Thanks for all of the feedback I've gotten! I know I didn't HAVE to kill Janet, but despite that ending, Heroes is one of my very favorite episodes because of everyone else's reactions.

One unfortunate side effect of fighting to keep the Goa'uld from taking over the galaxy was that on occasion, the bad guys decided to take the fight straight to Earth. Most people on the planet were blissfully unaware of how close they came to total annihilation, or the fact that the secret to the Earth's defense was located deep underneath the snow in Antarctica. Once the danger was gone, that base – left behind thousands of years earlier by the Ancients – became the best resource the SGC had for finding the Lost City of Atlantis. As summer approached, however, the team assigned to the facility wasn't making much progress.

"I think we're going to have to put off our trip by about a week or two," Daniel told his wife as she cooked dinner one night. "If it was anything else, I'd say no, but…it's about Atlantis."

She smiled slightly. "I've been waiting for you to tell me this for a week."

"Yeah, took a little while to get the courage…You could go on without me with the kids."

Sha're shook her head. "We can wait. Father isn't expecting us on a particular date."

"Are you sure?" she nodded. "In that case, maybe I could make things a little easier for you – take one kid off your hands."

"What?"

"I'm not sure why Jack agreed to this – maybe he was distracted by the Jell-O in the mess – but he okayed me bringing Catie along. Technically, she has the clearance, although I'm sure this is going to get very quietly slipped into some report for the Pentagon."

"She would be thrilled."

"I thought so, too. So you're okay with this?"

"Only a couple weeks?" she asked.

"I promise…or if not, you can go on without us." Sha're threw a dish rag at him. "Okay, okay! I promise. Two weeks, tops, and then we leave for Abydos. With or without finding Atlantis."

So many things about the trip made it special for Catherine, besides their destination. It was her first time on an airplane, first time out of Colorado, first time going outside the city limits without her mother… Jack had gotten a small SGC jacket for her and designated her as 'his eyes and ears' at the base. Catherine would miss General Hammond, but so far it seemed like having Jack in charge had some interesting perks.

"Look down there," Daniel told his daughter, pointing out the window of the helicopter they were riding in. A smile crossed her face as she obeyed and saw the only man-made object on the snow-covered landscape – a glass dome.

"Is that it?" she asked.

He nodded. "That's it."

The chopper landed and they both hurried inside the facility, along with the few other personnel that had ridden with them from McMurdo. A brown-haired woman was waiting for them. "Welcome, Dr. Jackson," she told Daniel.

"Thanks, Elizabeth. I love what you've done with the place."

She laughed. "We've come a long way in a month. We'd raise the temperature higher, but the walls would start melting."

"Hate it when that happens," he kidded back. "This is Catherine, my daughter. Catie, this is Dr. Elizabeth Weir."

She smiled at the little girl as she shook her hand. "I hear you're set to follow in your father's footsteps?"

Catherine shrugged. "Maybe."

They unpacked in the living quarters first; at least that structure was heated, if sparsely furnished. The mess hall was also the main social area; the team had started giving nightly lectures on each of the research areas in order to keep each other up to date. They also had frequent poker games.

At the bottom of the longest elevator that Catherine had ever seen was a more amazing place than she'd dreamed of. The icy outpost was beautiful, brightly lit and ornate. If that was only the landing pad for Atlantis, she couldn't imagine what the actual city looked like.

Dr. Weir showed them around, pointing out all of the things that they'd added or learned about since Daniel's brief visit to the base a few months earlier. "We're getting better at understanding the technology left behind here, but we're still no closer to actually finding where Atlantis went." She handed him a tablet PC. "This is the latest batch of writings that we've been able to translate."

"I'll get on it." He turned to his daughter. "Do you want to keep looking around?" Catherine nodded. "Okay, what's rule number one?"

"Don't touch anything unless someone says it's okay."

"Thank you. Go on."

Catherine quickly found that most of the people in the base were extremely nice. Peter, one of the engineers, let her touch a drone; he'd quickly realized that he should have first asked if she (like her father) had the ATA gene when the device started glowing dimly. Heather and Carson, the two doctors on the team, wouldn't let her get put in the stasis chamber, but they did explain what they'd learned about it so far. William, one of the astrophysicists, showed her what they'd been able to determine from the Ancients' database about how the galaxy had changed in the last several million years.

"Oh, God, is it show and tell again?" one of the other astrophysicists, Rodney McKay, asked – or rather, whined – as he walked up to see his teammate with Catherine. "Come on, go bug someone else. We've got work to do."

"You're fine," William assured her. "Some days he's just grumpy. And by some I mean all."

McKay glared. "Cute. Go get your father to show you what he's doing or something."

Catherine got up – her father's second rule was not to bother anyone if they were too busy to show her something. "Thanks, Dr. Mendes," she said. "I guess I'll just head back up to the mess. I've got a book to read."

"You sure?" She nodded. "Okay, same time tomorrow, then." Catherine headed for the elevator. "What is your problem?" the scientist asked McKay. "She'd been down here for fifteen minutes. I told her I could go over some stuff with her after lunch everyday; the kid's got a knack for science."

"This isn't a day care," McKay grumbled. "I don't even know what the hell she's doing here."

The other man rolled his eyes as he turned back to his computer. "Obviously, to make your life miserable."

"Mmm, I'm sure."

Catherine spent most of the rest of the day up in the mess hall working on her summer reading list. Just before dinnertime, however, she rode back down to the ice base and tracked down McKay. "Oh, what now?" he groaned when he saw her.

"I just wanted to give this to you," she told him, handing him a piece of paper. "For your desk or something." He rolled his eyes, but took the sheet from her. A frown crossed his face as he looked at it.

"What is this supposed to be?"

"A cat."

"I can see that. Why are you giving me a picture of a cat?"

"You have one, don't you? I just figured maybe you miss it. I know I miss my mom and brother, and I haven't been gone as long as you have. I thought maybe if you had a picture, you wouldn't miss it as much."

McKay was speechless. "Really?"

Catherine smiled. "Uh-huh."

"Well…wow, I…um…Maybe you're not quite as rotten of a kid as most."

She cocked her head in confusion. "Is that supposed to be a good thing?"

"Yeah."

Her smile returned. "Okay. See you at dinner."

McKay nodded. "Yeah, see you."

TBC...