09. Forget Standard Procedure

At the end of the day, Sheppard knew "what" they had found. McKay knows "what" they had retrieved. What stunk to hell and back was what Woolsey's opinion of "what" they have was brought back for closer scrutiny.

Behind a curtain of privacy, Carson, Sheppard, Woolsey, and McKay spoke.

She could tell their names, though she wasn't able to get any further.

"She's just a kid! A baby practically!" Sheppard yells indignantly.

"It's what she could become, Colonel," Woolsey pointed out, but the usual stoicism was missing from his voice in lieu of the reluctant hesitance.

"What do you think, Carson? Can you help her?" McKay asked, sounding strained and on the verge of demanding the same impossibilities that had been pulled from him on a weekly basis.

She blinked, aware of the stink of humans and alert of her growing weakness. She thrashed against her restraints, her small body giving a decent fight against the ties that bound her. It wasn't enough.

Carson sounded both quiet and reluctant. "The most humane thing to do would be a drug cocktail designed to kill her. We can'na feed her the way she needs, and I can'na alter her this young on the genetic level. We certainly can'na send her home, and I'll be damned if I let her end up with Area 51 or the IOA."

She hissed at the sweet weakness around her. She raised her scarred-open palms as much as she could see, and gave in immediately to the need that made her want to screech at the nurse attending to her.

She hadn't been listening for a while, and wasn't sure what it meant when she heard Sheppard speak.

"Get out," Sheppard ordered, "Now."

"I'm not leaving," McKay responded.

She heard others leaving, the lights suddenly dimming in the room they had her caged in. She hissed again when footsteps came near her, her hands feebly reaching up to feed.

Solid, cool, metallic—an open hole of metal pressed against her temple. Her hand jerked again, threatening to break through the bonds.

Sheppard hesitated with harsh, choked breathing, something that sounded like a held-back cry.

McKay placed his fingers around Sheppard's on the pistol.

She smelled their presence and gnashed her too-human teeth at the sickening pair of them. They were weak, they were food, they were nothing

Next, there was a ballistic shot through the base of her skull where she had least expected it.

As consciousness left the vastness of the mind she had available while so young, her head fell to the side. The last thing she saw—heard—felt—is the fact they didn't want her to die.

Blood and life spilled from her head, and she smiles

They were everything she was not—weakness.

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