Fic: A Tiny Problem
Author: gottalovev
Wordcount: 10 342
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s): John Sheppard/Rodney McKay, implied Radek Zelenka/Elizabeth Weir
Summary: When Radek and Elizabeth go missing, John and Rodney decide to check the lab they had planned to visit. What they find is definitely surprising and has an unforeseen… little complication.
Warning(s) highlight to read: A couple of F words, but that's about it. The characters are not mine (unfortunately).
Notes: It was a joy to work with such wonderful and creative art by mific (and I totally stole the title from the artist!). The fantastic rinkafic did me the favor of a fast and insightful beta... thank you so much!
Companion piece to A Tiny Problem.
A Tiny Problem
It's weird, that's what it is, John thinks. He's tried calling Elizabeth on the comms when she didn't show up for a scheduled meeting, and there's no sign of her in all of the usual spots John could think of. The mess hall had been the first place he'd checked - not even Elizabeth could resist coffee when fresh supplies were in - but he goes again because it's possible they've both been moving at the same time and therefore missed each other. The fact she's not answering to the radio after over an hour is more perplexing, though. Mid afternoons are quiet in the mess hall, but John spots Rodney at their usual table and ambles over with a smile.
"Hey," he says over Rodney's shoulder, making him jump in surprise.
"Jeez, warn a guy!" Rodney has spilled a bit of coffee on his tray, and he mops at it with a glare at John. "Aren't you supposed to work or something?"
"Yeah, but I can't find Elizabeth. Have you seen her?" John eyes the two cookies on Rodney's plate but he decides against a strategic op to secure one of them when Rodney pulls his plate closer to himself.
"Don't even think about it. And the answer to your question is no, I haven't seen her today. Call her."
John rolls his eyes. "Tried it, no answer. You weren't supposed to meet her this morning?"
The good thing about performance review is that no one from the command staff can escape the meetings. No one. It's a solace and makes everyone equal in the misery department.
Rodney hums. "I was, but then I couldn't because I was elbow deep in sensitive Ancient tech. I sent Zelenka. He's the one who does the performance reviews, anyway."
"Which results in a reduced ratio of grown adults crying, I presume." John says. Secretly, he sometimes wishes he could come up with little jabs half as creative as Rodney's are. He has read some of the reports by Jack O'Neill in his SG-1 days, after all, and John aims to one day present the crackiest report ever done.
"Ha, come on. I just say it how it is. If you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen." Rodney taps the comm link on his ear. "Zelenka, come in."
Radek doesn't respond. After a second fruitless call, they look at each other.
"Okay, so that both are unreachable at the same time after a meeting together can't be a coincidence," Rodney says.
John can't help but smirk. "Maybe they don't want to be found right now."
Rodney looks puzzled for a moment, and then his eyes go round when John waggles his eyebrows. "Oh! You think he finally made a move? About damn time!"
Shrugging, John tips his chair on its back legs, sways a little. "Maybe. Though if we don't hear from them in, say, about an hour..."
"Fine. If it comes to that, meet me in the lab?" Rodney asks, putting a whole cookie in his mouth without biting it first, but then he gives the other one to John unprompted, which goes into the win column.
"Will do," John says, taking a bite before Rodney changes his mind and takes the cookie back.
***
"Miko says that Radek needed some Ancient translation for a lab he found," Rodney explains as he taps on his tablet, his eyes glued to it and not looking at all where he's going in real life. Rodney's a bit like someone playing some computer game with that thing, but one where he's the moving figure on the screen.
"You think he used that excuse to get some one on one time with Elizabeth?" John asks.
"It's most probably a not so subtle come-see-my-etchings plan," Rodney agrees.
A good thing, though, is that Radek is a prudent man by nature. He left a note about where he was planning to go - indeed with Elizabeth - in the lab and even mailed the info to Rodney. It is dated from the morning, which does make the worry factor go up a bit. They've been MIA for 3 hours now.
"I don't know what he might have found in tower 3-G." Rodney is still fiddling with his tablet, walking at a determined pace towards their destination. "The last time I checked it was mostly living quarters."
John snorts. He knows plenty of reasons why he'd bring the object of his affection to some unknown living quarters, out of the way, and where you can get precious privacy.
"Do they have decent beds?"
Rodney raises an eyebrow at him and scoffs. "One track mind, thy name is Sheppard," he declares.
"It's not like you usually complain about that." John says with a leer and waits a second for maximum effect before continuing. "This is a miracle in itself, of course."
"Oh, shut up." Rodney's almost smiling, though, and John's half tempted to detour in one of those rooms that line the corridor and check out the beds first hand. But it's not the time, not when some of his people are missing.
"It's right down this corridor," Rodney says, pointing left.
The door opens easily, which is a good thing. On the other hand, what is inside is weird as fuck. Almost creepy, in fact. John tries to get the lights to come on fully but the room stays gloomy, with a green tint. It's indeed a lab, though not what they're used to see in Atlantis. In the back of the room, there's a work bench cluttered with floating animals - is that a brain? - and with various glass montages set for some mysterious chemistry experiments.
"Wow," John says.
"Could it be more cliché? I mean, this place looks like the underground lair of a super villain." Rodney says, frowning at the mess.
If at first sight the bench and various vials caught his eye, John is soon drawn to the boxes that are lined up near one of the walls. They are roughly 2 feet by 2 feet and about that high, too. The lid on them is transparent, which reveals they are some sort of doll houses. A whole series of doll houses, in fact, with tiny furniture and close attention to detail and even doors to get out. Man, those Ancients were weird.
Rodney comes to look over John's shoulder and frowns.
"What the ever loving..." He starts but John, curious to see if the Plexiglas opens, touches the top of the box and they're enveloped by the telltale white light of a transporter beam.
"Fuck!" Rodney finishes, as they end up in another room altogether, with green walls and no windows. He spins around and glares at John. "Oh, that's just great. You touched something, again"
John raises his hand, defensively. "I know, I know, no touching in creepy labs, my bad. But it looked like a Barbie house! What's the harm in that?"
Fiddling with his PDA, Rodney doesn't look happy.
"You tell me! Obviously, the lab owner didn't want to share his toys because we got zapped away. But I don't understand... "
He's doing the squinty thing with his forehead that John knows by now means that the data he's presented with is illogical, and therefore offending Rodney's delicate sensibilities.
"What is it?" John asks as he makes sure that the room is clear. There's a closed door but it doesn't want to open: that could be annoying.
Rodney looks up, then blinks and stares. With a sense of dread, John looks up too and, oh, shit, it's shiny. A lot like Plexiglas. He reassesses the room they are in with that new information and yeah. They seem to be in trouble.
"Just great," Rodney says sitting down heavily in a chair that happens to be near by. "No, seriously, my life is now complete."
John checks his hands, his clothes, his gun... everything is absolutely normal and it's hard to reconcile that and the fact that they are, most probably, about 8 inches tall right now. And trapped in an Ancient doll house.
"Since it was so easy to get in, there's surely a way out, right?" John says, thinking very hard that he wants to get out of the box now. When that doesn't work, he asks Atlantis politely where the control panel of the house would be, but nothing happens either.
Rodney shakes the remains of his shock and starts to tour the... living quarters they are now in, there's no other word for it. Everything looks incredibly familiar, built to be an illusion of Atlantis herself. It's a fully furnished apartment and John wonders if it was once huge and has been shrunk too, or if it was built up from scratch. There are kitchen and bathroom appliances, and John's pretty sure they'd work, though there's no water and no food in the cupboards. Usually, if there's to be environmental controls or any special features in a room, it's situated in the main living area. A superficial and then a very methodical search where Rodney knocks on every panel in the room turns out nothing.
"Hey, Rodney," John says after a while, when he notices the increasingly agitated state Rodney heading for. That's not good; John needs him alert and not panicking.
"What?" Rodney snaps.
"Your PDA still works? How is that even possible?"
"We're about seven inches tall, John... How is that even possible, that's what I'd like to know. Oh and while I'm at it, just how to go back to regular height would be pretty high on my list of questions, too."
He's pretty sure that Rodney already tried, but John has to ask. "Did you try telling someone? To send a signal, an email, something?"
"Did I..." Rodney looks at him as if he can't believe something as stupid was said out loud. "Of course I tried! What kind of idiot do you take me for? The problem is that I can't access all of the functionalities of this piece of shit. The locator is functional, since it triangulates directly with the wave lengths emitted by Atlantis, but I cannot seem to send a signal myself. In short it takes incoming but my output isn't read, or not strong enough to reach destination."
"Bummer." John makes a round once more, just because it's the only thing he can do. He's leaning in the door of the smaller of the two bedrooms when Rodney comes by his side.
"What are you doing?"
With a gesture, John encompasses the room. "Look, bunk beds!"
"Hum." Rodney looks honestly puzzled. "Yes? And that's going to help us how?"
"Oh, no, nothing. It's just that it's pretty rare that we have hints that there once were once kids here, or families."
"I'll give you that," Rodney agrees. "I'd bet that when the war with the Wraith became serious, they must have toned down population growth. That is until they got to Earth where we have indirect proof that they... mingled." He gives John a raised eyebrow.
John scoffs, and wonders once again why he's got such a strong ATA gene. Was it pure luck or did someone somewhere decide to be creative with the branches of his family tree? The Asgard Loki had performed experiments on Earth humans for years and years after all, and who knows, maybe there's a mostly ascended Ancient looking after his descendants and intervening here and there.
"You know, apart from the not being able to get out of the box and regular size again, this is really pretty cool," John says, before he lie down on the bottom bunk (it's surprisingly comfortable).
After a pleading look upwards to gather his strength, Rodney predictably starts to rant.
"Cool, he say." As expected, the hands then come into play, chopping first and followed with wide circles as if to point to their surroundings all at once. "I'll maybe find this cool when we're back to normal, and not a second before!"
"I'm just saying." A technology to make everything become a fraction of its original size with minimum side effects would be revolutionary.
"Look, John, this isn't something fun, do you get that? Now is not the time to play house and if we don't get out, we might be screwed. To make matters worst, I suspect that the most likely person to help us with this problem is stuck in one of those other boxes."
All drama all the time: sometimes it gets a bit annoying.
"Jeez, okay, let me find my doomed face." John gets up and as he passes through the door he grips Rodney's elbow and forces eye contact. "Stop it. It's only you and me here. I am one hundred percent sure that you'll get us out, got it?"
Rodney takes a deep breath and relaxes a fraction. He nods. "Yeah, okay. Of course. I can't believe I'm asking this, but do you have some C4 in one of your multiple pockets?"
As if John wouldn't have thought of that if he had some; he pouts and mourns the explosion that will never be. The only way out of this place, except maybe from the Plexiglas ceiling that they cannot reach anyway, is the locked door and there are no handy dandy panels with crystals to play around in.
"Unfortunately, no. But I think blunt force on the door could work. It's not one of those sliding-into-the-walls doors, but one with hinges even if they're on the other side."
"What are you thinking about?" Rodney asks, back to curious.
"A battering ram. There's gotta be something we can use in here."
Rodney starts snapping his fingers and John smirks. The key is to focus him, sometimes to apply a bit of pressure, and then Rodney finds the solution almost every time.
"Yes, okay, we could do that."
They tour the place one last time before deciding on parts of the bunk beds frame. Rodney improvises tools and they are soon using their homemade battering ram on the door. It takes about a dozen hard hits on specific pressure point determined by Rodney before the lock finally busts and lets the door open.
Stepping out is a huge shock: the fact they're now minuscule is finally apparent by the surroundings. It's like waking into a room made for giant, distances and heights amplified.
"I could have lived without this particular feeling," Rodney mutters, but he's back to business immediately. He looks at the other boxes critically. "First thing first, we need to find Radek and Elizabeth."
This, as it turns out, is relatively easy since there's some faint pounding on the door two boxes down. John and Rodney take their battering ram over and destroy the hinges in quick succession. The opening door reveals a more disheveled than usual Zelenka.
"Zaplať pánbůh!" Radek says, beaming, but then he sobers up a little. "Oh. You have been caught by the beam too."
"It's nice to see you none the less," Elizabeth says as she steps out. She looks relieved to see reinforcements too. "We wondered if someone would find us."
"Radek left notes of your exploration trip, though I really think we should set up a control mechanism to touch base at scheduled intervals when on exploration trips, just in case," Rodney says. "How long have you two been stuck in there?"
They look at each other and Radek shrugs. "Maybe two hours, I would say. There was nothing to open the door."
John smirks, he can't help it. "No bed? What a shame."
He wouldn't put his pay on it, but Elizabeth maybe blushes at that, which is ten kinds of interesting. Curious, John enters the box they opened and it's indeed bare, only walls and no furniture. His and Rodney's was way better.
When he gets out, Radek and Rodney are arguing about what would be the best thing to do to get back to normal, each of them fiddling with their now miniature toys - Radek had a tablet in hand, it seems - and John takes Elizabeth aside.
"Hey, wanna visit a couple more?" he asks.
She shakes her head a bit as if he's the most ridiculous person she knows but smiles. "Sure, why not. I don't get what they were trying to do with this, but it's fascinating."
John hauls his piece of bed frame and goes to bust a couple more hinges. "I don't know. Maybe at some point they were too crowded."
Each box is different, at least the ones John manages to peak into before Rodney requests they make their way towards the lab benches.
"My laptop is there," Zelenka says. "I wonder how we will manage to climb up there, though."
"Don't worry, doc." John's actually looking forward to that part, it should be fun. Ropes would be nice, though.
"Oh, wait." Elizabeth goes back in the second to last cube she went in, then calls for them. "This could help."
Indeed, a ladder will do. It's telescopic, too, which means that they'll have to do a minimum of acrobatics to get to the top of the workspace. They're about to pick the ladder up when they feel the ground vibrate slightly: it's their first clue that someone is coming. The second is the huge shadow that falls on them. It's Ronon, who's always been kind of impressive, but right now? He's really fucking huge. He spots them immediately and his face, up there in the stratosphere, is priceless for a few seconds before he starts laughing. The sound it makes booms around them and John guesses that their hearing must be impacted by the transformation. Rodney doesn't take too kindly that he's mocked and starts to rant, which makes Ronon laugh even more, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. By this point, even John starts to be annoyed, because it might be funny, but it's not that hilarious.
Carson's there now, too, and he does a quite impressive goldfish impression - complete with round eyes - when he sees them on the ground.
"We should get away from the boxes," Zelenka suggests. It's too late though, since both Carson and Ronon are walking over.
It sends Rodney into a good imitation of a windmill as he shouts for them to not come closer. Does it work? Not at all, not even when John tries to gesture for them to stay back, too. Ronon and Carson get in range and before they can do anything about it, they're touching the boxes - Carson to deposit his medical kit, Ronon because he's still laughing, the fucker - and the shrinking beam engulfs them.
John takes his bed frame to bust more hinges. Two releases later, they gather outside the boxes. Rodney has his arm crossed over his chest and he glares at Ronon.
"Not so funny anymore, huh?"
Ronon chuckles and he hasn't lost his big smile. "Oh, no, it's hilarious. You should have seen yourself, squeaking like an urlistu."
"Well now you'll squeak like whatever that is, too," Rodney says petulantly.
"Is everyone okay?" Carson asks, still looking mostly spooked.
"We're fine." Elizabeth pats his arm gently. "Apart from being doll sized."
"This means we're not fine at all, if we think about the big picture." Rodney's fiddling with his PDA and he starts walking towards the back of the lab. "We were about to go for the computer on the lab bench before you had the brilliant idea to get caught, too. So let's go, maybe we'll find a way to get out of this unfortunate situation."
***
The first thing John sees when he gets at the top of the ladder and on the work bench is a lizard floating in a jar. A lizard that at this very moment is just as big as John is, and it's more than a little disturbing. John turns to help Elizabeth, who was right behind him, get on the counter and then Zelenka, Rodney and Carson. With all the junk laying around, it is getting crowded.
"I need you guys to open the laptop," Rodney orders, pointing at Ronon and John.
"Why wouldn't you open the laptop?" counters Ronon.
Rodney raises his chin in the air. "You perfectly know that I have a bad back, and I can't see how pushing and pulling on the computer could improve it."
John takes position on one side while Ronon takes the other, but before they can start to push up Zelenka jumps in the melee.
"The little latch!" he says, pushing on it with both hands. "You can try, now."
It's easier than John thought it would be, and once the computer is opened Rodney starts fiddling with his PDA again.
"I wonder if the signal is undetectable, or..."
John raises his eyebrows. "Why don't you use the big one?
"Okay, sure, do you want to start the program to search the database for me?" Rodney asks, pointing at the keyboard.
The problem is immediately apparent.
"You could walk on it," Ronon suggests.
"We could, indeed, walk on the keys, but it would have to be real quick, so we don't press on them too long and generate a whole row of the letter 'g'," Rodney says. "Hence my trying to work remotely."
"And?" John asks, hands on his hips.
"It doesn't work."
"Then we'll press the keys one by one."
"Wait a second." Rodney kneels by the touch pad and starts swiping his hand back and forth on it to move the cursor; he slaps it for clicks and double clicks. It works, thanks heavens, and Rodney's soon into the right program.
"We should send an email to make sure no one comes and gets caught like us. Tell them to stay out of the lab," John suggests.
Rodney agrees so they get on that. Since pushing the right keys, one by one, is tedious at best because John needs to walk around the keyboard and stretch for the letters in the middle, they keep the email short and to the point: where they are, with whom, stay out unless we call and if you come in, and please don't go near the boxes.
The message is barely sent that the door opens to reveal Lorne and Teyla. Amazing and dependable Lorne and Teyla and for a second there John thinks that they won't make the mistake to go near the boxes. Unfortunately? They do, in spite that they're all waving from the lab bench and shouting.
"I can't believe this!" Rodney says, exasperated, as Lorne and Teyla are beamed.
"Did you see..." Radek starts and Rodney interrupts.
"Yes, yes, it's the only good thing that's came out of this so far. I did notice that the beam originated from that fixture on the wall. There must be a control panel close by."
"Someone should go liberate Major Lorne and Teyla from the box," Elizabeth says, because of course they got beamed into a box where the door still locked.
"I'll go."
Ronon always prefers having something to do, so John gestures for him to go.
That done, Rodney makes them start searching the database. He's on touch pad duty as John, Carson and Zelenka do the typing, Elizabeth stays close to help with the translation needed here and there. There's a lot of arguing and John really wishes that the Ancients would have came up with something resembling the Dewey Decimal system, because taking guesses in keywords for a search in the database is a pain in the ass. John's considering diving off the table to end his sufferings. Rodney and Zelenka arguing is generally fun to watch, but John's starting to worry that this being tiny business might stick a while. Lorne's head popped up at the top of the ladder and John cannot help but to rib him.
"I've got to say that this is not your best rescue effort yet, Major."
Lorne looks sheepish as he climbs on the table, followed by Teyla. "I am sorry, sir. When Ronon wasn't responding our radio calls at his turn, we decided to come and have a look, too."
"It's too bad you missed the email," John says.
"John!" Rodney is glaring at him.
"What?"
"I said we need a 'S', come on!"
Rolling his eyes, John reaches for the 'S'. Then the 'A' and he slides a bit further for the 'T'. His corner of the keyboard is quite solicited.
At least this search seems to give interesting results because Zelenka, Rodney and Elizabeth huddle near the arrow keys as they go through the pages of results on miniaturization. As if to prove that he's the biggest of the control freaks, it's Rodney who keeps a foot on the down arrow as they go line by line. Lorne, on the other hand, looks pretty shocked and sits despondently at the edge of the work bench.
"All of this equipment is very strange," Teyla says, looking around. It's kind of surreal to realize she's standing on a fucking microscope.
"I know," Carson says from the stool he hopped on to, and then points at Teyla's new perch. "And some of it is Earth based, too. Why would someone bring a microscope here?"
"Whoever it is, they're weird," Ronon says. He climbs on the top of a jar and he bends down to peek in the next one where what looks disturbingly like a tiny pink dinosaur skeleton floats.
Elizabeth seems to have finished whatever translation was asked of her - or maybe Radek and her just got fed up with dealing with Rodney - because she's going down the ladder again.
"I think we should stay together," John tells her.
"Oh, I'm not going anywhere. I just wanted to check if there's something under here that could give us a clue as to whom works here without anyone knowing about it. My guess is that they don't have the gene."
John wonders for as second what she means by that but it makes sense: everyone that was zapped had the gene or accompanied someone who had it. Even Zelenka, on whom the new artificial gene therapy had just worked. It's so easy to get trapped in those boxes that their mystery scientist must not have it.
"Or they have it, and he or she is trapped too," Ronon says. After all, there are a dozen boxes that were not opened.
"We have no one MIA," Rodney says distractedly, fiddling with his PDA again. "I vote for someone without the gene, too."
"As long as it's not a stray Wraith, we're good."
Atlantis would have told him about that, though, John thinks.
"Should we ask for a team without the gene to come and help us?" Radek asks.
Rodney shakes his head. "I don't think we should take the chance, maybe the beam doesn't make the difference. We don't seem to be in any immediate danger, at least, and we can solve this on our own. It would be way worst if some soldier would come in here and step on one of us with his big boots, or shoot before assessing the situation correctly thinking we're rats or something."
"We sent an email, Rodney, they won't come over unless we ask," John says.
"Because you're sure they all read their emails?" Rodney points at Lorne.
"That's not fair, we'd just sent it."
"Let me get through these results and if in a couple of hours we don't have anything we'll reassess."
Waiting for the geeks to find the solution always makes John feel kind of helpless. He's in the Ronon school of thought that he prefers having a bad guy to shoot at, or something to fly for the rescue, but the waiting game is hard on his nerves. He can't even go and explore the lab desk because Rodney needs him close to press keys on the computer here and there.
"This is boring," Ronon says, echoing his thoughts. "I'm gonna go see what's in the other boxes."
"I will go with you," Teyla says and Lorne seems to shake his weird mood and decides to go too.
Frankly, John would love accompany them, but he doesn't want Rodney to be pissed at him.
Carson is now observing the test tubes, and he's found some sort of journal, too.
"Radek?" he calls. "Would you come? I think there's something here."
They turn the pages and bow over the writing.
"Do you recognize the handwriting?" Carson asks.
"It looks a lot like Rizoli, but I cannot be sure." Radek hikes up his glasses, and then turns another page.
Rodney perks up. "The biochemist?"
"Yes, she is a biochemist but she also has a mechanical engineering degree."
John can't quite place the girl; he only has a vague image of a short woman with brown hair in a white lab coat. "Does it say what she's working on? And why she didn't tell anyone about it?"
Radek throws John a smirk. "Unfortunately, no. This is not her diary and Doctor Rizoli, if it is her and I am not certain, did not bother writing her motivations about her actions."
"You must be confusing her with a James Bond villains, it's a common mistake," Rodney teases.
"She knew the ancients had a shrinking beam, though," Carson says. "She mentions not being able to activate it, though. She doesn't have the gene, though she is scheduled to get it in the next wave."
"Not anymore," Rodney says. "Not until we're sure."
Another turn of pages and Radek hums. "This could be interesting."
"What?" Rodney asks.
"There are schematics to include the shrinking beam technology in a canon."
John can't help but laugh. "Oh, boy, that could be awesome! Just like in the movie 'Honey I shrunk the kids'"
Even Rodney smiles. "We could make a pet Wraith for Ronon."
"The medical implications are quite staggering," Carson says with a dreamy look on his face.
Radek kneels down to check something a bit more closely. "But again I do not know why Rizoli, or whomever, did not speak up."
"She wants to make the biggest impact possible with this discovery, and for that she needs a finished product," Rodney suggests. "Some people want all of the glory and can't share with others."
It's very very hard for John not to laugh out loud. "My favorite is the floating brain. I am sure it's way relevant," John says.
Rodney looks up at it and has visibly shivers.
"What kind of brain, that's what I wonder. As far as I know, no one brought a sheep's brain in chloroform from Earth as their personal item."
True, that's a disturbing thought. John lets Rodney fiddle with the computer and walks around it, going to see the various glassware montages. There's one that could be used as a still, but the rest is mostly, if he remembers his organic chemistry right, for liquid extractions. It doesn't give him any clue what for, though he still hopes that the notes Carson found will tell them more. Did the person working here in secret thought they'd never find this place? It sure looks like it, if they let so much stuff lying around. Who knows, maybe it's been going on for so long that they got sloppy. Docking under a refrigerant, John goes to check the floating animals. He thinks he saw an octopus.
***
An hour later Ronon and the others are back with them on the lab bench. They have visited all of the boxes and Teyla is particularly smitten with the one set with open spaces that she describes in details. Rodney cuts her story short when he says that he found a way get them back to their regular size.
"How so?" John asks.
"I'm pretty sure that if someone with the gene goes to press this button just here, under the beam mechanism," Rodney says, pointing to the detailed blue prints of it on the laptop screen, circling his hand around the button in question. "Whoever is in the box at which it's aimed at the time will be rematerialized outside at full height."
"Okay, cool, let's try it." John jumps down from the lizard jar - his favorite - and goes for the ladder.
When Rodney tries to get on it to climb down too, John grabs his ankle. "Nuh huh, you stay here."
"What?"
"I need you here, able to find another solution if this doesn't work well and I get zapped again only to end up one inch high."
"But..."
"No but, Rodney," John says, squeezing the ankle a little. "You stay here out of range of that damn thing and see how it goes."
With a put upon sight, Rodney agrees. "Okay, fine."
"Lorne, you're with me. You're on button duty."
"Yes, Sir," Lorne says with a smirk as he gets up. "I've always found I was a bit on the short side, but this takes the cake."
"I'll go too," Ronon says. "I'll help with the ladder."
That's fair enough, so John nods. "Let's go, then."
It does not take much work for the three of them to haul the ladder from the lab bench to the ornament in the wall near the boxes. After a bit of pulling, they put it in place and it's almost the perfect height. John wonders if it's regular fail safe equipment specifically for whoever ended up in the boxes, in case they got stuck and had no one to bring them back.
Lorne checks the direction the thingy that shoots the beam is oriented towards and John goes into the corresponding box. Maybe there's a special spot where he should stand, but there's no marks on the floor. This place is pretty neat, John has the time to think as he goes to into the living room. It has nice black couches and something soft covering the ground, a bit like a dojo mattress. Since everyone that got zapped ended up approximately at the same place, John thinks it's a safe bet to wait in the middle of the room. Ronon puts his head through the door.
"Ready?"
John nods. "Yep."
Ronon goes back out to relay the signal and almost instantly John blinks, white light dissolving while he stands right outside the box. He's regular size again, and the shift of focus and perspective is a bit jarring. He smiles at Lorne with a thumbs up and can't help laughing out loud when he sees his tiny friends doing a dance of joy on the lab bench. Ronon runs towards the same house, fast as a mouse, and ducks inside of it while John steps aside; with a push of the button, Lorne turns Ronon back too.
John grins, clapping Ronon on the back and reassured to feel all of his presence back to normal. Not that he wasn't impressive when they were all Ken-sized. "Excellent. Let's change Lorne, now."
John goes to the ladder and offers his hand to his second in command who climbs on with a big smile. Careful not to drop him, John deposits Lorne near the boxes. There's no way John's touching the darn things if he doesn't have to, so he's careful about that, and then he takes the three strides back to the button - funny how it seemed a lot further than that just minutes ago. When John pushes it, Lorne transforms as expected.
"Glad that worked!" Lorne says, grinning. He looks up at Ronon beside him and makes a humming sound. "Do you think Dr. Z could modify the beam so we re-materialize a tiny bit taller than usual?"
"You're fine just the way you are, Evan," John says teasingly, but it's very true. He feels no need to enhance his friends, and John is assaulted by images of the marshmallow man in Ghostbusters for some reason. His mind is a wondrous place.
"I think the others want to be turned back, too," Ronon says and yes, look at that, there's some waving from the lab bench.
They go fetch the others and while Ronon scoops up Elizabeth and Teyla and Lorne offers a ride to Radek and Carson, there's no question that John is in charge of tiny Rodney. Now that he can appreciate the humor a bit more, it's indeed hilarious to hear Rodney makes these tiny squeaky sounds, hands waving in a way that clearly conveys that he wants John to bring him to the boxes immediately. John grins as he carefully grabs Rodney around his body to lift him from the table and bring him closer to his face. Rodney doesn't appreciate being manhandled like that, though, and starts pounding on John's hand with his little fists, face turning red as he screeches in outrage. John can't help being endeared and he laughs.
"Aren't you cute like this."
If tiny blue eyes could shoot lasers, John would be dead, no doubt. Knowing that he's really pushing it but unable to resist, John uses the tip of his index finger to pet Rodney's hair, making shushing sounds. Rodney tries to bite him, which is all kinds of hilarious, and keeps twisting in his grip.
"Come on, it's fun and you know it. Okay, I'll let you go, just hang on," John says as he puts Rodney on his shoulder. To keep his balance, Rodney takes two handfuls of John's hair and, completely unnecessarily, he yanks, hard. Tiny Rodney is a spiteful little beast.
"Ow! Be nice or you stay like that for a couple of days, hear me?"
Rodney only kicks his ear. By now everyone is back to normal size, so John finally relents and brings Rodney towards the boxes to set him down; as soon as Rodney's feet hit the ground he stalks in. Lorne, who is on button duty again, makes him re-materialize after a couple of seconds. Immediately Rodney turns on John.
"You are so going to pay for this, it's not even funny," he promises, voice cold and yikes, John is in more trouble than he thought.
"Ah, please, you would have done the same." John hits his ear piece and sets it for the general military channel. "Attention all personnel. The situation in tower 3-G is back to normal. Resume normal operations. Sheppard out."
"Sir? Maybe we should get some security detail over to guard the place, preferably without the gene, to make sure no one gets stuck again," Lorne suggests.
"No," Rodney says, as he walks towards the lab bench. "We're not sure who's working here and what they have planned. If we put guards at the door, it's going to spook him or her and we'll never know."
"Do you suggest surveillance?" Zelenka asks.
"Yes. I'll monitor Atlantis' cameras and install a couple of my own. We need to send a message that the lab is from now on off limits, since everyone knows we've been here, but from then it's going to be a game of patience. I suspect our culprit will lay low for a couple of weeks, but they won't be able to resist coming back to check what we might have done with the stuff."
Zelenka nods. "Yes. And I will go through the searches made in the database with specific keywords relative to miniaturization, and see what comes out."
"Good idea but you might have to go back a couple of years," adds Elizabeth. "What is the official story, here?"
"We need to stick with what we sent out with the email," Rodney says.
"Too bad we mentioned the boxes," John muses. "Maybe we could spin a tale about how we detected some sort of radiation or signal? No one needs to know that we got shrunk and stuck in them."
Everyone nods. It has the potential to be embarrassing for all.
"That's doable. It sucks that we need to keep out, though, because I can't wait to check this technology further." Rodney has a look around and does a disgusted face at the preserved animals. "What those are for, I have no idea."
"What I wonder is what the Ancients were using this for in the first place," Carson says. "Did they need space? Or was it a social experiment?"
"Prisoners would be easier to control," Ronon suggests.
"I wouldn't put it past them." Rodney closes the laptop and passes it to Zelenka. "Ok, let's go get some equipment to bug this place."
When Rodney leaves without acknowledging him at all, John winces. It seems that he's in the dog house for real.
***
The military contingent might mainly consist in big bad Marines, but they are surprisingly easy to spook when mom and dad - John's long resigned himself to think of Lorne and himself like that - disappear for a couple of hours. John knows who to go to speak in person so the word that they're fine and that they've dealt with the situation is spread to everyone. After dinner, he files a report with the official cover story - who knows, maybe the scientist isn't alone in the operation of that lab, and everyone knows that a good hacker can get into the system, especially if Rodney lets a tiny backdoor window open intentionally.
The trap set, John decides that it's been a long enough day and that it's time he makes amends for his behavior in the creepy lab. Not that he was that much over the line, in his humble opinion, but if Rodney has decided to be mad about it, then John needs to make things right.
The first surprise is that Rodney has already left his lab. John goes by the mess hall and lucks out when there's a slice of almost-blueberry pie left. A bit of charm with the cook on duty secures a scoop of vanilla ice cream, which is pretty damn impressive if he says so himself. Armed with his apology and a dessert fork, John goes to Rodney's quarters and rings the chime.
"Go away!" he hears through the door.
"I have a surprise," John says.
"I'm not interested."
"You wouldn't say that if you knew what it was."
There's a couple of seconds of silence, but John knows that Rodney is dying of curiosity on the other side.
"Fine, be like that," John says. "I'll just eat it myself. Good night!"
He mentally counts down: three, two, one...
"Wait!" The door opens and Rodney zeroes on the plate and snatches it away. "Is that ice cream?" He then looks up, and frowns at John. "You owed me. Now go away."
When the door slides shut in his face, John gapes a little. This is so not on. He's been polite, but now he's getting annoyed, too, so he makes Atlantis override Rodney's pathetic lock on the door.
"Hey!" John says, striding in. Predictably Rodney is inhaling the pie and ice cream, already more than halfway in. On his desk there are three monitors, each separated in quadrants, showing the live feed of what is going on in the Barbie lab - John thinks the name fits, plus it's catchy - and in the adjacent corridors.
Rodney glares.
"The door was locked, asshole."
Putting his hands on his hips, John rolls his eyes. "Yeah, and? Come on, Rodney. I brought ice cream."
He's known the guy for a while, so John can feel Rodney's anger wavering. You have to give it to him: Rodney might get into a snit easily, but he rarely holds a grudge unless it's career related. Pretty sure that he won't get his head bitten off, John walks to Rodney and even dares to touch his arm.
"Look, I'm sorry, okay? I didn't want to make you angry."
With a huff, Rodney crams more pie in his mouth. He seems a bit mollified, so John smiles and inches his hand up Rodney's bicep, before closing it on Rodney's nape. He steps a bit closer into Rodney's personal space and looks as sheepish as he can. "Do you think you can forgive me?"
A corner of Rodney's mouth tilts up. "It depends if you can find more of this," he says, waving the plate a little, but he tilts a bit into John's touch as if he can't help it.
Bingo, he's got him. John chuckles and leans in to lick at a bit of ice cream at the corner of Rodney's mouth. "Mmmm. Unfortunately, no, that's all of the desert I've got for now. But maybe there's something else you'd like."
Rodney's eyes light up. Yes, his boyfriend is more than predictable.
"You bet there is," he all but growls, though he makes sure to finish the pie before pushing a laughing John towards his bed.
***
It starts as a fun ribbing game between John, Rodney and Zelenka, but everyone who got shrunk that fateful day end up placing bets in the "When will the crazy scientist will finally make a move?" pool. It's Teyla who finally takes the 80 bucks when it takes more than three months. More than once Rodney had been tempted to stop the covert surveillance and to go work in that lab, drawn to the unknown technology like a moth to a flame. But fortunately - or unfortunately if Rodney was to be believed - Elizabeth had held strong in her resolve and it finally paid off.
John's all but liquefied after a round of mind blowing sex, drawing lazy patterns on Rodney's shoulders with the tip of a finger, when something on Rodney's desk starts beeping. The man has half a dozen alarms set up at all time for various shit but this one has Rodney sitting up straight in the bed, almost sending John down on the floor.
"The fuck?" he says, grabbing Rodney's arm for purchase.
"That's it!" Rodney gets up, mindless of his very naked state, and opens his second favorite laptop. "Someone triggered the motion sensor in the Barbie lab!"
"What?"
Rodney comes back to bed with the laptop and John sits up against the headboard to watch with him.
It's been fourteen weeks and never once did anyone slip, but right now they have someone on camera. It's a woman, kind of short, and Rodney makes a victorious crowing sound.
"That's it, come in, we've got you!" He taps on the keyboard, makes the camera zoom on the face and then clears all of the noise in the image. As they had suspected all along, it's Doctor Ellen Rizoli, who stops just inside the lab once the door closes behind her. "Should I lock the door?" Rodney asks.
"Wait, she might hear it. Let's see what she does, first," John suggests.
Rodney's putting his radio on so John hurries to do the same.
"Zelenka, come in." He waits a couple of seconds as they watch Rizoli going to the lab bench before calling Radek again.
"What is it, Rodney?" Radek answers, voice a bit scratchy. He was probably sleeping.
"Rizoli is in the lab, at last. Right on camera for everyone to see."
"What?" There's some rustling and a bit of mumbling. When there's whispering John and Rodney look at each other and raise matching surprised eyebrows.
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," Rodney says sweetly. All sounds cease and John has to bite the side of his hand not to laugh out loud.
"No, no, why would you say that?" Radek asks a bit too fast. "I have opened my computer and I can see her too, now. What is she doing?"
"She seems to be doing an inventory of the lab bench," Rodney says, squinting at the screen. "Is being on site in the middle of the night enough to make her the culprit?"
"I am not certain for a court of law. But she works for us, so we are totally justified in asking for her to explain herself."
They feel doubly validated when Rizoli puts something in her lab coat pocket, grabs the journal, and after looking around the room - and, unknowingly it seems, directly at several cameras - hurries to get out. Or she tries to. Rodney starts typing but John gives a stern command to Atlantis not to let Rizoli get out of the lab or to allow any kind of damage to the room. Rizoli jumps back when the door closes and locks in her face.
"You did that, didn't you?" Rodney asks.
John shrugs as he gets dressed. "Well yeah."
"Show off." Rodney clicks on his radio. "Doctor Rizoli, I'd ask you to please sit on the ground exactly were you are, we are coming over."
Rizoli, who was about to open the panel near the door to try and escape makes a little squeaky sound and raises her hands, her eyes darting right and left as she looks for the cameras.
"I, huh, I was doing nothing wrong Doctor McKay," she says.
"We'll see about that. Six inches higher than the top right corner of the door, by the way."
Rizoli looks directly at one of the cameras, her face a little pale and wide brown eyes. "Oh."
"Hi." Rodney is almost dressed by now. "Just sit down on the floor. I can see everything and trying to tamper with the evidence would be bad, do you understand?"
She nods and slowly sits down, legs crossed. "Yes, okay."
"Good, we'll be right over." Rodney switches channels on his radio. "Radek, did you hear that? We're going to the lab. Are you sitting this one out? I can play bad cop and call you in later, if that doesn't work, to try the gentler way."
"You watch too much television Rodney," Radek says. "But that is actually a good idea. It looks like she is going to talk, though. And I suppose that by 'we', you mean you and Colonel Sheppard?"
"Of course. I told him first," Rodney says, throwing John a nervous look.
It's not that John doesn't appreciate the fact that Rodney still wants to protect him by not saying outright that they're together, even if DADT is almost out of the way, but Rodney shouldn't bother with Radek: he's known for a while. Probably before Rodney even realized that John was interested in being more than just friends. Heck, the whole base must know. It's not like they've been subtle.
"Come on," John urges. "Let's go see what she has to say."
***
If they had known that Rizoli would crack and confess so easily, they would not have bothered to set a trap and they would just had went and ask her questions.
"Two years!" Rodney doesn't seem to be able to get over that fact. Rizoli cowers a little bit more on her stool and John is tempted to step between the two.
"It's not like I came every day or anything!" she protests. "Just once in a while, when I had time."
"But two years! If you were doing nothing wrong, why not tell anyone about it?"
"I thought it was nothing! Just boxes, maybe some interior design contest at one point, or the lab of someone who liked doing doll houses as a hobby. I know I do." Rizoli raises her chin with some hint of defiance at last. It seems that she would not appreciate being teased about liking that particular hobby.
"When did you figure out there was something more?" John asks, as friendly as he can make it. The girl looks terrified enough, no need to add to it. She turns her eyes to him and is obviously pleading for some understanding.
"Weeks, it took weeks before I thought to search the database for references to this particular lab."
"Weeks? I hear the plural, but does that mean two weeks or more than that?" Rodney insists
Rizoli winces. "Nine?"
Rodney gapes a little and turns to John. "Forgive me if I'm wrong, but aren't we supposed to pick the best of the brightest for this place?"
John rolls his eyes. "You tell me, genius. You're the one who approves of all of the scientific personnel."
"I was busy with my job. This," Rizoli waves around. "This was just when I had a minute for myself or needed to think of something else. I had no idea."
"Until?" John prompts.
She sighs. "Until I found mentions of miniaturization. I was sure it was an abandoned experiment, but I was curious to learn more."
"Why didn't you tell then?" Rodney asks.
"Because." Rizoli stops talking for a second, and when she starts again she sounds a bit more agitated, but also more confidant; she looks straight at Rodney when before she would barely raise her eyes from the floor. "Because I knew I should have talked about it before then, and that I'd get my head bitten off because I didn't. Because I knew I'd be taken off the project for it."
Before Rodney opens his mouth, John tries to defuse the tension, or at least to redirect some of the blast. "You do tend to take away all of the cool toys."
Rizoli throws him a little smile but Rodney glares. Mission accomplished. "You? Shut up, please."
"She's right and you know it." John turns to Rizoli. "But you should have told anyway, Ellen. Why did you keep this secret for two years? We were bound to find out sometimes."
She sighs loudly. "Yes, I know. The odds of people finding this lab were pretty slim. And then I started to think that if I could find something cool, understand how it had once worked, then it would be a little better."
"It still works." Rodney points to the device on the wall. "If we'd known about it before, maybe we could have rigged it into something useful for the expedition by now."
Rizoli perks up. "Oh, it works? I did suspect it was gene activated."
John almost laughs out loud at the epic 'are you a moron?' bitch face Rodney does.
"You suspected." It seems the straw that breaks the camel's back because he throws his arms in the air and turns to take a couple of steps away, before coming back. "I have no idea what to do with you. How someone can be so epically stupid..."
"Hey, hey, hey," John says. He knows that the little throbbing vein on Rodney's temple is a very bad sign and he pulls him a little further. "I need to talk to you."
"What?" Oh boy. Rodney looks as if he's ready to bite someone head's off.
"Do you think she had bad intentions towards the expedition?" John asks. He has to get this back on track. Rodney clenches his jaw, throws the girl a dark look but then he shakes his head no.
"Not sure. Probably not. She might be playing us, though, amping up the lovable dimwit act."
It had not even crossed John's mind, but it could be. After all, as Rodney said earlier, they recruit the cream of the scientific community. Maybe they have good actors in the lot, too.
"If she's playing us, she's good. Let's try to learn more, and maybe make her take a lie detector test later. Calm down a little, buddy."
Asking Rodney to calm down in the face of stupidity is kind of huge. Maybe he's mellower than usual or just tired, but Rodney gives in easily. "You better talk to her, then. I didn't manage to have a good look at the journal, so I'll do that."
John smiles and squeezes Rodney's forearm who fetches the lab notes and starts flipping through the pages.
"Good." John goes to sit with Rizoli. "Look, you know how he gets. But this is serious, I'm not gonna lie."
"I know."
"Searching the database about this place, that's one thing. But what's the rest?" John gestures to the glassware and floating animals and brain.
Rizoli blushes a little. If she really can fake it, she's really good. "It's not related at all. It's a personal side project; I've been making progress in emo-pigment research. But it's not an Atlantis priority, so I need to do it in my spare time." She hurries to add, "and that's fine, of course. No need to spend any of the expedition's dime on it."
"You brought all of that stuff from Earth?"
"Little by little. Nothing is stolen, you can check."
"We will," Rodney mutters. He opens his radio. "Radek, you there?"
While Rodney discusses if they should start working on what is here right now or in the morning, John can't help but ask about something he's been wondering since they found the place.
"Did you need to make it look so..." Words fail John, so he waves a little.
"Like every mad scientist cliché ever thought of? Are those the words you're looking for, John?" Rodney asks, ending communication.
"That's about right. So, Ellen, why did you make the place look like a mad scientist lab?"
Unexpectedly Rizoli smiles at that, delighted. "You think it's creepy?"
John nods. "Sorta."
"Cool. What can I say, I've always loved old horror movies."
"The brain is a bit overkill," Rodney says and John's happy to see he's calming down. He's got his serious face going on, and he's examining something closely.
"My personal favorite is the floating dino skeleton. I call her Mindy." Rizoli is trying hard to lighten the mood; she obviously felt the change in atmosphere, too.
"You guys are weird," John declares.
"Thanks," Rizoli says with a smile. Scientists, really. A bunch of weirdos.
"How could you even begin to design a portable device for the shrinking beam if you didn't know how much power it consumed?" Rodney asks. "You had absolutely no test results!"
"Very true. But whatever the need for energy actually is, a canon like this would depend on the strength of the power source utilized anyway. My theory is that the stronger the power source would be, may it be a generator, the energy from a jumper or even a ZPM, the more potential the canon would have as a result. I think that we could modulate the response - in this case the degree of miniaturization - with the energy input."
Rodney doesn't argue, he just makes a humming sound.
"You're totally thinking about it too, aren't you?" John asks, starting to smile. "You want a super shrinking canon." He must admit that it would be pretty cool.
"It really works?" Rizoli asks, looking towards the wall. "Man, I wish I had seen it."
"Let's say that it was not the best experience ever," Rodney says.
John laughs; he didn't think it was so bad.
"What, people got caught?" Rizoli says, eyes round. "I thought someone shrunk a chair or something."
Admitting that eight people got caught sounds pretty lame and John decides she doesn't need to know the details.
"Yeah," John says. "You should have seen tiny Rodney."
"Sheppard!"
Radek comes in the lab at that moment, eyes overly bright, and yeah, no chance those two will get out of this place for at least two days straight. Before they get sucked into the work, John takes Rodney aside.
"I'll take Rizoli back to her quarters, and tell her to stay there until we decide what to do with her."
"Yes, okay. Schedule a meeting with Elizabeth some time tomorrow - well sometime later. We'll have a better idea when we'll have gone through all of her stuff. I should have scanned it when we found it."
John points to the journal that Radek is already flipping through at his turn. "Are her ideas any good?" he asks.
"It could be." It seems to pain Rodney to admit it, though. "We need to do tests first."
"Be careful not to shrink yourself again, alright?" John says with a grin.
Rodney scoffs. "You'd like that too much, so you can bet I won't."
As it happens more and more lately, John is tempted to kiss Rodney in public just for being adorably grumpy. Or funny. Or sometimes when he's brilliant. Yes, he's tempted to kiss Rodney in public a lot. "Don't worry, if it happens I'll rescue you. Or maybe I'll just keep you tiny for a while, and feed you cookies. Can you imagine? Cookies bigger than your head with huge chocolate chips."
Rodney rolls his eyes but his smile is fond. "I've seen you play dolls with Madison, John. I'm on to you."
John points to Rodney's wrist. "Set your watch, I want confirmation that everything is ok every 30 minutes until you manage to have a crew in here."
With a put upon sigh, Rodney puts an alarm on. John knows that as soon as they will be given free reign, Rodney and Radek will lose any sense of time. "Yes, dear."
John lets his hand linger a bit too long after he claps Rodney on the shoulder as a goodbye and goes to get Rizoli. "Let's go, I'm bringing you back to your place."
"I guess so." She puts a brave face on, but it's clear she would have loved to stay. Maybe she might come back one of those days, if they find nothing too serious in her research and the way she did things. Before he lets himself be mellowed, John must talk to Carson about the lie detector test.
"Later guys!" John shouts as he leaves the lab.
He'll be back soon anyway. And if he almost wishes that Rodney and Radek will have been miniaturized again by accident by the times that happen, well no one needs to know but him. Atlantis hums the way she does when she's trying desperately to please him and John grins. He has a feeling he'd better come back with coffee.
The End
Wordcount: 10 342
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s): John Sheppard/Rodney McKay, implied Radek Zelenka/Elizabeth Weir
Summary: When Radek and Elizabeth go missing, John and Rodney decide to check the lab they had planned to visit. What they find is definitely surprising and has an unforeseen… little complication.
Warning(s) highlight to read: A couple of F words, but that's about it. The characters are not mine (unfortunately).
Notes: It was a joy to work with such wonderful and creative art by mific (and I totally stole the title from the artist!). The fantastic rinkafic did me the favor of a fast and insightful beta... thank you so much!
Companion piece to A Tiny Problem.
A Tiny Problem
It's weird, that's what it is, John thinks. He's tried calling Elizabeth on the comms when she didn't show up for a scheduled meeting, and there's no sign of her in all of the usual spots John could think of. The mess hall had been the first place he'd checked - not even Elizabeth could resist coffee when fresh supplies were in - but he goes again because it's possible they've both been moving at the same time and therefore missed each other. The fact she's not answering to the radio after over an hour is more perplexing, though. Mid afternoons are quiet in the mess hall, but John spots Rodney at their usual table and ambles over with a smile.
"Hey," he says over Rodney's shoulder, making him jump in surprise.
"Jeez, warn a guy!" Rodney has spilled a bit of coffee on his tray, and he mops at it with a glare at John. "Aren't you supposed to work or something?"
"Yeah, but I can't find Elizabeth. Have you seen her?" John eyes the two cookies on Rodney's plate but he decides against a strategic op to secure one of them when Rodney pulls his plate closer to himself.
"Don't even think about it. And the answer to your question is no, I haven't seen her today. Call her."
John rolls his eyes. "Tried it, no answer. You weren't supposed to meet her this morning?"
The good thing about performance review is that no one from the command staff can escape the meetings. No one. It's a solace and makes everyone equal in the misery department.
Rodney hums. "I was, but then I couldn't because I was elbow deep in sensitive Ancient tech. I sent Zelenka. He's the one who does the performance reviews, anyway."
"Which results in a reduced ratio of grown adults crying, I presume." John says. Secretly, he sometimes wishes he could come up with little jabs half as creative as Rodney's are. He has read some of the reports by Jack O'Neill in his SG-1 days, after all, and John aims to one day present the crackiest report ever done.
"Ha, come on. I just say it how it is. If you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen." Rodney taps the comm link on his ear. "Zelenka, come in."
Radek doesn't respond. After a second fruitless call, they look at each other.
"Okay, so that both are unreachable at the same time after a meeting together can't be a coincidence," Rodney says.
John can't help but smirk. "Maybe they don't want to be found right now."
Rodney looks puzzled for a moment, and then his eyes go round when John waggles his eyebrows. "Oh! You think he finally made a move? About damn time!"
Shrugging, John tips his chair on its back legs, sways a little. "Maybe. Though if we don't hear from them in, say, about an hour..."
"Fine. If it comes to that, meet me in the lab?" Rodney asks, putting a whole cookie in his mouth without biting it first, but then he gives the other one to John unprompted, which goes into the win column.
"Will do," John says, taking a bite before Rodney changes his mind and takes the cookie back.
***
"Miko says that Radek needed some Ancient translation for a lab he found," Rodney explains as he taps on his tablet, his eyes glued to it and not looking at all where he's going in real life. Rodney's a bit like someone playing some computer game with that thing, but one where he's the moving figure on the screen.
"You think he used that excuse to get some one on one time with Elizabeth?" John asks.
"It's most probably a not so subtle come-see-my-etchings plan," Rodney agrees.
A good thing, though, is that Radek is a prudent man by nature. He left a note about where he was planning to go - indeed with Elizabeth - in the lab and even mailed the info to Rodney. It is dated from the morning, which does make the worry factor go up a bit. They've been MIA for 3 hours now.
"I don't know what he might have found in tower 3-G." Rodney is still fiddling with his tablet, walking at a determined pace towards their destination. "The last time I checked it was mostly living quarters."
John snorts. He knows plenty of reasons why he'd bring the object of his affection to some unknown living quarters, out of the way, and where you can get precious privacy.
"Do they have decent beds?"
Rodney raises an eyebrow at him and scoffs. "One track mind, thy name is Sheppard," he declares.
"It's not like you usually complain about that." John says with a leer and waits a second for maximum effect before continuing. "This is a miracle in itself, of course."
"Oh, shut up." Rodney's almost smiling, though, and John's half tempted to detour in one of those rooms that line the corridor and check out the beds first hand. But it's not the time, not when some of his people are missing.
"It's right down this corridor," Rodney says, pointing left.
The door opens easily, which is a good thing. On the other hand, what is inside is weird as fuck. Almost creepy, in fact. John tries to get the lights to come on fully but the room stays gloomy, with a green tint. It's indeed a lab, though not what they're used to see in Atlantis. In the back of the room, there's a work bench cluttered with floating animals - is that a brain? - and with various glass montages set for some mysterious chemistry experiments.
"Wow," John says.
"Could it be more cliché? I mean, this place looks like the underground lair of a super villain." Rodney says, frowning at the mess.
If at first sight the bench and various vials caught his eye, John is soon drawn to the boxes that are lined up near one of the walls. They are roughly 2 feet by 2 feet and about that high, too. The lid on them is transparent, which reveals they are some sort of doll houses. A whole series of doll houses, in fact, with tiny furniture and close attention to detail and even doors to get out. Man, those Ancients were weird.
Rodney comes to look over John's shoulder and frowns.
"What the ever loving..." He starts but John, curious to see if the Plexiglas opens, touches the top of the box and they're enveloped by the telltale white light of a transporter beam.
"Fuck!" Rodney finishes, as they end up in another room altogether, with green walls and no windows. He spins around and glares at John. "Oh, that's just great. You touched something, again"
John raises his hand, defensively. "I know, I know, no touching in creepy labs, my bad. But it looked like a Barbie house! What's the harm in that?"
Fiddling with his PDA, Rodney doesn't look happy.
"You tell me! Obviously, the lab owner didn't want to share his toys because we got zapped away. But I don't understand... "
He's doing the squinty thing with his forehead that John knows by now means that the data he's presented with is illogical, and therefore offending Rodney's delicate sensibilities.
"What is it?" John asks as he makes sure that the room is clear. There's a closed door but it doesn't want to open: that could be annoying.
Rodney looks up, then blinks and stares. With a sense of dread, John looks up too and, oh, shit, it's shiny. A lot like Plexiglas. He reassesses the room they are in with that new information and yeah. They seem to be in trouble.
"Just great," Rodney says sitting down heavily in a chair that happens to be near by. "No, seriously, my life is now complete."
John checks his hands, his clothes, his gun... everything is absolutely normal and it's hard to reconcile that and the fact that they are, most probably, about 8 inches tall right now. And trapped in an Ancient doll house.
"Since it was so easy to get in, there's surely a way out, right?" John says, thinking very hard that he wants to get out of the box now. When that doesn't work, he asks Atlantis politely where the control panel of the house would be, but nothing happens either.
Rodney shakes the remains of his shock and starts to tour the... living quarters they are now in, there's no other word for it. Everything looks incredibly familiar, built to be an illusion of Atlantis herself. It's a fully furnished apartment and John wonders if it was once huge and has been shrunk too, or if it was built up from scratch. There are kitchen and bathroom appliances, and John's pretty sure they'd work, though there's no water and no food in the cupboards. Usually, if there's to be environmental controls or any special features in a room, it's situated in the main living area. A superficial and then a very methodical search where Rodney knocks on every panel in the room turns out nothing.
"Hey, Rodney," John says after a while, when he notices the increasingly agitated state Rodney heading for. That's not good; John needs him alert and not panicking.
"What?" Rodney snaps.
"Your PDA still works? How is that even possible?"
"We're about seven inches tall, John... How is that even possible, that's what I'd like to know. Oh and while I'm at it, just how to go back to regular height would be pretty high on my list of questions, too."
He's pretty sure that Rodney already tried, but John has to ask. "Did you try telling someone? To send a signal, an email, something?"
"Did I..." Rodney looks at him as if he can't believe something as stupid was said out loud. "Of course I tried! What kind of idiot do you take me for? The problem is that I can't access all of the functionalities of this piece of shit. The locator is functional, since it triangulates directly with the wave lengths emitted by Atlantis, but I cannot seem to send a signal myself. In short it takes incoming but my output isn't read, or not strong enough to reach destination."
"Bummer." John makes a round once more, just because it's the only thing he can do. He's leaning in the door of the smaller of the two bedrooms when Rodney comes by his side.
"What are you doing?"
With a gesture, John encompasses the room. "Look, bunk beds!"
"Hum." Rodney looks honestly puzzled. "Yes? And that's going to help us how?"
"Oh, no, nothing. It's just that it's pretty rare that we have hints that there once were once kids here, or families."
"I'll give you that," Rodney agrees. "I'd bet that when the war with the Wraith became serious, they must have toned down population growth. That is until they got to Earth where we have indirect proof that they... mingled." He gives John a raised eyebrow.
John scoffs, and wonders once again why he's got such a strong ATA gene. Was it pure luck or did someone somewhere decide to be creative with the branches of his family tree? The Asgard Loki had performed experiments on Earth humans for years and years after all, and who knows, maybe there's a mostly ascended Ancient looking after his descendants and intervening here and there.
"You know, apart from the not being able to get out of the box and regular size again, this is really pretty cool," John says, before he lie down on the bottom bunk (it's surprisingly comfortable).
After a pleading look upwards to gather his strength, Rodney predictably starts to rant.
"Cool, he say." As expected, the hands then come into play, chopping first and followed with wide circles as if to point to their surroundings all at once. "I'll maybe find this cool when we're back to normal, and not a second before!"
"I'm just saying." A technology to make everything become a fraction of its original size with minimum side effects would be revolutionary.
"Look, John, this isn't something fun, do you get that? Now is not the time to play house and if we don't get out, we might be screwed. To make matters worst, I suspect that the most likely person to help us with this problem is stuck in one of those other boxes."
All drama all the time: sometimes it gets a bit annoying.
"Jeez, okay, let me find my doomed face." John gets up and as he passes through the door he grips Rodney's elbow and forces eye contact. "Stop it. It's only you and me here. I am one hundred percent sure that you'll get us out, got it?"
Rodney takes a deep breath and relaxes a fraction. He nods. "Yeah, okay. Of course. I can't believe I'm asking this, but do you have some C4 in one of your multiple pockets?"
As if John wouldn't have thought of that if he had some; he pouts and mourns the explosion that will never be. The only way out of this place, except maybe from the Plexiglas ceiling that they cannot reach anyway, is the locked door and there are no handy dandy panels with crystals to play around in.
"Unfortunately, no. But I think blunt force on the door could work. It's not one of those sliding-into-the-walls doors, but one with hinges even if they're on the other side."
"What are you thinking about?" Rodney asks, back to curious.
"A battering ram. There's gotta be something we can use in here."
Rodney starts snapping his fingers and John smirks. The key is to focus him, sometimes to apply a bit of pressure, and then Rodney finds the solution almost every time.
"Yes, okay, we could do that."
They tour the place one last time before deciding on parts of the bunk beds frame. Rodney improvises tools and they are soon using their homemade battering ram on the door. It takes about a dozen hard hits on specific pressure point determined by Rodney before the lock finally busts and lets the door open.
Stepping out is a huge shock: the fact they're now minuscule is finally apparent by the surroundings. It's like waking into a room made for giant, distances and heights amplified.
"I could have lived without this particular feeling," Rodney mutters, but he's back to business immediately. He looks at the other boxes critically. "First thing first, we need to find Radek and Elizabeth."
This, as it turns out, is relatively easy since there's some faint pounding on the door two boxes down. John and Rodney take their battering ram over and destroy the hinges in quick succession. The opening door reveals a more disheveled than usual Zelenka.
"Zaplať pánbůh!" Radek says, beaming, but then he sobers up a little. "Oh. You have been caught by the beam too."
"It's nice to see you none the less," Elizabeth says as she steps out. She looks relieved to see reinforcements too. "We wondered if someone would find us."
"Radek left notes of your exploration trip, though I really think we should set up a control mechanism to touch base at scheduled intervals when on exploration trips, just in case," Rodney says. "How long have you two been stuck in there?"
They look at each other and Radek shrugs. "Maybe two hours, I would say. There was nothing to open the door."
John smirks, he can't help it. "No bed? What a shame."
He wouldn't put his pay on it, but Elizabeth maybe blushes at that, which is ten kinds of interesting. Curious, John enters the box they opened and it's indeed bare, only walls and no furniture. His and Rodney's was way better.
When he gets out, Radek and Rodney are arguing about what would be the best thing to do to get back to normal, each of them fiddling with their now miniature toys - Radek had a tablet in hand, it seems - and John takes Elizabeth aside.
"Hey, wanna visit a couple more?" he asks.
She shakes her head a bit as if he's the most ridiculous person she knows but smiles. "Sure, why not. I don't get what they were trying to do with this, but it's fascinating."
John hauls his piece of bed frame and goes to bust a couple more hinges. "I don't know. Maybe at some point they were too crowded."
Each box is different, at least the ones John manages to peak into before Rodney requests they make their way towards the lab benches.
"My laptop is there," Zelenka says. "I wonder how we will manage to climb up there, though."
"Don't worry, doc." John's actually looking forward to that part, it should be fun. Ropes would be nice, though.
"Oh, wait." Elizabeth goes back in the second to last cube she went in, then calls for them. "This could help."
Indeed, a ladder will do. It's telescopic, too, which means that they'll have to do a minimum of acrobatics to get to the top of the workspace. They're about to pick the ladder up when they feel the ground vibrate slightly: it's their first clue that someone is coming. The second is the huge shadow that falls on them. It's Ronon, who's always been kind of impressive, but right now? He's really fucking huge. He spots them immediately and his face, up there in the stratosphere, is priceless for a few seconds before he starts laughing. The sound it makes booms around them and John guesses that their hearing must be impacted by the transformation. Rodney doesn't take too kindly that he's mocked and starts to rant, which makes Ronon laugh even more, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. By this point, even John starts to be annoyed, because it might be funny, but it's not that hilarious.
Carson's there now, too, and he does a quite impressive goldfish impression - complete with round eyes - when he sees them on the ground.
"We should get away from the boxes," Zelenka suggests. It's too late though, since both Carson and Ronon are walking over.
It sends Rodney into a good imitation of a windmill as he shouts for them to not come closer. Does it work? Not at all, not even when John tries to gesture for them to stay back, too. Ronon and Carson get in range and before they can do anything about it, they're touching the boxes - Carson to deposit his medical kit, Ronon because he's still laughing, the fucker - and the shrinking beam engulfs them.
John takes his bed frame to bust more hinges. Two releases later, they gather outside the boxes. Rodney has his arm crossed over his chest and he glares at Ronon.
"Not so funny anymore, huh?"
Ronon chuckles and he hasn't lost his big smile. "Oh, no, it's hilarious. You should have seen yourself, squeaking like an urlistu."
"Well now you'll squeak like whatever that is, too," Rodney says petulantly.
"Is everyone okay?" Carson asks, still looking mostly spooked.
"We're fine." Elizabeth pats his arm gently. "Apart from being doll sized."
"This means we're not fine at all, if we think about the big picture." Rodney's fiddling with his PDA and he starts walking towards the back of the lab. "We were about to go for the computer on the lab bench before you had the brilliant idea to get caught, too. So let's go, maybe we'll find a way to get out of this unfortunate situation."
***
The first thing John sees when he gets at the top of the ladder and on the work bench is a lizard floating in a jar. A lizard that at this very moment is just as big as John is, and it's more than a little disturbing. John turns to help Elizabeth, who was right behind him, get on the counter and then Zelenka, Rodney and Carson. With all the junk laying around, it is getting crowded.
"I need you guys to open the laptop," Rodney orders, pointing at Ronon and John.
"Why wouldn't you open the laptop?" counters Ronon.
Rodney raises his chin in the air. "You perfectly know that I have a bad back, and I can't see how pushing and pulling on the computer could improve it."
John takes position on one side while Ronon takes the other, but before they can start to push up Zelenka jumps in the melee.
"The little latch!" he says, pushing on it with both hands. "You can try, now."
It's easier than John thought it would be, and once the computer is opened Rodney starts fiddling with his PDA again.
"I wonder if the signal is undetectable, or..."
John raises his eyebrows. "Why don't you use the big one?
"Okay, sure, do you want to start the program to search the database for me?" Rodney asks, pointing at the keyboard.
The problem is immediately apparent.
"You could walk on it," Ronon suggests.
"We could, indeed, walk on the keys, but it would have to be real quick, so we don't press on them too long and generate a whole row of the letter 'g'," Rodney says. "Hence my trying to work remotely."
"And?" John asks, hands on his hips.
"It doesn't work."
"Then we'll press the keys one by one."
"Wait a second." Rodney kneels by the touch pad and starts swiping his hand back and forth on it to move the cursor; he slaps it for clicks and double clicks. It works, thanks heavens, and Rodney's soon into the right program.
"We should send an email to make sure no one comes and gets caught like us. Tell them to stay out of the lab," John suggests.
Rodney agrees so they get on that. Since pushing the right keys, one by one, is tedious at best because John needs to walk around the keyboard and stretch for the letters in the middle, they keep the email short and to the point: where they are, with whom, stay out unless we call and if you come in, and please don't go near the boxes.
The message is barely sent that the door opens to reveal Lorne and Teyla. Amazing and dependable Lorne and Teyla and for a second there John thinks that they won't make the mistake to go near the boxes. Unfortunately? They do, in spite that they're all waving from the lab bench and shouting.
"I can't believe this!" Rodney says, exasperated, as Lorne and Teyla are beamed.
"Did you see..." Radek starts and Rodney interrupts.
"Yes, yes, it's the only good thing that's came out of this so far. I did notice that the beam originated from that fixture on the wall. There must be a control panel close by."
"Someone should go liberate Major Lorne and Teyla from the box," Elizabeth says, because of course they got beamed into a box where the door still locked.
"I'll go."
Ronon always prefers having something to do, so John gestures for him to go.
That done, Rodney makes them start searching the database. He's on touch pad duty as John, Carson and Zelenka do the typing, Elizabeth stays close to help with the translation needed here and there. There's a lot of arguing and John really wishes that the Ancients would have came up with something resembling the Dewey Decimal system, because taking guesses in keywords for a search in the database is a pain in the ass. John's considering diving off the table to end his sufferings. Rodney and Zelenka arguing is generally fun to watch, but John's starting to worry that this being tiny business might stick a while. Lorne's head popped up at the top of the ladder and John cannot help but to rib him.
"I've got to say that this is not your best rescue effort yet, Major."
Lorne looks sheepish as he climbs on the table, followed by Teyla. "I am sorry, sir. When Ronon wasn't responding our radio calls at his turn, we decided to come and have a look, too."
"It's too bad you missed the email," John says.
"John!" Rodney is glaring at him.
"What?"
"I said we need a 'S', come on!"
Rolling his eyes, John reaches for the 'S'. Then the 'A' and he slides a bit further for the 'T'. His corner of the keyboard is quite solicited.
At least this search seems to give interesting results because Zelenka, Rodney and Elizabeth huddle near the arrow keys as they go through the pages of results on miniaturization. As if to prove that he's the biggest of the control freaks, it's Rodney who keeps a foot on the down arrow as they go line by line. Lorne, on the other hand, looks pretty shocked and sits despondently at the edge of the work bench.
"All of this equipment is very strange," Teyla says, looking around. It's kind of surreal to realize she's standing on a fucking microscope.
"I know," Carson says from the stool he hopped on to, and then points at Teyla's new perch. "And some of it is Earth based, too. Why would someone bring a microscope here?"
"Whoever it is, they're weird," Ronon says. He climbs on the top of a jar and he bends down to peek in the next one where what looks disturbingly like a tiny pink dinosaur skeleton floats.
Elizabeth seems to have finished whatever translation was asked of her - or maybe Radek and her just got fed up with dealing with Rodney - because she's going down the ladder again.
"I think we should stay together," John tells her.
"Oh, I'm not going anywhere. I just wanted to check if there's something under here that could give us a clue as to whom works here without anyone knowing about it. My guess is that they don't have the gene."
John wonders for as second what she means by that but it makes sense: everyone that was zapped had the gene or accompanied someone who had it. Even Zelenka, on whom the new artificial gene therapy had just worked. It's so easy to get trapped in those boxes that their mystery scientist must not have it.
"Or they have it, and he or she is trapped too," Ronon says. After all, there are a dozen boxes that were not opened.
"We have no one MIA," Rodney says distractedly, fiddling with his PDA again. "I vote for someone without the gene, too."
"As long as it's not a stray Wraith, we're good."
Atlantis would have told him about that, though, John thinks.
"Should we ask for a team without the gene to come and help us?" Radek asks.
Rodney shakes his head. "I don't think we should take the chance, maybe the beam doesn't make the difference. We don't seem to be in any immediate danger, at least, and we can solve this on our own. It would be way worst if some soldier would come in here and step on one of us with his big boots, or shoot before assessing the situation correctly thinking we're rats or something."
"We sent an email, Rodney, they won't come over unless we ask," John says.
"Because you're sure they all read their emails?" Rodney points at Lorne.
"That's not fair, we'd just sent it."
"Let me get through these results and if in a couple of hours we don't have anything we'll reassess."
Waiting for the geeks to find the solution always makes John feel kind of helpless. He's in the Ronon school of thought that he prefers having a bad guy to shoot at, or something to fly for the rescue, but the waiting game is hard on his nerves. He can't even go and explore the lab desk because Rodney needs him close to press keys on the computer here and there.
"This is boring," Ronon says, echoing his thoughts. "I'm gonna go see what's in the other boxes."
"I will go with you," Teyla says and Lorne seems to shake his weird mood and decides to go too.
Frankly, John would love accompany them, but he doesn't want Rodney to be pissed at him.
Carson is now observing the test tubes, and he's found some sort of journal, too.
"Radek?" he calls. "Would you come? I think there's something here."
They turn the pages and bow over the writing.
"Do you recognize the handwriting?" Carson asks.
"It looks a lot like Rizoli, but I cannot be sure." Radek hikes up his glasses, and then turns another page.
Rodney perks up. "The biochemist?"
"Yes, she is a biochemist but she also has a mechanical engineering degree."
John can't quite place the girl; he only has a vague image of a short woman with brown hair in a white lab coat. "Does it say what she's working on? And why she didn't tell anyone about it?"
Radek throws John a smirk. "Unfortunately, no. This is not her diary and Doctor Rizoli, if it is her and I am not certain, did not bother writing her motivations about her actions."
"You must be confusing her with a James Bond villains, it's a common mistake," Rodney teases.
"She knew the ancients had a shrinking beam, though," Carson says. "She mentions not being able to activate it, though. She doesn't have the gene, though she is scheduled to get it in the next wave."
"Not anymore," Rodney says. "Not until we're sure."
Another turn of pages and Radek hums. "This could be interesting."
"What?" Rodney asks.
"There are schematics to include the shrinking beam technology in a canon."
John can't help but laugh. "Oh, boy, that could be awesome! Just like in the movie 'Honey I shrunk the kids'"
Even Rodney smiles. "We could make a pet Wraith for Ronon."
"The medical implications are quite staggering," Carson says with a dreamy look on his face.
Radek kneels down to check something a bit more closely. "But again I do not know why Rizoli, or whomever, did not speak up."
"She wants to make the biggest impact possible with this discovery, and for that she needs a finished product," Rodney suggests. "Some people want all of the glory and can't share with others."
It's very very hard for John not to laugh out loud. "My favorite is the floating brain. I am sure it's way relevant," John says.
Rodney looks up at it and has visibly shivers.
"What kind of brain, that's what I wonder. As far as I know, no one brought a sheep's brain in chloroform from Earth as their personal item."
True, that's a disturbing thought. John lets Rodney fiddle with the computer and walks around it, going to see the various glassware montages. There's one that could be used as a still, but the rest is mostly, if he remembers his organic chemistry right, for liquid extractions. It doesn't give him any clue what for, though he still hopes that the notes Carson found will tell them more. Did the person working here in secret thought they'd never find this place? It sure looks like it, if they let so much stuff lying around. Who knows, maybe it's been going on for so long that they got sloppy. Docking under a refrigerant, John goes to check the floating animals. He thinks he saw an octopus.
***
An hour later Ronon and the others are back with them on the lab bench. They have visited all of the boxes and Teyla is particularly smitten with the one set with open spaces that she describes in details. Rodney cuts her story short when he says that he found a way get them back to their regular size.
"How so?" John asks.
"I'm pretty sure that if someone with the gene goes to press this button just here, under the beam mechanism," Rodney says, pointing to the detailed blue prints of it on the laptop screen, circling his hand around the button in question. "Whoever is in the box at which it's aimed at the time will be rematerialized outside at full height."
"Okay, cool, let's try it." John jumps down from the lizard jar - his favorite - and goes for the ladder.
When Rodney tries to get on it to climb down too, John grabs his ankle. "Nuh huh, you stay here."
"What?"
"I need you here, able to find another solution if this doesn't work well and I get zapped again only to end up one inch high."
"But..."
"No but, Rodney," John says, squeezing the ankle a little. "You stay here out of range of that damn thing and see how it goes."
With a put upon sight, Rodney agrees. "Okay, fine."
"Lorne, you're with me. You're on button duty."
"Yes, Sir," Lorne says with a smirk as he gets up. "I've always found I was a bit on the short side, but this takes the cake."
"I'll go too," Ronon says. "I'll help with the ladder."
That's fair enough, so John nods. "Let's go, then."
It does not take much work for the three of them to haul the ladder from the lab bench to the ornament in the wall near the boxes. After a bit of pulling, they put it in place and it's almost the perfect height. John wonders if it's regular fail safe equipment specifically for whoever ended up in the boxes, in case they got stuck and had no one to bring them back.
Lorne checks the direction the thingy that shoots the beam is oriented towards and John goes into the corresponding box. Maybe there's a special spot where he should stand, but there's no marks on the floor. This place is pretty neat, John has the time to think as he goes to into the living room. It has nice black couches and something soft covering the ground, a bit like a dojo mattress. Since everyone that got zapped ended up approximately at the same place, John thinks it's a safe bet to wait in the middle of the room. Ronon puts his head through the door.
"Ready?"
John nods. "Yep."
Ronon goes back out to relay the signal and almost instantly John blinks, white light dissolving while he stands right outside the box. He's regular size again, and the shift of focus and perspective is a bit jarring. He smiles at Lorne with a thumbs up and can't help laughing out loud when he sees his tiny friends doing a dance of joy on the lab bench. Ronon runs towards the same house, fast as a mouse, and ducks inside of it while John steps aside; with a push of the button, Lorne turns Ronon back too.
John grins, clapping Ronon on the back and reassured to feel all of his presence back to normal. Not that he wasn't impressive when they were all Ken-sized. "Excellent. Let's change Lorne, now."
John goes to the ladder and offers his hand to his second in command who climbs on with a big smile. Careful not to drop him, John deposits Lorne near the boxes. There's no way John's touching the darn things if he doesn't have to, so he's careful about that, and then he takes the three strides back to the button - funny how it seemed a lot further than that just minutes ago. When John pushes it, Lorne transforms as expected.
"Glad that worked!" Lorne says, grinning. He looks up at Ronon beside him and makes a humming sound. "Do you think Dr. Z could modify the beam so we re-materialize a tiny bit taller than usual?"
"You're fine just the way you are, Evan," John says teasingly, but it's very true. He feels no need to enhance his friends, and John is assaulted by images of the marshmallow man in Ghostbusters for some reason. His mind is a wondrous place.
"I think the others want to be turned back, too," Ronon says and yes, look at that, there's some waving from the lab bench.
They go fetch the others and while Ronon scoops up Elizabeth and Teyla and Lorne offers a ride to Radek and Carson, there's no question that John is in charge of tiny Rodney. Now that he can appreciate the humor a bit more, it's indeed hilarious to hear Rodney makes these tiny squeaky sounds, hands waving in a way that clearly conveys that he wants John to bring him to the boxes immediately. John grins as he carefully grabs Rodney around his body to lift him from the table and bring him closer to his face. Rodney doesn't appreciate being manhandled like that, though, and starts pounding on John's hand with his little fists, face turning red as he screeches in outrage. John can't help being endeared and he laughs.
"Aren't you cute like this."
If tiny blue eyes could shoot lasers, John would be dead, no doubt. Knowing that he's really pushing it but unable to resist, John uses the tip of his index finger to pet Rodney's hair, making shushing sounds. Rodney tries to bite him, which is all kinds of hilarious, and keeps twisting in his grip.
"Come on, it's fun and you know it. Okay, I'll let you go, just hang on," John says as he puts Rodney on his shoulder. To keep his balance, Rodney takes two handfuls of John's hair and, completely unnecessarily, he yanks, hard. Tiny Rodney is a spiteful little beast.
"Ow! Be nice or you stay like that for a couple of days, hear me?"
Rodney only kicks his ear. By now everyone is back to normal size, so John finally relents and brings Rodney towards the boxes to set him down; as soon as Rodney's feet hit the ground he stalks in. Lorne, who is on button duty again, makes him re-materialize after a couple of seconds. Immediately Rodney turns on John.
"You are so going to pay for this, it's not even funny," he promises, voice cold and yikes, John is in more trouble than he thought.
"Ah, please, you would have done the same." John hits his ear piece and sets it for the general military channel. "Attention all personnel. The situation in tower 3-G is back to normal. Resume normal operations. Sheppard out."
"Sir? Maybe we should get some security detail over to guard the place, preferably without the gene, to make sure no one gets stuck again," Lorne suggests.
"No," Rodney says, as he walks towards the lab bench. "We're not sure who's working here and what they have planned. If we put guards at the door, it's going to spook him or her and we'll never know."
"Do you suggest surveillance?" Zelenka asks.
"Yes. I'll monitor Atlantis' cameras and install a couple of my own. We need to send a message that the lab is from now on off limits, since everyone knows we've been here, but from then it's going to be a game of patience. I suspect our culprit will lay low for a couple of weeks, but they won't be able to resist coming back to check what we might have done with the stuff."
Zelenka nods. "Yes. And I will go through the searches made in the database with specific keywords relative to miniaturization, and see what comes out."
"Good idea but you might have to go back a couple of years," adds Elizabeth. "What is the official story, here?"
"We need to stick with what we sent out with the email," Rodney says.
"Too bad we mentioned the boxes," John muses. "Maybe we could spin a tale about how we detected some sort of radiation or signal? No one needs to know that we got shrunk and stuck in them."
Everyone nods. It has the potential to be embarrassing for all.
"That's doable. It sucks that we need to keep out, though, because I can't wait to check this technology further." Rodney has a look around and does a disgusted face at the preserved animals. "What those are for, I have no idea."
"What I wonder is what the Ancients were using this for in the first place," Carson says. "Did they need space? Or was it a social experiment?"
"Prisoners would be easier to control," Ronon suggests.
"I wouldn't put it past them." Rodney closes the laptop and passes it to Zelenka. "Ok, let's go get some equipment to bug this place."
When Rodney leaves without acknowledging him at all, John winces. It seems that he's in the dog house for real.
***
The military contingent might mainly consist in big bad Marines, but they are surprisingly easy to spook when mom and dad - John's long resigned himself to think of Lorne and himself like that - disappear for a couple of hours. John knows who to go to speak in person so the word that they're fine and that they've dealt with the situation is spread to everyone. After dinner, he files a report with the official cover story - who knows, maybe the scientist isn't alone in the operation of that lab, and everyone knows that a good hacker can get into the system, especially if Rodney lets a tiny backdoor window open intentionally.
The trap set, John decides that it's been a long enough day and that it's time he makes amends for his behavior in the creepy lab. Not that he was that much over the line, in his humble opinion, but if Rodney has decided to be mad about it, then John needs to make things right.
The first surprise is that Rodney has already left his lab. John goes by the mess hall and lucks out when there's a slice of almost-blueberry pie left. A bit of charm with the cook on duty secures a scoop of vanilla ice cream, which is pretty damn impressive if he says so himself. Armed with his apology and a dessert fork, John goes to Rodney's quarters and rings the chime.
"Go away!" he hears through the door.
"I have a surprise," John says.
"I'm not interested."
"You wouldn't say that if you knew what it was."
There's a couple of seconds of silence, but John knows that Rodney is dying of curiosity on the other side.
"Fine, be like that," John says. "I'll just eat it myself. Good night!"
He mentally counts down: three, two, one...
"Wait!" The door opens and Rodney zeroes on the plate and snatches it away. "Is that ice cream?" He then looks up, and frowns at John. "You owed me. Now go away."
When the door slides shut in his face, John gapes a little. This is so not on. He's been polite, but now he's getting annoyed, too, so he makes Atlantis override Rodney's pathetic lock on the door.
"Hey!" John says, striding in. Predictably Rodney is inhaling the pie and ice cream, already more than halfway in. On his desk there are three monitors, each separated in quadrants, showing the live feed of what is going on in the Barbie lab - John thinks the name fits, plus it's catchy - and in the adjacent corridors.
Rodney glares.
"The door was locked, asshole."
Putting his hands on his hips, John rolls his eyes. "Yeah, and? Come on, Rodney. I brought ice cream."
He's known the guy for a while, so John can feel Rodney's anger wavering. You have to give it to him: Rodney might get into a snit easily, but he rarely holds a grudge unless it's career related. Pretty sure that he won't get his head bitten off, John walks to Rodney and even dares to touch his arm.
"Look, I'm sorry, okay? I didn't want to make you angry."
With a huff, Rodney crams more pie in his mouth. He seems a bit mollified, so John smiles and inches his hand up Rodney's bicep, before closing it on Rodney's nape. He steps a bit closer into Rodney's personal space and looks as sheepish as he can. "Do you think you can forgive me?"
A corner of Rodney's mouth tilts up. "It depends if you can find more of this," he says, waving the plate a little, but he tilts a bit into John's touch as if he can't help it.
Bingo, he's got him. John chuckles and leans in to lick at a bit of ice cream at the corner of Rodney's mouth. "Mmmm. Unfortunately, no, that's all of the desert I've got for now. But maybe there's something else you'd like."
Rodney's eyes light up. Yes, his boyfriend is more than predictable.
"You bet there is," he all but growls, though he makes sure to finish the pie before pushing a laughing John towards his bed.
***
It starts as a fun ribbing game between John, Rodney and Zelenka, but everyone who got shrunk that fateful day end up placing bets in the "When will the crazy scientist will finally make a move?" pool. It's Teyla who finally takes the 80 bucks when it takes more than three months. More than once Rodney had been tempted to stop the covert surveillance and to go work in that lab, drawn to the unknown technology like a moth to a flame. But fortunately - or unfortunately if Rodney was to be believed - Elizabeth had held strong in her resolve and it finally paid off.
John's all but liquefied after a round of mind blowing sex, drawing lazy patterns on Rodney's shoulders with the tip of a finger, when something on Rodney's desk starts beeping. The man has half a dozen alarms set up at all time for various shit but this one has Rodney sitting up straight in the bed, almost sending John down on the floor.
"The fuck?" he says, grabbing Rodney's arm for purchase.
"That's it!" Rodney gets up, mindless of his very naked state, and opens his second favorite laptop. "Someone triggered the motion sensor in the Barbie lab!"
"What?"
Rodney comes back to bed with the laptop and John sits up against the headboard to watch with him.
It's been fourteen weeks and never once did anyone slip, but right now they have someone on camera. It's a woman, kind of short, and Rodney makes a victorious crowing sound.
"That's it, come in, we've got you!" He taps on the keyboard, makes the camera zoom on the face and then clears all of the noise in the image. As they had suspected all along, it's Doctor Ellen Rizoli, who stops just inside the lab once the door closes behind her. "Should I lock the door?" Rodney asks.
"Wait, she might hear it. Let's see what she does, first," John suggests.
Rodney's putting his radio on so John hurries to do the same.
"Zelenka, come in." He waits a couple of seconds as they watch Rizoli going to the lab bench before calling Radek again.
"What is it, Rodney?" Radek answers, voice a bit scratchy. He was probably sleeping.
"Rizoli is in the lab, at last. Right on camera for everyone to see."
"What?" There's some rustling and a bit of mumbling. When there's whispering John and Rodney look at each other and raise matching surprised eyebrows.
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything," Rodney says sweetly. All sounds cease and John has to bite the side of his hand not to laugh out loud.
"No, no, why would you say that?" Radek asks a bit too fast. "I have opened my computer and I can see her too, now. What is she doing?"
"She seems to be doing an inventory of the lab bench," Rodney says, squinting at the screen. "Is being on site in the middle of the night enough to make her the culprit?"
"I am not certain for a court of law. But she works for us, so we are totally justified in asking for her to explain herself."
They feel doubly validated when Rizoli puts something in her lab coat pocket, grabs the journal, and after looking around the room - and, unknowingly it seems, directly at several cameras - hurries to get out. Or she tries to. Rodney starts typing but John gives a stern command to Atlantis not to let Rizoli get out of the lab or to allow any kind of damage to the room. Rizoli jumps back when the door closes and locks in her face.
"You did that, didn't you?" Rodney asks.
John shrugs as he gets dressed. "Well yeah."
"Show off." Rodney clicks on his radio. "Doctor Rizoli, I'd ask you to please sit on the ground exactly were you are, we are coming over."
Rizoli, who was about to open the panel near the door to try and escape makes a little squeaky sound and raises her hands, her eyes darting right and left as she looks for the cameras.
"I, huh, I was doing nothing wrong Doctor McKay," she says.
"We'll see about that. Six inches higher than the top right corner of the door, by the way."
Rizoli looks directly at one of the cameras, her face a little pale and wide brown eyes. "Oh."
"Hi." Rodney is almost dressed by now. "Just sit down on the floor. I can see everything and trying to tamper with the evidence would be bad, do you understand?"
She nods and slowly sits down, legs crossed. "Yes, okay."
"Good, we'll be right over." Rodney switches channels on his radio. "Radek, did you hear that? We're going to the lab. Are you sitting this one out? I can play bad cop and call you in later, if that doesn't work, to try the gentler way."
"You watch too much television Rodney," Radek says. "But that is actually a good idea. It looks like she is going to talk, though. And I suppose that by 'we', you mean you and Colonel Sheppard?"
"Of course. I told him first," Rodney says, throwing John a nervous look.
It's not that John doesn't appreciate the fact that Rodney still wants to protect him by not saying outright that they're together, even if DADT is almost out of the way, but Rodney shouldn't bother with Radek: he's known for a while. Probably before Rodney even realized that John was interested in being more than just friends. Heck, the whole base must know. It's not like they've been subtle.
"Come on," John urges. "Let's go see what she has to say."
***
If they had known that Rizoli would crack and confess so easily, they would not have bothered to set a trap and they would just had went and ask her questions.
"Two years!" Rodney doesn't seem to be able to get over that fact. Rizoli cowers a little bit more on her stool and John is tempted to step between the two.
"It's not like I came every day or anything!" she protests. "Just once in a while, when I had time."
"But two years! If you were doing nothing wrong, why not tell anyone about it?"
"I thought it was nothing! Just boxes, maybe some interior design contest at one point, or the lab of someone who liked doing doll houses as a hobby. I know I do." Rizoli raises her chin with some hint of defiance at last. It seems that she would not appreciate being teased about liking that particular hobby.
"When did you figure out there was something more?" John asks, as friendly as he can make it. The girl looks terrified enough, no need to add to it. She turns her eyes to him and is obviously pleading for some understanding.
"Weeks, it took weeks before I thought to search the database for references to this particular lab."
"Weeks? I hear the plural, but does that mean two weeks or more than that?" Rodney insists
Rizoli winces. "Nine?"
Rodney gapes a little and turns to John. "Forgive me if I'm wrong, but aren't we supposed to pick the best of the brightest for this place?"
John rolls his eyes. "You tell me, genius. You're the one who approves of all of the scientific personnel."
"I was busy with my job. This," Rizoli waves around. "This was just when I had a minute for myself or needed to think of something else. I had no idea."
"Until?" John prompts.
She sighs. "Until I found mentions of miniaturization. I was sure it was an abandoned experiment, but I was curious to learn more."
"Why didn't you tell then?" Rodney asks.
"Because." Rizoli stops talking for a second, and when she starts again she sounds a bit more agitated, but also more confidant; she looks straight at Rodney when before she would barely raise her eyes from the floor. "Because I knew I should have talked about it before then, and that I'd get my head bitten off because I didn't. Because I knew I'd be taken off the project for it."
Before Rodney opens his mouth, John tries to defuse the tension, or at least to redirect some of the blast. "You do tend to take away all of the cool toys."
Rizoli throws him a little smile but Rodney glares. Mission accomplished. "You? Shut up, please."
"She's right and you know it." John turns to Rizoli. "But you should have told anyway, Ellen. Why did you keep this secret for two years? We were bound to find out sometimes."
She sighs loudly. "Yes, I know. The odds of people finding this lab were pretty slim. And then I started to think that if I could find something cool, understand how it had once worked, then it would be a little better."
"It still works." Rodney points to the device on the wall. "If we'd known about it before, maybe we could have rigged it into something useful for the expedition by now."
Rizoli perks up. "Oh, it works? I did suspect it was gene activated."
John almost laughs out loud at the epic 'are you a moron?' bitch face Rodney does.
"You suspected." It seems the straw that breaks the camel's back because he throws his arms in the air and turns to take a couple of steps away, before coming back. "I have no idea what to do with you. How someone can be so epically stupid..."
"Hey, hey, hey," John says. He knows that the little throbbing vein on Rodney's temple is a very bad sign and he pulls him a little further. "I need to talk to you."
"What?" Oh boy. Rodney looks as if he's ready to bite someone head's off.
"Do you think she had bad intentions towards the expedition?" John asks. He has to get this back on track. Rodney clenches his jaw, throws the girl a dark look but then he shakes his head no.
"Not sure. Probably not. She might be playing us, though, amping up the lovable dimwit act."
It had not even crossed John's mind, but it could be. After all, as Rodney said earlier, they recruit the cream of the scientific community. Maybe they have good actors in the lot, too.
"If she's playing us, she's good. Let's try to learn more, and maybe make her take a lie detector test later. Calm down a little, buddy."
Asking Rodney to calm down in the face of stupidity is kind of huge. Maybe he's mellower than usual or just tired, but Rodney gives in easily. "You better talk to her, then. I didn't manage to have a good look at the journal, so I'll do that."
John smiles and squeezes Rodney's forearm who fetches the lab notes and starts flipping through the pages.
"Good." John goes to sit with Rizoli. "Look, you know how he gets. But this is serious, I'm not gonna lie."
"I know."
"Searching the database about this place, that's one thing. But what's the rest?" John gestures to the glassware and floating animals and brain.
Rizoli blushes a little. If she really can fake it, she's really good. "It's not related at all. It's a personal side project; I've been making progress in emo-pigment research. But it's not an Atlantis priority, so I need to do it in my spare time." She hurries to add, "and that's fine, of course. No need to spend any of the expedition's dime on it."
"You brought all of that stuff from Earth?"
"Little by little. Nothing is stolen, you can check."
"We will," Rodney mutters. He opens his radio. "Radek, you there?"
While Rodney discusses if they should start working on what is here right now or in the morning, John can't help but ask about something he's been wondering since they found the place.
"Did you need to make it look so..." Words fail John, so he waves a little.
"Like every mad scientist cliché ever thought of? Are those the words you're looking for, John?" Rodney asks, ending communication.
"That's about right. So, Ellen, why did you make the place look like a mad scientist lab?"
Unexpectedly Rizoli smiles at that, delighted. "You think it's creepy?"
John nods. "Sorta."
"Cool. What can I say, I've always loved old horror movies."
"The brain is a bit overkill," Rodney says and John's happy to see he's calming down. He's got his serious face going on, and he's examining something closely.
"My personal favorite is the floating dino skeleton. I call her Mindy." Rizoli is trying hard to lighten the mood; she obviously felt the change in atmosphere, too.
"You guys are weird," John declares.
"Thanks," Rizoli says with a smile. Scientists, really. A bunch of weirdos.
"How could you even begin to design a portable device for the shrinking beam if you didn't know how much power it consumed?" Rodney asks. "You had absolutely no test results!"
"Very true. But whatever the need for energy actually is, a canon like this would depend on the strength of the power source utilized anyway. My theory is that the stronger the power source would be, may it be a generator, the energy from a jumper or even a ZPM, the more potential the canon would have as a result. I think that we could modulate the response - in this case the degree of miniaturization - with the energy input."
Rodney doesn't argue, he just makes a humming sound.
"You're totally thinking about it too, aren't you?" John asks, starting to smile. "You want a super shrinking canon." He must admit that it would be pretty cool.
"It really works?" Rizoli asks, looking towards the wall. "Man, I wish I had seen it."
"Let's say that it was not the best experience ever," Rodney says.
John laughs; he didn't think it was so bad.
"What, people got caught?" Rizoli says, eyes round. "I thought someone shrunk a chair or something."
Admitting that eight people got caught sounds pretty lame and John decides she doesn't need to know the details.
"Yeah," John says. "You should have seen tiny Rodney."
"Sheppard!"
Radek comes in the lab at that moment, eyes overly bright, and yeah, no chance those two will get out of this place for at least two days straight. Before they get sucked into the work, John takes Rodney aside.
"I'll take Rizoli back to her quarters, and tell her to stay there until we decide what to do with her."
"Yes, okay. Schedule a meeting with Elizabeth some time tomorrow - well sometime later. We'll have a better idea when we'll have gone through all of her stuff. I should have scanned it when we found it."
John points to the journal that Radek is already flipping through at his turn. "Are her ideas any good?" he asks.
"It could be." It seems to pain Rodney to admit it, though. "We need to do tests first."
"Be careful not to shrink yourself again, alright?" John says with a grin.
Rodney scoffs. "You'd like that too much, so you can bet I won't."
As it happens more and more lately, John is tempted to kiss Rodney in public just for being adorably grumpy. Or funny. Or sometimes when he's brilliant. Yes, he's tempted to kiss Rodney in public a lot. "Don't worry, if it happens I'll rescue you. Or maybe I'll just keep you tiny for a while, and feed you cookies. Can you imagine? Cookies bigger than your head with huge chocolate chips."
Rodney rolls his eyes but his smile is fond. "I've seen you play dolls with Madison, John. I'm on to you."
John points to Rodney's wrist. "Set your watch, I want confirmation that everything is ok every 30 minutes until you manage to have a crew in here."
With a put upon sigh, Rodney puts an alarm on. John knows that as soon as they will be given free reign, Rodney and Radek will lose any sense of time. "Yes, dear."
John lets his hand linger a bit too long after he claps Rodney on the shoulder as a goodbye and goes to get Rizoli. "Let's go, I'm bringing you back to your place."
"I guess so." She puts a brave face on, but it's clear she would have loved to stay. Maybe she might come back one of those days, if they find nothing too serious in her research and the way she did things. Before he lets himself be mellowed, John must talk to Carson about the lie detector test.
"Later guys!" John shouts as he leaves the lab.
He'll be back soon anyway. And if he almost wishes that Rodney and Radek will have been miniaturized again by accident by the times that happen, well no one needs to know but him. Atlantis hums the way she does when she's trying desperately to please him and John grins. He has a feeling he'd better come back with coffee.
The End