blinked, and shook his head, visibly turning back into the tough, unflappable captain. “Whitford, send Saavedra up if he’s done whining. You’ll work with Liaison Emmagan the rest of the week, if she’s willing. Otherwise I’ll reassign you for the duration of Saavedra’s suspension.”

Whitford said only, “Yes, sir,” and he didn’t move until Hendricks dismissed him.

“Sheppard, who is she really?” Hendricks asked when they were alone.

“I’m pretty sure that’s classified,” John said.

“And Dex? Did you hear about his stunt yesterday, running down that perp? It’s like Cadman and Lorne all over again, but like they’re from another planet, the things they don’t know.”

John carefully schooled his face.

—

Thursday afternoon they got the call. A body was found in an RV that had been parked in a casino lot. John called down to Whitford’s desk to get Teyla, but he didn’t answer. On his way out he asked dispatch to contact the patrol car Ronon was in and ask them to meet him at the scene, and for Whitford to bring Teyla.

He got to the scene about the same time the evidence van did, and Tameka stepped out of the passenger side. “They said it’s pretty gross. She’s been in there for a few days.”

John said, “We’ll need good photos.”

p?"Don't I always?"

"Yeah, just…" John thought about Jeannie's pattern, and he wanted photos that would help her. “Do you have a compass?”

“Girl Scout leader,” Tameka said, walking around to open the back of the van. “Of course I have a compass. You want to know how the body is oriented?” She started pulling out her gear.

“Just a thought. Also, I want to measure the distance between the center of the hands and feet. I’ll show you when we get in.”

“Okay, but first,” she said, handing John a face mask, “you’re going to want this.”

—

Jack looked up as McKay entered his office.

“You wanted to see me, sir?”

“I heard you poked HR to get paperwork started for Detective Sheppard. He said yes?” McKay looked smug. “How’d you do it?”

“It was his idea, like you said. I took him up in a gateship and let him fly it, and he asked where he could sign up.”

“He took the stick?”

“Like a natural. Teyla primed him by asking to see the planet.”

“And you didn’t tell her to ask for that?”

“Maybe.

Jack grunted, and let it go. McKay had skills in manipulating people, and if it worked in Jack’s favor, he wasn’t going to call him on it any further. “I hear from your sister that there’s probably alien technology involved in these murders.”

“All the more reason to have her and the SGC involved,” McKay said.

“You know you have to go back to Atlantis soon. It could take weeks to solve this case.”

“I don’t want to go back without him,” McKay said. “And there’s work I can do here. Carter and I have come up with a way to combine what she figured out about the large life signs detector with the little one. We’ll be able to identify people with Goa’uld parasites, whether they have Naquadah in their blood or not. You see…” he started

Jack raised a finger to cut off the technical discussion. He knew they would do it if McKay said they could. He was stuck on the first thing.

“Why won’t you leave without him?”

McKay blushed, and Jack stopped himself from sitting back in surprise. He didn’t want to know about the personal lives of the SGC unless it affected performance or security. McKay was a special case, though, and Jack glanced at his hand. The wide gold band was gone. Perhaps McKay had finally laid Dr. Elmo Cerutti to rest. Jack dropped that line of thinking and said, “If this involves alien tech, why don’t we just take over the case.”

“Because the lead detective has been a victim in each case. Sheppard’s the best bait they have, and he won’t leave if some other person gets killed because he’s gone.” McKay’s blush hadn’t left his cheeks, and Jack could hear pride and frustration in McKay’s voice. “Maybe this John Sheppard isn’t as far from that Colonel John Sheppard as we first thought.”

Jack thought there was a bit more to it, but he only said, “Do what you think best, but we do have a bit of clock on the Daedelus for getting you back. We also worry about having Teyla gone from her people for too long.”

“Understood.”

—

Jeannie was working at a laptop in the records room. John cleared his throat and knocked at the side of the door to get her attention. She held up a hand. “Let me finish this thought.” She said, and kept typing. She looked up after a couple of minutes, blinking. “I was catching up on some of the stuff I’m supposed to be doing at the Mountain.”

“We have more data on the case,” John said. He set down a folder of printed photographs. “We measured the hand and foot positions before moving the body. It matches up. I also checked the position relative to North. I don’t know if that’s something we can get from the previous murders.”

“Good thinking,” Jeannie said, reaching for the folder.

John put a hand on it. “This is the worst one,” he said. “The body baked in a closed RV for several days.” Jeannie nodded and opened the folder slowly, the closed it again, looking away. John reached for it and took out the paper with the measurements and one with a sketch, showing the direction of North.

“Thanks,” she said. “I guess you didn’t call Rodney about this.”

“No. I don’t know what your people could learn from a body this far gone.”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll start looking at the data, and see where it fits with everything else.”

John called Rodney on his way up to his office, but it went to voicemail. “We found the body today. No need to send help.” He paused and added, “Talk to you later.”

—

Dinner was Chinese take out in Ronon and Teyla’s apartment. They had settled in easily, although John could tell that one of them was sleeping on the couch. “What did you think of the crime scene?” he asked.

“Boring,” Ronon said.

“TV shows gloss over a lot of the hard work,” he turned to Teyla. “How’s it been with just Whitford?”

She chewed a bite, considering. “He is very polite now.”

“I bet,” John said. “I might have let him know that I’ve seen you wipe the floor with trained Marines.”

“Of course,” she said serenely.

“What about you?” John asked Ronon. “What do you think of the patrol job?”

“They’re not very good at it,” he said. “What can you see from inside a car?”

“I forgot to ask. Hendricks said something about a stunt you pulled?”

“Yeah.” Ronon shrugged. “We got called to a scene of a robbery in progress. The guy ran. They weren’t going to chase him, so I did.”

John hadn’t heard about it. “Did you catch him?”

Ronon raised an eyebrow with an amused look. “Yeah,” he said, like the answer should have been obvious.

“You didn’t hurt him, did you?”

“No.”

“Wonder how that looked in a report.” He stood up to go. “Tomorrow’s Friday.”

“I think that after tomorrow I would prefer to remain with you,” Teyla said, “or work with another department.”

“Yeah, me too,” rumbled Ronon.

“Well, maybe we’ll be able to catch this guy on Sunday.”

—

When Rodney called, John was ready with an equation, but Rodney wanted to talk about the case and the life signs detector. “I’m coming out this weekend. I’ll be there tomorrow night. I want you to have the little detector you found in the gateship.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll get a hotel room, but I’ll stay up with the surveillance crew.”

“Okay.”

“That all you can say?”

“What do you want me to say? I hope this bastard comes after me on Sunday.”

“I understand.”

There was an awkward silence, so John changed the subject. “Got an equation for you.”

“Try me.”

Flirting with math. John could handle that.

—

Friday started like every other day that week, with a run, breakfast, and the drive to the police headquarters. Ronon peeled off to meet the patrol officer, and Teyla stopped in the bullpen at Saavedra and Whitford’s desks. They’d made space for her at a nearby desk, with a computer and a file box, so John left her to it, and went up to his office. He looked at the Johnny Cash poster for a long moment, took it down and rolled it up. With any luck, this would be his last formal day on the job.

He booted his own computer and logged in, dealing with the trivia and paperwork. On Monday it had seemed pointless, but he’d spent the week thinking about records and rights, and what he would need to set up a new policing function in an alien city.

The day was quiet, and when he picked up Teyla from the robbery desk, Whitford said, “Good luck this weekend, Sheppard.”

“Thanks.”

—

Saturday went pretty much the same as the previous week, but at least John was in the routine of running with Ronon and could almost keep up. At breakfast Teyla announced that she wanted to see a performance. “Singing? Magic? Acrobats?” John asked. Blue Man Group was right out, because of all the cultural references. Heck, he didn’t even get half of it.

“Magic?” Ronon asked.

“Illusion,” John corrected.

Teyla said. “I’m fond of singing, but they all sound interesting.”

“How about a variety show? It’ll have everything,” John said. “There’s one at Planet Hollywood.”

“That sounds wonderful,” Teyla said. “Is there appropriate clothing we should wear?”

John glanced up across his French toast. Her face was composed. “If you want to go shopping, just ask.”

She laughed at that. “Could we please go shopping? I’d like to go to a mall.”

John would rather have his teeth pulled, but he said, “Sure.” He also wondered if she’d know how to find the kinds of clothes that would be appropriate.

“I typically go with Vala Mal Doran and Samantha Carter,” she said, much to John’s relief. She turned out to be a fairly direct shopper, too, but John and Ronon still made her go to the knife store. He’d intended it as a slight revenge, but she surprised John, although it shouldn’t have been a surprise, picking out several knives.

McKay called as they finished lunch.

“Where are you? You’re not at your apartment.”

“I’m at the mall with Teyla and Ronon. It’s okay. It’s Saturday.”

“True. Also, I doubt he’d strike in a crowd. Look,” Rodney said, and suddenly he sounded less sure and competent, “can I maybe take you out to dinner tonight?”

John breathed in, his chest warming at Rodney’s shy tone and the invitation, both, but before he automatically said yes, he remembered that he couldn’t. “We have tickets for a show tonight. Teyla asked. Want me to see if I can get another ticket?”

“I… No. Thank you,” Rodney said. “It’s not really my kind of thing.”

“Classical concerts all the way, huh?” John said, teasing a bit.

“Yes, well, do be sure to be home by midnight.”

“We’re heading back to the apartment,” John said. “Teyla wants to go swimming.”

“I don’t do well in the sun.”

“There are umbrellas. You can even bring your laptop.”

He heard a soft huff of laughter. “Next time. I’m going to meet up with Jeannie this afternoon, and then the surveillance team. Have fun at the show. Please—”

“I’ll call you when we get in,” John said, knowing that Rodney was going to say next.

“Do that. Shield working?”

“Seems to.”

---

John decided to give them the full Las Vegas Strip experience, down to a hired limo. Teyla had seemed a bit more relaxed as the week went on, but the crowds and the lights seemed to put Ronon on edge. They all refused the alcoholic drinks included in the ticket price, but they did accept the bottomless glasses of soft drinks. Ronon followed John’s lead and had a ginger ale and Teyla stuck to water.

Ronon paid little attention to the acrobats or musicians. Only the illusionists caught his attention when Teyla pointed out that they had no transporter technology. He leaned over after the Vanishing Elephant. “It’s still in there, behind a fake curtain,” Ronon said. “Proportions of the box are wrong. Must be a product of the size of the stage that it looks right. Huh.”

John looked at the large box again, and realized that Ronon was probably right, but a combination of proportioning and even the slant of the sides of the box helped with the illusion that it was smaller than it was. Dex had good eyes.

The car dropped them back at Ronon and Teyla’s apartment, and John walked from there. It was 11:52, and he hadn’t grabbed the shield because he was sure they’d be back in time. John stepped into his apartment, and saw a box on the table with a note from Rodney on the top. “Turn this on and keep it on. —MRM”

John found the small life signs detector from the gateship in the box, and he turned it on. There were several dots, but far enough away that they were probably his neighbors. He left the device on the table and shrugged off his jacket, heading to his bedroom to hang it up and get ready for bed before he put on the shield.

Everything was taken care of by 11:59. It was only after the gem began to glow that John realized how keyed up he’d been coming up to the official start of Sunday. John’s phone rang just as he reached for it to call Rodney. “Nice present,” he said instead of a greeting.

“Is it on?”

“Yes, dear,” John said, trying to do his best 1950’s long-suffering dad voice, but something in the left-over adrenaline made it come out differently. He heard Rodney’s sharp intake of breath, and couldn’t figure why.

“Did you have fun tonight?”

“Teyla liked it. Ronon didn’t like the crowds, and he saw through the magician’s stuff.” John sat at the table and looked at the life signs detector. One of his neighbors was moving around. The other hadn’t moved at all. Probably on the couch, watching TV.

“It’s hard to get anything past Ronon,” Rodney said.

There was a moment of quiet, and then John said, “Didn’t have time to come up with an equation today.”

“That’s okay. It’s late, and I’m going to be up with the surveillance team all night.”

“You don’t have to do that,” John said.

“Yeah,” Rodney said. “I do. I was a wreck last weekend.”

“I’ve slept in war zones,” John said. “This is quieter.” He was deflecting, and he knew it. He hadn’t slept well last week, and probably wouldn’t sleep much tonight. “The waiting part isn’t too different.” He changed the subject. “Anything new with Jeannie?”

“No. We were mostly working on an LSD that anyone can use.”

“LSD? Acid?” John asked before he thought about the utter absurdity of Rodney McKay and hallucinogens. Then he thought about all the serious scientists who had used them.

“What?” Rodney said, then, “No. Different acronym, like the thing I left for you.”

“Oh, right. Life signs detector.” John felt slightly stupid, but decided to go for it. “That’s good, because as an officer of the law, I’d be required to bring you in for the other thing.”

“That so?” Rodney said, speculation and warmth in his voice.

Crap. They didn’t need math to flirt, but then John was suddenly aware of the cameras and microphones hidden in his apartment. “I should probably try to sleep.” He glanced at the detector, the LSD. That neighbor still hadn’t moved.

“All right,” Rodney said. “Let me know if something happens.”

He glanced at the picture of the Blackbird placed by Rodney’s people. “You’ll know before I do. Goodnight.”

John lay on the bed reading War and Peace again, eventually turning off the light and dozing. He must have fallen asleep, because he woke up needing to use the bathroom. All those refills had caught up with him. He got up, and checked the life signs detector. He could see blips for his neighbors, unmoving. As he walked by the picture with its undoubted microphones and cameras he said, “Need to take a leak. Turning off the shield.”

John’s cell phone started ringing the moment he started to relieve himself. It was probably Rodney, but he could let him wait while nature took its course. It went to voicemail as John bent over to wash his hands, smiling sleepily to himself at the image of Rodney calling, probably to tell John to put the shield back on right now. As he dried his hands he saw a flash in the mirror behind him, coming from his room, from the direction of his bed. John started to turn, reaching for the shield, but before his fingers touched it, he felt something thump against his back, and a weight like something sticking to his shirt. There was a familiar sensation, and then he could not move, he could not see, and after a moment, he could not think.

—

He came to in a symphony of pain, a cacophony in his ears, and then everything went white. He’d been here once before. He could follow that light, and maybe stay there this time, but Rodney’s voice sounded urgent in his ears. “John! John! Don’t you dare die on me again!” and then a woman’s voice firmly telling Rodney to get out of the way and let her work.

—

Jack was alerted when Mitchell beamed back down from the Daedelus. Dr. Frasier always had him beamed directly to her from missions, or wherever he’d been sent in emergencies. The Goa’uld healing device took some effort to use, and she wanted him under observation, with fluids, after the marathon he’d just pulled with Sheppard. From the brief report from Dr. Keller, Sheppard had been a complete mess, seconds from death from a head wound, a gun shot, and stabbing. He was nearly strangled, too. Jack shook his head. Keller said they saw what looked like a transport rings, so whoever was doing this had Goa’uld technology. It was something they’d have to deal with.

They’d beamed Sheppard and Mitchell to the Daedelus about eight hours ago. Jack had decided to look at the SGC security tapes, because he wanted to see how Mitchell reacted. The moment Mitchell had the word, he sprinted to the infirmary to get the healing device, the SF assigned to alert him barely keeping up. The look on Mitchell’s face as they radioed to beam him out reminded Jack of the man Mitchell had been before that goddamned snake.

After the breakfast with Sheppard, Jack had thought about the choices they’d made with Mitchell. They couldn’t let him go. His ability with Goa’uld technology was too important, but he was treated like a tool, taken out of the box only when needed, and not even cleaned and oiled before putting it back. The set of Mitchell’s features before beam-out, grim with a streak of pride, looked like a pilot about to take off, knowing that the mission could be suicide. The streak of pride there convinced Jack that it wasn’t too late to fix what he’d let happen.

He scooped up the folder on his desk and left his office. “I’ll be in the infirmary,” he said. He made his way there in no particular hurry, nodding to the airmen and scientists scurrying to get out of his way. He hesitated in the infirmary, not sure where Mitchell was until Dr. Frasier gestured toward a curtained-off bed. Her report was in the folder Jack held, and she knew why he was here.

Mitchell looked up when Jack cleared his throat at the edge of the curtain. “How you feeling?”

“Fine, sir. Just a little tired.” The deep circles under Mitchell’s eyes told of understatement.

“Thank you,” Jack said.

Mitchell blinked. “Sir?”

“I don’t think anyone ever thanks you.” Mitchell looked like he was biting back an answer. Jack said what he figured Mitchell was thinking. “I don’t think anyone ever talks to you much.”

Mitchell looked away. “Can I help you with something, sir?”

Jack kept his tone light, as if he were talking about the weather. “New orders, Captain Mitchell. Secure wing of Walter Reed for therapy and rehab, four-month minimum. Secure wing because the therapists have to have clearance, but you’ll be able to go off base. You’ll also be available to us for emergencies like today. Then we’ll have you back here. Off-base housing, if you want. Gate team reinstatement if you pass your quals. Rehab will include PT and weapons re-certification. Vacation’s over.”

Jack dropped an envelope out of the folder on Mitchell’s lap, and walked out before he could see the look on his face. He could hear Mitchell say, “Captain?” behind him. The tone of wonder and relief made Jack feel guilty enough for not having thought about what he’d let happen under his own nose.

Damn that Sheppard, Jack thought, and wondered if being a cop had given him that sense of justice, or if that was what had made him be a cop.

—

John felt the hum, the slight vibration that he associated with aircraft carriers. And space ships. There was also a tapping noise, resolving itself into the sound of fingers on keyboards.

John opened his eyes and looked toward the noise. Rodney and his sister were working at a pair of laptops at a table that didn’t look like it belonged in the room. The room was familiar from, well, he decided to think of it as the last time he died. An IV was taped down to his arm, blood moving into his veins. John remembered that from last time, too. He looked back at Rodney and Jeannie, realizing that Rodney was wearing a hoodie, not his usual suit. John stared for a moment, trying to process a Rodney McKay so dressed down, so casual.

So he tried to say, but his voice wouldn’t work. He cleared his throat to try again, and at that slight noise Rodney and his sister looked up in unison, nearly the same expression on their faces. But it was only nearly the same. Jeannie McKay looked happy, but Rodney’s expression looked like bone-deep relief. “John!”

“So, not dead yet, huh?” John managed to say. With the fog in his brain, it was pretty much all he could put together.

“No,” Rodney said, getting up from the computer. “No thanks to you. Again.”

“Wha’ happened?” His voice still wouldn’t work quite right.

Rodney stood by the bed, gripping the rail, knuckles white. His voice, however, was controlled. “You took off the shield, and someone tried to kill you, but only four ways. No poison, and no organ disruption. We got there in time.”

“You get him?” That was what mattered.

“No. Ronon broke through the door and he disappeared. Looked like a transport rings, which is Goa’uld technology. Sorry to say that part of you bed is gone. Jeannie and I pulled a lot of data off the LSD. We’re trying to figure it out—the little one you found can’t distinguish life inside life.”

“We in space?” John asked.

Rodney nodded, swallowing. “We beamed you up, and Mitchell at the same time. He’s already gone. He worked on you for hours.” Rodney looked away. “I… He…”

John could see only Rodney’s profile, the side of his mouth that usually slanted up pressed into a thin, flat line. John reached up, his arm weighing far more than it should, and wrapped his hand around Rodney’s. He found his voice. “It’s okay. I’m okay. Not getting out of that second date.”

Rodney blinked several times. “When you’re better,” he said, still looking away.

Then John’s brain caught up, a bit of fog blowing away. The reason Rodney’s husband was dead was the same reason John was still alive—Mitchell getting that snake in his head. He squeezed Rodney’s hand, then pulled away, “I’m sorry.”

Before his hand dropped to the bed, Rodney had let go of the bed rail and grabbed for it. His fingers wrapped awkwardly around John’s for a moment, and then Rodney shifted to take John’s hand in both of his. John looked at their hands, because he couldn’t look at Rodney. The grey cuff of Rodney’s sweatshirt was frayed, showing its age, and John wondered what he was like, really like, when he was alone with someone, out of the suit and away from the people who deferred to him just walking down a corridor. Rodney reached out and ran his fingers down the side of John’s face, the touch hesitant. John stilled his instinct to flinch away, and let himself move his head toward Rodney’s hand until it settled, warm on the side of his face. “Un proprio casino,” Rodney said, softly.

“What?”

Rodney smoothed his hand over John’s hair. “Elmo used to say it,” he said, and paused. His mouth twitched slightly, but he went on. “It basically means a real fuck up. Which this was. You almost died. Again.”

“Yeah, you said that,” John said, closing his eyes so he wouldn’t have to look at Rodney. “I’ll try not to make a habit of it.”

“Somehow I doubt that,” Rodney said, his voice soft.

They were quiet for a long moment, and John finally opened his eyes. Rodney was looking at him, his blue irises set in a lacework of red veins over circles darkening like bruises, his face unshaven. He looked like hell. “How long was I out?” John asked.

“About forty hours.”

“The case?” John asked. There were things that needed to be done, and he was stuck in this bed, feeling like he’d been hit by a truck. A truck that poured cement into his skull. “Someone needs to get my statement.”

“We’re not ready to move you. Mitchell said the head wound was very hard to heal. You may not be quite all there yet. When you’re better, Captain Hendricks can do the honors. He only signed the non-disclosure that lets him know that there are things he doesn’t know, and he can’t discuss even that.”

“So what do I tell him?”

“Anything that doesn’t break your non-disclosure,” Rodney said. “What can you can tell us?”

“Yeah,” John said. “The last thing I remember is something stuck to my back. It was Ancient tech. I think maybe familiar, but everything just stopped. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t move. Nothing. It didn’t hurt.”

“Ancient technology? Something that creates local suspended animation… Jeannie,” Rodney said, turning away, “do we have anything like that?”

“Not that I know of,” Jeannie said, not even pretending she hadn’t been listening. “I can ask Dr. Lee. He’s knows the inventory better than most.”

Hearing Dr. Lee’s name nudged a memory in John. “Some kind of food storage device,” he said.

Rodney turned back. “That’s just gruesome, and besides, your killer doesn’t eat.”

“No, I spent an hour down in his lab—Dr. Lee’s—trying out Ancient things. I thought one was something for storing fresh food. You stick it on the side of the box.”

Rodney looked at him, eyes widening. “Or a person.”

The image hit John. “And you can do whatever, shoot, stab, and they won’t bleed out because…”

“Local stasis field.” Rodney looked at his sister. “Why didn’t we think of that?”

“Because we’ve only heard of such fields affecting a localized area, not a single body," Jeannie said, her voice trailing off. She was looking up toward the ceiling, eyes moving rapidly. John could tell she was thinking, making connections.

Rodney said, “So your killer is an ATA with access to both Ancient and Goa’uld technology. But where are they beaming from? And why Sundays?”

“If you’re watching from space,” Jeannie said slowly, still looking up, “there’s a periodic change in activity types and levels on Sunday, especially in Christian countries. The question is if some other culture has had a Six Ways from Friday or Six Ways from Saturday killer, although I don’t suppose they’d call them that, since they wouldn’t have the same idiomatic references. But there would be a periodic drastic change in the kind of activity in populated areas on religious observance days, making it potentially easier to identify targets. Or not get caught.”

“But why kill the detectives?”

Jeannie started to answer, seemed to think better of it, and said, “No clue.”

Rodney looked back at John. “Anything else?”

“Just the flash. Never saw an actual person. Didn’t you get it on camera?”

“There’s a cloaked person appearing in your bedroom, and then they follow you into the bathroom. That’s the one place we didn’t put cameras. The timing’s too perfect,” Rodney said. “They had to know something.”

“Inside?” John said.

Jeannie looked down from the ceiling. “But why?”

“No clue,” John said.

Rodney said, “Now we know the means, though. If a victim held by that stasis thing, the attacker could take their time with the hits, then let the stasis go, and the bleeding all starts at the same time. Death would be quick.” He looked at John. “They didn’t get to the poison or organ disruption with you,” Rodney said. “I’m not sure Mitchell could have pulled you back from that.”

“Yeah,” John said. “Nice job on the save.”

“But we still don’t know who it was.”

“I need to go back,” John said.

“Not yet. We’ll figure it out,” Rodney said, reaching to smooth John’s hair again. “We know how it was done. We don’t know who or why.”

“Anyone else?” John asked. “I’m not dead, so did he…?”

“No. We asked Hendricks,” Jeannie said. “They haven’t found anyone else.”

“Did you tell him?”

Rodney’s mouth pulled into a momentary line before he said, “We told him there is no way they can solve this with the resources they have.”

“Tell him, please. It’ll drive him crazy otherwise.”

“John,” Rodney said, carding his fingers through John’s hair, “sometimes people go crazy when they learn the truth. I let him think it was some kind of black ops thing.”

“Okay,” John said, but he didn’t like it. And Hendricks was too much a cop to be satisfied with that, but he wouldn’t push it further. Then something Rodney said floated back into his mind. “Did you say my bed was missing?”

Rodney’s lips quirked. “Transport rings transport everything. First they landed on part of the bed and then took some with them when they left.”

“Didn’t see anything like that at the other scenes.”

“Probably landed nearby and walked in,” Rodney said. “We made it harder to get to you. If whoever it is has inside information? Probably moved as soon as they heard you say that you were taking off the shield.”

“So you’re looking for a mole.”

Rodney nodded, looking grim, but he said, “Do you need anything?”

John shook his head. He was tired, but he wanted to hear Rodney’s voice. He raised his arm enough to brush his knuckles over Rodney’s, who still gripped the bed rail, but not so hard. “Tell me about Atlantis.”

He fell asleep to the sound of Rodney's voice, and dreamed of spires and the sea.

—

The next time John woke up, the IV was no longer full of red blood, just clear solution, and only Jeannie was there, face lit by the screen of the laptop. He had a headache, but he felt more like himself. “Hey,” he said.

“Oh!” She looked up, then came over to stand beside him. “You need anything? Water?”

His mouth was dry. “Water’d be good.”

She handed him a glass with a straw, then moved a rolling table closer to him.

“Where’s Rodney?”

“Sleeping. He passed out at his keyboard, so I sent him to bed. He hasn’t slept much.” John handed her the water, and she set it down. Looking at the table, she said, “He helped,” she said.

“Who?”

“Rodney. I don’t know how he managed it. We brought up the big life signs detector, and he touched it, and you, and helped Cameron Mitchell heal you. He said it was easier to use now.”

It hit John square in the chest, what it must have taken for Rodney to do that. It was hard enough, John well knew, to be able to communicate through the overwhelming glut of information, the knowledge of every cell and tissue in John’s body. And to do that with Mitchell? But if the tables were turned, John would have at least tried, and Rodney, with those lightening sparks that John had seen in his brain, could probably do anything he put his mind to. John tried to shake off the thought, but it hurt his head.

“Are you okay?” Jeannie asked.

“Can you get a nurse or a corpsman to help me up?” he said. He needed to move, if not run away.

“Sure,” Jeannie said. She went to the door, and large airman in scrubs came in. They got John out of the bed, and his first few steps felt like it wasn’t even his own body he was trying to control. Eventually they were able to get him to the head, and Jeannie had to be shooed out because it hadn’t occurred to her there was a problem in her staying to help. By the time John got back to the bed, she was in front of her computer again.

“What are you working on?”

“Still trying to find patterns,” she said, without looking up. “Sometimes other things. Looking now to see who or what might have access to transport technology and want to commit ritual murder.”

“Did you ever figure out anything more about the way the hands and feet were placed?”

“The irregular polygons with the identical total perimeters?”

“Yeah, those.”

“Hadn’t looked at them too hard.”

“Can you make a table with all the lengths, starting from the vertex closest to North, and then the interior and exterior angles?”

“I did already. Think you might find a new pattern?”

“Maybe? Need something to do, anyway,” John said. His head felt a lot better, but the rest of him, not so much.

“How about a laptop?” Jeannie asked. “I can put all the files on it.”

“Sounds good.”

The big airman came in again with a tray of food as Jeannie ran off to find another computer. “Thanks,” John said. “Any chance I’ll get to look out a window while I’m here?” That one taste of space in the gateship had made him hungry for more.

“Sure. We need to start you rehabbing before we send you back. Walk will do you good.”

Send him back? I don’t want to go back. The thought came to John so hard that he almost spoke it aloud. Instead he said, “Thanks.”

He was half way through his soup and sandwich when she came back. “I loaded this with all the info from the crime scenes, tabulated out. I also made tracings of all the polygons to scale with North marked out—did that a few days ago. I’ve overlaid them, inverted them, played with them, but nothing seems to stand out.”

“Position relative to the stars at the time of death?” John asked.

Jeannie stared at him with her mouth open for a full three seconds. “Huh.” She turned back to the table with her computer, still holding the one she’d brought for John, sat down, and tried to put the new laptop on the open keyboard of her own. “Oh, right.” She gave John the computer, barely looking at where she was going, and sat down.

John opened the computer and found the files. He spent an hour looking through the tabulated data and the pictures, but he couldn’t see anything, either. He was also not as okay as he’d thought, because after half an hour his head started to hurt worse. He closed the laptop and put it aside.

He hadn’t planned to go to sleep again, but he woke up to the sound of Ronon’s voice, rumbling softly. “You know it has to be there.”

“But it can’t be,” Rodney answered, his voice low as if trying not to wake John. John blinked his eyes open and looked over at the computer table. Jeannie wasn’t there, but Rodney was, wearing the hoodie again, but looking less ragged overall. Ronon sat in Jeannie’s chair and pointed at Rodney’s screen. “We know what’s there,” Rodney said. “It’s a satellite, one of the Russian’s. Been there for decades. It’s not big enough to hide a person.”

“That box on stage wasn’t big enough to hide an elephant, either.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Sheppard took us out to an entertainment. Guy made an elephant disappear, but it was just an illusion.”

“Of course it was an illusion! What does that…” Rodney trailed off. “We need to get a visual on that satellite.”

“Take me with you,” John said.

Rodney looked up. “You’re awake. Good. How do you feel?”

“Like I can get up on my own,” John said, and started to swing his legs over the side of the bed. “Also like I want pants.”

Rodney rushed around the table to help John out of bed. “You sure you should be getting up?”

“Yeah,” John said, and he meant it. A restlessness took hold of him, and he ripped the tape off his IV and pulled it out.

“Stop that!” Rodney grabbed his arm. “You shouldn’t be getting up.”

“I’m good,” he said, jerking his arm away. He looked at Rodney, feeling mulish and itchy both, not backing down. “Pants.”

Rodney stepped back, his hands up in a small gesture of surrender. “We’ll need to get you something to wear. Everything you had on was ruined.”

“I’ll get pants,” Ronon said, smirking at John on the way out. “I’ll see if they have any of those flowered shirts, too.” John had a sinking feeling this was the kind of thing Ronon latched on to, and he was going to be hearing about this on Atlantis.

Atlantis. He couldn’t leave without solving this case, but he was… eager. It was a word he hadn’t thought about himself in a long time, but he was eager to be gone, to see the city Rodney described. He looked at Rodney, but his face was a mask, the professional distance John remembered from their first meeting suddenly clamped down. John wasn’t sure what he’d done to lose the warmth he’d felt when Rodney stroked his head and described a city built all of the materials in that life signs detector, of a whole city like the gateship, so big that they used transporters that even Rodney barely understood. He couldn’t have imagined sense of wonder in Rodney’s voice coming from the man in front of John now. Despite the hoodie, this was Dr. McKay.

John forced himself back into his own professional mode, as much as he could in a hospital gown. It sounded like they had something. “What did you find?” He stepped toward the computers, but he wobbled a bit. Rodney took his arm again, but from a short distance away, and this time John didn’t fight.

“You had the right idea about star positions,” Rodney said, but it wasn’t the tone John expected, distant and superior. It was Rodney’s professional voice, but less distanced.

“I was right?” John asked.

“Except star positions weren’t the relevant variable. It was something else. Everything points to this old Russian satellite, but it didn’t make sense. It still doesn’t completely make sense because we’ve established it has to be someone with ATA who also has access to beaming technology. Or transport rings,” Rodney said. “We have to go see what’s really there.”

“Let me go with you.”

“You can barely stand,” Rodney said with a hint of dismissal, moving to Jeannie’s chair and pointing for John to sit down.

“We have a couple of days, right?” John said, making sure the hospital robe was between him and the chair as he sat. “What day is it?”

“Wednesday.”

“What?” John had trouble absorbing that idea.

“You’ve slept a lot. There was… You lost quite a lot of blood,” Rodney said, his eyes on the screen, holding himself like he was purposefully not turning toward John. He cleared his throat, and then pointed to the laptop. “We have no idea how he’s doing it, but the bodies are arranged so that, together, we were able to map where he might be in space. Between the line segment lengths, the orientation of the vertices to North, and the approximate star field that we could guess, given the uncertainty of times of death, it didn’t relate to specific star fields. It did, however relate to the presence of a Russian satellite on a fairly rapid orbit.”

Rodney pulled up a picture on the screen. The satellite looked more sophisticated than Sputnik, but not much more. “Looks old. Shouldn’t it have, I don’t know, crashed by now?”

“Oh,” Rodney said. “Many of the satellites from the Seventies and Eighties are still up there, but some have had decayed orbits and burned up on re-entry.” He pulled the laptop toward him so that John couldn’t see the screen well, and began typing rapidly. His knee brushed against John’s leg, but he pulled it back as soon as he noticed, and glanced at John with his eyebrows down.

John wondered what had happened while he was asleep for Rodney to go from stroking his head to barely able to touch him. Maybe whatever this thing was between them was just a product of the life signs device. Well, it hadn’t gotten very far, so no harm done. Maybe Rodney still wasn’t ready, but John glanced at Rodney’s hands, and the ring was still gone, the dent of where it had been less obvious.

Ronon walked in. “Couldn’t get pants,” he said, but he was holding something green and folded, too big to be just a pair of trousers.

A flight suit. John swallowed, surprised at his reaction. He hadn’t worn a flight suit since he’d been shot down, cashiered out, and the feelings on being offered were added into all of the confusion from McKay. He belonged here. He didn’t belong here. “Thanks,” he said, pushing himself up. He moved toward the door, planning to make his way to the head to get changed, but walking wasn’t easy. John paused, gripping the door frame to resettle his balanced, wondering if he should ask for help. He glanced back, but Ronon had already taken the empty seat.

“Satellite, huh?” Ronon rumbled.

John moved through the door toward the opposite corridor wall, planning to use it to get himself to the head. Behind him he heard, “We need a closer look. Maybe take a cloaked gateship,” Rodney said. “We could extend the shield around the satellite and bring it into the ship.”

“Need a better pilot than you. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Take Sheppard,” Ronon said. At the sound of his own name, John paused, hating himself for wanting to eavesdrop. He heard Rodney make an equivocal noise. “You showed me his records. I talked to Mitchell.” Then, “Why not?” Ronon said in answer to something John couldn’t hear.

He barely heard Rodney’s response. “I don’t want to lose him.”

Ronon’s snort sounded exasperated. “You don’t even have him, yet.” That got John moving. He really wasn’t meant to hear this conversation. He moved down the hall, bracing himself against the wall, his feet picking up the pace. But Ronon’s voice carried. “Don’t be stupid.”

John pushed open the door to the men’s head, and took a stall. He unfolded the flight suit, and found a pair of military-issue undershorts, slipping them on before shucking the robe and hospital gown. He tried leaning against the wall to put his legs in the flight suit, but he wasn’t ready. He awkwardly sat to pull it on, but when he stood to pull it over his shoulders and zip it up, it felt like a familiar skin. He wouldn’t have been able to say that he felt raw before, but he felt a bit less so now.

He checked the mirror on the way out. He needed to shave, and badly. Or he needed to give into it and grow a beard. He splashed water on his face and finger combed his hair, rearranging the bed head into something like its normal unruliness. Then he realized he was delaying going back, took a breath, and pulled on the door to open it.

Ronon was waiting for him in the hall. “You okay to walk?”

“Yeah,” John said, and he was, bare feet cold on the metal floor. He kept a hand on the wall, just in case, but with every step he felt stronger, more like his legs were his own. Rodney looked up as he walked through the door, his face impassive, but John saw a slight flush start to creep up his neck. Before either of them could say anything, the big orderly John remembered came in, followed by a shorter man in a white doctor coat.

“Mr. Sheppard, I’m Dr. Viziri. Nice to see you awake. We’d like to send you back down to Stargate Medical. You’ll need more PT than we can do here. Given your rate of recovery, though, it should only be about a week.”

“Okay,” John said, surprised, and then wondering why he should be. He glanced over at Rodney.

“I’ll stay here,” Rodney said. “We need to use the Daedelus’s sensors to see what that thing is.”

“Don’t do anything without me,” John said.

“A week,” Rodney said.

John shook his head looked at the doctor. “Two days. We have to move in by Saturday.”

“John, we can take care of this this,” Rodney said with a gesture that took in all of the SGC.

Ronon said, “It’s his collar, McKay.”

Rodney looked confused, but John laughed. Ronon had the 1970s cop slang down cold. “This is not just your murder investigation,” Rodney said, catching up.

“But it’s not not my murder investigation.”

“Can he rehab at Area 51 and practice with the gateship?” Rodney asked the doctor.

John looked over at Viziri. “I have no idea what you are up to, but I’ve worked at the SGC long enough not to bother to ask. I’ll make the arrangements for Area 51 Medical, but if he’s not up to speed in two days, we won’t certify him for a mission.”

“Well,” Rodney said, a bland expression on his face. “I’m sure it will work out.”

“For values of work out meaning that you’ll beam him out of the infirmary if they say no?” Viziri asked.

“Good day, doctor,” Rodney said with the same blank expression.

“Come with me, please, Mr. Sheppard,” Viziri said, turning from the room.

John started to follow, then stopped at the touch of the cool floor on his feet. "Shoes?"

Rodney blinked, then looked down. "Demanding, aren't you?" John thought he almost saw a glint under Rodney's professional exterior.

"Yeah," Ronon said. "First pants, then shoes?"

"I'm sure they can get you something on the ground," Viziri said.

The big orderly handed John a pair of hospital socks with the weird dots on the soles, and he sat on the bed to pull them on. He looked at Rodney and Ronon as he stood back up. “So, I’ll see you in a few?” It felt strange to just leave like this.

Ronon nodded. Rodney said, “Yes,” in a clipped tone, that moment of humor apparently tamped down again.

“You’ll…” John started, then felt like an idiot. “You’ll call?”

Something softened in Rodney’s posture. “Your phone is still in your apartment,” he said. “I’ll have someone bring you your things. Including your shoes.”

It wasn’t an answer, but the small joke felt like the door wasn't completely closed off. John nodded and left, following the doctor. Walking through the corridors felt like walking through the bowels of an aircraft carrier, with airmen instead of sailors. With the jumpsuit on, it was disorienting, like a déjà vu of something he’d never seen. Maybe it was because he was walking in socks. Maybe it was because he wasn’t as much better as he thought.

—

John looked out at the Nevada desert through the front window of the gateship. He was high enough that he could see the shape of Las Vegas on the horizon, but no one would notice him. He had the ship cloaked. Just a few minutes ago he’d managed to land it in the middle of the base, right outside the commander’s building, without anyone noticing until someone walked into the shield. Instead of decloaking, he took off again, leaving only a confused clerk.

His co-pilot and instructor laughed. Miller was a veteran and now a civilian trainer (“…and light switch,” he’d said). He clapped John on the shoulder. “Nice work. I’ve been flying one of these since the original expedition to Atlantis, and I don’t think I could pull that off.”

“Thanks,” John said, feeling a bit like a child next to this silver-haired vet, but he loved flying the gateship, and the maneuver had also let him practice for getting close to the Russian satellite. “Back to the barn? I have to check in with medical this afternoon.”

“Yeah, how’s your rehab going?”

“Okay. Fast.”

Miller laughed again, an easy sound and something he did often. He stretched out his prosthetic leg. “PT stands for pain and torture.”

“Well,” John said, pulling a barrel roll on the way to the hanger to cover his chagrin, “this has got to be the best rehab I’ve ever had.”

“You’re not a bad student,” Miller said, as John placed the ship exactly back where they had taken off. Miller released the shield and the cloak, but let John do the power-down sequence. When it was almost finished, Miller said, “I hear you’re going to Atlantis.”

“Looks that way. Anything I ought to know?”

“I won’t spoil it for you,” Miller said. “I miss it, but since I lost the leg...”

“Combat?”

“Bug. These things called Iratus bugs. We think the Ancients used them to create the Wraith, and one latched on to my leg and wouldn’t come off. It was sucking the life out of me, like the Wraith do, so Col. Sumner—he was the CO—took an axe and chopped it off.”

John looked at Miller. He would have guessed him for 65, but John knew he’d never made it past lieutenant. He’d been so focused on his own rehab and learning the gateships that he hadn’t put the pieces together. He realized he was staring. “I’m thirty two, Sheppard,” Miller said quietly. “But,” he added, his voice going back to normal, “I’ve got just enough ATA to fly one of these things, and the inertial dampeners mean we don’t have to worry about my dicky ticker.” He grinned at John. “I looked up a bunch of old slang, just to mess with people.” He got up, walking with his slight limp.

John followed him down the ramp and into the warehouse. “Good luck with medical,” Miller said, extending a hand.

“I’d buy you a beer, but it’s a dry base.”

“Good thing, that. Given the shit we see, some people would take the edge off a little too regularly. I’ll take the thought. Good luck.”

John watched him limp off. Rodney had only told him of the wonders of Atlantis. Miller’s missing leg reminded John that the story was a bit more complex.

—

Rodney called at 10:03. “Sorry I couldn’t call last night,” he said, his voice tinny and slightly delayed. “We were out of cell range.”

That was probably an understatement. “You still where I saw you last?”

“Yes, but I’ll be with you tomorrow. Everyone says you’re ready to go. Remarkable, considering how you were dead for a moment there.”

John’s breath caught, and he said, “Dead? I thought I was almost dead.”

“You were dead. Just not for long. Maybe a second or two. The healing device can only do so much.”

“Maybe someday you’ll tell me the whole story?”

He heard a breath that might have been a sigh, might have been static. “Maybe.”

John knew the risk he was taking, but he said, “Jeannie told me you worked with Mitchell, used the life signs detector.” John paused. Rodney had pulled away from him before he’d left the Daedelus, and John was too much the detective to not want to figure out why.

Rodney said, “We’re going to take it with us to the satellite. I haven’t been able to test how well it works past a shield, or in vacuum for that matter.”

It took John a second to catch up. Rodney was talking about the life signs detector, and definitely not allowing the conversation to go anywhere near the subject of Mitchell. John let it go. “We can test it before we take off in the gateship.”

“I’ll be down tomorrow with Ronon and Teyla. I’m also bringing a tac team assigned by General O’Neill. Yes,” Rodney said before John could bring it up, “I know your entire service jacket, and you have all the tactical training, but you’ve already died once this week, and I’d like to keep it to only once a year.”

John snorted. “I’ll do my best.”

Something in Rodney’s voice warmed up. “See that you do.” There was a pause, and then, “Your job tomorrow is pilot. Teyla can do any negotiating, if things go that way. Ronon can back her up. I’d like to wait until our telemetry on the satellite is better, but…”

“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” John finished.

“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Rodney repeated, “and we shouldn’t wait. No one else dies.”

John nodded, even though Rodney couldn’t see it. “Yeah. About that,” he started knowing he was opening a minefield. “We should bring Mitchell and that healing device, just in case.” Rodney didn’t say anything. “What if he puts that stasis thing on Teyla?”

“We won’t let him close enough.”

“We don’t even know if it’s a him. Could be a what.”

“Okay,” Rodney said. “Burning satellite time, here, so I need to ring off. See you tomorrow.”

The silence in John’s ear told him the connection had been cut. He wasn’t sure what Rodney meant by Okay—okay bring Mitchell, or okay maybe not human?

—

It was a strictly professional operation. John had a flight suit that fit, and even had his name on an embroidered tag on his chest. McKay led the briefing with the ease of a seasoned commander—another facet John hadn’t expected. “We’ve had experience extending the gateship’s shield around another object. We plan to do that here and use it to board. What we don’t know is how big that object is, which means that plan may need to be adjusted.”

John glanced at the small group of big men in the room, smirking at that last line. The Marines watched Rodney with respect, and the looks on their faces spoke of familiarity, not scorn. They knew how well plans survived contact with the enemy. Mitchell stood against the wall in the back, haircut neat, listening intently. John had expected more of that overeagerness he’d seen in the mountain, but this looked more like the Mitchell he remembered. Something else looked different, and then John realized the uniform was no longer bare, but had Captain’s bars and Mitchell’s name. Before he could think about that, Rodney pulled his attention to the front, where a picture of the satellite was projected.

“There’s cloaking technology, probably, but we think the ship is there. If we can access whatever space craft this person is in,” Rodney said, “we will try to apprehend. They have the ATA gene, Goa’uld and Ancient technology, and given the murders they’ve been committing?”

“Bug-fuck crazy,” rumbled one of the Marines in a New York accent, Chen on his name badge. “All due respect, sir.”

Rodney smiled and looked at John. John shrugged. “Police profilers have used a lot more words to say the same thing, corporal.”

That got a chuckle from the Marines, and a slanted smile from Rodney. “We would prefer a live capture. Strongly prefer. We need to find out who this person is, and how they have this technology. Why they’ve chosen to use it this way, well, that would be nice for Detective Sheppard to know, too. In a way, we’re lucky they’re using it the way they are. This combination is a direct threat to homeworld security, and we need to know if it’s the only one. Alive, people. Consider it a challenge.”

“We brought gear from the mountain,” the sergeant of the group said, “including weapons. Station’s set up in the warehouse by the gateship. EVA suits are ready. This’ll mean a jump from artificial gravity and through microgravity. Tel’taks also have an artificial gravity system, so we’ll be going back and forth pretty rapidly. Don’t anybody lose their lunch.”

The Marines chuckled, and Rodney picked up. “Sheppard is pilot and LSD duty. Mitchell is medic. They stay on the ship. Specialist Dex with me and Liaison Emmagan in reserve.” The Marines looked over, one of them raising his eyebrows at Mitchell, but none of them said anything. “Sergeant Homer, you’ll assign your EVA team to secure whatever it is when we find out. Let’s go,” Rodney said, and they filed out of the conference room and walked the quarter mile to the warehouse that served as the hanger.

John dropped back to walk by Mitchell, putting on his aviator sunglasses and debating things he could say or ask. Finally he said, “Thanks. For the life saving thing. Again.”

Mitchell snorted. “You owe me a good bottle of bourbon for that.” He bounced a bit. “I hope nothing too awful happens here. I just recovered from patching up your sorry ass.” There was an edge in his voice, something very like what John had heard at the SGC, the overeagerness in the trash talk, like he was still not sure if he was welcome.

“And working with McKay,” John said, hoping Mitchell understood what he meant.

“That was… that was all right,” Mitchell said. “Easier, really, in some ways, almost like he, I don’t know, helped.” John looked at him, eyebrow up. “I don’t know,” Mitchell said. “Sort of like working on a car and having someone hold a bolt while you get the wrench on it.”

“Huh,” Sheppard said. He wasn’t sure what to say next, so he said, “Nice to see the sun?”

“Yeah, been getting used to that the last few days. I’m heading to Walter Reed after this. Seems like the Tin Man found a heart.” John looked over. “General O’Neill,” Mitchell explained, but he didn’t say more.

There was a Marine waiting for them next to the jumper with several crates open, and a rolling rack with large orange suits, a table full of helmets. Space suits. John stopped in his tracks and watched as the four Marines with them stepped up in turn to grab tac vests and weapons. There were conventional weapons, but also something John didn’t recognize that looked like a cobra. The Marines took their arms over to the orange suits, putting on the kevlar first, and strapping their sidearms to the outside.

John and Mitchell hung back, but Rodney said, “Detective Sheppard?”

John stepped up first, and was handed a pistol. “M45 MEUSOC,” the Marine said. “You familiar?”

The trigger guard seemed enlarged. John checked the safety, cleared the chamber, ejected the cartridge, and reseated it. “Yeah.” He took the holster and the kevlar vest handed to him, and suited up. Mitchell helped him with the space suit—“EVA,” Mitchell corrected—and John wasn’t sure if he could pilot as well with the gloves. Or shoot a gun for that matter, but that might explain the big trigger guard. A gloved finger could fit into it. “So why the guns?”

“Last resort,” Mitchell said. “Stray bullets can ricochet or put holes in a space ship, but we don’t know what we’re getting into. The Marines have zats. It’s a Goa’uld weapon.

“No gun for you?” John asked.

Mitchell shook his head. “Not yet.” He swallowed, a trace of that nervousness from under the mountain showing again. “They just let me out of the barn, Sheppard.”

“Let’s go,” Rodney said, walking by them. “Leave your helmet on the rack until you need it.”

John walked up the ramp into the ship, where the Marines had already settled. There was space for his helmet on a rack in the back. Before he went up to the flight deck, he made eye contact with each of the Marines, learning their names—Sgt. Homer, Cpl. Chen, Cpl. Samson, and Pvt. DiAngelo. The kevlar added weight, and the joints of the EVA suit made an odd restriction as he sat in the pilot’s seat and reached to interact with the HUD. He could feel his heart beat against the tight vest. A mission. Ronon and Teyla dropped into the seats behind him, and Rodney took the co-pilot’s place, carrying a laptop, EVA suit gloves off, clipped next to a tool belt opposite his side arm. He nodded to John.

“Everyone set back there?” John asked, and got an Ooo-rah from the Marines. “Fasten your seatbelts, folks,” he said, as he lifted the gateship, and took it gently out of the hanger. He glanced over at Rodney in the co-pilot’s seat, and couldn’t help but flash him a grin. He checked the inertial dampeners, engaged the cloak and shield, and then sent the gateship straight up, the sky rapidly changing from solid blue to translucent to black, the stars bright around them. It had taken less than three minutes, and that long only because John had kept the acceleration low until they were high enough that there wasn’t enough atmosphere for any appreciable sonic boom.

Rodney shook his head, and muttered something about hotshot pilots and flyboys as he took out his laptop. The telemetry from Rodney’s computer fed into the HUD, and John started their course toward the old Russian satellite.

The trip was only fifteen minutes, but Rodney had them stop several hundred kilometers away. Only the sensors showed the small blip of old technology. “Ease us in slowly,” Rodney said, his fingers moving rapidly on the keyboard. “I’m going to try to see what else might be there. Cloaks can sometimes be detected by energy signatures, if you know exactly what you’re looking for, which we don’t, or sometimes by blank spots. Sometimes they block high-energy particles like neutrinos.”

“A hole in the background radiation?” John said.

Rodney glanced up and smiled. “Exactly, but that’s if they have a shield, which would not be good…” He trailed off, looking intently at his screen. He looked up suddenly. “Shield! Right…” He set his laptop aside and pulled out the gear bag he’d stuffed under the co-pilot’s seat, rummaging until he pulled out a familiar box. “Here,” he said, handing it to John. “You wear this. Nothing happens to you.”

John opened to box to look at the green gem. “No. You wear it. You’re going in there.”

Rodney made an equivocal noise, reaching for his laptop again. “Take us in closer, 50 kph or so,” he said, absorbed in the screen again. “Take your time. If I don’t tell you stop before 10 kilometers, stop there.”

John left the box in his lap and started the ship moving, glancing at Rodney now and then. “Okay,” Rodney finally said, “no shield, so probably a cloak. Given that they used transport rings in and out of your apartment, that likely means a tel’tak. That’s a—“

“Small Goa’uld transport ship. I went to a couple of Lunch and Learn sessions when I was in the mountain.”

“Okay, then. Anything you can see on the sensors?”

John shook his head. There didn’t look to be anything but the small satellite. “Try the LSD?”

“Hmm. Good range check, but a negative result won’t tell us much.” Rodney opened his second box and John reached out with a gloved hand. The EVA suit attenuated the feelings, but John could sense everyone in the shuttle, and nothing else. Rodney grunted, and closed up the box.

“Maybe we can light it up?” John said.

Rodney looked up sharply. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” John said, “I saw it on Star Trek once. We could vent a little plasma as we go by, and see what happens.”

Rodney’s eyebrows went down. “That,” he started dismissively, and then cut himself off. “That might work. I should have thought of that. We’d have to drop our shields to do it.”

John turned to the HUD, working his way through the systems to see how this might work, the pathways and commands revealing themselves as he looked. “I can do it in about three seconds.”

Ronon spoke up. “Can they fire in that time?”

“Theoretically, yes,” Rodney said. “Why three seconds?”

John thought about it, mentally calculating vectors. “I can probably do it in less if I near stop, someone else handles the venting, and I accelerate. Make us harder to hit, too.”

“I will help,” Teyla said, easing forward. “What should I do?”

“Push that button when Rodney says now,” John said, pointing out a spot on the control panel that he would assign to drop the shields and open the plasma valve for a half second. He liked these virtual controls, using the HUD and his mind to create the temporary connections.

“Let’s do it,” Rodney said.

John eased them in, a trajectory that would take them within five hundred meters. “Ready?”

Rodney said, “Ready. And. Now! Teyla pressed the control and John immediately accelerated for two seconds, watching his indicators and turning the ship to see if there was anything he could get on a visual. The red wash of plasma outlined a vaguely pyramid shape that John recognized from the informational sessions, just to the right of the small satellite, about ten times the size of the old Russian hardware. “Tel’tak,” Rodney said. “And no shield. Let’s see what he does.” There was no response from the ship, but Rodney insisted they wait a full five minutes. John didn’t give in to the urge to fidget, his pilot instincts coming to the fore again after a very long time. Rodney finally said, “Okay, let’s move in and see if you can’t extend the shields around that ship. We did this once before underwater, so it should work in space.”

John felt his heart beat go up, not racing, but the extra edge that difficult maneuvers had always given him. Rodney projected the outline of the tel’tak on the HUD. John wasn’t sure how he did it, but it was just like having a true visual with additional telemetry, based on the calculations of where the plasma had revealed the other ship to be. The round shape of the Russian satellite served as an additional guide.

“Bring us up with the satellite in between, so we don’t hit it. While we’re here, I’d like to look at it,” Rodney said. “There’s probably a reason it’s still up here after all these decades.” John glanced over, his eyebrows up. They were starting what was essentially a space raiding party, and Rodney wanted to indulge his curiosity? Rodney looked up and his eyebrows went down at seeing John’s expression. “What? Never pass up a chance to investigate a mystery, right detective?”

“I’m off the clock,” John said, but he smiled.

“Pay attention,” Rodney said, so John turned back to the controls and brought them in, stopping their acceleration and matching speeds with the satellite, turning so that the rear hatch faced where the tel’tak should be. Rodney turned to the controls in front of him. “Extending the shield around the tel’tak, he said, his fingers moving. “There. It’s going to drain a lot of power, and I’m going to keep it as tight as possible. Let’s try the LSD. We’re within 50 meters.”

John reached out to the box that held the device as Rodney opened the top. He set his gloved fingers on top. He didn’t get much more than the crew on the ship at first, but he reached out past them, focusing on the tel’tak. There was a glimmer of something, but he couldn’t be sure. “It feels blocked, maybe?” he said.

“Tel’tak cloak may be interfering. Good to know. Okay,” Rodney said, raising his voice. “We’ll have atmosphere, but I want everyone suited up.” He pulled his gloves on. “I’ll bring your helmet,” he said to John. “You’re not EVA certified, which is another reason to leave you here.”

John turned in his seat to watch them muster to leave. Mitchell came up carrying two helmets. “I’ll hang here with you, if that’s okay. Let me get your helmet for you. It’s tricky the first time.” Mitchell put it on him, told him how to key the radio with a chin movement and made him test it. The helmet obstructed John’s view more than he would have liked, and he had to turn his whole body to watch the Marines and Rodney’s team ready themselves to cross. The Marines were going first, two to find and deal with the hatch, and two to tether the ships so the tel’tak couldn’t accelerate away without dragging them along, too. Rodney was going to deactivate the cloak from the external generator. Ronon and Teyla were staying on the gateship until the door was open, and then Teyla would go over as a potential negotiator with Ronon as her guard.

The HUD gave John some telemetry, but he wanted to see, turning in his seat to watch just as the Marines vaulted out of the back, sailing in aerial formation past the satellite, then disappearing from view. The only indicator they were there was the two heavy cables that snaked out from the gateship to the blankness. He heard the voices on his helmet radio.

“Opening extra atmosphere,” Rodney said, cracking the valve on a pressure tank. They had four, two to vent now to provide atmosphere under the shield, so they wouldn’t kill whoever was in the tel’tak when they opened the door, one to re-pressurize the gateship, and one reserve. Chatter started coming in. John couldn’t put names to the voices, and it bothered him.

“Definitely a tel’tak. “

“Tether one secure.”

“Tether two secure.”

“Dr. McKay, you are cleared for transit. Take the right tether. It’s closer to the cloak generator.”

John watched Rodney snap a line onto the tether cable, and his heart went to his throat as Rodney leapt out into the void. They hadn’t said anything to each other, and it hadn’t even been Rodney who brought him his helmet. John put away the thought, reprimanding himself. Too long away from this, and he couldn’t keep his mind on the mission? He watched McKay’s orange suit disappear the way the Marines had done, into the cloak of the other ship. The two dots of Rodney’s boots disappeared, and John felt his heart fall back into place, a strange weight.

He turned back to the HUD, and something fell to the floor. It was the shield box. He’d forgotten it, and hadn’t even felt its weight through the stiff EVA suit. John grabbed the box with his boots, and tucked it behind his feet, under the chair. He hoped Rodney wouldn’t need it. The chatter started in his ear again.

“Door located.”

“Should we blow it?”

“Wait,” came McKay’s voice. “Almost done here. Got it!” John turned to look out the back hatch again, and now there was a ship in view, a vague pyramid with a strange fold. He could see three of the EVA suits on the outside of the hull, and then a third crawling over, possibly Rodney looking for the hatch. There were a few minutes of quiet and then another “Got it!” from Rodney, and a door folded out of the side. John realized the two ships were rotated out of alignment, the bottom of the other ship to John’s right. The Marines came down from the top of the door, swinging in slowly and the dropping suddenly inside the other ship, knees flexing as they hit the artificial gravity. To John’s perspective, they stood up sideways, but they brought up their weapons and disappeared into the ship.

“Flight deck, clear.”

“Cargo hold, clear.”

“Looks like no one’s home. Emmagan and Dex, stay in the gateship.”

“Let me get in and see when the transport rings were last used,” Rodney said, and John watched him come around the door way sideways, easing himself into the artificial gravity.

There was nothing for John to do but wait and listen, so he turned back to the HUD, setting the sensors to gather information on the satellite for McKay. He kept his breathing even, waiting. So many missions he’d had to stay with the helo. This was no different. Flight suit, space suit, he thought. Small detail. And then his radio erupted, Marines calling for McKay. John rose out of his seat with cop instincts, not pilot, stilling only at Mitchell’s hand on the arm of his suit. It took him two tries to key the radio, but before he could speak, he heard Mitchell, saw his lips moving behind the glass of his helmet. “SITREP.”

“Door to the cargo bay has closed. McKay is inside with DiAngelo.” The voice sounded calm. “We are working to open the door.”

“Anything we can do from here? Any equipment we have you need?” Mitchell said.

“Not that I can tell yet, sir.”

John said, “Can you keep your radios open, please, so we know what’s going on? Or do you need radio discipline?” he added, not sure what the risks were of an enemy overhearing.

“Radios on. Chatter down,” the voice said, probably Homer. For the next moments John waited, tense. The sensation of trying to ball his fists in EVA gloves was strange, and he made himself relax, spreading his fingers on his thighs. The only sounds were clipped commands, and a muttered, “Come on, baby.” Then, “Got it!” Rodney’s words, but the accent was pure New York. “Three down! No helmets! One without a suit.”

“Can ‘em, quick!”

“Alive?”

“I’ve got a pulse on McKay.” John let out a breath, then took another, slowly, as he listened, doing his best to slow his heart and damp down the adrenaline so that he could do his job. He turned to look out the back hatch, in time to see Ronon launch himself along the tether line. He wasn’t as practiced as he landed in the gravity, but another hand reached out and steadied him.

“DiAngelo’s alive,” said one of the Marines

“Who is this guy?”

“No idea. McKay and DiAngelo are back in the can.”

“Get them back to the gateship. Samson, you know Tel’taks. Can you set this up to stay in orbit until we can send a team and pilot to retrieve it?”

“Yes, sergeant.”

“I’ll, get McKay.” Ronon said.

“Good. Chen, get the bogey.”

“Yes, sergeant.” New York again. So that was Chen.

“Good. I’ll stay with Samson until he’s ready to move, then bring DiAngelo over. If that bogey moves, zat him once. I don’t want him waking up.”

John heard breathing and a small grunt or two over the open mics, and then a large figure in an EVA suit appeared at the door, holding a smaller one. “Heading over,” Ronon said. “I’m going to need someone to meet me at the hatch.” A hand reached out behind him, snapping the suit tether to one of the cables connecting the ships, and he launched himself out of the tel’tak’s open door. Mitchell was already out of his chair, John right behind, but Teyla was there to help, too, so John stood back. Dex’s course was not as straight, his center of mass changed with the addition of McKay, and his erratic drift made him pull on his tether a few times, slowing down. He drifted the last ten feet at a snail’s pace, oriented sideways to the open ramp of the gateship. Mitchell moved forward, snapped himself to the tether line, and went out hand over hand to meet them, grabbing Ronon’s boot and guiding it down to the ramp surface.

John watched the artificial gravity take hold as Ronon walked heel-and-toe up the ramp in his magnetic boots. The body in his arms slowly settled until it was clear that it was a strain to hold. John wanted to pushed forward to help, but Ronon had already moved in to place Rodney on the floor. He looked through the face plate. Rodney’s eyes were closed, but John’s chest tightened at the sight of dark rings around Rodney’s nostrils, and another trickle of dark down one side of his mouth. Blood, but not a lot, probably from the sudden change in pressure when he took off his helmet. John wanted to take off the helmet here to get his hands on Rodney, but he knew better. The low pressure on the combined ships was probably why Rodney’s nose was bleeding. John tore his gaze away from Rodney and looked out the hatch. Ronon and Mitchell were helping in the next pair, whoever carried DiAngelo. He needed to get out of the way, to get back to his job in the pilot’s seat, so he moved back to the flight deck, watching from the seat there.

The next to come over carried a man without any EVA protection. He thrust the figure into Ronon’s arms and kicked off back to close the Tel’tak door, before crawling over to release each tether. The Marines reeled him. As soon as he was inside, John heard, “Hatch closing.” And then, “Hatch secured.”

John reached to the controls, but remembered that the shield still covered both ships. He wasn’t sure how Rodney had done it, or how to reverse it, and he froze for a moment, trying to envision what would happen? Would the satellite and the tel’tak drag behind them? Then he remembered Rodney wanting to take the satellite, but it wasn’t the time to worry about that. All this took a second to think through before he realized he simply needed to drop the shield. Both ship and satellite would still be there. So he dropped the shield then put it up again, just around the gateship, and steered to a good entry point for Area 51.

He heard talk behind him, but he focused on his job. “Cabin pressure restored,” he heard, but he didn’t stop to take off his helmet. He needed to get them on the ground, to get real medical help for Rodney. Mitchell’s voice came through the muffle of the EVA suit, “McKay first.”

John didn’t want to think about what that might mean, but then he heard Rodney’s voice insisting, “I am fine.” John relaxed and tuned out the chatter after that, hands and mind on the controls as he brought them back through the atmosphere. Mitchell slid into the co-pilot’s seat, and as soon as they were through to the mesosphere, his voice came muffled through John’s helmet as he radioed ahead. “We have wounded, possibly decompression. One is pretty serious. I used the healing device, and the damage seemed more than it should be.” There was a pause, and a voice answered, but John couldn’t make out the words through his helmet. “DiAngelo, and an AUO,” Mitchell said.

“AUO?”

“Alien of Unknown Origin,” Mitchell said. “Like UFO, but breathing. Sometimes breathing,” he corrected himself.

“Okay, then,” John said, because he didn’t know what else to say. He set the ship down on the ground near the medical wing at Area 51 and opened the hatch.

He stood up from the pilot’s chair to see medics running from the building pushing gurneys. Everyone else had their helmets off, and John fumbled at the catches for his, lifting it off in time to see DiAngelo and the other person taken out on the stretchers. Rodney following behind, his helmet under his arm, striding away and making the medic trot to catch back up. John started down the ramp, slowed and frustrated by the EVA suit, when Sgt. Homer called his name. He was holding an extra gun belt and that strange snake-looking weapon, in addition to the ones he wore. “We need to gear down. Can you take this thing back to the barn?”

John watched Rodney’s retreating back, watched an SF stop him before he entered the medical building, gesturing at Rodney’s side arm. Rodney turned as if to ignore him, but the medic at his side put a hand on his arm, which Rodney shook off. The SF moved to block the door, and another appeared beside him. One of the Marines, John thought it was Chen, walked toward the group, slowed by his EVA suit. At a word from him, Rodney unstrapped the weapon and handed it over. Chen watched Rodney disappear into the building before turning back, plodding to the ship.

“Let’s catch a ride, gentlemen,” Sgt. Homer said, and John turned back to the flight deck, wondering why Rodney hadn’t just handed over his weapon. He put the thought aside, and as soon as the Marines were on board, he closed the aft ramp and flew the gateship back to the hangar.

The same Marine was waiting for them, the empty rack and crates ready for the EVA suits, kevlar, and weapons. John watched as the Marines checked everything in, then followed their lead, Ronon and Teyla behind him. “So what happened over there?” he asked Ronon.

“Place looked empty. Turned out it wasn’t.”

“Can you give me a little more than that?”

Samson looked up from tying his boots. “DiAngelo cleared the cargo area, and McKay went to look for anything that might, I don’t know, mean something to McKay.”

“Dr. McKay,” Homer corrected.

“Yes, sergeant,” Samson said, barely chastened. “So as soon as Dr. McKay was through the doorway, the hatch slammed shut. It took me a minute to get it open, and when we came in, DiAngelo and McKay were on the floor, helmets off, and there was this squirrelly looking guy next to McKay, not a mark on any of them.”

“Squirrelly looking?”

Samson glanced up at Homer and Chen before answering. “Black robe with a hood, bald on the top. Long, grey hair. I mean, Goa’uld usually go for all the shiny stuff, pretty hosts, all that. This was like the creepy old-guy Goth Goa’uld. But not ugly like the Star Wars emperor. Get what I mean?”

Chen snorted. “You have a way with words, Samson.”

John had no idea what to make of it. He wanted to get over to Medical, to check on Rodney and to see who this was, his possible Six Ways from Sunday killer. “Come on,” Mitchell said, and he helped John out of the suit and showed him how to hang it.

John unstrapped the kevlar vest. “I need to get back over to medical. I need to find out what happened.” Mitchell nodded. They geared down, and John remembered at the last minute to go back and get the box with the personal shield. The LSD was there, too. Mitchell followed him in to the gateship. “Wish I had the ATA gene,” he said as John dug under the pilot’s seat for the shield.

John stood up with the box. “Drives like a truck.”

“Bullshit,” Mitchell said, a grin sliding across his face.“Although maybe it does compared to an F302.” He looked tired, and John remembered him saying that one of the injured was worse than he thought.

“Or a helo.”

“Did I hear you say you were heading to medical?” Sgt. Homer asked. “I want to get over and check on DiAngelo.”

“And I need to see about getting over to DC,” Mitchell said. “I have an appointment at Walter Reed.”

“You okay?” John asked.

“Gonna be,” Mitchell said. “That… It felt good. I mean, no one likes a shit show, but it was good to be there like part of the team. Even on the edge of it. I don’t know. Felt like more than a walking med kit for a change.”

“Yeah,” John said, thinking that the rank and name badge made all the difference.

John thanked Chen and Samson, although he didn’t see Ronon and Teyla. He saw Rodney’s shoes stowed neatly by the rack of EVA suits, so he grabbed them. Homer picked up DiAngelo’s boots, and together they headed out. The sun threw long shadows as it set, the air already cooling down, drying the stress sweat that had built up under John’s helmet. John started to plan his interviews. First Rodney, who would probably give him the facts, nice and clear. Then DiAngelo, if he was awake. Last the creepy Goth guy. Was he an alien, or just a human with the ATA gene? How did he get alien technology? How do you interview an alien? Do they even know the good cop/bad cop routine? Could he get Rodney to be the bad cop? Maybe Ronon could stand there and glower?

John turned back to the hanger to find out what Ronon and Teyla were doing, and bumped directly into Teyla. “Oh. Sorry,” he said, seeing Ronon with her. They’d been following him and Homer.

“We also wish to see Rodney,” she said.

“Yeah, and,” John started, he glanced at Ronon. “I want to question the guy they brought back.”

“Do I get to be bad cop?” Ronon said, a wolf smile breaking on his face.

“Kind of what I was thinking.”

“Teyla can be Better Cop,” Ronon said. “Here. Let me help you with that.

John wasn’t sure about the psychology of a three-person interrogation team, but on the other hand, Teyla’s title was Liaison. Rodney had brought her on the mission in part for that reason. “Sounds like a plan. Let’s see if he’s awake.”

“After we check on Rodney,” Teyla said softly, touching John’s shoulder.

John nodded and swallowed back a fear and tension, his fingers loosening on the box and shoes he had forgotten he was carrying. If Rodney had been wearing the damn shield… John hadn’t spoken to Rodney since before he’d launched himself across to the tel’tak. He’d heard his voice, seen him walk, seen that he was okay, but Teyla’s sympathetic touch wound around the uncertainty. They weren’t anything to each other. Not yet. “Yeah,” he breathed. “Let’s go.”

The corpsman at reception sent them down a hallway where they heard Rodney before they saw him. “I’m fine. I have things to do. Discharge me.” John hesitated outside the door of the exam room. He could see Rodney’s arm and the top of a T-shirt sleeve, moving with a gesture. John could see the trailing edge of Rodney’s scars and he breathed in, realizing that he knew the full extent of them, how they wrapped over his shoulder and down one side of his rib cage. “This is enough!” Rodney said, breaking John back into the present. His voice had an edge to it. Maybe Rodney was used to being deferred to, but this sounded almost imperious.

Teyla slipped past John, her face so composed it couldn’t be natural. “Rodney, we found you unconscious. Please let them finish their work. It is, after all, their duty to keep you healthy and to heal any harm.”

“I’m not harmed!” He sounded agitated. John came in the room, and Ronon leaned against the door frame. Seeing Rodney close, wearing only a T-shirt and hospital scrub pants, made John want to reach out, trace his fingers over the scars he could also see around Rodney’s neck, but his hands were full with the box and Rodney’s shoes. “What do you want?” Rodney asked, glancing at them.

“Brought your shoes,” he said, holding out the high-tech sneakers.

“Thanks,” Rodney said, but he didn’t reach for them. John set them down by a chair.

“Well,” John said, looking for something to say, “if one of the things you need to get to is that satellite, we didn’t capture it. Downloaded a lot of telemetry for you.”

Confusion passed over Rodney’s face, finishing with his eyebrows down. “Oh,” he said, after a moment, smoothing out his face. “That will be fine. Yes, I should get to that. Thanks.”

The last was curt, dismissive. John felt himself freeze, a momentary hold. He glanced at Ronon, then back to Rodney. “I— We were worried that we were going to lose you.” It came out in an awkward rush.

Rodney looked up at him, sharply questioning, then his expression smoothed again. “It’s okay,” he said softly.

John cleared his throat, and consciously tried to drop back into detective mode. “So. What happened?”

Rodney sat up, as if he were also changing modes. “DiAngelo cleared the cargo bay, but it wasn’t clear. I went in to see if I could determine if the rings had been used. Someone hit me on the back of the head. The next thing I know, I woke up on the deck of the gateship with Mitchell using the healing device on me.”

It came out like a recitation, and something didn’t feel right. “How could someone hit you on the back of the head if you had your helmet on?”

Rodney blinked. “Maybe I was hit with a zat? My head hurt. That’s all I remember.”

John’s gut didn’t like the answer. “Nothing?”

Rodney looked him in the eye, his expression neutral. “Nothing.”

“We will stay with Rodney,” Teyla said. “You should go interview your suspect.”

“Wait,” Rodney said. “I think there’s something important I need to do first.” He got up from the exam table and moved toward John, managing in those three steps to look like he was prowling. He took John’s face in his hands, sliding his fingers up into John’s hair, leaned in, and put his mouth on John’s, a kiss he was too shocked to return. Rodney moved back slightly, lips separated but their breath still mingling, and his fingers tightened against John’s scalp.

“Now?” John whispered. “Timing. Audience.” He held the box with the shield between them, making the angle awkward.

“Now,” Rodney said, and moved in again.

This time John kissed him back, his hand rising so that his fingers brushed the scars under Rodney’s Tshirt. He kept it briefer than he might have liked, not letting Rodney deepen it, uncomfortable and confused by the timing. “Later,” he said, glancing at Ronon and Teyla or Rodney’s shoulder. Ronon smirked, but Teyla had a slight crease between her brows. John could not tell if it meant concern, disapproval, or surprise. He reached up to one of Rodney’s hands on his head, wrapping his fingers around the palm as he drew it down. Rodney resisted at first, his hands seemingly immovable until he gave in, shifting John’s grip on him until they were holding hands. John said, looking at their hands. “Let me interview my suspect. I’ll come back by when we’re done.”

Rodney reached for the box. “In the mean time, I’ll take that back.”

Teyla stepped between them. “No. I think John should wear it when he interviews the suspect. The person could still be dangerous.”

There was a moment’s hesitation before Rodney said, “Of course. You should go with him for extra protection.”

“I will stay with you,” Teyla said.

“I’ll go with Sheppard,” Ronon said.

Rodney nodded, turning away as if the kiss hadn’t happened. John said, “Yeah,” and turned from the door. Ronon followed him out, and they both stood in the middle of the hall. “I don’t even know where he is,” John said. “What did he look like?”

“Nothing much,” Ronon said. “Short. Mostly bald.”

John started down the hall, trying to put the kiss out of his mind, looking for a door with a guard. DiAngelo was in the next room, oxygen tubes in his nose, Sgt. Homer on one side, a nurse on the other. “How is he?” John asked.

“The fast change in air pressure did a bit of damage, but the bigger issue is that he was probably hit with a zat. It’ll take some time for him to come to.”

“Any idea where they took the guy you found?”

“There’s a secure room down the hall,” Homer said. “Can’t miss it.”

“Hope he’s okay,” John said, nodding at the bed.

“This guy?” Homer said. “It’ll take more than this to put him down. Son of a bitch is tough, but don’t tell him I said that.”

“I heard that,” DiAngelo said, his voice rough.

John hesitated, then said, “Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about what happened over there?”

“Go for it,” DiAnglo rasped.

“What do you remember?”

“Vaulted over from the gateship. As soon as we were through the cloak I could see the tel’tak. I secured the port tether. Samson and Dr. McKay sprung the door. We went inside and split up to clear the flight deck and the cargo hold. I called the hold clear, turned around, and that’s the last thing I remember. I’m guessing zat.”

“Could someone have been hiding?”

“Guess they were. There were a couple of cargo containers, and I didn’t look inside those.”

“Do you know how your helmet came off?” John asked.

“Didn’t know it was off.”

“That’s how they found you.”

“I’m sorry. All I know is I got zatted, or at least that’s what it feels like, only a little worse.”

“That’d probably be the decompression,” Homer said. “We found a zat in the cargo bay.”

The nurse looked up. “Please…” she started, her eyes searching John’s collar for any indication of rank. Not finding any, she still defaulted to say, “…sir. He’s just woken up. I’d like to examine him and bring in the doctor.”

“Sure. Let me know if you remember anything else.” John nodded to Homer and left the room walking down the hall, Ronon beside him. Homer was right that they couldn’t miss it. There were two MPs at the door with P90s.

John paused. The MPs probably wouldn’t know who he was or why he should be allowed in the room. He hadn’t put his badge in his flight suit pockets, and he doubted that an LVPD detective would carry much weight in a secret government facility. No sense not trying, and being as brazen as possible.

He walked up to the MPs. The one closest to them was a black woman, who turned to look at him, the other, a red-headed white man, looked the opposite way. Nice training, John thought. You couldn’t distract them and have someone sneak up the other way. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’d like to see the prisoner. Detective Sheppard, Las Vegas police. This is Specialist Ronon Dex from Atlantis.

The MP nodded, like it made sense. “We understand he’s not awake yet,” she said.

“We’d like to at least take a look at him.”

She nodded again and knocked on the door without turning. It cracked open. “Detective Sheppard’s here. He’s expected.”

Expected? John glanced up at Ronon, who shrugged. The door opened all the way, and the two MPs stood aside to let them in.

Ronon put a hand on John’s arm. “You gonna wear the shield?”

“If he’s out, do I need to?”

Ronon shrugged again. “Make Teyla happy,” he said. “Rodney, too. What if he wakes up?”

“What about you?”

“I’m not the lead detective on the case. You’re the last person he tried to kill. Don’t want him to finish the job.”

John took the shield from the box and put it on his chest, where it began to glow, and stepped inside. The room looked like a typical hospital room, except for the additional MPs. One large corpsman stood by a bank of machines, and the person in the bed was wired for blood pressure, EKG, and blood oxygen, at least. He looked small, head mostly bald, but for a fringe around the bottom of his skull. His eyelids looked red, and there was a crust of blood around his nose. Samson had been right. He did look squirrelly.

“Still out?” John asked.

The corpsman nodded. John walked up to look at the hands. They were small and neat, the nails well cared for. “He’s still out,” John said.

“I think I said that,” the corpsman answered.

“I know. DiAngelo just woke up. This guy’s still out. Rodney was up before we’d even landed.”

“Maybe he wasn’t hit as hard,” Ronon said.

The figure on the bed didn’t move. John stared at him, a short man, and squirrelly looking was about right. His mouth was open, head turned to the side, no sign of movement beyond the rise and fall of his chest.

John gestured Ronon over, and put his hand on the top of the box he carried with the LSD, then put a hand on the guy in the bed. He suddenly felt all of the life around him, but he focused on the small, still man, looking for something inside him. Without touching the device directly, John had less information, but he had a general sense of the guy’s internal organs. There didn’t seem to be an extra one around his neck and spinal cord. Not Goa’uld, then.

John pulled back and took his hand off the box. “Can you let me know when he wakes up?” John asked. Something was bothering him, but he suddenly wanted coffee and food.

John nodded his thanks to the corpsman, and left the room. He looked at the MPs as he passed. “I asked them to let me know when he’s awake.”

“Where will you be, sir?”

“Where is there coffee?”

John listened to the directions, and thanked her, and walked down the hall to Rodney’s room.

Rodney’s white T-shirt was slightly too small, pulling across his shoulders where he bent to put on his shoes. John watched him for a moment, trying to understand the kiss, the change from strict professionalism to public display of, not affection. John remembered the feeling of Rodney’s fingers in his hair, how hard it was to get him to let go. It seemed more like a branding of ownership, almost.

“Hello,” Teyla said. John looked her way, and found her face as blank as before, hiding all her emotions.

Rodney looked up. “I have to get back to the mountain. I’ll arrange for the Daedelus to beam me directly there.” He rose and stepped toward John, putting a hand softly on his arm. “Come with me?”

“I still have a suspect asleep here. The squirrelly guy from the tel’tak. He has the ATA gene, Rodney, but he doesn’t have a snake.”

“Goa’uld,” Rodney corrected. “Perhaps.” He took a breath, as if to steel himself to say something, his fingers tightening on John’s arm. “You know you can never arrest him. He’ll be dealt with by the SGC. Why not just let them have him? Come with me.”

This time it wasn’t a question, and John’s back tensed with immediate disagreement. “I have to do my job,” he said. “I have to be sure.” If Rodney knew, as he’d said so long ago, everything about him, he’d know that John couldn’t leave unfinished business.

“All right,” Rodney said, dropping his hand, and his voice dropping all the warmth. “Get me to where I can contact the Daedelus.”

“I will come with you,” Teyla said.

“No, Rodney said. “See this through, if you want to see how our police forces work.” He took the box from Ronon. “I’ll take this back to the lab.” He turned and strode out of the room, carrying himself as if he wore his suit and tie, not T shirt and scrubs.

—

John felt comfortable sitting with Ronon in silence. His coffee cup was empty, and all that was left of the french fries was a small lake of ketchup on Ronon’s plate. They were simply waiting, almost alone as the canteen was shut down around them.. It had been about a half hour since Rodney left, and John wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. He was about to suggest going back to see if the guy was awake, when a voice called his name from the doorway. John raised his hand and got up from the table as an MP walked over to them. “I was asked to find you. It looks like your suspect might be waking up.”

“Thank you,” John said, grabbing the box, and glancing at Ronon. “Let’s go.” He didn’t wait for the MP, and practically ran back to the guarded room. He didn’t see anything different about the figure on the bed, but the corpsman was fussing over something next to him. John started to step closer to the bed, but Ronon put a hand on his arm.

“Shield.”

John took it out of the box and put it on, then moved when he heard a groan from the bed. The guy’s eyes fluttered open. “Where am I?” he asked, voice hoarse, sounding damaged.

“Area—“ John started, but he was cut off by an MP.

“Local hospital.”

John glanced over. The MP had her eyebrows raised. John nodded, understanding.

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“I’m in Area 51, right?” The man started to try to sit up. “Where’s Col. O’Neill. I need to see Col. O’Neill!”

“Just hold on,” John said, covering his shock at hearing O’Neill’s name. “We can get O’Neill.” He thought a one-star might just come visit for something like this, although John was pretty sure this person or thing was going straight to the mountain.

The man’s eyes went wide. “He’s real?”

“Yes,” John said, dragging out the word. This was the last thing he’d expected to happen. “How do you know General O’Neill?”

“I had stories. In my head. I could see. They went through the stargate. Fought aliens. And saved the planet… I finally started calling the Air Force to try to find him. Col. Jack O’Neill. Then someone came to visit me. A Col. Simmons. He said it was real, and I could help them…”

John desperately wished he’d thought to ask for a notepad. “Hang on,” he said, and grabbed a paper—something medical—and turned it over to the blank side. “Pen?” He asked the corpsman. As soon as he had it, he wrote down the name Col. Simmons, and knows about stargate.

“What do you remember after Col. Simmons?”

“He said he would take me to meet Jack O’Neill.” The man sounded happy, desperate, and a bit like a fanboy. John tried to imagine this person living on an alien space ship.

“Let’s go back a few steps. What’s your name?

“Joe Spencer.”

“Where do you live, Joe?”

“Indiana. New Haven, just outside Fort Wayne.”

“What do you do there, Joe?”

“I have a barber shop. Stylin’ Joe. Why am I in a hospital?” He looked up, past John. “You’re Specialist Ronon Dex! Why aren’t you on Atlantis? Oh, my God!”

John glanced over at Ronon, who shrugged. “Mr. Spencer, what’s the last thing you remember?”

Spencer visibly tried to pull himself together. “I got into a car with Col. Simmons. He was going to take me to meet Col. O’Neill. I was so excited. Did I… Did I have a heart attack? I mean, my heart really was pounding…”

“Not a heart attack. You really don’t remember anything between getting into the car and now?” Spencer shook his head. “What day was that?”

Spencer opened his mouth, then closed it. “What day is it today?”

John said, “Just answer the question please.”

“No!” Spencer said. “You could be from the Trust.”

“I don’t know what that is. Just, what day was it?”

Spencer said, “Tuesday?”

“Do you remember the date?”

“The 23rd.”

“Month? Year?”

“May. It’s 2005.”

“And nothing between then and now?”

“Why, what day is it?!” Spencer’s eyes went wide with panic. “Oh my god, I was disappeared. What happened to me? How much did I lose? A week? A month?”

John hesitated. It was Saturday, October 16, 2010, and he didn’t know how Spencer would react to losing four and a half years. The corpsman, who had stood by quietly, said, “Sirs.”

John nodded. He took off the personal Shield, turning it off, and when the light had gone dim, he put it in Spencer’s hand. It glowed green. ATA. But Spencer didn’t remember anything.

The pieces fell into place. Snake. There had been a snake, but it was gone now. “Oh, crap,” John said. Rodney had recovered so fast because he had a fucking snake in his head. John snatched back the shield and ran from the room, skidding to a halt outside DiAngelo’s room. “Check him for snakes!” he yelled, but he knew where the snake was. He sprinted to the reception area, hearing Ronon’s boots behind him. “General O’Neill. We need to get General O’Neill on the phone.”

“The base commander—“ the receptionist started.

John cut her off. “O’Neill.”

Ronon, behind him, said, “McKay’s compromised. That’s what you mean, Sheppard?”

John nodded, and the woman behind the desk picked up the phone. “Security code Omega two-two-five. I repeat, Omega two-two-five. Call for General O’Neill. First priority.”

She handed the phone to John.

—

“Sir, you wanted to know when Dr. McKay was back. He’s just beamed from Area 51.”

Jack looked up from his computer. Paperwork was just as bad when it was electronic, and he was glad of the break. “Where is he?”

“He went straight to Captain Carter’s lab.”

“Thank you.” Jack stood and stretched. If McKay hadn’t come straight to his office, the trip to the satellite must have been a bust. Better to go find out now than wait for a report that didn’t say anything. Jack wanted to know how Sheppard and Mitchell had done.

He swung by the commissary for coffee, figuring that if Jeannie McKay was there, she’d need the bribe to be civil at his interruption. He gathered four cups into a holder, and carried it out as he smiled benignly at the discomfort and straight sitting that came in his wake. He didn’t stay any longer than needed, nodding to some of the commanders on his way out.

The door to Carter’s lab was open, which was a bit unusual, and he didn’t hear voices, which was very unusual. He leaned in with his shoulder to push the door open, and he smelled the blood. He leaned back and kicked the door open, yelling down the hall, “Medic! 911! Carter’s lab! Now! Get Vala or Mitchell!” Crimson pooled around Carter’s body, and it wasn’t clear if she was alive or dead. Jack put the coffee on a lab bench, and stepped carefully over to her. There was a soldering iron sticking into her side, jammed in right up to the blue plastic handle, the cord wrapped around her neck, and her lips blue.

Jack knelt down to remove the cord, and to his relief, her lips regained some color immediately. It wasn’t much, just a loss of the horrible blue, turning to an almost white peach color as Carter gasped in a breath, and then let it out in a cry of pain. Jack gripped her, his heart doing something he couldn’t explain. He’d held dying men before, but never a woman. He wanted to grab the obscene handle of the soldering iron, but he knew better. As much as she was bleeding around it, she’d bleed more as soon as it was removed.

“Carter? Carter?”

“Yessir,” she breathed.

“What happened?”

“McKay.”

That didn’t make any sense. Jack heard boots in the hallway. “In here!” he called, looking toward the door, but it wasn’t a medic.

An SF skidded around the door with a radio phone. “Call for you. Omega two-two-five. McKay’s been compromised.”

Jack looked back at Carter. “Yeah, got that memo. Find him.”

—

“O’Neill here.”

“Sir, McKay’s been—“

“Compromised. I know. Goa’uld?”

“I think so. You should probably…” John cut himself off, remembering it was a General on the other end of the line. “This is out of my area, sir.”

“What did you find at the satellite?”

“A cloaked tel’tak with someone on board. McKay and one of the Marines, DiAngelo, were trapped with the suspect, and when they got the door open, McKay and DiAngelo had their helmets off.”

“Suspect, huh? McKay acting weird?”

“He—“ John started, then stopped, thinking about the kiss. It hadn’t been Rodney kissing him, and that made his stomach clench. He took a breath. “He healed very quickly, and yeah, a little weird. Hard to describe, but off.”

“And your suspect?”

“He woke up asking for you, said he’d been seeing stories in his head about the Stargate for years. He tried to call the Air Force to find out if you existed, and was picked up by a Col. Simmons. That was almost five years ago. He doesn’t remember anything else.”

“Simmons,” O’Neill repeated. “Oh, hell.”

“Sir, the man is a barber from Indiana, so I don’t know how he knew about the stargate. Do you know where McKay is?”

“No, but he tried to kill Carter. Two ways at least.” John felt like a weight forced itself down his throat into the pit of his gut. The Goa’uld was the killer, and it was in Rodney. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” O’Neill said, and the line went dead. John handed the phone back to the receptionist, nodding his thanks, and turned to Ronon.

Ronon’s mouth was pressed into a thin line, an muscle jumping in his jaw. “Teyla’s with him.”

“If she’s…”

“Still alive. Yeah.”

Not knowing what else to do, John walked back to the barber’s room. DiAngelo wasn’t in his room, the bed gone. They’d probably taken him for an X-ray, checking for one of those damn snakes. By the time he reached the guarded door, he heard O’Neill behind him. “Wait.” John turned, to see the general jog up, blood on the knee of one pants leg. “His name is Joe Spencer. He lives in New Haven, Indiana, right?”

“How did you know, sir?”

“I used to see pieces of his life. I thought maybe it was a weird thing I imagined as stress relief. Mundane. Boring. Then it…” O’Neill flicked an eyebrow. “It changed. I just figured my coping mechanism had gone south.”

“So you were seeing each others lives. You never told anyone?”

“Not the kind of thing that looks good on a psych eval.”

John didn’t know what to think about that, or what it said about the Stargate Program. “He was surprised to find out you’re real.”

“Sometimes I am, too.”

John glanced at O’Neill, surprised at the flippancy. “McKay has Teyla with him.”

“They’re looking for him. He’s in one of the most secure facilities on the planet. They’ll find him.”

“He’s also the smartest man on the planet,” Ronon said.

O’Neill closed his eyes. “And now a Goddamned snake has access to all that brain power.” He took a breath. “Call back up to the mountain. Let them know Teyla is with him. I’ll be in here with Mr. Spencer.”

John ran back to the reception desk and got put through to the mountain again, same security code. When he’d delivered the information, he walked back to the guarded room. The MPs just nodded and stood aside to let him and Ronon through. He heard O’Neill say, “Did Simmons mention the Trust to you? Anything about that?”

“Simmons was Trust?” Spencer said, struggling to sit up. “Why didn’t I recognize him?”

“I don’t know how you recognized any of this. How did it all start? I first remember you cutting your nose hairs in, what, 1998?”

“Sir, what does this mean?” John asked.

“Somehow Mr. Spencer and I have seen glimpses of each other’s lives, and in trying to find me, he alerted a group called the Trust. Apparently, they put a snake in his head. I, uh, know a little bit about what happened after that.”

“You could still see his life?” Ronon said.

“Like I said, I thought it was stress weirdness.” O’Neill’s tone sounded brittle, like he was shooting for casual and missing. “I need to get back to the mountain. There are a number of messes I need to look into.”

“What about me?” Spencer asked.

“We’ll transfer you to the mountain when medical says you can move. We always can use ATA carriers. Need barbers, too.”

“But my wife! My son!”

“We’ll let them know you’re alive,” O’Neill said. Spencer went white and lay back in the bed. “Unless you don’t want us too?”

Spencer swallowed. “Five years. Andy’s a teenager now. Maybe she re-married.”

“We’ll find out for you,” O’Neill said softly. “Charlene’s a good woman.”

“She never believed me.”

“Look,” O’Neill said, “if you know about the Trust, then you know how bad it could be if an ATA positive Goa’uld with no naquadah were loose in the mountain.”

“No naquadah?” Spencer asked.

“New experiment by the Goa’uld. Clones without naquadah, so they’re harder for other snakes to detect. I can’t tell you’re a former host. Look,” he said, holding up a hand to still Spencer’s next question. “I have to go. Tell everything you remember to Detective Sheppard here.”

Ronon stepped in front of O’Neill as he walked toward the door. “I need to go with you to look for Teyla.” O’Neill nodded, and Ronon stepped aside to fall in behind.

John stepped toward them. “Look, he can wait. You can’t leave me here.”

“I can,” O’Neill said without turning.

“Please,” John said, the word coming out unbidden. “My case isn’t done yet. The real murderer is in Rodney.”

O’Neill’s head came up slightly. He barely turned is head and said, “Rodney,” he repeated, and John knew he said it to make the point that it wasn’t McKay to John. “Think you can catch him?”

“I’ll do what I can, sir.”

“Okay, then.”

—

This time John was awake when they beamed up to the Daedelus, but he didn’t see more than a few walls and a console before they materialized inside the mountain. The first thing he saw was the Stargate. The were on the deck in front of the ramp, closer than John had been before. It was smaller than he had thought, just barely big enough for a gateship. He turned away at Ronon’s touch on his arm. O’Neill was already striding away, calling for a SITREP.

“Sheppard,” Ronon said, “we have to find her.” John looked up at the urgency in Ronon’s voice. “Rodney’s important, but she’s more than you know. We call her liaison, but to some worlds, she’s like a queen. If she dies here, there could be war.”

John had never heard Ronon speak like this. “They have people on the ground looking. Let’s see if there are surveillance tapes for the lab.”

“I can’t. I can’t sit still and just look.”

John understood. “Ronon, I’ve seen her fight. How would someone control her like this?”

“You think she’s dead.”

“Let’s not assume that. How would someone subdue Teyla?”

“They’d have to knock her out and tie her up.”

“So let’s make sure they have a team looking in every closet.”

“And that life signs detector you found in the gateship?”

“Let’s find that. You look for her; I’ll look at the tapes.”

Gutierrez trotted up to them. “The general sent me to help you, sir.”

A cold discipline slid over John’s worry and fear. He spoke without thinking, the environment, the jumpsuit he wore, snapping him back into the mindset of an officer. “Get me to where there might be surveillance video around Carter’s lab, and at McKay’s beam-down site. Then check with Dr. Lee about where the small life-signs detector would be. I’ll look at surveillance, and if you can get that detector, Ronon can use it to look for Teyla. If you can’t get it, Ronon will still look for Teyla. Get him backup if you can, but if not, the rest of you focus on McKay. If any of this is counter to what General O’Neill has already put in place, his orders stand, but let me know what’s going on.”

“Yes, sir,” Guteirrez said. “Security monitoring is on level 16.”

“I can find my way. The location of the LSD is first priority.” Ronon clapped him on the arm and took off at a run. John turned toward the elevators, calling over his shoulder to Guttierez, “Oh, and get someone to get me a radio.”

—

A butterbar lieutenant with her hair in a tight bun came out of the room. Behind her, John could see banks of screens before the door closed. Her name was Coleman, and she didn’t look friendly. “I’ve been ordered to give you images on Dr. McKay,” she said. “Please use this monitor. We will send you the time sequence.” She sat John down in front of a computer in the anteroom. “I’ll send you the images, sir.” She disappeared into the monitor room, and John took a deep breath, and rubbed his eyes. They felt scratchy and a wave of tiredness hit him. It was just gone midnight. He didn’t have time for this, but in a moment, the screen brightened.

The video showed Rodney and Teyla beaming down in a sparkle of light. John didn’t know Teyla quite well enough to be sure, but he thought her body language showed a wariness he hadn’t seen before. She looked at Rodney, and followed him when he snapped at her. The camera picked them up in a corridor and tracked them to a bank of elevators. He watched them in the elevator, Rodney staring straight ahead, and Teyla speaking to him, her brow slightly furrowed, but there was no audio. It looked like Rodney turned to speak to her, but his back was to the camera. When the doors slid open, the screen went blank. John waited a few seconds before knocking at the door.

Coleman cracked the door. “You don’t have clearance to see those areas,” she said.

“Get me clearance.” John heard his voice, flat and implacable, as he stared down at the young officer. The effort of keeping himself in check must have shown on his face, because Coleman took a half step back. He didn’t care. Rodney was out there with a killer in his head, and Teyla could already be dead.

Coleman’s eyes narrowed. “General O’Neill has to do that.”

“Get me General O’Neill,” he said in precise, clipped words. Her mouth went tight, mirroring her eyes, offended at his tone, which was stupid given that she should be used to taking orders from assholes. He said, “We don’t have time for this. What do you think I’m doing here? Get O’Neill.”

“I can’t do that.”

John’s eyebrows went up, the only further sign of anger he allowed himself. Before he could decide what to say he heard a voice behind him. “Sir?”

Coleman came out and shut the door behind her, and then stepped past John, looking expectant. John turned to find an SF he didn’t recognize, ignoring Coleman and holding out a radio for him. John stepped over to take it, listened to the instructions for command frequency, all call, and sub-frequencies. “Anything I can’t hear?” he asked.

“No, sir. The general said to give you full access.”

John turned to look at Coleman.

Coleman’s voice was cold. “He didn’t tell that to me?”

John nodded to the SF and keyed the radio to command, and said, “This is Sheppard. I need clearance to view all of the surveillance video.”

O’Niell’s voice was recognizable. “Granted. Let him in the room.”

Coleman stiffened visibly, but she turned and opened the door, letting John go through before her. The surveillance room was more than extensive. A glance at the labels told John that there were more levels to the complex than he had even suspected, and cameras everywhere. He spared a thought about how much they must have seen of him walking around. “McKay,” John said. “Where is he?”

“We don’t know, sir,” Coleman said. “We can’t find him.”

“Teyla. Liaison Emmagan. Where is she?”

“We don’t know.”

“Well, what do you know?”

Coleman nodded to a technician, who brought up the same video John had seen before, but now when Rodney and Teyla stepped onto the elevator, the image didn’t go black, and there was audio in the elevator, where there hadn’t been before.

“Rodney, where are we going?” Teyla asked, voice slightly distorted in the recording. When Rodney didn’t answer, she asked again. “Where are we going?”

“I must take care of something, and then go to the laboratory.” It was Rodney’s voice, but there was something off, even through the recording’s distortions. When the doors opened, he gripped Teyla by the arm, taking her down a hallway. It didn’t quite look like it was forced, but it didn’t quite look normal. The cameras dropped them at one point, and there was a delay of about fifteen seconds before they picked up again. Rodney opened the door to a room, ushering in Teyla with none of the weird tension John thought he had seen.

“Where is that?”

“Captain Carter’s lab.”

“What next?” John asked, when the screen continued to show the closed door.

“It’s like they disappeared,” Copeland said. “We ran back the video file, but it looks like they never even entered the room.”

“So they’re still in there?”

“We don’t know, sir.”

John’s heart stilled. “What do you mean?”

“She means that a recon team already searched the room,” said a new voice.

John looked over to see a lieutenant colonel at the door, probably the director of security.

“Live video?” John snapped. The screen blanked and then came up with the same scene, this time with the door open, and guards at either end of the hall. Someone in a white lab coat stepped out of the room, shaking his head. “Where did they go?” John asked.

“We can’t find them, not on surveillance and not by foot.”

“The little life signs detector, did you give that to Ronon?” John asked. “Can it, I don’t know, be calibrated to find people from another galaxy?”

“Specialist Dex has been given the Ancient device you found,” the officer, Santiago, said. “He’s tasked with finding Liaison Emmagan, as you suggested.”

John stared at the screen, not actually seeing it, his mind elsewhere, processing patterns. Rodney, or whatever was in him, was now a suspect in murder and potentially kidnapping. Given everything John knew about the Six Ways from Sunday killer, what would they do next? Of course. He’d want his toys back. He keyed his radio, heedless of whatever protocol they might expect. “Has anyone checked Dr. Lee’s lab?” John asked. “He’ll go for whatever Ancient devices he can get, and there’s one of those food storage things there.”

“Food storage?”

“Just get someone to Dr. Lee’s lab!” John wanted to run himself, the itch of it under his skin and coloring his voice. He put down his radio. “Do you have video there?”

“We didn’t see anything. It’s like he didn’t enter the room.”

He took a breath. “The room he was in, would he have network access?”

“Yes, sir,” Coleman said.

“Then he’s probably hacked your system. Look for any cameras on loops, and get someone to Lee’s lab!”

“They’re on their way,” Santiago said. “Get the lab cameras up. Lee’s lab first, then go back and see what McKay did.”

John watched the screen in front of him go blank, and then come up with an angled ceiling view of a laboratory. “No…” Dr. Lee’s body was on the floor, surrounded by two distinct pools of blood, one from the head and one from the torso. John grabbed his radio. “Medical team to Dr. Lee’s lab!” he called, but he didn’t hold any hope that they would need more than a body bag. He looked at the image on the screen, the slightly awkward man lying with his glasses askew, knowing that it was most likely Rodney’s hands that had done this. His stomach clenched, but he had a job to do.

“Run the time back. When did this happen.” The counter on the screen moved backward, and Lee’s body disappeared about 10 minutes in, showing an empty lab. “Run that forward, real time.” John watched the screen, trying to find the Ancient stasis device in the shelves of artifacts. Suddenly Lee’s body appeared, the only motion the creep of the blood seeping from his body.

“Go forward and back,” John said, and he looked at the rest of the room, not the floor where the body appeared and disappeared. “Go back slowly,” he said, looking at the screen without trying to focus. “There. Back and forth, two seconds.” He spotted it, the little stasis thing that he’d seen before. “Here’s where he hacked into the cameras,” John said. “See what you can do with that.” He heard Col. Santiago giving orders behind him, but he was focused on the screen. “Now back to when the body appears.” From the camera view, John could only see two causes of death. “I need to get down there. It’s a crime scene.”

Santiago nodded, and assigned him an escort. On the way down to the lab, John thought back through the profile of the Six Ways killer, and then stopped short. He keyed his radio. “This is Sheppard. Jeannie McKay. Where is she?”

“She should be in Lab Seven,” a voice answered.

“Find her, and keep her under guard,” John said, continuing down the corridor. Once McKay—McKay’s snake—had the stasis thing, he could go back to killing. John stopped again. “What time is it?”

“Oh-twenty-two, sir,” said his escort.

After midnight. “Sunday,” John said, feeling suddenly weary. Dr. Lee had probably been killed just after midnight. That meant Dr. Lee had been killed while John was waiting for surveillance video. “He’s probably done for the day.”

“Sir?”

“He only kills on Sunday, and so far, only one person per day.”

O’Neill was waiting for them at the door to Dr. Lee’s lab. “Figured we had a bona fide homicide detective,” he said, he face and voice grim despite the light tone of the words. “You get first crack.”

John stepped through the door, pulling most his feelings into a mask. He looked at the body of Dr. Lee on the floor with much of the same dispassion he used for that first body in the hotel room. Was it a month ago? He let himself feel keenly the lack of Tameka Jones, not just for her competence but for her company. Her mild sarcasm had always helped him create the distance he needed to observe, but also kept him human. Everyone around him, even though they were military, seemed shocked. “I need a camera,” he said, “gloves, evidence bags. Competent help.” His voice came out flat and controlled, much to his own relief. Rodney— No, that thing in McKay had done this using McKay’s hands. Dr. Lee had been funny and awkward, earnest and kind. John took a breath, and pulled at his slipping mask. He’d done this too many times before, stepping in to the scene of a murder. He’d never done it when it all involved people he knew.

John looked carefully at the body. The blood at the head meant probably blunt force trauma, same as the last one. There were two distinct areas of blood seeping under the lab coat. “Anyone hear a gun shot?” John asked over his shoulder. No one had. John picked up a pen from the desk to move the collar aside. There were dark ligature marks. No sign of foaming at the mouth, only a trickle of dark blood.

“Gloves, sir,” someone behind him said, and John reached up without looking, but with a grunted thanks. He pulled on the gloves and unbuttoned the lab coat. The plaid of his shirt made it harder to find the wounds, so John unbuttoned that, too, smearing the red on the broad belly as he did so. There was a clear stab wound into the gut, but the second wound was round, right under the sternum, but the edges didn’t look like a bullet wound. That was four. John stood to look at the arrangement of limbs, estimating the distance between the arms and feet. It looked like they had the same patterns as before, but that didn’t make sense. Maybe it was habit by now?

“He can’t be far,” John said. “This happened while I was in the surveillance room.”

A young woman with Lieutenant’s bars knocked at the side of the door. “Camera, sir.”

“You a photographer?”

“Yes, sir.”

A man came in behind her, silver threads in his hair and the insignia of a staff sergeant on his sleeve. He carried a bin full of things John couldn’t quite see. “Supervising lab tech, sir. Put me to use.”

John gave them a fast lesson in processing a crime scene, and they went to work. He tried not to think about Rodney and Teyla. Other people had the problem of finding them. He had a crime scene to work.

The radio settled by his ear, he followed the search for McKay and Teyla as a series of Clear and Not here. One of the other scientists came in to inventory the Ancient artifacts to see if anything else was missing. Jeannie McKay had been moved to the security room, sat in front of a terminal, a given a radio.

“Why am I here?” she asked John.

“To find out what Rodney did to the surveillance systems.”

“Why would he do something like that?”

John winced. No one had told her. “Look,” he started, not sure what to say.

O’Neill’s voice broke in. “Jeannie, your brother got snaked. It’s one of the ones with no naquadha.”

“And the snake is the Six Ways from Sunday killer,” John said.

“Oh, God,” Jeannie said.

“Freak out off the mic,” O’Neill said, but not unkindly. “We need to track him, and you’re probably the only one who can undo whatever he did.”

“It’s Sunday,” Jeannie said. “Did he…?”

Trust a McKay brain to get to the point, John thought, but before he could answer, O’Neill broke in again. “The Goa’uld, Jeannie,” he said, “not Rodney.”

John looked at Dr. Lee’s body. “Jeannie, I don’t know the orientation of the rooms under the mountain, but we need to check if the hand and foot arrangement is the same or different.”

“Send me the photos,” she said, sounding stronger.

John hated to test her control. “Jeannie, it’s someone you probably know.” He did not want to tell her on the radio, but she needed to know before she saw the pictures.

There was a pause, and she said quietly, “Col. Santiago just told me it’s Bill. We can use the video from here to figure it out. It would help if you could give us a reference point.” She sounded almost icy over the radio, which was not something John expected. “McKay out.”

John found an old fashioned yard stick and laid it down on the line between Lee’s left arm and foot for Jeannie to have a solid point of reference. He couldn’t imagine that the polygon described by the arms and legs would surround the point of the satellite again, especially this far underground and with the ship probably gone, picked up by some SGC personnel. He stood up feeling a twinge in his back, then rubbed at it, trying to figure out how long he’d been awake.

There was nothing in Dr. Lee’s lab to indicate a struggle. John figured that Rodney had walked in, picked up the food storage thing, and attached it to Lee. Then, four kinds of murder. He stopped himself from scrubbing his hand down his face, but it was a near thing. John looked at the gathered evidence bags, and realized he’d need at least one tech on Atlantis if O’Neill wanted him to do any real police work. He wanted something stronger, but he needed coffee.

He stepped out of the room. O’Neill was gone, back to his office someone said.. They had everything they needed, and John absently released the body to the medics standing by. He looked around and didn’t see Guttierez, or anyone free to escort him, really. He didn’t think he would be in danger, but he put on the shield and headed toward the mess for coffee, thinking he should go back to the surveillance room.

He had no base ID, but he was still in the jumpsuit, so he walked like he belonged there and no one questioned him. His radio was quiet, an occasional note that an area was clear, and the mess hall was deserted, cold sandwiches and burnt coffee available at the end of the empty service line. He grabbed a sandwich and wolfed it down, standing over a trash barrel, then poured a coffee to wash it down, burning his mouth with the bitter edge. He poured another cup, thinking he’d take one to Jeannie in the surveillance room.

He walked to the elevator, the coffee hitting his system and waking up his brain. John punched the button for 28 instead of 16, bypassing surveillance and going straight down to O’Neill’s office. He chugged one of the coffees, and dropped the other in the trash when the door opened.

—

Jack sat in his office. He hadn’t wanted to leave Dr. Lee’s lab, but he’d clearly been in the way. He wanted to look over Jeannie’s shoulder. He wanted to be out with the teams looking for Teyla and McKay. He wanted a lot of things he’d never have. The security forces would not allow him to wander the halls without escort, and there wasn’t really anything he could do. Somehow, he wasn’t too surprised when McKay showed up at his door holding a zat.

“Rodney,” he said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“General.”

“How’d you get past the guards?”

McKay—the thing in McKay—gestured with the zat.

“Anything I can help you with?” Jack said, his default blandness sliding into place in the face of a dangerous situation. He had ample proof the thing in McKay was dangerous, and with access to what McKay knew? Jack wondered why McKay had bothered to come directly to him. The Goa’uld answered his unspoken question.

“He knows I cannot leave without your permission or help.”

“He?” Jack asked, knowing full well what the thing meant.

“He knows you’re not stupid, so do not play the fool with me.”

“Wasn’t sure who was home,” Jack said, keeping up his vague mask. “You can’t do that voice thing?” he said, gesturing at his throat. “Or the eyes. They’re kind of the giveaway.”

“Authorize the gate.”

“You didn’t just shoot my guards, did you? I’ll have to give them hazard pay.”

“Authorize the gate.”

“Oh, I heard you the first time. Got a name?”

“Kiriath.”

“Never heard of you.”

“I am first child of Ba’al.”

That got Jack’s attention, but he only let his eyebrows go up a fraction. “That why you kill people on Sundays?”

That got him a smirk, McKay’s usual expression for questions he considered stupid, but darker. Crazier. “Even with his knowledge, I cannot leave this planet without your stargate.”

“Why would you want to leave us?”

“The flavor is gone.”

Jack had no idea what that meant. “Excuse me?”

“It pains me to leave work unfinished, but this latest was… Unsatisfying.”

Jack caught up, but he said, “Do tell.”

“There were only five ways available to me. And you know,” Kiriath said, his eyes snapping up in a gaze that was far more Ba’al than McKay despite the difference between brown eyes and blue. The same darkness Jack remembered was now in McKay. “You know how I love variety.”

Jack felt the blood drain from his face in a wash of ice-cold fear. It was a conditioned response, trained into him by Ba’al, and a dozen deaths and resurrections in that damn sarcophagus.

McKay’s face smiled. “Oh, yes. I remember everything he did to you, we did to you, I did to you. I have all his genetic memories, and I can taste your fear and savor it all over again.”

Jack refused to give in to the paralysis, moving through the cold to give Kiriath a lopsided smirk. It was a risk, but he had to take it. “I’ve met Ba’al,” Jack said. “I’ve been tortured and killed by Ba’al. You? Not even close.”

McKay’s face turned red, his eyes widening a moment, almost as if he expected to give that Goa’uld flash of gold. “I am his son and heir!” he roared, knuckles whitening on the hand that held the zat.

“You don’t have a plan,” Jack said, “do you?”

“You will authorize dialing the gate to the planet of my choice.”

“What are you, a hijacker?” Jack said, feeling calmer. “You think we’re going to just send you out into the universe with McKay’s brain?”

Kiriath raised the zat with a wordless growl, and Jack had a moment to think, Shit. Miscalculated, before Kiriath was pulled backward with an arm around his throat. Jack didn’t know who it was, but he rushed around the desk to grab the zat from the flailing body of McKay. He could see the unruly hair of his rescuer. Sheppard. Jack took careful aim and fired, once, at McKay’s body. It went limp, but Sheppard didn’t let go.

“Sheppard,” Jack said.

“Can we get it out of him,” Sheppard said, not loosening his grip.

“If you kill him, the Goa’uld releases a poison, and he’ll really die. Let go.”

Sheppard moved his arm off McKay’s neck, and pushed him off, gently, sliding out from underneath to kneel at McKay’s side. “How do we get it out of him.”

“We’ll need help,” Jack said, wondering if the Tok’ra would answer his call. “In the mean time, we need to get him in restraints before he wakes up, which won’t be long.” Jack reached for his phone, but John was already on the radio calling for medical and security assistance to General O’Neill’s office.

—

Teyla looked too small and too fragile lying in the bed, her feet encased in bandages. Ronon sat next to her bed, his face an odd combination of both relief and murderousness. An IV snaked into her arm, full of red fluid. Teyla had lost blood through the sliced ribbons that Kiriath had made of her feet. Ronon had found her unresponsive in a supply closet, thanks to the little life signs detector.

“What do you remember?” John asked, struggling to pull the persona of the detective over his exhaustion. The last I saw he pulled you into a lab.”

“I was not certain of my suspicions at that point. Rodney often does not explain himself, and I waited while he worked. It took him only a few minutes until he was satisfied, and we left the room again. He took a piece of equipment, a box with a crystal on top. When he touched it, it glowed.”

“The life signs detector?” John asked.

“Perhaps. He would touch it periodically. He did not want to be seen, concocting some story about needing not to get sidetracked onto other projects if anyone knew he was back.” Teyla stopped for a moment, reaching for the water next to her. Ronon had it in her hand almost before John realized what she wanted. She sipped. “We went to an armory, and that’s when I knew for sure. There were two guards, and he knocked one unconscious with a single blow, and threw the second against the wall. Our Rodney is not that strong.”

“But a Goa’uld host…” John said, remembering Rodney describing how a snaked Mitchell had thrown Elmo, who’d been about six-three.

“Yes,” she said. “He was fast. I tried to take him down, but he slapped me as if I were an insect. Before I could get up, he picked up a zat and shot me. The next thing I remember was Ronon carrying me.” She glanced over at Ronon, then to her feet. “He didn’t want to kill me. He only wanted to make sure I could not follow him even when I awoke.”

“She was gagged,” Ronon said, looking at Teyla, “and her hands tied. Taped.” John could see the rectangular patch of reddened skin around her mouth, now that he looked. Ronon reached down and touched the top of her feet, his big hand stretching across both insteps. “We have to wait on her feet. Time, or until we can go back home.”

Teyla reached out and touched Ronon’s arm. “The healing device is only for life or death situations, Ronon. I am well enough.” She didn’t quite look it, but John could tell she would be okay. “What about Rodney?”

John hesitated. “He has a Goa’uld in him named Kyria, Kiri-something. General O’Neill says some of their allies have ways of removing the parasites, but…”

“The parasites have a poison in them that can kill the host. I have read about them. No word from the Tok'ra or the Asgard?” She asked.

John swallowed and shook his head. "The plan is to keep him sedated.” John’s body turned involuntarily toward the door, a suppressed desire to see Rodney, even if someone else was in his head. Even though he tried to stop himself turning, he’d moved enough to see Jeannie McKay hovering, her expression scared.

“Hey,” John said.

Teyla looked over John’s shoulder and smiled warmly, looking for a moment like her usual self. “Jeannie.”

“Are you okay?” Jeannie asked, going to Teyla’s bedside. “Rodney didn’t— I mean the Goa’uld in him didn’t—“

“I will recover,” Teyla said.

Jeannie sat down heavily on the bed, visibly shaken. “A Goa’uld.” She looked up a John. “I should have figured it out.”

Teyla took Jeannie’s hand. “How could you have known?”

“The satellite. That should have been the giveaway.”

“Have you ever known a Goa’uld to act in this way? To murder for no reason other than pleasure?” Teyla said.

"Yes, but no. Not to make an art project out of it." Jeannie shook her head, then looked at John. “You caught him?”

John nodded. “He’s in isolation, knocked out, if you want to see him. General O’Neill is looking for a way to get it out of him.”

“I should want to see him, but I can’t. I don’t want to hear that thing speaking out of his mouth.”

John reached out as if to put a hand on her shoulder, but he pulled it back, not sure if it would be welcome, or even if he wanted to touch her. Jeannie was turned away and didn’t see, but Ronon met his gaze and gestured with his chin toward the door. John dipped his head once, and turned without speaking to find the isolation ward.

He saw O’Neill standing by a bed, and assumed that was Carter, but he didn’t want to disturb them. A corpsman pointed the way to the isolation room, and the guards at the door let John in without question. John looked at the body in the bed, strapped down across the chest, padded shackles on wrists and ankles. He was wired for monitoring, and the machines quietly registered heartbeat, oxygen, other things John wasn’t sure of. Rodney’s face didn’t look right. It wasn’t sleep-slack, but tense, and John didn’t know what to make of it. The body was still, the only movement a pulse in his neck, and that made John think about what else was in Rodney’s neck, coiled around his spine. He suddenly wanted to see it.

The life signs detector. He left the room and walked over to O’Neill, clearing his throat so as not to surprise him. Carter lay on the bed, an IV in her arm. She was pale, with a thin line of bruising across her neck. O’Neill glanced up. “Sheppard.”

“Sir. She going to be okay?”

O’Neill nodded, looking back at her. “How’s Teyla?”

“Fine.” John said.

“You need something?”

John took a breath, surprised by a sudden hesitance. “The life signs detector. The big one. Can I use it?”

O’Neill looked at him, his gaze searching. “You want to see that thing in him?” John nodded. O’Neill’s lips quirked—suppressed smile, resignation, something John couldn’t read. “He took it from her lab,” he said, looking back at Carter.

“I know. Teyla said he was carrying it with him up until he shot her.” John thought about handling a gun and the life signs detector, both. Carrying it would be like coming close to touching it, not overwhelming, but still more information than anyone could process and still be able to talk. And shooting someone when you could see what it did? No way. Rodney hadn’t had it in his hands in O’Neill’s office. Where would he have set it down? “Could it be in your office?”

O’Neill keyed his radio and tasked someone to look for it, specifying no ATA, and asked to have the device brought to the infirmary. John went back to sit beside Rodney and wait.

—

John woke up, startling at the sound of the door. An SF stood there, holding the life signs detector box, the truncated cone on the top dull. John looked at the clock on the wall. It was 04:13. “Took a while to find, huh?”

“Yes, sir. Where shall I put it?”

John gestured at the rolling table tucked back to the wall behind Rodney’s head. He wasn’t ready to touch the device, yet, and he didn’t want to do it without someone else in the room, someone he knew and maybe even trusted a little bit. “Wait here,” he said, and went out into the open area where Teyla’s bed had been. There was a curtain around it now, and around Carter’s. John found a bathroom, and took a few minutes to pull himself together, splashing water on his face, and looking up to see the beads dripping off his stubble. He looked like hell, but damn if he hadn’t had a long day, starting with a trip into space.

He shook his head, letting the droplets fly off, spattering the mirror. He wanted a shower, but it would have to wait, so he steeled himself with a breath. He could do this. On the way back to the isolation room he stopped by Teyla’s bed. Ronon was there, sleeping sprawled in a chair, a hand on Teyla’s arm—the contact of a guard, not a lover. John thought about waking him, wondering if maybe this couldn’t wait until morning, but there was an itch in the back of his brain that he didn't want to listen to. He shifted on bare feet, wanting to will himself to go, to sleep, to have the guard put the device in another room.

Ronon opened an eye, a deliberate gesture to let John know that he was awake. John didn’t know how to respond, so he let Ronon's wakefulness make the decision. He cocked his head toward the door to the isolation room. Ronon rose from the chair, graceful as a cat, and followed John toward the isolation room. Inside the door, John dismissed the SF. Ronon looked at the life signs detector, and then at John. “This couldn’t wait?”

“What couldn’t wait?” said Rodney’s voice.

John’s head snapped around in surprise. Rodney looked at him from the bed, his expression almost flat, but looking like he was trying to cover an expression of haughty disdain. “You couldn’t wait to free me? Question me? Fuck me?”

John froze at the last two words. Jaw clenched, he said, “Who are you?”

A little more of the attempted mask slipped. “Kiriath, child of Ba’al.”

“Did you kill Dr. Lee?”

The mask dropped entirely, and Kiriath narrowed Rodney’s eyes, pulling up a side of the lip in a sneer. “Of course.”

“And all those other people?” John asked.

The sneer became a smile, smug and self-satisfied. “Of course.” John couldn’t glance away. He had faced killers before, and he almost felt sorry for those that killed in passion or accident, weeping in their fear and guilt. He had never faced one that was proud of the crime. Soldiers he understood, the pride in their work, the need to make the enemy into an other that could be killed. It might have shown on his face, because Kiriath looked at John for a long moment, and laughed, a practiced derision.

“Why?” John asked.

The laugh cut off. “Because it was beautiful. Because it was a tribute. Because I could. Because I had nothing better to do.”

John wouldn’t let himself look away. McKay’s eyes were not Rodney’s eyes. All of the expression in the minute movements of the muscles around his eyelids and brows lacked that focus and intelligence John found so attractive. This was not Rodney. This was an insane thing, and John remembered Jeannie's comment. He stepped closer, and Kiriath pulled at one of the restraints. John put a half smile on his face, pulled on the near-insubordinate attitude that had both allowed him to survive the Air Force, and ultimately proved his downfall. “So you’re an artist?”

Kiriath’s eyes flew open wide. “You understand!”

“Sure,” John said, ignoring Ronon’s intake of breath behind him and playing along as hard as he could. “You know what Rodney knew about me, right?” Kiriath nodded. “What the psych idiots missed was how it felt to see the bomb patterns on the ground, to know what they meant.”

“He had your full file, not the redacted one,” Kiriath said, and John could swear there was lust in his voice. “Those black operations…”

“The blackest,” John said, “but sanctioned. They didn’t care how I did it, as long as it got done.”

“I bet it was beautiful,” Kiriath breathed.

John schooled his face against a wash of memories, of images he’d spent years suppressing, of pain he’d never let himself feel. He glanced over to Ronon, feeling like a traitor, but the rush of disconnection and fear made him grab for any kind of lifeline. Ronon had to know that he was going along with this to get something from Kiriath, and John trusted that he’d follow and pretend.

John wasn’t sure how much he was pretending, how much the satisfaction of doing his job had always overridden any sense of his targets as people. But every one of the victims of every homicide he’d ever worked—they were people. A realization hit him with an unexpected epiphany. The satisfaction of his police work lay in retribution for their deaths. He chased killers because he had been one. He was one. He would be again.

How much of this showed on his face, he couldn’t be sure, but he was glad he was facing Ronon. He looked up into Ronon’s eyes, and Ronon nodded, like it was permission and absolution. John looked back at Kiriath, his smirk back in place. “It was beautiful.”

Kiriath’s eyes narrowed a bit. “He wants to love you. He thinks you’re noble and good.” A strange smile twisted Rodney’s mouth. “I want to love you, too. I think you’re like me. I may be glad I didn’t kill you.”

“Only maybe?” John said, trying to be flirtatious.

“Maybe,” Kiriath said, and John saw the insanity in the eyes.

He almost laughed because all he could think of was the line from the movie The Princess Bride, so he spoke it aloud. “Good night, Westley. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”

Kiriath laughed at that, head back in true surprise.

John felt like he had his moment, so he took it. “I want to see you,” he said.

Kiriath pulled in McKay’s eyebrows in a frown of slight confusion. “You can see me.”

John shook his head. “The real you.”

Kiriath’s narrowed his eyes, expression almost cartoonishly suspicious. “You’re trying to get me to come out of my host.”

John shook his head. “I want to see you, inside McKay. I bet that’s just…” John paused, purposefully licked his lips. “I bet it’s beautiful.”

“Kiss me, and I’ll come out. We could be together.”

John shook his head, swallowing bile as he said, “Then we wouldn’t have McKay’s brain with you. You’d have McKay’s brain after you. After us.” John tried to put an expression on his face that would work, and he chose one he had seen on his captors in Iraq. “I want to see you in his brain,” John said.

“The machine?” Kiriath asked.

“I have it here,” John said. He didn’t look over his shoulder, but just trusted Ronon to go along. “He’ll make sure we’re not disturbed.”

“You can do this without my permission,” Kiriath said.

“But if you know I’m looking, you’ll be more beautiful for me,” John said. It felt stilted as he said it, and he suppressed the feeling of bile again in his throat, but it seemed to work.

Kiriath shimmied Rodney’s body in a caricature of, well, John didn’t know what. “Come on then.”

John swallowed, and put his hand on Rodney’s arm, then touched the cone of the life signs detector. It lit up under his hand, and the rush of everything, all of Rodney’s body, threatened to overwhelm John’s mind, but it didn’t fit his memory. The sharp, bright lines of Rodney’s brain were different, darker. John focused on the screws in Rodney’s arm, used those as a starting place, letting his attention go up Rodney’s shoulder and then to the neck, where Kiriath wound around Rodney’s spine. But he could see into Kiriath, too, the brain and the attaching tendrils to Rodney’s nervous system, the vestigial organs, and the far too well developed poison sacs. Rodney had a scar in his throat where the symbiont had burrowed in, not completely healed.

John focused on the poison sacs, hoping that the inference he’d drawn was correct. Mitchell had said it seemed like Rodney had been helping with the healing when he used the life signs detector on John. John thought that maybe, just maybe, the device was more than a detector. What if it allowed someone to manipulate the body, not just see it?

There was no chance to test it. He had to work now, but he had to distract Kiriath. If Rodney could talk to Mitchell while using the device, John would have to talk, too. “I can see you,” he said, as he pushed, slightly, at Rodney’s gut, the rope of small intestine, slowing the rhythm of contractions, just enough to know he could do it. It worked, but he knew he would have to work fast. He spoke aloud, both to orient himself and to distract Kiriath, standing to move his hand to Rodney’s face. “You wrap around the spine, and I can see where you have tendrils reaching in. Spirals,” he said, and then stopped. John knew he was bad at romantic talk, and that was what he was shooting for, but he had no idea if it was working.

“You like that?” Kiriath said, a strange sort of insecurity in his expression.

“Beautiful,” John breathed, looking into McKay’s eyes, but his real attention was on the poison sacs, wondering if he could cut them off, if he could do it without Kiriath noticing. To do that, he had to talk, and to talk, he had to lie.

Ronon’s voice rumbled, “Tell me.”

And John felt relief crash through him, like Ronon got it. “He takes over,” John started, and then he began a monologue he barely could barely focus on, even while he was giving it. His attention was elsewhere, using the device to sever the connection to Kiriath’s poison glands, to re-open the hole in Rodney’s neck that Kiriath had bored through. John took a breath, and put as much fake love and lust into his voice as he could, saying, “And he has access to all of Rodney’s secrets, so the Goa’uld lust and Rodney’s brain are both there.” And with there, he mentally snipped every one of Kiriath’s tendrils, and reached into Rodney’s mouth, fingers diving through the hole he’d remade to grab that goddamned snake.

With his fingers and his mind he unwound the Goa’uld from Rodney’s spine, snipping off every tendril as they tried to regrow, and pulled it out from Rodney’s throat, the body of the snake between two fingers, shifting to a full-handed grip as soon as it was free of Rodney’s mouth. The head of the snake whipped around, twin crests rising from either side of its head, the mouth open, hissing, and the eyes black as onyx. It tried to dive out of John’s hand, straight toward his face, but he tightened his grip against the slipperiness of Rodney’s blood, letting go of the device to grip it with two hands.

He wanted to kill it, to drop it on the floor and crush it beneath his boots. John restrained himself as well as he could, looking around for something to put it in. John barely heard Ronon calling for help, the beeping of the machines attached to Rodney making a background cacophony. As much as he wanted to kill it, he thought that O’Neill and the others would want to have it. As the doctors and nurses crowded into the room, he stepped out of the way, out the door, asking, “What do I do with this?”

A pale woman in scrubs, who had been running toward the isolation room, stopped so hard that she skidded, leaning back to get her balance. “Holy crap, that’s a Goa’uld!”

“What do I do with it?” John asked again.

“Hang on!” she said, and turned to run in the opposite direction. John followed, and she met him in the open area of the infirmary, carrying a glass jar. “Here!” John dropped it in, and she turned away again, snapping a lid on it and calling, “Tell them I have it!”

John wasn’t sure who he was supposed to tell, but he turned and ran back to the isolation room. Rodney was surrounded by people, but John wanted to get close to him, to use the detector again. He saw an opening near Rodney’s head, next to the table where the device stood, so he moved in. One of the people working, noticed him. “What did you do?”

“I took it out of him.”

“How?”

“I just did,” John said, exasperated and not sure how to even begin to describe it. He put his hand on the device and his palm on Rodney’s cheek, fingers trailing around his jaw line, and he was there again, moving his awareness to Rodney’s throat and brain. The darkness in his brain was gone, but there was something different, still something missing. John focused down to the ragged hole he’d left in Rodney’s throat, pushing it closed, asking the very cells of his body to knit back together.

“He’s stabilizing,” John heard someone say, and John leaned over and laid his head down next to Rodney’s, letting his fingers drop off the device. He was close enough to the detector that he could still feel all the living things around him, but it wasn’t overwhelming or impossible to ignore. Someone shoved a chair under his knees, and he sat down, one hand on the lowered bed rail, one still on Rodney’s face, resettling his head next to Rodney’s. Then everything went to black.

—

Jack looked at the two beds, situated head to head, that damn life signs detector nearby. No one had returned his request for help, not the Tok’ra or the Asgard, but he hadn’t really expected it. If they called back, he would give Kiriath to the Tok’ra to study. In the mean time, it was in a vat, looking as supremely angry as a snake could look.

Jack glanced over at the life signs detector. When he got close to it he could sense every person in the infirmary and in the hallways beyond, so he was hanging back by the door. Sheppard and McKay were lying so that their heads shared a pillow, feet in opposite directions. When they’d separated them, both had become agitated, and when they’d tried to take the device from the room, Sheppard had looked pained and eventually cried out. This bed configuration seemed to be the only way to keep them calm. Dr. Frasier wasn’t sure exactly why they were still unconscious, especially Sheppard, but she’d asked Jack down to deal with that damned device.

He looked over at Carter, sitting next to him in a wheelchair, pale, but improving from having had a soldering iron jammed under her ribs. “You ready, sir?” she asked. “Just touch it and think off.

Jack nodded. “Not sure I want to know the roach count.”

“Just be quick, sir.”

Jack glanced at Dr. Frazier, and then walked over to the device and put one finger on top of the truncated cone, and caught a flash of sensation, as if everything he’d already been able to sense just from proximity to the device had solidified out of a fog, the details coming clear. He thought OFF as hard as he could, and it faded, but slowly, as if there was something else keeping it going.

When the light completely dimmed, Sheppard and McKay opened their eyes.

“What—“ McKay started to say, but his voice was hoarse.

“Don’t try to talk,” Dr. Frasier said. “There’s no good way to say this, so I’ll be straight. You had a Goa’uld in you.”

“Out how?” McKay rasped.

Jack said, “Sheppard here pulled it out without killing you. We’d love to know how he did that.”

“Just reached in and grabbed it,” Sheppard said, sitting up. “You can do… stuff. With that thing,” he said gesturing vaguely toward the now-dark device. Sheppard looked at McKay, who was looking back, head and neck craned to try to see him well. Sheppard stood up, and McKay followed him with his eyes as Sheppard started to unbuckle the restraints. Jack noticed the SF’s moving forward, but he waved them back “You don’t need these,” Sheppard said. When he had McKay loose, he offered a hand to help him sit up, then held a glass of water, positioning the straw without being asked.

“How long,” McKay rasped, letting the straw drop from his lips.

Jack paused a beat to see if Sheppard would answer, but he didn’t. Jack cleared his throat before starting. “Last thing you remember is going over to that tel’tak, right?”

“Guy with a zat,” Rodney whispered.

“Right. You got zatted, and the crazy Goa’uld who’d been killing people on Sundays took over your body,” Jack said. “Remember any of it?”

Jack had never seen anything on McKay’s face like the horror and fear that claimed him. McKay had stayed cool under fire, stepped over bodies to get to computers, and Jack had never seen it get to him. “Did I—?” He looked at Carter, drew the right conclusion, and shut down. He couldn’t even finish the question.

“You didn’t,” Carter said.

“Its name was Kiriath, and we have it in a jar if you want to see it.” Jack gestured toward the door. “We’re sending it to the Tok’ra, if they ever call us back.”

McKay shook his head.

Sheppard moved away from McKay, standing next to Jack. “My case is closed,” Sheppard said, not speaking directly to McKay, but just addressing the room at large. “I think I’m ready for a new job.” He stopped, interrupting himself, sounding suddenly unsure. “If you still think I’m a good fit.”

“If you can do stuff with that thing,” McKay said, heedless of his throat, “there is no way in hell I am not bringing you to Atlantis.”

Jack carefully didn’t smirk, but he saw Carter’s eyebrows. McKay swearing meant that John Sheppard didn’t stand a chance.

—

John stood in the middle of his apartment in Las Vegas, a few half-full boxes at his feet, a letter to Tameka Jones on the table. He didn’t want to go back to the department, but he didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye. He’d written her a simple note, not able to tell her directly how much he’d valued her skill, realizing he’d considered her a friend. She also deserved to know that she had made it possible for Jeannie McKay to crack the pattern, even if he couldn’t tell her what it was. John had also emailed a letter for her file to Captain Hendricks. Tameka was the person he’d miss the most from the department.

He looked at the boxes, not sure of what he would need in an alien galaxy. His Johnny Cash CDs were packed, and most of his clothes, and a few framed pictures that had been in the back of his drawer for years—one of Nancy and Holland making faces at the camera, another a family picture from before his mother had died with John and his brother looking impossibly young. His skateboard stuck out of one of the boxes. He didn’t know what else he might want to take. The knock on the door was a welcome distraction.

Rodney stood there, holding a cardboard tube. He wore a suit, the collar and cuffs crisp, and the mailing tube seemed like an inappropriate accessory. “May I come in?” He seemed diffident.

John stood aside, “It’s a bit of a mess,” he said, just to say something.

“You’re taking a skateboard?”

“You can’t be surprised,” John said. “I finally got to read the file you have on me.” He’d made it a condition of taking the job. John needed to know what Rodney thought he knew about him, beyond the spearmint gum and that thing with the pole dancer and her boyfriend when he was seventeen. John quoted from the analysis, “Attachment to juvenile activities.”

Rodney quoted also, finishing the conclusion, paraphrasing from the report. “As the one point of stability as the son of a high-roller and con man, possible whether you lived in luxury hotels or rented a trailer.”

John couldn’t help the twist of smile. After reading Rodney's file, John had any number of pieces of ammunition to use, starting from Rodney’s home-built nuclear weapon, or the mess he’d made of his personal relationships before meeting Elmo Cerutti. He’d also read everything written by one Dr. Sanders, the expedition’s counselor. He thought Rodney had nearly cracked after Elmo’s death in the first months they were stranded in Pegasus, reporting how he’d nearly ruined the science department by treating everyone as beneath him. Sumner’s reports had recorded a Come to Jesus conversation with Rodney, telling him to buck up or just go feed himself to a Wraith before he got them all killed, and Would Elmo have wanted that?

John looked at Rodney. It was the first time he’d seen him since reading the report. Rodney’s diffidence probably had something to do with knowing he’d read it. They hadn’t been alone together since John had pulled the snake out of Rodney, through circumstance, mostly, but neither one had tried to change it. Now Rodney was here, but as starched as John had ever seen him. It was hard to even imagine him in a hoodie with a day’s growth of beard.

Rodney glanced up, then away, his face looking composed, covering some kind of feeling. Maybe he was wondering what John thought of him, now that he’d read the unedited file. The truth was, Rodney scared him, but he scared him like jumping out of an airplane scared him. He still wanted to do it. John held out his hand, palm up. Rodney looked at it for a long moment, his eyebrows slightly drawn in, and John felt a cold wash as Rodney put the cardboard tube into his hand. “It’s for your Johnny Cash poster.”

“You didn’t have to hand-deliver it,” John said, barely gripping the tube enough to keep from dropping it, only to stop himself from trying to crush it.

“You know everything now,” Rodney said. John nodded, looking at the tube so he wouldn’t have to look at Rodney. “We won’t have to work too closely together.”

John didn’t know what to say to that, or even quite why Rodney had said it. There was a short silence, and John caught the flash of navy wool in his peripheral vision as Rodney turned toward the door. “You know,” John said, looking up to see Rodney with his fingers on the door handle. “You’re talking like we had a bad breakup, but we never even had that second date.” Rodney’s head turned quickly, confusion and hope chasing quickly across his face, then gone. John continued trying to sound teasing, and hearing himself fail, “Of course, you didn’t have all that many second dates until Elmo.”

Rodney’s fingers dropped abruptly off the door handle and curled into a fist as he turned, his expression schooled into blankness despite his body’s reaction.

“Their loss,” John said quietly. A flash of something crossed Rodney’s face, and John said, “Now you know how I felt with your exactly everything about you crap. Hell, I’ve seen inside your guts with that detector.”

“Much less read my file,” Rodney added. Rodney looked hesitant, not an expression he usually wore. “Elmo was good for me,” Rodney said. “He was solid, and he loved me, and he wouldn’t take any of my crap.”

They were quiet for a few moments, and finally John took a step toward Rodney. “Look,” he said. “I think we both know where this is going.” He tossed the cardboard tube toward the box, and moved before he could let himself think about it any more. He took Rodney’s face in his hands, and kissed him, gentle at first, letting Rodney adjust, and then Rodney grabbed John and kissed him back.

Rodney did not kiss like Kiriath, and John let himself feel profoundly grateful before he let the sensation sweep him in a different direction altogether.

—

“Sorry I was… First time since…” Rodney trailed his big, competent hand down John’s flank as they lay in bed, looking at each other, sweat drying. John burrowed his head into Rodney’s shoulder. This had been very much a first time for him, too—the first time it wasn’t hushed or hurried. John hadn’t lasted any longer than Rodney, the first time, and they’d not stopped kissing until after a second round. John’s lips were sore. “I think we need to share quarters on the Daedelus,” Rodney said. John made a noise of agreement, kissing Rodney’s neck just above the burn scars, the salt stinging the small cuts on his mouth. “Stop that,” Rodney said. “We need to get moving. How much more do you have to pack?”

“Clothes are done. Music. Skateboard,” John mumbled into Rodney’s shoulder.

“I brought the tube for the Cash poster.”

John pulled back and sat upright. “Damn. It’s still on my desk in the office.”

“We can run by there,” Rodney said. “You can say goodbye.”

John thought about the letter to Tameka on his table. He could hand-deliver it.

“Come on,” Rodney said groaning slightly as he stood up. At first he seemed unembarrassed at his nakedness, but then, as if remembering where he was, he reached for his shorts.

John put a hand on Rodney’s arm. He didn’t want to retreat back into his own head, and if Rodney hid away again, John would, too. They knew each other so well now, and in some ways hardly at all. John wanted to do things differently than he ever had before. He needed to, and he had to start with the little things. All he said was, “Shower.”

—

They took John’s car to the police station, as Rodney had had himself beamed directly to John’s front door. John put the poster in the tube, looked around his office one last time, and closed the door. His visit with Hendricks was brief. John put his gun and badge on Hendricks’s desk. “We got him,” he said.

“Anything I’m allowed to know?” Hendricks asked.

“He was crazy,” John said, “and it was some weird art project.”

“I see.”

“You’ll get an official communication from the—“

“Denver Procurement Office?” Hendricks interrupted.

“Air Force,” Rodney said. “We’ll make sure the contributions of your team are well described.”

“Fair enough,” Hendricks said. “Got your note about Jones,” he said to John.

“She’s the best,” John said.

Hendricks nodded. “She is. You were pretty good, too, despite all the warnings about you.”

“Thanks,” John said, hearing Rodney snort behind him. Hendricks stuck out his hand, and John shook it. “Thanks,” he said again, and Hendricks grunted a good luck, dismissing him.

They went next to see Tameka. She looked up from the computer at her lab bench when John knocked on her open door. “Where have you been?” she asked.

“TDY,” John said, knowing she’d get the military reference to a temporary duty assignment. “It’s going to be permanent. I’m, well, I’m moving. Pretty far.” He stumbled on his words. He hated lying to her. “I just. Here,” he said, handing her the envelope with the letter.

She took it, glancing at the address, raising an eyebrow at the stamp. She looked up at him, then at Rodney. John watched her take his measure before turning back. “You’re going to hug me goodbye,” she said. “I know you don’t like it, but you’re going to do it.”

She put her arms around him, and after a moment he hugged her back, bending his neck until her curls tickled his nose. She ended the hug with a final squeeze, and then walked over to Rodney. She put a finger on his chest. “I don’t know who you are, but you be good to him,” she said.

Rodney took a step back, looking at her finger. John was amused. People were rarely that familiar with Dr. Rodney McKay, and John was sure Tameka had figured on that. She hadn’t become the only woman on her team by being unobservant. The show was as much for his amusement as to make an impression on Rodney. John smiled. “Goodbye,” he said. “I’ll miss you.”

“Yes, you will, but you have him to distract you,” she said, turning back to her computer, setting the letter next to the keyboard. “Now get out of here. I have work to do.”

When they were back in John’s car, heading to Area 51, Rodney asked, “How did she know we were together?”

John grinned and touched his lips, which were still tender from kissing for an hour straight. “She’s a crime scene tech. She’s very observant.”

—

They sat at the front of the gateship. In the back was Miller, who would pilot the ship back to Area 51. There were also some last-minute supplies, including two cases of scotch, plus John’s things—two duffels of clothing, an open box with the skateboard and poster tube sticking out, and a sealed box mostly full of music and movie discs. Rodney had tried to convinced John he didn’t need any of the music discs, but John didn’t trust him on that score. Cash was an acquired taste. Ronon and Teyla had beamed aboard the Daedelus, and Rodney had a few bags for them, including a box of Cinnabon for Ronon.

Rodney reached out, resting his hand on John’s shoulder. “Say good bye to Earth. You won’t be here for a while,” Rodney said. “It’s why we took the gateship instead of beaming up.”

“I could have seen it from an observation window on the Daedelus,” John said, but Rodney didn’t say anything. John turned the ship around to face the planet, taking in the greens and blues, the swirl of white cloud. “Okay,” John said after a moment, and turned the ship, feeling like he was pulling out his roots and opening himself toward space.

Rodney slid his hand down John’s arm, hooking his pinky through John’s in a gesture that seemed oddly childish, but totally Rodney. John accelerated toward the Daedelus, slipping his little finger from Rodney’s as the ship came into view. John slid his hand under Rodney’s palm to lace their fingers together, glancing at the dent that remained from Rodney’s wedding ring. He felt himself closing off, but stopped. “You took it off for me,” he said.

“What?”

John touched the empty spot on Rodney’s third finger.

“That,” Rodney started, but he interrupted himself, lifting their hands to his lips. “It was time.”

John felt Rodney’s lips move with the words. “Yeah,” he said. “Speaking of time…” John keyed the comm system. “Daedelus, this is gateship 10 requesting permission to come aboard.”

“Gateship 10, this is Daedelus control. Head for flight bay two, Sheriff. We will open when you’re ready to park.”

“Sheriff?” John looked at Rodney, who didn’t look in the least surprised, eyebrows raised in challenge.

“Get used to it,” he said, and John could feel Rodney's lips moving against his hand, still held to Rodney's mouth. John raised his eyebrows back, questioning. Rodney lowered their joined hands, and smiled. “You’re about to be a law man on the wild frontier.”

John snorted, amusement steadying the apprehension and the excitement. The Daedelus appeared in the view screen, and John looped it once, happy to finally see it from the outside in all its science fiction glory. He found the big 2 painted on the side and headed toward it. “Daedelus, we are ready,” John said into the radio.

He turned to Rodney, and squeezed his hand. “We are, aren’t we?”