A/N: This chapter was a beast to get out this week. I have been dealing with injury, pain (I'm counting them as different because they had different causes.), fickle muses, and lack of knowledge. Stargate had people who actually looked up all the science talk to make sure they got it at least semi-accurate and then they had the incomparable Amanda Tapping who did her own research to make sure they got it correct (according to all the interviews I've watched.) and if they didn't she fixed it as much as she could. Seriously that woman does everything. It's mildly terrifying and insanely intimidating to someone who is not inclined to molecular biology, genetics, etc etc etc to write the kind of detail needed to do justice to a Stargate story. And I know I fall well short of the mark so I thank you for your leniency.

I was recently asked when I thought this story would be completed. My answer was that I do not know. I know that the end of this installment is on the horizon but I am not sure when exactly as the characters have a tendency to demand things in the middle of a story that I was not prepared for. If they followed my intentions this "season" would have ended over a month ago. But they didn't and here we are. I do know that with your support I will keep after Leaving Earth until it is done. But I will be taking a break before Arriving begins to make sure I have the plot arch and storylines down before I wade into the episodes.

Also, I want to thank my wonderful loyal readers who have stuck with me through over 40 chapters. Wow. To those who keep after me so that I force myself past the beast and monster chapters. Those who with their kind, and at times pointed, words drive me to be better and to progress in my craft. I am nowhere near perfect but you all have stuck with me. I hope I do you proud and continue improving.

As always, like, follow, favorite, subscribe, and review!

Much Love,

JR

Recap:

After Ronon is accosted by a sick Atlantis Team Member and he is stuck in quarantine. Luka has asked some awkward questions and made some interesting requests. And the days are counting down until the formal mating. Will it even happen with Ronon in Quarantine?

Chapter 13 Quarantine Part 2

Infirmary. 0940. Quarantine. Room Two.

"We're all here, doc." Ronon smiled at his long-time friend. There was a time he would have pursued the woman, but in hindsight, he was glad he missed that opportunity. He wouldn't have his sights on his own fierce little blond if he had, and Jennifer was much better off with McKay. They could tease each other out of their offices in a way that he would never have been able to work out. No, all in all, he was very pleased with the way things turned out. Now if only he could get out of this room…

Leaning back against the clear wall nearest him, Sophie was the picture of cool placidity. Which confused Jennifer to no end. She knew the woman had seen Connors go down, she knew too that Sophie had enough medical knowledge that she should be worried. But there she stood, shoulder against the glass so she had an eye on Ronon and the room, with a small calm smile on her face like she wasn't scared at all.

"So what's the news that you couldn't share with us until we were together, Doctor Keller?" Sophie prodded, absentmindedly catching the back of Luka's backpack by the strategically placed handle when his attention was caught by a beeping monitor.

Swallowing, Keller tapped the screen of her tablet and shared the image onto the main monitor of the room so everyone could see it. "Good news, we isolated the problem." Coughing lightly, she looked down to read the information that she had collected from the ancient database. "It's actually not a virus or bacteria. It's a spore."

When it came up it almost looked reflective on the screen, metallic kind of. Like a spiked clamshell in shape and that odd reflective blue. Definitely foreign. "It's kinda pretty," Sophie admitted out loud. "But I have a feeling that you're going to tell us it does some rather un-pretty things. So out with it."

"Found on one of the ocean planets in Pegasus, the spore is one of the rare few that actually thrive in water, only attacking mammalian-based life forms." Tapping the screen in her hands again, she pulled up the next screen. It was a graph of sorts, that showed the results of his blood workup."It seems to just be spiking his adrenaline levels so far which we found consistent with the results recorded in the database."

Moving to get a closer look at the screen, Sophie traced the back and red levels with her eyes. "I'm assuming that the black levels are," she glanced over to the doctor, "his normal levels?"

Jennifer nodded. "We take comparative samples every week when the teams are on active duty so that we know pre and post-mission levels in case anything pops up. Scientists are subject to bi-weekly tests for the same reason."

"Well that'll be a hell of a pregnancy test," Sophie mused, turning back to the screen. On some of the levels, nothing seemed to be moving, others only had a slight raise. Some even seemed to be dropping. "His testosterone levels are raised." She murmured. "How does it compare to Connors?"

"Minimal changes yet in comparison," Jennifer admitted, her blond head bobbing in connection with her words. "Her aggression and sex hormones are through the roof. We've even referenced old SG files because they ran into something similar on P3X-797. The spore is reacting similarly to the histaminayltic they found on the planet, other than the lowered intelligence levels which is why I have Connors sedated and under guard in case she's smart enough to get past the door."

"Not possible," Sophie murmured, flicking through the file link to the video of how the spore moved in the sample. "Not unless she can match the med staff bio-metric scans. She doesn't match anyone else but hers."

Rolling his eyes at the tone of voice that he well knew, Luka used it often enough when he was engrossed in a problem and not likely to come up for air or food for a while. "So make it simple for me," waving over to the mother and son who were going through the data like hungry piranha after a wounded tapir, he shrugged. "They'll hear everything you say and be able to reply and repeat back to you what you said. So just get on with it, doc."

"Bottom line, you're in here for a week at least." She sighed, shoulders slumping. "I know you were only a couple of days away from getting married but you're levels are rising much slower than Lieutenant Connors and I'm not sure why. Maybe she only had a limited number of spores in her system to pass on. Maybe it's your slightly different genetic make-up. Maybe it's as simple as you being male and her being female. Either way, this thing is passed on through bodily fluids and according to the security video, you were the fifteenth man that she had intimate with and or exchanged bodily fluids with. I don't know how many they infected before they came for their symptoms."

Sighing, she shook her head. "Speaking of symptoms, are you having any? Headache, dizziness, nausea, racing heart, abnormal sweating, pain or tenderness anywhere, abnormal aggression, mood swings, anything out of the ordinary."

"Last time I checked, wanting your soon-to-be mate out of her clothes was normal," he teased, his smile growing. "So I think I'm good there."

Coughing on her chuckle, Keller winced. "Tends to be normal, yes."

From the screen, and what looked like a chemical breakdown of the spore, Sophie asked "how is Connors?"

Turning grave, Jennifer pulled up the video of Connors in quarantine room one where she was strapped to the bed. Even in the video, the guard that sat between her clenched teeth shone like a beacon in the low light. "Not good." The doctor said with a heavy breath. "Raised levels of everything. We have her levels from her checkup before the seizure. But they were low and within the normal range. Nothing that should have caused this." She waved to the screen. "All I can do right now is try to keep her calm and work backward. Maybe I'll find a trigger."

"Like the aggression, she showed to me or the sexual aggression toward Ronon?" Sophie asked, idly brushing her son's hair. "Both are known to elevate blood pressure and change hormone levels."

"You're thinking it's a combination of factors?" Jennifer asked, her eyebrows drawing together as she moved to the screen that Sophie looked at. "Like a perfect storm?"

"I'm not sure how it works for humans," Sophie began. "But I know with Furlings it's never just one thing. Like we don't get a cold. We get a cold, an ear infection, and tooth infection but when you track it back, it's the tooth infection that started everything. In engineering parlance there's a shatter point, everything else just comes off it."

"Humans tend to do that too." Brushing her hair away from her face, Keller watched as Luka began tapping the screen. "But we'd need minute by minute progression."

"No." He said, continuing the tapping, straining to reach the top of the screen until his mother lifted him to her hip. "You need a starting point, a time, and an endpoint." Huffing at the annoyance that was his height, he wrapped his legs around his mother and leaned so far over that he was nearly parallel to the floor and she was holding onto his backpack to keep him from falling. "Gran could do this much faster." He groused.

"Just find what you can, baby." His mother murmured. "Then the doctor and Gran can take it from there."

Tapping into the city security cameras and life signs detector, he did some hacking that not even she could follow and pulled up a screen she had seen once but hadn't ever needed personally, so she really hadn't paid any attention. It was similar to the medical tracking program that was in her wrist band though. It showed heart rates, respiration, even the chemical composition of a person's breath and sweat. Which struck Sophie as more than a little gross actually.

But as he pulled up the tiny tussle between herself and Connors then played it through slowly by frame, Keller gasped and expanded the frame of the medical information on the screen. "But that's…" She trailed off for a moment then clicked to the next readout. "That adrenaline jump was too high even for an untrained combatant." She murmured.

Looking back at Ronon, Sophie shrugged. She understood a bit of the medical thing, it was really hard not to in her family, but this was far and away above her head. She was a metal, ceramic, and glass person. Wires talked to her, not veins and tendons. Ronon returned her puzzled look then looked back at Jennifer as she jumped like she had been electrocuted.

Sending the readout to her tablet so she could move with it, she turned back to the adults in the room. "I may have an idea." Then she took off like a shot through the sliding door.

"Well, that was informative," Gunnr murmured, plucking his nephew up from his sister's hip. "I'll take that. Talk to your husband."

"Not mated yet."

Rolling his eyes at her snark, he snorted. "Give it time."

Woolsey's office. 0950.

"You're saying that you think her body is attempting to fight off the spore?" Woolsey asked as he removed his glasses to clean them once again, buying himself a moment to think.

"I think that the spore itself is trying to lower Lieutenant Connors bodily functions." The good doctor began again, slightly more coherently than she had been the first time. "The Lantean records of the spore said that it only survived in fish found in cold saltwater. Now humans apparently have the correct ph, oxygen, and salinity for the spore to survive. But not the correct temperature. I think Connors was unconsciously trying to raise her body temperature. She was running through hallways, eating the spiciest food we have in the mess. I think the spore impeded her cognitive function so that she didn't even think to come to medical for help. But she knew she was cold and getting colder. A fever is the normal human response to infection, and she has enough medical knowledge to try to induce a fever on her own. But not enough to try the drugs that would, for which I am grateful." She ended.

"What do you suggest we do?"

"I think we have to take her temperature to an uncomfortably high level and sustain it until the spore in her lungs and nervous system are eliminated."

Oh, he knew that he should have stayed in bed, Woolsey thought on a sigh. "How high?"

Jennifer swallowed, looking down at her tablet. "One hundred six degrees Fahrenheit at least."

Rapidly blinking, Woolsey slid into his chair. "Correct me if I'm wrong doctor, but last time I checked, that temperature begins causing organ and brain damage rather quickly." When she nodded, Woolsey began rubbing his temples. "Are you telling me that she is at the point that I have to authorize something that has the distinct possibility of killing her in order to save her life?"

"According to her levels now? We have less than thirty minutes." She informed him. "And considering she was infected two days ago? This spore has an uncomfortably short incubation period. And she has exposed twenty-seven other members of the expedition. Only Doctor MacIntyre and her son have been cleared."

"Why aren't they infected?"

"Working theory?" Jennifer asked. At her superior's nod, she pulled up Sophie's results from her testing. "Sophie consistently runs hotter than ninety-nine degrees. I think that her non-human DNA and Luka's Tokk'ra genetics make them inhospitable hosts for the spore. But Ronon is just human enough that the spore has taken a very slow hold. He generally runs at exactly ninety-nine degrees."

Eyebrows furrowing, Woolsey shook his head trying to clear the muddle of facts that he was swamped by. "So if it is only a matter a degree or two," he began in slow and precise tones, "why the need to raise Connors temperature so high? Why not just induce a mild to medium grade fever that wouldn't risk damaging her permanently?"

"Because the spore has gotten too much a foothold on her," Jennifer said with the certainty that only a doctor, and a very good one at that, could muster. "If it follows the same pattern as other spores, the colony builds until it reaches a population peak, at which point it, for lack of a better term, blooms and spreads. If it spreads she may infect dozens if not hundreds more, and that doesn't count the others already infected. They are already showing signs of infection at a slower rate, I would guess that is because they were among the secondary exposure instead of getting the spores straight from the sample in the lab."

"And her current status?"

"She's in a coma."

Interrupting the intense staring that they had going on, the door to the office slid open with a hiss admitting General O'Neill. "Woolsey we have a problem."

"Well," the administrator of Atlantis sighed, squeezing his eyes shut. "It wouldn't be a day in Atlantis without the world ending." Turning in his chair to the door, Woolsey looked balefully at the man who entered. "Let me guess, for whatever reason we aren't being allowed to land on our designated stop. And we're ordered to immediately return to Earth?"

Eyes bugging slightly in annoyance at having his thunder stolen, O'Neill puffed like a bantam rooster. "The Lucian Alliance caught wind of Atlantis moving." He nodded at the doctor in greeting as she backed away a step, yielding the proverbial floor to him. "They are on the planet and every other option you have between here and the edge of the system. And from the new system border comms satellites," he said referring to the latest security satellites that were being placed in deep space to scan for enemy and ally activity. "We got word that what is left of the Traveler fleet has asked for an alliance. They're offering an escort to the new Atlantis homeworld in exchange for protection and admittance into the new federation that is forming."

"Star Trek?" Jennifer chuckled under her breath. "That's what we're going with?"

"You live on a spaceship, Doc." A tiny smile was cast in her direction. "And work for a top-secret government organization that travels through the wormholes to other planets meeting alien races." He blinked as a thought hit him, not for the first time, as more than a little odd. "Most of whom look quite human. Yeah," he drawled, "we live in a television show. So why not take some cues from one?"

Shrugging, at least it wasn't a terrible idea she decided.

"There's only a few hundred left." Jack continued, turning back to Woolsey with the air of a man that was used to commanding the attention of a room. He had grown into being a general and a leader quite well, even if he still hated being the "man," but hadn't given in to all the trappings and red tape of it. He was still a soldier at heart. His loyalties had just become a little more flexible over the years, and now he had the power to actually do something about and for them. He liked that bit.

"Didn't they pass on old Genii tech to the Alliance?"

Jack smiled. "Old easily detectable technology that was found before any damage was done, yes."

"So we like them now?" She asked, confusion furrowing her brow.

Woolsey, content to let the doctor ask the questions that he himself was wondering, looked out the clear glass wall of his office to people scurrying back and forth. Going about their daily lives, working like little ants preparing for the winter. Never ceasing. He was responsible for them. Their health, their happiness, their continued safety. That weight of responsibility had never weighed so heavily before. He rarely had time to think in the various crisis' that plagued the city. Just once, he would like a quiet day. A day without people dying around him. Or their home on the line.

"Options, general?" He asked with a heavy breath, interrupting the discussion that bounced back and forth between the two people in his office.

"Earth," Jack began. "Or, since I didn't exactly get this information from official channels, you make a run for Pegasus and claim that your comms receiver was on the fritz. I may even know an engineer who would be willing to make the receivers malfunction and have the repair logs and reports to back up the claim." He smiled. "I may be able to expedite her marriage paperwork in return for the favor. But you have only about a half-hour to make your decision and get everything in place before the Alliance notices us out here or the Earth Council orders you back, Richard."

It was always a half hour, Richard mused. "Only need thirty seconds." Standing from his chair, Richard turned to Jennifer and nodded to the doctor. "Proceed with your plan doctor but cautiously. I want to be notified of any change in Connors condition." Turning back to the general as Jennifer squeezed out of the room behind Jack, Woolsey held out his hand to the door. "I suggest we get this city headed to Pegasus."

Smiling widely, Jack exited tossing over his shoulder, "I knew there was a reason I didn't let you get killed by those bugs."