FIC: Kingdom of Mirrors Part 3/3
Part one and part two.
The Defenders clustered around McKay’s bedside in a tight circle, eyes dark and ruthless as they stared straight ahead. When John approached, the nearest one raised his weapon in a single smooth movement, like he was lifting a glass of water or pointing something out to a friend.
John raised his hands in surrender. “Hey, hey, this is all a little excessive, don’t you think?” There were at least fifteen Defenders in this room. “Even for McKay.”
The Defender with the gun shook his head. “McKay didn’t order this. He’s still out. Someone tried to kill him.” A brief flicker of emotion flitted across that blank visage like John had only ever seen while looking in the mirror. But even he had problems believing that these people who had never been conditioned to feel could possibly care about the man who made them clean and play musical instruments and even fuck him sometimes.
“And it wasn’t me!” John shouted. He just wanted to see Rodney. He needed to know that his . . . friend? Lover? He needed to know that Rodney was okay.
“She came here with you.”
“And I just met her a few days ago!” In fact, John should have known better. He had never trusted easily. It had taken nearly a year helping Mitchell back to full health before he even let the man know how to get in and out of the Bat-cave. He’d never let his guard down so completely. It was utterly irrational.
He could see the slight unfocused gaze in the wall of Defenders in front of him, signaling that they were conferring using the City’s communication system.
“Come on, guys. I’m one of you.”
“You are not . . .” the Defender still in the silk stockings replied, a hard edge appearing behind a façade of lip gloss and eyeshadow.
But he didn’t have a chance to finish, because McKay was groaning into wakefulness in the bed just beyond John’s vision. The pain threaded through his voice made John’s heart clench. The cross-dressing Defender turned to tend to him, but Rodney’s call was clear, “John? John? Not you, My Fair Lady. John.”
The Defender just managed to hide his disappointment when he motioned for John. Anyone else might have missed it, but John was familiar with those features.
McKay was wrapped tightly in the red silk sheets and a fuzzy white blanket. Somebody had changed him into a loose fitting pair of blue silk pajamas and propped him up on a mountain of pillows. His cheeks were pale, splotched with red and some bruising brought on by the anaphylaxis. He gazed up at John through hooded, glazed eyes, but offered a trembling smile, reaching out for John’s hand and then yanking him gently into his bed. “My father offered me a small immunosystems rewrite when I grew old enough for it to be safe. I was in a Purist phase and turned him down. Stupid, in retrospect.”
John shook his head, squeezing Rodney’s hand and bringing it up to his lips to kiss. “I can understand why you might want to. You haven’t had any Enhancements done?”
Rodney shook his head. It was ironic - the only son of the champion of human genetic programs without a single code-switch. “I’m brilliant just the way I am.”
John smiled, laying down precariously between Rodney and the edge of the bed, resting his head on Rodney’s shoulder. “Yes, you are.”
John had no idea how long they stayed like that, with Rodney’s fingers trailing absently through his hair and the Defenders crowding all around, their hazel eyes settling upon John every once and a while, managing to be both empty and accusatory.
Atlantis Communications Query. Do you accept?
John wanted to ignore it in favor of the warm gust of Rodney’s breath ghosting over his cheek and the flutter of his heart beneath John’s palm, but he knew that he owed Vala the opportunity to explain herself.
Accepted.
I’m sorry, John.
You’d better be.
Do you have any idea the kind of things he’s responsible for?
No. And I don’t need to. Rodney’s a good man. Beside him, Rodney gasped a little. Only then did John realize how tightly he’d been gripping his hand.
You can be a good man and still do evil. The Church of Ascension teaches us that there are no bad people. Everyone can reform.
Then how can you kill? Is that who’s behind this?
Daniel says that sometimes you have to act for the greater good. Even the Alterans knew that.
Reverend Daniel Jackson. Of course - resistant to the Asgard genetic technology and the false immortality it promised. And why does the Reverend Jackson want Rodney dead?
Because of his involvement with Lifesource Laboratories. Where Vala was a subject.
Is that what this is all about? Revenge?
No. McKay is working on a quantum genetic simulator. It’ll allow geneticists like Carson Beckett to predict a person’s actions from a simple genome scan - also the exact childhood experiences necessary to mold anybody into the personality that they want.
Rodney wouldn’t do that. He’s pro-Construct-Rights.
Why don’t you ask him, then? For someone opposed to Enhancements and Constructs, he has a suspicious number of Defenders.
He’s rescuing them from being dispersed!
Fine. Then explain how comfy he is with Carson Beckett.
Beckett was McKay Senior’s protégé. They probably spent a lot of time together.
Time constructing the devices that put us in the situation we’re in! Even if they didn’t pull the trigger, they have to take responsibility for it.
John refused to acknowledge any further conversation. Rodney wasn’t a bad person. After all, he’d saved John and all the Defenders in this mansion from the horrors fate had in store for them. How could he be?
He looked into Rodney’s sleepy blue eyes. The other man must have noticed John’s indecision, because he pushed himself up so that they were facing. “What is it?”
John pulled away slightly, though Rodney’s hand stroking his cheek kept him anchored to the spot. “It’s been more than thirty years, Rodney. How can we possibly expect to just pick things up the way they were?”
“I’ve done calculations . . . my father . . . our formative experiences all occur very young. Even if I don’t know everything that’s happened to you, I still know you.” His hands reached for John, digging into the soft material of his shirt, but John pulled away, standing.
“That’s the same logic they use to justify the creation of the Defenders. If they keep the conditions of their childhood correct, they can guarantee loyalty. But the future’s not certain, Rodney. Not even the Asgard can predict that.”
John had struggled against the crushing weight of destiny his entire life. He wasn’t like the other Defenders. When he gave up the business of assassination and let Elizabeth Weir go, he’d made a choice - him, not some programming or genetic destiny even. He’d made the choice for himself. Nobody else controlled his future.
Childhood friendship wasn’t why he was sharing Rodney’s bed at the moment. He was doing it because he’d found something in Rodney. What he felt was real, if only by virtue of the fact that he felt it.
“Hey,” Rodney whispered, drawing John delicately down to settle between his legs. The Defenders, now milling about the room, seemed to collectively shift their eyes to odd corners of the room. Rodney ignored them, tilting his chin up to press his lips to John’s unresisting ones. “Just let me believe that the man I love is a good person.”
John groaned, shooting a mental communiqué to the Defenders telling them to get out. “I’m not a good person, Rodney. I’m just as ruthless as they say we all are. I’ve killed.”
“I know.”
“Your father.”
Rodney smiled, bemused, before delivering John another weary kiss. “Who do you think ultimately contracted the hit?”
“But he was your father.” John’s voice faltered. Heredity was supposed to be important, wasn’t it? That was what entitled Authentics to more.
Rodney shrugged. “He was an evil man. A regular Dr. Mengele.”
John gulped. “Vala says the same thing about you.”
“Hardly.” Rodney’s laugh was gruff, barely even a grunt. “Call one of the Defenders. Tell them to let Carson in.”
John felt his eyes widen almost involuntarily.
“Carson? You’re afraid of Carson?” The laugh was longer this time, tinged with hysteria.
John did was he was told, and it was only moments before the infamous Dr. Carson Beckett was bustling through the doors, old-fashioned white coat fluttering behind him. “Oh dear, Rodney, what have ya done to yourself this time, lad?”
John stepped back, watching with a hawk’s eye as Beckett fussed over Rodney. John couldn’t argue with that, at least.
“Good news, Rodney,” Beckett whispered, looking skeptically at John.
Rodney waved away his concerns. “You’re done?”
Carson nodded, looking flushed and almost embarrassed. He certainly wasn’t the monster the Reverend Jackson made him out to be. The man didn’t look capable of harming a flagesallus, despite all of the things that Beckett Farms had done to Vala.
“Done with what?” John asked.
“A way to defeat the Wraith. Thanks to Rodney’s latest invention, we were able to predict a transmission path for the virus I’ve been developing for the better part of two years.”
“A virus?” John didn’t know much about medicine - the science was a mystery left only up to the elite that the Asgard Science Council chose to enlighten, but he’d always thought that viruses were bad things.
“Yes, it’s a retrovirus that is able to deliver an immediate gene therapy, like an Enhancement, if you will, to a Wraith. The Wraith are actually a kind of hybrid creature between the Iratus bugs that our armies have found so pesky and humans. With the retrovirus, we will be able to transform Wraith into humans. The only problem is that the Asgard would never allow it. They’d shut us down - destroy all samples and Dispense us the second they found out.”
“Wait. Why?” As much as John had hated the people who’d made his face a familiar fixture throughout the city and the people who had taken Vala’s child from her, and even the people who had prevented the natives of Pegasus from waging their own war, he’d never really connected it back to a concrete hatred of the Asgard. After all, they were protectors too, rescuing human beings from an age of intraspecies war with weapons hideous in their crude indiscriminance. War Chancellor Thor had rid the home galaxy of the Goa’uld, and with the help of his new subjects, destroyed the Replicator threat. They’d opened the gateway to the stars, and brought Earthlings out to the reaches of the galaxy and the City, that John loved more than almost anything. But before the Asgard, the tide of sentiment had been swinging against genetic purification and the science of self-improvement at any costs. Without the Asgard, the Defenders never would have existed.
Rodney and Beckett exchanged a meaningful glance. “Because all the Asgard want . . . all they’ve ever wanted,” Beckett practically whispered, “is to live just a little bit longer.”
It all made sense now. “Which is an art that the Wraith have perfected.”
Beckett nodded. “Aye. They want to contain the Wraith threat, yes, but what are the lives of a few Pegasus natives in the face of the huge research potential the Wraith present? Why else would the Chancellor have moved his headquarters and his scientific support staff to the frontier of another galaxy?”
John shook his head. “All the while they send us to die on the frontlines of a war they never intended to win.”
“But we’ll remedy it, lad. Don’t you worry.”
“So,” Rodney queried, “what’d you do with it?”
“Now, that’s the tricky part.” Carson looked sheepish.
Rodney accused, “You didn’t.”
“I had no choice, Rodney! Scientific Minister Loki has been watching me ever since my little mishap on Hoff.”
“Mishap! Carson, you killed half your test subjects!”
John felt his heart catch. They had not reported that on the NewsFeed.
Carson sighed. “They were so eager. If I just could have gotten permission from the council, the Hoffans never would have even had access to the experiment.”
Rodney slumped back against his bed, looking suddenly tired. And old. How could they have gone so long without finding each other? “So, who’d you code it into?”
Beckett shook his head. “The Prototype.”
Rodney buried his face in his hands, groaning. “I always knew you were too busy lifting up sheep’s skirts and searching for the elusive Scottish haggis-tolerant gene to actually focus on . . . oh, say . . . thinking!”
“What was I supposed to do, Rodney? The Defenders all get a full DNA workup when we register their IdentTags and the Asgard propaganda people are riding our surrogate production department like little grey cowboys. I couldn’t just code it into some Authentic child!”
Rodney crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at Carson in a way that suggested that he’d expected Carson to do exactly that, but gave it up to wallow in a good dose of self-pity. “But those idiotic grey bastards sent the Prototype to the front.”
“I know. She doesn’t even know the kind of power she has, if we could just position her where we need. I knew that girl was trouble the second she pulled her dress off.”
Carson scoffed. “She can’t help that, man. All of the hormones we’ve got pumping through the surrogates to ensure optimum fecundity, the poor dears would probably fuck a flagpole. VLA22537’s no different.” VLA . . . Vala? Then again, hormones might explain it.
“I don’t know. She’s different enough to escape and then try to kill me, Carson. Even the little grey mafia knows that she’s different. Different enough to ship her daughter off to the frontlines the second they find out she’s stolen the records to make contact. That’s too much to attribute to simple variation.”
“Bearing the Prototype instead of one of the old model Defenders probably altered her body chemistry somewhat.”
Wait . . . that wasn’t right. John interrupted. “So you’re saying that Vala was created to carry . . . people like me?”
Beckett turned, with a sweetly patronizing grin on his face. “Yes. Research showed that Authentic children generally suffered from less developmental problems than the early models grown in Asgard artificial wombs, or spontaneously assembled. As it turns out, the most responsive homeostatic environment for a fetus is a natural womb, so we created a class of surrogate mothers - as genetically similar to the Defenders as an Authentic mother might have been, but with the optimal genes for childbearing.”
“So you’re saying that Vala is my mother?” Because John really really did not want to go there.
“No. She did not bear you. And your Authentic birth mother was likely quite different. You share the same degree of genetic relatedness - the same you might with a parent or a child, but it is one possibility of trillions.”
“Yes, yes, it’s all very Freudian. You kill your creator and fuck your genetic mother . . . or maybe the man raised as your brother . . . “ Rodney interrupted, looking half-crazed and ponderous. “But that’s beside the point. The point is - how are we going to get to the Prototype and move her to the appropriate ground zero to unleash the virus when she’s on the front and we’re stuck here?”
John smiled, refusing to think about the sex he’d just had and its startling Oedipal implications. This was a problem he knew how to fix. “Oh, I can get us to the front.”
Rodney gaped.
Carson just frowned and asked. “Wait, you had sex with a surrogate? I thought we’d coded all Defenders to be gay.”
It was not John’s day.
<<<>>>
Vala was glaring at them all, especially Carson Beckett. She looked ready to take his head off, but John’s hand on her arm held her back. If it hadn’t been a necessity, he never would have consented to touch her. There was just something wrong about it now, even though it had seemed so natural before.
“So let me get this straight,” Mitchell was saying. “You want to steal a Gateship, smuggle two priority1 Authentics through the Stargate, transport yourselves to the frontlines of the most devastating war this galaxy has ever known, and then capture a trained and genetically designed warrior leading an entire army of similar fighters and transport her the heart of Wraith territory.”
John considered. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
Mitchell laughed. “You are one crazy fucker, Shep.”
John shrugged. “You okay with staying here, Cam?”
“If there’s no other way.”
“There’s not.”
Depressingly, all of them that could easily fake gate passes, were the ones that weren’t needed. John could easily pass as one of the troops headed for the front, and Vala was unregistered in the database, so she could pass for a Fugee. Even Dex, once Beckett had extracted the Wraith transmitter from his back, was able to move relatively freely. It was the two scientists that posed the biggest problem.
“Though I still don’t see why we need one of those ship thingies,” Vala prodded, poking Rodney and making him glower.
“We need one because Carson and I would be recognized if anyone saw us approaching the Gate and we’re both probably at the top of the off-world restriction list.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re Very Important People. Brilliant physicist and top notch geneticist.”
“But why?”
Rodney rolled his eyes. “Remind me again why we don’t still have you locked up?”
“Because you need me to steal the ship thingy.” Vala smiled at him and then flounced off to bug Mitchell.
“And you’re supposed to be related?” Rodney whispered under his breath, reeling John in close and draping a hand around his waist.
John grinned, stealing a kiss. Mitchell was right: what they were about to try was probably the craziest plan in a history of crazy plans, but it was as though something deep within him had unclenched. Whatever he decided to do from now on, he would do freely and without regrets.
“So, do you wanna get out of here?” Rodney asked.
“Hell, yeah.” John didn’t know if he meant this room, this City, this planet, or even this galaxy. But, yeah.
<<<>>>
Vala was wearing an emerald green dress this time. It was made of silk and draped over her narrow hips like a waterfall, flowing out and down in a long train. John had absolutely no idea how she planned to walk in it without tripping. He stood beside her, his biosign regulator suit expanding in and out carefully. Rodney had hacked him a pass into the research sector quite easily, but he still needed to take on the identity of yet another one of his copies.
“Dr. Carolyn Lam, here to see the head of the human wing of your research division,” Vala said with a smile. Lam was the perfect Authentic to impersonate. She was the daughter of the Commissioner, but he’d kept her so well protected from the limelight that few even knew what she looked like. Still, she was high profile enough that no one would dare bother her with a scan - especially when Rodney had hacked into HumanSolution’s appointment database and added her name.
The secretary wasn’t a Construct, which surprised John. But she did show the typical sharp jaw line and bright smile that were trademarks of the Enthusiasm Enhancement. She stood, pleated skirt swishing behind her as she led Vala through several artfully concealed security bulkheads and down a long hall towards a pair of stained-glass doors. “Mr. Lee is waiting for you.”
John took the time to pull up his file in the database. William Lee, Terran, Authentic with a double Intelligence Enhancement. John couldn’t help but smile proudly - Rodney was a genius without any Enhancements. Same with Samantha Carter. For all they pushed a program of genetic engineering, it was obvious that the Asgard respected natural brilliance far more than anything constructed. Because it was unique, John supposed, and the Asgard needed unique points of view almost as much as they needed longer lives.
John and Vala shared a look of trepidation as the doors opened before them automatically. It turned out to be completely unwarranted, however. John hadn’t imagined it would be this easy. The Gateship was sitting right there in the middle of the room, pretty much begging him to steal it. Vala’s eyes widened so conspicuously that John was forced to give her a nudge. Not that the squat balding man (apparently Mr. Lee) was looking at her face.
“Dr. Lam,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it, like a gentlemen of the old romantic cinema.
Vala smiled coyly. John had to hand it to her - she was good. “Mr. Lee, it truly is an honor. I have been following your work in my spare time.”
“Really? You . . . they allow you access?”
Vala winked. “Those of us close to the council find few of our wants impossible to satisfy.”
Lee practically melted under her gaze. It kinda made John want to throw up. Instead he directed his attention to the Gateship, settled innocently just a faomr away. God, she was a beauty. Sometimes when he dreamt, John was flying high like Superman, sailing through a star-dappled sea like Peter Pan searching for Neverland.
Lee must have seen some of the longing in John’s gaze, because he chuckled. “These Defenders can’t seem to get enough of the Gateships. Granted, they are the only ones capable of flying them, but still . . . nobody says these guys are without emotion if they’ve seen one at the helm.” Lee patted John’s shoulder patronizingly.
John glared.
“Oh . . . erm . . . right. Sorry. What is it you wanted to speak with me about, Doctor Lam?”
“Well, just that, actually. John . . . JHN44544, that is,” she fudged, “is one of my favorites and . . .”
“Oh, the experiments with Gene/technology interaction. I read about that. Is he one of the specifically trained pilot models?”
John bit his tongue, resisting the urge to say, ‘He’s standing right here.’
“Exactly,” Vala grinned.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you,” Lee stuck out his hand, which was a greasy as his blue oxford - clearly not salvaged by having been rolled up to his elbows.
John shook it anyway.
“They won’t let us have any of these models. Most of them are sent directly to the front. The Wraith are probably getting tired of the taste of them. Not that . . . well . . . I’m sorry, that was insensitive.”
“That’s okay,” John shrugged. He was used to that kind of thing. “Hey, you mind if I give her a try?” He indicated the ship.
“Oh. Please! If you wouldn’t mind turning on the cloaking technology. The Asgard are the only one of the four old races that did not master the ability to cloak, focusing on research into time and genetics instead. But we here at HumanSolutions think we can solve that little problem for them.”
John nodded. The ship was spacious on the inside, and old. He ran a hand down a smooth bronze bulkhead, like tracing the age lines of an towering tree, or running his fingers through ancient lace. He smiled.
“They all do that,” Lee whispered to Vala.
John chanced a look, finding that she was equally enraptured. The Gateships were alive in a way that he thought the City used to be. Now you had to dig through layers and layers of foreign coding, broad lumbering subroutines that covered up the delicate vibrancy beneath. But how could the Asgard be expected to understand - to them, everything was all pure rationalist and brute mental force. They never paused for a second to consider the true complexity of the universe, nor to find beauty in it.
“I can see why,” Vala replied smoothly, drawing John back to the present. “They’re beautiful.”
“Yeah, almost makes you think that the Alterans had something, you know? The whole Ascension business?”
“You’re not a believer?” Vala sounded honestly shocked, as though the idea of Ascension wasn’t just an opiate of the masses, like Marx had said so many years ago. The Asgard had long ago given up on that route and turned instead to science to preserve them.
Lee laughed. It was a chocked, stuttering sound, no doubt weighted by flirtation with a girl way out of his league. “Yes, well, if wishes were horses . . . hey, you’re not telling me that a woman like you . . .”
For all her charm, Vala did not hide her emotions well. Her smile was ice-slick and melting. “No . . . no . . . though for a moment . . . . One likes to hope.”
Lee nodded, considering. But before they could get into some hapless theological discussion, John interrupted. “So it’s okay if I . . .” he pointed to the front of the ship.
“Yes, yes, go ahead,” Lee waved him on, still staring at Vala with something like awe in his eyes.
John slid reverently into the pilot’s seat, grinning as the display came to life almost immediately, stats and figures dancing readily in his mind.
“Now, if you wouldn’t mind cloaking it.”
John complied, feeling the slight change flutter through him. “There.”
“Huh. Let me just . . .” Lee pointed to the door.
“Hold on a minute,” Vala queried. “This cloaking thing doesn’t even show up on the City’s sensors.”
Lee laughed. “Nope. As far as we can tell it’s fairly fool-proof. Unless the pilot elects to transmit his location to the central tower . . .”
Vala’s hand snapped out so quickly that Lee barely had time to blink before he was a crumpled heap on the floor. “Wow, that was depressingly easy.”
John smiled as they both stepped outside the cloaked ship, sending an Atlantis Communiqué to Rodney’s computer terminal. In a flash, they had disappeared into a local transport, along with the cloaked Gateship.
<<<>>>
“Do you have any idea how . . . [hiccup] . . . annoying . . . [hiccup] . . . these . . . [hiccup] . . . suits are,” Rodney complained.
“Yes, Rodney. I wear them all the time,” John replied, with a long suffering sigh. The biosign converting suit kinda grew on you - though John had to admit that the skin tight unitard was slightly less than flattering on Rodney’s stockier figure, no matter how enticing seeing his package outlined in silver and gold fibers might be.
“Which is why . . . [hiccup] . . . thievery . . . [hiccup] . . . was last on my list of career choices.”
“Boo,” Mitchell added unhelpfully, where he was lounging in a similar suit.
“Yes . . . [hiccup] . . . very scary. Notice how I’m still very not . . . [hiccup] . . . cured.”
“It’s quite an interesting sensation, Rodney,” Carson piped up. “Under different circumstances this might prove educational. Shoe’s on the other foot, in a manner of speaking.”
Rodney’s only answer was a hiccup.
“You know, it helps if you just relax,” Vala offered. “Let the suit breath for you.”
“Yes, because I’m going to . . . [hiccup] . . . trust my very . . . [hiccup] . . . important autonomic functions . . .[hiccup] . . . to a machine.”
John snorted. “You believe in machines for everything else.” He punched Rodney in the arm. “Buck up.”
“Ow! Remind me what I ever saw in you . . . you sadistic Neanderthal. If I find out you’re secretly into erotic asphyxiation, there’s going to be hell to pay, mister.”
Vala clapped. “Your hiccups are gone!”
“By the Ascended, I am truly blessed,” Rodney grumbled sarcastically.
“Yes, I suppose you are. As much as any of us are, that is,” Vala replied with a serene smile.
“Crazy,” Rodney mouthed. “Are we ready yet.”
“If you’re sure,” Beckett gulped, “because I’ve never touched one of these before,” he gestured to the weapon Mitchell was showing him. “And I’ve had no Defense Enhancement . . .”
“Well, you’re going to have to suck it up, Carson, because you’re the only one in three galaxies who knows exactly how this retrovirus works,” Rodney snapped, still fiddling with his suit nervously. “And I’m hardly walking headlong into the middle of a war zone alone.”
“You won’t be alone,” John pointed out. “Vala, Dex, and I will be with you.”
Vala chose that moment to flash her breasts to one of the Defenders working down in the gardens.
“Why does that not inspire me with confidence?”
“Don’t forget half the Genii army,” Dex added.
That appeared to mollify Rodney somewhat. “No less than we deserve. This is a mission of galactic importance, after all.”
“So are we ready?” John asked.
“Everything’s fine on my end,” Mitchell replied, comfortable with his biosign disguised as Rodney. He trained a weapon on the unfortunate Gateship scientist, Mr. Lee, currently unconscious and hogtied, with a suit emitting Dr. Beckett’s biosign.
“Well, then it’s time to go,” John said. “So long, Mitchell.”
Mitchell nodded to them before Rodney activated the personal domestic transporter he’d built for himself and somehow convinced the Asgard he was entitled to. John smiled at the idea that Rodney could cow even Representative Hermiod. Even though he’d lived his whole life under Asgard rule, John still found them to be pretty damned creepy.
Rodney took his place next to John then, crouching down low and covering his genitals before there was a flash of white light and they were standing inside the Gateship, along with Dex, Beckett, Vala and Ladon Radim (transported in from somewhere on Land).
John took a deep breath, settling himself at the controls and looking down at the one-way glass dome of the Bat-cave for possibly the last time ever. The sky was so blue around them, and John couldn’t restrain a joyous barrel roll as he drew the Gateship up and into the sky. After some revision, they’d decided to make the 35 hour puddle jump to the nearest Gate instead of risking it with the security in the central tower’s Gateroom.
As the networked lattice of the City spread out below them, John sighed, surprised to find a weight lifting slowly from his chest. As much as he loved the City and the soft pull of her more seductive subroutines, he hadn’t realized that all his life this was what he’d been waiting for - the atmosphere fading away below him like the forgotten smells of the street at night, the stars twinkling in all their majesty around him, a the deep pervasive cold of a calm so perfect that it stole even light away.
He met Rodney’s eyes from where he sat in the co-pilot’s seat, a bemused smile on his lips.
“And you’re sure you’ve hacked the security grid?” Vala was asking. “Because as pretty as this all is, I think I rather object to life as space dust.
Rodney heaved a put upon sigh, pointing to his head. “Genius, remember? I helped design this system. Even installed some impressive back doors.” He pointed, and almost as if on cure, two of the defensive satellites spun slowly on their axes, flashing with sunlight as though winking at them, before facing away.
“Impressive,” Ladon mumbled, from where he was relegated to standing in the doorway between the two sections of the ship.
“So, you guys are positive you know where to find Adria?” Vala asked, biting her bottom lip.
Do you think she’ll like me? popped into John’s head through the Gateship’s internal communications system.
She’s a Defender, just like me. And I like you. John assured, even though he wondered why Vala even cared. They were there to get Adria to activate the retrovirus, nothing more. It didn’t matter if she and Vala got along.
She smiled at him anyways, turning her attention quickly back to Ladon Radim when he spoke, “Commander Kolya is tracking her movements now. He’s very good. We shouldn’t have a problem.”
“Good,” Vala replied.
So you do like me. she continued. Because it’d be a shame to think that a little thing like me trying to kill your lover would mess up this incontrovertible magnetism between us.
That and the fact that we happen to be related.
So what? It’s not as though we plan to reproduce. And we were so good together.
John looked over at Rodney again, where the man was deep in an argument with Ladon Radim about what he considered to be a harebrained scheme of defeating the Wraith with an arsenal of mere atomic bombs. Rodney’s hands danced, and his eyes flashed with a passion that John rarely saw imprisoned in the deadened City they were leaving behind. No. He already had what he needed.
Please Vala begged.
No.
Pretty, pretty please.
No
Pretty, pretty, pretty . . .
This was going to be a long ride.
<<<>>>
Acastus Kolya was waiting for them on the other side of the Gate. If he was impressed by the Gateship decloaking before him, he didn’t show it. His pock-marked features were grim as he greeted them. “Defender, Dr. McKay, Dr. Beckett, Specialist Dex.” He didn’t acknowledge Vala.
“It’s Sheppard, actually,” John corrected, not liking this man, but impressed by him nonetheless. Kolya lead the Independent Wraith Resistance cell with the most kills, and he wore the rough patch of blue on his neck, where an Iratus bug bit him, like a mantle.
“So she’s here?” Vala asked, hopeful.
Kolya gestured to the thick back smoke rising above the tree line, the mass of bodies scattered around the Gate like the remnants of a house of cards. John was surprised to note that they all appeared to be Wraith. He’d never seen a Wraith before, but he found that he was suitable frightened by them anyhow - ghostly white faces and long pointed teeth like or wolverines or some other nightmarish creature. He nudged one with his boot to make sure that it was still dead. They didn’t stink like he would expect them to from the gaping maw or the state of decomposition - like something had rotted them from the inside out, nothing but empty black holes where their eyes used to be.
“It’s her,” Beckett breathed. He was leaning down over one of the corpses with the natural ease of someone with a lot of practice. John had heard of captured Wraith in the City, of course. He’d just preferred not to think about the kind of experiments that were being performed on them.
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to work, Carson,” Rodney was saying, staying as far away from the corpse as possible.
“No,” Carson sighed. “This is a possibility. I designed the virus to be distributed to a central node in one of the hive ships. You used the quantum genetic simulator to calculate the spread, remember? It’s not meant . . . she’s not supposed to deliver that kind of dosage to individual Wraith. They’ll transform too quickly for their bodies to keep up.”
“A dead Wraith is a dead Wraith,” Ronon offered. It was a Pegasus kind of cold comfort.
“Well, we’re not out to commit genocide, man!”
John was under the impression that was exactly what they intended to do.
“If we make them into humans, they will be capable of the same rights and privileges afforded to us. Hell, they might even Ascend one day.”
John shuddered at the thought, moving over towards Kolya, who was prowling through the tall fields of grass surrounding the Gate and towards the forest.
“How far?”
“They’re close,” Kolya replied curtly, motioning to the others and leading the way into a forest of twisted trees, for all appearances dead, except for the tufts of purple leaves overshadowing them, coating the ground in a falsely-optimistic sea of lavender-smelling mulch. John would have been awed by the alieness of it, if his heart wasn’t pounding like a sledgehammer in his chest. He’d never gotten this nervous before a job. But then again, there generally weren’t scary space vampires in the vaults of banks.
The terrain was moist, and the quality of light different, much bluer than he was used too. They trudged along, Rodney complaining about blisters and allergies the whole way. Carson was a nervous presence at John’s back, but the rest of them - this is what they’d been born for.
“It’s like something out of the Brother’s Grimm,” Rodney remarked, as they emerged from this enchanted forest to a view of what looked like a mountainside, purple trees perched on it like strange tufts of colorful fur. One side of the mountain was smoking, a haze of little figures clad in black battling across rocky crags and small drop-offs. And at the steepest places it became clear that it was not a mountainside at all, but a giant ship, like one of the hundreds that had advanced on the City one year when John was young and still living in a squalid hovel on the Land. The sky had rumbled a deep amber, bruised and smoky and threatening, but the shield had held. It was sparkling and crackling alive around him, and even from a shantytown on the outskirts of City-544 Cove, John had felt the calming cycling of its status updates.
There was no shield now, and the Gateship was a lonely whisper, parked on the other side of the trees. John could not remember feeling so alone, even as they entered the fray of the battle, Kolya shouting out orders to Genii soldiers as they closed in on what appeared to be a small siege of at least a dozen Wraith drones surrounding a single figure. John held his breath, looking into the faceless masks of the Wraith soldiers and knowing that they were just the same as the army of Defenders that seemed to appear out of nowhere, tumbling down the slope from a higher battlefield. They ignored Kolya’s men - not fighting them, but not coming to their aid either, but diving and weaving, trying to break through the ranks of the Wraith surrounding whatever it was they deemed so important.
Without the City’s system for communications, John almost started when one yelled at him, “You, get those Genii to back the fuck away. We’ve got this!”
John wanted to protest that they didn’t seem to have it under control at all, as one of the drones pushed someone with John’s face up against a rock, slammed his hand down and stole from him even the little individuality a clone might find. John knew that his own old and withered face would stay with him from this moment onward, in waking as well as in nightmares. Assuming he survived this, of course.
“Holy Ascension!” Rodney was shouting from beside him, firing his weapon clumsily as John tried to force him back and behind a large rock for protection.
But then something at the center of the battle seemed to flash in a moment of bright green like the light across the ocean at sunset. The Wraith drones that had formed a tight circle fell like petals of a flower spreading open to face the dawn and standing in the center stood a tall figure, lean and beautiful in a suit of black leather. Her hair was dark and her eyes flashed a brilliant gold, but the way she moved - calm and still but deadly - was absolutely unmistakable.
“Adria,” Vala whispered, rushing to her daughter’s side.
But Adria did not even flinch as she turned a weapon on her mother, a cold glint in those strange golden eyes. “I do not wish to harm you, but if you interfere with our purpose, I will do what I must.”
“You have to come with us, Lass! What you just did . . . you’ve been coded to transmit a virus. It’s very important that we . . .” Beckett trailed off as Adria leveled him with a cold steady glare.
“I have to do nothing. You have come here without permission from the council or War Minister Thor.” She nodded to the small army of Defenders that seemed to be amassing around them now, despite the fact that the sounds of the battle still raged in the distance. “We will take you into custody and have you returned to the City for judgment.”
“Do what you must. But only after you’ve come with us. Just place your hand on that hive ship there and then we can go home. They can Dispense me if they want. Just do it.”
“I will not hear any more of your traitorous overtures,” Adria responded. “I am the will of the Asgard who made me, and them alone. Now, please, surrender to our custody before we are forced to make this violent.”
“Adria, don’t do this.” Vala’s voice was steely, more stern and serious than John had ever heard it.
“I do not have to listen to you either,” she replied.
“Adria, I’m your mother.”
“You speak as though that means something.”
“I carried you in my womb for nine months,” Vala pleaded, sounding pained.
“Any woman could have done that.” Anyone could have. But Vala did. Didn’t that count for something?
“We share the same genes, Adria. We are more alike than we are different. If you hurt me, you’re hurting some of you too.”
“And I share those same genes with you and with him,” she gestured to John. “And them,” the army of Defenders standing at the ready behind her. “And farms and farms of women just like you, made to breed and nothing more.”
“You’re more than just what you were made for, darling. Think about every thought, every experience, and tell me how they can possibly be summed up in a single purpose.”
The Defenders were a blank wall of faces surrounding them now, their features somehow more sharp and pinched than John’s, like the faceless crowd in a comic book.
“Please tell me you’re not that stupid!” Rodney protested. “Just a single touch and you could end this war. You could stop the Wraith forever!”
“It is not the will of the Council to do such things, Rodney McKay.”
Rodney didn’t seem to care. He was irrational now, marching towards her. “It was us that made you, not the council. We created you as a weapon to save our own people, not theirs. We have a responsibility to the people of Pegasus and you will stop being a brat and do what you need to!”
“No,” Adria replied. “They are base scum. They are people to be ruled, nothing more.”
Dex was seething beside him, but it was Kolya that got off the shot.
It bounced harmlessly off some sparkling green shield. Adria did not smile, but neither did she seem affected when she leveled her weapon on Kolya, using the kill setting that John had never seen used inside the walls of the City. Kolya’s head was a smoking patchwork of burns when he fell helplessly onto a cushion of purple leaves - staining their narrow filaments a deep crimson.
“Oh Ascension!” Beckett shouted, rushing to the downed man’s side, even though it was obvious that it was far too late.
“You don’t have to do this, Adria,” John began, biting his lip and aware of the Wraith encroaching upon them even as he spoke. “I’m the same as all the rest, but I’m here. You can change your destiny. The fact that you allow yourself to choose means a universe of possibilities open up.” He remembered the words inked across Rodney’s chest, ‘All Who Question are Authentic.’ “Even with a quantum genetic analysis, they couldn’t tell me who I am, because we’re more than just empty shells. You have to believe that there’s something more to us than just our genes or even the range of experiences that they’ve fed to us.”
For a second there was something that looked like remorse in her eyes. But then she raised her weapon. The heat that seared across the side of John’s chest was excruciating as the worst forms of fire, burning malicious and bright until he was blinking up at the oddly blue sky and Rodney’s strained face. Someone was squeezing John’s hand, but he had trouble finding it through the pain.
He blinked and then somehow Rodney was gone, yanked away from him. John wanted to cry out, but the wind was rushing in his ears and his side was a mass of twisted nerves and white hot pain. Adria’s voice came to him, as if under water, when the green of her shield flashed off and her hand came up to his face. “You have outworn your loyalty Defender. As a last act, you can aid the Empire by finding out what Carson Beckett’s virus does to humans.”
John gurgled at her inarticulately, feeling blood well up and coat his lips.
“Models like you and I are not capable of change - only of corruption,” she whispered, but John knew it for a lie. Adria did not know it, but someone else with John’s face had crept up behind her, a Wraith stunner gripped tight in his hand.
John smiled.
They said that Defenders did not feel as Authentics did, but the last look John saw on Adria’s face was a very human one - betrayal. It stayed with her as Dex maneuvered her off John and brushed clean a well of purple leaves before pressing her delicate hand down into the living ship beneath.
As John closed his eyes, he felt the sickening rumble of the ground beneath him as it crumbled.
FIN
***
Cast of Characters:
John (Sheppard) - Defender, Prototype
Vala - Birthing Unit, Defender-class
Adria - Defender v.2.0
Rodney McKay - Authentic
Samantha Carter - Authentic
Jack O’Neill - Authentic
Commissioner Hank Landry - Authentic
Counselor Elizabeth Weir - Authentic
Reverend Daniel Jackson - Loyalty and Compassion Enhancement
Cameron Mitchell - Loyalty and Enthusiasm Enhancement
Evan Lorne - Loyalty and Defense Enhancement
Teyla Emmagen - Pegasus Native, Athosian
Ronon Dex - Pegasus Native, Satedan
Ladon Radim - Pegasus Native, Genii
Acastus Kolya - Pegasus Native, Genii
Scientific Minister Loki - Asgard
War Chancellor Thor - Asgard
Representative Hermiod - Asgard
Inspired by:
Oedipus Rex! Cetie said it was okay to do incest . . . and I didn’t want to disappoint.
‘Defender’ is from Leah and Springwoof’s brilliant ‘The Body Holographic’ and ‘Left to Fend’ , which it’s based on.
Lover Come Back, another fic in which Hermiod is the boss.
This reel_sga remix of ‘The Third Man,’ which gave me the idea to take 1920s bank robbing (which I know absolutely nothing about) and transpose it to a futuristic setting.
Also, some of the inspiration has to be ‘Firefly,’ if just the feel.
And ‘Liar, Guns, and Money’ from ‘Farscape,’ and ‘Mission Impossible 1,’ because like I could figure out anything involving bank robbing.
The Defenders clustered around McKay’s bedside in a tight circle, eyes dark and ruthless as they stared straight ahead. When John approached, the nearest one raised his weapon in a single smooth movement, like he was lifting a glass of water or pointing something out to a friend.
John raised his hands in surrender. “Hey, hey, this is all a little excessive, don’t you think?” There were at least fifteen Defenders in this room. “Even for McKay.”
The Defender with the gun shook his head. “McKay didn’t order this. He’s still out. Someone tried to kill him.” A brief flicker of emotion flitted across that blank visage like John had only ever seen while looking in the mirror. But even he had problems believing that these people who had never been conditioned to feel could possibly care about the man who made them clean and play musical instruments and even fuck him sometimes.
“And it wasn’t me!” John shouted. He just wanted to see Rodney. He needed to know that his . . . friend? Lover? He needed to know that Rodney was okay.
“She came here with you.”
“And I just met her a few days ago!” In fact, John should have known better. He had never trusted easily. It had taken nearly a year helping Mitchell back to full health before he even let the man know how to get in and out of the Bat-cave. He’d never let his guard down so completely. It was utterly irrational.
He could see the slight unfocused gaze in the wall of Defenders in front of him, signaling that they were conferring using the City’s communication system.
“Come on, guys. I’m one of you.”
“You are not . . .” the Defender still in the silk stockings replied, a hard edge appearing behind a façade of lip gloss and eyeshadow.
But he didn’t have a chance to finish, because McKay was groaning into wakefulness in the bed just beyond John’s vision. The pain threaded through his voice made John’s heart clench. The cross-dressing Defender turned to tend to him, but Rodney’s call was clear, “John? John? Not you, My Fair Lady. John.”
The Defender just managed to hide his disappointment when he motioned for John. Anyone else might have missed it, but John was familiar with those features.
McKay was wrapped tightly in the red silk sheets and a fuzzy white blanket. Somebody had changed him into a loose fitting pair of blue silk pajamas and propped him up on a mountain of pillows. His cheeks were pale, splotched with red and some bruising brought on by the anaphylaxis. He gazed up at John through hooded, glazed eyes, but offered a trembling smile, reaching out for John’s hand and then yanking him gently into his bed. “My father offered me a small immunosystems rewrite when I grew old enough for it to be safe. I was in a Purist phase and turned him down. Stupid, in retrospect.”
John shook his head, squeezing Rodney’s hand and bringing it up to his lips to kiss. “I can understand why you might want to. You haven’t had any Enhancements done?”
Rodney shook his head. It was ironic - the only son of the champion of human genetic programs without a single code-switch. “I’m brilliant just the way I am.”
John smiled, laying down precariously between Rodney and the edge of the bed, resting his head on Rodney’s shoulder. “Yes, you are.”
John had no idea how long they stayed like that, with Rodney’s fingers trailing absently through his hair and the Defenders crowding all around, their hazel eyes settling upon John every once and a while, managing to be both empty and accusatory.
Atlantis Communications Query. Do you accept?
John wanted to ignore it in favor of the warm gust of Rodney’s breath ghosting over his cheek and the flutter of his heart beneath John’s palm, but he knew that he owed Vala the opportunity to explain herself.
Accepted.
I’m sorry, John.
You’d better be.
Do you have any idea the kind of things he’s responsible for?
No. And I don’t need to. Rodney’s a good man. Beside him, Rodney gasped a little. Only then did John realize how tightly he’d been gripping his hand.
You can be a good man and still do evil. The Church of Ascension teaches us that there are no bad people. Everyone can reform.
Then how can you kill? Is that who’s behind this?
Daniel says that sometimes you have to act for the greater good. Even the Alterans knew that.
Reverend Daniel Jackson. Of course - resistant to the Asgard genetic technology and the false immortality it promised. And why does the Reverend Jackson want Rodney dead?
Because of his involvement with Lifesource Laboratories. Where Vala was a subject.
Is that what this is all about? Revenge?
No. McKay is working on a quantum genetic simulator. It’ll allow geneticists like Carson Beckett to predict a person’s actions from a simple genome scan - also the exact childhood experiences necessary to mold anybody into the personality that they want.
Rodney wouldn’t do that. He’s pro-Construct-Rights.
Why don’t you ask him, then? For someone opposed to Enhancements and Constructs, he has a suspicious number of Defenders.
He’s rescuing them from being dispersed!
Fine. Then explain how comfy he is with Carson Beckett.
Beckett was McKay Senior’s protégé. They probably spent a lot of time together.
Time constructing the devices that put us in the situation we’re in! Even if they didn’t pull the trigger, they have to take responsibility for it.
John refused to acknowledge any further conversation. Rodney wasn’t a bad person. After all, he’d saved John and all the Defenders in this mansion from the horrors fate had in store for them. How could he be?
He looked into Rodney’s sleepy blue eyes. The other man must have noticed John’s indecision, because he pushed himself up so that they were facing. “What is it?”
John pulled away slightly, though Rodney’s hand stroking his cheek kept him anchored to the spot. “It’s been more than thirty years, Rodney. How can we possibly expect to just pick things up the way they were?”
“I’ve done calculations . . . my father . . . our formative experiences all occur very young. Even if I don’t know everything that’s happened to you, I still know you.” His hands reached for John, digging into the soft material of his shirt, but John pulled away, standing.
“That’s the same logic they use to justify the creation of the Defenders. If they keep the conditions of their childhood correct, they can guarantee loyalty. But the future’s not certain, Rodney. Not even the Asgard can predict that.”
John had struggled against the crushing weight of destiny his entire life. He wasn’t like the other Defenders. When he gave up the business of assassination and let Elizabeth Weir go, he’d made a choice - him, not some programming or genetic destiny even. He’d made the choice for himself. Nobody else controlled his future.
Childhood friendship wasn’t why he was sharing Rodney’s bed at the moment. He was doing it because he’d found something in Rodney. What he felt was real, if only by virtue of the fact that he felt it.
“Hey,” Rodney whispered, drawing John delicately down to settle between his legs. The Defenders, now milling about the room, seemed to collectively shift their eyes to odd corners of the room. Rodney ignored them, tilting his chin up to press his lips to John’s unresisting ones. “Just let me believe that the man I love is a good person.”
John groaned, shooting a mental communiqué to the Defenders telling them to get out. “I’m not a good person, Rodney. I’m just as ruthless as they say we all are. I’ve killed.”
“I know.”
“Your father.”
Rodney smiled, bemused, before delivering John another weary kiss. “Who do you think ultimately contracted the hit?”
“But he was your father.” John’s voice faltered. Heredity was supposed to be important, wasn’t it? That was what entitled Authentics to more.
Rodney shrugged. “He was an evil man. A regular Dr. Mengele.”
John gulped. “Vala says the same thing about you.”
“Hardly.” Rodney’s laugh was gruff, barely even a grunt. “Call one of the Defenders. Tell them to let Carson in.”
John felt his eyes widen almost involuntarily.
“Carson? You’re afraid of Carson?” The laugh was longer this time, tinged with hysteria.
John did was he was told, and it was only moments before the infamous Dr. Carson Beckett was bustling through the doors, old-fashioned white coat fluttering behind him. “Oh dear, Rodney, what have ya done to yourself this time, lad?”
John stepped back, watching with a hawk’s eye as Beckett fussed over Rodney. John couldn’t argue with that, at least.
“Good news, Rodney,” Beckett whispered, looking skeptically at John.
Rodney waved away his concerns. “You’re done?”
Carson nodded, looking flushed and almost embarrassed. He certainly wasn’t the monster the Reverend Jackson made him out to be. The man didn’t look capable of harming a flagesallus, despite all of the things that Beckett Farms had done to Vala.
“Done with what?” John asked.
“A way to defeat the Wraith. Thanks to Rodney’s latest invention, we were able to predict a transmission path for the virus I’ve been developing for the better part of two years.”
“A virus?” John didn’t know much about medicine - the science was a mystery left only up to the elite that the Asgard Science Council chose to enlighten, but he’d always thought that viruses were bad things.
“Yes, it’s a retrovirus that is able to deliver an immediate gene therapy, like an Enhancement, if you will, to a Wraith. The Wraith are actually a kind of hybrid creature between the Iratus bugs that our armies have found so pesky and humans. With the retrovirus, we will be able to transform Wraith into humans. The only problem is that the Asgard would never allow it. They’d shut us down - destroy all samples and Dispense us the second they found out.”
“Wait. Why?” As much as John had hated the people who’d made his face a familiar fixture throughout the city and the people who had taken Vala’s child from her, and even the people who had prevented the natives of Pegasus from waging their own war, he’d never really connected it back to a concrete hatred of the Asgard. After all, they were protectors too, rescuing human beings from an age of intraspecies war with weapons hideous in their crude indiscriminance. War Chancellor Thor had rid the home galaxy of the Goa’uld, and with the help of his new subjects, destroyed the Replicator threat. They’d opened the gateway to the stars, and brought Earthlings out to the reaches of the galaxy and the City, that John loved more than almost anything. But before the Asgard, the tide of sentiment had been swinging against genetic purification and the science of self-improvement at any costs. Without the Asgard, the Defenders never would have existed.
Rodney and Beckett exchanged a meaningful glance. “Because all the Asgard want . . . all they’ve ever wanted,” Beckett practically whispered, “is to live just a little bit longer.”
It all made sense now. “Which is an art that the Wraith have perfected.”
Beckett nodded. “Aye. They want to contain the Wraith threat, yes, but what are the lives of a few Pegasus natives in the face of the huge research potential the Wraith present? Why else would the Chancellor have moved his headquarters and his scientific support staff to the frontier of another galaxy?”
John shook his head. “All the while they send us to die on the frontlines of a war they never intended to win.”
“But we’ll remedy it, lad. Don’t you worry.”
“So,” Rodney queried, “what’d you do with it?”
“Now, that’s the tricky part.” Carson looked sheepish.
Rodney accused, “You didn’t.”
“I had no choice, Rodney! Scientific Minister Loki has been watching me ever since my little mishap on Hoff.”
“Mishap! Carson, you killed half your test subjects!”
John felt his heart catch. They had not reported that on the NewsFeed.
Carson sighed. “They were so eager. If I just could have gotten permission from the council, the Hoffans never would have even had access to the experiment.”
Rodney slumped back against his bed, looking suddenly tired. And old. How could they have gone so long without finding each other? “So, who’d you code it into?”
Beckett shook his head. “The Prototype.”
Rodney buried his face in his hands, groaning. “I always knew you were too busy lifting up sheep’s skirts and searching for the elusive Scottish haggis-tolerant gene to actually focus on . . . oh, say . . . thinking!”
“What was I supposed to do, Rodney? The Defenders all get a full DNA workup when we register their IdentTags and the Asgard propaganda people are riding our surrogate production department like little grey cowboys. I couldn’t just code it into some Authentic child!”
Rodney crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at Carson in a way that suggested that he’d expected Carson to do exactly that, but gave it up to wallow in a good dose of self-pity. “But those idiotic grey bastards sent the Prototype to the front.”
“I know. She doesn’t even know the kind of power she has, if we could just position her where we need. I knew that girl was trouble the second she pulled her dress off.”
Carson scoffed. “She can’t help that, man. All of the hormones we’ve got pumping through the surrogates to ensure optimum fecundity, the poor dears would probably fuck a flagpole. VLA22537’s no different.” VLA . . . Vala? Then again, hormones might explain it.
“I don’t know. She’s different enough to escape and then try to kill me, Carson. Even the little grey mafia knows that she’s different. Different enough to ship her daughter off to the frontlines the second they find out she’s stolen the records to make contact. That’s too much to attribute to simple variation.”
“Bearing the Prototype instead of one of the old model Defenders probably altered her body chemistry somewhat.”
Wait . . . that wasn’t right. John interrupted. “So you’re saying that Vala was created to carry . . . people like me?”
Beckett turned, with a sweetly patronizing grin on his face. “Yes. Research showed that Authentic children generally suffered from less developmental problems than the early models grown in Asgard artificial wombs, or spontaneously assembled. As it turns out, the most responsive homeostatic environment for a fetus is a natural womb, so we created a class of surrogate mothers - as genetically similar to the Defenders as an Authentic mother might have been, but with the optimal genes for childbearing.”
“So you’re saying that Vala is my mother?” Because John really really did not want to go there.
“No. She did not bear you. And your Authentic birth mother was likely quite different. You share the same degree of genetic relatedness - the same you might with a parent or a child, but it is one possibility of trillions.”
“Yes, yes, it’s all very Freudian. You kill your creator and fuck your genetic mother . . . or maybe the man raised as your brother . . . “ Rodney interrupted, looking half-crazed and ponderous. “But that’s beside the point. The point is - how are we going to get to the Prototype and move her to the appropriate ground zero to unleash the virus when she’s on the front and we’re stuck here?”
John smiled, refusing to think about the sex he’d just had and its startling Oedipal implications. This was a problem he knew how to fix. “Oh, I can get us to the front.”
Rodney gaped.
Carson just frowned and asked. “Wait, you had sex with a surrogate? I thought we’d coded all Defenders to be gay.”
It was not John’s day.
<<<>>>
Vala was glaring at them all, especially Carson Beckett. She looked ready to take his head off, but John’s hand on her arm held her back. If it hadn’t been a necessity, he never would have consented to touch her. There was just something wrong about it now, even though it had seemed so natural before.
“So let me get this straight,” Mitchell was saying. “You want to steal a Gateship, smuggle two priority1 Authentics through the Stargate, transport yourselves to the frontlines of the most devastating war this galaxy has ever known, and then capture a trained and genetically designed warrior leading an entire army of similar fighters and transport her the heart of Wraith territory.”
John considered. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
Mitchell laughed. “You are one crazy fucker, Shep.”
John shrugged. “You okay with staying here, Cam?”
“If there’s no other way.”
“There’s not.”
Depressingly, all of them that could easily fake gate passes, were the ones that weren’t needed. John could easily pass as one of the troops headed for the front, and Vala was unregistered in the database, so she could pass for a Fugee. Even Dex, once Beckett had extracted the Wraith transmitter from his back, was able to move relatively freely. It was the two scientists that posed the biggest problem.
“Though I still don’t see why we need one of those ship thingies,” Vala prodded, poking Rodney and making him glower.
“We need one because Carson and I would be recognized if anyone saw us approaching the Gate and we’re both probably at the top of the off-world restriction list.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re Very Important People. Brilliant physicist and top notch geneticist.”
“But why?”
Rodney rolled his eyes. “Remind me again why we don’t still have you locked up?”
“Because you need me to steal the ship thingy.” Vala smiled at him and then flounced off to bug Mitchell.
“And you’re supposed to be related?” Rodney whispered under his breath, reeling John in close and draping a hand around his waist.
John grinned, stealing a kiss. Mitchell was right: what they were about to try was probably the craziest plan in a history of crazy plans, but it was as though something deep within him had unclenched. Whatever he decided to do from now on, he would do freely and without regrets.
“So, do you wanna get out of here?” Rodney asked.
“Hell, yeah.” John didn’t know if he meant this room, this City, this planet, or even this galaxy. But, yeah.
<<<>>>
Vala was wearing an emerald green dress this time. It was made of silk and draped over her narrow hips like a waterfall, flowing out and down in a long train. John had absolutely no idea how she planned to walk in it without tripping. He stood beside her, his biosign regulator suit expanding in and out carefully. Rodney had hacked him a pass into the research sector quite easily, but he still needed to take on the identity of yet another one of his copies.
“Dr. Carolyn Lam, here to see the head of the human wing of your research division,” Vala said with a smile. Lam was the perfect Authentic to impersonate. She was the daughter of the Commissioner, but he’d kept her so well protected from the limelight that few even knew what she looked like. Still, she was high profile enough that no one would dare bother her with a scan - especially when Rodney had hacked into HumanSolution’s appointment database and added her name.
The secretary wasn’t a Construct, which surprised John. But she did show the typical sharp jaw line and bright smile that were trademarks of the Enthusiasm Enhancement. She stood, pleated skirt swishing behind her as she led Vala through several artfully concealed security bulkheads and down a long hall towards a pair of stained-glass doors. “Mr. Lee is waiting for you.”
John took the time to pull up his file in the database. William Lee, Terran, Authentic with a double Intelligence Enhancement. John couldn’t help but smile proudly - Rodney was a genius without any Enhancements. Same with Samantha Carter. For all they pushed a program of genetic engineering, it was obvious that the Asgard respected natural brilliance far more than anything constructed. Because it was unique, John supposed, and the Asgard needed unique points of view almost as much as they needed longer lives.
John and Vala shared a look of trepidation as the doors opened before them automatically. It turned out to be completely unwarranted, however. John hadn’t imagined it would be this easy. The Gateship was sitting right there in the middle of the room, pretty much begging him to steal it. Vala’s eyes widened so conspicuously that John was forced to give her a nudge. Not that the squat balding man (apparently Mr. Lee) was looking at her face.
“Dr. Lam,” he said, taking her hand and kissing it, like a gentlemen of the old romantic cinema.
Vala smiled coyly. John had to hand it to her - she was good. “Mr. Lee, it truly is an honor. I have been following your work in my spare time.”
“Really? You . . . they allow you access?”
Vala winked. “Those of us close to the council find few of our wants impossible to satisfy.”
Lee practically melted under her gaze. It kinda made John want to throw up. Instead he directed his attention to the Gateship, settled innocently just a faomr away. God, she was a beauty. Sometimes when he dreamt, John was flying high like Superman, sailing through a star-dappled sea like Peter Pan searching for Neverland.
Lee must have seen some of the longing in John’s gaze, because he chuckled. “These Defenders can’t seem to get enough of the Gateships. Granted, they are the only ones capable of flying them, but still . . . nobody says these guys are without emotion if they’ve seen one at the helm.” Lee patted John’s shoulder patronizingly.
John glared.
“Oh . . . erm . . . right. Sorry. What is it you wanted to speak with me about, Doctor Lam?”
“Well, just that, actually. John . . . JHN44544, that is,” she fudged, “is one of my favorites and . . .”
“Oh, the experiments with Gene/technology interaction. I read about that. Is he one of the specifically trained pilot models?”
John bit his tongue, resisting the urge to say, ‘He’s standing right here.’
“Exactly,” Vala grinned.
“Well, it’s nice to meet you,” Lee stuck out his hand, which was a greasy as his blue oxford - clearly not salvaged by having been rolled up to his elbows.
John shook it anyway.
“They won’t let us have any of these models. Most of them are sent directly to the front. The Wraith are probably getting tired of the taste of them. Not that . . . well . . . I’m sorry, that was insensitive.”
“That’s okay,” John shrugged. He was used to that kind of thing. “Hey, you mind if I give her a try?” He indicated the ship.
“Oh. Please! If you wouldn’t mind turning on the cloaking technology. The Asgard are the only one of the four old races that did not master the ability to cloak, focusing on research into time and genetics instead. But we here at HumanSolutions think we can solve that little problem for them.”
John nodded. The ship was spacious on the inside, and old. He ran a hand down a smooth bronze bulkhead, like tracing the age lines of an towering tree, or running his fingers through ancient lace. He smiled.
“They all do that,” Lee whispered to Vala.
John chanced a look, finding that she was equally enraptured. The Gateships were alive in a way that he thought the City used to be. Now you had to dig through layers and layers of foreign coding, broad lumbering subroutines that covered up the delicate vibrancy beneath. But how could the Asgard be expected to understand - to them, everything was all pure rationalist and brute mental force. They never paused for a second to consider the true complexity of the universe, nor to find beauty in it.
“I can see why,” Vala replied smoothly, drawing John back to the present. “They’re beautiful.”
“Yeah, almost makes you think that the Alterans had something, you know? The whole Ascension business?”
“You’re not a believer?” Vala sounded honestly shocked, as though the idea of Ascension wasn’t just an opiate of the masses, like Marx had said so many years ago. The Asgard had long ago given up on that route and turned instead to science to preserve them.
Lee laughed. It was a chocked, stuttering sound, no doubt weighted by flirtation with a girl way out of his league. “Yes, well, if wishes were horses . . . hey, you’re not telling me that a woman like you . . .”
For all her charm, Vala did not hide her emotions well. Her smile was ice-slick and melting. “No . . . no . . . though for a moment . . . . One likes to hope.”
Lee nodded, considering. But before they could get into some hapless theological discussion, John interrupted. “So it’s okay if I . . .” he pointed to the front of the ship.
“Yes, yes, go ahead,” Lee waved him on, still staring at Vala with something like awe in his eyes.
John slid reverently into the pilot’s seat, grinning as the display came to life almost immediately, stats and figures dancing readily in his mind.
“Now, if you wouldn’t mind cloaking it.”
John complied, feeling the slight change flutter through him. “There.”
“Huh. Let me just . . .” Lee pointed to the door.
“Hold on a minute,” Vala queried. “This cloaking thing doesn’t even show up on the City’s sensors.”
Lee laughed. “Nope. As far as we can tell it’s fairly fool-proof. Unless the pilot elects to transmit his location to the central tower . . .”
Vala’s hand snapped out so quickly that Lee barely had time to blink before he was a crumpled heap on the floor. “Wow, that was depressingly easy.”
John smiled as they both stepped outside the cloaked ship, sending an Atlantis Communiqué to Rodney’s computer terminal. In a flash, they had disappeared into a local transport, along with the cloaked Gateship.
<<<>>>
“Do you have any idea how . . . [hiccup] . . . annoying . . . [hiccup] . . . these . . . [hiccup] . . . suits are,” Rodney complained.
“Yes, Rodney. I wear them all the time,” John replied, with a long suffering sigh. The biosign converting suit kinda grew on you - though John had to admit that the skin tight unitard was slightly less than flattering on Rodney’s stockier figure, no matter how enticing seeing his package outlined in silver and gold fibers might be.
“Which is why . . . [hiccup] . . . thievery . . . [hiccup] . . . was last on my list of career choices.”
“Boo,” Mitchell added unhelpfully, where he was lounging in a similar suit.
“Yes . . . [hiccup] . . . very scary. Notice how I’m still very not . . . [hiccup] . . . cured.”
“It’s quite an interesting sensation, Rodney,” Carson piped up. “Under different circumstances this might prove educational. Shoe’s on the other foot, in a manner of speaking.”
Rodney’s only answer was a hiccup.
“You know, it helps if you just relax,” Vala offered. “Let the suit breath for you.”
“Yes, because I’m going to . . . [hiccup] . . . trust my very . . . [hiccup] . . . important autonomic functions . . .[hiccup] . . . to a machine.”
John snorted. “You believe in machines for everything else.” He punched Rodney in the arm. “Buck up.”
“Ow! Remind me what I ever saw in you . . . you sadistic Neanderthal. If I find out you’re secretly into erotic asphyxiation, there’s going to be hell to pay, mister.”
Vala clapped. “Your hiccups are gone!”
“By the Ascended, I am truly blessed,” Rodney grumbled sarcastically.
“Yes, I suppose you are. As much as any of us are, that is,” Vala replied with a serene smile.
“Crazy,” Rodney mouthed. “Are we ready yet.”
“If you’re sure,” Beckett gulped, “because I’ve never touched one of these before,” he gestured to the weapon Mitchell was showing him. “And I’ve had no Defense Enhancement . . .”
“Well, you’re going to have to suck it up, Carson, because you’re the only one in three galaxies who knows exactly how this retrovirus works,” Rodney snapped, still fiddling with his suit nervously. “And I’m hardly walking headlong into the middle of a war zone alone.”
“You won’t be alone,” John pointed out. “Vala, Dex, and I will be with you.”
Vala chose that moment to flash her breasts to one of the Defenders working down in the gardens.
“Why does that not inspire me with confidence?”
“Don’t forget half the Genii army,” Dex added.
That appeared to mollify Rodney somewhat. “No less than we deserve. This is a mission of galactic importance, after all.”
“So are we ready?” John asked.
“Everything’s fine on my end,” Mitchell replied, comfortable with his biosign disguised as Rodney. He trained a weapon on the unfortunate Gateship scientist, Mr. Lee, currently unconscious and hogtied, with a suit emitting Dr. Beckett’s biosign.
“Well, then it’s time to go,” John said. “So long, Mitchell.”
Mitchell nodded to them before Rodney activated the personal domestic transporter he’d built for himself and somehow convinced the Asgard he was entitled to. John smiled at the idea that Rodney could cow even Representative Hermiod. Even though he’d lived his whole life under Asgard rule, John still found them to be pretty damned creepy.
Rodney took his place next to John then, crouching down low and covering his genitals before there was a flash of white light and they were standing inside the Gateship, along with Dex, Beckett, Vala and Ladon Radim (transported in from somewhere on Land).
John took a deep breath, settling himself at the controls and looking down at the one-way glass dome of the Bat-cave for possibly the last time ever. The sky was so blue around them, and John couldn’t restrain a joyous barrel roll as he drew the Gateship up and into the sky. After some revision, they’d decided to make the 35 hour puddle jump to the nearest Gate instead of risking it with the security in the central tower’s Gateroom.
As the networked lattice of the City spread out below them, John sighed, surprised to find a weight lifting slowly from his chest. As much as he loved the City and the soft pull of her more seductive subroutines, he hadn’t realized that all his life this was what he’d been waiting for - the atmosphere fading away below him like the forgotten smells of the street at night, the stars twinkling in all their majesty around him, a the deep pervasive cold of a calm so perfect that it stole even light away.
He met Rodney’s eyes from where he sat in the co-pilot’s seat, a bemused smile on his lips.
“And you’re sure you’ve hacked the security grid?” Vala was asking. “Because as pretty as this all is, I think I rather object to life as space dust.
Rodney heaved a put upon sigh, pointing to his head. “Genius, remember? I helped design this system. Even installed some impressive back doors.” He pointed, and almost as if on cure, two of the defensive satellites spun slowly on their axes, flashing with sunlight as though winking at them, before facing away.
“Impressive,” Ladon mumbled, from where he was relegated to standing in the doorway between the two sections of the ship.
“So, you guys are positive you know where to find Adria?” Vala asked, biting her bottom lip.
Do you think she’ll like me? popped into John’s head through the Gateship’s internal communications system.
She’s a Defender, just like me. And I like you. John assured, even though he wondered why Vala even cared. They were there to get Adria to activate the retrovirus, nothing more. It didn’t matter if she and Vala got along.
She smiled at him anyways, turning her attention quickly back to Ladon Radim when he spoke, “Commander Kolya is tracking her movements now. He’s very good. We shouldn’t have a problem.”
“Good,” Vala replied.
So you do like me. she continued. Because it’d be a shame to think that a little thing like me trying to kill your lover would mess up this incontrovertible magnetism between us.
That and the fact that we happen to be related.
So what? It’s not as though we plan to reproduce. And we were so good together.
John looked over at Rodney again, where the man was deep in an argument with Ladon Radim about what he considered to be a harebrained scheme of defeating the Wraith with an arsenal of mere atomic bombs. Rodney’s hands danced, and his eyes flashed with a passion that John rarely saw imprisoned in the deadened City they were leaving behind. No. He already had what he needed.
Please Vala begged.
No.
Pretty, pretty please.
No
Pretty, pretty, pretty . . .
This was going to be a long ride.
<<<>>>
Acastus Kolya was waiting for them on the other side of the Gate. If he was impressed by the Gateship decloaking before him, he didn’t show it. His pock-marked features were grim as he greeted them. “Defender, Dr. McKay, Dr. Beckett, Specialist Dex.” He didn’t acknowledge Vala.
“It’s Sheppard, actually,” John corrected, not liking this man, but impressed by him nonetheless. Kolya lead the Independent Wraith Resistance cell with the most kills, and he wore the rough patch of blue on his neck, where an Iratus bug bit him, like a mantle.
“So she’s here?” Vala asked, hopeful.
Kolya gestured to the thick back smoke rising above the tree line, the mass of bodies scattered around the Gate like the remnants of a house of cards. John was surprised to note that they all appeared to be Wraith. He’d never seen a Wraith before, but he found that he was suitable frightened by them anyhow - ghostly white faces and long pointed teeth like or wolverines or some other nightmarish creature. He nudged one with his boot to make sure that it was still dead. They didn’t stink like he would expect them to from the gaping maw or the state of decomposition - like something had rotted them from the inside out, nothing but empty black holes where their eyes used to be.
“It’s her,” Beckett breathed. He was leaning down over one of the corpses with the natural ease of someone with a lot of practice. John had heard of captured Wraith in the City, of course. He’d just preferred not to think about the kind of experiments that were being performed on them.
“This isn’t how it’s supposed to work, Carson,” Rodney was saying, staying as far away from the corpse as possible.
“No,” Carson sighed. “This is a possibility. I designed the virus to be distributed to a central node in one of the hive ships. You used the quantum genetic simulator to calculate the spread, remember? It’s not meant . . . she’s not supposed to deliver that kind of dosage to individual Wraith. They’ll transform too quickly for their bodies to keep up.”
“A dead Wraith is a dead Wraith,” Ronon offered. It was a Pegasus kind of cold comfort.
“Well, we’re not out to commit genocide, man!”
John was under the impression that was exactly what they intended to do.
“If we make them into humans, they will be capable of the same rights and privileges afforded to us. Hell, they might even Ascend one day.”
John shuddered at the thought, moving over towards Kolya, who was prowling through the tall fields of grass surrounding the Gate and towards the forest.
“How far?”
“They’re close,” Kolya replied curtly, motioning to the others and leading the way into a forest of twisted trees, for all appearances dead, except for the tufts of purple leaves overshadowing them, coating the ground in a falsely-optimistic sea of lavender-smelling mulch. John would have been awed by the alieness of it, if his heart wasn’t pounding like a sledgehammer in his chest. He’d never gotten this nervous before a job. But then again, there generally weren’t scary space vampires in the vaults of banks.
The terrain was moist, and the quality of light different, much bluer than he was used too. They trudged along, Rodney complaining about blisters and allergies the whole way. Carson was a nervous presence at John’s back, but the rest of them - this is what they’d been born for.
“It’s like something out of the Brother’s Grimm,” Rodney remarked, as they emerged from this enchanted forest to a view of what looked like a mountainside, purple trees perched on it like strange tufts of colorful fur. One side of the mountain was smoking, a haze of little figures clad in black battling across rocky crags and small drop-offs. And at the steepest places it became clear that it was not a mountainside at all, but a giant ship, like one of the hundreds that had advanced on the City one year when John was young and still living in a squalid hovel on the Land. The sky had rumbled a deep amber, bruised and smoky and threatening, but the shield had held. It was sparkling and crackling alive around him, and even from a shantytown on the outskirts of City-544 Cove, John had felt the calming cycling of its status updates.
There was no shield now, and the Gateship was a lonely whisper, parked on the other side of the trees. John could not remember feeling so alone, even as they entered the fray of the battle, Kolya shouting out orders to Genii soldiers as they closed in on what appeared to be a small siege of at least a dozen Wraith drones surrounding a single figure. John held his breath, looking into the faceless masks of the Wraith soldiers and knowing that they were just the same as the army of Defenders that seemed to appear out of nowhere, tumbling down the slope from a higher battlefield. They ignored Kolya’s men - not fighting them, but not coming to their aid either, but diving and weaving, trying to break through the ranks of the Wraith surrounding whatever it was they deemed so important.
Without the City’s system for communications, John almost started when one yelled at him, “You, get those Genii to back the fuck away. We’ve got this!”
John wanted to protest that they didn’t seem to have it under control at all, as one of the drones pushed someone with John’s face up against a rock, slammed his hand down and stole from him even the little individuality a clone might find. John knew that his own old and withered face would stay with him from this moment onward, in waking as well as in nightmares. Assuming he survived this, of course.
“Holy Ascension!” Rodney was shouting from beside him, firing his weapon clumsily as John tried to force him back and behind a large rock for protection.
But then something at the center of the battle seemed to flash in a moment of bright green like the light across the ocean at sunset. The Wraith drones that had formed a tight circle fell like petals of a flower spreading open to face the dawn and standing in the center stood a tall figure, lean and beautiful in a suit of black leather. Her hair was dark and her eyes flashed a brilliant gold, but the way she moved - calm and still but deadly - was absolutely unmistakable.
“Adria,” Vala whispered, rushing to her daughter’s side.
But Adria did not even flinch as she turned a weapon on her mother, a cold glint in those strange golden eyes. “I do not wish to harm you, but if you interfere with our purpose, I will do what I must.”
“You have to come with us, Lass! What you just did . . . you’ve been coded to transmit a virus. It’s very important that we . . .” Beckett trailed off as Adria leveled him with a cold steady glare.
“I have to do nothing. You have come here without permission from the council or War Minister Thor.” She nodded to the small army of Defenders that seemed to be amassing around them now, despite the fact that the sounds of the battle still raged in the distance. “We will take you into custody and have you returned to the City for judgment.”
“Do what you must. But only after you’ve come with us. Just place your hand on that hive ship there and then we can go home. They can Dispense me if they want. Just do it.”
“I will not hear any more of your traitorous overtures,” Adria responded. “I am the will of the Asgard who made me, and them alone. Now, please, surrender to our custody before we are forced to make this violent.”
“Adria, don’t do this.” Vala’s voice was steely, more stern and serious than John had ever heard it.
“I do not have to listen to you either,” she replied.
“Adria, I’m your mother.”
“You speak as though that means something.”
“I carried you in my womb for nine months,” Vala pleaded, sounding pained.
“Any woman could have done that.” Anyone could have. But Vala did. Didn’t that count for something?
“We share the same genes, Adria. We are more alike than we are different. If you hurt me, you’re hurting some of you too.”
“And I share those same genes with you and with him,” she gestured to John. “And them,” the army of Defenders standing at the ready behind her. “And farms and farms of women just like you, made to breed and nothing more.”
“You’re more than just what you were made for, darling. Think about every thought, every experience, and tell me how they can possibly be summed up in a single purpose.”
The Defenders were a blank wall of faces surrounding them now, their features somehow more sharp and pinched than John’s, like the faceless crowd in a comic book.
“Please tell me you’re not that stupid!” Rodney protested. “Just a single touch and you could end this war. You could stop the Wraith forever!”
“It is not the will of the Council to do such things, Rodney McKay.”
Rodney didn’t seem to care. He was irrational now, marching towards her. “It was us that made you, not the council. We created you as a weapon to save our own people, not theirs. We have a responsibility to the people of Pegasus and you will stop being a brat and do what you need to!”
“No,” Adria replied. “They are base scum. They are people to be ruled, nothing more.”
Dex was seething beside him, but it was Kolya that got off the shot.
It bounced harmlessly off some sparkling green shield. Adria did not smile, but neither did she seem affected when she leveled her weapon on Kolya, using the kill setting that John had never seen used inside the walls of the City. Kolya’s head was a smoking patchwork of burns when he fell helplessly onto a cushion of purple leaves - staining their narrow filaments a deep crimson.
“Oh Ascension!” Beckett shouted, rushing to the downed man’s side, even though it was obvious that it was far too late.
“You don’t have to do this, Adria,” John began, biting his lip and aware of the Wraith encroaching upon them even as he spoke. “I’m the same as all the rest, but I’m here. You can change your destiny. The fact that you allow yourself to choose means a universe of possibilities open up.” He remembered the words inked across Rodney’s chest, ‘All Who Question are Authentic.’ “Even with a quantum genetic analysis, they couldn’t tell me who I am, because we’re more than just empty shells. You have to believe that there’s something more to us than just our genes or even the range of experiences that they’ve fed to us.”
For a second there was something that looked like remorse in her eyes. But then she raised her weapon. The heat that seared across the side of John’s chest was excruciating as the worst forms of fire, burning malicious and bright until he was blinking up at the oddly blue sky and Rodney’s strained face. Someone was squeezing John’s hand, but he had trouble finding it through the pain.
He blinked and then somehow Rodney was gone, yanked away from him. John wanted to cry out, but the wind was rushing in his ears and his side was a mass of twisted nerves and white hot pain. Adria’s voice came to him, as if under water, when the green of her shield flashed off and her hand came up to his face. “You have outworn your loyalty Defender. As a last act, you can aid the Empire by finding out what Carson Beckett’s virus does to humans.”
John gurgled at her inarticulately, feeling blood well up and coat his lips.
“Models like you and I are not capable of change - only of corruption,” she whispered, but John knew it for a lie. Adria did not know it, but someone else with John’s face had crept up behind her, a Wraith stunner gripped tight in his hand.
John smiled.
They said that Defenders did not feel as Authentics did, but the last look John saw on Adria’s face was a very human one - betrayal. It stayed with her as Dex maneuvered her off John and brushed clean a well of purple leaves before pressing her delicate hand down into the living ship beneath.
As John closed his eyes, he felt the sickening rumble of the ground beneath him as it crumbled.
FIN
***
Cast of Characters:
John (Sheppard) - Defender, Prototype
Vala - Birthing Unit, Defender-class
Adria - Defender v.2.0
Rodney McKay - Authentic
Samantha Carter - Authentic
Jack O’Neill - Authentic
Commissioner Hank Landry - Authentic
Counselor Elizabeth Weir - Authentic
Reverend Daniel Jackson - Loyalty and Compassion Enhancement
Cameron Mitchell - Loyalty and Enthusiasm Enhancement
Evan Lorne - Loyalty and Defense Enhancement
Teyla Emmagen - Pegasus Native, Athosian
Ronon Dex - Pegasus Native, Satedan
Ladon Radim - Pegasus Native, Genii
Acastus Kolya - Pegasus Native, Genii
Scientific Minister Loki - Asgard
War Chancellor Thor - Asgard
Representative Hermiod - Asgard
Inspired by:
Oedipus Rex! Cetie said it was okay to do incest . . . and I didn’t want to disappoint.
‘Defender’ is from Leah and Springwoof’s brilliant ‘The Body Holographic’ and ‘Left to Fend’ , which it’s based on.
Lover Come Back, another fic in which Hermiod is the boss.
This reel_sga remix of ‘The Third Man,’ which gave me the idea to take 1920s bank robbing (which I know absolutely nothing about) and transpose it to a futuristic setting.
Also, some of the inspiration has to be ‘Firefly,’ if just the feel.
And ‘Liar, Guns, and Money’ from ‘Farscape,’ and ‘Mission Impossible 1,’ because like I could figure out anything involving bank robbing.