The ideal condition
Would be, I admit, that men should be right by instinct
But sine we are all likely to go astray
The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach.
-Sophocles, ‘Antigone'

No skill in the world, nothing human can penetrate the future.
-Sophocles, ‘Oedipus Rex'


When John walked into the southern quarter depository of the 363rd city bank, Rodney McKay was on the univision for the third time that week. That was almost as many as Jack O'Neill and only marginally less than War Chancellor Thor himself. Not that John was keeping track.

Ignoring Rodney, and the way his hands seemed to fly across the screen as he explained his newest theory on timeless animation, John turned to the nearest banking attendant, flashing her a conspiratorial grin. She was an Authentic – most of those out here close to Land were – refugees seeking Asgard protection, you could tell by the rarity of her features, too exotic to belong in a simple cream colored suit, hair looking artificial, curled in tight ringlets beneath a two-years-out-of-fashion hat. That's why John chose this place – closer in, the Banker3000s didn't allow anyone in with a rotating frequency, lifesign-imprint badge. Rodney McKay had made the splashpage of Valhalla News with that invention.

John leaned in, grinning. "I'd like to make a deposit, if that's all right with you, Miss . . ." he used the gene interface to pull up her personnel file, the information slipping in through an ocular stimuli in the blink of an eye. Teyla Emmagen, Pegasus Native - Athosian. Part time bank teller, part time research subject, LifeSource laboratories.

"All are welcome to make deposits. It is simply a surprising request from a Defender-class."

John turned on his brightest smile. He didn't think that his model was made for charm, but for him, it had been a matter of survival. "I'm a surprising guy. Certifier gets overbooked sometimes. He has a few L.D. types down at the office. They can watch security while I'm away."

Her look was unsure, but she proceeded to inspect his secure-case anyhow.

John pulled in closer, letting his voice fall to a conspiratorial whisper. "To tell you the truth, I think our Supe would rather defend his money than his life."

She smiled solemnly at that, pulling out the few empty data crystals John had acquired last night. "Perhaps you would do well to direct him to the temple of the Ascended. I will need a certifying thumbprint." She closed the crystals back in their case with a swift grace – too skilled for a teller.

"Aikido?" he inquired, pressing his thumb to the plate and hoping that the five layers of GeneGuard latex he'd sprayed all over his body an hour ago held.

She met his eyes for the first time then, her gaze penetrating and solid, considering for a pregnant moment. "No. Bantos fighting."

John nodded. He was familiar with the technique, though he had never practiced it. His class was supposedly bred for agility and strategic intelligence as well as interface with the Alteran technology, picking up the martial arts quickly. But as a child John had not been trained in fighting as expected. He learned what he had to when he needed it. Agility and intelligence were good for a lot more than fighting.

"An admirable technique. I've always wanted to learn."

"Perhaps, if you return closer to Shift-Change, I might instruct you."

He smiled, always shocked at how many women responded to him, despite the fact that Defenders were generally known for a pleasant but impersonal distance. Quietly, they were also known for their homosexuality. "I would like that."

Her returning grin was almost enough to make him regret that he would not be returning.

"You would like a new deposit cluster?"

John nodded.

"Then all that is left is your model number."

"DefenderTZZ04398." He'd lifted the model number and the skin samples he'd rubbed all over the protective layer off one of Samantha Carter's bodyguards at the Black Hole Ball last night. Who knew, he might even make it onto the splashpage of the SocietyFeed tonight – not that he'd be distinguishable from the swarm of Defenders at these types of events. John smiled to himself. He could just imagine Rodney McKay laughing at that. But that was a fantasy for another time.

Except, Miss Teyla Emmagen was frowning, the red flashing on her screen reflecting in her eyes. A quick interface revealed that the code wasn't taking. DefenderTZZ04358 was apparently in a continuous-scan building at the moment. Of course, he should have anticipated this. Since when did Samantha Carter venture far outside the Research Ring?

Teyla's eyes came up to meet John's for a brief second, an unmistakable look of intensity matched by a faint whispering, almost at the corner of his mind.

You are the one that they speak of?

Well, now he knew what LifeSource was doing with Miss Teyla Emmagen. He gave her the most subtle of nods.

I had not envisioned that you would be a Defender.

John shrugged. "Sorry to disappoint."

You will make sure that my people also receive a shipment?

John nodded. He didn't imagine he'd have much trouble talking Dex into it.

Then a more suitable code would be 004395.

"Oh, I'm sorry. One of those days, you know? It's nine-five."

Teyla nodded, entering the code. "That completes your registration, Defender. A vault representative will be with you shortly."

Forcing down the relieved sigh, John squared his shoulders and moved into the waiting area.

The vault representative was shorter than the usual L.D., though John could spot the Loyalty Enhancement almost immediately in the sharp tilt of his jaw line.

The man shook John's hand with a firm grasp, guiding him through the bronze vault doors into a staging area with a brisk efficiency that further suggested L&D. Normally, John didn't like to pry, but he was going to potentially be evading this guy. The city was quick to comply with his request. Evan Lorne, Terran, Authentic with Loyalty and Creativity Enhancement. Huh. A security director without a Defense Enhancement – this was going to be easy

"You done this before?" Lorne asked casually, clearly not a willing participant in the service business.

"Yep."

Lorne nodded. "I'll leave you to it, Sir. Normally I like to remind the newbies that the storage containers come up out of the floor, though when it popped up under someone's feet it amused the Security2800s for weeks. You have fifteen minutes of the privacy screen before the computer sends our own Defenders down to collect you."

John nodded. He was counting on it.

The banks kept their own network of security cameras, but the City's lifesensors were following Lorne as he made his way out into the corridor and back to the reception area. John waited until he found his next customer before sending in the call.

Two Defenders coming right up. John took advantage of the privacy block to strip off his outermost layer to reveal the sleek black suit favored by his Class. He couldn't argue - black was classy.

City schematics showed two Defenders walking down the corridor. He smirked. Being a thief was a lot easier when you looked exactly like the majority of the highly respected security personnel in the city. He pulled out the lifesign transmitter the Genii Fugee, Ladon Radim, had constructed for him, syncing it with the monitor on his biomasking suit.

"Excuse me," John asked, pushing out into the hallway.

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize someone had already called you," one of them said.

"Oh. I was called for repairs, but I was not trained in materials technology."

The other nodded. "We are capable. You can return to the office, if you would like."

"Thank you." John carefully patted one on the back, scrapping the sampling microchip imbedded beneath his index finger nail against the back of his neck. From there, it was only a trip down the corridor and a soft mental beep telling him that the retrovirus was ready.

"Here goes nothing," John whispered to himself, using the same device beneath his fingernail to scratch a thin line on the back of his hand. The retrovirus didn't need to be wholly transformative. The sequencers only checked for the presence of the identifying protein, not the quantity, and John was blessed to be born without an identifying marker. Still, he had to pause a minute out of the ten he had left in order to let it work, mopping up the cold sweat that formed on the back of his neck afterwards.

After that, it was a straight shot through the security checkpoint, with a nod and a wave to one of the Security2800s on patrol. The thumbprint he'd had preprogrammed from the government file transmitted to the moldable electronic skin he'd had implanted onto the tips of every finger.

The lights of the cleanroom were a dull fluorescent blue – they looked sharp and sterile. And stripping off his uniform to reveal the biosign converter underneath was quick and efficient. Eight minutes. John forced his breathing to relax, heart and lungs pumping to the beat of the electronic impulses emitted by the skin-tight black suit, traced with gold and silver fibers that ran the length of the energy meridians of his body. Wearing the biosign of another was easy, when you had the right tailor. John smirked, watching the white paneling of the floor and the walls of the honeycomb-like tunnel leading up to the vault interface as it flashed red beneath his feet. It was not a concern, however - he was a Defender here on a routine randomized security sweep.

Still, it made his heart want to race, looking at those fading red footprints and hoping that his guise would hold. He was almost so concentrated on keeping his lifesigns under control that he didn't notice the slight obstruction up against the honeycomb cells of the ceiling until he was almost upon it.

John's first instinct was to exclaim, demand an explanation from the figure dressed all in white that was crouched there, just brushing the pressure sensors. But the chamber demanded silence, so all John could do was look into the familiar green eyes of a woman with a long thin nose and a confused but defiant expression, painted all in white.

Six minutes. John shook his head and proceeded on to the main control chamber. She was not a guard – jobs such as that were not registered to Authentics, with too much self-interest to consider, and despite all her familiarity, she was not any Construct that he knew of. No, she was another thief, and making a much more impressive stealthy approach than he. Luckily, by the time she got through the antechamber, he'd already be in and out. He wondered who could have possibly manufactured her gear.

The control chamber was stark, lit by bright white floodlights that turned on the second he crossed the threshold, throwing everything into a play of light and dark, like the pages of an old black and white comic.

The control podium in the center was a simple raised block, the controlling stones tiny and arranged in a complex grid like a really good game of Battleship. John reached down and unzipped the zipper around his groin area. It would be embarrassing if it wasn't the only area to conceal large rounded objects on one's person without attracting undue attention. The modified control crystal looked almost the same, though if you looked closely, you might see a slight sheen of thin blue filaments – grown into the stone through an adaptation of Wraith technology.

Placing the stone on the control board, John pulled up a mental image of storage blocks using the City's mainframe. Yanking off the Alteran data module strapped to his inner thigh (the best black market purchase John had ever made) he constructed a quick mental map of the sectors most rarely moved and cross referenced it with the vault expiry date contents, and insurance information listed in the bank's database.

Six minutes. John bit his lip as the program ran. Bingo – a medium sized container, stored since 1967, the first year of civilian inhabitance, moved from the central bank for lack of activity on the account and figuratively gathering dust ever since. And the insurance price – raised to an adjustable 51,000 credits in 2001, the date of the Human Council's Reliquary Act. John had himself a real winner.

He made the adjustments and was busy stuffing his custom control stone back into his underwear when the door slid open to reveal a tall curvy figure dressed entirely in white.

There were a lot of things that John wanted to say, chief among them, ‘No, I'm not happy to see you, that's a control stone in my pants' and ‘what the fuck are you doing here? This is my job.' Unfortunately, the security measures were set to activate with any unauthorized sound.

The woman was looking down at his unzipped catsuit speculatively, her green eyes twinkling as they rose to meet his.

Atlantis communications query. Do you accept? The code half flashed, half spoke in his mind. John twitched. As far as he knew, only Defenders were able to use the City's communications system, and seeing as how she didn't look exactly like John . . . she couldn't possibly be one of the rare Authentics with natural ATA, could she?

The woman raised one well-sculpted eyebrow.

Accept. It wasn't as though John could afford to go ahead without all the facts.

Is that a control stone in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

John stalked right by the mysterious thief and her playful smirk. He didn't have time to play games. He just hoped to the Ascended she didn't screw up in the next three minutes and get them both caught. It was a struggle to keep his gait and his breathing relaxed, but before he knew it, he was yanking his uniform on and speedwalking down the corridor.

Two minutes.

"Ah, Defender, I was hoping you wouldn't mind a quick security check of the main chamber. One of the Drones thinks he saw something on the monitor." This bank manager was clearly a M.O. Enhancement – slicked back hair, immaculate dust-resistant suit, a tight manufactured smile. Mathematics and Organization indeed. John forced himself not to grimace at the derogatory. Constructs were people too, after all.

John nodded. One minute and thirty seconds. "Yes, Sir. In fact, I already checked the vault just now. Nothing to see there."

"Good," the man patted John's shoulder. "You Defenders really are worth the investment. Keep up the good work."

John nodded, clenching his fists while the man walked away. The second he was out of sight, John sprinted off down the corridor, skidding to a halt in front of his deposit room. There it was, sitting on the dais – a security case only slightly more worn than the one John had carried in with him – now safe in slot7883. He smiled, pulling on his long black trenchcoat over the security uniform.

Thirty seconds. John straightened his lapels, grabbed the case and walked out the door.

Evan Lorne was waiting for him on the other side. "I was just coming to check on you. Didn't want to have to sic the Defenders on you for a simple misunderstanding." The man was slouching against the corridor, but John could see the stiffness in his muscles. He wasn't a big man, but Lorne was coiled like a spring – impressive. "They can get a little rough. To tell you the truth, I think they're bored."

John smiled at that. "Know the feeling."

"It's not usual to have a client take the full fifteen minutes on a deposit," Lorne remarked casually, still not relaxed.

"My employers are a . . . conservative group. I was just running through some of your security protocols with the deposit interface. You don't mind, do you?"

John didn't think it was possible for Lorne to clench more, but the other man certainly proved him wrong. "No," he gritted out, "it's your prerogative, Defender."

"Then why do I get the impression that I'm intruding on your territory?"

Lorne shrugged and chuckled a little at that. "Hey, in this world, with a hyper-intelligent alien race fighting our wars for us, we've got to be the kings of our own separate molehills."

John nodded, making a mental note to get Ronon in touch with this man. "Well, I'm sorry, I'll just head back over to my own kingdom, then. You're doing an excellent job here."

Lorne nodded, shaking John's hand as he walked out the door, 51,000 credits of stolen materials in hand. "Fuck yeah," he whispered under his breath.

---

John could barely contain himself through the inter-sector tunnels, watching the sun sparkle off the small sections of ocean that appeared between the different segments of the City. He could only imagine what this world might look like one day, in the event of emergency, when the individual sectors would rise out of a chaotic ocean and into the sky, leaving only the scattered Fugee camps on Land as evidence of their presence.

Normally, the sight of the City flying by around him would be enough to distract him, but now John's mind was elsewhere. Who was the mysterious woman? What did she want? How dare she risk both their necks like that?

John continued to fume as he slammed his way into a transportation elevator in 280th city. The City map prompted him to select a location, but John forced his way past the easy avenues of the preprogrammed system with ease. A blink of an eye later, he was strolling into the antechamber of the ‘Bat-cave,' though of course his secret lair was a hidden network of narrow rooms laced throughout one of the outer city spires, not deep beneath the Earth. Also, he was less a dark knight than a thief. John looked out a narrow one-way window into the sunset, hanging up his coat, and nodding to Mitchell, who was in the corner throwing darts at a picture of Jack O'Neill.

"So, didya get it?" Mitchell asked, practically bouncing on his toes like an overexcited puppy. John rolled his eyes. Sometimes he wished he'd never pulled the guy out of that research hospital. He'd thought the spinal injury would ultimately prove fatal. He hadn't counted on the resilience of Loyalty and Enthusiasm Enhancements. No wonder L.E.s made such good personal trainers. Mitchell was no Alfred.

"Yeah, I got it," John mumbled, handing the case over. He hadn't even bothered to look at it himself yet.

"Whew, this one's a beaut," Mitchell exclaimed, pulling out a stack of vacuum-sealed paper. "Look at the glossy finish here – 40s, maybe even earlier. Mint condition."

"How hard can printing be?" The Asgard didn't actively try to suppress the EarthCulture that still lingered. In fact, the market for relics seemed almost to amuse them, but neither did they care to promote what they considered to be inefficient cultural productions which neither contributed to the knowledge base of society nor its progress.

Mitchell just laughed. "Well, supply and demand have existed since the beginning of human history, John. Hell, we discovered it before the 1947 colonization. You ought to get used to it."

"As used to it as I am to effects of the 1947 invasion? "

Mitchell rolled his eyes. "Don't start in on that stuff again, John. I can't imagine how it is to look just like thousands of other guys, but if it weren't for the Asgard, we wouldn't be here. Earth'd probably be in the middle of a nuclear winter right now."

"They aren't perfect, Cam."

"Who is? We both know that they've screwed up the Wraith War and that they people of Pegasus should be given the means to fight back on their own, but beyond that . . . I can't fault them for trying to make life in the galaxy better off."

"Party line," John mumbled.

But Mitchell had already reverted to his Enthusiasm-Enhancement habit of pretending like no argument had taken place. "Oh, look at this! Superman, first printing. This is amazing! I can't believe your luck sometimes."

John shrugged. "Today I wasn't so lucky."

Mitchell put the comics down, a look of concern flashing onto his handsome but forgettable features. "What do you mean, John? Were you made?"

John shook his head, moving down a narrow hall into the main chamber and making straight for the large bottle of Bourbon floating in the preservation field, grabbing an apple while he was at it – he deserved a treat after the day he'd had. "Worse. There was another thief."

"What?" Mitchell asked. "Another Defender?"

John shook his head.

"But how does anybody else . . . I mean, I don't see how you could without the help of the City and for that you need the Gene . . . . But the Authentics with the Gene are sterilized or closely watched, I don't see how one of them could get away with it."

John shook his head, interfacing with the Bat-cave's computers and ordering them to extract his memory of the mysterious woman, construct her appearance without the white paint and run it through the City's database. It was only a matter of seconds before the searched turned up negative. John had a feeling that it would.

"Whoever she is, she's not registered in the database."

"How's that even possible? Could she be an illegal Fugee?"

"I don't think so. There have only been two reported natural occurrences of the Gene among Pegasus Natives, and they were the last of their lineage."

"Well, then who is she?"

"I don't know. That's the whole point, Cam."

Mitchell's disappointment at the use of his first name was obvious. "Oh, okay. Hey, I could try to find out?" He looked hopeful.

John sighed. The Bat-man never mentioned that having a sidekick was often more than it was worth. "Sure. But after we've made the drop with Dex."

Mitchell nodded, grabbing the apple out of John's hand and taking a bite. "There's a Bat-man," he indicated the pile.

Ordinarily, John would have wrestled the apple away from Mitchell, but instead he made his way over to the security vault, running his fingers over his prize with reverence.

"You gonna copy it?"

It was a number three – incredibly rare. John knew that it was just paper. In theory, the scans could be just as satisfying . . . but there was just something about having the paper in your hand. John sighed. At the same time, who knew how many pulse pistols Ronon could get assembled with the credits from hocking just one of those. "Yeah. I'll scan it in the morning."

Mitchell nodded, throwing himself down on the couch with a little too much eagerness. "So . . ." he took a big crunchy bite of John's apple. "You want a blowjob?"

L and Es, they were all about service and John wasn't in the mood to deal with Mitchell's raw enthusiasm. Sometimes he just wanted to brood. "Naw . . . I'm actually a little tired right now. I'll take a raincheck?"

"Sure. Anytime." The sad part was that Mitchell really did mean that. "Night, John."

John nodded, taking the Bat-man comic with him down yet another corridor and up an aluminum spiral staircase. The City had this room classed as an astronomical observatory, but to John it was as close to Ascension as he'd ever touch, the sunset spread out before the microventilation system open to let the wind in. If he squinted and blocked out the transparent supports holding up the glass dome of the ceiling, he could almost believe he was flying.

---

Of course, John couldn't sleep – not with images of that strangely familiar woman dressed in all white floating through his mind. He flipped on the univision, hoping to find something to put him to sleep. He might've taken Mitchell up on his blowjob offer if the man wasn't collapsed on the pallet on the opposite side of the dome, face smashed almost violently into the pillow he was holding in a chokehold.

On the Ascension Network, the Reverend Daniel Jackson was levitating pencils again. John rolled his eyes and flipped stations. He'd tried the Church of Ascension once, but despite some crazy Fugee convert calling him the One and trying to put the moves on him, a few of the disciples had gotten into an argument over whether or not if was even possible for clones to Ascend and John decided that he really didn't need the added headache. Besides, 14 hours of meditation a day really weren't for him. He could levitate a pencil with a GeneLink to the City's localized shielding system anyways.

There was more religious junk on a few of the other stations, but the NewsFeed was moderately more interesting than usual. Beside the usual rumors that Samantha Carter and Jack O'Neill might be looking into a birthing license and some anti-Aryan violence on the outer ring, Beckett Farms had better watch themselves if they wanted Science Minister Loki to renew their reproduction contract. John flipped through the science channels, but it was all genetics research – not even a WraithWar field update. And he certainly didn't want to check the numbers and find out how many Defender-class had been lost in today's fighting.

John was about to turn the uni off when he saw a brief glimpse of bright blue eyes and waving hands. He pulled his finger off the scan button, despite his disappointment to find that he'd landed on the Biography channel. Normally he didn't care to follow the celebrities, but he'd always had a thing for Rodney McKay. He took another swig of the beer he'd grabbed out of the cooling unit, pushing back against the sleek wooden headboard of his bed.

As it turned out, it was a biography of the Great Doctor Henry McKay, Rodney's father and the father of genetic Enhancements for humans.

"Unfortunately, Henry McKay's relationship with his son was a turbulent one," the Biographer announced, all sympathy absent from his voice. The visual was a still image of a young Rodney with his mop of dark blonde curls tied back with a striped necktie. The words ‘All Who Question are Authentic' tattooed large on his narrow chest. John often wondered what it might look like now that Rodney's shoulders had widened. Maybe Rodney had long since had it removed. Regardless, John would've liked to find out. He let one hand skim down the hair of his belly and down to the elastic of his black silk boxers.

"Rodney never accepted his father's work up until Henry's death. While his father's genius was reflected in many triumphs as an engineer and technical problem-solver, Rodney never chose to focus his intellect on the genetic research that made his father a hero." This time the image was the famous footage of Rodney breaking a bottle of champagne against the bow of the first Asgard Warship armed with anti-replicator weapons. John gripped his rapidly hardening cock, giving it a few tentative strokes. On screen, Rodney's hands were flying as he discussed how his contributions would cement an Asgard triumph over the Replicators.

"Even after his son's inventions helped win the Replicator War, their relationship was strained." Images flashed by of Rodney and his father at various dinners and celebrations, eyeing each other warily. John's hand stilled. There was something about Henry McKay that always bothered him, even before the assassination. Now it was just the image of those blue eyes, as soulless and empty as the man's work had been. "Rumors circulated that McKay had abused his son during the period of Rodney's childhood when Henry kept his family from the eye of the media. Biographers are unsure what to make of Rodney's decision to sue the media producers who advanced the opinion."

John's hand sped up at several clips of Rodney shouting at UniV cameras, angrily waving his hands and berating the uselessness of journalists. He didn't know what it was about Rodney McKay, flushed and angry that did it for him, but . . . he groaned. Fuck yeah.

"Father and son seemed to have made a fragile peace just before Henry's death. Whether it was due to concerns over Henry's health or Rodney's relationship with the war effort's Girl Friday, Samantha Carter, it was never clear." The image cut to Rodney wearing a tux and Samantha Carter a sleek silver-grey dress and long gloves, Henry McKay embracing them both. "It was a blessing that the geneticist did not live to see the spectacle that was Carter and McKay's separation. In the third month of the 14,031st cycle, Henry McKay was found dead in the kitchen of the 22nd City hotel, where he was scheduled to give a talk on the genome and its significance to the Ascension debate."

Okay, John did not need to be seeing a coffin while he was trying to jerk off. He mentally urged the uni to return to a still image of Rodney staring down the camera. His eyes were wide and blue, but they might as well have been laser beams the way the cut John to the core. He moaned, his stroke speeding up.

Those big articulate hands were dancing down his sides, stroking up his inner thigh. Those eyes were looking down at John as Rodney moved above him. He'd grasp John's hips, pull them up to him. His hands would tease John open like any machine, smooth and delicate and adrenaline fueled like the best jobs – in and out with a blunt whisper.

John licked a finger, letting his other hand trail down to probe at his entrance. Rodney would push into him, spread his legs wide and fuck him up against this real wooden headboard, the sweet scent of pine and sex lingering in the air. He would take John out to the wide fields of the Land and strip him bare in a field of tall grass, the blue sky wide open above them and . . .

John gasped, spraying himself blank halfway through his fantasy. Only Rodney McKay could manage to get him so worked up in absentia.

John fell asleep mid eye-roll.

---

He was there again – a wide open field of green, tall grass waving above his head in the sunlight. There were advertisements for places like this in the main square – jaunts through the Stargate to other worlds. But John had never been on one. He'd lived and breathed with the City for as long as he could remember.

It was only in his dreams that he came here, running up and down this sea of green like one of the large fish that swam in the depths of this planet's ocean, beneath the City and in the narrow channels between sections.

In his dream, he would turn to find another child there. His companion wore a mantle of golden hair, curled up and shining in the sunlight, chubby cheeks, an oddly pointed nose, and blue eyes that sparkled like what they could glimpse of the sea on the horizon.

Come on. John said, tugging at the boy's hand. Don't tell me you're a pigeon.

It's not a pigeon, you idiot. What, were you raised in a barn? You're supposed to say ‘chicken.'

John chuckled, turning to respond, only to find a busy street instead of an open field. They boy was gone, and John was lost all alone in a bustling crowd, the sprawling green and the sunlight almost forgotten.

He woke with a cry, sweating and fearful, the adrenaline leaving a mark on his skin like a burn, fading with time and scarring. He could hear Mitchell over in his corner, snoring.

There were coffee plants in the hills of the land, amid tents and slums, and the Fugees the Asgard tolerated only because they were not afraid to leave them behind. It sold like gold on the black market, but Dex always made sure that John got some skim. He set the food warmer on, drinking in the heady aroma. Smell was said to be the sense most associated with memory. And coffee was the only thing that smelled to him like childhood.

John trooped down the stairs and grabbed his coffee out of the warming field, remembering his fantasy of the night before. Rumor had it that Rodney McKay drank eleven cups a day. With a mental yawn, he flipped on the univision, surprised to see a ‘Special Alert' flashing across the bottom of the screen. John dropped the Bat-man comic in the scanner, moving a basketball out of the way to plop down on the couch.

‘Break in at Valhalla Mutual, 363rd City,' the grey caption proclaimed. Shit. "Cam!" John shouted. "Get down here!"

A few seconds later, Mitchell appeared in his boxers, hair tousled more than John was used to seeing it. "Wha . . . Shit, John."

"That's what I said."

"Dex's gonna be pissed off."

"Hey, it's my skin on the line, and you're worried about what Dex thinks?"

"Hey, nobody pisses off the big guy. For Ascension's sake, John . . . what are we gonna do?"

"We don't know if it was me . . . shhh . . ." John said, motioning to the screen.

A pretty young S.B. Enhancement reporter was standing in front of the bank John had frequented just the evening before. "The 363rd City was in chaos this morning, when an armored Gateship of Banker3000s, Defenders, and Security personnel arrived to find their 6am Central Banking shipment missing."

"So, not us then," Mitchell remarked.

"Shh, it's not over ‘til it's over."

"The shipment is reported to be the quarterly backup of research logs from LifeSource Research, a subsidiary of Beckett Farm, which is already facing serious allegations of unauthorized human testing.

"Evan Lorne, an L.D. in charge of security at the 363rd City bank, refuses to make a statement to the press, despite the fact that inside sources at Valhalla Bank report an additional security breach – a missing vault of EarthCulture relics valued at over 50,000 credits. The owner of the stolen material remains anonymous, despite the fact that the bank assures the press that they have received notification."

"We are in such deep shit," Mitchell remarked.

"Yeah, I think you said that already."

"Do you think Dex'll still be able to move the stuff?"

John shrugged. "Hard to tell. We'd have to hack the bank's files – find out if they knew the contents and whether or not they reported it to the cops."

"Damn."

"Damn is right. Oh wait, it's the commissioner."

Hank Landry wore his usual look of gruff consternation, though John had always been convinced that the guy was usually just as amused as he was annoyed. "First, I want to assure all of you that whoever is guilty of this will be found and brought to justice."

"Commissioner!" several agents of the written and live press were shouting. "Do you have any suspects?"

"As a matter of fact we do."

John held his breath.

"We have one Miss Teyla Emmagen in custody, a bank employee and part-time subject at LifeSource labs. Her teller records showed some irregularities, but if she is responsible, then she is undoubtedly working with one or more accomplices."

"Commissioner, do you have any information about the accomplices."

Landry shook his head. "Unfortunately, Miss Emmagen is one of the rare individuals on whom mental probing proves unsuccessful. There was, however, a possible security breech flagged, a small spike of background heat picked up on the cleanroom FLIR, though only one lifesign, corresponding to one of the bank's Defenders, was present."

"Does this mean that a Defender is a suspected accomplice?" the S.B. reporter probed, shock playing beautifully on her well-proportioned features.

"We have no reason to doubt the loyalty of the Defender models at this time," Landry responded curtly. "At the moment, we have our primary subject in custody. I am sure that we will be able to retrieve further information from her and the public will be the first to know when we do."

While the reporters continued to ask for information, it was half-hearted. Once Landry gave his ‘that's all folks' tone, there would be no getting more out of him.

"What are we going to do?" Mitchell asked, looking sullen.

"We're going to meet Dex." John sighed. "And then, like the Reverend Jackson says, we're going to wait."

---

They met with Dex on the Land. John stood out here, somewhat, earning wary glances as he strode through the narrow cobblestone streets, trying not to wrinkle his nose at the stench of waste and burning. Defenders were accepted here, but not welcomed.

"Man," Mitchell remarked. "Remind me why Dex can't come into the City again?"

"The tracker. The Asgard allow all Runners Fugee status, but the City's sensors track it."

"Ah. No wonder the big guy's always so grumpy. I don't know what I'd do if I had to stay out here all the time."

"Better than a hive ship," a voiced rumbled from behind them.

Mitchell spun around. "Whoa, Dex, don't jump up on a guy like that."

Dex smiled a wide toothy smile, ignoring Mitchell and turning to face John. "Saw the announcement on the Box. Commissioner Landry's not a fool. Even if he doesn't admit it to the public, he must suspect a Defender."

"C'mon, everyone trusts the Defenders," Mitchell remarked, nudging Dex with an elbow before realizing what he'd done and frowning.

Dex grunted. "And good investigators know to trust no one but themselves. Follow me." He indicated a one story stone building with wide strips of colorful cloth for windows, a smoky spiced smell wafting out from within. Inside, the halls were thin, exposing an open stone courtyard and a garden of the sweetest smelling herbs John had ever encountered growing in swirled patterns at their feet. Ronon led them up a narrow staircase onto the red-clay roof of the building, overlooking the courtyard on one side and the narrow bustling streets of Fugee country on the other. In the distance, John could make out grass-covered mountains and stepped farmland, a place that he would never visit.

"You have it?"

John opened his rough cloth satchel. "Twenty-three in all. Our deal says I'll keep five as profit."

Dex snorted. "You got yourself caught. If you want me to get you a buyer, you'll accept three."

"But . . ." Mitchell began.

"Four, and I'm keeping one."

Dex nodded, not bothering to ask why John had decided to keep the Bat-man. The guy wouldn't even know how much it was worth anyway.

"You got a buyer?"

"My next stop."

"The girl who they've got fingered . . ."

"Teyla Emmagen. She was a leader of the Athosian people, before a culling forced them to take Refuge."

"Leader?"

"She isn't stupid enough to let them list that in her file."

"So she's one of yours?"

Dex shook his head.

"Should be. She's sympathetic to your cause. The security manager too, I think."

"You think everyone's sympathetic, John," Dex pointed out.

"Well, she's worth having on your side. She can read thoughts."

"Like the Wraith?" Dex growled. Every second he was trapped on Atlantis instead of out in the field fighting the Wraith grated on him. He was not a man meant to be caged. If he did not know that the Wraith would follow him to any other planet in the system, he would be out there fighting now, that much, John knew.

"Yes, but she wants to fight them. She stuck her neck out because she wanted the weapons to go to her people."

Dex nodded. "I'll see that they're supplied. Now, do you want to tell me how you let yourself get caught?"

John shifted uncomfortably, looking down at the mass of bodies passing by them in the street below. "I . . . um . . . well, there was this girl and . . . ow! Ronon, watch the hair!"

Dex grinned, looking both fierce and ridiculously pleased with himself.

"Now, now, kids, play nice." John knew that Mitchell meant well, but . . . he'd never been called a kid by anyone as far as he could remember. He'd never had the luxury.

"Shut up, Cam," he said, turning to Dex. "So, as I was saying, there was a girl and . . . no, don't hit me again, Dex. She was a thief. I didn't even say a word to her, I swear, I . . ."

John was interrupted by a figure sauntering up the steps, dressed in Fugee garb. John didn't normally do the whole women thing, but he could appreciate the bare stomach and the black leather pants – the thin silk halter covering the important bits. But it was the eyes – green and warm but wise, even beneath the cocked eyebrow. "No . . ." he murmured, taking an involuntary step back.

"Hey, boys, how are things going?" she said, ambling over to them like she was wearing a sundress and not two holsters stuffed with pulse pistols. Her dark hair was pulled back into pigtails and she squinted in the sun, but there was just something about her . . . something familiar. "Oh, you're cute in those slacks, but I think I liked you better with your hand down your pants."

John didn't even bother fighting Dex's next slap upside the head. He winced, before rising, surprise melting into anger in the blink of an eye. He understood why Defenders seemed to have no problem being intimidating. "Who the hell are you and what did you do?"

She stuck out her hand for shaking. "I'm Vala. And you are?"

"John," he gritted out.

"And your friends?"

"Cameron Mitchell."

"Ronon," Dex remarked, looking more angry than interested in the way that her gaze swept up and down his body.

"Nice," she said.

"You weren't done telling me what the fuck you thought you were doing yesterday."

"Why, I was robbing the bank. I thought you Defenders were supposed to be intelligent."

John gritted his teeth. "Were you trying to get caught?"

Vala rolled her eyes, ponytails bouncing as she flounced over to the railing of the roof and hoisted herself up, swinging her legs over the side like a child. "I didn't get caught, silly. The Commissioner has a clerk and I'm here, talking to you. I think that qualifies as getting off scot-free. Except the getting off part – though I'm sure one of you boys might be able to help me out with that. And Scott, whoever he is."

John also had no idea who Scott was, but he wanted this woman to pay for blowing his cover . . . or at the very least apologize. He stalked up to her, hoping that she would lean back over the ledge and get threatened into doing what he wanted, but instead she just leaned in, swinging a leg around him to hold herself in place. She swayed into his neck, looking up through her lashes at him like a lover. "I'm sorry that I got the Commissioner involved. But the job was to steal LifeSource's records, not some random person's valuables, and I got paid rather handsomely."

"Um . . ." John mumbled, looking straight into her eyes, unable to stop either this niggling feeling of familiarity or the fact that he seemed to be growing hard from looking at a woman for the first time in his life.

Mitchell cleared his throat, and John turned around to see Dex looming over them, a large hand reaching out to grab Vala by her bicep and pull her up and around John until she was standing facing the rebel and his rather intimidating set of dreads. "You messed up John's ability to steal and you cost the Independent Wraith Resistance the weapons that we might not be able to get without him."

"And I'm sorry about that too, but how was I supposed to know that he didn't expect anybody to notice that he'd lifted their possessions? Normally, people who put very valuable things in safes like to make sure they're still there. Somebody would have found out eventually, right?"

"Yeah, a long time after we'd sold their stuff!" John protested.

She scowled for a second, then brightened. "Then I'll just have to make it up to you."

This couldn't be good.

"You have any guns?" Dex asked.

"No," she grinned. "Even better. I'll come help you."

---

"So. What's our next job?" Vala asked, bouncing up and down on top of one of John's beanbag chairs. Her pigtails bounced too. John winced.

"I think it's best we lay low for a while," John' remarked.

"Okay. I can lay. What else's there to do around here? What about shopping? I bet you one of those Relics you sold off could buy a lot of shoes."

"We could play basketball," Mitchell offered, though he seemed a little deflated. It was hard to imagine somebody who could annoy Cam in such a short amount of time, but it appeared to be working.

"Ooh! What's basketball? Is it one of those games where you take off your clothes every time you lose?" She poked Mitchell's abs. "Because I like those games."

John still couldn't believe he'd agreed to this. But she was an exceptional tracker. Then again, she had the gene too – which would help explain it.

Mitchell tossed the basketball up in the air. "No, this is a basketball. And don't tell me you don't know what it is. Even the Defenders play basketball, right John?"

John nodded, not bothering to mention that his first game had come as an adult.

"I don't know what it is."

"What are you, an alien?"

She didn't answer.

"You're not an alien, are you?" Mitchell asked, letting the basketball bounce off the coffee table and up into the preservation field.

"No, nothing like that," Vala replied. "I'm from a farm."

"A farm?"

"Yes, where children are grown."

John and Mitchell exchanged a look. "Excuse me?"

"Well, how were you two produced?"

"By my mother and father," Mitchell replied indignantly.

"And you?"

"Um . . ." John began.

"He doesn't remember," Mitchell filled in for him.

"Well, you were probably born on a farm. Like my Adria. They took her before I . . ." her eyes went glassy and distant for a second before she shook herself back to the present. "But let's not dwell on depressing things. The long and the short of it is this – I escaped, discovered a skill for the acquisition of valuables and have been working contracts ever since. And now, we're partners." She clapped her hands together. "Aren't you excited?"

"Actually," John mumbled. "I work alone."

Mitchell scowled.

"I mean I do the actual . . . you know, alone."

"You use your appearance to get by. But now the commissioner might be on to you."

"Because of you."

"Well, that's neither here nor there." Vala grinned, moving over to settle herself on John's lap before he could even blink.

"Um . . ."

"You," she tapped his nose, "need me."

"I don't need anyone," John replied, standing and depositing her not-so-gently on the floor.

"Fine. But I'm not leaving until you let me help you." She paused, considering. "So, what do you guys normally do at . . . a quarter to six?"

"Um . . ." Mitchell stuttered, at the same time John said, "Nothing."

Vala took one look at the flush spreading up Mitchell's cheeks and across John's ears before laughing. "Oh, good, I was hoping you'd say that. " She stood, grabbing John by the hand and yanking him up, extending a hand to Mitchell. "You coming?"

"Ah . . . er . . . no thank you, the two of you enjoy yourselves."

"Don't worry about him," John said, once they were safely closed in the bedroom. "Cam's pretty much the poster boy for efficient boring, vanilla sex."

"And I take it you're not?" Vala asked, pushing him down against the bed, the sky a brilliant blue crowning her head.

John really thought he should say no, right up until he didn't.

---

John dreamed of a room, the walls painted a simple blue, lit only by desk lamps. There were paintings on real paper on the walls, rough airplanes and rocket ships scratched out in wax.

Hey, the blue-eyed boy said, perched on top of a bookshelf, a quilt tied around his neck. I'm the bat-man and you can be the-boy-wonder.

I'm almost as old as you, why can't I be the Bat-man?

The boy scoffed, leaping off of the bookcase to bounce on the bed.

Cool! John exclaimed, clambering up the shelves, some Relics spilling out behind him. Whoever thought two kids their age would be reading War and Peace was clearly off his rocker.

You have hair like Robin, the boy remarked, moving out of the way so that John could jump.

But not fast enough. John had him pinned, hands above his head, in a second.

Hey! the boy squawked. For all you know I have a rare blood-clotting disorder.

I wanna be the Bat-man. John could feel the delicate bones of the boy's wrists in his hands, so real he could almost break them. He squeezed.

Stop it! You're hurting me! the boy yelled, struggling beneath him.

John turned and suddenly he was in a dark alleyway, a young woman grasped beneath him, dark brown hair, delicate cheekbones and wise eyes looking up at him in fear. She could scream all she wanted – he'd just tell anyone concerned that it was official Defender business.

My credit chip is in my bag. Take me to the nearest depository. I'll transfer it to you. You don't want to do this, her voice was low and calm but somehow melodic too. The City was speaking to him – the only constant he could remember. Elizabeth Weir – the SocietyFeed had her listed as the fiancée of the famous transfer surgeon, Simon Wallace, and a powerful Immigration Counselor of her own right. He was getting paid well for this hit.

Please, she begged. Stop right now and you don't have to be this. I won't tell.

Then he felt hands rough on his collar, choking him. He brought his hands up and he was back in that children's room again, a man standing over him, his face blotted out in silhouette from the desk lamp with the Batsignal taped to it. His fury was like the anger of the Dark Knight, his grimace like the Joker as his hand came down hard across John's face. You don't touch him! You hear me?! He's a genius Authentic and you . . . you're nothing! You got that? Nothing! I'll have you destroyed before I let you hurt him!

Another slap and the man was gone, leaving John whimpering, looking at the kid with blue eyes through blurred vision.

Are you okay? the kid asked, rubbing his wrists.

John nodded, choking back a sob.

I'm fine, by the way, you cretin.

John choked back another sob at that. He didn't know what a cretin was, but it probably meant the same as ‘nothing.'

The other boy looked at him, sighing and untying the quilt from around his shoulders. I would have let you be the Bat-man, you know? Even if your hair matches Robin's.

John's sniffles transformed into a smile, taking the cape.

But, hey, wearing the cape takes ‘sponsibility. No hurting.

John nodded, watching Elizabeth Weir look over her shoulder, offering him a soft smile before she disappeared into the night. No hurting.

John blinked and then he was back in the Bat-cave, looking up at the stars. His left arm felt dense and numb, shoved beneath something warm and . . . snoring?

He pushed himself up, looking down at the figure that seemed to have tried to burry itself in his armpit. Vala's skin was a pale purple in the first hints of dawn creeping up above the horizon. Her breasts were tucked awkwardly against her chest as she shifted to use her hands as a pillow, still snoring in almost a soft rumbling purr.

John stood, pushing a stray strand of hair back from where it had escaped her pigtails. He very rarely even noticed a woman, but there was just something about this one.

He smiled, looking down on her, wearing a stolen pair of his black boxers, before creeping down the spiral staircase and into the living room where Mitchell was passed out on the couch, feed-flipper still in hand. John settled into the small space not taken up by his partner in crime and changed the feed with his mind.

The BreakingNewsFeed flashed a bright red in his mind, so he turned there quickly.

"We're here outside the McKay mansion, where Rodney McKay has just made the startling announcement that he is in fact the owner of the rare items stolen from the 363rd City Bank two days ago." She laughed, a frighteningly high-pitched giggle. "Whoever emptied that vault, I feel sorry for you."

John let his face fall into his hands. "Thor's Hammer preserve me." Rodney McKay was one of the most powerful men in the Empire and a genius with all forms of technology. Masturbation fantasies aside, he was the last person John wanted to draw attention from.

McKay came on screen then, looking smart and composed in a perfectly tailored black suit.

"Mr. McKay," the airhead from the Newsfeed was saying. "What can you tell us about the contents of the case and what you intend to do about the robbery?"

McKay smirked, looking smug. "Mostly comics from the EarthWar era. Valuable, yes, but only one of personal significance to me."

John looked over to where he'd left the Bat-man comic laying on the side table. "Fuck."

"Aren't you concerned about the loss of property? The police have yet to bring the robber to justice."

McKay smiled at that. It wasn't arrogant or sarcastic, but secretive somehow. He looked into the camera and it was almost as though he was staring straight at John – those blue eyes intense and probing. "Oh, I'm pretty sure I know who did it."

John's eyes widened.

"Have you informed the commissioner of this news?"

McKay laughed. "The commissioner will deserve to know when he figures it out himself. Besides, the commissioner will never be able to find the person responsible."

The reporter, if anything, appeared confused. "You aren't concerned that the Justice Council will force you to reveal what you know?"

McKay waved her away, almost casual. "I'd like to see them try. I'm too important to them to risk losing my talents over missing property that happens to be mine in the first place."

"And the LifeSource labs material?"

McKay shrugged. "The person I'm thinking of has no motive to steal data like that."

Which was true, of course. John's work was to get money to let the Independent Wraith Resisters buy materials with which to fight. They stole from rich people for a good cause. Espionage, blackmail, and other data-related crimes were a whole different level all together.

"And besides – whoever stole the data crystals expected to get caught. And if you expect to get caught – why steal just one box of salable material? No, whoever did that didn't expect to get caught."

"But you intend to catch them?"

"No. They can keep the comics. I'm sure they have their reasons for taking them. I'd just dare them to attempt something in the Research Sector, where I've personally installed ample security measures. In fact, if he's not a pigeon, then he'll come."

That stopped John dead in his tracks. Rodney McKay was a well-known asshole, but he was brilliant – perhaps a little hyperactive and crazed sometimes, but he was a genius. And he didn't make mistakes like that.

The Reverend Jackson said that the universe was a sea of energy. He said that people and experiences floated through it like the many sections of the City in this vast sea. Your dreams cast out their nets and pulled the experiences you needed to you like a magnet and there were no coincidences. It wasn't a coincidence.

"Watcha watchin'?" A voice came from behind him. Vala was standing there, still wearing nothing but John's boxers, a bowl of cereal somehow having appeared in her hands. "He's cute."

"That's Rodney McKay."

She looked blank.

"A famous physicist. He's . . . well, he invented a lot of really important things. His father was the first gentleman to clone the service-class. He also helped invent the majority of the Enhancements for naturally born children."

"Okay."

"Hey, do you feel like a near-impossible job with a high probability that the people who'll catch us will be ruthless?"

"Is there going to be good treasure?"

John nodded.

"Then count me in."

"You're going to have to wear a proper dress, though. And a hat."

She wrinkled her nose, indignant. "Hey, I'll have you know I clean up very nicely."

"Good."

"Now, what's this job you've got for us?" She flung herself onto the couch, breasts bouncing distractingly.

"We're going to break into this man's mansion," he pointed to the screen where Rodney was ranting about the incompetence of early-model security personal.

She smiled, almost casually. "No."

"Look, this is a matter of principle, here. We stole something he cares about. And we have to return it."

"I didn't think Defenders were supposed to be so noble," Mitchell mumbled from where he was rubbing his face into wakefulness on the couch, catching a glimpse of a naked woman and looking away, blushing.

"Well, I . . . I just happen to have a thing for brilliant, blue-eyed men who talk with their hands."

Vala grinned at that, standing and slinking over and rubbing up against him like a cat. "What a coincidence. So do I."

"John," Mitchell began, looking desperate. "We're not going to try to break into McKay's goddamned fortress because the two of you somehow have the hots for the man . . . that's just . . ."

"We're not going to break in," John said with a wink. "We're heading in the front door."

---

Cameron Mitchell looked like a million credits in a tux. It was all John could do to keep his hands to himself as Vala fussed over Mitchell's bow tie, looking pretty spectacular herself in a sparkling nude-colored dress, ending in a swirl of feathers, her hair all pinned up like Betty Grable's.

John wore his usual plain black outfit, as favored by the Defenders of the City, Ronon flanking him in an impossibly large purple zoot suit, like something right out of one of the detective story relics.

John surveyed his team. They were actually going to do this. They were going to break into Rodney McKay's Fortress of Solitude. "So, we ready, guys?"

"As we'll ever be," Mitchell replied, still looking doubtful. There was only so much a Loyalty Enhancement could compel.

"Don't worry," Dex grumbled, elbowing Mitchell in the ribs so hard that he almost fell over. "John's got it under control."

"Whatever you say," Mitchell remarked, rubbing his side with a wince.

"Well, I think you look lovely," Vala grinned. "I'd have no problem believing you were . . ." she looked down at where she'd written the ID's they'd swiped yesterday down on a data tablet. "Mr. Peter Shanahan – attaché to the commissioner's office, and glamorous boyfriend of Miss . . . Chaya Athar of the Ascension temple."

"She doesn't seem much like a priestess to me," Dex remarked.

John laughed. "The Temples here have a little more . . . Las Vegas to them than Offworld, Ronon. Trust me, Vala will work."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Ronon asked, opening stepping into the transportation elevator that would take them to the personal transport they'd lifted just for this occasion.

John's hands itched watching Dex at the steering wheel, but he forced himself to open the door for Vala and Mitchell, sliding into the passenger seat and looking out at the city as it disappeared below them. Dex almost crashed them. Twice.

Rodney McKay's so-called Fortress of Solitude resembled more an urban mansion of Lex Luthor's than the fortress of ice and crystal, with its towering gothic arches of burnished silvery material and the stained glass popular throughout the city. Henry McKay had it constructed based on some cathedral back on OldEarth

"Good luck," Dex winked as he drove off into the night, leaving them on an artificial green lawn swarming with well-dressed socialites and their security personnel. The Defenders prowled through the crowd like black-clad ants, slouching their way up and down invisible lanes of traffic.

Mitchell looked at John skeptically, striding up to the two Defenders with a guest-list scanner at the entrance. "Here goes nothing," he whispered under his breath.

John had long since gotten over seeing his face, impassive and almost severe on the faces of most of the security personnel in the city, but it was still strange to meet his own unblinking eyes as a Defender took his scanner over Mitchell.

John crossed his fingers behind his back – most genetic scanners did not possess the degree of sophistication to process an entire genome in a short enough time to work the door, so they had adopted a sort of genetic shorthand – the Enhancements plus a spread of 13 different genes and checked their coding. Luckily for them, they were able to find someone on the guest list with a match for Cameron, and call in an emergency at the Commissioner's office that would keep him busy to boot.

Vala, on the other hand, was slightly more difficult. Her genome wasn't in the database and John didn't have the equipment to do a scan on her that would help them find a match. Instead they positioned her as a Pegasus Native and devotee of the temple of Ascensions, where the Reverend Daniel Jackson had made his protests against genetics known and forbidden all holy people not yet scanned from being entered into the database on religious grounds. It was the perfect cover.

John just hoped that it would work. Who knew what kind of security systems McKay might be using?

The Defender doing the scan looked down at the log and nodded. "Enjoy your evening." He didn't sound particularly enthused.

Once they were safely inside, Mitchell elbowed John in the ribs. "Hey, they say that they can train obedience into you guys, but you can't breed you to care."

John snorted. If his sole purpose in life was to check names on a list, he'd be less than excited too.

"Wow, look at all the sparkly!" Vala exclaimed, gripping Mitchell's arm in a way that looked wholly uncomfortable. The main hall was covered in a soft plush velvet carpet, with a large hardwood dance floor in the center. An array of jewel-like crystals floated above their heads, emitting a soft glow like fireflies. Couples whirled by on the dance floor, waltzing in a bizarre parody of strutting birds, covered in sparkling beads and feathers.

"I'm going to scope out the food cart," Mitchell said, heading off in one direction.

"And I'll just be over there, with those purse-sized gold statues, if you don't mind," Vala added.

Fine. If they wanted to be that way. "I'll head up that staircase, see what kind of guards McKay's got keeping people out of the rest of the house. Back here in five."

Vala nodded, seemingly distracted by all of the ‘sparkly.' Why did John even bother?

He made his way up the long winding spiral staircase, the crowd thinning out the higher up he got until he was looking down on the scene from a narrow balcony, supported by a series of baroque mahogany beams.

Down on the stage below, a group of Defenders carrying a variety of Jazz instruments flowed out onto the dance floor below them. It was a testament to wealth and privilege that Rodney McKay could afford to waste the talents of the City's most trusted (and expensive) bodyguards on something so trivial as the creation of music.

John forced himself to relax, ambling down the corridor past a woman in a green dress that looked remarkably like Ingrid Bergman and the man attached to her face. Another couple – a pair of men this time - was pushed up against a priceless-looking EarthRelic of an engraved cabinet, one of the man's pants pulled down far enough that a pair of boxers proclaiming "Here's Looking At You, Kid," stood out in the meager lighting of the alcove they had chosen. John barely spared them a second glance, moving to the heavy wooden door at the end of the hall. A thumbprint identifier slid out of the woodwork, prompting him.

John looked around carefully, noting that the two couples were still rather engrossed and unlikely to notice him before pressing his thumb experimentally to the plate.

"You are not Rodney McKay," an electron voiced proclaimed, light flashing. You are not Rodney McKay. You are not . . ."

"Shit," John said, turning and hustling off, trying to look engrossed in something . . . anything else. But the stairway was long and he met two Defenders coming up as he sped down.

One grabbed his arm, hard enough to bruise. "Whatcha doing up there, buddy?" The Defenders all referred to each other as buddy. It was a disgusting habit, in John's humble opinion.

"Oh, nothing. A little of this, a little of that. Just wanted to check all the possible entrances and exits. My employers pay me to be thorough."

One of the Defenders looked slightly skeptical, but the other chuckled, a deep braying laugh. John had always hated his own laugh, and tried to restrain it as much as possible. "Ours do the same. I'm sure the place checks out to your standards. All incidental entryways clear for McKay only, and admit other personnel only if the security system is triggered. He makes the rest of us go in and out through the kitchen."

"You know, he's kinda a pain in the ass," the other said.

They both shrugged. "Have a good night."

"You too . . . buddy," John tried not to wince at the familiar title. "Well, so much for plan A," he whispered to himself.

Mitchell and Vala were waiting for him over near a display of genuine Atlantean benthic caviar when he returned. "Trouble, John?" Mitchell asked, smirking.

"No luck on the landing. We have to go through the kitchen."

"Good," Vala piped up, halfway through stuffing her face with crackers and caviar. "I just had one of the caterers ask me if I'd blow him in the meat locker."

"I'm not sure I really want to know the answer, but did you say yes?" Mitchell asked with a grimace.

"I said I'd think about it. I wonder if they have any trinkets in the kitchen areas."

Mitchell sighed, grabbing Vala by her narrow shoulders and pushing her towards the kitchen area, John following behind her.

"So, what's the plan?" she whispered in John's ear, causing a tingle to form at the base of his spine. For Thor's sake, could she select a dress closer to skin color?

John used the scanner implanted beneath his fingernail to run along the seam of his suit. Sure enough, there was a sample from the Defender who had just accosted him waiting there. "I know how I'm going to get in."

"And me?"

"You are staying out here."

"But how am I supposed to steal anything with all of these people watching?"

John chuckled. "I'm sure you'll figure something out. I just need a distraction that'll let me slip in without it seeming suspicious."

"All right. Hey, here he is . . ." she waved to one of the wait staff – a young Negro boy with a particularly guileless smile. "Aiden Ford, well, aren't I glad to see you . . ."

John nodded to Vala, heading off to take up a stance in one of the corners. Of course, before he knew it, there were gagging sounds coming from one of the large rooms full of stasis fields. As far as John could remember, Vala had a pretty well-tamed gag reflex.

He poked his head in long enough to find Vala rushing out hand over her mouth.

"Defender, do you think you could escort this woman to the nearest bathroom?" one of the chefs was saying, French accent thick with disgust. "Through that door, there."

John shot Vala a quick glare before scooping her up and heading for the door, which opened on a simple mental command.

John wrinkled his nose in disgust. "Please tell me you didn't just . . ."

"Oh, I can throw up on command. It works well when you're getting genotyped – too much extra-corpus genetic material is read by scanners as an attempt at camouflage. Normally, people'd rather just let you go than help you wipe the stuff off before they scan you."

John made a face, pushing them up to the door and through, a Defender stationed there making the identical face to John's and buzzing them through.

"See?"

"Yeah, well . . . still a little . . . yuck." If she thought she was getting a kiss with that breath, she was kidding herself.

"Well, we're in. Aren't we?" She dragged him down a narrow corridor covered in night-sky patterned carpeting so thick that she struggled through it in high heels. "Now, if I were a well-to-do gentleman with the brain of a genius and a large load of treasure, where would I keep it?"

"Um . . ." there was something about this corridor that looked familiar. "I think this way."

Vala stopped, swiping a small silver orb off a shelf at the end of the corridor. "Because I think that this way . . ."

John rolled his eyes, yanking her along by the arm. She was kinda boney. "A right and then . . . two lefts," he whispered.

"So you memorized the floor plans then?"

"No. It's just a feeling." John pulled the comic out of his jacket. It was just down here – the mahogany door with the cherubs carved along the rims. And sure enough . . . John threw the door open to find a small bed and a high dresser, the walls an intense shade of blue. Here . . . he knew this place.

Vala spotted a lamp in the shape of an old EarthWar style aircraft. "Hey, do you think this is valuable?"

John didn't answer, taking in the whole room. He knew this place. He's played here. This was . . . "Vala, I . . . I think I almost knocked this over playing tag when I was a kid."

"Yes, but is it worth anything?"

John turned to her, ready to explain how it was all beginning to come together – his time on the streets, the dreams, his irrational obsession with the McKay family, the reason why he wasn't like all the rest.

Of course, that was when the Defenders walked in.

"Hey," John raised his hands, letting the comic fall easily to the floor. "We don't want any trouble."

There were three of them, dressed all in black. They slunk in like panthers, arranging themselves in an array of casual slouches around the room. Two drew weapons, while the other lit up a cigarette. Everyone always commented on how the Defenders could look so calm – they could smile during an interrogation, slouch through the strictest of punishments, beat you to a pulp with their pretty faces calm and empty like mannequins. People wondered, but John understood. Didn't mean it still wasn't fucking creepy, though.

The one with the cigarette stepped forward. "It's too late for that." He didn't even put the thing out before he threw the first punch. John tried to fight back, hearing Vala struggling next to him, but it wasn't long before he felt the paralyzing tingle of a stunning net.

"Mr. McKay doesn't like people trespassing on his property," one said as he took the cigarette from his twin and put it out against John's cheek.

"But we like people who give our kind a bad name even less," the third added, throwing John to the ground and leveling a kick to his ribs.

It was surreal, getting the crap beat out of you by your own mirror image, but what John really couldn't get over was the blankness in their eyes, like this was as normal to them as breathing. John wondered if that was the look on his face when he stole.

He coughed, feeling the cloying thickness of blood like a slap to the roof of his mouth, seeming to gurgle over his lips almost involuntarily. His head was reeling, Vala's shouts and squeaked moans just another part of the cacophony that was the pounding of blood in his ears and in his veins, his own useless grunts of pain. He'd really fucked-up this time.

But then, somewhere he heard an angry shout, a voice cutting through the din like a ship sliding glass-sharp through the mist. "Stop, you Neanderthals!"

And then, there were warm hands slipping down his shoulders, gently plying him loss from where he was curled tight in a ball on the floor. "John?" the voice said from above him, seemingly shrouded in a halo of bright light.

Those eyes seemed familiar somehow, John thought as darkness crept in from the outskirts of his vision.

---

John came to wakefulness slowly. There was a bright stabbing light on the edge of his vision, and his nose tickled in the sun. The ache in his body was pervasive, and stretching out just made him cringe, arms pulling in to grip a tender region right around his solar plexus.

Thor's Chariot, what time was it? John groaned, flipping over and scrubbing his face, only to find his cheekbones were sensitive too – that delicate, scared-to-move feeling and electrolyzed taste of a medical regenerator.

"Mitchell!" John shouted, rolling to the left . . . and right out of what appeared to be an incredibly large red-silk covered bed. "Okay, so no Mitchell."

The window through which the blinding light was flowing looked down over a vast green lawn, interspersed with hedges and strange-looking marble statues and phallic looking stained-glass turrets. John didn't know the City even had patches of greenery this large. He was spared the view, however, by a mass of maps and data sheets, innocuous wires about what seemed to be a mix of mundane social functions, meetings, and technical specs.

So last night . . . the McKay mansion. John buried his head in his hands, only now realizing that someone had left him in nothing but a pair of Chinese-embroidered black silk boxers. Of all the ways a robbery (or in this case a stealthy act of returning) could end, this was pretty much the most embarrassing. And he teased Mitchell about his propensity for finishing every desperate situation in his underwear.

The question was, of course, why the hell did whoever caught John suddenly decide to leave him here alone?

A wire flashed up on the window in bright red script. "John is awake."

"Thanks," John muttered. "I hadn't noticed."

He calmed his thoughts, wading through the hum of data constantly running through the back of his mind – City sensors, warnings, routine maintenance checks.

Atlantis Communications Query: Vala. he asked, half-heartedly. There was no answer.

It wasn't much later when the door burst open and none other than Rodney McKay himself strode in, graceful hands already in motion and dancing around him like butterflies with an Enzyme habit. "Ah, John, it's good you're awake. Don't worry, I punished those morons that jumped you like that. They're taking their turn in the band. I know what you're thinking – music should be fun, but the way they train them. I've seen five year olds that were easier to instruct. Stubborn too, you'd think it was an iratus bug and not a trombone . . . but anyhow, I trust everything has healed up nicely. I had Beckett himself over here on a consult. Voodoo, all of it, but if anyone knows Defender physiology, he does. Not that you're one of them, of course. You're . . . you're someone else." McKay paused in his rant long enough to take a deep breath and fix John with easily the most concerned stare he'd ever been on the receiving end of in his life. "Huh. I can't believe you're actually here. I've spent a long time searching. . . and there's so many things I can't wait to tell you."

John gaped.

"What? Don't look at me like that." Rodney McKay replied, as if he knew John . . . as though one of the most important people in the City and the thief talked regularly. Then suddenly McKay had John's head in his hands, thumbs stroking through John's hair in a way that might have made him purr if it wasn't completely unexpected. "Beckett swore there'd be no permanent brain damage, but you can never be sure with these things."

That was enough to shake John out of his stunned state, throwing off McKay's hands and pacing. "What are you talking about? Do I even know you?"

For the first time, John had ever seen him, on univision or otherwise, Rodney McKay looked unsure. "You are John, right? I haven't gotten somebody else's pet Defender?"

"Yeah, I'm John," though how Rodney McKay knew that . . .

"Don't you remember me? I just assumed you would . . . but then again, childhood is a tricky thing and I have an exceptional memory. I'm sure you'd been through a lot since then." McKay bit his lip, looking more worried than John could stand. Who knew one of the most important men in the Asgard Empire could look that vulnerable?

"You . . . you were the blue-eyed boy? We played Bat-man."

McKay's smile bloomed across his expressive features like the first star announcing itself to the evening. "Yes. Yes. Though you've grown up to look even more like Dick Grayson. If I didn't know the hair was genetic . . ." A hand reached out, combing through John's mane like something remembered from a long, long time ago. He closed his eyes and leaned into it.

But it didn't last. Before he knew it, McKay was drawing back, hands playing nervously between them. "Sorry, sorry," he patted John on the shoulder awkwardly. "I didn't mean . . . you're not . . . I don't own you." His smile was almost beatific, "Nobody does."

---

McKay's gardens were sprawling, and John was glad he'd suggested them. He liked nature, what little he could get of it without ever being able to wrangle a Gate-pass. Of course, he had no idea why McKay even bothered to keep a stretch of gardens and green houses if he had to put on three coats of sunscreen, a white UV-resistant leisure suit covering every alin of exposed skin and a ridiculously floppy hat, before he'd set a toe out-of-doors.

"Don't you think that's a little excessive?" John wrinkled his nose against the thick aroma of cocoa-butter.

"Never can be to careful. Have you ever seen a cancer cell?"

John shook his head.

"Well, unlike you, I have a delicate immune system. Who knows what kind of problems I could be looking at a decade down the line."

John laughed. "If you intend to live that long." John had never seen an aged Defender, after all. Maybe they were like horses in OldEarth literature – put out to pasture on a planet somewhere. But John had never dared imagine even that far. Deep down, he'd always known that he'd get caught long before then. He wasn't wrong.

"So, now that you've defeated the last great threat to the domestic security to the City, what do you intend to do?" he asked, heading off towards what looked like a series of fountains flowing down a hillside like waterfalls.

McKay followed, grumbling something about his knees before catching up to John and yanking him to a stop. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well, you've caught me! Now what?"

"Oh. Well, I hadn't planned anything specifically. What would you like to do?"

How could McKay take John's future . . . no, who was he kidding, his life so capriciously? "I'd like not to be Dispensed by the commissioner. That's what."

"Oh," McKay laughed.

John forced his most strained (and menacing) smile. "McKay!"

"Oh, I'm not laughing at you . . . okay, well maybe I actually am. But you think I'd go to all this trouble just to hand you in?"

"I stole from you."

"And you returned the only thing I really cared about." McKay reached out, grasping John's shoulder and guiding them over to a nearby bench – smooth and sun-warm. "John, all of this . . ." he gestured to the opulent gardens and the perfect gothic mansion, and maybe the City covering an entire sea. "everything I've done . . . . My father, that bastard, all he ever did was to create the Defenders. All of this wealth is yours. Well, not that I didn't maintain it of my own right. Not with the same dirty science as my father, but with real discoveries and real work. But without my father's name, I wouldn't have gotten a blink from the science minister – not even that trumped-up turkey of a physics chair . . ."

"Representative Hermiod?" The guy was pretty damned creepy, but turkey was not the way John would have chosen to describe him.

"Yeah, that's the one. Condescending grey bastard. I don't know how a man with no reproductive organs can possibly manage to be so smug."

"Yeah. I always wondered how they could get off signing reproductive permits when they can't even do the deed themselves." John looked around, just in case someone might be watching.

"All the left over meat went to feed their egos."

John chuckled at that, rising and pulling Rodney to his feet. This felt right . . . more right than anything had in a long time. "So, you never answered my question. Now that you've caught me, what do you plan to do with me?"

"I thought that maybe, after I rescued you from a life of crime, of course . . ."

"Of course . . ."

"Though your Robin Hood-like inclinations were impressive, if not more-or-less suicidal . . . I thought maybe you'd like to pick up where we left off."

"Yeah?" John asked, moving in closer and forcing McKay to take a step back, onto the marble barrier surrounding the nearest fountain.

McKay's eyes sparkled. Ascension, they were so blue! "Yeah."

"So, that's what . . . back when we were six?"

"Five."

"Uh-huh." John smirked, pushing McKay back straight into the fountain.

"What? You can't! I'm the smartest man in three galaxies! You can't . . ." McKay's protests trailed off when he latched on to John's ankles and yanked him in too.

---

When they were safely inside, several models of Housekeep5000s trying not to gape at how they were dripping water all over the hardwood floors, John turned to McKay and grinned. "So, what'd you do with Vala?"

"Oh, I think she's down in the kitchens. ‘Let the punishment fit the crime,' I always say. That's Rogers and Hammerstein, you know? OldEarth stuff – has a different kind of morality to it."

"So is the crime somehow involving injustice done to poor unsuspecting young hot serving boys?"

"What? No," McKay scoffed.

"Because to redeem herself, she's probably got one pounding her into the meat locker at the moment."

"Eww. That can't be sanitary." McKay clicked on his radio. "Lex, Joker, head down to the kitchens and use the nanobots to sterilize the meat locker, would you please?"

"Joker?"

"Oh, Defenders. Calling them by RegNumber seems inhumane."

"So you pick comic book super-villains instead?"

"Helps me remember them. Speaking of which . . . I've got your other friend too – the disgustingly enthusiastic one. He's out playing Rugby with some of the Defenders. Though I hope he's not an L.E. because those guys play dirty."

John winced. So did he, sometimes. "Yeah, well, Cam can handle himself. Wait a minute . . . he's not like . . . trying to rescue me or anything?"

"Nah. He came in and talked to you when we had you in the regeneration unit. You told him something about B52 bombers and Charlie Chaplin, if I remember correctly."

"Huh."

"Care to explain?"

"Not really. Hey, do you happen to know how I got here? I mean, I thought it was an Executive Decision that all Defenders had to be trained in special facilities, for quality assurance purposes."

"Yes, well . . . that was after . . ."

"After what?"

"John, you were the first."

John had always sort of suspected, what with lack of an identifying protein and all. "And he was just going to raise me here, with his family?"

"No, not exactly. You see, he didn't just put you together out of random genetic elements – not even the Asgard have advanced that far. He found two people with a dominant ATA gene – how they'd managed to come together on their own, out of all the immigrants to this City, is still a mystery, but my father got lucky. He had the science ministry step in, confiscate you and bring you over to our place for observation."

"Wait. Hold up. You're saying that I have real parents? That I'm an Authentic?" John tried not to let himself gape, standing there dripping in Rodney McKay's beautifully furnished hallway.

"Yes."

John's heart was thundering in his chest. He had to force himself to lean back and take deep calming breaths. All his life he'd just been one of thousands, when in actuality, he was unique. No, he was more than unique. He was so special that they'd practically created a whole new race from his DNA. "Where are they? What are their names? So I have a surname?"

McKay shook his head, sadly. "I couldn't find record of your parents. They disappeared from the Asgard database soon after you were born. If the government didn't Dispense them, then they were most likely sent back to the Milky Way – one of the planets without Alteran technology. But you do have a surname."

"What is it?"

"Sheppard. Your name is John Sheppard."

John didn't know what to do or how to react. It was as though the floor was sliding out from under him. He was both crushed under the weight of this new meaning and light as a feather. "Fuck."

"Yeah, that's pretty much what I said when I found out. Imagine my surprise when half the bodyguards in the City popped up looking just like grown-up versions of my childhood friend."

"So everything I remember . . ."

"It happened. Half of it was orchestrated to happen. Remember that time my father was going to punish me for sneaking into the pantries without permission and you lied and said it was your idea?"

John thought back, vaguely remembering the sting of a belt and the blue-eyed boy's furious protests. "Maybe a little."

"Well, that's how he determined that the Defenders didn't need a Loyalty Enhancement. In fact, agility, defense, self-sacrifice, bravery – none of it had to be added. The only thing Daddy-dearest thought you needed was a good dose of Obedience, but he'd lost his original test subject. Decided to try putting it in with training and rely on your natural sense of loyalty instead."

"He lost his test subject?"

McKay gaped. "You don't remember, do you?"

John shook his head.

"He was going to send you off to some laboratory somewhere and then to be trained. I didn't want . . . I was only a kid. I thought you'd be better off . . ."

John tried to think back. Years spent scraping his life together on the outskirts, later posing as a Defender when he finally looked old enough. He remembered losing the blue-eyed boy in a crowd, watching the sadness color those rosy cheeks. But he'd forgotten that it had been a plan.

"I convinced my father to allow you to come with us on an outing to the market in the Fugee sector. Then I pretended to be sick to distract him while you ran off."

"I left voluntarily?"

Rodney looked down at his hands, where they were still for the first time. "He didn't think you were a person. He . . ."

"He beat me." There was no use in sugar coating it.

Rodney's eyes flashed up to meet John's. They were as blue as ever. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, me too." John looked around McKay's huge house, with its wood paneled floors and its high ceilings. He wondered how life might have been if he'd stayed here – at least for a while. But then again, he was still the only Defender in the City that could still call himself free. "So . . . Mitchell and Vala?"

---

They found Mitchell sprawled out on the lawn, panting and looking slightly bruised. He jumped when John kneeled down to pull him up. John tried not to meet McKay's critical eye when Mitchell snaked a hand through John's belt loop and whispered in his ear. "You guys might look alike, John. But these guys sure as hell aren't you."

John was stuck between demanding to know how Mitchell ever thought people grown in a lab could ever be the same as John and wanting to ask what in the name of Thor these guys had done to him.

"You okay?"

Mitchell nodded. "For places to be held, it's not bad."

"Oh, no," McKay piped up. "You don't actually have to stay here." He looked over at John. "I've already got what I wanted."

Mitchell looked between the two of them suspiciously. "You want to tell me what's going on here, John?"

John shrugged. "Turns out that I used to know McKay as a kid."

"And how do I know it's really you and not a Defender pretending at it?"

"We met in a convalescence home after you'd been shot down in the Wraith wars. I was there doing recon for the Independent Wraith Resistance. You wanted to keep fighting."

Mitchell nodded. "So you were what? Playmates?"

They nodded.

"You're kidding."

McKay rolled his eyes. "I'm disappointed in you, Sheppard. I'd expect you'd at least find yourself a few lackeys with at least the illusion of intelligence." He turned to Mitchell. "You can go now." He snapped his fingers and a few of the Defenders who had been drowsing laconically on the grass stood and fixed Mitchell with John's iciest grin. "Though he is pretty, if in a generic Beauty-Enhancement kind of way."

"Hey, you mind if I walk him out?" John asked.

McKay looked slightly surprised, but didn't care to enlighten John as to why. He just turned and wandered off, the pack of Defenders slouching after him, not seeming to care what happened to their new guest.

"So," Mitchell said as he not-so-subtly guided John in the direction of the exit, "you gonna tell the guy that you assassinated his father?"

John looked up fondly at the towering gothic visage of the house, arched wooden doors gaping like mouths, speaking the language and designs of history a galaxy away. He was surprised that he hadn't recognized it sooner. "He's Rodney McKay. He probably already knows."

Mitchell nodded. "When should we be expecting you?"

Generally, Cam wasn't that perceptive a guy. Enthusiasm almost always required a delicate kind of ignorance of everyone else's doubts. But he looked hard into John's eyes now. They both knew the real question: now that John had found the family he'd always seemed to be looking for, did he still need them? How important could the resistance be to a City-bound thief, after all?

"Soon. Tell Dex not to worry. I'll be there soon."

---

John found Rodney up in the bedroom with the disgustingly large bed and the red silk sheets – apparently Rodney's own.

"So . . . what now?" he asked, smiling when McKay jumped back from where he was moving control stones across the window display.

McKay spun around, stepping closer. His eyes were blown wide, as expressive as his hands and not bothering to hide anything. On the univision, Rodney McKay only ever appeared impassioned and angry. John had never seen this silent desperation. Rodney wanted to reach out, but he kept his hands almost shaking with tension by his sides, shaking his head defeatedly. "I imagined what we'd say and what we'd do for so long. But now you're here and so much time has passed . . ."

"Hey, we've got the whole future to make up for it." John was surprised to note that he meant it. There was still the resistance, and a million other things. But if they could keep seeing each other . . . well, Rodney was one of the few people who could honestly regard him as more than just a variation on the familiar genetic archetype.

"What do you want, John?" he asked, giving in to the desire now to reach up and cup John's cheek. "What do you want this to be?"

But just then, someone with John's face strolled through in a miniskirt, silk stockings, high-heels and holding a feather duster. "Is that . . ." The tenderness of the moment had evaporated in seconds to turn to an icy outrage. If he did what he'd fantasized about with Rodney, while the man clearly took advantage of an entire menagerie of look-a-likes, how unique or honest could it be? Would he let the man down?

"Oh, he's being punished." Rodney explained, upon glimpsing John's disbelieving look. "Found out he was letting me win at chess – as though I need that kind of deception."

The Defender rolled his eyes.

"Some punishment, McKay," John grit out.

"Well, it's hard to figure out what to do with them. They seem lazy, but they like running and push-ups and some even like being spanked, but I guess you know that, don't you?"

"So you make them play in a band or be your sex slave?" John was familiar with the practice. He was as sexually open as the next guy, but he had to admit that it creeped him out – that every minute in the City, someone was probably fucking a guy with his face. Still, he expected better from McKay.

"Are you kidding? Sex with Rodney McKay, a punishment? The only real threat they listen to is ‘the box' but it's a waste of time they could be using for something more productive – like making music or," he nodded to the Defender in the high heels, "cleaning."

"What's the box?" John didn't like the sound of that.

"It's an ATA shielded room. Nothing to do, no contact with the City. Half a day in there and they're dying of boredom."

John didn't quite know why this offended him so much, only that it did. He'd snuck into a training camp once – discipline was achieved through physical violence, psychological torture. They even locked some poor soul up in a room full of bugs as a punishment. "I thought you were for Constructs Rights."

Rodney sobered. "I am. But everyone has to experience the consequences of their actions and since I can't fire them . . ."

"Yes, you can."

"Not these guys. I wouldn't keep Defenders at all if they weren't going to be Dispensed."

"Dispensed?"

"All the ones here are supposedly defective. Reactions too slow, exposed to a strange childhood trauma, on the more rebellious side." Rodney gestured to the thing lounging around in the high heals. "Can't get him to take the damned stockings off. I think he does it just to annoy me."

The Defender leaned over to dust some sort of Asgard award statue and winked. That was really more of himself than John needed to see.

"All right. I've had enough with you, Catwoman. Off you go," McKay motioned, turning back to John the second the Defender had left the room. "Where were we?"

Except John wasn't done yet. "You slept with them?"

"Yes, I did. But can you blame me?"

Yes, he very well could.

"Fine. But in my defense, I didn't even know that you were still alive until recently. And you're gorgeous. And they're grateful, and also gorgeous and . . . maybe for a little while I could pretend they were you."

That was very romantic and all. But did John get to soothe his desires with Rodney look-a-likes? Did he have servants in his employ that would indulge every fantasy? And did Rodney ever think it would be anything close to enough?

"I don't know if I can do this," John whispered, his body leaning into McKay even though he knew it would be in his best interest to lean away.

"You can do whatever you want," Rodney replied, something secretive and soft in his gaze and the odd slope of his nose when he tilted his head.

Could it be better this way? Could sex with the real John be that much better than sex with the copies? Would it ever mean as much to Rodney as it did to John? But then again, John wanted this, almost more than he could remember wanting anything. He wasn't one to seek a life of hedonistic pleasure, but neither was he fully invested in the resistance, never having left the City.

And didn't he deserve to get what he wanted? As much as any Authentic, wasn't he entitled to be king of his very own molehill?

John leaned in until their mouths were just alins apart, foreheads pressed together. John would be embarrassed about the panicked rush of his breath and the soft flutter of his heart, if he couldn't feel Rodney doing the same from where he pressed his palm to the other man's chest.

Atlantis communications query. Do you accept?

Not now. No.

He'd deal with Vala later.

Except then the door slammed open and that wasn't really an option. "Hell-oh boys!" she exclaimed with a sly grin, eyes raking over them the same way Dex eyed a particularly juicy slice of meat. "You wouldn't be having fun without me, now would you?"

Someone had allowed Vala to change from her eveningwear into a red shirtdress, which she had chosen to leave unbuttoned far below the level of common decency – unless she was posing for a pin-up. She moved into the room somewhere between a flounce and a glide, white teeth flashing in a near-predatory smile.

John pulled back, his anger flashing quick and forge-bright. "We're kinda in the middle of something here, Vala."

She pouted, leaning back on the statue John's look-a-like had just dusted in a way calculated to emphasize her bosom. "But I wanna play with you boys."

John looked to Rodney, ready protest, but his friend looked entranced by the prospect. It figured. "You do?" he stuttered. Then again, he supposed that Rodney'd had plenty of sex with Defenders – one on one with John wouldn't exactly be exciting new territory for him.

"Sure. How could I pass up a bum like that?" She clapped her hands together in anticipation, steamrolling over John's many and varied objections. "Well, let's get down to it then."

She took the opportunity to rip all the buttons off her dress and John was not surprised in the least that there was nothing on under it. She was a sight to behold, but in truth, John wasn't interested in that. He'd fantasized about Rodney for nearly all of his life, maybe even loved him – they said that the Defenders were incapable of love, but John was an Authentic, wasn't he? Didn't that make him capable of honest emotion, even if it was diluted by the thousands of others who might feel the very same way?

He turned to McKay then, running a hand down that strong jaw line and up into the fine strands of soft brown hair, before drawing him in to a kiss. John melted against him, drowning in it, until he wondered how Rodney could possibly even remember that Vala was standing there. John could barely even remember who he was.

But even as they kissed, John felt deft hands flutter at the waistband of his pants, yanking them down as a head of silky-soft hair pushed itself between them. The feel of a woman's lips were different – smaller and tighter but not the same raging furnace of heat somehow. There was something in him that held him back, instead of just reaching down and taking like he might with a man. Still, he felt himself grow rock hard in her mouth, though maybe that was just the kiss and the way Rodney's blue blue eyes stared into his, as though this were the only real thing, regardless of the will of men or nature even, attempts to control something that ultimately belonged to no one to control.

But, then again, with someone digging sharp fingernails into his backside and yanking him deeper in, maybe control was more of an illusion. She was smiling around his cock now, maybe even laughing, her breaths coming out in a moist tickle across his skin. Thor's Hammer, he was going to come in a pair of seconds if she kept this up.

Luckily for him, Rodney took this moment to push him backwards, down against the silky sheets of the bed. He practically pulled Vala up by her pigtails and shoved her after John.

Of course, all she had to say at the harsh treatment was, "Mwrooow." She crawled up John's body, slinking like a cat, breasts hanging down to form a delicate tip thanks to the weight of gravity. John had never had the desire before, but he reached out, smoothing a hand over the soft skin of her back and pulling her close, her navel brushing his chest as he suckled on first one milky white breast and then the other.

Vala leaned her head back, moaning and clutching desperately at him when he ran the edges of his teeth over the sensitive nubs of her nipples, one hand massaging through her thick curls of hair as the other pressed insistently against her hips, edging her on as she rocked against him.

"Oh, Ascension, you two are gorgeous together." Rodney breathed from somewhere off to John's right. John reached out blindly for him, even as Vala ratcheted up the pace of her little thrusts. John wasn't too sure about this whole clitoris business, but he was sure that he could feel something rubbing up against his thigh, even if it was only just a tortuous wetness. He had no idea what to do with it.

But obviously Rodney did, because he was at John's side now, pulling his head away from Vala's breast and into a deep kiss, tongue playing over John's teeth and lips nibbling at John's own. His hands, too, were roaming, maneuvering Vala with subtle pushes until that strange wetness was rubbing against John's cock.

"Don't come until I tell you," Rodney ordered, pinching John's thigh. Not that he needed to – after hearing a breathy command like that, John'd die of blue balls before he'd disobey.

Still, the other two weren't making it easy. "Oh, darling, that's the spot," Vala moaned, shuddering, as Rodney's fingers played over the place where she and John rutted up against each other like a master pianist pours his soul into his instrument.

His kiss with John intensified, until John had forgotten Vala and her perfect breasts altogether and Rodney was the only thing in the world – solid and golden and burning the like purest of fires. John tried to reach for him, but Vala was in the way, almost ignoring John as she rode Rodney's fingers to a gasping, babbling climax. "Oh, oh, Rodney, that's so good. You're a genius, darling . . . oh . . . a genius."

Yeah, that's pretty much was John was thinking, with Vala slumped against him, and Rodney now repositioning her until she wasn't just straddling John, but sinking down onto his aching shaft. She was in a daze from her first climax, but when her eyes opened, there was a sly, blessed out, but devious look on her face. "I'm going to ride you so well, honey, you'll wish I had a . . . whatsit? . . . oh . . ." she was already riding him good enough to get them both to gasp and bite their lips in an identical expression. "Oh . . . you'll wish I had a saddle."

He already wished she did. John groaned, leaning forward to bite her shoulder. He had no idea how long Rodney expected him to hold on, but, damn she was good. She leaned down then, pushing him back against Rodney's sizable stack of pillows, panting out these harsh little squeaks, completely different than when Rodney had been fingering her. "Oh, gorgeous, your cock . . . baby, you're on fire."

John smiled, reaching out again for Rodney, only to be surprised, when Rodney's hands reached over Vala to push at John's shoulders, rubbing even as they forced him down until he was laying flat. John released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. He thrust up into Vala, keeping his eyes fixed on Rodney's, trying to say without words, ‘this is what I want to do to you.'

Vala seemed oblivious to the whole thing, of course, pulling her second orgasm out of John with a shudder. He heard a vague mantra of, "Come on, baby, yeah. Just like that, Sunshine." It was only after she'd shuttered and spasmed around him that she leaned forward and kissed him. She tasted sweet – of lemonade and apple pie and the good old fashioned things that John'd never had a mother to bake for him. Unlike Rodney's, her lips were delicate and not chapped in the slightest. Her tongue played restlessly with his, darting in just quick enough to taste and then pulling back to make him follow.

"Gods, I want to . . ." Rodney babbled, "you're so . . . and I . . . John . . . I need . . ." His hand found John's and squeezed, bone-crushingly tight for a moment before he disappeared, coming back with what appeared to be a jar of lubricant.

John tried to roll over, pushing at Vala, who was now lapping at his nipples speculatively.

"No," Rodney gripped his shoulder. "Wait. The first time I take you, a want you all to myself." John smiled at that, squeezing Rodney's hand to his shoulder, even as Vala made a point to squeeze his cock between her thighs.

"Then at least let me suck it first," John whined. In all this, he hadn't even gotten to see Rodney's cock. He'd completely missed Rodney stripping out of his clothes. Though now his eyes widened at the slogan Rodney still had tattooed to his chest, ‘All Who Question Are Authentic.' He reached out, tracing the letters through Rodney's sparse chest hair, before reaching down and tangling his fingers in Rodney's pubic hair before bringing them back up to his face to sniff and taste. Rodney smelled musky and sweet and so very male.

"Rodney, I want your cock in my mouth. Now!"

Rodney laughed at that. "I've never heard a Defender so demanding before. Hold your chariot, Sheppard, I'm coming."

John grinned, marveling at the flexibility involved to get Rodney practically sitting on his face, while Vala sat up, true cowgirl style, arching her back and riding him again, one hand playing over Rodney's perineum, while the other fondled John's balls from behind her.

"Whoever has their finger up my ass, take some lube," Rodney announced, tactlessly, tossing the pot of lubricant over his shoulder as he changed the angle, allowing John to lick at his balls and at the shaft, but not actually get it in his mouth. It was frustrating, but hot, surrounding in that heady scent, and with Rodney's thick cock bouncing just a little beyond his reach, the head angry-red and leaking. The smell was driving John wild, encouraging little sporadic bouts of thrusting that Vala took moaning, babbling out encouragements as she crested over another orgasm or two.

John stretched and strained, slapping at Rodney's ass and pulling at his hips until he finally scooted back enough that John could feel the burn of his cock against he back of his throat. How he hadn't come yet must have been a gift of the Ascended.

"Oh, Valhalla," Rodney panted, pulling out. Embarrassingly, John found his lips trying to follow Rodney's shaft like a baby suckling after its mother's breast. "If I don't stop now, I'll mess up my master plan."

"You have a master plan for sex?" John asked, incredulously. Not that he cared – everything Rodney's ordered him to do had worked out so far.

"Of course, doesn't everybody?" Rodney panted, squeezing at the base of his cock now. "Hey, Pippi Longstocking, what'd you do with the lube?" he demanded, searching around beyond the line of John's vision. "How'd you like to have both of us fuck you at once?"

"Huh?" Vala looked up, dazed, from where she had been giving John a damned good hicky on the side of his neck.

Rodney held up two fingers. "Two pegs. Two holes."

She looked confused for only a second before shrugging and going back to the hicky-monster she was clearly trying to make of John.

"Hey," he joked, "you said you wanted to play with the boys."

"Oh, I like playing," she purred, lifting up from John for a second to waggle her ass at Rodney.

Rodney, for his part, made quick work of stretching her out and lubing himself up. It wasn't long until John felt Vala flatten against him, the weight of two bodies constricting his chest – but in a good way. Erotic asphyxiation didn't seem like such a bad way to go anyhow.

John had expected this to be disappointing – with Vala a pale medium between the two of them, a nuisance. Instead, it was blazing hot, with Vala making small cries, almost painful mews like this hurt so much she'd fallen in love with it. John could feel Rodney moving against him, through a wall of swollen, heated flesh. It was like sending waves of arousal, through sea and air and soul . . . a domino effect, or a tidal pull, the pure violent friction of it muted by Vala's weeping pussy.

"Harder, boys, harder! Like you mean it!" she was commanding, her nails digging deep into John's shoulder. Not that he could feel it, of course, as close the edge as he was. But regardless of how she moaned and cried out and gasped tears of pleasure into John's shoulder, he only had eyes for Rodney, staring into endless pools of blue that seemed to whisper, ‘feel this – it's all for you.'

John had no idea how long they stayed like this, Vala a supple cushion between them, easing the bite of the passion and channeling it into something soft and hopeful and true, but it couldn't have been the eternity it seemed, because John was so close – high on a lip-biting flash of white that only tumbled down into release when Vala shuddered for another countless time that night, sending both John and Rodney over the edge and spilling deep inside of her.

John only protested the weight of the two of them when he realized that part of this light-heading weightless feeling came from not being able to breath. Rodney slid out with a gasp, collapsing beside them and knocking the lube off the bed with a crash. He moaned inarticulately and waved at it dismissively.

Vala carefully pulled herself off of John, looking a little sore already, but sated. Her eyes were slits, like a purring cat to match her Cheshire smile as she leaded down to give John one last lingering lip-lock. "You boys know the best games," she whispered, moving over to Rodney, and pointing to her lips, demanding a kiss.

John was spent and tired, but he had all sorts of unfamiliar juices sticking to him – not to mention the sheets, so he stood up and staggered to the bathroom.

That was when he heard the shout.

"Rodney!" Post-coital laziness had fled in an instant. What had Vala done to him?! Was he okay? John pounded on the door, uselessly. She must have locked it with one of the staff's codes. Probably the stupid kitchen boy's.

John was panicking now, pounding at the door as he heard gasps from beyond it, Vala's playful voice now trembling with emotion, but soft and deadly. "That was for the things you've created. The sex was because I'm sorry."

"Open the door, you bitch!" John was shouting, though he didn't think he'd ever called anyone that in his life.

It was a moment before it occurred to him: this veritable fortress was crawling with Defenders.

Atlantis Communications Query: Joker.

Accepted

Thank god. Send someone to the master bedroom now! McKay's in trouble.

John heard their shouts and the sounds of footsteps almost immediately, but no matter how hard he banged, it seemed like an eternity before the door slid open. Rodney was being rushed away on a hovering gurney, his face and his chest and his hands swollen and bruised almost beyond recognition.

Vala was crouched, still naked, in a corner, a ring of angry Defenders surrounding her. She turned her face into the wall, but John could still see one eye already going black and blue.

"What did you do?!" he shouted, almost angrier than he could every remember being. "How could you do this?!"

She looked up, eyes watering. "By have a thing for, I meant, would like to see dead. Minor detail." Her smile was apologetic and her teeth filled with blood from where one of the Defenders had obviously hit her. John would've done it himself.

"I trusted you!" he raged. "He trusted you too! Even after you tried to steal from him and dirtied his kitchen, he trusted you." This is why he always insisted on working alone.

"If he's allowed to live . . ." she began, but the Defenders had no need for it. They were trained never to question. They weren't Authentics. The answers weren't for them. They kept the order – no more, no less.

One of the Defenders snapped his fingers and after what John was sure was a fierce mass of communiqués, two grabbed Vala by either arm before lifting her up, still naked and walking out of the room.

John collapsed on the bed, suddenly too tired to follow. What if Rodney died? What if John'd brought Vala into this house like some damned Trojan Horse? He curled on his side, staring at the wide communications monitor that was the window, waiting until the status bar representing Rodney McKay's health flashed a cool, safe blue before standing and leaving. Once he made sure Rodney was safe, he'd be gone, back to fighting for wrongs and rights that could be plotted and predicted for him.

---

The Defenders clustered around McKay's bedside in a tight circle, eyes dark and ruthless as they stared straight ahead. When John approached, the nearest one raised his weapon in a single smooth movement, like he was lifting a glass of water or pointing something out to a friend.

John raised his hands in surrender. "Hey, hey, this is all a little excessive, don't you think?" There were at least fifteen Defenders in this room. "Even for McKay."

The Defender with the gun shook his head. "McKay didn't order this. He's still out. Someone tried to kill him." A brief flicker of emotion flitted across that blank visage like John had only ever seen while looking in the mirror. But even he had problems believing that these people who had never been conditioned to feel could possibly care about the man who made them clean and play musical instruments and even fuck him sometimes.

"And it wasn't me!" John shouted. He just wanted to see Rodney. He needed to know that his . . . friend? Lover? He needed to know that Rodney was okay.

"She came here with you."

"And I just met her a few days ago!" In fact, John should have known better. He had never trusted easily. It had taken nearly a year helping Mitchell back to full health before he even let the man know how to get in and out of the Bat-cave. He'd never let his guard down so completely. It was utterly irrational.

He could see the slight unfocused gaze in the wall of Defenders in front of him, signaling that they were conferring using the City's communication system.

"Come on, guys. I'm one of you."

"You are not . . ." the Defender still in the silk stockings replied, a hard edge appearing behind a façade of lip gloss and eyeshadow.

But he didn't have a chance to finish, because McKay was groaning into wakefulness in the bed just beyond John's vision. The pain threaded through his voice made John's heart clench. The cross-dressing Defender turned to tend to him, but Rodney's call was clear, "John? John? Not you, My Fair Lady. John."

The Defender just managed to hide his disappointment when he motioned for John. Anyone else might have missed it, but John was familiar with those features.

McKay was wrapped tightly in the red silk sheets and a fuzzy white blanket. Somebody had changed him into a loose fitting pair of blue silk pajamas and propped him up on a mountain of pillows. His cheeks were pale, splotched with red and some bruising brought on by the anaphylaxis. He gazed up at John through hooded, glazed eyes, but offered a trembling smile, reaching out for John's hand and then yanking him gently into his bed. "My father offered me a small immunosystems rewrite when I grew old enough for it to be safe. I was in a Purist phase and turned him down. Stupid, in retrospect."

John shook his head, squeezing Rodney's hand and bringing it up to his lips to kiss. "I can understand why you might want to. You haven't had any Enhancements done?"

Rodney shook his head. It was ironic – the only son of the champion of human genetic programs without a single code-switch. "I'm brilliant just the way I am."

John smiled, laying down precariously between Rodney and the edge of the bed, resting his head on Rodney's shoulder. "Yes, you are."

John had no idea how long they stayed like that, with Rodney's fingers trailing absently through his hair and the Defenders crowding all around, their hazel eyes settling upon John every once and a while, managing to be both empty and accusatory.

Atlantis Communications Query. Do you accept?

John wanted to ignore it in favor of the warm gust of Rodney's breath ghosting over his cheek and the flutter of his heart beneath John's palm, but he knew that he owed Vala the opportunity to explain herself.

Accepted.

I'm sorry, John.

You'd better be.

Do you have any idea the kind of things he's responsible for?

No. And I don't need to. Rodney's a good man. Beside him, Rodney gasped a little. Only then did John realize how tightly he'd been gripping his hand.

You can be a good man and still do evil. The Church of Ascension teaches us that there are no bad people. Everyone can reform.

Then how can you kill? Is that who's behind this?

Daniel says that sometimes you have to act for the greater good. Even the Alterans knew that.

Reverend Daniel Jackson. Of course – resistant to the Asgard genetic technology and the false immortality it promised. And why does the Reverend Jackson want Rodney dead?

Because of his involvement with Lifesource Laboratories. Where Vala was a subject.

Is that what this is all about? Revenge?

No. McKay is working on a quantum genetic simulator. It'll allow geneticists like Carson Beckett to predict a person's actions from a simple genome scan – also the exact childhood experiences necessary to mold anybody into the personality that they want.

Rodney wouldn't do that. He's pro-Construct-Rights.

Why don't you ask him, then? For someone opposed to Enhancements and Constructs, he has a suspicious number of Defenders.

He's rescuing them from being dispersed!

Fine. Then explain how comfy he is with Carson Beckett.

Beckett was McKay Senior's protégé. They probably spent a lot of time together.

Time constructing the devices that put us in the situation we're in! Even if they didn't pull the trigger, they have to take responsibility for it.

John refused to acknowledge any further conversation. Rodney wasn't a bad person. After all, he'd saved John and all the Defenders in this mansion from the horrors fate had in store for them. How could he be?

He looked into Rodney's sleepy blue eyes. The other man must have noticed John's indecision, because he pushed himself up so that they were facing. "What is it?"

John pulled away slightly, though Rodney's hand stroking his cheek kept him anchored to the spot. "It's been more than thirty years, Rodney. How can we possibly expect to just pick things up the way they were?"

"I've done calculations . . . my father . . . our formative experiences all occur very young. Even if I don't know everything that's happened to you, I still know you." His hands reached for John, digging into the soft material of his shirt, but John pulled away, standing.

"That's the same logic they use to justify the creation of the Defenders. If they keep the conditions of their childhood correct, they can guarantee loyalty. But the future's not certain, Rodney. Not even the Asgard can predict that."

John had struggled against the crushing weight of destiny his entire life. He wasn't like the other Defenders. When he gave up the business of assassination and let Elizabeth Weir go, he'd made a choice – him, not some programming or genetic destiny even. He'd made the choice for himself. Nobody else controlled his future.

Childhood friendship wasn't why he was sharing Rodney's bed at the moment. He was doing it because he'd found something in Rodney. What he felt was real, if only by virtue of the fact that he felt it.

"Hey," Rodney whispered, drawing John delicately down to settle between his legs. The Defenders, now milling about the room, seemed to collectively shift their eyes to odd corners of the room. Rodney ignored them, tilting his chin up to press his lips to John's unresisting ones. "Just let me believe that the man I love is a good person."

John groaned, shooting a mental communiqué to the Defenders telling them to get out. "I'm not a good person, Rodney. I'm just as ruthless as they say we all are. I've killed."

"I know."

"Your father."

Rodney smiled, bemused, before delivering John another weary kiss. "Who do you think ultimately contracted the hit?"

"But he was your father." John's voice faltered. Heredity was supposed to be important, wasn't it? That was what entitled Authentics to more.

Rodney shrugged. "He was an evil man. A regular Dr. Mengele."

John gulped. "Vala says the same thing about you."

"Hardly." Rodney's laugh was gruff, barely even a grunt. "Call one of the Defenders. Tell them to let Carson in."

John felt his eyes widen almost involuntarily.

"Carson? You're afraid of Carson?" The laugh was longer this time, tinged with hysteria.

John did was he was told, and it was only moments before the infamous Dr. Carson Beckett was bustling through the doors, old-fashioned white coat fluttering behind him. "Oh dear, Rodney, what have ya done to yourself this time, lad?"

John stepped back, watching with a hawk's eye as Beckett fussed over Rodney. John couldn't argue with that, at least.

"Good news, Rodney," Beckett whispered, looking skeptically at John.

Rodney waved away his concerns. "You're done?"

Carson nodded, looking flushed and almost embarrassed. He certainly wasn't the monster the Reverend Jackson made him out to be. The man didn't look capable of harming a flagesallus, despite all of the things that Beckett Farms had done to Vala.

"Done with what?" John asked.

"A way to defeat the Wraith. Thanks to Rodney's latest invention, we were able to predict a transmission path for the virus I've been developing for the better part of two years."

"A virus?" John didn't know much about medicine – the science was a mystery left only up to the elite that the Asgard Science Council chose to enlighten, but he'd always thought that viruses were bad things.

"Yes, it's a retrovirus that is able to deliver an immediate gene therapy, like an Enhancement, if you will, to a Wraith. The Wraith are actually a kind of hybrid creature between the Iratus bugs that our armies have found so pesky and humans. With the retrovirus, we will be able to transform Wraith into humans. The only problem is that the Asgard would never allow it. They'd shut us down – destroy all samples and Dispense us the second they found out."

"Wait. Why?" As much as John had hated the people who'd made his face a familiar fixture throughout the city and the people who had taken Vala's child from her, and even the people who had prevented the natives of Pegasus from waging their own war, he'd never really connected it back to a concrete hatred of the Asgard. After all, they were protectors too, rescuing human beings from an age of intraspecies war with weapons hideous in their crude indiscriminance. War Chancellor Thor had rid the home galaxy of the Goa'uld, and with the help of his new subjects, destroyed the Replicator threat. They'd opened the gateway to the stars, and brought Earthlings out to the reaches of the galaxy and the City, that John loved more than almost anything. But before the Asgard, the tide of sentiment had been swinging against genetic purification and the science of self-improvement at any costs. Without the Asgard, the Defenders never would have existed.

Rodney and Beckett exchanged a meaningful glance. "Because all the Asgard want . . . all they've ever wanted," Beckett practically whispered, "is to live just a little bit longer."

It all made sense now. "Which is an art that the Wraith have perfected."

Beckett nodded. "Aye. They want to contain the Wraith threat, yes, but what are the lives of a few Pegasus natives in the face of the huge research potential the Wraith present? Why else would the Chancellor have moved his headquarters and his scientific support staff to the frontier of another galaxy?"

John shook his head. "All the while they send us to die on the frontlines of a war they never intended to win."

"But we'll remedy it, lad. Don't you worry."

"So," Rodney queried, "what'd you do with it?"

"Now, that's the tricky part." Carson looked sheepish.

Rodney accused, "You didn't."

"I had no choice, Rodney! Scientific Minister Loki has been watching me ever since my little mishap on Hoff."

"Mishap! Carson, you killed half your test subjects!"

John felt his heart catch. They had not reported that on the NewsFeed.

Carson sighed. "They were so eager. If I just could have gotten permission from the council, the Hoffans never would have even had access to the experiment."

Rodney slumped back against his bed, looking suddenly tired. And old. How could they have gone so long without finding each other? "So, who'd you code it into?"

Beckett shook his head. "The Prototype."

Rodney buried his face in his hands, groaning. "I always knew you were too busy lifting up sheep's skirts and searching for the elusive Scottish haggis-tolerant gene to actually focus on . . . oh, say . . . thinking!"

"What was I supposed to do, Rodney? The Defenders all get a full DNA workup when we register their IdentTags and the Asgard propaganda people are riding our surrogate production department like little grey cowboys. I couldn't just code it into some Authentic child!"

Rodney crossed his arms over his chest, glaring at Carson in a way that suggested that he'd expected Carson to do exactly that, but gave it up to wallow in a good dose of self-pity. "But those idiotic grey bastards sent the Prototype to the front."

"I know. She doesn't even know the kind of power she has, if we could just position her where we need. I knew that girl was trouble the second she pulled her dress off."

Carson scoffed. "She can't help that, man. All of the hormones we've got pumping through the surrogates to ensure optimum fecundity, the poor dears would probably fuck a flagpole. VLA22537's no different." VLA . . . Vala? Then again, hormones might explain it.

"I don't know. She's different enough to escape and then try to kill me, Carson. Even the little grey mafia knows that she's different. Different enough to ship her daughter off to the frontlines the second they find out she's stolen the records to make contact. That's too much to attribute to simple variation."

"Bearing the Prototype instead of one of the old model Defenders probably altered her body chemistry somewhat."

Wait . . . that wasn't right. John interrupted. "So you're saying that Vala was created to carry . . . people like me?"

Beckett turned, with a sweetly patronizing grin on his face. "Yes. Research showed that Authentic children generally suffered from less developmental problems than the early models grown in Asgard artificial wombs, or spontaneously assembled. As it turns out, the most responsive homeostatic environment for a fetus is a natural womb, so we created a class of surrogate mothers – as genetically similar to the Defenders as an Authentic mother might have been, but with the optimal genes for childbearing."

"So you're saying that Vala is my mother?" Because John really really did not want to go there.

"No. She did not bear you. And your Authentic birth mother was likely quite different. You share the same degree of genetic relatedness – the same you might with a parent or a child, but it is one possibility of trillions."

"Yes, yes, it's all very Freudian. You kill your creator and fuck your genetic mother . . . or maybe the man raised as your brother . . . " Rodney interrupted, looking half-crazed and ponderous. "But that's beside the point. The point is – how are we going to get to the Prototype and move her to the appropriate ground zero to unleash the virus when she's on the front and we're stuck here?"

John smiled, refusing to think about the sex he'd just had and its startling Oedipal implications. This was a problem he knew how to fix. "Oh, I can get us to the front."

Rodney gaped.

Carson just frowned and asked. "Wait, you had sex with a surrogate? I thought we'd coded all Defenders to be gay."

It was not John's day.

---

Vala was glaring at them all, especially Carson Beckett. She looked ready to take his head off, but John's hand on her arm held her back. If it hadn't been a necessity, he never would have consented to touch her. There was just something wrong about it now, even though it had seemed so natural before.

"So let me get this straight," Mitchell was saying. "You want to steal a Gateship, smuggle two priority1 Authentics through the Stargate, transport yourselves to the frontlines of the most devastating war this galaxy has ever known, and then capture a trained and genetically designed warrior leading an entire army of similar fighters and transport her the heart of Wraith territory."

John considered. "Yeah, that sounds about right."

Mitchell laughed. "You are one crazy fucker, Shep."

John shrugged. "You okay with staying here, Cam?"

"If there's no other way."

"There's not."

Depressingly, all of them that could easily fake gate passes, were the ones that weren't needed. John could easily pass as one of the troops headed for the front, and Vala was unregistered in the database, so she could pass for a Fugee. Even Dex, once Beckett had extracted the Wraith transmitter from his back, was able to move relatively freely. It was the two scientists that posed the biggest problem.

"Though I still don't see why we need one of those ship thingies," Vala prodded, poking Rodney and making him glower.

"We need one because Carson and I would be recognized if anyone saw us approaching the Gate and we're both probably at the top of the off-world restriction list."

"Why?"

"Because we're Very Important People. Brilliant physicist and top notch geneticist."

"But why?"

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Remind me again why we don't still have you locked up?"

"Because you need me to steal the ship thingy." Vala smiled at him and then flounced off to bug Mitchell.

"And you're supposed to be related?" Rodney whispered under his breath, reeling John in close and draping a hand around his waist.

John grinned, stealing a kiss. Mitchell was right: what they were about to try was probably the craziest plan in a history of crazy plans, but it was as though something deep within him had unclenched. Whatever he decided to do from now on, he would do freely and without regrets.

"So, do you wanna get out of here?" Rodney asked.

"Hell, yeah." John didn't know if he meant this room, this City, this planet, or even this galaxy. But, yeah.

---

Vala was wearing an emerald green dress this time. It was made of silk and draped over her narrow hips like a waterfall, flowing out and down in a long train. John had absolutely no idea how she planned to walk in it without tripping. He stood beside her, his biosign regulator suit expanding in and out carefully. Rodney had hacked him a pass into the research sector quite easily, but he still needed to take on the identity of yet another one of his copies.

"Dr. Carolyn Lam, here to see the head of the human wing of your research division," Vala said with a smile. Lam was the perfect Authentic to impersonate. She was the daughter of the Commissioner, but he'd kept her so well protected from the limelight that few even knew what she looked like. Still, she was high profile enough that no one would dare bother her with a scan – especially when Rodney had hacked into HumanSolution's appointment database and added her name.

The secretary wasn't a Construct, which surprised John. But she did show the typical sharp jaw line and bright smile that were trademarks of the Enthusiasm Enhancement. She stood, pleated skirt swishing behind her as she led Vala through several artfully concealed security bulkheads and down a long hall towards a pair of stained-glass doors. "Mr. Lee is waiting for you."

John took the time to pull up his file in the database. William Lee, Terran, Authentic with a double Intelligence Enhancement. John couldn't help but smile proudly – Rodney was a genius without any Enhancements. Same with Samantha Carter. For all they pushed a program of genetic engineering, it was obvious that the Asgard respected natural brilliance far more than anything constructed. Because it was unique, John supposed, and the Asgard needed unique points of view almost as much as they needed longer lives.

John and Vala shared a look of trepidation as the doors opened before them automatically. It turned out to be completely unwarranted, however. John hadn't imagined it would be this easy. The Gateship was sitting right there in the middle of the room, pretty much begging him to steal it. Vala's eyes widened so conspicuously that John was forced to give her a nudge. Not that the squat balding man (apparently Mr. Lee) was looking at her face.

"Dr. Lam," he said, taking her hand and kissing it, like a gentlemen of the old romantic cinema.

Vala smiled coyly. John had to hand it to her – she was good. "Mr. Lee, it truly is an honor. I have been following your work in my spare time."

"Really? You . . . they allow you access?"

Vala winked. "Those of us close to the council find few of our wants impossible to satisfy."

Lee practically melted under her gaze. It kinda made John want to throw up. Instead he directed his attention to the Gateship, settled innocently just a faomr away. God, she was a beauty. Sometimes when he dreamt, John was flying high like Superman, sailing through a star-dappled sea like Peter Pan searching for Neverland.

Lee must have seen some of the longing in John's gaze, because he chuckled. "These Defenders can't seem to get enough of the Gateships. Granted, they are the only ones capable of flying them, but still . . . nobody says these guys are without emotion if they've seen one at the helm." Lee patted John's shoulder patronizingly.

John glared.

"Oh . . . erm . . . right. Sorry. What is it you wanted to speak with me about, Doctor Lam?"

"Well, just that, actually. John . . . JHN44544, that is," she fudged, "is one of my favorites and . . ."

"Oh, the experiments with Gene/technology interaction. I read about that. Is he one of the specifically trained pilot models?"

John bit his tongue, resisting the urge to say, ‘He's standing right here.'

"Exactly," Vala grinned.

"Well, it's nice to meet you," Lee stuck out his hand, which was a greasy as his blue oxford – clearly not salvaged by having been rolled up to his elbows.

John shook it anyway.

"They won't let us have any of these models. Most of them are sent directly to the front. The Wraith are probably getting tired of the taste of them. Not that . . . well . . . I'm sorry, that was insensitive."

"That's okay," John shrugged. He was used to that kind of thing. "Hey, you mind if I give her a try?" He indicated the ship.

"Oh. Please! If you wouldn't mind turning on the cloaking technology. The Asgard are the only one of the four old races that did not master the ability to cloak, focusing on research into time and genetics instead. But we here at HumanSolutions think we can solve that little problem for them."

John nodded. The ship was spacious on the inside, and old. He ran a hand down a smooth bronze bulkhead, like tracing the age lines of an towering tree, or running his fingers through ancient lace. He smiled.

"They all do that," Lee whispered to Vala.

John chanced a look, finding that she was equally enraptured. The Gateships were alive in a way that he thought the City used to be. Now you had to dig through layers and layers of foreign coding, broad lumbering subroutines that covered up the delicate vibrancy beneath. But how could the Asgard be expected to understand – to them, everything was all pure rationalist and brute mental force. They never paused for a second to consider the true complexity of the universe, nor to find beauty in it.

"I can see why," Vala replied smoothly, drawing John back to the present. "They're beautiful."

"Yeah, almost makes you think that the Alterans had something, you know? The whole Ascension business?"

"You're not a believer?" Vala sounded honestly shocked, as though the idea of Ascension wasn't just an opiate of the masses, like Marx had said so many years ago. The Asgard had long ago given up on that route and turned instead to science to preserve them.

Lee laughed. It was a chocked, stuttering sound, no doubt weighted by flirtation with a girl way out of his league. "Yes, well, if wishes were horses . . . hey, you're not telling me that a woman like you . . ."

For all her charm, Vala did not hide her emotions well. Her smile was ice-slick and melting. "No . . . no . . . though for a moment . . . . One likes to hope."

Lee nodded, considering. But before they could get into some hapless theological discussion, John interrupted. "So it's okay if I . . ." he pointed to the front of the ship.

"Yes, yes, go ahead," Lee waved him on, still staring at Vala with something like awe in his eyes.

John slid reverently into the pilot's seat, grinning as the display came to life almost immediately, stats and figures dancing readily in his mind.

"Now, if you wouldn't mind cloaking it."

John complied, feeling the slight change flutter through him. "There."

"Huh. Let me just . . ." Lee pointed to the door.

"Hold on a minute," Vala queried. "This cloaking thing doesn't even show up on the City's sensors."

Lee laughed. "Nope. As far as we can tell it's fairly fool-proof. Unless the pilot elects to transmit his location to the central tower . . ."

Vala's hand snapped out so quickly that Lee barely had time to blink before he was a crumpled heap on the floor. "Wow, that was depressingly easy."

John smiled as they both stepped outside the cloaked ship, sending an Atlantis Communiqué to Rodney's computer terminal. In a flash, they had disappeared into a local transport, along with the cloaked Gateship.

---

"Do you have any idea how . . . [hiccup] . . . annoying . . . [hiccup] . . . these . . . [hiccup] . . . suits are," Rodney complained.

"Yes, Rodney. I wear them all the time," John replied, with a long suffering sigh. The biosign converting suit kinda grew on you – though John had to admit that the skin tight unitard was slightly less than flattering on Rodney's stockier figure, no matter how enticing seeing his package outlined in silver and gold fibers might be.

"Which is why . . . [hiccup] . . . thievery . . . [hiccup] . . . was last on my list of career choices."

"Boo," Mitchell added unhelpfully, where he was lounging in a similar suit.

"Yes . . . [hiccup] . . . very scary. Notice how I'm still very not . . . [hiccup] . . . cured."

"It's quite an interesting sensation, Rodney," Carson piped up. "Under different circumstances this might prove educational. Shoe's on the other foot, in a manner of speaking."

Rodney's only answer was a hiccup.

"You know, it helps if you just relax," Vala offered. "Let the suit breath for you."

"Yes, because I'm going to . . . [hiccup] . . . trust my very . . . [hiccup] . . . important autonomic functions . . .[hiccup] . . . to a machine."

John snorted. "You believe in machines for everything else." He punched Rodney in the arm. "Buck up."

"Ow! Remind me what I ever saw in you . . . you sadistic Neanderthal. If I find out you're secretly into erotic asphyxiation, there's going to be hell to pay, mister."

Vala clapped. "Your hiccups are gone!"

"By the Ascended, I am truly blessed," Rodney grumbled sarcastically.

"Yes, I suppose you are. As much as any of us are, that is," Vala replied with a serene smile.

"Crazy," Rodney mouthed. "Are we ready yet."

"If you're sure," Beckett gulped, "because I've never touched one of these before," he gestured to the weapon Mitchell was showing him. "And I've had no Defense Enhancement . . ."

"Well, you're going to have to suck it up, Carson, because you're the only one in three galaxies who knows exactly how this retrovirus works," Rodney snapped, still fiddling with his suit nervously. "And I'm hardly walking headlong into the middle of a war zone alone."

"You won't be alone," John pointed out. "Vala, Dex, and I will be with you."

Vala chose that moment to flash her breasts to one of the Defenders working down in the gardens.

"Why does that not inspire me with confidence?"

"Don't forget half the Genii army," Dex added.

That appeared to mollify Rodney somewhat. "No less than we deserve. This is a mission of galactic importance, after all."

"So are we ready?" John asked.

"Everything's fine on my end," Mitchell replied, comfortable with his biosign disguised as Rodney. He trained a weapon on the unfortunate Gateship scientist, Mr. Lee, currently unconscious and hogtied, with a suit emitting Dr. Beckett's biosign.

"Well, then it's time to go," John said. "So long, Mitchell."

Mitchell nodded to them before Rodney activated the personal domestic transporter he'd built for himself and somehow convinced the Asgard he was entitled to. John smiled at the idea that Rodney could cow even Representative Hermiod. Even though he'd lived his whole life under Asgard rule, John still found them to be pretty damned creepy.

Rodney took his place next to John then, crouching down low and covering his genitals before there was a flash of white light and they were standing inside the Gateship, along with Dex, Beckett, Vala and Ladon Radim (transported in from somewhere on Land).

John took a deep breath, settling himself at the controls and looking down at the one-way glass dome of the Bat-cave for possibly the last time ever. The sky was so blue around them, and John couldn't restrain a joyous barrel roll as he drew the Gateship up and into the sky. After some revision, they'd decided to make the 35 hour puddle jump to the nearest Gate instead of risking it with the security in the central tower's Gateroom.

As the networked lattice of the City spread out below them, John sighed, surprised to find a weight lifting slowly from his chest. As much as he loved the City and the soft pull of her more seductive subroutines, he hadn't realized that all his life this was what he'd been waiting for – the atmosphere fading away below him like the forgotten smells of the street at night, the stars twinkling in all their majesty around him, a the deep pervasive cold of a calm so perfect that it stole even light away.

He met Rodney's eyes from where he sat in the co-pilot's seat, a bemused smile on his lips.

"And you're sure you've hacked the security grid?" Vala was asking. "Because as pretty as this all is, I think I rather object to life as space dust.

Rodney heaved a put upon sigh, pointing to his head. "Genius, remember? I helped design this system. Even installed some impressive back doors." He pointed, and almost as if on cure, two of the defensive satellites spun slowly on their axes, flashing with sunlight as though winking at them, before facing away.

"Impressive," Ladon mumbled, from where he was relegated to standing in the doorway between the two sections of the ship.

"So, you guys are positive you know where to find Adria?" Vala asked, biting her bottom lip.

Do you think she'll like me? popped into John's head through the Gateship's internal communications system.

She's a Defender, just like me. And I like you. John assured, even though he wondered why Vala even cared. They were there to get Adria to activate the retrovirus, nothing more. It didn't matter if she and Vala got along.

She smiled at him anyways, turning her attention quickly back to Ladon Radim when he spoke, "Commander Kolya is tracking her movements now. He's very good. We shouldn't have a problem."

"Good," Vala replied.

So you do like me. she continued. Because it'd be a shame to think that a little thing like me trying to kill your lover would mess up this incontrovertible magnetism between us.

That and the fact that we happen to be related.

So what? It's not as though we plan to reproduce. And we were so good together.

John looked over at Rodney again, where the man was deep in an argument with Ladon Radim about what he considered to be a harebrained scheme of defeating the Wraith with an arsenal of mere atomic bombs. Rodney's hands danced, and his eyes flashed with a passion that John rarely saw imprisoned in the deadened City they were leaving behind. No. He already had what he needed.

Please Vala begged.

No.

Pretty, pretty please.

No

Pretty, pretty, pretty . . .

This was going to be a long ride.

---

Acastus Kolya was waiting for them on the other side of the Gate. If he was impressed by the Gateship decloaking before him, he didn't show it. His pock-marked features were grim as he greeted them. "Defender, Dr. McKay, Dr. Beckett, Specialist Dex." He didn't acknowledge Vala.

"It's Sheppard, actually," John corrected, not liking this man, but impressed by him nonetheless. Kolya lead the Independent Wraith Resistance cell with the most kills, and he wore the rough patch of blue on his neck, where an Iratus bug bit him, like a mantle.

"So she's here?" Vala asked, hopeful.

Kolya gestured to the thick back smoke rising above the tree line, the mass of bodies scattered around the Gate like the remnants of a house of cards. John was surprised to note that they all appeared to be Wraith. He'd never seen a Wraith before, but he found that he was suitable frightened by them anyhow – ghostly white faces and long pointed teeth like or wolverines or some other nightmarish creature. He nudged one with his boot to make sure that it was still dead. They didn't stink like he would expect them to from the gaping maw or the state of decomposition – like something had rotted them from the inside out, nothing but empty black holes where their eyes used to be.

"It's her," Beckett breathed. He was leaning down over one of the corpses with the natural ease of someone with a lot of practice. John had heard of captured Wraith in the City, of course. He'd just preferred not to think about the kind of experiments that were being performed on them.

"This isn't how it's supposed to work, Carson," Rodney was saying, staying as far away from the corpse as possible.

"No," Carson sighed. "This is a possibility. I designed the virus to be distributed to a central node in one of the hive ships. You used the quantum genetic simulator to calculate the spread, remember? It's not meant . . . she's not supposed to deliver that kind of dosage to individual Wraith. They'll transform too quickly for their bodies to keep up."

"A dead Wraith is a dead Wraith," Ronon offered. It was a Pegasus kind of cold comfort.

"Well, we're not out to commit genocide, man!"

John was under the impression that was exactly what they intended to do.

"If we make them into humans, they will be capable of the same rights and privileges afforded to us. Hell, they might even Ascend one day."

John shuddered at the thought, moving over towards Kolya, who was prowling through the tall fields of grass surrounding the Gate and towards the forest.

"How far?"

"They're close," Kolya replied curtly, motioning to the others and leading the way into a forest of twisted trees, for all appearances dead, except for the tufts of purple leaves overshadowing them, coating the ground in a falsely-optimistic sea of lavender-smelling mulch. John would have been awed by the alieness of it, if his heart wasn't pounding like a sledgehammer in his chest. He'd never gotten this nervous before a job. But then again, there generally weren't scary space vampires in the vaults of banks.

The terrain was moist, and the quality of light different, much bluer than he was used too. They trudged along, Rodney complaining about blisters and allergies the whole way. Carson was a nervous presence at John's back, but the rest of them – this is what they'd been born for.

"It's like something out of the Brother's Grimm," Rodney remarked, as they emerged from this enchanted forest to a view of what looked like a mountainside, purple trees perched on it like strange tufts of colorful fur. One side of the mountain was smoking, a haze of little figures clad in black battling across rocky crags and small drop-offs. And at the steepest places it became clear that it was not a mountainside at all, but a giant ship, like one of the hundreds that had advanced on the City one year when John was young and still living in a squalid hovel on the Land. The sky had rumbled a deep amber, bruised and smoky and threatening, but the shield had held. It was sparkling and crackling alive around him, and even from a shantytown on the outskirts of City-544 Cove, John had felt the calming cycling of its status updates.

There was no shield now, and the Gateship was a lonely whisper, parked on the other side of the trees. John could not remember feeling so alone, even as they entered the fray of the battle, Kolya shouting out orders to Genii soldiers as they closed in on what appeared to be a small siege of at least a dozen Wraith drones surrounding a single figure. John held his breath, looking into the faceless masks of the Wraith soldiers and knowing that they were just the same as the army of Defenders that seemed to appear out of nowhere, tumbling down the slope from a higher battlefield. They ignored Kolya's men – not fighting them, but not coming to their aid either, but diving and weaving, trying to break through the ranks of the Wraith surrounding whatever it was they deemed so important.

Without the City's system for communications, John almost started when one yelled at him, "You, get those Genii to back the fuck away. We've got this!"

John wanted to protest that they didn't seem to have it under control at all, as one of the drones pushed someone with John's face up against a rock, slammed his hand down and stole from him even the little individuality a clone might find. John knew that his own old and withered face would stay with him from this moment onward, in waking as well as in nightmares. Assuming he survived this, of course.

"Holy Ascension!" Rodney was shouting from beside him, firing his weapon clumsily as John tried to force him back and behind a large rock for protection.

But then something at the center of the battle seemed to flash in a moment of bright green like the light across the ocean at sunset. The Wraith drones that had formed a tight circle fell like petals of a flower spreading open to face the dawn and standing in the center stood a tall figure, lean and beautiful in a suit of black leather. Her hair was dark and her eyes flashed a brilliant gold, but the way she moved – calm and still but deadly – was absolutely unmistakable.

"Adria," Vala whispered, rushing to her daughter's side.

But Adria did not even flinch as she turned a weapon on her mother, a cold glint in those strange golden eyes. "I do not wish to harm you, but if you interfere with our purpose, I will do what I must."

"You have to come with us, Lass! What you just did . . . you've been coded to transmit a virus. It's very important that we . . ." Beckett trailed off as Adria leveled him with a cold steady glare.

"I have to do nothing. You have come here without permission from the council or War Minister Thor." She nodded to the small army of Defenders that seemed to be amassing around them now, despite the fact that the sounds of the battle still raged in the distance. "We will take you into custody and have you returned to the City for judgment."

"Do what you must. But only after you've come with us. Just place your hand on that hive ship there and then we can go home. They can Dispense me if they want. Just do it."

"I will not hear any more of your traitorous overtures," Adria responded. "I am the will of the Asgard who made me, and them alone. Now, please, surrender to our custody before we are forced to make this violent."

"Adria, don't do this." Vala's voice was steely, more stern and serious than John had ever heard it.

"I do not have to listen to you either," she replied.

"Adria, I'm your mother."

"You speak as though that means something."

"I carried you in my womb for nine months," Vala pleaded, sounding pained.

"Any woman could have done that." Anyone could have. But Vala did. Didn't that count for something?

"We share the same genes, Adria. We are more alike than we are different. If you hurt me, you're hurting some of you too."

"And I share those same genes with you and with him," she gestured to John. "And them," the army of Defenders standing at the ready behind her. "And farms and farms of women just like you, made to breed and nothing more."

"You're more than just what you were made for, darling. Think about every thought, every experience, and tell me how they can possibly be summed up in a single purpose."

The Defenders were a blank wall of faces surrounding them now, their features somehow more sharp and pinched than John's, like the faceless crowd in a comic book.

"Please tell me you're not that stupid!" Rodney protested. "Just a single touch and you could end this war. You could stop the Wraith forever!"

"It is not the will of the Council to do such things, Rodney McKay."

Rodney didn't seem to care. He was irrational now, marching towards her. "It was us that made you, not the council. We created you as a weapon to save our own people, not theirs. We have a responsibility to the people of Pegasus and you will stop being a brat and do what you need to!"

"No," Adria replied. "They are base scum. They are people to be ruled, nothing more."

Dex was seething beside him, but it was Kolya that got off the shot.

It bounced harmlessly off some sparkling green shield. Adria did not smile, but neither did she seem affected when she leveled her weapon on Kolya, using the kill setting that John had never seen used inside the walls of the City. Kolya's head was a smoking patchwork of burns when he fell helplessly onto a cushion of purple leaves – staining their narrow filaments a deep crimson.

"Oh Ascension!" Beckett shouted, rushing to the downed man's side, even though it was obvious that it was far too late.

"You don't have to do this, Adria," John began, biting his lip and aware of the Wraith encroaching upon them even as he spoke. "I'm the same as all the rest, but I'm here. You can change your destiny. The fact that you allow yourself to choose means a universe of possibilities open up." He remembered the words inked across Rodney's chest, ‘All Who Question are Authentic.' "Even with a quantum genetic analysis, they couldn't tell me who I am, because we're more than just empty shells. You have to believe that there's something more to us than just our genes or even the range of experiences that they've fed to us."

For a second there was something that looked like remorse in her eyes. But then she raised her weapon. The heat that seared across the side of John's chest was excruciating as the worst forms of fire, burning malicious and bright until he was blinking up at the oddly blue sky and Rodney's strained face. Someone was squeezing John's hand, but he had trouble finding it through the pain.

He blinked and then somehow Rodney was gone, yanked away from him. John wanted to cry out, but the wind was rushing in his ears and his side was a mass of twisted nerves and white hot pain. Adria's voice came to him, as if under water, when the green of her shield flashed off and her hand came up to his face. "You have outworn your loyalty Defender. As a last act, you can aid the Empire by finding out what Carson Beckett's virus does to humans."

John gurgled at her inarticulately, feeling blood well up and coat his lips.

"Models like you and I are not capable of change – only of corruption," she whispered, but John knew it for a lie. Adria did not know it, but someone else with John's face had crept up behind her, a Wraith stunner gripped tight in his hand.

John smiled.

They said that Defenders did not feel as Authentics did, but the last look John saw on Adria's face was a very human one – betrayal. It stayed with her as Dex maneuvered her off John and brushed clean a well of purple leaves before pressing her delicate hand down into the living ship beneath.

As John closed his eyes, he felt the sickening rumble of the ground beneath him as it crumbled.

FIN