SoS - Chapter 21

First things first- a deep and heartfelt thank you to everyone who helped me reach over 500 hits in the first 48 hours and a grand total of 980 hits from 206 visitors for this story in December 2014! Now, I figured in order to start 2015 off right, I should go ahead and publish another chapter, despite only a handful of responses to my challenge.

But from now on I mean it! No love = No new chappies!

Post #rotaracting101 w/ pics of you volunteering, or now you can post under #liaveannos w/ general comments, complaints, requests, or just about anything along that line.

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The rooftop was cluttered and filthy. Not that he'd been expecting a pristine example of cleanliness, but the debris were making it exceptionally difficult to be stealthy. And stealth was an absolute must as, up ahead, they could clearly make out the outlines of three well-armed soldiers standing guard along the entrance to the elevator shaft. But they weren't going for the elevators.

Jake glanced back over his shoulders and signaled towards the other two to stay low and follow him around the corner. There was a large air conditioning matrix up on the roof, nearly sixteen feet long and a fair bit taller than he was, which blocked the soldiers' view of the southern side of the building. And there, behind the unsteady hum and cough of the AC unit, was a large ventilation fan. Wisps of white vapor could be seen creeping lazily out over the top.

Both Cassie and Jake were already reacting to the smell. The air stung at their eyes and made it painful to breath. But they could not cough, or they may give away their position to the men standing guard.

Steeling himself and trying to take shallow breaths, Jake checked on the guards one last time before ducking low behind a particularly wide length of ducting and, still half crouched, moved as swiftly and silently as he could to hide behind the AC unit. As big as it was, he no longer had any need to duck, but he sank into a squat anyways, counting out thirty long, painful seconds before glancing around the corner once again to check that all three soldiers had still remained in place.

Satisfied that he hadn't been seen, he signaled the go-ahead to Cassie and a hairs breath later she was slinking along behind the ducting and had seated herself on the rough concrete beside him. Another agonizing thirty second wait and Jake checked around the corner again. This time he noted, with no small amount of alarm, that he could only see two of the guards. He stared for a moment longer than he would have otherwise dared, but when the remaining two seemed utterly non-chalant he eventually drew his head back and nodded reluctantly to Erek. A moment and a half later, and the Canine alien android had joined them.

"What now?" Cassie whispered, trying desperately not to breathe in too deeply.

"We need to get that ventilation fan up and running. Erek, do you think you can handle that?" Jake asked, nodding meaningfully to the four foot wide fan lying caged in the facilities roof, fat cables connecting it to the AC unit. Their resident tech head took a good long look at the unit before frowning at the cables.

"I can get it up and running again, but I am going to need someone inside the environmental control matrix to activate it," the android informed them gravely.

"The what?" Cassie asked sharply with no small amount of alarm. In a moment of briefest panic, she breathed a bit too deeply and inhaled a faint wisp of caustic white fumes. They all froze, waiting for the guards to come charging around the corner at any minute, but when Jake risked a peak around the corner the same two guards remained clearly within his field of vision. Finally he turned back around to answer Cassie's question.

"He means the AC. The switch is inside this thing we're hiding behind. Place this big, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a whole control room in there."

"The door is most likely on the other side," Erek agreed logically.

"In full view of the guards," Jake pointed out despondently.

"One of you will have to morph and go into the control room to manually activate the ventilation after I repair and reconnect the system," Erek said, looking between the two animorphs questioningly. Cassie dropped her shoulders slightly and looked at Jake with an odd sad little smile on her face.

"It's going to have to be you, Jake."

"No," Jake disagreed as loudly and firmly as he dared between the proximity of the guards and the terrible white smoke. "I don't like the idea of leaving you up here with two armed soldiers standing guard and a third one gone walk-about!"

"And I don't like the idea of any of us being near anyone with a loaded weapon!" Cassie pointed out fairly. "But you know machines a lot better than I do. I'm animals and medicine. Organics, Jake. That's my thing. And this may not be your thing, but you're a hell of a lot better at it than I am. It has to be you and you know it."

Cassie gave him another odd little smile and Jake could barely hear his own thoughts over the grinding of his teeth. She was right, but that didn't mean he had to like it. Sensing that he'd finally given in, she looked back to Erek and nodded.

"Jake, you will have to find the manual override for the ventilation system. It should be separate from the main AC controls, likely with warning and emergency only indicators. I need at least four and a half minutes to re-connect the system. You cannot engage the system before that or it will short out the connections and the motor will burn out before it even turns on."

"Right, four and a half minutes," Jake agreed, nodding as he glanced at his watch. A slender hand slipped into his and gave it a reassuring squeeze. He looked up to see Cassie smiling softly at him.

"You got this Jake."

Jake tried to smile back, but it felt more like a spasmodic twitch than a true smile. Squeezing Cassie's hand in return, he nodded to Erek and glanced down at his watch.

"Four and a half minutes?"

Erek nodded and Jake gave Cassie's hand one last squeeze before slipping his hand from hers and turning to face the ventilation slats on the side of the air conditioning matrix. Things were about to get interesting…

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Jay stared despondently at the rock in front of him. They had run just about every test known to man, and even made up a few new ones to try and unlock the secrets of this tiny little paperweight. But so far- no dice. Nothing. Nada. A big old goose egg. The square root of zilch. X-rays, MRI, spectrophotometry. Nothing they had tried had yielded any results and yet still the darn thing continued to glow. They only just barely picked up low level radiation readings from a cross spectrum analysis, but they were so faint that they would have been dismissed as background radiation if they hadn't known to look for it. Jay let out a sigh that turned into a frustrated growl and ran his fingers frantically through his hair. No matter what they did, none of their machines picked up on anything.

"No luck?"

Jay spun around in his swivel chair but overshot. He got a glimpse of Molly standing in the doorway before she was out of view again and he had to reverse course. She stood in the doorway to his lab, bright red hair brushing against the shoulders of her pale blue medical scrubs. She had a cute little sympathetic smile on her face and two cups of coffee in her hands, one of which she offered to Jay.

"Ooh! Goodie- caffeine," Jay exclaimed as he took a long drink from the glorious beverage. Molly sure did make a mean cup of coffee, and it helped that she put in just a little bit of cocoa powder. Jay looked up when he heard her giggling.

"Sometimes I forget how childish you can be." Jay flushed scarlet, which only made Molly giggle more. "It isn't a bad thing. In fact… I think it's kind of adorable."

"Puppies are adorable," Jay sulked halfheartedly, his cheeks still pink but appreciative of Molly's attempt to restore his dignity. "I'd rather be dashing brilliant and masculine."

Molly just smiled endearingly at him. "Well then, Mr. Dashingly Brilliant, I guess you'll just have to solve the mystery of the Memory Stone now won't you?"

"Is that what we're calling it now?"

"That's what Colonel O'Neil is calling it anyways. It's sort of caught on."

"Well it certainly rolls of the tongue better than Relic P3X-975 Charlie 16," Jay grumbled under his breath as he continued to stare stubbornly at the object in question.

"So… no unlocked mysteries of the universe yet?" Molly asked reluctantly. Jay's tired sigh was answer enough but as the tired scientist mussed up his already messy hair he began to answer her in earnest anyway.

"We've mapped all the symbols, active and inactive, for the archeology and linguistics departments but nothing so far. We've mapped the energy signature, which we don't fully understand, and run every test imaginable but so far nothing!" Molly settled down onto one corner for the desk as Jay continued in his explanation/rant. He was only half talking to her and mostly just thinking out loud now, but she didn't mind. "All we know for sure is that it runs off of some brand new high frequency energy that we've never even seen before and that anyone who looks at it is forced to relive some of their most awful memories but none of our machines can pick anything up at all!"

Molly just shrugged as she blew delicately on her coffee before taking a sip. "Machines don't really have memories though, do they?"

"Huh?" Jay was suddenly starring at her with an intensity that she found slightly disquieting as she fiddled with the coffee cup in her hands. "Say that again!"

"Machines don't have memories?"

Jay lurched to his feet so quickly he sent his swivel chair rolling across the room where it continued to spin in slow lazy circles.

"Of course! How could we have been so stupid?"

"Stupid about what?" Molly asked, honestly not understanding whatever intuitive leap she had just provoked. But Jay just continued to look at her as though she had just proved that light saber technology was possible.

"We've been using every machine we've got on base to test this thing, but the only time we got any sort of response from it was when it interacted with a living organic being!" Molly was vaguely following. Xenotechnology really wasn't her forte, but organics she understood. "Whatever frequency this thing operates on is only compatible within a neurological mainframe! It needs a living mind, complete with memories for reference points, in order to engage! It must be programmed to remain dormant unless connected to a neurological interface! Molly you're a genius!"

With an IQ of 147, Molly actually was already aware of that last fact. But even with her considerable intelligence she wasn't prepared to Jay Felger to suddenly wrap her in his arms and press his lips enthusiastically to hers. For split second she froze, shocked and unable to comprehend what was happening, before reality caught up with her and she melted into the kiss. And just as suddenly Jay pulled back, another goofy grin on his face as he snatched up his rock and 3-D glasses and bolted from the lab.

"I've gotta find Carter!"

Molly only just barely caught herself from melting off the desk corner into a puddle of goo on the floor. She barely even noticed the warm coffee splashed across her scrubs of the now half empty mug hanging loosely in her grasp. If she had the capacity to consider it, she would realize that Jay was probably now running through the halls of the SGC with an identical stain on his shirt and lab coat from where the coffee had been sloshed between them during his hug. But at the moment she wasn't thinking about stains. Most of what she was thinking revolved around a certain Jay Felger, and his coffee flavored kiss.

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