So this would be my first Sanctuary fic. It doesn't have a real timeline because it's sort of AU in that Helen had a sister and I've shuffled some events around. Regardless it's post-Sleepers and pre-Awakenings meaning Nikola is still ordinary, much to his chagrin. Pairings will basically be Helen/John (with a bit of triangle stuff with Nikola of course), Henry/Erika, and I'm not sure what I'm doing with the rest. I will probably be switching POVs a lot as well for funsies - but Nikola is my favorite because he's such a… well, you know. Anywho, hope you enjoy!

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Chapter 1: Hidden Agenda

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Nikola ground his teeth together as he watched the pulse burst in a lethal display of electricity. It was supposed to be incapacitating, benign - but Nikola's heart wasn't exactly in this. What did he care if the supposedly docile reptile died from heart failure? Rubbing his temple, he scooped up the remainder of his Chteau Margaux. He downed it irritably before turning back to the drawing board and gathering his wits about him. Erasing several figures with his hand, he replaced them with slightly lower digits. He had to account for the would-be velociraptor's incredibly thick skin, but not go so high as to burst its itty bitty heart.

"You're still working on that?"

"Oh good, I was sorely in need of a golden retriever. Would you mind grabbing me another bottle of wine from the cellar?" Nikola said, his eyes not leaving the chalkboard.

"You know if you adjust the oscillators it might not - "

"Yes, yes, it might not induce so much friction within the inner matrix - I have done this before, you know," Nikola snapped.

"Geez, bite my head off, will you?" Henry replied. Nikola responded with a roll of his eyes. It wasn't that he necessarily disliked Henry, it was more a culmination of indifference that resulted in verbal abuse. His current irritation, however, was stemming from a very obvious place of depression. It had been nearly two months since he was devamped, but he still wasn't taking it very well.

"Helen and Will should be back from their mission in the next couple hours. Just got a transmission from them - which is why I'm here I might add. Not to be your whipping boy." The dog crossed his arms, looking at Nikola's handiwork. Henry fingered one of the inner coils causing it to fall to the ground and roll under the work bench. Henry offered him an apologetic look.

"Fetch," Nikola said.

"Dude! You're a magnet, just -"

"It's copper." Nikola looked back at his calculations while Henry groaned and dove underneath the workbench to collect the ring. "How long ago did you get the transmission from them?" He asked, replacing a few more integers on his chalkboard until they suited him. His sensitivity to Henry's presence was only exacerbated because Helen had forbade him from going with she and her protege to South America or somewhere. He had offered to go with if only to keep his mind off his current unexceptional state of being. Helen had requested he be in charge of the Sanctuary in her absence, but a request from Helen Magnus was never really a request.

"About an hour ago," Henry said, voice muffled as he edged his way further under the workbench. Nikola heard a self congratulatory "Gotcha!" before the compact little man pushed himself out from under the bench. "Hey, this is silver plated!" Nikola grinned, manipulating the magnetic waves and forcing the small ring out of Henry's hand and into his own.

"Thank you," he said snidely, snapping the ring back into place. "So you got the message an hour ago and are only telling me now?"

"You've been in here for over twenty four hours, I didn't think it was all that pressing. You're not the best leader in the world you know. Kate and I had to deal with that Bonach bird man thing all on our own," Henry complained.

"Well you were just saying how you wanted a little bit more autonomy. Far be it from me to deny you that wish," Nikola said, securing another silver plated ring into place and adjusting a few wires to lessen the strength of the shock. It would have been so much simpler if he still had his powers. Nikola wasn't terribly concerned with the status of the Sanctuary - had anything truly earth shattering occurred he would have stepped in. He anticipated his stay to be incredibly temporary though.

"Henry?" Kate's voice came over the loudspeaker. Nikola did his best to block it out. The brutish young girl was his least favorite member of this latest rendition of Helen's team. He liked that she was a bit sassy, but she was hardly the most graceful thing in the place. In fact, Helen's pet Sasquatch showed more refinement than the ex mercenary.

"Yeah, Kate," came Henry's reply.

"Need you to get up here now! Will's just collapsed! Bring one of those epi pens from the infirmary, and be quick about it!" Henry was already out the door before Kate finished her sentence. Nikola had to respect the urgency with which those kids could move. He immediately decided to wait until after that urgency had died down somewhat. He had already noticed a rather obvious trend in that Will Zimmerman was the most prone to punishment. Whether it was down to bad luck or the man's own incompetency was still up for discussion, however it wasn't hard to guess which Nikola would blame.

Twenty minutes later, the intercom crackled again. This time Helen's voice came through.

"Nikola, I need you. Get down to the infirmary. Now," she said. He didn't need to be asked by her twice. The flash bomb equivalent of a stunner was nearly done anyway, it hadn't taken all that much tweaking once he realized where he had gone wrong. He arrived in the infirmary to find Helen giving her young protege an injection of some kind.

"Is it catching?" he asked, grimacing at Will's face. He tried to feign concern, but he just couldn't muster up the interest it would take. The boy's face was an ashen color. Blue lips and yellowed sclera completed the disgusting ensemble. But it wasn't until he began coughing up a bluish white mucus that Nikola's eyes widened. He wrenched up Will's shirt, heart racing.

"What are you doing? G-get him off me!" Will said painfully, barely putting up a struggle. He was far too weak. There were odd pale white sores popping up all over Will's body. Nikola's eyes met Helen's. Anxiety flooded his body.

"I thought I got rid of the plant. I set fire to half the Amazon. It should be gone - I… I made sure of it!" Nikola said.

"What? You've seen this before?" Will asked weakly. "Best news I've had all day - can you cure it?"

"It's not so simple, Will," Helen said looking at him gravely.

"That's putting it mildly," Nikola said, huffing and leaving the the infirmary, feeling as though he might be sick. He waited for Helen just outside the door. Their conversation needn't include the boy - it would only cause a panic for him. There was no cure for the Bosilica virus. The plant's spores ate white blood cells, thrived on bacteria - and adapted to just about any environment. Nikola and Helen had spent decades developing a treatment - they had never come close.

Helen came out of the room and shut the door behind her. "He's got maybe a week of the weakness and sores left. Then the fever and seizures will kick in."

"Yes, and then loss of sensory organs, kidney failure - I know all the lyrics to this one, Helen," he said, clenching his jaw. "Where the hell did you crazy kids end up?"

"Outside of Bosnia. One of the people keeping the Ukoback keeps the fertilized spores as insurance. Steal the creature, get dusted with the stuff. I've no idea how she got a hold of it," Helen said. The spores of the Bosilica plant are very nearly invisible. They would have appeared as nothing more than your run of the mill dust motes. Harmless. Nikola had built something which would detect the spores, but he had spent quite a while making certain that the plant was extinct rendering the instrument useless. Besides that, the plant was indigenous only to the southern portion of the Amazon rainforest. It had a symbiotic relationship with a dozen other indigenous species of the region and couldn't grow without them.

"Please tell me you killed the bitch," Nikola said. Helen raised an eyebrow at him. "No, of course not. That would be mean. Need I remind you that he is going to die."

"No, we're not going to let that happen, Nikola."

"Don't you think I've tried? For longer than you or Gregory ever bothered -"

"Don't you dare say that, Nikola. She was my sister," Helen said, anger rising.

"Yes, and my wife," Nikola said, voice wavering slightly. Helen's jaw clenched and they held each other's gaze for a moment. "He's going to die. Two months - at the most."

"Nikola we have resources we didn't used to-"

"Do you think the only thing I've been doing in my spare time is turning idiot teenagers into faux vampires and making mostly benign weapons for you? I've tried everything I can think of to kill that virus. Nothing works! Radiation, magic serums, combat phages - everything short of throwing the host into an acid bath - which, come to think of it, it would probably enjoy that," Nikola said, voice rising.

"Are you quite finished?" Helen asked and Nikola bristled. "You're forgetting about Praxis. They've got technology that far surpasses even anything you could dream up," Helen said.

"Oh yes, how could I forget Shambala - the place I wasn't invited to see," Nikola replied, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice.

"You are such a child," she berated him. Nikola ignored it as he began thinking of the possibilities. Suppose they did have something to combat the effects of the virus? Hell, for all they knew the Bosilica plant originated down in that hellhole.

"What about the mandated radio silence that harpy instilled upon you, what's her name," Nikola said, snapping his fingers, signaling for Helen to fill in the blank.

"Ranna," Helen said. "I'm certain Henry can get her a message. She wouldn't simply ignore it if it was an emergency." She paused, tilting her head at him in that accusing way she reserved only for him. "Why do you seem so excited by the idea? We won't get a free pass to visit again if that's what you're hoping for."

"I know, that's not important. I've got to get to the lab, tell Fido to get on that message," Nikola said, voice suddenly far away. His mind was clicking away with something that had been rather foreign to him these past months: hope.

"Nikola," Helen said sharply.

"Don't you see Helen? We've got to save your kept boy, don't we? I'm very happy that he's got a better chance than Eleanor," Nikola said, almost laughing at the sentence. Of course he didn't actually care about Will. Certainly he didn't want the boy to die - but that wasn't the point.

"You're thinking of doing something rash, aren't you? Adam's time travel machine doesn't work - you won't be able to go back and save Eleanor if all of this turns out," Helen said, her mind working more slowly than usual. Of course he wasn't' thinking of a damn time machine - and certainly not something built by that lunatic. He didn't need to.

"I wouldn't need to do that, Helen. I've thought this through, don't you see?" He knew she didn't, but he was feeling positively giddy at the possibilities. "I've got arrangements to make. You tell me how all of this saving-the-shrink-from-a-debilitating-condition for the thousandth time turns out."

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Helen watched Nikola go and suddenly felt exhausted. His sudden glee had left her feeling entirely unsettled, but she couldn't worry about him now. Not with Will in his current condition. She swallowed hard, beginning the difficult process of compartmentalization. Regardless of the treatments Praxis may or may not have to offer, she needed to begin pulling out research. Files on the disease which she hadn't opened in God, what had it been? Twenty years at least. Perhaps longer.

"So Doc, what's the verdict? How are we gonna fix him?" Henry asked hopefully. Helen hadn't been able to bring herself to tell them what it was exactly they were dealing with.

"Yeah, he is not looking pretty in there," Kate added, watching as the Big Guy mopped at Will's forehead. Helen crossed her arms, clenching her jaw as she tried to decide how much to tell them. The idea of instilling hopelessness in Will was something she wanted to avoid - at least not until she could get in touch with Ranna.

"You said you'd encountered this before, right, Doc?" Henry pressed.

"Yes. Henry I need you to work on getting in touch with Ranna immediately," Helen said.

"I take it a bit of tylenol's not going to do the trick then?" Kate said.

"No, I'll be in the lab. Kate you'll need to deal with the Ukoback. Get the Big Guy to help you if you need it - then assist Henry. That message should be our first priority right now," Helen said. Both of them nodded and went to tend to their tasks.

Helen stood there for a moment, looking in on Will. Her stomach was tied in knots as she recalled her sister in the same position. But Eleanor had refused to lie still, she'd insisted on being in the lab right until the end. Helen had been sure it had quickened the pace of the illness, but Eleanor had always been fiercely stubborn. In the end all she'd had was her denial - the disease had still taken her.

Before she headed to the lab, Helen made her way to her office in hopes of unearthing her files on Eleanor's case. She would need to review everything she had already learn - she didn't have time to make repeated mistakes. Helen had encountered at least half a dozen cases of the Bosilica virus in her life time, but nothing like what had happened to Will. She had never heard of someone managing to use it as a weapon - it was simply too volatile, too unpredictable. Why the hell the woman, Risiki Landau, had endeavored to protect a Ukoback with the spores was beyond her. Ukobacks were impish creatures which survived on burning coals and starting small inconvenient forest fires. They were not ordinary, but they didn't fetch much on the black market, either. She made a mental note to do a thorough work up on the beast as soon as she had Will sorted. Part of her didn't wonder if the Ukoback had something to do with it.

There were far too many variables to juggle within this incident for Helen's liking. As she entered her office, she was greeted with the fresh scent of lemon and rain. Big Guy had been in to clean. She saw that he'd even left her a cup of tea. She would have been warmed by this gesture if she wasn't feeling so stressed.

Grabbing a small rounded key from a small teak tinderbox on her sideboard, she went around to the wardrobe on the opposite side of the room which she had had refitted to operate as a more aesthetically pleasing file cabinet. Unlocking it with a key, she searched through the seemingly endless amount of files for those on the Bosilica virus.

As she searched, her blood pressure began to rise as she realized the files were not there. "Nikola," she muttered angrily as she slammed the door shut.

As if she really had summoned him, the former vampire appeared at her door carrying a box. "I may have borrowed these a couple weeks, well, years ago," Nikola said, putting the box down on her desk.

"I thought you had left," Helen said, fingering through the box after she had removed the lid. "And where's Eleanor's particular case file? This is just my findings on later cases."

"Well, that one's not here exactly," Nikola said. Helen's jaw clenched.

"So you stole it."

"Borrowed. I had every intention of giving it back to you. At some point," Nikola replied, waving her off with a flick of his wrist. "I'll be out of touch for a few days by the way."

"Now? You're leaving now? I may need your help if Praxis ends up being a dead end, Nikola!"

"Yes, but as you keep telling me - I'm a physicist and a glorified electrician, what could I possibly bring to the table?"

She could not believe how childish he was being now. He knew how important this was to her and he was just going to leave her there. Just like he did when Eleanor died. She realized it was hard for him, but all they had was each other. John, James, Nigel… everyone was gone.

"Nikola -"

"I'll be back, Helen. It's just a few days. I'll bring Ellie's file back with me," Nikola said, voice softening as he put a hand on her shoulder. She hated when he did that. He was so changeable, one minute a cold, unfeeling bastard - the next he was the sweetest person in the world. At least in his own way. And, she supposed, only towards her.

"Two days, Nikola," Helen said.

"We'll see," he replied.

"Nikola."

"Helen."

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Hope you enjoyed, I'd love to hear your thoughts!