Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard is a live and let live kind of guy. He's generally very calm and reasonable, willing to at least hear you out before ripping you a new one. Not only is this true, but he's quite fond of the scientist standing next to him in ways he's rather not talk about aloud.

Five hours of Prime, Not Prime1 and I Spy, however, temper this attitude. He and Rodney have been re-exploring sections of Atlantis, the starship city they live in over in the Pegasus galaxy. It was made by the Ancients, an ancientcivilization that was extraordinarily technologically advanced until they all either ascended to a higher plane of existence or came to live with us on Earth about 10 thousand years ago. Earth only discovered the whereabouts of Atlantis about four years ago and with all the impending disasters they haven't had the time to thoroughly go through everything.

But why in the world would the top military personnel and the chief of science be doing this grunt work? Well, apparently there's a high energy level that just, right now, this instant popped up, which, of course, needs to be examined immediately by the rightful discoverer . . . or his boss.

Just John's luck, this energy signal is out in the boonies of Atlantis, where no transporter dares transport, well none that are in working order. The tip of the hat, half the corridors in this section have been blown off and/or caved in by various giant storms, giant laser beams, and/or giant space debris. Lost is not a word John would ever use.

"Blue!"

"Rodney, everything is blue. We're floating on an ocean and in an Ancient city. You know, those guys who love blue walls, blue lights, blue oceans!"

"That makes it all the harder!" Grin. He had a grin on his face. John wished he'd had some coffee this morning or, heck, even just some breakfast of any kind.

"How close are we?"

"Directly? Fourteen yards, but who knows if this way's corridors are intact. Now, if blue is too hard I would be willing to give you a more specific shade, but only after you've guessed a few times."

"You know what? Lets play 20 questions, me first, I already have one."

"What? Don't think you could possibly match my wit? Fine," he smirked, "plant, animal, or mineral?"

"Animal. One."

"Alive or dead?"

"Dead. Two."

"On Atlantis or not?" Rodney's lips started to curve down.

"On Atlantis. Three."

"Human or other?" A definite frown.

"Human. Four."

Rodney was pouting now, "Someone we know?"

"Yes. Five."

"Is it me? It's me isn't it!"

"Yes! Now can we just find this thing?"

Rodney sulked to the control panel of the next door. "Yes, of course, because I can do anything." He popped off the lid and moved a few crystals around, the door opened immediately. "Look, intact ground. I think we really are there." He voice was slightly hopeful, happier, though he was still quite put down.

He wasn't alone. John sulked into the room. He didn't mean to upset Rodney; he was just tired of playing I Spy. He really needed to work on his communication skills.

A particularly shiny Ancient device caught John's eye. It was sitting on a table and John went over to look at it. He started reaching for it, but figured Rodney would just yell at him for touching things before he knew what they were. As if Rodney didn't do that all the time! John suddenly felt very irrationally angry at the lead scientific officer. He picked up the item.

"John! John!" Colonel Sheppard blinked his eyes. He was on the floor. Rodney was panicking. Shit. He was up and aiming his gun before Rodney could move out of the way.

"What happened?"

"What happened?" the astrophysicist screamed, "You just fell over! What did you do?"

"What did I do?" John lowered his gun.

"Yes, you! You were playing with the Ancient—"

"Sir?" Both leaders spun around – and around.

"What was that?" A terrified Rodney yelped. "Where is it coming from?" John was silent in a way only those in the armed forces can be.

"It is me. I am me."

John's perfectly even, calm voice sounded through the room. "Who are you?"

"I am your creation." John snuck a confused glace and Rodney, who seemed equally puzzled and ten times more petrified.

"Ours?"

"Yours, John." Rodney shot him an accusatory look, but John shushed him with a hand motion. John was spinning to look around the room when a flickering image of a man appeared in front of them. "Ah. This seems to be my image."

John's head tilted to the side, "You mean I activated you?"

The man's head slanted. "I am new. My memories last mere moments."

"Moments?" Rodney now sounded almost ecstatic now, he turned to John having seemly having forgotten all danger, "Do you know what this means? We've always wondered how they made the Replicators and how long it would take to make an independent model. This is amazing!"

John was not amazed. Replicators kill things, destroy planets. Replicators mind link with other, evil Replicators. Replicators replicate. "We. Are. Not. Keeping. A. Replicator."

"My designation is Serval 14. I am of a different function than the Replicators." The man was frowning.

"Serval? That's the word for hologram in Ancient!" Rodney should know; he spent four hours translating the writing on Ancient technology yesterday.

"Yes," Rodney's enthusiasm seemed to bolster Serval's mood, but he kept glancing at John. "I am designed to record and store information when on a world with limited technology," he appeared thoughtful for a moment. "Yes. My knowledge is that some villagers find other forms of technology frightening." His image was now completely solid; it would be easy to mistake him for any other person.

Rodney seemed to be getting more and more excited, "Your knowledge! Of course! You need a base of information," he started mumbling, an obvious sign his brain was working on overload, "can't take years learning like children . . ."

"Rodney! We are not going to risk Atlantis with anything even remotely like a Replicator!" He was practically growling and Rodney shot his head to look at him immediately.

"John, I promise I will not hurt anyone. It is not in my code to do such things."

"That's Colonel Sheppard to you! And forgive me if I can't trust your word."

Serval narrowed his eyes. "But Colonel Sheppard, as you can see, I am not even solid. What harm could I possibly do?" His voice resounded in a lower pitch.

"Perhaps," Rodney started, looking back and forth between man and creation, "we should radio Sam. And Dr. Keller. Who knows if making this guy severely lowered you blood sugar or something."

John reached for his earpiece, "Control room, this is Colonel Sheppard. Is Sam there?" A moment, a scowl. "Control room, are you there?"

Rodney lifted his hand, his face showing his again growing fear, "Sam? Dr. Keller?" His wide eyes starred at John, "This is a hell of a time to work on radio diagnostics!"

"Who is Sam?" Serval looked angry. "What do you wish to do with me?"

"Nothing," John's face did not reassure him.

"I am of my own, you cannot harm me!"

Rodney frowned now, "You consciously don't want to die?" He looked at John.
"Rodney, neither do the Replicators, no one does, but we can't risk it."

"What would you do with him?" Rodney looked angry now, accusatory.

"I don't know," John wasn't happy with his own answer, "but we can't just let him sit around and do whatever he wants. And we certainly can't let him get captured with all he knows of Atlantis."

"Captured? He's on Atlantis right now! Who's going to capture him?"

"The Geni have infiltrated before, the Wraith, and what if the Replicators sense him?"

"Look at him! You can practically see through him! He isn't a Replicator!" Rodney moves to gesture towards said not-Replicator and—

"You will not contact this Sam." It came from empty air.

"Where is he? Do you see him?" Rodney frantically whipped his head around.

"I will not allow it; I will not allow you to contact any of your species or leave this room." Both gene carriers2 felt the click of doors locking. John, with the stronger gene of the two, tried to unlock the door but was grossly unsuccessful.

"Serval!" Angry is not the word I would use.

"Yes, Sheppard?" He sounded completely calm, completely in control.

"Open the door!"

"Why would I do that?"

John looked over at Rodney; he was already working on the controls to forcibly open the door. "Because we're going to get out of here one way or another and it would be better for your future if you were completely cooperative.

"I don't think so. I've stopped the air flow into this room, you need oxygen to survive."

Rodney was already calculating the time in his head, "At least twelve hours, heck of a lot more if we blow a hole in the wall." John looked at him with a hint of smile and took some C4 out of his [bulletproof vest pocket.

"Or we could just you to bits, little Serval." He started walking towards where he presumably dropped the object at the beginning of all this.

"No!" Serval appeared in front of him and as John walked into him he tensed up and fell limp, the way you do when you've been hit by a stunner. There was a moment of silence from both conscious parties. "That was interesting."

Rodney face appeared to attempt to hide its massive fear and in turn put forth a wall of determination. "Stay away from him! He's just been trying to protect his people!" Rodney moved towards them.

"You worry when he is not responsive," Serval took soundless steps toward him, Rodney stopped moving, "Why? He will awake again, even I know this." Without John to provoke him, he seemed very . . . calm.

"You hurt him!" Rodney didn't seem to notice or care that he was talking to a being creating mere minutes ago, "Who knows how bad!"

"Hurt?"

"Yes, hurt! As in pain!" He stopped, shocked, "You don't know what the means, how it feels."

"I have not been forced to be unresponsive, no. Nor have I been physically injured, for I have to physical body. That is all I know of pain."

They stared at each other for a few moments. Neither one knew what to say, what they were expected to do next. Rodney did not want to harm this apparent AI without consulting with other first. He checked on John, found he was indeed merely stunned. Then he started moving back to the door, dragging John with him.

"Why do you wish, so greatly, to return to your people? To talk with them?"

"We don't know what to do with you. We don't know if you'll hurt us, all of us. It's not fair to make a decision that involves their lives without them."

"You fear pain."

Rodney looked back at him, "Yes."

"I fear destruction of my whole. I want to obtain safety, but I don't know how."

Rodney's eyes lit up. "Of course! Why didn't I see this before?"

John's eyes blinked open; blue-grey metallic ceiling greeted them. His hearing returned and noises of the infirmary came to him, the hustle and bustle and the informative voices of nurses all around him. He turned his head to the bed next to him expecting to see Rodney as always, or at least signs of his presence, but there was nothing.

"Hey." Ronon walked up to him.

"Hey." John's memory came back in an instant, a flash of fear and images, he shot into a sitting position, "Where's Rodney?" It was more of a command to find absolutely right now than anything.

"Finishing up his thing. The project he found out with you." Sheppard wished Zelenka, another astrophysicist, had come instead this king of brute force. "Didn't explain your state though," he raised an eyebrow.

"Long story, did anyone come with him?"

Ronon gave him a confused look, "Only you two were in that section."

John frowned even more than before, "Distract Keller, I'm going to find Rodney." He hopped off the bed only to find two callused hands on his sides reversing the motion.

"You should let Keller check you out first."

"Ronon, Rodney could be hurt, there was this guy out there; I need to see him."

Ronon frowned.

Rodney had been working as fast as was humanly possible since he got back to his lab. He needed to finish before John woke up and came looking for him; he would understand afterwards, but now he'd just—

"Rodney! Are you okay?" John ran through the door and grabbed onto Rodney's shoulders. For a second, Rodney thought he was going to hug him, but then Ronon entered the room too and John let go.

"John, you have to trust me! Leave the—"

"What? I'm not leaving—"

"John! Trust me! I need to do this right now and you can't be here." They stared at each other for a moment. "I'll get you when I'm done."

John stood directly outside the closed door.

"Okay, Serval?"

"Yes?"

"It's ready."

"What of the 'mistake'?"

"It'll be fixed in the process."

"Good. I'm sorry I hurt your friend."

Rodney took a deep breathe, "He'll be okay." He set his eyes on Serval's holographic form, "After this everything will be fixed."

John heard the roar of an Ancient device being activated inside Rodney's lab and rushed within. Rodney was standing calmly, a smile on his face.

"So you're telling me that a malfunctioning artificial intelligence was bouncing around in my head, feeding on my anger."

"And amplifying yours, which is why you were excessively violent and prejudice against it even though its threat to the city was minimal." Rodney just loves it when everything suddenly makes perfect sense.

"Right, and it knew how to interfere with our radios and the breathing thing because it could read my mind, even though it itself didn't realize it."

"Yup, it needs a strong sense of morals, which it normally gets from it's creator; otherwise the Ancients wouldn't be able to trust that they wouldn't go evil and try to kill people, so it shares a mind link with him or her."

"But I was suspicious and angry because I didn't know what it was . . ."

"And the whole thing totally backfired, yeah."

"Wow, that kind of sucks." John thought Rodney's door open.

"Yeah," Rodney agreed while budging in front of his military commander.

John followed him in and sat casually down on his bed, leaning up against the wall at the head of the bed. He watched Rodney grab his laptop and a Star Wars box set.
"I managed to borrow this from Parrish and Lorne. Only for a week though, so we'll have to have a marathon on movie night."

John smirked, "I'm sure Ronon and Teyla will love that. We could watch the last few now and save the first three for them."

Rodney chuckled, "Yeah, I'm sure Ronon will love the better quality space violence."

John's grin quieted, "So how'd you get rid of Serval?" He'd been bouncing around the question the whole way to Rodney's quarters, but Rodney was so interested in how Serval worked and his incomplete and malfunctioning code that he didn't even notice.

"Oh right, well that part's not as interesting. Spectacularly hard, of course, something only I could do, but not all that interesting."

"Rodney," John whined.

He grinned, "I worked him into Atlantis's mainframe."

"What?" John instantly imagined Serval with absolute control of the city.

Rodney sensed this, "But I fixed the code first! And changed it so he wouldn't link with any minds at all, he'll just retrieve and store data, like he's suppose to. Yet another layer and redundancy in the Ancient database won't hurt anything."

John calmed. Rodney sat down next to him with the laptop on his lap. John put his arm around his companion's shoulder and leaned into him, presumably to see better, which merely gained him a glance in response. The movie started up with a typical snarky and uncensored comment from Rodney and John reminded himself to trust his best friend more often. He tended to be right.

1 Wherein one says a number and another person states whether it is prime or not prime. John, though he hasn't played this game with anyone canonically, is presumed to actually be quite good at it, as he is quite the mathematician.

2 You have to have the Ancient gene to use much Ancient technology; this is so the life sucking aliens (Wraith) can't use their stuff. Most Ancient technology is used with the mind, you think 'on' and it turns on. Rodney has an artificial gene that was given to him be Dr. Beckett, while John has one of the strongest natural genes; it's actually why he came along on this expedition.