FIC: Kingdom Of Mirrors 1/3 John/Rodney/Vala
Well, here's my lonelytartsclub entry, finally arrived:
Recipient: Cetie
Creator: Gaia (gaiaanarchy)
Title: Kingdom of Mirrors
Rating: R/NC-17 (18)
Prompt(s): 1. AU where John and Vala are 1920s bank robbers, bonus for other SG1 or SGA characters showing up. 2. “I just have a thing for brilliant, blue-eyed men who talk with their hands.” “Hey me too!” 3. Vala drags John and someone else into a threesome, someone else being either Sam or Rodney.
Pairings: John/Rodney, John/Vala, John/Rodney/Vala, Cam/John (implied), Rodney/Sam (implied), Jack/Sam (implied).
Spoilers: Poisoning the Well, Michael, Flesh and Blood
Word count: 27,590
Warnings: Vaguely incestuous, hetsex, slash, AU, masturbation
Authors note: Sorry for the lateness. As you can tell, it got a little out of control. Loads of thanks to _workinprogress and ellex42 for betaing and holding my hand at the last minute.
Summary: When John walked into the southern quarter depository of the 363rd city bank, Rodney McKay was on the univision for the third time that week. That was almost as many as Jack O’Neill and only marginally less than War Chancellor Thor himself. Not that John was keeping track or anything. AU in which the Asgard run Atlantis, John and Vala are bank robbers, and Rodney is . . . well, Rodney.
The ideal condition
Would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct
But sine we are all likely to go astray
The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach.
-Sophocles, ‘Antigone’
No skill in the world, nothing human can penetrate the future.
-Sophocles, ‘Oedipus Rex’
KINGDOM OF MIRRORS
By Gaia
When John walked into the southern quarter depository of the 363rd city bank, Rodney McKay was on the univision for the third time that week. That was almost as many as Jack O’Neill and only marginally less than War Chancellor Thor himself. Not that John was keeping track.
Ignoring Rodney, and the way his hands seemed to fly across the screen as he explained his newest theory on timeless animation, John turned to the nearest banking attendant, flashing her a conspiratorial grin. She was an Authentic - most of those out here close to Land were - refugees seeking Asgard protection, you could tell by the rarity of her features, too exotic to belong in a simple cream colored suit, hair looking artificial, curled in tight ringlets beneath a two-years-out-of-fashion hat. That’s why John chose this place - closer in, the Banker3000s didn’t allow anyone in with a rotating frequency, lifesign-imprint badge. Rodney McKay had made the splashpage of Valhalla News with that invention.
John leaned in, grinning. “I’d like to make a deposit, if that’s all right with you, Miss . . .” he used the gene interface to pull up her personnel file, the information slipping in through an ocular stimuli in the blink of an eye. Teyla Emmagen, Pegasus Native - Athosian. Part time bank teller, part time research subject, LifeSource laboratories.
“All are welcome to make deposits. It is simply a surprising request from a Defender-class.”
John turned on his brightest smile. He didn’t think that his model was made for charm, but for him, it had been a matter of survival. “I’m a surprising guy. Certifier gets overbooked sometimes. He has a few L.D. types down at the office. They can watch security while I’m away.”
Her look was unsure, but she proceeded to inspect his secure-case anyhow.
John pulled in closer, letting his voice fall to a conspiratorial whisper. “To tell you the truth, I think our Supe would rather defend his money than his life.”
She smiled solemnly at that, pulling out the few empty data crystals John had acquired last night. “Perhaps you would do well to direct him to the temple of the Ascended. I will need a certifying thumbprint.” She closed the crystals back in their case with a swift grace - too skilled for a teller.
“Aikido?” he inquired, pressing his thumb to the plate and hoping that the five layers of GeneGuard latex he’d sprayed all over his body an hour ago held.
She met his eyes for the first time then, her gaze penetrating and solid, considering for a pregnant moment. “No. Bantos fighting.”
John nodded. He was familiar with the technique, though he had never practiced it. His class was supposedly bred for agility and strategic intelligence as well as interface with the Alteran technology, picking up the martial arts quickly. But as a child John had not been trained in fighting as expected. He learned what he had to when he needed it. Agility and intelligence were good for a lot more than fighting.
“An admirable technique. I’ve always wanted to learn.”
“Perhaps, if you return closer to Shift-Change, I might instruct you.”
He smiled, always shocked at how many women responded to him, despite the fact that Defenders were generally known for a pleasant but impersonal distance. Quietly, they were also known for their homosexuality. “I would like that.”
Her returning grin was almost enough to make him regret that he would not be returning.
“You would like a new deposit cluster?”
John nodded.
“Then all that is left is your model number.”
“DefenderTZZ04398.” He’d lifted the model number and the skin samples he’d rubbed all over the protective layer off one of Samantha Carter’s bodyguards at the Black Hole Ball last night. Who knew, he might even make it onto the splashpage of the SocietyFeed tonight - not that he’d be distinguishable from the swarm of Defenders at these types of events. John smiled to himself. He could just imagine Rodney McKay laughing at that. But that was a fantasy for another time.
Except, Miss Teyla Emmagen was frowning, the red flashing on her screen reflecting in her eyes. A quick interface revealed that the code wasn’t taking. DefenderTZZ04358 was apparently in a continuous-scan building at the moment. Of course, he should have anticipated this. Since when did Samantha Carter venture far outside the Research Ring?
Teyla’s eyes came up to meet John’s for a brief second, an unmistakable look of intensity matched by a faint whispering, almost at the corner of his mind.
You are the one that they speak of?
Well, now he knew what LifeSource was doing with Miss Teyla Emmagen. He gave her the most subtle of nods.
I had not envisioned that you would be a Defender.
John shrugged. “Sorry to disappoint.”
You will make sure that my people also receive a shipment?
John nodded. He didn’t imagine he’d have much trouble talking Dex into it.
Then a more suitable code would be 004395.
“Oh, I’m sorry. One of those days, you know? It’s nine-five.”
Teyla nodded, entering the code. “That completes your registration, Defender. A vault representative will be with you shortly.”
Forcing down the relieved sigh, John squared his shoulders and moved into the waiting area.
The vault representative was shorter than the usual L.D., though John could spot the Loyalty Enhancement almost immediately in the sharp tilt of his jaw line.
The man shook John’s hand with a firm grasp, guiding him through the bronze vault doors into a staging area with a brisk efficiency that further suggested L&D. Normally, John didn’t like to pry, but he was going to potentially be evading this guy. The city was quick to comply with his request. Evan Lorne, Terran, Authentic with Loyalty and Creativity Enhancement. Huh. A security director without a Defense Enhancement - this was going to be easy
“You done this before?” Lorne asked casually, clearly not a willing participant in the service business.
“Yep.”
Lorne nodded. “I’ll leave you to it, Sir. Normally I like to remind the newbies that the storage containers come up out of the floor, though when it popped up under someone’s feet it amused the Security2800s for weeks. You have fifteen minutes of the privacy screen before the computer sends our own Defenders down to collect you.”
John nodded. He was counting on it.
The banks kept their own network of security cameras, but the City’s lifesensors were following Lorne as he made his way out into the corridor and back to the reception area. John waited until he found his next customer before sending in the call.
Two Defenders coming right up. John took advantage of the privacy block to strip off his outermost layer to reveal the sleek black suit favored by his Class. He couldn’t argue - black was classy.
City schematics showed two Defenders walking down the corridor. He smirked. Being a thief was a lot easier when you looked exactly like the majority of the highly respected security personnel in the city. He pulled out the lifesign transmitter the Genii Fugee, Ladon Radim, had constructed for him, syncing it with the monitor on his biomasking suit.
“Excuse me,” John asked, pushing out into the hallway.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize someone had already called you,” one of them said.
“Oh. I was called for repairs, but I was not trained in materials technology.”
The other nodded. “We are capable. You can return to the office, if you would like.”
“Thank you.” John carefully patted one on the back, scrapping the sampling microchip imbedded beneath his index finger nail against the back of his neck. From there, it was only a trip down the corridor and a soft mental beep telling him that the retrovirus was ready.
“Here goes nothing,” John whispered to himself, using the same device beneath his fingernail to scratch a thin line on the back of his hand. The retrovirus didn’t need to be wholly transformative. The sequencers only checked for the presence of the identifying protein, not the quantity, and John was blessed to be born without an identifying marker. Still, he had to pause a minute out of the ten he had left in order to let it work, mopping up the cold sweat that formed on the back of his neck afterwards.
After that, it was a straight shot through the security checkpoint, with a nod and a wave to one of the Security2800s on patrol. The thumbprint he’d had preprogrammed from the government file transmitted to the moldable electronic skin he’d had implanted onto the tips of every finger.
The lights of the cleanroom were a dull fluorescent blue - they looked sharp and sterile. And stripping off his uniform to reveal the biosign converter underneath was quick and efficient. Eight minutes. John forced his breathing to relax, heart and lungs pumping to the beat of the electronic impulses emitted by the skin-tight black suit, traced with gold and silver fibers that ran the length of the energy meridians of his body. Wearing the biosign of another was easy, when you had the right tailor. John smirked, watching the white paneling of the floor and the walls of the honeycomb-like tunnel leading up to the vault interface as it flashed red beneath his feet. It was not a concern, however - he was a Defender here on a routine randomized security sweep.
Still, it made his heart want to race, looking at those fading red footprints and hoping that his guise would hold. He was almost so concentrated on keeping his lifesigns under control that he didn’t notice the slight obstruction up against the honeycomb cells of the ceiling until he was almost upon it.
John’s first instinct was to exclaim, demand an explanation from the figure dressed all in white that was crouched there, just brushing the pressure sensors. But the chamber demanded silence, so all John could do was look into the familiar green eyes of a woman with a long thin nose and a confused but defiant expression, painted all in white.
Six minutes. John shook his head and proceeded on to the main control chamber. She was not a guard - jobs such as that were not registered to Authentics, with too much self-interest to consider, and despite all her familiarity, she was not any Construct that he knew of. No, she was another thief, and making a much more impressive stealthy approach than he. Luckily, by the time she got through the antechamber, he’d already be in and out. He wondered who could have possibly manufactured her gear.
The control chamber was stark, lit by bright white floodlights that turned on the second he crossed the threshold, throwing everything into a play of light and dark, like the pages of an old black and white comic.
The control podium in the center was a simple raised block, the controlling stones tiny and arranged in a complex grid like a really good game of Battleship. John reached down and unzipped the zipper around his groin area. It would be embarrassing if it wasn’t the only area to conceal large rounded objects on one’s person without attracting undue attention. The modified control crystal looked almost the same, though if you looked closely, you might see a slight sheen of thin blue filaments - grown into the stone through an adaptation of Wraith technology.
Placing the stone on the control board, John pulled up a mental image of storage blocks using the City’s mainframe. Yanking off the Alteran data module strapped to his inner thigh (the best black market purchase John had ever made) he constructed a quick mental map of the sectors most rarely moved and cross referenced it with the vault expiry date contents, and insurance information listed in the bank’s database.
Six minutes. John bit his lip as the program ran. Bingo - a medium sized container, stored since 1967, the first year of civilian inhabitance, moved from the central bank for lack of activity on the account and figuratively gathering dust ever since. And the insurance price - raised to an adjustable 51,000 credits in 2001, the date of the Human Council’s Reliquary Act. John had himself a real winner.
He made the adjustments and was busy stuffing his custom control stone back into his underwear when the door slid open to reveal a tall curvy figure dressed entirely in white.
There were a lot of things that John wanted to say, chief among them, ‘No, I’m not happy to see you, that’s a control stone in my pants’ and ‘what the fuck are you doing here? This is my job.’ Unfortunately, the security measures were set to activate with any unauthorized sound.
The woman was looking down at his unzipped catsuit speculatively, her green eyes twinkling as they rose to meet his.
Atlantis communications query. Do you accept? The code half flashed, half spoke in his mind. John twitched. As far as he knew, only Defenders were able to use the City’s communications system, and seeing as how she didn’t look exactly like John . . . she couldn’t possibly be one of the rare Authentics with natural ATA, could she?
The woman raised one well-sculpted eyebrow.
Accept. It wasn’t as though John could afford to go ahead without all the facts.
Is that a control stone in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
John stalked right by the mysterious thief and her playful smirk. He didn’t have time to play games. He just hoped to the Ascended she didn’t screw up in the next three minutes and get them both caught. It was a struggle to keep his gait and his breathing relaxed, but before he knew it, he was yanking his uniform on and speedwalking down the corridor.
Two minutes.
“Ah, Defender, I was hoping you wouldn’t mind a quick security check of the main chamber. One of the Drones thinks he saw something on the monitor.” This bank manager was clearly a M.O. Enhancement - slicked back hair, immaculate dust-resistant suit, a tight manufactured smile. Mathematics and Organization indeed. John forced himself not to grimace at the derogatory. Constructs were people too, after all.
John nodded. One minute and thirty seconds. “Yes, Sir. In fact, I already checked the vault just now. Nothing to see there.”
“Good,” the man patted John’s shoulder. “You Defenders really are worth the investment. Keep up the good work.”
John nodded, clenching his fists while the man walked away. The second he was out of sight, John sprinted off down the corridor, skidding to a halt in front of his deposit room. There it was, sitting on the dais - a security case only slightly more worn than the one John had carried in with him - now safe in slot7883. He smiled, pulling on his long black trenchcoat over the security uniform.
Thirty seconds. John straightened his lapels, grabbed the case and walked out the door.
Evan Lorne was waiting for him on the other side. “I was just coming to check on you. Didn’t want to have to sic the Defenders on you for a simple misunderstanding.” The man was slouching against the corridor, but John could see the stiffness in his muscles. He wasn’t a big man, but Lorne was coiled like a spring - impressive. “They can get a little rough. To tell you the truth, I think they’re bored.”
John smiled at that. “Know the feeling.”
“It’s not usual to have a client take the full fifteen minutes on a deposit,” Lorne remarked casually, still not relaxed.
“My employers are a . . . conservative group. I was just running through some of your security protocols with the deposit interface. You don’t mind, do you?”
John didn’t think it was possible for Lorne to clench more, but the other man certainly proved him wrong. “No,” he gritted out, “it’s your prerogative, Defender.”
“Then why do I get the impression that I’m intruding on your territory?”
Lorne shrugged and chuckled a little at that. “Hey, in this world, with a hyper-intelligent alien race fighting our wars for us, we’ve got to be the kings of our own separate molehills.”
John nodded, making a mental note to get Ronon in touch with this man. “Well, I’m sorry, I’ll just head back over to my own kingdom, then. You’re doing an excellent job here.”
Lorne nodded, shaking John’s hand as he walked out the door, 51,000 credits of stolen materials in hand. “Fuck yeah,” he whispered under his breath.
<<<>>>
John could barely contain himself through the inter-sector tunnels, watching the sun sparkle off the small sections of ocean that appeared between the different segments of the City. He could only imagine what this world might look like one day, in the event of emergency, when the individual sectors would rise out of a chaotic ocean and into the sky, leaving only the scattered Fugee camps on Land as evidence of their presence.
Normally, the sight of the City flying by around him would be enough to distract him, but now John’s mind was elsewhere. Who was the mysterious woman? What did she want? How dare she risk both their necks like that?
John continued to fume as he slammed his way into a transportation elevator in 280th city. The City map prompted him to select a location, but John forced his way past the easy avenues of the preprogrammed system with ease. A blink of an eye later, he was strolling into the antechamber of the ‘Bat-cave,’ though of course his secret lair was a hidden network of narrow rooms laced throughout one of the outer city spires, not deep beneath the Earth. Also, he was less a dark knight than a thief. John looked out a narrow one-way window into the sunset, hanging up his coat, and nodding to Mitchell, who was in the corner throwing darts at a picture of Jack O’Neill.
“So, didya get it?” Mitchell asked, practically bouncing on his toes like an overexcited puppy. John rolled his eyes. Sometimes he wished he’d never pulled the guy out of that research hospital. He’d thought the spinal injury would ultimately prove fatal. He hadn’t counted on the resilience of Loyalty and Enthusiasm Enhancements. No wonder L.E.s made such good personal trainers. Mitchell was no Alfred.
“Yeah, I got it,” John mumbled, handing the case over. He hadn’t even bothered to look at it himself yet.
“Whew, this one’s a beaut,” Mitchell exclaimed, pulling out a stack of vacuum-sealed paper. “Look at the glossy finish here - 40s, maybe even earlier. Mint condition.”
“How hard can printing be?” The Asgard didn’t actively try to suppress the EarthCulture that still lingered. In fact, the market for relics seemed almost to amuse them, but neither did they care to promote what they considered to be inefficient cultural productions which neither contributed to the knowledge base of society nor its progress.
Mitchell just laughed. “Well, supply and demand have existed since the beginning of human history, John. Hell, we discovered it before the 1947 colonization. You ought to get used to it.”
“As used to it as I am to effects of the 1947 invasion? “
Mitchell rolled his eyes. “Don’t start in on that stuff again, John. I can’t imagine how it is to look just like thousands of other guys, but if it weren’t for the Asgard, we wouldn’t be here. Earth’d probably be in the middle of a nuclear winter right now.”
“They aren’t perfect, Cam.”
“Who is? We both know that they’ve screwed up the Wraith War and that they people of Pegasus should be given the means to fight back on their own, but beyond that . . . I can’t fault them for trying to make life in the galaxy better off.”
“Party line,” John mumbled.
But Mitchell had already reverted to his Enthusiasm-Enhancement habit of pretending like no argument had taken place. “Oh, look at this! Superman, first printing. This is amazing! I can’t believe your luck sometimes.”
John shrugged. “Today I wasn’t so lucky.”
Mitchell put the comics down, a look of concern flashing onto his handsome but forgettable features. “What do you mean, John? Were you made?”
John shook his head, moving down a narrow hall into the main chamber and making straight for the large bottle of Bourbon floating in the preservation field, grabbing an apple while he was at it - he deserved a treat after the day he’d had. “Worse. There was another thief.”
“What?” Mitchell asked. “Another Defender?”
John shook his head.
“But how does anybody else . . . I mean, I don’t see how you could without the help of the City and for that you need the Gene . . . . But the Authentics with the Gene are sterilized or closely watched, I don’t see how one of them could get away with it.”
John shook his head, interfacing with the Bat-cave’s computers and ordering them to extract his memory of the mysterious woman, construct her appearance without the white paint and run it through the City’s database. It was only a matter of seconds before the searched turned up negative. John had a feeling that it would.
“Whoever she is, she’s not registered in the database.”
“How’s that even possible? Could she be an illegal Fugee?”
“I don’t think so. There have only been two reported natural occurrences of the Gene among Pegasus Natives, and they were the last of their lineage.”
“Well, then who is she?”
“I don’t know. That’s the whole point, Cam.”
Mitchell’s disappointment at the use of his first name was obvious. “Oh, okay. Hey, I could try to find out?” He looked hopeful.
John sighed. The Bat-man never mentioned that having a sidekick was often more than it was worth. “Sure. But after we’ve made the drop with Dex.”
Mitchell nodded, grabbing the apple out of John’s hand and taking a bite. “There’s a Bat-man,” he indicated the pile.
Ordinarily, John would have wrestled the apple away from Mitchell, but instead he made his way over to the security vault, running his fingers over his prize with reverence.
“You gonna copy it?”
It was a number three - incredibly rare. John knew that it was just paper. In theory, the scans could be just as satisfying . . . but there was just something about having the paper in your hand. John sighed. At the same time, who knew how many pulse pistols Ronon could get assembled with the credits from hocking just one of those. “Yeah. I’ll scan it in the morning.”
Mitchell nodded, throwing himself down on the couch with a little too much eagerness. “So . . .” he took a big crunchy bite of John’s apple. “You want a blowjob?”
L and Es, they were all about service and John wasn’t in the mood to deal with Mitchell’s raw enthusiasm. Sometimes he just wanted to brood. “Naw . . . I’m actually a little tired right now. I’ll take a raincheck?”
“Sure. Anytime.” The sad part was that Mitchell really did mean that. “Night, John.”
John nodded, taking the Bat-man comic with him down yet another corridor and up an aluminum spiral staircase. The City had this room classed as an astronomical observatory, but to John it was as close to Ascension as he’d ever touch, the sunset spread out before the microventilation system open to let the wind in. If he squinted and blocked out the transparent supports holding up the glass dome of the ceiling, he could almost believe he was flying.
<<<>>>
Of course, John couldn’t sleep - not with images of that strangely familiar woman dressed in all white floating through his mind. He flipped on the univision, hoping to find something to put him to sleep. He might’ve taken Mitchell up on his blowjob offer if the man wasn’t collapsed on the pallet on the opposite side of the dome, face smashed almost violently into the pillow he was holding in a chokehold.
On the Ascension Network, the Reverend Daniel Jackson was levitating pencils again. John rolled his eyes and flipped stations. He’d tried the Church of Ascension once, but despite some crazy Fugee convert calling him the One and trying to put the moves on him, a few of the disciples had gotten into an argument over whether or not if was even possible for clones to Ascend and John decided that he really didn’t need the added headache. Besides, 14 hours of meditation a day really weren’t for him. He could levitate a pencil with a GeneLink to the City’s localized shielding system anyways.
There was more religious junk on a few of the other stations, but the NewsFeed was moderately more interesting than usual. Beside the usual rumors that Samantha Carter and Jack O’Neill might be looking into a birthing license and some anti-Aryan violence on the outer ring, Beckett Farms had better watch themselves if they wanted Science Minister Loki to renew their reproduction contract. John flipped through the science channels, but it was all genetics research - not even a WraithWar field update. And he certainly didn’t want to check the numbers and find out how many Defender-class had been lost in today’s fighting.
John was about to turn the uni off when he saw a brief glimpse of bright blue eyes and waving hands. He pulled his finger off the scan button, despite his disappointment to find that he’d landed on the Biography channel. Normally he didn’t care to follow the celebrities, but he’d always had a thing for Rodney McKay. He took another swig of the beer he’d grabbed out of the cooling unit, pushing back against the sleek wooden headboard of his bed.
As it turned out, it was a biography of the Great Doctor Henry McKay, Rodney’s father and the father of genetic Enhancements for humans.
“Unfortunately, Henry McKay’s relationship with his son was a turbulent one,” the Biographer announced, all sympathy absent from his voice. The visual was a still image of a young Rodney with his mop of dark blonde curls tied back with a striped necktie. The words ‘All Who Question are Authentic’ tattooed large on his narrow chest. John often wondered what it might look like now that Rodney’s shoulders had widened. Maybe Rodney had long since had it removed. Regardless, John would’ve liked to find out. He let one hand skim down the hair of his belly and down to the elastic of his black silk boxers.
“Rodney never accepted his father’s work up until Henry’s death. While his father’s genius was reflected in many triumphs as an engineer and technical problem-solver, Rodney never chose to focus his intellect on the genetic research that made his father a hero.” This time the image was the famous footage of Rodney breaking a bottle of champagne against the bow of the first Asgard Warship armed with anti-replicator weapons. John gripped his rapidly hardening cock, giving it a few tentative strokes. On screen, Rodney’s hands were flying as he discussed how his contributions would cement an Asgard triumph over the Replicators.
“Even after his son’s inventions helped win the Replicator War, their relationship was strained.” Images flashed by of Rodney and his father at various dinners and celebrations, eyeing each other warily. John’s hand stilled. There was something about Henry McKay that always bothered him, even before the assassination. Now it was just the image of those blue eyes, as soulless and empty as the man’s work had been. “Rumors circulated that McKay had abused his son during the period of Rodney’s childhood when Henry kept his family from the eye of the media. Biographers are unsure what to make of Rodney’s decision to sue the media producers who advanced the opinion.”
John’s hand sped up at several clips of Rodney shouting at UniV cameras, angrily waving his hands and berating the uselessness of journalists. He didn’t know what it was about Rodney McKay, flushed and angry that did it for him, but . . . he groaned. Fuck yeah.
“Father and son seemed to have made a fragile peace just before Henry’s death. Whether it was due to concerns over Henry’s health or Rodney’s relationship with the war effort’s Girl Friday, Samantha Carter, it was never clear.” The image cut to Rodney wearing a tux and Samantha Carter a sleek silver-grey dress and long gloves, Henry McKay embracing them both. “It was a blessing that the geneticist did not live to see the spectacle that was Carter and McKay’s separation. In the third month of the 14,031st cycle, Henry McKay was found dead in the kitchen of the 22nd City hotel, where he was scheduled to give a talk on the genome and its significance to the Ascension debate.”
Okay, John did not need to be seeing a coffin while he was trying to jerk off. He mentally urged the uni to return to a still image of Rodney staring down the camera. His eyes were wide and blue, but they might as well have been laser beams the way the cut John to the core. He moaned, his stroke speeding up.
Those big articulate hands were dancing down his sides, stroking up his inner thigh. Those eyes were looking down at John as Rodney moved above him. He’d grasp John’s hips, pull them up to him. His hands would tease John open like any machine, smooth and delicate and adrenaline fueled like the best jobs - in and out with a blunt whisper.
John licked a finger, letting his other hand trail down to probe at his entrance. Rodney would push into him, spread his legs wide and fuck him up against this real wooden headboard, the sweet scent of pine and sex lingering in the air. He would take John out to the wide fields of the Land and strip him bare in a field of tall grass, the blue sky wide open above them and . . .
John gasped, spraying himself blank halfway through his fantasy. Only Rodney McKay could manage to get him so worked up in absentia.
John fell asleep mid eye-roll.
<<<>>>
He was there again - a wide open field of green, tall grass waving above his head in the sunlight. There were advertisements for places like this in the main square - jaunts through the Stargate to other worlds. But John had never been on one. He’d lived and breathed with the City for as long as he could remember.
It was only in his dreams that he came here, running up and down this sea of green like one of the large fish that swam in the depths of this planet’s ocean, beneath the City and in the narrow channels between sections.
In his dream, he would turn to find another child there. His companion wore a mantle of golden hair, curled up and shining in the sunlight, chubby cheeks, an oddly pointed nose, and blue eyes that sparkled like what they could glimpse of the sea on the horizon.
Come on. John said, tugging at the boy’s hand. Don’t tell me you’re a pigeon.
It’s not a pigeon, you idiot. What, were you raised in a barn? You’re supposed to say ‘chicken.’
John chuckled, turning to respond, only to find a busy street instead of an open field. They boy was gone, and John was lost all alone in a bustling crowd, the sprawling green and the sunlight almost forgotten.
He woke with a cry, sweating and fearful, the adrenaline leaving a mark on his skin like a burn, fading with time and scarring. He could hear Mitchell over in his corner, snoring.
There were coffee plants in the hills of the land, amid tents and slums, and the Fugees the Asgard tolerated only because they were not afraid to leave them behind. It sold like gold on the black market, but Dex always made sure that John got some skim. He set the food warmer on, drinking in the heady aroma. Smell was said to be the sense most associated with memory. And coffee was the only thing that smelled to him like childhood.
John trooped down the stairs and grabbed his coffee out of the warming field, remembering his fantasy of the night before. Rumor had it that Rodney McKay drank eleven cups a day. With a mental yawn, he flipped on the univision, surprised to see a ‘Special Alert’ flashing across the bottom of the screen. John dropped the Bat-man comic in the scanner, moving a basketball out of the way to plop down on the couch.
‘Break in at Valhalla Mutual, 363rd City,’ the grey caption proclaimed. Shit. “Cam!” John shouted. “Get down here!”
A few seconds later, Mitchell appeared in his boxers, hair tousled more than John was used to seeing it. “Wha . . . Shit, John.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Dex’s gonna be pissed off.”
“Hey, it’s my skin on the line, and you’re worried about what Dex thinks?”
“Hey, nobody pisses off the big guy. For Ascension’s sake, John . . . what are we gonna do?”
“We don’t know if it was me . . . shhh . . .” John said, motioning to the screen.
A pretty young S.B. Enhancement reporter was standing in front of the bank John had frequented just the evening before. “The 363rd City was in chaos this morning, when an armored Gateship of Banker3000s, Defenders, and Security personnel arrived to find their 6am Central Banking shipment missing.”
“So, not us then,” Mitchell remarked.
“Shh, it’s not over ‘til it’s over.”
“The shipment is reported to be the quarterly backup of research logs from LifeSource Research, a subsidiary of Beckett Farm, which is already facing serious allegations of unauthorized human testing.
“Evan Lorne, an L.D. in charge of security at the 363rd City bank, refuses to make a statement to the press, despite the fact that inside sources at Valhalla Bank report an additional security breach - a missing vault of EarthCulture relics valued at over 50,000 credits. The owner of the stolen material remains anonymous, despite the fact that the bank assures the press that they have received notification.”
“We are in such deep shit,” Mitchell remarked.
“Yeah, I think you said that already.”
“Do you think Dex’ll still be able to move the stuff?”
John shrugged. “Hard to tell. We’d have to hack the bank’s files - find out if they knew the contents and whether or not they reported it to the cops.”
“Damn.”
“Damn is right. Oh wait, it’s the commissioner.”
Hank Landry wore his usual look of gruff consternation, though John had always been convinced that the guy was usually just as amused as he was annoyed. “First, I want to assure all of you that whoever is guilty of this will be found and brought to justice.”
“Commissioner!” several agents of the written and live press were shouting. “Do you have any suspects?”
“As a matter of fact we do.”
John held his breath.
“We have one Miss Teyla Emmagen in custody, a bank employee and part-time subject at LifeSource labs. Her teller records showed some irregularities, but if she is responsible, then she is undoubtedly working with one or more accomplices.”
“Commissioner, do you have any information about the accomplices.”
Landry shook his head. “Unfortunately, Miss Emmagen is one of the rare individuals on whom mental probing proves unsuccessful. There was, however, a possible security breech flagged, a small spike of background heat picked up on the cleanroom FLIR, though only one lifesign, corresponding to one of the bank’s Defenders, was present.”
“Does this mean that a Defender is a suspected accomplice?” the S.B. reporter probed, shock playing beautifully on her well-proportioned features.
“We have no reason to doubt the loyalty of the Defender models at this time,” Landry responded curtly. “At the moment, we have our primary subject in custody. I am sure that we will be able to retrieve further information from her and the public will be the first to know when we do.”
While the reporters continued to ask for information, it was half-hearted. Once Landry gave his ‘that’s all folks’ tone, there would be no getting more out of him.
“What are we going to do?” Mitchell asked, looking sullen.
“We’re going to meet Dex.” John sighed. “And then, like the Reverend Jackson says, we’re going to wait.”
<<<>>>
They met with Dex on the Land. John stood out here, somewhat, earning wary glances as he strode through the narrow cobblestone streets, trying not to wrinkle his nose at the stench of waste and burning. Defenders were accepted here, but not welcomed.
“Man,” Mitchell remarked. “Remind me why Dex can’t come into the City again?”
“The tracker. The Asgard allow all Runners Fugee status, but the City’s sensors track it.”
“Ah. No wonder the big guy’s always so grumpy. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to stay out here all the time.”
“Better than a hive ship,” a voiced rumbled from behind them.
Mitchell spun around. “Whoa, Dex, don’t jump up on a guy like that.”
Dex smiled a wide toothy smile, ignoring Mitchell and turning to face John. “Saw the announcement on the Box. Commissioner Landry’s not a fool. Even if he doesn’t admit it to the public, he must suspect a Defender.”
“C’mon, everyone trusts the Defenders,” Mitchell remarked, nudging Dex with an elbow before realizing what he’d done and frowning.
Dex grunted. “And good investigators know to trust no one but themselves. Follow me.” He indicated a one story stone building with wide strips of colorful cloth for windows, a smoky spiced smell wafting out from within. Inside, the halls were thin, exposing an open stone courtyard and a garden of the sweetest smelling herbs John had ever encountered growing in swirled patterns at their feet. Ronon led them up a narrow staircase onto the red-clay roof of the building, overlooking the courtyard on one side and the narrow bustling streets of Fugee country on the other. In the distance, John could make out grass-covered mountains and stepped farmland, a place that he would never visit.
“You have it?”
John opened his rough cloth satchel. “Twenty-three in all. Our deal says I’ll keep five as profit.”
Dex snorted. “You got yourself caught. If you want me to get you a buyer, you’ll accept three.”
“But . . .” Mitchell began.
“Four, and I’m keeping one.”
Dex nodded, not bothering to ask why John had decided to keep the Bat-man. The guy wouldn’t even know how much it was worth anyway.
“You got a buyer?”
“My next stop.”
“The girl who they’ve got fingered . . .”
“Teyla Emmagen. She was a leader of the Athosian people, before a culling forced them to take Refuge.”
“Leader?”
“She isn’t stupid enough to let them list that in her file.”
“So she’s one of yours?”
Dex shook his head.
“Should be. She’s sympathetic to your cause. The security manager too, I think.”
“You think everyone’s sympathetic, John,” Dex pointed out.
“Well, she’s worth having on your side. She can read thoughts.”
“Like the Wraith?” Dex growled. Every second he was trapped on Atlantis instead of out in the field fighting the Wraith grated on him. He was not a man meant to be caged. If he did not know that the Wraith would follow him to any other planet in the system, he would be out there fighting now, that much, John knew.
“Yes, but she wants to fight them. She stuck her neck out because she wanted the weapons to go to her people.”
Dex nodded. “I’ll see that they’re supplied. Now, do you want to tell me how you let yourself get caught?”
John shifted uncomfortably, looking down at the mass of bodies passing by them in the street below. “I . . . um . . . well, there was this girl and . . . ow! Ronon, watch the hair!”
Dex grinned, looking both fierce and ridiculously pleased with himself.
“Now, now, kids, play nice.” John knew that Mitchell meant well, but . . . he’d never been called a kid by anyone as far as he could remember. He’d never had the luxury.
“Shut up, Cam,” he said, turning to Dex. “So, as I was saying, there was a girl and . . . no, don’t hit me again, Dex. She was a thief. I didn’t even say a word to her, I swear, I . . .”
John was interrupted by a figure sauntering up the steps, dressed in Fugee garb. John didn’t normally do the whole women thing, but he could appreciate the bare stomach and the black leather pants - the thin silk halter covering the important bits. But it was the eyes - green and warm but wise, even beneath the cocked eyebrow. “No . . .” he murmured, taking an involuntary step back.
“Hey, boys, how are things going?” she said, ambling over to them like she was wearing a sundress and not two holsters stuffed with pulse pistols. Her dark hair was pulled back into pigtails and she squinted in the sun, but there was just something about her . . . something familiar. “Oh, you’re cute in those slacks, but I think I liked you better with your hand down your pants.”
John didn’t even bother fighting Dex’s next slap upside the head. He winced, before rising, surprise melting into anger in the blink of an eye. He understood why Defenders seemed to have no problem being intimidating. “Who the hell are you and what did you do?”
She stuck out her hand for shaking. “I’m Vala. And you are?”
“John,” he gritted out.
“And your friends?”
“Cameron Mitchell.”
“Ronon,” Dex remarked, looking more angry than interested in the way that her gaze swept up and down his body.
“Nice,” she said.
“You weren’t done telling me what the fuck you thought you were doing yesterday.”
“Why, I was robbing the bank. I thought you Defenders were supposed to be intelligent.”
John gritted his teeth. “Were you trying to get caught?”
Vala rolled her eyes, ponytails bouncing as she flounced over to the railing of the roof and hoisted herself up, swinging her legs over the side like a child. “I didn’t get caught, silly. The Commissioner has a clerk and I’m here, talking to you. I think that qualifies as getting off scot-free. Except the getting off part - though I’m sure one of you boys might be able to help me out with that. And Scott, whoever he is.”
John also had no idea who Scott was, but he wanted this woman to pay for blowing his cover . . . or at the very least apologize. He stalked up to her, hoping that she would lean back over the ledge and get threatened into doing what he wanted, but instead she just leaned in, swinging a leg around him to hold herself in place. She swayed into his neck, looking up through her lashes at him like a lover. “I’m sorry that I got the Commissioner involved. But the job was to steal LifeSource’s records, not some random person’s valuables, and I got paid rather handsomely.”
“Um . . .” John mumbled, looking straight into her eyes, unable to stop either this niggling feeling of familiarity or the fact that he seemed to be growing hard from looking at a woman for the first time in his life.
Mitchell cleared his throat, and John turned around to see Dex looming over them, a large hand reaching out to grab Vala by her bicep and pull her up and around John until she was standing facing the rebel and his rather intimidating set of dreads. “You messed up John’s ability to steal and you cost the Independent Wraith Resistance the weapons that we might not be able to get without him.”
“And I’m sorry about that too, but how was I supposed to know that he didn’t expect anybody to notice that he’d lifted their possessions? Normally, people who put very valuable things in safes like to make sure they’re still there. Somebody would have found out eventually, right?”
“Yeah, a long time after we’d sold their stuff!” John protested.
She scowled for a second, then brightened. “Then I’ll just have to make it up to you.”
This couldn’t be good.
“You have any guns?” Dex asked.
“No,” she grinned. “Even better. I’ll come help you.”
<<<>>>
“So. What’s our next job?” Vala asked, bouncing up and down on top of one of John’s beanbag chairs. Her pigtails bounced too. John winced.
“I think it’s best we lay low for a while,” John’ remarked.
“Okay. I can lay. What else’s there to do around here? What about shopping? I bet you one of those Relics you sold off could buy a lot of shoes.”
“We could play basketball,” Mitchell offered, though he seemed a little deflated. It was hard to imagine somebody who could annoy Cam in such a short amount of time, but it appeared to be working.
“Ooh! What’s basketball? Is it one of those games where you take off your clothes every time you lose?” She poked Mitchell’s abs. “Because I like those games.”
John still couldn’t believe he’d agreed to this. But she was an exceptional tracker. Then again, she had the gene too - which would help explain it.
Mitchell tossed the basketball up in the air. “No, this is a basketball. And don’t tell me you don’t know what it is. Even the Defenders play basketball, right John?”
John nodded, not bothering to mention that his first game had come as an adult.
“I don’t know what it is.”
“What are you, an alien?”
She didn’t answer.
“You’re not an alien, are you?” Mitchell asked, letting the basketball bounce off the coffee table and up into the preservation field.
“No, nothing like that,” Vala replied. “I’m from a farm.”
“A farm?”
“Yes, where children are grown.”
John and Mitchell exchanged a look. “Excuse me?”
“Well, how were you two produced?”
“By my mother and father,” Mitchell replied indignantly.
“And you?”
“Um . . .” John began.
“He doesn’t remember,” Mitchell filled in for him.
“Well, you were probably born on a farm. Like my Adria. They took her before I . . .” her eyes went glassy and distant for a second before she shook herself back to the present. “But let’s not dwell on depressing things. The long and the short of it is this - I escaped, discovered a skill for the acquisition of valuables and have been working contracts ever since. And now, we’re partners.” She clapped her hands together. “Aren’t you excited?”
“Actually,” John mumbled. “I work alone.”
Mitchell scowled.
“I mean I do the actual . . . you know, alone.”
“You use your appearance to get by. But now the commissioner might be on to you.”
“Because of you.”
“Well, that’s neither here nor there.” Vala grinned, moving over to settle herself on John’s lap before he could even blink.
“Um . . .”
“You,” she tapped his nose, “need me.”
“I don’t need anyone,” John replied, standing and depositing her not-so-gently on the floor.
“Fine. But I’m not leaving until you let me help you.” She paused, considering. “So, what do you guys normally do at . . . a quarter to six?”
“Um . . .” Mitchell stuttered, at the same time John said, “Nothing.”
Vala took one look at the flush spreading up Mitchell’s cheeks and across John’s ears before laughing. “Oh, good, I was hoping you’d say that. “ She stood, grabbing John by the hand and yanking him up, extending a hand to Mitchell. “You coming?”
“Ah . . . er . . . no thank you, the two of you enjoy yourselves.”
“Don’t worry about him,” John said, once they were safely closed in the bedroom. “Cam’s pretty much the poster boy for efficient boring, vanilla sex.”
“And I take it you’re not?” Vala asked, pushing him down against the bed, the sky a brilliant blue crowning her head.
John really thought he should say no, right up until he didn’t.
<<<>>>
John dreamed of a room, the walls painted a simple blue, lit only by desk lamps. There were paintings on real paper on the walls, rough airplanes and rocket ships scratched out in wax.
Hey, the blue-eyed boy said, perched on top of a bookshelf, a quilt tied around his neck. I’m the bat-man and you can be the-boy-wonder.
I’m almost as old as you, why can’t I be the Bat-man?
The boy scoffed, leaping off of the bookcase to bounce on the bed.
Cool! John exclaimed, clambering up the shelves, some Relics spilling out behind him. Whoever thought two kids their age would be reading War and Peace was clearly off his rocker.
You have hair like Robin, the boy remarked, moving out of the way so that John could jump.
But not fast enough. John had him pinned, hands above his head, in a second.
Hey! the boy squawked. For all you know I have a rare blood-clotting disorder.
I wanna be the Bat-man. John could feel the delicate bones of the boy’s wrists in his hands, so real he could almost break them. He squeezed.
Stop it! You’re hurting me! the boy yelled, struggling beneath him.
John turned and suddenly he was in a dark alleyway, a young woman grasped beneath him, dark brown hair, delicate cheekbones and wise eyes looking up at him in fear. She could scream all she wanted - he’d just tell anyone concerned that it was official Defender business.
My credit chip is in my bag. Take me to the nearest depository. I’ll transfer it to you. You don’t want to do this, her voice was low and calm but somehow melodic too. The City was speaking to him - the only constant he could remember. Elizabeth Weir - the SocietyFeed had her listed as the fiancée of the famous transfer surgeon, Simon Wallace, and a powerful Immigration Counselor of her own right. He was getting paid well for this hit.
Please, she begged. Stop right now and you don’t have to be this. I won’t tell.
Then he felt hands rough on his collar, choking him. He brought his hands up and he was back in that children’s room again, a man standing over him, his face blotted out in silhouette from the desk lamp with the Batsignal taped to it. His fury was like the anger of the Dark Knight, his grimace like the Joker as his hand came down hard across John’s face. You don’t touch him! You hear me?! He’s a genius Authentic and you . . . you’re nothing! You got that? Nothing! I’ll have you destroyed before I let you hurt him!
Another slap and the man was gone, leaving John whimpering, looking at the kid with blue eyes through blurred vision.
Are you okay? the kid asked, rubbing his wrists.
John nodded, choking back a sob.
I’m fine, by the way, you cretin.
John choked back another sob at that. He didn’t know what a cretin was, but it probably meant the same as ‘nothing.’
The other boy looked at him, sighing and untying the quilt from around his shoulders. I would have let you be the Bat-man, you know? Even if your hair matches Robin’s.
John’s sniffles transformed into a smile, taking the cape.
But, hey, wearing the cape takes ‘sponsibility. No hurting.
John nodded, watching Elizabeth Weir look over her shoulder, offering him a soft smile before she disappeared into the night. No hurting.
John blinked and then he was back in the Bat-cave, looking up at the stars. His left arm felt dense and numb, shoved beneath something warm and . . . snoring?
He pushed himself up, looking down at the figure that seemed to have tried to burry itself in his armpit. Vala’s skin was a pale purple in the first hints of dawn creeping up above the horizon. Her breasts were tucked awkwardly against her chest as she shifted to use her hands as a pillow, still snoring in almost a soft rumbling purr.
John stood, pushing a stray strand of hair back from where it had escaped her pigtails. He very rarely even noticed a woman, but there was just something about this one.
He smiled, looking down on her, wearing a stolen pair of his black boxers, before creeping down the spiral staircase and into the living room where Mitchell was passed out on the couch, feed-flipper still in hand. John settled into the small space not taken up by his partner in crime and changed the feed with his mind.
The BreakingNewsFeed flashed a bright red in his mind, so he turned there quickly.
“We’re here outside the McKay mansion, where Rodney McKay has just made the startling announcement that he is in fact the owner of the rare items stolen from the 363rd City Bank two days ago.” She laughed, a frighteningly high-pitched giggle. “Whoever emptied that vault, I feel sorry for you.”
John let his face fall into his hands. “Thor’s Hammer preserve me.” Rodney McKay was one of the most powerful men in the Empire and a genius with all forms of technology. Masturbation fantasies aside, he was the last person John wanted to draw attention from.
McKay came on screen then, looking smart and composed in a perfectly tailored black suit.
“Mr. McKay,” the airhead from the Newsfeed was saying. “What can you tell us about the contents of the case and what you intend to do about the robbery?”
McKay smirked, looking smug. “Mostly comics from the EarthWar era. Valuable, yes, but only one of personal significance to me.”
John looked over to where he’d left the Bat-man comic laying on the side table. “Fuck.”
“Aren’t you concerned about the loss of property? The police have yet to bring the robber to justice.”
McKay smiled at that. It wasn’t arrogant or sarcastic, but secretive somehow. He looked into the camera and it was almost as though he was staring straight at John - those blue eyes intense and probing. “Oh, I’m pretty sure I know who did it.”
John’s eyes widened.
“Have you informed the commissioner of this news?”
McKay laughed. “The commissioner will deserve to know when he figures it out himself. Besides, the commissioner will never be able to find the person responsible.”
The reporter, if anything, appeared confused. “You aren’t concerned that the Justice Council will force you to reveal what you know?”
McKay waved her away, almost casual. “I’d like to see them try. I’m too important to them to risk losing my talents over missing property that happens to be mine in the first place.”
“And the LifeSource labs material?”
McKay shrugged. “The person I’m thinking of has no motive to steal data like that.”
Which was true, of course. John’s work was to get money to let the Independent Wraith Resisters buy materials with which to fight. They stole from rich people for a good cause. Espionage, blackmail, and other data-related crimes were a whole different level all together.
“And besides - whoever stole the data crystals expected to get caught. And if you expect to get caught - why steal just one box of salable material? No, whoever did that didn’t expect to get caught.”
“But you intend to catch them?”
“No. They can keep the comics. I’m sure they have their reasons for taking them. I’d just dare them to attempt something in the Research Sector, where I’ve personally installed ample security measures. In fact, if he’s not a pigeon, then he’ll come.”
That stopped John dead in his tracks. Rodney McKay was a well-known asshole, but he was brilliant - perhaps a little hyperactive and crazed sometimes, but he was a genius. And he didn’t make mistakes like that.
The Reverend Jackson said that the universe was a sea of energy. He said that people and experiences floated through it like the many sections of the City in this vast sea. Your dreams cast out their nets and pulled the experiences you needed to you like a magnet and there were no coincidences. It wasn’t a coincidence.
“Watcha watchin’?” A voice came from behind him. Vala was standing there, still wearing nothing but John’s boxers, a bowl of cereal somehow having appeared in her hands. “He’s cute.”
“That’s Rodney McKay.”
She looked blank.
“A famous physicist. He’s . . . well, he invented a lot of really important things. His father was the first gentleman to clone the service-class. He also helped invent the majority of the Enhancements for naturally born children.”
“Okay.”
“Hey, do you feel like a near-impossible job with a high probability that the people who’ll catch us will be ruthless?”
“Is there going to be good treasure?”
John nodded.
“Then count me in.”
“You’re going to have to wear a proper dress, though. And a hat.”
She wrinkled her nose, indignant. “Hey, I’ll have you know I clean up very nicely.”
“Good.”
“Now, what’s this job you’ve got for us?” She flung herself onto the couch, breasts bouncing distractingly.
“We’re going to break into this man’s mansion,” he pointed to the screen where Rodney was ranting about the incompetence of early-model security personal.
She smiled, almost casually. “No.”
“Look, this is a matter of principle, here. We stole something he cares about. And we have to return it.”
“I didn’t think Defenders were supposed to be so noble,” Mitchell mumbled from where he was rubbing his face into wakefulness on the couch, catching a glimpse of a naked woman and looking away, blushing.
“Well, I . . . I just happen to have a thing for brilliant, blue-eyed men who talk with their hands.”
Vala grinned at that, standing and slinking over and rubbing up against him like a cat. “What a coincidence. So do I.”
“John,” Mitchell began, looking desperate. “We’re not going to try to break into McKay’s goddamned fortress because the two of you somehow have the hots for the man . . . that’s just . . .”
“We’re not going to break in,” John said with a wink. “We’re heading in the front door.”
PART 2
Recipient: Cetie
Creator: Gaia (gaiaanarchy)
Title: Kingdom of Mirrors
Rating: R/NC-17 (18)
Prompt(s): 1. AU where John and Vala are 1920s bank robbers, bonus for other SG1 or SGA characters showing up. 2. “I just have a thing for brilliant, blue-eyed men who talk with their hands.” “Hey me too!” 3. Vala drags John and someone else into a threesome, someone else being either Sam or Rodney.
Pairings: John/Rodney, John/Vala, John/Rodney/Vala, Cam/John (implied), Rodney/Sam (implied), Jack/Sam (implied).
Spoilers: Poisoning the Well, Michael, Flesh and Blood
Word count: 27,590
Warnings: Vaguely incestuous, hetsex, slash, AU, masturbation
Authors note: Sorry for the lateness. As you can tell, it got a little out of control. Loads of thanks to _workinprogress and ellex42 for betaing and holding my hand at the last minute.
Summary: When John walked into the southern quarter depository of the 363rd city bank, Rodney McKay was on the univision for the third time that week. That was almost as many as Jack O’Neill and only marginally less than War Chancellor Thor himself. Not that John was keeping track or anything. AU in which the Asgard run Atlantis, John and Vala are bank robbers, and Rodney is . . . well, Rodney.
The ideal condition
Would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct
But sine we are all likely to go astray
The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach.
-Sophocles, ‘Antigone’
No skill in the world, nothing human can penetrate the future.
-Sophocles, ‘Oedipus Rex’
KINGDOM OF MIRRORS
By Gaia
When John walked into the southern quarter depository of the 363rd city bank, Rodney McKay was on the univision for the third time that week. That was almost as many as Jack O’Neill and only marginally less than War Chancellor Thor himself. Not that John was keeping track.
Ignoring Rodney, and the way his hands seemed to fly across the screen as he explained his newest theory on timeless animation, John turned to the nearest banking attendant, flashing her a conspiratorial grin. She was an Authentic - most of those out here close to Land were - refugees seeking Asgard protection, you could tell by the rarity of her features, too exotic to belong in a simple cream colored suit, hair looking artificial, curled in tight ringlets beneath a two-years-out-of-fashion hat. That’s why John chose this place - closer in, the Banker3000s didn’t allow anyone in with a rotating frequency, lifesign-imprint badge. Rodney McKay had made the splashpage of Valhalla News with that invention.
John leaned in, grinning. “I’d like to make a deposit, if that’s all right with you, Miss . . .” he used the gene interface to pull up her personnel file, the information slipping in through an ocular stimuli in the blink of an eye. Teyla Emmagen, Pegasus Native - Athosian. Part time bank teller, part time research subject, LifeSource laboratories.
“All are welcome to make deposits. It is simply a surprising request from a Defender-class.”
John turned on his brightest smile. He didn’t think that his model was made for charm, but for him, it had been a matter of survival. “I’m a surprising guy. Certifier gets overbooked sometimes. He has a few L.D. types down at the office. They can watch security while I’m away.”
Her look was unsure, but she proceeded to inspect his secure-case anyhow.
John pulled in closer, letting his voice fall to a conspiratorial whisper. “To tell you the truth, I think our Supe would rather defend his money than his life.”
She smiled solemnly at that, pulling out the few empty data crystals John had acquired last night. “Perhaps you would do well to direct him to the temple of the Ascended. I will need a certifying thumbprint.” She closed the crystals back in their case with a swift grace - too skilled for a teller.
“Aikido?” he inquired, pressing his thumb to the plate and hoping that the five layers of GeneGuard latex he’d sprayed all over his body an hour ago held.
She met his eyes for the first time then, her gaze penetrating and solid, considering for a pregnant moment. “No. Bantos fighting.”
John nodded. He was familiar with the technique, though he had never practiced it. His class was supposedly bred for agility and strategic intelligence as well as interface with the Alteran technology, picking up the martial arts quickly. But as a child John had not been trained in fighting as expected. He learned what he had to when he needed it. Agility and intelligence were good for a lot more than fighting.
“An admirable technique. I’ve always wanted to learn.”
“Perhaps, if you return closer to Shift-Change, I might instruct you.”
He smiled, always shocked at how many women responded to him, despite the fact that Defenders were generally known for a pleasant but impersonal distance. Quietly, they were also known for their homosexuality. “I would like that.”
Her returning grin was almost enough to make him regret that he would not be returning.
“You would like a new deposit cluster?”
John nodded.
“Then all that is left is your model number.”
“DefenderTZZ04398.” He’d lifted the model number and the skin samples he’d rubbed all over the protective layer off one of Samantha Carter’s bodyguards at the Black Hole Ball last night. Who knew, he might even make it onto the splashpage of the SocietyFeed tonight - not that he’d be distinguishable from the swarm of Defenders at these types of events. John smiled to himself. He could just imagine Rodney McKay laughing at that. But that was a fantasy for another time.
Except, Miss Teyla Emmagen was frowning, the red flashing on her screen reflecting in her eyes. A quick interface revealed that the code wasn’t taking. DefenderTZZ04358 was apparently in a continuous-scan building at the moment. Of course, he should have anticipated this. Since when did Samantha Carter venture far outside the Research Ring?
Teyla’s eyes came up to meet John’s for a brief second, an unmistakable look of intensity matched by a faint whispering, almost at the corner of his mind.
You are the one that they speak of?
Well, now he knew what LifeSource was doing with Miss Teyla Emmagen. He gave her the most subtle of nods.
I had not envisioned that you would be a Defender.
John shrugged. “Sorry to disappoint.”
You will make sure that my people also receive a shipment?
John nodded. He didn’t imagine he’d have much trouble talking Dex into it.
Then a more suitable code would be 004395.
“Oh, I’m sorry. One of those days, you know? It’s nine-five.”
Teyla nodded, entering the code. “That completes your registration, Defender. A vault representative will be with you shortly.”
Forcing down the relieved sigh, John squared his shoulders and moved into the waiting area.
The vault representative was shorter than the usual L.D., though John could spot the Loyalty Enhancement almost immediately in the sharp tilt of his jaw line.
The man shook John’s hand with a firm grasp, guiding him through the bronze vault doors into a staging area with a brisk efficiency that further suggested L&D. Normally, John didn’t like to pry, but he was going to potentially be evading this guy. The city was quick to comply with his request. Evan Lorne, Terran, Authentic with Loyalty and Creativity Enhancement. Huh. A security director without a Defense Enhancement - this was going to be easy
“You done this before?” Lorne asked casually, clearly not a willing participant in the service business.
“Yep.”
Lorne nodded. “I’ll leave you to it, Sir. Normally I like to remind the newbies that the storage containers come up out of the floor, though when it popped up under someone’s feet it amused the Security2800s for weeks. You have fifteen minutes of the privacy screen before the computer sends our own Defenders down to collect you.”
John nodded. He was counting on it.
The banks kept their own network of security cameras, but the City’s lifesensors were following Lorne as he made his way out into the corridor and back to the reception area. John waited until he found his next customer before sending in the call.
Two Defenders coming right up. John took advantage of the privacy block to strip off his outermost layer to reveal the sleek black suit favored by his Class. He couldn’t argue - black was classy.
City schematics showed two Defenders walking down the corridor. He smirked. Being a thief was a lot easier when you looked exactly like the majority of the highly respected security personnel in the city. He pulled out the lifesign transmitter the Genii Fugee, Ladon Radim, had constructed for him, syncing it with the monitor on his biomasking suit.
“Excuse me,” John asked, pushing out into the hallway.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize someone had already called you,” one of them said.
“Oh. I was called for repairs, but I was not trained in materials technology.”
The other nodded. “We are capable. You can return to the office, if you would like.”
“Thank you.” John carefully patted one on the back, scrapping the sampling microchip imbedded beneath his index finger nail against the back of his neck. From there, it was only a trip down the corridor and a soft mental beep telling him that the retrovirus was ready.
“Here goes nothing,” John whispered to himself, using the same device beneath his fingernail to scratch a thin line on the back of his hand. The retrovirus didn’t need to be wholly transformative. The sequencers only checked for the presence of the identifying protein, not the quantity, and John was blessed to be born without an identifying marker. Still, he had to pause a minute out of the ten he had left in order to let it work, mopping up the cold sweat that formed on the back of his neck afterwards.
After that, it was a straight shot through the security checkpoint, with a nod and a wave to one of the Security2800s on patrol. The thumbprint he’d had preprogrammed from the government file transmitted to the moldable electronic skin he’d had implanted onto the tips of every finger.
The lights of the cleanroom were a dull fluorescent blue - they looked sharp and sterile. And stripping off his uniform to reveal the biosign converter underneath was quick and efficient. Eight minutes. John forced his breathing to relax, heart and lungs pumping to the beat of the electronic impulses emitted by the skin-tight black suit, traced with gold and silver fibers that ran the length of the energy meridians of his body. Wearing the biosign of another was easy, when you had the right tailor. John smirked, watching the white paneling of the floor and the walls of the honeycomb-like tunnel leading up to the vault interface as it flashed red beneath his feet. It was not a concern, however - he was a Defender here on a routine randomized security sweep.
Still, it made his heart want to race, looking at those fading red footprints and hoping that his guise would hold. He was almost so concentrated on keeping his lifesigns under control that he didn’t notice the slight obstruction up against the honeycomb cells of the ceiling until he was almost upon it.
John’s first instinct was to exclaim, demand an explanation from the figure dressed all in white that was crouched there, just brushing the pressure sensors. But the chamber demanded silence, so all John could do was look into the familiar green eyes of a woman with a long thin nose and a confused but defiant expression, painted all in white.
Six minutes. John shook his head and proceeded on to the main control chamber. She was not a guard - jobs such as that were not registered to Authentics, with too much self-interest to consider, and despite all her familiarity, she was not any Construct that he knew of. No, she was another thief, and making a much more impressive stealthy approach than he. Luckily, by the time she got through the antechamber, he’d already be in and out. He wondered who could have possibly manufactured her gear.
The control chamber was stark, lit by bright white floodlights that turned on the second he crossed the threshold, throwing everything into a play of light and dark, like the pages of an old black and white comic.
The control podium in the center was a simple raised block, the controlling stones tiny and arranged in a complex grid like a really good game of Battleship. John reached down and unzipped the zipper around his groin area. It would be embarrassing if it wasn’t the only area to conceal large rounded objects on one’s person without attracting undue attention. The modified control crystal looked almost the same, though if you looked closely, you might see a slight sheen of thin blue filaments - grown into the stone through an adaptation of Wraith technology.
Placing the stone on the control board, John pulled up a mental image of storage blocks using the City’s mainframe. Yanking off the Alteran data module strapped to his inner thigh (the best black market purchase John had ever made) he constructed a quick mental map of the sectors most rarely moved and cross referenced it with the vault expiry date contents, and insurance information listed in the bank’s database.
Six minutes. John bit his lip as the program ran. Bingo - a medium sized container, stored since 1967, the first year of civilian inhabitance, moved from the central bank for lack of activity on the account and figuratively gathering dust ever since. And the insurance price - raised to an adjustable 51,000 credits in 2001, the date of the Human Council’s Reliquary Act. John had himself a real winner.
He made the adjustments and was busy stuffing his custom control stone back into his underwear when the door slid open to reveal a tall curvy figure dressed entirely in white.
There were a lot of things that John wanted to say, chief among them, ‘No, I’m not happy to see you, that’s a control stone in my pants’ and ‘what the fuck are you doing here? This is my job.’ Unfortunately, the security measures were set to activate with any unauthorized sound.
The woman was looking down at his unzipped catsuit speculatively, her green eyes twinkling as they rose to meet his.
Atlantis communications query. Do you accept? The code half flashed, half spoke in his mind. John twitched. As far as he knew, only Defenders were able to use the City’s communications system, and seeing as how she didn’t look exactly like John . . . she couldn’t possibly be one of the rare Authentics with natural ATA, could she?
The woman raised one well-sculpted eyebrow.
Accept. It wasn’t as though John could afford to go ahead without all the facts.
Is that a control stone in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
John stalked right by the mysterious thief and her playful smirk. He didn’t have time to play games. He just hoped to the Ascended she didn’t screw up in the next three minutes and get them both caught. It was a struggle to keep his gait and his breathing relaxed, but before he knew it, he was yanking his uniform on and speedwalking down the corridor.
Two minutes.
“Ah, Defender, I was hoping you wouldn’t mind a quick security check of the main chamber. One of the Drones thinks he saw something on the monitor.” This bank manager was clearly a M.O. Enhancement - slicked back hair, immaculate dust-resistant suit, a tight manufactured smile. Mathematics and Organization indeed. John forced himself not to grimace at the derogatory. Constructs were people too, after all.
John nodded. One minute and thirty seconds. “Yes, Sir. In fact, I already checked the vault just now. Nothing to see there.”
“Good,” the man patted John’s shoulder. “You Defenders really are worth the investment. Keep up the good work.”
John nodded, clenching his fists while the man walked away. The second he was out of sight, John sprinted off down the corridor, skidding to a halt in front of his deposit room. There it was, sitting on the dais - a security case only slightly more worn than the one John had carried in with him - now safe in slot7883. He smiled, pulling on his long black trenchcoat over the security uniform.
Thirty seconds. John straightened his lapels, grabbed the case and walked out the door.
Evan Lorne was waiting for him on the other side. “I was just coming to check on you. Didn’t want to have to sic the Defenders on you for a simple misunderstanding.” The man was slouching against the corridor, but John could see the stiffness in his muscles. He wasn’t a big man, but Lorne was coiled like a spring - impressive. “They can get a little rough. To tell you the truth, I think they’re bored.”
John smiled at that. “Know the feeling.”
“It’s not usual to have a client take the full fifteen minutes on a deposit,” Lorne remarked casually, still not relaxed.
“My employers are a . . . conservative group. I was just running through some of your security protocols with the deposit interface. You don’t mind, do you?”
John didn’t think it was possible for Lorne to clench more, but the other man certainly proved him wrong. “No,” he gritted out, “it’s your prerogative, Defender.”
“Then why do I get the impression that I’m intruding on your territory?”
Lorne shrugged and chuckled a little at that. “Hey, in this world, with a hyper-intelligent alien race fighting our wars for us, we’ve got to be the kings of our own separate molehills.”
John nodded, making a mental note to get Ronon in touch with this man. “Well, I’m sorry, I’ll just head back over to my own kingdom, then. You’re doing an excellent job here.”
Lorne nodded, shaking John’s hand as he walked out the door, 51,000 credits of stolen materials in hand. “Fuck yeah,” he whispered under his breath.
<<<>>>
John could barely contain himself through the inter-sector tunnels, watching the sun sparkle off the small sections of ocean that appeared between the different segments of the City. He could only imagine what this world might look like one day, in the event of emergency, when the individual sectors would rise out of a chaotic ocean and into the sky, leaving only the scattered Fugee camps on Land as evidence of their presence.
Normally, the sight of the City flying by around him would be enough to distract him, but now John’s mind was elsewhere. Who was the mysterious woman? What did she want? How dare she risk both their necks like that?
John continued to fume as he slammed his way into a transportation elevator in 280th city. The City map prompted him to select a location, but John forced his way past the easy avenues of the preprogrammed system with ease. A blink of an eye later, he was strolling into the antechamber of the ‘Bat-cave,’ though of course his secret lair was a hidden network of narrow rooms laced throughout one of the outer city spires, not deep beneath the Earth. Also, he was less a dark knight than a thief. John looked out a narrow one-way window into the sunset, hanging up his coat, and nodding to Mitchell, who was in the corner throwing darts at a picture of Jack O’Neill.
“So, didya get it?” Mitchell asked, practically bouncing on his toes like an overexcited puppy. John rolled his eyes. Sometimes he wished he’d never pulled the guy out of that research hospital. He’d thought the spinal injury would ultimately prove fatal. He hadn’t counted on the resilience of Loyalty and Enthusiasm Enhancements. No wonder L.E.s made such good personal trainers. Mitchell was no Alfred.
“Yeah, I got it,” John mumbled, handing the case over. He hadn’t even bothered to look at it himself yet.
“Whew, this one’s a beaut,” Mitchell exclaimed, pulling out a stack of vacuum-sealed paper. “Look at the glossy finish here - 40s, maybe even earlier. Mint condition.”
“How hard can printing be?” The Asgard didn’t actively try to suppress the EarthCulture that still lingered. In fact, the market for relics seemed almost to amuse them, but neither did they care to promote what they considered to be inefficient cultural productions which neither contributed to the knowledge base of society nor its progress.
Mitchell just laughed. “Well, supply and demand have existed since the beginning of human history, John. Hell, we discovered it before the 1947 colonization. You ought to get used to it.”
“As used to it as I am to effects of the 1947 invasion? “
Mitchell rolled his eyes. “Don’t start in on that stuff again, John. I can’t imagine how it is to look just like thousands of other guys, but if it weren’t for the Asgard, we wouldn’t be here. Earth’d probably be in the middle of a nuclear winter right now.”
“They aren’t perfect, Cam.”
“Who is? We both know that they’ve screwed up the Wraith War and that they people of Pegasus should be given the means to fight back on their own, but beyond that . . . I can’t fault them for trying to make life in the galaxy better off.”
“Party line,” John mumbled.
But Mitchell had already reverted to his Enthusiasm-Enhancement habit of pretending like no argument had taken place. “Oh, look at this! Superman, first printing. This is amazing! I can’t believe your luck sometimes.”
John shrugged. “Today I wasn’t so lucky.”
Mitchell put the comics down, a look of concern flashing onto his handsome but forgettable features. “What do you mean, John? Were you made?”
John shook his head, moving down a narrow hall into the main chamber and making straight for the large bottle of Bourbon floating in the preservation field, grabbing an apple while he was at it - he deserved a treat after the day he’d had. “Worse. There was another thief.”
“What?” Mitchell asked. “Another Defender?”
John shook his head.
“But how does anybody else . . . I mean, I don’t see how you could without the help of the City and for that you need the Gene . . . . But the Authentics with the Gene are sterilized or closely watched, I don’t see how one of them could get away with it.”
John shook his head, interfacing with the Bat-cave’s computers and ordering them to extract his memory of the mysterious woman, construct her appearance without the white paint and run it through the City’s database. It was only a matter of seconds before the searched turned up negative. John had a feeling that it would.
“Whoever she is, she’s not registered in the database.”
“How’s that even possible? Could she be an illegal Fugee?”
“I don’t think so. There have only been two reported natural occurrences of the Gene among Pegasus Natives, and they were the last of their lineage.”
“Well, then who is she?”
“I don’t know. That’s the whole point, Cam.”
Mitchell’s disappointment at the use of his first name was obvious. “Oh, okay. Hey, I could try to find out?” He looked hopeful.
John sighed. The Bat-man never mentioned that having a sidekick was often more than it was worth. “Sure. But after we’ve made the drop with Dex.”
Mitchell nodded, grabbing the apple out of John’s hand and taking a bite. “There’s a Bat-man,” he indicated the pile.
Ordinarily, John would have wrestled the apple away from Mitchell, but instead he made his way over to the security vault, running his fingers over his prize with reverence.
“You gonna copy it?”
It was a number three - incredibly rare. John knew that it was just paper. In theory, the scans could be just as satisfying . . . but there was just something about having the paper in your hand. John sighed. At the same time, who knew how many pulse pistols Ronon could get assembled with the credits from hocking just one of those. “Yeah. I’ll scan it in the morning.”
Mitchell nodded, throwing himself down on the couch with a little too much eagerness. “So . . .” he took a big crunchy bite of John’s apple. “You want a blowjob?”
L and Es, they were all about service and John wasn’t in the mood to deal with Mitchell’s raw enthusiasm. Sometimes he just wanted to brood. “Naw . . . I’m actually a little tired right now. I’ll take a raincheck?”
“Sure. Anytime.” The sad part was that Mitchell really did mean that. “Night, John.”
John nodded, taking the Bat-man comic with him down yet another corridor and up an aluminum spiral staircase. The City had this room classed as an astronomical observatory, but to John it was as close to Ascension as he’d ever touch, the sunset spread out before the microventilation system open to let the wind in. If he squinted and blocked out the transparent supports holding up the glass dome of the ceiling, he could almost believe he was flying.
<<<>>>
Of course, John couldn’t sleep - not with images of that strangely familiar woman dressed in all white floating through his mind. He flipped on the univision, hoping to find something to put him to sleep. He might’ve taken Mitchell up on his blowjob offer if the man wasn’t collapsed on the pallet on the opposite side of the dome, face smashed almost violently into the pillow he was holding in a chokehold.
On the Ascension Network, the Reverend Daniel Jackson was levitating pencils again. John rolled his eyes and flipped stations. He’d tried the Church of Ascension once, but despite some crazy Fugee convert calling him the One and trying to put the moves on him, a few of the disciples had gotten into an argument over whether or not if was even possible for clones to Ascend and John decided that he really didn’t need the added headache. Besides, 14 hours of meditation a day really weren’t for him. He could levitate a pencil with a GeneLink to the City’s localized shielding system anyways.
There was more religious junk on a few of the other stations, but the NewsFeed was moderately more interesting than usual. Beside the usual rumors that Samantha Carter and Jack O’Neill might be looking into a birthing license and some anti-Aryan violence on the outer ring, Beckett Farms had better watch themselves if they wanted Science Minister Loki to renew their reproduction contract. John flipped through the science channels, but it was all genetics research - not even a WraithWar field update. And he certainly didn’t want to check the numbers and find out how many Defender-class had been lost in today’s fighting.
John was about to turn the uni off when he saw a brief glimpse of bright blue eyes and waving hands. He pulled his finger off the scan button, despite his disappointment to find that he’d landed on the Biography channel. Normally he didn’t care to follow the celebrities, but he’d always had a thing for Rodney McKay. He took another swig of the beer he’d grabbed out of the cooling unit, pushing back against the sleek wooden headboard of his bed.
As it turned out, it was a biography of the Great Doctor Henry McKay, Rodney’s father and the father of genetic Enhancements for humans.
“Unfortunately, Henry McKay’s relationship with his son was a turbulent one,” the Biographer announced, all sympathy absent from his voice. The visual was a still image of a young Rodney with his mop of dark blonde curls tied back with a striped necktie. The words ‘All Who Question are Authentic’ tattooed large on his narrow chest. John often wondered what it might look like now that Rodney’s shoulders had widened. Maybe Rodney had long since had it removed. Regardless, John would’ve liked to find out. He let one hand skim down the hair of his belly and down to the elastic of his black silk boxers.
“Rodney never accepted his father’s work up until Henry’s death. While his father’s genius was reflected in many triumphs as an engineer and technical problem-solver, Rodney never chose to focus his intellect on the genetic research that made his father a hero.” This time the image was the famous footage of Rodney breaking a bottle of champagne against the bow of the first Asgard Warship armed with anti-replicator weapons. John gripped his rapidly hardening cock, giving it a few tentative strokes. On screen, Rodney’s hands were flying as he discussed how his contributions would cement an Asgard triumph over the Replicators.
“Even after his son’s inventions helped win the Replicator War, their relationship was strained.” Images flashed by of Rodney and his father at various dinners and celebrations, eyeing each other warily. John’s hand stilled. There was something about Henry McKay that always bothered him, even before the assassination. Now it was just the image of those blue eyes, as soulless and empty as the man’s work had been. “Rumors circulated that McKay had abused his son during the period of Rodney’s childhood when Henry kept his family from the eye of the media. Biographers are unsure what to make of Rodney’s decision to sue the media producers who advanced the opinion.”
John’s hand sped up at several clips of Rodney shouting at UniV cameras, angrily waving his hands and berating the uselessness of journalists. He didn’t know what it was about Rodney McKay, flushed and angry that did it for him, but . . . he groaned. Fuck yeah.
“Father and son seemed to have made a fragile peace just before Henry’s death. Whether it was due to concerns over Henry’s health or Rodney’s relationship with the war effort’s Girl Friday, Samantha Carter, it was never clear.” The image cut to Rodney wearing a tux and Samantha Carter a sleek silver-grey dress and long gloves, Henry McKay embracing them both. “It was a blessing that the geneticist did not live to see the spectacle that was Carter and McKay’s separation. In the third month of the 14,031st cycle, Henry McKay was found dead in the kitchen of the 22nd City hotel, where he was scheduled to give a talk on the genome and its significance to the Ascension debate.”
Okay, John did not need to be seeing a coffin while he was trying to jerk off. He mentally urged the uni to return to a still image of Rodney staring down the camera. His eyes were wide and blue, but they might as well have been laser beams the way the cut John to the core. He moaned, his stroke speeding up.
Those big articulate hands were dancing down his sides, stroking up his inner thigh. Those eyes were looking down at John as Rodney moved above him. He’d grasp John’s hips, pull them up to him. His hands would tease John open like any machine, smooth and delicate and adrenaline fueled like the best jobs - in and out with a blunt whisper.
John licked a finger, letting his other hand trail down to probe at his entrance. Rodney would push into him, spread his legs wide and fuck him up against this real wooden headboard, the sweet scent of pine and sex lingering in the air. He would take John out to the wide fields of the Land and strip him bare in a field of tall grass, the blue sky wide open above them and . . .
John gasped, spraying himself blank halfway through his fantasy. Only Rodney McKay could manage to get him so worked up in absentia.
John fell asleep mid eye-roll.
<<<>>>
He was there again - a wide open field of green, tall grass waving above his head in the sunlight. There were advertisements for places like this in the main square - jaunts through the Stargate to other worlds. But John had never been on one. He’d lived and breathed with the City for as long as he could remember.
It was only in his dreams that he came here, running up and down this sea of green like one of the large fish that swam in the depths of this planet’s ocean, beneath the City and in the narrow channels between sections.
In his dream, he would turn to find another child there. His companion wore a mantle of golden hair, curled up and shining in the sunlight, chubby cheeks, an oddly pointed nose, and blue eyes that sparkled like what they could glimpse of the sea on the horizon.
Come on. John said, tugging at the boy’s hand. Don’t tell me you’re a pigeon.
It’s not a pigeon, you idiot. What, were you raised in a barn? You’re supposed to say ‘chicken.’
John chuckled, turning to respond, only to find a busy street instead of an open field. They boy was gone, and John was lost all alone in a bustling crowd, the sprawling green and the sunlight almost forgotten.
He woke with a cry, sweating and fearful, the adrenaline leaving a mark on his skin like a burn, fading with time and scarring. He could hear Mitchell over in his corner, snoring.
There were coffee plants in the hills of the land, amid tents and slums, and the Fugees the Asgard tolerated only because they were not afraid to leave them behind. It sold like gold on the black market, but Dex always made sure that John got some skim. He set the food warmer on, drinking in the heady aroma. Smell was said to be the sense most associated with memory. And coffee was the only thing that smelled to him like childhood.
John trooped down the stairs and grabbed his coffee out of the warming field, remembering his fantasy of the night before. Rumor had it that Rodney McKay drank eleven cups a day. With a mental yawn, he flipped on the univision, surprised to see a ‘Special Alert’ flashing across the bottom of the screen. John dropped the Bat-man comic in the scanner, moving a basketball out of the way to plop down on the couch.
‘Break in at Valhalla Mutual, 363rd City,’ the grey caption proclaimed. Shit. “Cam!” John shouted. “Get down here!”
A few seconds later, Mitchell appeared in his boxers, hair tousled more than John was used to seeing it. “Wha . . . Shit, John.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Dex’s gonna be pissed off.”
“Hey, it’s my skin on the line, and you’re worried about what Dex thinks?”
“Hey, nobody pisses off the big guy. For Ascension’s sake, John . . . what are we gonna do?”
“We don’t know if it was me . . . shhh . . .” John said, motioning to the screen.
A pretty young S.B. Enhancement reporter was standing in front of the bank John had frequented just the evening before. “The 363rd City was in chaos this morning, when an armored Gateship of Banker3000s, Defenders, and Security personnel arrived to find their 6am Central Banking shipment missing.”
“So, not us then,” Mitchell remarked.
“Shh, it’s not over ‘til it’s over.”
“The shipment is reported to be the quarterly backup of research logs from LifeSource Research, a subsidiary of Beckett Farm, which is already facing serious allegations of unauthorized human testing.
“Evan Lorne, an L.D. in charge of security at the 363rd City bank, refuses to make a statement to the press, despite the fact that inside sources at Valhalla Bank report an additional security breach - a missing vault of EarthCulture relics valued at over 50,000 credits. The owner of the stolen material remains anonymous, despite the fact that the bank assures the press that they have received notification.”
“We are in such deep shit,” Mitchell remarked.
“Yeah, I think you said that already.”
“Do you think Dex’ll still be able to move the stuff?”
John shrugged. “Hard to tell. We’d have to hack the bank’s files - find out if they knew the contents and whether or not they reported it to the cops.”
“Damn.”
“Damn is right. Oh wait, it’s the commissioner.”
Hank Landry wore his usual look of gruff consternation, though John had always been convinced that the guy was usually just as amused as he was annoyed. “First, I want to assure all of you that whoever is guilty of this will be found and brought to justice.”
“Commissioner!” several agents of the written and live press were shouting. “Do you have any suspects?”
“As a matter of fact we do.”
John held his breath.
“We have one Miss Teyla Emmagen in custody, a bank employee and part-time subject at LifeSource labs. Her teller records showed some irregularities, but if she is responsible, then she is undoubtedly working with one or more accomplices.”
“Commissioner, do you have any information about the accomplices.”
Landry shook his head. “Unfortunately, Miss Emmagen is one of the rare individuals on whom mental probing proves unsuccessful. There was, however, a possible security breech flagged, a small spike of background heat picked up on the cleanroom FLIR, though only one lifesign, corresponding to one of the bank’s Defenders, was present.”
“Does this mean that a Defender is a suspected accomplice?” the S.B. reporter probed, shock playing beautifully on her well-proportioned features.
“We have no reason to doubt the loyalty of the Defender models at this time,” Landry responded curtly. “At the moment, we have our primary subject in custody. I am sure that we will be able to retrieve further information from her and the public will be the first to know when we do.”
While the reporters continued to ask for information, it was half-hearted. Once Landry gave his ‘that’s all folks’ tone, there would be no getting more out of him.
“What are we going to do?” Mitchell asked, looking sullen.
“We’re going to meet Dex.” John sighed. “And then, like the Reverend Jackson says, we’re going to wait.”
<<<>>>
They met with Dex on the Land. John stood out here, somewhat, earning wary glances as he strode through the narrow cobblestone streets, trying not to wrinkle his nose at the stench of waste and burning. Defenders were accepted here, but not welcomed.
“Man,” Mitchell remarked. “Remind me why Dex can’t come into the City again?”
“The tracker. The Asgard allow all Runners Fugee status, but the City’s sensors track it.”
“Ah. No wonder the big guy’s always so grumpy. I don’t know what I’d do if I had to stay out here all the time.”
“Better than a hive ship,” a voiced rumbled from behind them.
Mitchell spun around. “Whoa, Dex, don’t jump up on a guy like that.”
Dex smiled a wide toothy smile, ignoring Mitchell and turning to face John. “Saw the announcement on the Box. Commissioner Landry’s not a fool. Even if he doesn’t admit it to the public, he must suspect a Defender.”
“C’mon, everyone trusts the Defenders,” Mitchell remarked, nudging Dex with an elbow before realizing what he’d done and frowning.
Dex grunted. “And good investigators know to trust no one but themselves. Follow me.” He indicated a one story stone building with wide strips of colorful cloth for windows, a smoky spiced smell wafting out from within. Inside, the halls were thin, exposing an open stone courtyard and a garden of the sweetest smelling herbs John had ever encountered growing in swirled patterns at their feet. Ronon led them up a narrow staircase onto the red-clay roof of the building, overlooking the courtyard on one side and the narrow bustling streets of Fugee country on the other. In the distance, John could make out grass-covered mountains and stepped farmland, a place that he would never visit.
“You have it?”
John opened his rough cloth satchel. “Twenty-three in all. Our deal says I’ll keep five as profit.”
Dex snorted. “You got yourself caught. If you want me to get you a buyer, you’ll accept three.”
“But . . .” Mitchell began.
“Four, and I’m keeping one.”
Dex nodded, not bothering to ask why John had decided to keep the Bat-man. The guy wouldn’t even know how much it was worth anyway.
“You got a buyer?”
“My next stop.”
“The girl who they’ve got fingered . . .”
“Teyla Emmagen. She was a leader of the Athosian people, before a culling forced them to take Refuge.”
“Leader?”
“She isn’t stupid enough to let them list that in her file.”
“So she’s one of yours?”
Dex shook his head.
“Should be. She’s sympathetic to your cause. The security manager too, I think.”
“You think everyone’s sympathetic, John,” Dex pointed out.
“Well, she’s worth having on your side. She can read thoughts.”
“Like the Wraith?” Dex growled. Every second he was trapped on Atlantis instead of out in the field fighting the Wraith grated on him. He was not a man meant to be caged. If he did not know that the Wraith would follow him to any other planet in the system, he would be out there fighting now, that much, John knew.
“Yes, but she wants to fight them. She stuck her neck out because she wanted the weapons to go to her people.”
Dex nodded. “I’ll see that they’re supplied. Now, do you want to tell me how you let yourself get caught?”
John shifted uncomfortably, looking down at the mass of bodies passing by them in the street below. “I . . . um . . . well, there was this girl and . . . ow! Ronon, watch the hair!”
Dex grinned, looking both fierce and ridiculously pleased with himself.
“Now, now, kids, play nice.” John knew that Mitchell meant well, but . . . he’d never been called a kid by anyone as far as he could remember. He’d never had the luxury.
“Shut up, Cam,” he said, turning to Dex. “So, as I was saying, there was a girl and . . . no, don’t hit me again, Dex. She was a thief. I didn’t even say a word to her, I swear, I . . .”
John was interrupted by a figure sauntering up the steps, dressed in Fugee garb. John didn’t normally do the whole women thing, but he could appreciate the bare stomach and the black leather pants - the thin silk halter covering the important bits. But it was the eyes - green and warm but wise, even beneath the cocked eyebrow. “No . . .” he murmured, taking an involuntary step back.
“Hey, boys, how are things going?” she said, ambling over to them like she was wearing a sundress and not two holsters stuffed with pulse pistols. Her dark hair was pulled back into pigtails and she squinted in the sun, but there was just something about her . . . something familiar. “Oh, you’re cute in those slacks, but I think I liked you better with your hand down your pants.”
John didn’t even bother fighting Dex’s next slap upside the head. He winced, before rising, surprise melting into anger in the blink of an eye. He understood why Defenders seemed to have no problem being intimidating. “Who the hell are you and what did you do?”
She stuck out her hand for shaking. “I’m Vala. And you are?”
“John,” he gritted out.
“And your friends?”
“Cameron Mitchell.”
“Ronon,” Dex remarked, looking more angry than interested in the way that her gaze swept up and down his body.
“Nice,” she said.
“You weren’t done telling me what the fuck you thought you were doing yesterday.”
“Why, I was robbing the bank. I thought you Defenders were supposed to be intelligent.”
John gritted his teeth. “Were you trying to get caught?”
Vala rolled her eyes, ponytails bouncing as she flounced over to the railing of the roof and hoisted herself up, swinging her legs over the side like a child. “I didn’t get caught, silly. The Commissioner has a clerk and I’m here, talking to you. I think that qualifies as getting off scot-free. Except the getting off part - though I’m sure one of you boys might be able to help me out with that. And Scott, whoever he is.”
John also had no idea who Scott was, but he wanted this woman to pay for blowing his cover . . . or at the very least apologize. He stalked up to her, hoping that she would lean back over the ledge and get threatened into doing what he wanted, but instead she just leaned in, swinging a leg around him to hold herself in place. She swayed into his neck, looking up through her lashes at him like a lover. “I’m sorry that I got the Commissioner involved. But the job was to steal LifeSource’s records, not some random person’s valuables, and I got paid rather handsomely.”
“Um . . .” John mumbled, looking straight into her eyes, unable to stop either this niggling feeling of familiarity or the fact that he seemed to be growing hard from looking at a woman for the first time in his life.
Mitchell cleared his throat, and John turned around to see Dex looming over them, a large hand reaching out to grab Vala by her bicep and pull her up and around John until she was standing facing the rebel and his rather intimidating set of dreads. “You messed up John’s ability to steal and you cost the Independent Wraith Resistance the weapons that we might not be able to get without him.”
“And I’m sorry about that too, but how was I supposed to know that he didn’t expect anybody to notice that he’d lifted their possessions? Normally, people who put very valuable things in safes like to make sure they’re still there. Somebody would have found out eventually, right?”
“Yeah, a long time after we’d sold their stuff!” John protested.
She scowled for a second, then brightened. “Then I’ll just have to make it up to you.”
This couldn’t be good.
“You have any guns?” Dex asked.
“No,” she grinned. “Even better. I’ll come help you.”
<<<>>>
“So. What’s our next job?” Vala asked, bouncing up and down on top of one of John’s beanbag chairs. Her pigtails bounced too. John winced.
“I think it’s best we lay low for a while,” John’ remarked.
“Okay. I can lay. What else’s there to do around here? What about shopping? I bet you one of those Relics you sold off could buy a lot of shoes.”
“We could play basketball,” Mitchell offered, though he seemed a little deflated. It was hard to imagine somebody who could annoy Cam in such a short amount of time, but it appeared to be working.
“Ooh! What’s basketball? Is it one of those games where you take off your clothes every time you lose?” She poked Mitchell’s abs. “Because I like those games.”
John still couldn’t believe he’d agreed to this. But she was an exceptional tracker. Then again, she had the gene too - which would help explain it.
Mitchell tossed the basketball up in the air. “No, this is a basketball. And don’t tell me you don’t know what it is. Even the Defenders play basketball, right John?”
John nodded, not bothering to mention that his first game had come as an adult.
“I don’t know what it is.”
“What are you, an alien?”
She didn’t answer.
“You’re not an alien, are you?” Mitchell asked, letting the basketball bounce off the coffee table and up into the preservation field.
“No, nothing like that,” Vala replied. “I’m from a farm.”
“A farm?”
“Yes, where children are grown.”
John and Mitchell exchanged a look. “Excuse me?”
“Well, how were you two produced?”
“By my mother and father,” Mitchell replied indignantly.
“And you?”
“Um . . .” John began.
“He doesn’t remember,” Mitchell filled in for him.
“Well, you were probably born on a farm. Like my Adria. They took her before I . . .” her eyes went glassy and distant for a second before she shook herself back to the present. “But let’s not dwell on depressing things. The long and the short of it is this - I escaped, discovered a skill for the acquisition of valuables and have been working contracts ever since. And now, we’re partners.” She clapped her hands together. “Aren’t you excited?”
“Actually,” John mumbled. “I work alone.”
Mitchell scowled.
“I mean I do the actual . . . you know, alone.”
“You use your appearance to get by. But now the commissioner might be on to you.”
“Because of you.”
“Well, that’s neither here nor there.” Vala grinned, moving over to settle herself on John’s lap before he could even blink.
“Um . . .”
“You,” she tapped his nose, “need me.”
“I don’t need anyone,” John replied, standing and depositing her not-so-gently on the floor.
“Fine. But I’m not leaving until you let me help you.” She paused, considering. “So, what do you guys normally do at . . . a quarter to six?”
“Um . . .” Mitchell stuttered, at the same time John said, “Nothing.”
Vala took one look at the flush spreading up Mitchell’s cheeks and across John’s ears before laughing. “Oh, good, I was hoping you’d say that. “ She stood, grabbing John by the hand and yanking him up, extending a hand to Mitchell. “You coming?”
“Ah . . . er . . . no thank you, the two of you enjoy yourselves.”
“Don’t worry about him,” John said, once they were safely closed in the bedroom. “Cam’s pretty much the poster boy for efficient boring, vanilla sex.”
“And I take it you’re not?” Vala asked, pushing him down against the bed, the sky a brilliant blue crowning her head.
John really thought he should say no, right up until he didn’t.
<<<>>>
John dreamed of a room, the walls painted a simple blue, lit only by desk lamps. There were paintings on real paper on the walls, rough airplanes and rocket ships scratched out in wax.
Hey, the blue-eyed boy said, perched on top of a bookshelf, a quilt tied around his neck. I’m the bat-man and you can be the-boy-wonder.
I’m almost as old as you, why can’t I be the Bat-man?
The boy scoffed, leaping off of the bookcase to bounce on the bed.
Cool! John exclaimed, clambering up the shelves, some Relics spilling out behind him. Whoever thought two kids their age would be reading War and Peace was clearly off his rocker.
You have hair like Robin, the boy remarked, moving out of the way so that John could jump.
But not fast enough. John had him pinned, hands above his head, in a second.
Hey! the boy squawked. For all you know I have a rare blood-clotting disorder.
I wanna be the Bat-man. John could feel the delicate bones of the boy’s wrists in his hands, so real he could almost break them. He squeezed.
Stop it! You’re hurting me! the boy yelled, struggling beneath him.
John turned and suddenly he was in a dark alleyway, a young woman grasped beneath him, dark brown hair, delicate cheekbones and wise eyes looking up at him in fear. She could scream all she wanted - he’d just tell anyone concerned that it was official Defender business.
My credit chip is in my bag. Take me to the nearest depository. I’ll transfer it to you. You don’t want to do this, her voice was low and calm but somehow melodic too. The City was speaking to him - the only constant he could remember. Elizabeth Weir - the SocietyFeed had her listed as the fiancée of the famous transfer surgeon, Simon Wallace, and a powerful Immigration Counselor of her own right. He was getting paid well for this hit.
Please, she begged. Stop right now and you don’t have to be this. I won’t tell.
Then he felt hands rough on his collar, choking him. He brought his hands up and he was back in that children’s room again, a man standing over him, his face blotted out in silhouette from the desk lamp with the Batsignal taped to it. His fury was like the anger of the Dark Knight, his grimace like the Joker as his hand came down hard across John’s face. You don’t touch him! You hear me?! He’s a genius Authentic and you . . . you’re nothing! You got that? Nothing! I’ll have you destroyed before I let you hurt him!
Another slap and the man was gone, leaving John whimpering, looking at the kid with blue eyes through blurred vision.
Are you okay? the kid asked, rubbing his wrists.
John nodded, choking back a sob.
I’m fine, by the way, you cretin.
John choked back another sob at that. He didn’t know what a cretin was, but it probably meant the same as ‘nothing.’
The other boy looked at him, sighing and untying the quilt from around his shoulders. I would have let you be the Bat-man, you know? Even if your hair matches Robin’s.
John’s sniffles transformed into a smile, taking the cape.
But, hey, wearing the cape takes ‘sponsibility. No hurting.
John nodded, watching Elizabeth Weir look over her shoulder, offering him a soft smile before she disappeared into the night. No hurting.
John blinked and then he was back in the Bat-cave, looking up at the stars. His left arm felt dense and numb, shoved beneath something warm and . . . snoring?
He pushed himself up, looking down at the figure that seemed to have tried to burry itself in his armpit. Vala’s skin was a pale purple in the first hints of dawn creeping up above the horizon. Her breasts were tucked awkwardly against her chest as she shifted to use her hands as a pillow, still snoring in almost a soft rumbling purr.
John stood, pushing a stray strand of hair back from where it had escaped her pigtails. He very rarely even noticed a woman, but there was just something about this one.
He smiled, looking down on her, wearing a stolen pair of his black boxers, before creeping down the spiral staircase and into the living room where Mitchell was passed out on the couch, feed-flipper still in hand. John settled into the small space not taken up by his partner in crime and changed the feed with his mind.
The BreakingNewsFeed flashed a bright red in his mind, so he turned there quickly.
“We’re here outside the McKay mansion, where Rodney McKay has just made the startling announcement that he is in fact the owner of the rare items stolen from the 363rd City Bank two days ago.” She laughed, a frighteningly high-pitched giggle. “Whoever emptied that vault, I feel sorry for you.”
John let his face fall into his hands. “Thor’s Hammer preserve me.” Rodney McKay was one of the most powerful men in the Empire and a genius with all forms of technology. Masturbation fantasies aside, he was the last person John wanted to draw attention from.
McKay came on screen then, looking smart and composed in a perfectly tailored black suit.
“Mr. McKay,” the airhead from the Newsfeed was saying. “What can you tell us about the contents of the case and what you intend to do about the robbery?”
McKay smirked, looking smug. “Mostly comics from the EarthWar era. Valuable, yes, but only one of personal significance to me.”
John looked over to where he’d left the Bat-man comic laying on the side table. “Fuck.”
“Aren’t you concerned about the loss of property? The police have yet to bring the robber to justice.”
McKay smiled at that. It wasn’t arrogant or sarcastic, but secretive somehow. He looked into the camera and it was almost as though he was staring straight at John - those blue eyes intense and probing. “Oh, I’m pretty sure I know who did it.”
John’s eyes widened.
“Have you informed the commissioner of this news?”
McKay laughed. “The commissioner will deserve to know when he figures it out himself. Besides, the commissioner will never be able to find the person responsible.”
The reporter, if anything, appeared confused. “You aren’t concerned that the Justice Council will force you to reveal what you know?”
McKay waved her away, almost casual. “I’d like to see them try. I’m too important to them to risk losing my talents over missing property that happens to be mine in the first place.”
“And the LifeSource labs material?”
McKay shrugged. “The person I’m thinking of has no motive to steal data like that.”
Which was true, of course. John’s work was to get money to let the Independent Wraith Resisters buy materials with which to fight. They stole from rich people for a good cause. Espionage, blackmail, and other data-related crimes were a whole different level all together.
“And besides - whoever stole the data crystals expected to get caught. And if you expect to get caught - why steal just one box of salable material? No, whoever did that didn’t expect to get caught.”
“But you intend to catch them?”
“No. They can keep the comics. I’m sure they have their reasons for taking them. I’d just dare them to attempt something in the Research Sector, where I’ve personally installed ample security measures. In fact, if he’s not a pigeon, then he’ll come.”
That stopped John dead in his tracks. Rodney McKay was a well-known asshole, but he was brilliant - perhaps a little hyperactive and crazed sometimes, but he was a genius. And he didn’t make mistakes like that.
The Reverend Jackson said that the universe was a sea of energy. He said that people and experiences floated through it like the many sections of the City in this vast sea. Your dreams cast out their nets and pulled the experiences you needed to you like a magnet and there were no coincidences. It wasn’t a coincidence.
“Watcha watchin’?” A voice came from behind him. Vala was standing there, still wearing nothing but John’s boxers, a bowl of cereal somehow having appeared in her hands. “He’s cute.”
“That’s Rodney McKay.”
She looked blank.
“A famous physicist. He’s . . . well, he invented a lot of really important things. His father was the first gentleman to clone the service-class. He also helped invent the majority of the Enhancements for naturally born children.”
“Okay.”
“Hey, do you feel like a near-impossible job with a high probability that the people who’ll catch us will be ruthless?”
“Is there going to be good treasure?”
John nodded.
“Then count me in.”
“You’re going to have to wear a proper dress, though. And a hat.”
She wrinkled her nose, indignant. “Hey, I’ll have you know I clean up very nicely.”
“Good.”
“Now, what’s this job you’ve got for us?” She flung herself onto the couch, breasts bouncing distractingly.
“We’re going to break into this man’s mansion,” he pointed to the screen where Rodney was ranting about the incompetence of early-model security personal.
She smiled, almost casually. “No.”
“Look, this is a matter of principle, here. We stole something he cares about. And we have to return it.”
“I didn’t think Defenders were supposed to be so noble,” Mitchell mumbled from where he was rubbing his face into wakefulness on the couch, catching a glimpse of a naked woman and looking away, blushing.
“Well, I . . . I just happen to have a thing for brilliant, blue-eyed men who talk with their hands.”
Vala grinned at that, standing and slinking over and rubbing up against him like a cat. “What a coincidence. So do I.”
“John,” Mitchell began, looking desperate. “We’re not going to try to break into McKay’s goddamned fortress because the two of you somehow have the hots for the man . . . that’s just . . .”
“We’re not going to break in,” John said with a wink. “We’re heading in the front door.”
PART 2