A/N: Sorry for the delay. I will try to post at least a chapter a week, and not skirt the edges of the week with a posting seven days after the previous since that is obviously cheating.
Unending love for Angela and Rox, who have wrestled this fic into its straightjacket! It's really not their fault it escaped, they did their very best - and what an impressive best that is.
Chapter the Third: True Colours
"Come here. You, hey, you, Thing-commonly-known-as-Sheppard. Come here." Rodney impatiently snapped his fingers in the direction of Freaky-Not-Sheppard. When his demand for movement went unheeded, he huffed and walked over to Not-Sheppard. He stood before the thing and waved a hand in its face. "Hey! Hello in there."
The hazel gaze slid up from his feet to his face and Rodney received a pleasant, dim-witted smile of recognition. "Yeah, hi, remember me. I'm the guy you've spent all morning with?"
"I remember you." At Rodney's arch eyebrow, the John Sheppard Copy provided more information. "Rodney McKay. Great friend and pain in the…ass?"
Rodney huffed before snapping his fingers in Not-Sheppard's face, because he could and it was immensely satisfying. "Half of that is accurate, at least. I am Rodney McKay, and a great friend indeed to be watching you, alone. There should be some security around, even if you are better than the real Sheppard in many ways." One look at Not-Sheppard's hopeful face had Rodney completing his thought. "But not quite right, so we're not keeping you. We're getting John Sheppard, flesh and bones, back. Never know when you might decide to go insane and kill me."
Not-Sheppard's face lost all the bright joy and settled on blank nothingness, and Rodney could not help the slight burn of guilt. He hated that face, and though he knew this was not the real Sheppard, thus not the real face, he hated it all the same. When John's face fell like that, it meant some very bad things were about to happen, had happened, or were happening. Which, McKay reasoned, they very well could be.
He, with a little help from Zelenka, had established that Not-Sheppard was indeed an inorganic being. They had pinpointed the location of a transmitter which they surmised communicated with those who had the real Sheppard – Radek's fanciful notion of adaptive updates of personality had been deemed stupider than Rodney could stand. From there had come an easy solution: track the signal and find Sheppard.
Only downside to this solution was that to track the signal, one had to take the receiver from its hiding place, in the very centre of Not-Sheppard's not-brain. It seemed that this pale copy of the colonel felt pain. The first incision Doctor Biro had practiced had been met with a gruelling scream. Biro, understandably, has dropped the saw and stepped back. At that point, Not-Sheppard had stopped all pretence of being the real Sheppard, and had proceeded to attach itself to McKay, much like small children seemed to do, finding the antics of the grumpy scientist amusing.
So Rodney was back at square one: with Not-Sheppard, in his lab, racking his brains for another way to find Sheppard. Screaming at Not-Sheppard had given little in the way of results and plenty in the way of sad eyes and pouting mouth – from Not-Sheppard – and nausea and unease – for Rodney.
Calibrating the scanners – again – Rodney spoke to Not-Sheppard in the same way he used to speak to his cat. Words flowed one into the other, with no precise message or purpose. They came, they went, just the sound of a voice lulling Not-Sheppard into…not sleep, that was ridiculous, he was a machine, but, perhaps, Rodney thought, a sense of security.
He did feel like a fabulous fool, speaking to a machine, but, though it looked like Sheppard, it was a lot more pleasant, and quiet.
"You know this might not work. I don't know what we'll do with you if the only solution is to cut you up, but from where I'm standing, it seems like the best solution. It's quick, it's easy. So, you might not like it, but you can't feel pain, can you?" Rodney turned to look at Not-Sheppard. "Can you? Really? Real pain? I assumed it was just the sound. Of course, you had to have known that was dangerous, but…if you were supposed to fool us, you'd have to feel pain, because Sheppard gets hurt all the time. Has no sense of basic safety, goes off running, jumping, fighting, like he's a twenty-something. He follows Ronon as if he can keep up! Moron."
While talking, Rodney had come to stand beside Not-Sheppard and he concluded his speech with a twisting nip to the skin of Not-Sheppard's bare arm.
"Ow," Not-Sheppard said, quietly and rather pitifully, pulling away from Rodney with betrayal on his face.
"Don't look at me like that, it was just a test."
The betrayal stayed firmly on the familiar features, and the pout returned.
"Don't! A test! Just a test! Don't be so –" Rodney's hands rolled in the air, indicating what Not-Sheppard was. "Just don't," Rodney concluded, annoyed by his incapability to find the right word.
The pout disappeared, but the betrayal stayed.
"Fine! Be like that! See if I don't recommend they cut you open anyways! You can scream all you want, I'll just walk away." He wouldn't; Rodney was physically incapable of walking away from John Sheppard, screaming out in pain. No matter that it was not John Sheppard, and that it was not real pain, he would never have been able to ignore the scream.
"McKay, stop fighting with the robot." Ronon strode in, followed by Teyla, and Radek.
"Oooh, lunch," Rodney said, gesturing for the tray Radek carried.
"Have you made any progress, Rodney?" Teyla enquired, glancing at Not-Sheppard who smiled and waved at her. She weakly returned the smile, unable to completely ignore the colonel's likeness.
"I've made progress."
Radek snorted and looked at the screen of Rodney's laptop. "Right, progress. You have become great friends with Roboshep, yes?'
"We're not calling him Roboshep! I told you!"
"Have we not agreed that Sheppard was the best name?"
"No, we didn't agree. We," Rodney said gesturing solely to himself, "have been told by Elizabeth to call him Sheppard. We have not agreed to any name. Anyways, he's been with me all morning and he's Not-Sheppard. That's that, right, Not-Sheppard?"
Not-Sheppard smiled. "Right, McKay,' he drawled in a familiar fashion. It was close to sarcastic, but not quite there.
Rodney turned to Radek. "There was a spike in his power consumption, earlier, I think he gets updates or something, because he seems more Sheppard-like when power spikes." McKay spoke with conviction, as if he had not spoken ill of Radek and his lineage for voicing the same theory.
"Spike? That is interesting. Is it possible that I was right? Is it possible that the Grand Master McKay was too quick to dismiss an idea which did not spring from his greedy little brain?"
"My brain is not little!"
"But it is greedy. Greedy, arrogant, insufferable man!" There was a long line of muttering in Czech.
Rodney mostly ignored the displeased sounds. "It doesn't matter who thought of it first, Radek, but it might help to get the tracker out of him and stop the signal"
The Czech muttering continued, unhindered by Rodney's nonsense. Not-Sheppard recoiled and Ronon astutely remarked, "I don't think he'd like that."
"Jeeeee, you think? Is it the earlier screaming that tipped you off?"
Radek, studying the laptop's screen, carefully pressed one key, then another.
"RADEK! Don't touch my work!"
"No shouting, we are done with that. Look," Radek said, pointing at a particular spot on the screen.
"What? What? What!" Rodney leaned forward and studied the screen. "Huh," he said, then, "Oh. Oh!"
Snap snap snap went the fingers before settling over the keyboard and typing up a storm. "Yes. Yes, this will work!" Rodney referenced the result of Not-Sheppard's scans.
Ronon and Teyla exited the lab, leaving Not-Sheppard to witness a phenomenon which gave those without scientific inclinations headaches. The Wonder Twins – granted, a smarter, older, and more competent version -- activated, and as expected, they retrieved a solution from the nebulous world of what if's and maybe's. Rodney and Radek were surprised, upon their return to the real world, to find Not-Sheppard curled into a ball, his face resting against the floor of the lab. After a brief discussion of a machine's need for rest, Rodney decidedly concluded that it was a part of Sheppard's personality, the laziness inherent to the real man, that had forced Not-Sheppard to nap. They left Not-Sheppard to his snoring, arguing that a machine should not snore.
Elizabeth was startled by two grown men, eyes bright and mouths smiling, erupting in her office and tag-teaming her with a high speed technological spiel. She watched the metaphorical ball going back and forth between her two top scientists until the twinge in her neck indicated she had had enough. "Ok. Ok. You found something. Explain. Coherently."
"We can get the signal without cutting Not-Sheppard up."
"Yes, Colonel Sheppard has scar on his arm from the change? The bug change? So does RoboShep."
"Except Not-Sheppard didn't get turned into a bug. It's a port. We can connect directly – well, not directly, it'll take a few modification to be accessible and for our system to work with its system. Of course, if it doesn't have an interface we'll have to create one that's compatible and that we can--"
"Rodney," Elizabeth interrupted, wanting relevant information only.
"Yes. We can probably pinpoint the signal by logging on Not-Sheppard's system. It should be easy."
"Not easy, RoboShep certainly is sophisticated—"
"The theory is simple enough."
"Timeframe?"
"A few hours."
"No, more. Two, perhaps three days. Time to eat and sleep included in the count," Radek conservatively estimated.
"One day."
"Two."
"Twelve hours."
Elizabeth interrupted the impending cock fight. "Timeframe is not as important as the results. Go, keep me updated."
The Wonder Twins nodded and left, bickering over time and abilities.
-O-O-O-O-O-
Not-Sheppard followed quietly. He moved closer to Rodney when they reached the jumper bay. The bustling activity of the pre-gating routine was in full force: Ronon spun his gun, Teyla watched calmly and marines stood with their hands on their guns. Rodney started toward the jumper.
Not-Sheppard remained rooted at the door.
"McKay," Ronon said, indicating Not-Sheppard.
Rodney turned and spotted the motionless copy of his team leader. "Hey! You! Come here!"
Not-Sheppard bit his lip and shuffled his feet. It was alarmingly endearing and even Ronon had to suppress a smile.
"For God's sake! Get over here!"
Not-Sheppard looked at his shoes and tugged on his vest. Rodney had given him a vest only because Sheppard should have a vest when going off world, copy or no copy.
"Come on," whined Rodney.
Still, Not-Sheppard refused to move. Grumbling, Rodney went back to the door and stood beside Not-Sheppard. "Come here. NOW!"
Not-Sheppard moved closer to Rodney, who huffed and grumbled about eager puppies and always knowing it all the way to the jumper. The marines watched the duo with aggressive determination. Someone had taken their CO. They needed their CO. They would get their CO back. End. Of. Story.
Taking his place in the driver's seat, Rodney started the pre-flight routine. He concentrated on the jumper, momentarily forgetting the world that surrounded him. That is, until a presence made itself known by standing right beside Rodney's chair.
"What!" Rodney demanded, looking up at Not-Sheppard with a frown.
"I fly," Not-Sheppard said, stroking the console lovingly.
"What! No!"
"I fly, I love to fly."
"You. Are. NOT. Sheppard! Now is not the time to get back in the role."
"I fly."
"No!"
"I fly."
'NO!"
"I fly, please."
"I said no! Somebody take him away from me!"
When nobody moved, Rodney sighed and got up from his seat. He took hold of Not-Sheppard's arm and forced him into the back of the jumper, cursing Sheppard's overpowering love for the jumpers that even a copy could not suppress. He pushed him into the bench between Ronon and the enormous marine, and sternly warned Not-Sheppard, "You stay here! I'm flying this ship. You are not Sheppard; you don't get to boss people around and be obnoxious. Be. Quiet!"
Not-Sheppard pouted, but Rodney ignored it and returned to his seat. The team prepared to embark on mission "Recover Lost Organic Idiot" – Rodney's mission title – or mission "Find Sheppard" – everybody else's mission title.
