The Sahara, 2032

Her lungs burned at the huge gasps of air she was sucking in, choking slightly on flecks of sand. Automatically her hands came up to waft the dust away from her vision, and make sure he was alright. It was stupid really – a habit from arranging literally thousands of these expeditions with her more than mortal Sanctuary colleagues over the years. After all, it wasn't like a vampire was going to succumb to a little incidental damage like… a stinger in the gut, or a rock through the leg, but still, Helen felt the need to be sure.

Nikola was making an unpalatable sound in the smoke, as though something rather disdainful had landed on his tongue. Served him right for trying to make some smarmy remark. It wasn't as though she could've predicted the Sand Ray was in its mating cycle before he'd disrupted it anyway!

Finally he managed to expel enough of the unwanted sediment to get out a clear sentence from his hunched-over position, "Why can I never seem to catch a break when it comes to hormonal women?"

Helen hit him on the arm for the barely-veiled illusion to the nine months of over-emotional hell he had put her through last year.

"Ow."

She rolled her eyes, "Maybe those hormones simply make them hyper-aware of what an obnoxious ass you're being?"

He grinned over at her, that incongruously arrogant look in his eyes which she'd shoot down in an instant… if she wasn't sure he had more convincing evidence up his sleeve. "Yeah," he straightened himself out, adjusting the ripped cuffs of his expeditionary jacket as though it were part of a three-piece suit, "or maybe they're just grouchy 'cause they can't have sex."

"What, you mean like you will be for the next… oh… I'm thinking… six days?"

"Only six?" he leered lowly, cocking an eyebrow and stepping a little closer into Helen's personal space, until her hand automatically reached up to hold him back at the heart. The flimsy restriction only made him grin all the wider.

"I don't think my staff could put up with the torture otherwise," she countered evenly, her reprimand not without encouragement as the low murmur resonated through his bones.

He watched her lips hungrily, oh so very ready to make her disregard that little threat with a kiss, but the radio, somewhat predictably, blared from its location on her hip.

"M?"

They still had to be careful not to use their real names top-side even after all this time. You never knew who might be listening, and the names Helen Magnus, Nikola Tesla, hell, even Will Zimmerman, were a little too hot on the international wire even with her supposed death twenty years ago.

Tesla made a disapproving sigh and snatched the rather old-school radio from her waistband before she even remembered which side she'd put it on.

"It's alright Dr Panic-attack; you can go back to piecing together the childhood traumas of little abnormals everywhere. The dusty manta-ray's sleeping like a baby."

Helen merely gave him that unimpressed look she did so well, and he tossed the radio back into her waiting hands.

"Yeah, funnily enough Nikki your saying so doesn't exactly fill me with confidence. Over."

Tesla rolled his eyes but failed to snatch the device back now that Magnus had it in her grip, and took to pouting instead.

"The ray's secured Will, from the pigmentation on its tail it would appear she's on her mating cycle… which accounts for the unexpected sandstorm. Over."

"Would that have caused her to purposefully attack a human settlement though? Over."

She watched, as Tesla got bored and started eying the Sand Ray as if it were doing something interesting – something she couldn't see with her own two eyes.

"Absolutely not. If she'd had a juvenile to protect, maybe… We should keep the noise to a minimum. Unless anything of immediate importance comes up we'll save it for the debrief. Over."

A sigh from the radio which Will probably hadn't meant to be heard, "Alright, just… be careful. Over and out."

Crouched over the slumbering beast Tesla sighed dramatically, "You'd think after all this time I'd have gotten over the irony…" he glanced at Helen as she approached, giving him an inquisitive tilt of her head, "The boy wonder…" he gave by way of explanation, "telling the two-hundred year old abnormal-protecting renegade – who blew herself up, I might add – to 'be careful'."

Joining him, closer to the abnormal's level, she smirked, "He does have a tendency to be pedantic when stressed, I'll grant you, but it's nice to know he cares." Another smile graced her face as she attempted to bring her diagnostic tablet back to life and input the data she was about to take from the creature's vitals and samples. "Sometimes he reminds me of someone else we used to know… now and then."

"Oh please," Nikola scoffed, running a hand over the back of the ray in a curiously tender gesture which did not match the look on his face, "James had a better sense of humour."

"Well maybe that's because you treated him with a modicum more…" she trailed off at the look of concentration on his face. "Nikola?"

He seemed to snap out of his absorption in the Sand Ray, enough to realise she was asking him what he was doing; "She's giving off a pulse. Like an SOS."

Helen gave it some thought, "Well, they communicate to other members of their species at that level – it's why her sister up in Egypt struggled to cope with the Macri's Magnetic Pulse when it was contacting Bertha... despite their natural resistance to the stimuli. It was overload on what turned out to be an already severely damaged sensory nerve."

"Hmm…"

She watched him closer still. Analytical 'hmms' were all too often a prelude to some rash experiment designed to eliminate certain theories, and she'd had to stop him from prodding, as Will liked to call it, more times than she could count. She didn't always succeed, of course, but when he failed to do anything provocative for a full minute she spoke up, "Hmm?"

He glanced back again, "She's unconscious… and still screaming," he started gesturing with his fingers, eying her meaningfully, "that doesn't bother you?"

"What are you saying – that some part of her physiology's been altered?"

"No – that she's stuck on repeat because someone's been smacking the button a little too hard, too often."

Helen tried to stifle a smile at such an analogue comparison, as Alistair Foss would've called it; derisively too, as was a teenager's wont. She could have pointed out that nothing had a mechanical repeat button anymore, not even CD players, but she was too busy watching Nikola, as he stood up to walk a circumference around the Ray.

"Well once we have these diagnostics, we'll be able to see what's causing it," she reasoned, getting back to the task at hand and taking her eye off of him, "We can't apply treatment to the nerves until the underlying condition has been alleviated."

The Sand Ray shifted as she pulled out a sample of fluid, squirming as if she were tickling it. Her head instantly snapped on Nikola, who was standing three meters to her left and behind. Quickly throwing up his crossed arms, open palmed, he started claiming innocence at her unspoken accusation... but the smirk made it unconvincing to say the least.

The pointed glare she was throwing him to stop interfering soon ushered an exasperated, "Fine!" from his lips. "But there's a lot of activity right there," he pointed to a spot on the Ray which Magnus recognised as the location of its heart.

Immediately breaking out a stethoscope – such a traditional piece of equipment it almost seemed incongruous – she listened closely.

Author's Note: Well guys, much as I love Vienna in Springtime, I have a hankering for some more modern schenanigans, particularly post-SFN where the scope is just endless. Let me know if you want to see more of this. I'm only going to post more chapters/finish writing this with your support because there's a scene I've gotten to that I'm not particularly inspired by but know needs to be written and… and… well gorram it I want to skip to smut sooo badly. Oh dang, maybe I should just go write a sex-fic and get it out of my system. Phhhhff. Let me know what you think folks.

And yes Alistair is probably who you think he is, and if you've read Howl to the Moon, you'll realise this is in the same head-cannon so ;)

DISCLAIMERS: Obviously I do not own Sanctuary, any of the characters, or the image I've used (which is a screen-cap from Kali (Season 2 finale) where Helen and Pili find the Giant Sand Ray). I am not making any money from any of this, and do it purely out of love… and because I get a kick out of it.

UPDATE: 19/04/13 - quick update, re-watching Kali, I realised it was the Macri which made the EM pulses that made all the creatures go bonkers not Bertha. Though it was never particularly explained (maybe it was Bertha responding?) I think it's likely it was supposed to be the Macri's signal affecting everyone/thing. So I just changed that a bit. :) small slip up.