AN: This doesn't quite fit into my plans, so I'm posting it separately.
Spoilers: Normandy
Disclaimer: So very much not mine.
Rating: Teen
Characters: James Watson, Helen Magnus, Nikola Tesla, Nigel Griffin, John Druitt
Summary: James finds a sketch and sees the future.
SketchesJames turns the recovered schematics for his weather machine over in his hands, running fingers along the creases in the paper as though to reassure himself that they'd actually been successful in at least that part of their mission. There were notations in German added to the notes in his own hand, and Helen's; probably coded, but possibly helpful. He should set about translating and decrypting them.
He's exhausted, but if he stops now he'll have to think, and that's about the only thing worse than torture. Helen is with Nikola, talking him down off the edge of yet another professional betrayal; or at least that's what they're all going to pretend. The truth, James guesses, is that she probably can't stand to think of him any more than he wants to think about her, and Nikola is always…distracting.
Nigel has stayed in France, the better to "facilitate operations with the Resistance", which James almost managed to say with a straight face when he gave his report to Whitehall. He can't think about that either, though, because all he wants in the whole world right now is to put all four of them in a room and never let them out of his sight again.
So James rummages on the overcrowded drafting table; there's only room for one, so they all share with a familiar friction that drives their aides to drink, looking for a pencil and some scrap of paper Nikola hasn't managed to cover with illegible nonsense. He finds one, and a sheet of paper with corners that are unmarked which he shakes out of the pile without disrupting the organized chaos of the rest.
He's penciled in the first few coded words before his mind wanders enough from German translation to look at the sketch on the paper he's repurposed. It's in Helen's hand, and it's new. Or at least he hadn't seen it before they went to France this last time, and she hadn't mentioned anything about it, even though they've all been sharing their workspace for months.
It appears to work off the same principle as the Autotype, manipulating electro-magnetic fields, though on an infinitely larger scale. She hasn't exactly cribbed off Nikola's notes, but he definitely hasn't stepped in to help her yet, either. Which is another oddity. James unfolds the paper to reveal the whole design, and if the machine he wears would let his heart skip a beat, it would have.
It's a shield.
Big enough to protect the whole of the London Sanctuary without interfering with any of the new electrical systems, and powered by a battery that will probably take up an entire room in the sublevel, and that's before she installs a back-up. From the outside, it will function like the lodestone in the German bunker James has been trying for forget, and anyone who attempts teleportation will simply bounce off.
Except Helen hasn't designed this for containment. She hasn't designed it for protection either, though in a pinch it will easily serve as both. If either of those were her true goals, the device would be smaller; the power source much, much less elaborate and with fewer redundancies.
James turns from the diagram and wretches violently, but he hasn't eaten enough since they got back to the comparative safety of Portsmouth to do more than heave. His aide comes running at the noise, despite strict orders to leave him alone, and James doesn't wave him off when he offers what's left of the wine Nikola had been drinking.
It's not a shield. It's a trap. Because James knows that John will not be able to resist, especially not now, not after Normandy. Helen will use herself, and him, when it comes down to it, as bait. And when John comes, one of them will throw the switch.
From the inside, it will kill.
finis
Gravity_Not_Included, May 26, 2011