Author's note:
Did I just bring back a character that has been dead since before canon even began? Yes, yes I did.
What am I going to do with her? Why, build up an OT3, of course :D
This will probably include background Jonny/Jessie/Hadji later on, but they're not the focus. This is supposed to be Benton/Rachel/Race.
I started working on this a couple of years ago and it was initially supposed to be something completely different. For starters, it was set right after Rachel's death and dealt with Benton's grief at losing her, because that was what I needed to learn to live with and later deal with myself at the time. But in time, it grew into something lighter and, as I kept working out the details of that story, I got very attached to my version of Rachel Quest. She needed her own story, or at the very least a bigger part in the larger story.
I don't know how often I'll update this - it took me months to figure out how to actually start this story - and it will still probably need some editing. If you still want to stick around, welcome aboard! :D There's probably four people who are interested in this anyway and I won't hold it against you if you're not not.
Chapter 1
3-something a.m.
Race was sure IRIS had barely addressed him directly a handful of times since the kids had left for college. The AI had the run of the entire house and he hardly logged into QuestWorld these days. It felt a bit silly to wonder if he had offended a computer, but what else could account for the long silent treatment? Or maybe this was just him worrying over nothing and IRIS was just following Dr. Quest's lead – God knows, he hasn't spoken to the Doc in weeks, either!
Which is to say he was more startled by IRIS's synthetic voice calling him in the middle of the night, than by the urgency it held.
He threw a glance at the old-fashioned alarm clock on his nightstand. The LEDs were flashing something past 3am.
She called him again with growing impatience.
"What's wrong?" he asked, sitting up and throwing a foot over the edge to scout for his slippers. If they were under attack, he needed to get his gun out of the nightstand. Between that and the fuzzy slippers, he could probably keep their attackers distracted until the cavalry arrived – if anyone had alerted them. He didn't really have a preference there: cops, feds… hell, even his old company if they still had a stake in the Doc's life… He was getting too old for this! (He was wearing fuzzy slippers, for heaven's sake! They were a Christmas gift from Jessie, the year after she left, so he wouldn't hear a word about it, but still… fuzzy slippers!)
"There is no need for weapons," the synthetic voice assured him, just as he was getting his gun out.
"Then what's wrong?"
There was a moment of quiet. It was only a couple of seconds, but they were so heavy with silence that they felt like a full minute.
Then IRIS said, "You are needed in the Lab."
"Did something happen?"
More silence.
"This isn't the time to channel your inner message machine, IRIS!" he insisted, already heading out the door. He was going through every possible scenario for disaster in his head. "Work with me, here!"
He was out the door, before he got an answer. The lights were turning on by themselves ahead of him, leading towards the Lighthouse. He followed.
"Is he injured?"
It was too quiet for a fire or an explosion to have happened. No alarms were going off. He was certain they weren't under attack, either.
While there was a perfectly good lab in the basement, the Doc had been using the Lighthouse facilities for months. They had an infirmary set up there after the mansion had been invaded one too many times and the kids had been on the receiving end of Surd's attacks on QuestWorld, but there was little he could do on his own if Benton was severely injured.
His footsteps on the soft carpet were the only sound in the hall.
"Is he sick?" Race insisted.
He had no idea what the Doc was working on anymore. Did he lock himself in with some artifact that hadn't seen the light of day in centuries, with all the lovely pathogens it came with? He was definitely not having that again!
No alerts were going off as he made his way across the complex – no fires, no explosions, no intruders. Somehow, this didn't comfort him.
"Dammit, IRIS! What's wrong?"
The soothing synthetic voice seemed to come from everywhere now that he was no longer in the privacy of his bedroom. It did a poor job at disguising the worry in it, though. "I can not say," it replied.
He ran a nervous hand through his hair and followed corridor after corridor until the underground passage that connected to the lighthouse. The distance seemed so much longer than normal and his demands for information were met with stubborn silence from the AI.
Race was heading into this blind. Given IRIS's stubborn refusal to provide any sort of information, though, Race was beginning to suspect maybe it was self-inflicted. He didn't want to think what that implied, but he hoped IRIS would have told him if this needed a hazmat suit or more medical help than the on-site infirmary could provide.
He didn't stop asking her questions all the way to the lab. Was Benton sick? Injured? Did his project go wrong? Did it go right? What the hell was going on?
"It is against my protocols to say anything, Race," IRIS said just as he reached the final door.
Her voice retreated to only the speaker nearest him. "You are meant to protect him and I…"
"…please!" the last word came out excruciatingly quiet from his watch.
Race was beyond worried when the door to the lab slid open.
The main floor of the lighthouse looked incredibly cluttered. The Doc's equipment took up most of the room that had originally been meant to house the QuestWorld interface. The wall of screens still dominated the room, but the chairs and control bank were lost amid a crowd of various monitors and machines that did only Benton knew what.
The screens were turned on, running a bunch of stats with the occasional flashes of memory. It was fuzzy, but he knew what it meant. He quietly stepped around the control bank - if IRIS hadn't been able to pull the plug from inside, there was no chance he could just initiate the logoff procedures. This needed something more drastic.
And indeed, slumped in one of the chairs, fully immersed in VR, sat Benton Quest. His hands were clenching so hard to the arms of the chair, his knuckles had gone completely white. His body convulsed with shocks and twitches caused by whatever happened between the flickers of static that came up on screen. The static green on the visor occasionally flickered as well and tears streamed down his cheeks.
Race didn't hesitate but a brief second before removing Benton's visor. Long enough to notice the other chair was also occupied but that they weren't in as much danger.
"Dammit, IRIS! What kind of protocol prevented you from stopping this?" Race didn't sound half as angry as he felt. He was distracted by Benton's lack of reaction to the sudden crash out of immersion and had to catch him under the arms before he toppled over.
"What did you think you were doing, locking me out?" he growled. He was holding Benton steady with one hand, while groping for the handle to lean the chair back with the other. He found it and once he was sure Benton couldn't do himself any more harm – he was going to have serious words with him when he came around – he asked, "Can you prepare a cot, IRIS? We need to monitor him until he wakes up."
"There are two cots available in the infirmary," the AI replied.
"Two?" he asked, suddenly remembering the other occupied chair.
Whatever simulation they had been trapped in had stopped running when he pulled Benton out, so instead of the static green of the visor, he found himself staring into the unblinking eyes of a ghost.
"Rachel?"
She sat motionless, dressed in nothing but a paper hospital gown… and barely older than she had been when he last saw her, over a decade ago.
Race could slap Dr Quest at that moment.
Instead, he carefully moved first the Doctor and then his wife into the other room and connected them to every sensor IRIS instructed him to. And waited.