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Fic - Heurískein
Posting this a bit before Yule because I don't trust myself to post/code it in what will most definitely be a sleep deprived state.
Title: Heurískein
Genre: Gen, though McShep if you squint, Crossover
Length: ~ 4000 words
Rating: PG-13 for mild language
Spoilers: SGA through “Miller’s Crossing” and Eureka general knowledge
Synopsis: The infection is not gone nor forgotten, and is currently wreaking havoc on the Millers and the McKays. John is caught in the middle.
Author’s Notes: Holiday present-type thing for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
threnodyjones because I heard-tell that she likes crossovers of a sort and because she tends to rock like a rocking thing. SGA crossover with Eureka, with a few extra guests as well.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of them, people with a lot of money do. I’m just borrowing them to play and making no profit from this.
~~~~~~~~~~
Heurískein: Greek - to find, to discover.
“So it’s a town of geeks?” John asked, following the little GPS unit’s directions and making a right turn.
“It’s a town of extremely intelligent people,” Rodney corrected. “It’s a town set up to let their intelligence have free rein and let their little minds run wild.”
“So, it’s a town full of geeks getting their geek on?” Sheppard amended with a smirk.
“Essentially,” Rodney conceded with a matching grin.
Sheppard eyed the little display again, not fully trusting something that had a “special” chip added just to find a town. If he were to believe what it said, they were almost there. “And how did Jeannie get caught up with them?”
Rodney snorted and reached for his cup of coffee, frowning at what must have been only the dregs. “Are you kidding? Both of us have pretty much permanent offers to live there whenever we get tired of doing whatever we are doing. Given my work with the SGC, they’d probably want me to work with Global, but whatever.” He up-ended his cup, shaking it to get the last drops. “Jeannie just finally accepted.”
John focused on a particularly slippery turn at the bottom of a hill, silently cursing the snow that had fallen the night before. “Her work solving your problems got her interested again?” he guessed.
“Not quite,” Rodney replied, looking out the window at the passing landscape. When he spoke next it was quieter, and with a hint of what John had learned to recognize as remorse. “More like she wasn’t satisfied with the security the SGC provided, or didn’t provide as it were, after the whole nanite programming fiasco. She thought it would be safer, for her and for her family.”
“And what do you think?” John asked, slowing slightly to stall for time as the little readout said what they were looking for should be just over the next hill. He knew what kind of security the SGC could offer, and he also knew they had not lived up to their full potential when it came to the Millers, simply assuming they were safe and never actually making certain it was the truth. They had promised to do better, now knowing the risk they put her in, but he could understand her wariness to believe them. If this little town could do better, more power to them.
Rodney shook his head. “I lived there for a few years after college, was recruited out of there actually,” he sighed. Turning to finally look away from the window, he added, “Let’s just say that I agree it might be safer than her house, but it’s got a few problems of its own.”
Sheppard thought about that for a moment, knowing from his own experiences that the pursuit of knowledge often came with painful errors. Multiply that by a town full of pursuers, and he could only imagine the damage they could wreak. Another thought crossed his mind, and he couldn’t help but voice it. “What the hell is Kaleb doing while they live here?”
At that, Rodney smiled. “Mr. English Major is teaching... English... at their elementary school.” He put his empty cup in the holder and mused, “There’s a chance he’s going to be teaching his own daughter soon, actually, though Madison might be beyond that. She’s very bright you know; gets it from the McKay side of the family.”
Sheppard chuffed out a laugh at that, McKay pride always being something he could count on. “At least they’re all keeping busy?” he offered.
Rodney returned to looking out the window. “Yeah, something like that.”
There was an unmistakable, for them anyway, feeling of passing through a force field and a sign appeared over the next rise, welcoming them to Eureka. “Well, it looks like we found it.”
~~~~~~~~~~
The reunion, like apparently most things McKay, did not go as smoothly as planned.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” Rodney demanded, hands flailing. He must have seen how close he came to whapping his sister in the face as he suddenly backed up to begin pacing. John gave them credit for getting the layout of the new house to near identical to the original.
“What was I supposed to say?” Jeannie challenged, her own hands waving in the air. “I know! How about, ‘Hey Mer, why don’t you come visit the new place for a few weeks and by the way did I mention I might be dying?’ Somehow, oddly enough, I didn’t think that was going to fly.”
Rodney whipped around at that, a panicked expression on his face. He grasped her hands in his own, seeking out her gaze, begging, “Don’t say that. Please, don’t say that. Not dying... not because...”
“It’s not because of you,” she swore, shaking her head and blinking suspiciously wet eyes. “It’s because of some asshole who tried to control something he had no right to control. Nothing more. I just happened to get caught in the middle.”
“Because of me, Jeannie,” he insisted. “He never would have come after you if it hadn’t been for me. For my research and my involving you and...”
“You paid that debt,” she told him.
“With a Prius,” John helpfully added from his spot on the couch. Kaleb nodded beside him.
Not surprisingly, they were ignored. “I obviously didn’t pay enough if you’re dying, again, from the same damn thing,” Rodney groused.
“You know, it’s probably a good thing Maddy is at school what with all this profanity,” Kaleb confided.
John made mental notes to both watch his own language around the Millers and to never introduce Kaleb or Madison to the Marines. “What’s she taking?” he asked instead, figuring for the basic reading, writing, and arithmetic.
His companion looked at his watch to verify the time and replied, “She should be in intro to Geometry right now. I think her elementary Physics class is over.”
John raised his eyebrows and reminded himself, once again, that this was not your standard town. He turned his attention back to the feuding siblings, only to realize he had missed the grand finale as Rodney was now promising his sister to do everything in his power to make her better, even if it involved stealing alien technology. Hoping that the place wasn’t bugged, he voiced his agreement to the matter.
Jeannie smiled slightly, finally sitting down beside him. “Global Dynamics is already working on the problem,” she told him. “They have some interesting ideas, though nothing they have tried so far has worked.”
Rodney snorted to let his opinion on this issue be known, but John took the opportunity to confess, “I still don’t understand why the Goa’uld tech didn’t work. If the nanites are inert, isn’t it down to just a basic healing issue at this point?”
“They aren’t inert, not completely,” Rodney sighed, sitting down on the coffee table across from his sister. “They somehow had enough juice left in them to realize there are others out there, in her blood stream, and are trying to both combine them and keep them alive. They don’t seem to be replicating beyond an initial rush, that we can tell, but they aren’t breaking down either. When the doctors first noticed some of the symptoms, they tried the Goa’uld tech, and the energy sped up the process instead of healing her.”
“I have what’s essentially a nanite tumor,” Jeannie broke it down for him even more. “As they were attempting to ‘cure’ my epilepsy last time, the highest concentration of them was in my brain, and that appears to be where they are congregating.”
“And it can’t be surgically removed?” he tried.
“There are too many of them floating around in my blood stream. They even tried a transfusion, only for them to appear in the new blood as well,” she explained.
“Short of removing every drop of blood in her body and replacing it, it doesn’t look like it’s going to work,” Kaleb added, not quite sounding like himself.
John turned to look at him, remembering the anxious, passionate man who was pissed at him and Rodney and the SGC as a whole when his wife was initially taken. “You’re taking this remarkably well,” he offered.
Kaleb let his head loll back against the couch, letting him see the slight glassy tones to his overwide eyes. “One thing Global Dynamics apparently has en mass is a large supply of anti-anxiety drugs.”
~~~~~~~~~~
That was apparently that. The next three days involved Rodney disappearing into the depths of Global Dynamics with his sister during the day, returning at night to berate their incompetence and the ego of some man named Stark that was in charge. John helped Madison with her homework and made a few calls of his own to research what he could, and Kaleb continued to walk around like the Stepford version of himself. The only redeeming thing to the whole situation was a little café that provided limitless real coffee and was willing to sneak them non-vegetarian dishes when the Millers were not looking.
The third night involved a dinner of wonderfully nutritious vegan lasagna followed by raiding the pack of beef jerky a kind man named Vincent had given them for their room. Jeannie offered to make them some tea, and Rodney followed her to the stove not to help, but to continue their discussion on the ionic properties of the nanites.
The kettle had just begun a low hum when Jeannie started to shake. Her eyes rolled upwards and Rodney barely caught her in time to lower her to the kitchen floor. John watched in horror for thirty long seconds while Jeannie convulsed, Rodney calmly petting her hair and whispering stories in her ear, the hum of the tea kettle moving on into a full screech that he was nearly too numb to remember to turn down.
Finally, Jeannie seemed to blink back to awareness, licking dry lips with a tongue that did not want to work properly and righting limbs that had gone in new and interesting directions. “Well,” she slurred, “That sucked.”
“You okay, Jean-Bean?” Rodney asked, offering her help to sit upright.
“Yeah, something caught my fall,” she smiled wryly. She winced slightly and looked down at the mess of a mug she had been holding, shards scattered across her floor and apron. “Crap, that was one of my favorites,” she sighed.
Rodney shook his hand free of a few shards of his own with an apologetic, “Well, it was you or the mug and I figured you’d kill me if I dropped you.”
“Um, guys?” Sheppard swallowed, looking at the red-tinged cream ceramic.
The siblings looked down at their bloodstained hands, then to each other. “Shit.”
~~~~~~~~~~
The man introduced as Nathan Stark looked up from a computer display and confirmed their fears, “Doctor McKay is also infected.” He made a pitying face. “Really, Rodney, you should have known better,” he chided.
“Sorry for thinking about catching my sister,” McKay sniped, letting a gloved tech finish wrapping a bandage around his hand. “I’ll never do it again.”
Stark opened his mouth to retort with something Sheppard was willing to bet was not going to be favorable based on the expression on his face, but was cut off the woman who had issued John his security pass. “Nathan,” Allison warned, hand on her hip.
Stark backed down, turning back to his readings and muttering something incomprehensible before describing just what stage of the whole thing Rodney was in at this point. He finished with, “It’s actually disappointing, really. The latest treatment I was reviewing involved a transfer of his clean blood with a counteragent into her bloodstream, after a few modifications, of course.”
“Of course,” John agreed with false sweetness, hearing his own words echoed by the kind sheriff that had brought them all down in the middle of the night. Jack Carter was someone who seemed to think a lot at his own level, going for the common sense approach instead of the high and mighty - definitely someone he thought he could get along with.
“How long?” Rodney demanded.
“Well, of course they are behaving a bit differently inside a different body,” Stark hedged. “Interestingly enough though, they seem to be locked in to what they were last doing for your sister and there are already trace amounts congregating along your brainstem...”
Rodney waved a bandaged hand to cut him off. “How long?” he repeated.
“Two weeks, maybe less, before they reach the same critical stage in you as they did in Jeannie,” Stark laid it out for him.
“Then we have two weeks to cure this,” Rodney decided.
Stark rolled his eyes. “There’s no reason to presume you could do what an entire agency could not.”
John stood, and noticed the sheriff do the same beside him. “Give them their two weeks, what could it hurt?” he smiled his fakest smile, trying to keep just enough edge to his voice to keep the threat unspoken.
“Quite a lot, actually,” came the reply.
“Nathan,” Jack started. John noticed Ms. Blake edge closer as well. “What can it hurt to let two certified geniuses try to find a cure? Besides, wouldn’t you want to try to save a member of your own family if given the chance?” The sheriff glanced between the two Global employees with a look that told John there was definitely a story there.
Reluctantly, Stark nodded. “We will continue to do everything within our means to find a solution,” he assured them. “But I can’t promise any miracles.”
This time, John’s smile came easily. “That’s what the McKay’s are for.”
~~~~~~~~~~
The next week was filled with visits back to Global Dynamics and more testing than quite honestly John was comfortable with. He made the trip nearly daily, watching Rodney and Jeannie get hooked up to tubes and wiring, only to have lab coat clad scientists shake their heads ruefully and cross yet another line off an increasingly crowded whiteboard. At night, Jeannie would play with Madison, Kaleb at her side, and Rodney would type furiously away at his laptop, convinced he could crack the code once and for all.
Those were the times John slipped away to make several calls of his own, finally hitting what he thought of as possibly as close to pay dirt as they were going to get in this whole mess.
He had witnessed more of Jeannie’s seizures than he ever needed to see again in his life, helping to catch her at times and let her lean on him as he escorted the exhausted woman to the bedroom to rest at others. She was looking paler, with growing shadows under her eyes as each day passed, and he knew Rodney was not far behind.
It was the first time he had to catch Rodney and lower him to the ground, steadying his shaking body while making sure there was nothing dangerous within range, that he knew he had enough.
Rodney was laying propped up against a mound of pillows on the bed, demanding his computer when John blurted out, “I think I can help.”
McKay narrowed his eyes at him. “Do you suddenly possess the coding knowledge of the Replicators, or the healing powers of the Ancients? Because, really, nothing short of that is going to be useful right now,” he snarked.
John bit his lip and resisted the urge to admit he had been helping the people at Global Dynamics try out some Ancient artifact they had gotten their non-gened hands on and amended he earlier statement to, “Not me, but someone I know, or at least someone I know knows someone, if that makes any sense.”
“Not really,” Rodney admitted, rubbing his tired eyes.
“Okay, it’s like this,” Sheppard said, settling down beside him on the mattress. “I’ve been looking for ways to help, right? Well, I contacted my cousin Brendan in the NSA...”
“Is there a Sheppard not involved in some huge organization?” Rodney sighed.
John gave him a look for cutting him off, but explained, “Cousin on my mother’s side, not a Sheppard.” He waited for the expected nod and continued, “Anyway, he recently worked with an agent from another agency on a case that was sort of out there. This agent, uh, Dunham, I think her name was, works with a guy that’s all kinds of genius.”
“Because we have a shortage of those here,” Rodney nodded, pretending to follow along.
This time Sheppard ignored him from long years of practice. “Anyways...” he continued. “Bren’s partner swears both Dunham and her associate are the real deal and that he’s done some incredible stuff in the past. I want to run it by him and get his opinion.”
“You want to run a top secret experiment based on top secret alien information set in a top secret community by someone your cousin worked with once. No wait, someone that your cousin worked with once currently works with now,” Rodney rattled off.
John admitted it sounded farfetched when he put it that way. “Look, it’s a long shot,” he agreed. “But at this point, what other shot do we have? Nothing you’ve come up with has worked and everything the other supposed geniuses have done has failed. What are you going to lose?”
“My sister’s life,” Rodney whispered, not looking him in the eye. Louder now, he said, “Call him, see what he comes up with.”
~~~~~~~~~~
That was how, two days later, John found himself watching Rodney lie down amongst a set up that looked like something out of a 1940’s horror film. McKay had insisted they try anything with him first, so not to risk his sister’s life, though Jeannie had weakly argued that it wasn’t like she had much time left anyway. Rodney had persevered though, which is why he was the one surrounded my metal and magnets and something that looked eerily like one of the little electrical globe things John once bought at a thrift shop.
“Doctor Bishop,” Stark was addressing an aging man over a video conference link. It was clear he was using the title solely to humor the man, and Sheppard had caught snippets of conversations outright mocking the scientist earlier. “The chances that this circus of a set up will actually succeed...”
“Are surprisingly high,” the older man cut him off. “This device should cut the connection between the tiny robots entirely and, I dare say, help break them down once and for all. The charge will counter their own internal systems and use it against them.”
“If it works,” the other man cut in.
“You will find, Mr. Stark, that a surprising number of my inventions do exactly as advertised,” Bishop replied, not with the air of the conceited, but of someone who had the history to back up his claims.
“We have to cut the connection to you before we try it or else it my short out the system as a whole,” Allison interrupted him, hands already on the controls. She had explained to John earlier about all the safety precautions they were using for the rest of the facility. Atlantis would have done it better, but they were going with what they had for now. “Is there anything else you need to tell us before we do so?”
This was when John wished the Daedalus had been in orbit around Earth and had been able to simply transport the man to Eureka for their needs. He had not been able to fly out because he was in the middle of a case of his own, but willingly donated his time via conference for their needs.
“No, no,” Bishop insisted, shaking his head and looking away at something off screen. “Oh, wait!” he suddenly exclaimed, just as Blake was about to cut the transmission. “There is a possibility his heart will stop over the course of the treatment. You will need to restart it, but that should be no problem.”
John blinked, both in the supposedly offhand way the doctor mentioned it, and the fact he swore he heard another voice in the background sigh, “Walter...”
“How can we do that if we can’t use anything with a charge? The defibrillator runs on a current,” he reminded him.
“I don’t suppose you have any cocaine?” Doctor Bishop tried, the voice in the background repeating its sigh. “No, of course not. Try epinephrine, it is the standard treatment now days and usually effective.”
Allison nodded to her medical staff in the background, ensuring they had everything they needed. “We’ll call you with news of any success,” she assured the doctor, and flipped a switch to make the monitor go blank.
“Ready to try the witchdoctor’s cure?” Stark asked with false cheer. Not waiting for an answer, he started working the controls on the device, the entire room humming with the contained energy.
Jeannie clung to both John and Kaleb from the wheelchair she had been relegated to. Speech had become increasingly difficult for her, but no words were needed as the tears streamed down her face, watching her brother convulse as the current ran through him from one device into another.
After what seemed like hours, but were merely minutes, Stark let out a surprised, “Huh, it’s working.” Followed by, “His heart stopped, get that epi.”
The current died down, leaving Rodney’s lax body in its wake, technicians in protective gear swarming in to try to revive him. John watched the monitor, eying the emergency defib kit that lay to the side, knowing there was the chance it could reawaken the nanites, but also knowing it could be the only way to bring him back. After a lifetime of activity, there was a stuttering, halting beep echoing through the room.
He turned to Jeannie, hugging her as tightly as he dared. “He’s back!”
She nodded in response, smiling widely. John let Kaleb take his place as he searched for a place to sit down, his legs suddenly not quite as steady as he would have preferred. As horrific as it was to watch, he knew he could and would do it again if needed. If this proved to save both Rodney and Jeannie’s lives, he’d readily live through the nightmares it came with. He looked again to his friend, still lying on the gurney, and then over to his sister, barely able to sit up in her chair as much as the whole experience took out of her.
“One down,” he sighed, banging his head against the wall. “One to go.”
~~~~~~~~~~
It was another week before the doctors were certain the nanites were truly breaking down this time. If they took the Daedalus now, there should be no trace by the time they got back to Atlantis. Needless to say, this was good news. The siblings, however, were finding alternative means to express their gratitude.
“I’m not buying you another Prius!” Rodney insisted, shoving things into his duffle.
“And I’m not asking you for one, this time,” Jeannie countered, taking the clothing right back out.
Rodney turned to face her, face reddening with exasperation. “I really don’t think I can afford anything else you might have your sights set on this time,” he told her in a huff. “I said I was sorry for nearly killing you, again, but you have to realize that fair is fair and you nearly killed me too this time around.”
“Which is why this would be both a gift to you and from you,” she persisted.
Rodney turned to his brother in law, sitting on the edge of the bed with Madison at his side. Ever since they had been released from the Global Dynamics infirmary, he had barely strayed two steps away from his wife. “You’re an English major,” Rodney sniped. “Tell me how that sentence made sense.”
Jeannie grabbed his arms and pulled him to her in an awkward hug. “I want you to promise to visit, regularly, whenever you get the chance,” she explained. “I want you to know you have a place here too, whenever you want it or need it.”
“Oh,” Rodney said, backing down and patting her arm as it was the only place he could reach at the angle he was at. “That’s different. I think I might be able to do that,” he admitted.
“I’ll try to help him remember,” John said from the other side of the bed where he had been watching the whole warped Lifetime moment.
Jeannie hurried around to that side and pulled him up as well. “You too,” she told him. “You have a place here too. It was your connections that did all of this...”
“And only temporarily killed us,” Rodney helpfully chimed in.
“So you more than earned a place here whenever you need it,” she finished, making a face at her brother.
“Thank you,” John accepted gratefully, finally being released. “It will be used,” he assured her. He hated to admit it, but the place kind of grew on him, especially the whole being free to think things up no matter how outlandish and getting whatever food he wanted at the diner. That reminded him, he had to talk to the sheriff again about that motorized football league idea they had come up with the first week he was here. Vincent had promised a full tailgating kit to go along with it.
“Now,” Jeannie said, straightening her skirt slightly as if such a display of emotion could be brushed off so easily. “You have two more days before the Daedalus comes for you and I already arranged it with that Carter person that they can pick you up from here instead of driving three towns over to the airport. You will rest, you will have fun, and you will eat yourself silly on Kaleb and Vincent’s creations,” she ordered.
“He’s talking about outfitting a cooler for your trip back,” Kaleb added. “I have no idea if he means building one, or just giving you the food though.”
Visions of good food, good company, and plenty of relaxation dancing in his head, John smiled. “Now that I can live with.”
End.
~~~~~~~~~~
Feedback is always welcomed.
Title: Heurískein
Genre: Gen, though McShep if you squint, Crossover
Length: ~ 4000 words
Rating: PG-13 for mild language
Spoilers: SGA through “Miller’s Crossing” and Eureka general knowledge
Synopsis: The infection is not gone nor forgotten, and is currently wreaking havoc on the Millers and the McKays. John is caught in the middle.
Author’s Notes: Holiday present-type thing for
threnodyjones because I heard-tell that she likes crossovers of a sort and because she tends to rock like a rocking thing. SGA crossover with Eureka, with a few extra guests as well. Disclaimer: I don’t own any of them, people with a lot of money do. I’m just borrowing them to play and making no profit from this.
~~~~~~~~~~
Heurískein: Greek - to find, to discover.
“So it’s a town of geeks?” John asked, following the little GPS unit’s directions and making a right turn.
“It’s a town of extremely intelligent people,” Rodney corrected. “It’s a town set up to let their intelligence have free rein and let their little minds run wild.”
“So, it’s a town full of geeks getting their geek on?” Sheppard amended with a smirk.
“Essentially,” Rodney conceded with a matching grin.
Sheppard eyed the little display again, not fully trusting something that had a “special” chip added just to find a town. If he were to believe what it said, they were almost there. “And how did Jeannie get caught up with them?”
Rodney snorted and reached for his cup of coffee, frowning at what must have been only the dregs. “Are you kidding? Both of us have pretty much permanent offers to live there whenever we get tired of doing whatever we are doing. Given my work with the SGC, they’d probably want me to work with Global, but whatever.” He up-ended his cup, shaking it to get the last drops. “Jeannie just finally accepted.”
John focused on a particularly slippery turn at the bottom of a hill, silently cursing the snow that had fallen the night before. “Her work solving your problems got her interested again?” he guessed.
“Not quite,” Rodney replied, looking out the window at the passing landscape. When he spoke next it was quieter, and with a hint of what John had learned to recognize as remorse. “More like she wasn’t satisfied with the security the SGC provided, or didn’t provide as it were, after the whole nanite programming fiasco. She thought it would be safer, for her and for her family.”
“And what do you think?” John asked, slowing slightly to stall for time as the little readout said what they were looking for should be just over the next hill. He knew what kind of security the SGC could offer, and he also knew they had not lived up to their full potential when it came to the Millers, simply assuming they were safe and never actually making certain it was the truth. They had promised to do better, now knowing the risk they put her in, but he could understand her wariness to believe them. If this little town could do better, more power to them.
Rodney shook his head. “I lived there for a few years after college, was recruited out of there actually,” he sighed. Turning to finally look away from the window, he added, “Let’s just say that I agree it might be safer than her house, but it’s got a few problems of its own.”
Sheppard thought about that for a moment, knowing from his own experiences that the pursuit of knowledge often came with painful errors. Multiply that by a town full of pursuers, and he could only imagine the damage they could wreak. Another thought crossed his mind, and he couldn’t help but voice it. “What the hell is Kaleb doing while they live here?”
At that, Rodney smiled. “Mr. English Major is teaching... English... at their elementary school.” He put his empty cup in the holder and mused, “There’s a chance he’s going to be teaching his own daughter soon, actually, though Madison might be beyond that. She’s very bright you know; gets it from the McKay side of the family.”
Sheppard chuffed out a laugh at that, McKay pride always being something he could count on. “At least they’re all keeping busy?” he offered.
Rodney returned to looking out the window. “Yeah, something like that.”
There was an unmistakable, for them anyway, feeling of passing through a force field and a sign appeared over the next rise, welcoming them to Eureka. “Well, it looks like we found it.”
~~~~~~~~~~
The reunion, like apparently most things McKay, did not go as smoothly as planned.
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” Rodney demanded, hands flailing. He must have seen how close he came to whapping his sister in the face as he suddenly backed up to begin pacing. John gave them credit for getting the layout of the new house to near identical to the original.
“What was I supposed to say?” Jeannie challenged, her own hands waving in the air. “I know! How about, ‘Hey Mer, why don’t you come visit the new place for a few weeks and by the way did I mention I might be dying?’ Somehow, oddly enough, I didn’t think that was going to fly.”
Rodney whipped around at that, a panicked expression on his face. He grasped her hands in his own, seeking out her gaze, begging, “Don’t say that. Please, don’t say that. Not dying... not because...”
“It’s not because of you,” she swore, shaking her head and blinking suspiciously wet eyes. “It’s because of some asshole who tried to control something he had no right to control. Nothing more. I just happened to get caught in the middle.”
“Because of me, Jeannie,” he insisted. “He never would have come after you if it hadn’t been for me. For my research and my involving you and...”
“You paid that debt,” she told him.
“With a Prius,” John helpfully added from his spot on the couch. Kaleb nodded beside him.
Not surprisingly, they were ignored. “I obviously didn’t pay enough if you’re dying, again, from the same damn thing,” Rodney groused.
“You know, it’s probably a good thing Maddy is at school what with all this profanity,” Kaleb confided.
John made mental notes to both watch his own language around the Millers and to never introduce Kaleb or Madison to the Marines. “What’s she taking?” he asked instead, figuring for the basic reading, writing, and arithmetic.
His companion looked at his watch to verify the time and replied, “She should be in intro to Geometry right now. I think her elementary Physics class is over.”
John raised his eyebrows and reminded himself, once again, that this was not your standard town. He turned his attention back to the feuding siblings, only to realize he had missed the grand finale as Rodney was now promising his sister to do everything in his power to make her better, even if it involved stealing alien technology. Hoping that the place wasn’t bugged, he voiced his agreement to the matter.
Jeannie smiled slightly, finally sitting down beside him. “Global Dynamics is already working on the problem,” she told him. “They have some interesting ideas, though nothing they have tried so far has worked.”
Rodney snorted to let his opinion on this issue be known, but John took the opportunity to confess, “I still don’t understand why the Goa’uld tech didn’t work. If the nanites are inert, isn’t it down to just a basic healing issue at this point?”
“They aren’t inert, not completely,” Rodney sighed, sitting down on the coffee table across from his sister. “They somehow had enough juice left in them to realize there are others out there, in her blood stream, and are trying to both combine them and keep them alive. They don’t seem to be replicating beyond an initial rush, that we can tell, but they aren’t breaking down either. When the doctors first noticed some of the symptoms, they tried the Goa’uld tech, and the energy sped up the process instead of healing her.”
“I have what’s essentially a nanite tumor,” Jeannie broke it down for him even more. “As they were attempting to ‘cure’ my epilepsy last time, the highest concentration of them was in my brain, and that appears to be where they are congregating.”
“And it can’t be surgically removed?” he tried.
“There are too many of them floating around in my blood stream. They even tried a transfusion, only for them to appear in the new blood as well,” she explained.
“Short of removing every drop of blood in her body and replacing it, it doesn’t look like it’s going to work,” Kaleb added, not quite sounding like himself.
John turned to look at him, remembering the anxious, passionate man who was pissed at him and Rodney and the SGC as a whole when his wife was initially taken. “You’re taking this remarkably well,” he offered.
Kaleb let his head loll back against the couch, letting him see the slight glassy tones to his overwide eyes. “One thing Global Dynamics apparently has en mass is a large supply of anti-anxiety drugs.”
~~~~~~~~~~
That was apparently that. The next three days involved Rodney disappearing into the depths of Global Dynamics with his sister during the day, returning at night to berate their incompetence and the ego of some man named Stark that was in charge. John helped Madison with her homework and made a few calls of his own to research what he could, and Kaleb continued to walk around like the Stepford version of himself. The only redeeming thing to the whole situation was a little café that provided limitless real coffee and was willing to sneak them non-vegetarian dishes when the Millers were not looking.
The third night involved a dinner of wonderfully nutritious vegan lasagna followed by raiding the pack of beef jerky a kind man named Vincent had given them for their room. Jeannie offered to make them some tea, and Rodney followed her to the stove not to help, but to continue their discussion on the ionic properties of the nanites.
The kettle had just begun a low hum when Jeannie started to shake. Her eyes rolled upwards and Rodney barely caught her in time to lower her to the kitchen floor. John watched in horror for thirty long seconds while Jeannie convulsed, Rodney calmly petting her hair and whispering stories in her ear, the hum of the tea kettle moving on into a full screech that he was nearly too numb to remember to turn down.
Finally, Jeannie seemed to blink back to awareness, licking dry lips with a tongue that did not want to work properly and righting limbs that had gone in new and interesting directions. “Well,” she slurred, “That sucked.”
“You okay, Jean-Bean?” Rodney asked, offering her help to sit upright.
“Yeah, something caught my fall,” she smiled wryly. She winced slightly and looked down at the mess of a mug she had been holding, shards scattered across her floor and apron. “Crap, that was one of my favorites,” she sighed.
Rodney shook his hand free of a few shards of his own with an apologetic, “Well, it was you or the mug and I figured you’d kill me if I dropped you.”
“Um, guys?” Sheppard swallowed, looking at the red-tinged cream ceramic.
The siblings looked down at their bloodstained hands, then to each other. “Shit.”
~~~~~~~~~~
The man introduced as Nathan Stark looked up from a computer display and confirmed their fears, “Doctor McKay is also infected.” He made a pitying face. “Really, Rodney, you should have known better,” he chided.
“Sorry for thinking about catching my sister,” McKay sniped, letting a gloved tech finish wrapping a bandage around his hand. “I’ll never do it again.”
Stark opened his mouth to retort with something Sheppard was willing to bet was not going to be favorable based on the expression on his face, but was cut off the woman who had issued John his security pass. “Nathan,” Allison warned, hand on her hip.
Stark backed down, turning back to his readings and muttering something incomprehensible before describing just what stage of the whole thing Rodney was in at this point. He finished with, “It’s actually disappointing, really. The latest treatment I was reviewing involved a transfer of his clean blood with a counteragent into her bloodstream, after a few modifications, of course.”
“Of course,” John agreed with false sweetness, hearing his own words echoed by the kind sheriff that had brought them all down in the middle of the night. Jack Carter was someone who seemed to think a lot at his own level, going for the common sense approach instead of the high and mighty - definitely someone he thought he could get along with.
“How long?” Rodney demanded.
“Well, of course they are behaving a bit differently inside a different body,” Stark hedged. “Interestingly enough though, they seem to be locked in to what they were last doing for your sister and there are already trace amounts congregating along your brainstem...”
Rodney waved a bandaged hand to cut him off. “How long?” he repeated.
“Two weeks, maybe less, before they reach the same critical stage in you as they did in Jeannie,” Stark laid it out for him.
“Then we have two weeks to cure this,” Rodney decided.
Stark rolled his eyes. “There’s no reason to presume you could do what an entire agency could not.”
John stood, and noticed the sheriff do the same beside him. “Give them their two weeks, what could it hurt?” he smiled his fakest smile, trying to keep just enough edge to his voice to keep the threat unspoken.
“Quite a lot, actually,” came the reply.
“Nathan,” Jack started. John noticed Ms. Blake edge closer as well. “What can it hurt to let two certified geniuses try to find a cure? Besides, wouldn’t you want to try to save a member of your own family if given the chance?” The sheriff glanced between the two Global employees with a look that told John there was definitely a story there.
Reluctantly, Stark nodded. “We will continue to do everything within our means to find a solution,” he assured them. “But I can’t promise any miracles.”
This time, John’s smile came easily. “That’s what the McKay’s are for.”
~~~~~~~~~~
The next week was filled with visits back to Global Dynamics and more testing than quite honestly John was comfortable with. He made the trip nearly daily, watching Rodney and Jeannie get hooked up to tubes and wiring, only to have lab coat clad scientists shake their heads ruefully and cross yet another line off an increasingly crowded whiteboard. At night, Jeannie would play with Madison, Kaleb at her side, and Rodney would type furiously away at his laptop, convinced he could crack the code once and for all.
Those were the times John slipped away to make several calls of his own, finally hitting what he thought of as possibly as close to pay dirt as they were going to get in this whole mess.
He had witnessed more of Jeannie’s seizures than he ever needed to see again in his life, helping to catch her at times and let her lean on him as he escorted the exhausted woman to the bedroom to rest at others. She was looking paler, with growing shadows under her eyes as each day passed, and he knew Rodney was not far behind.
It was the first time he had to catch Rodney and lower him to the ground, steadying his shaking body while making sure there was nothing dangerous within range, that he knew he had enough.
Rodney was laying propped up against a mound of pillows on the bed, demanding his computer when John blurted out, “I think I can help.”
McKay narrowed his eyes at him. “Do you suddenly possess the coding knowledge of the Replicators, or the healing powers of the Ancients? Because, really, nothing short of that is going to be useful right now,” he snarked.
John bit his lip and resisted the urge to admit he had been helping the people at Global Dynamics try out some Ancient artifact they had gotten their non-gened hands on and amended he earlier statement to, “Not me, but someone I know, or at least someone I know knows someone, if that makes any sense.”
“Not really,” Rodney admitted, rubbing his tired eyes.
“Okay, it’s like this,” Sheppard said, settling down beside him on the mattress. “I’ve been looking for ways to help, right? Well, I contacted my cousin Brendan in the NSA...”
“Is there a Sheppard not involved in some huge organization?” Rodney sighed.
John gave him a look for cutting him off, but explained, “Cousin on my mother’s side, not a Sheppard.” He waited for the expected nod and continued, “Anyway, he recently worked with an agent from another agency on a case that was sort of out there. This agent, uh, Dunham, I think her name was, works with a guy that’s all kinds of genius.”
“Because we have a shortage of those here,” Rodney nodded, pretending to follow along.
This time Sheppard ignored him from long years of practice. “Anyways...” he continued. “Bren’s partner swears both Dunham and her associate are the real deal and that he’s done some incredible stuff in the past. I want to run it by him and get his opinion.”
“You want to run a top secret experiment based on top secret alien information set in a top secret community by someone your cousin worked with once. No wait, someone that your cousin worked with once currently works with now,” Rodney rattled off.
John admitted it sounded farfetched when he put it that way. “Look, it’s a long shot,” he agreed. “But at this point, what other shot do we have? Nothing you’ve come up with has worked and everything the other supposed geniuses have done has failed. What are you going to lose?”
“My sister’s life,” Rodney whispered, not looking him in the eye. Louder now, he said, “Call him, see what he comes up with.”
~~~~~~~~~~
That was how, two days later, John found himself watching Rodney lie down amongst a set up that looked like something out of a 1940’s horror film. McKay had insisted they try anything with him first, so not to risk his sister’s life, though Jeannie had weakly argued that it wasn’t like she had much time left anyway. Rodney had persevered though, which is why he was the one surrounded my metal and magnets and something that looked eerily like one of the little electrical globe things John once bought at a thrift shop.
“Doctor Bishop,” Stark was addressing an aging man over a video conference link. It was clear he was using the title solely to humor the man, and Sheppard had caught snippets of conversations outright mocking the scientist earlier. “The chances that this circus of a set up will actually succeed...”
“Are surprisingly high,” the older man cut him off. “This device should cut the connection between the tiny robots entirely and, I dare say, help break them down once and for all. The charge will counter their own internal systems and use it against them.”
“If it works,” the other man cut in.
“You will find, Mr. Stark, that a surprising number of my inventions do exactly as advertised,” Bishop replied, not with the air of the conceited, but of someone who had the history to back up his claims.
“We have to cut the connection to you before we try it or else it my short out the system as a whole,” Allison interrupted him, hands already on the controls. She had explained to John earlier about all the safety precautions they were using for the rest of the facility. Atlantis would have done it better, but they were going with what they had for now. “Is there anything else you need to tell us before we do so?”
This was when John wished the Daedalus had been in orbit around Earth and had been able to simply transport the man to Eureka for their needs. He had not been able to fly out because he was in the middle of a case of his own, but willingly donated his time via conference for their needs.
“No, no,” Bishop insisted, shaking his head and looking away at something off screen. “Oh, wait!” he suddenly exclaimed, just as Blake was about to cut the transmission. “There is a possibility his heart will stop over the course of the treatment. You will need to restart it, but that should be no problem.”
John blinked, both in the supposedly offhand way the doctor mentioned it, and the fact he swore he heard another voice in the background sigh, “Walter...”
“How can we do that if we can’t use anything with a charge? The defibrillator runs on a current,” he reminded him.
“I don’t suppose you have any cocaine?” Doctor Bishop tried, the voice in the background repeating its sigh. “No, of course not. Try epinephrine, it is the standard treatment now days and usually effective.”
Allison nodded to her medical staff in the background, ensuring they had everything they needed. “We’ll call you with news of any success,” she assured the doctor, and flipped a switch to make the monitor go blank.
“Ready to try the witchdoctor’s cure?” Stark asked with false cheer. Not waiting for an answer, he started working the controls on the device, the entire room humming with the contained energy.
Jeannie clung to both John and Kaleb from the wheelchair she had been relegated to. Speech had become increasingly difficult for her, but no words were needed as the tears streamed down her face, watching her brother convulse as the current ran through him from one device into another.
After what seemed like hours, but were merely minutes, Stark let out a surprised, “Huh, it’s working.” Followed by, “His heart stopped, get that epi.”
The current died down, leaving Rodney’s lax body in its wake, technicians in protective gear swarming in to try to revive him. John watched the monitor, eying the emergency defib kit that lay to the side, knowing there was the chance it could reawaken the nanites, but also knowing it could be the only way to bring him back. After a lifetime of activity, there was a stuttering, halting beep echoing through the room.
He turned to Jeannie, hugging her as tightly as he dared. “He’s back!”
She nodded in response, smiling widely. John let Kaleb take his place as he searched for a place to sit down, his legs suddenly not quite as steady as he would have preferred. As horrific as it was to watch, he knew he could and would do it again if needed. If this proved to save both Rodney and Jeannie’s lives, he’d readily live through the nightmares it came with. He looked again to his friend, still lying on the gurney, and then over to his sister, barely able to sit up in her chair as much as the whole experience took out of her.
“One down,” he sighed, banging his head against the wall. “One to go.”
~~~~~~~~~~
It was another week before the doctors were certain the nanites were truly breaking down this time. If they took the Daedalus now, there should be no trace by the time they got back to Atlantis. Needless to say, this was good news. The siblings, however, were finding alternative means to express their gratitude.
“I’m not buying you another Prius!” Rodney insisted, shoving things into his duffle.
“And I’m not asking you for one, this time,” Jeannie countered, taking the clothing right back out.
Rodney turned to face her, face reddening with exasperation. “I really don’t think I can afford anything else you might have your sights set on this time,” he told her in a huff. “I said I was sorry for nearly killing you, again, but you have to realize that fair is fair and you nearly killed me too this time around.”
“Which is why this would be both a gift to you and from you,” she persisted.
Rodney turned to his brother in law, sitting on the edge of the bed with Madison at his side. Ever since they had been released from the Global Dynamics infirmary, he had barely strayed two steps away from his wife. “You’re an English major,” Rodney sniped. “Tell me how that sentence made sense.”
Jeannie grabbed his arms and pulled him to her in an awkward hug. “I want you to promise to visit, regularly, whenever you get the chance,” she explained. “I want you to know you have a place here too, whenever you want it or need it.”
“Oh,” Rodney said, backing down and patting her arm as it was the only place he could reach at the angle he was at. “That’s different. I think I might be able to do that,” he admitted.
“I’ll try to help him remember,” John said from the other side of the bed where he had been watching the whole warped Lifetime moment.
Jeannie hurried around to that side and pulled him up as well. “You too,” she told him. “You have a place here too. It was your connections that did all of this...”
“And only temporarily killed us,” Rodney helpfully chimed in.
“So you more than earned a place here whenever you need it,” she finished, making a face at her brother.
“Thank you,” John accepted gratefully, finally being released. “It will be used,” he assured her. He hated to admit it, but the place kind of grew on him, especially the whole being free to think things up no matter how outlandish and getting whatever food he wanted at the diner. That reminded him, he had to talk to the sheriff again about that motorized football league idea they had come up with the first week he was here. Vincent had promised a full tailgating kit to go along with it.
“Now,” Jeannie said, straightening her skirt slightly as if such a display of emotion could be brushed off so easily. “You have two more days before the Daedalus comes for you and I already arranged it with that Carter person that they can pick you up from here instead of driving three towns over to the airport. You will rest, you will have fun, and you will eat yourself silly on Kaleb and Vincent’s creations,” she ordered.
“He’s talking about outfitting a cooler for your trip back,” Kaleb added. “I have no idea if he means building one, or just giving you the food though.”
Visions of good food, good company, and plenty of relaxation dancing in his head, John smiled. “Now that I can live with.”
End.
~~~~~~~~~~
Feedback is always welcomed.
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"It’s a town full of geeks getting their geek on" - this will forever more be my description of Eureka. Forever and ever.
“One thing Global Dynamics apparently has en mass is a large supply of anti-anxiety drugs.” - oh my god, this must be so true. And to see Kaleb saying that... Bwah!
WALTER! Squee!
“And only temporarily killed us,” Rodney helpfully chimed in. - oh that was so very Rodney. Well done!
After the last two sucky days at work, you have no idea what a balm this was to read. Thank you!
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I couldn't resist adding Walter. In my little universe, all my fave shows are connected in some way or another. They don't always make sense, but they are connected. *g*
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I'm new here via ficsearch and very happily bookmarking this for future reading.
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