Author's Note: This is my first Quantum Leap fanfic in a while and my first for the new show. I know there are doubtless a few timeline issues since the timeline of the original show and the new show haven't been fully established yet, and this story will no doubt be superseded by information gleaned from tonight's new episode, but I wanted to write the story anyway because I find Janis to be a fascinating character.

After inspecting the small flashing handheld device one more time, Janis Calavicci looked over her work, her life's work. Everything she'd ever done had been building to this moment, right before she was going to turn it on. At least assuming that there weren't any interruptions. Glancing over at a small photo on the desk, she looked at the Navy admiral standing next to his best friend, a quantum physicist. Sure, they were unlikely friends, but Janis' father was a unique sort of guy, and her Uncle Sam was even more unique.

Suddenly it was thirty years ago and a young Janis, clad in a striped shirt and overalls, sat on Sam's knee on the couch inside her father's home office as Sam once again glanced towards the door, making sure that no one was walking in.

"Okay, one more time, Janis!" Sam said. "Ain't that..."

"A kick in the butt!" Janis finished and then broke out laughing.

Sam joined in the fit of laughter, just as Al walked into the room carrying two glasses, handing one to Sam.

"What's all the laughing?" Al asked as he placed his glass down on the coffee table. "He didn't manage to tell a physics joke that's actually funny, did he?"

Janis just shook her head as Al lifted Janis and kissed her on the head before placing her back down on the floor.

"Go and play with your sisters, Uncle Sam and I need to talk. Boring grown-up stuff." Al said.

Janis nodded and ran out of the room, but she stopped and sat down on the other side of the door. The grown-ups never really worried about talking about anything in front of her, but she understood more than they realized. One day they'd stop underestimating her. She placed her ear up against the door and listened.

"Do you remember the first time we met?" Al asked.

"At the Starbright Project. You were fighting a vending machine." Sam replied.

"Yeah, it ate my change." Al sighed. "Me and Beth had just had our biggest fight yet and I was living in a motel near Starbright HQ. As usual, Beth was right, I wasn't coping with what I'd seen in Vietnam and needed help. And in comes this bright-eyed, bushy-tailed physicist with a theory."

"And the rest is history..." Sam smiled, and then his face fell. "We're in trouble, aren't we, Al?"

"Yeah, big trouble," Al admitted. "They're going to pull the funding."

"But we're so close! The Accelerator is nearly up and running and the Imaging Chamber just has a few kinks to work out!" Sam exclaimed, nearly slamming his glass down onto the table. "A few more months and we'll be ready for human testing!"

"We don't have a few months. The decision is coming down tomorrow."

"But what if I get Donna to ask her father to..." Sam started.

"It's too late for that. Maybe if we had time to wade through red tape but as it stands?" Al shook his head. "But the bean counter nozzles don't care about the good we can do, all they see are dollar signs. And we're not making enough."

Sam put his head into his hands and let out a grunt of frustration. Gritting his teeth, he stood up rapidly and started to pull on his coat.

"I've got some notes back at the Project that I want to look over..." Sam muttered.

"Sam? Sam! You'd better not be planning to do anything irresponsible!" Al shouted, then softened. "Without me by your side. We're in this together right?"

"In all kinds of weather." Sam smiled. "I'm just going to do some last-minute tune-ups, if they're gonna shut us down, I want everything to be perfect when they flip the switch."

"Good. We can talk in the morning. And who knows? Maybe somebody up there will send us a miracle!" Al said.

"We can only hope," Sam said as he turned the knob on the door to Al's office.

Janis quickly stepped back from the door as Sam opened it. Stepping out into the hallway, Sam noticed Janis trying to duck behind the nearest corner and walked over toward her, kneeling in front of her.

"It's not nice to eavesdrop," Sam said. "But I understand, I used to do the same thing with my parents. It's hard when they worry and won't tell you why right?"

"Problems at work, right?" Janis asked.

"Yeah," Sam replied. "But we'll get through it, we always do, your Dad and I."

Sam started to get up, and Janis looked into Sam's eyes.

"You're leaving, aren't you?" Janis asked.

"Yeah, for now, but I'll be back soon," Sam said. "Oh, and Janis? Never let anyone stand in the way of your dreams. If you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything."

Janis watched as her Uncle Sam walked through the door. And she knew it would be the last time she ever saw him.

It was some years later that Janis, every bit as brilliant as her Uncle Sam, started to research time travel in her spare time, and she had some theories. Unfortunately, Janis was currently in the midst of a historic argument with her father, in that same office where Sam and Al had discussed the Project years earlier, thanks to those theories.

"Absolutely not!" Al shouted.

"What? Why?!" Janis demanded.

Over the past five years, Janis had been fed various stories about what happened to Sam Beckett, the official news stories, the internet message board conspiracies, but she knew the truth. She'd overheard enough snippets of Al's confidential phone calls through the wall and quiet conversations in the living room with her mother to understand that Sam had become a time traveler and became lost in time. But things were different now. Janis didn't know exactly what happened, but her father was home a lot more frequently and wasn't being called in randomly in the middle of the night. But none of that mattered at the moment, because right now, all that mattered was being louder than the other.

"Because! This is a classified government project! I can't just give you confidential documents, let alone bring you to the project site!" Al shot back.

"Not even if I can help save Uncle Sam?"

"We've had the brightest minds working on doing that and they haven't achieved squat since he vanished!" Al yelled. "What makes you think you'll be any different?"

"Maybe because I'm your daughter? And I've heard you tell Mom about the Project before, and you used to tell me stories before bed of Uncle Sam going out and saving history, so don't pretend you suddenly care about confidentiality! What's the real reason you don't want to let me on the Project?"

"Because you're a teenager! And..." Al started to tear up. "Because I'm scared. I won't lose someone else I love to Quantum Leap, I've already lost too much! I lost Sam, and I won't lose you too!"

Janis was prepared to strike back, but the fight had gone too far. She'd wanted the true reason that her father didn't want her involved with the Project, but not like this.

"You're my daughter, so there's a lot of me in you. And a lot of your mother, but there's also a lot of that corn-fed wunderkind Sam Beckett in there." Al wiped his eyes with his hands. "But I lost him. And I'm scared of losing you too."

The anger evaporated, and Janis rushed to her father and embraced him in a hug. While Janis was still determined to help the Project, she understood her father's concerns. And right now, she could at least give her father the solace he needed that he wouldn't lose anyone else to Project Quantum Leap.

More time passed. She breezed through college with advanced degrees that would surely have made her uncle proud, and Janis thought she had moved on. Even Al had moved on, unlikely as that seemed, both him and her mother having moved out of New Mexico once the Project was shut down permanently following Sam's final disappearance and moving into the Los Angeles suburbs. Beth had always wanted a garden. Although Al still spent long nights sitting awake in his office wondering about Sam. Janis was visiting her parents for the weekend and was going through some old knick-knacks from her childhood when the doorbell rang.

"Janis! Can you get that?" Al shouted from another room.

"I've got it, Dad!" Janis replied and headed to the front door.

She opened it and a mustachioed black man stood behind it, clearly as surprised to see Janis as Janis was to see him. Janis wasn't sure who he was, but she knew that he'd been in the military and served in the same war as her father because he wore a nearly identical ring on his finger. She'd seen that same ring before somewhere, but she was having trouble placing it.

"Hi there, I'm Herbert Williams. You must be... Janis, right?" he asked.

"That's right," Janis replied, coolly.

"Ahem... Is your father around?" he tried to peer into the house.

"Magic? Is that you?" Al asked as he walked into the foyer. "It's been a while."

"That it has. May I come in?" Magic asked.

"Absolutely," Al waved him in.

Janis stepped to the side, immediately not trusting this new figure. Suddenly, she remembered where she'd seen that ring before. On the finger of another Vietnam veteran with a connection to her father's old job, Commander Thomas Beckett. As the two walked off to Al's home office, Janis remembered being a kid and sitting, her ear pressed to the door of the office. Not that same office, since that one had been in a different house two states away, but she decided to replicate that memory anyway, standing outside the door and pressing her ear to it.

"How's the family?" Al asked.

"Doing well," Magic replied. "And you?"

"Also doing well. But I know you didn't come all this way to trade pleasantries we could exchange on the phone. What's this about?" Al got serious.

"I'm here to ask for your blessing," Magic said.

"Don't take this the wrong way, Magic, but I think you're too old for my daughters." Al chuckled, lightening the mood somewhat.

"Funny, but while I am asking to get involved with one of your children, it isn't those children." Magic hesitated. "There's talk of reviving the Project."

"What? Since when?" Al sat up in his seat. "Did they get a lead on Sam?"

"Sorry to get your hopes up, but no," Magic said. "Dr. Eleese and Ms. Fuller believe that they've secured enough funding to activate the Project in its original parameters. And they're hoping that by doing things the right way, we might be able to learn more about what went wrong with the original Project Quantum Leap."

"And maybe find Sam?" Al questioned.

"We can't say for sure, but I wanted to make sure that you knew what we were doing, considering your connection to the Project," Magic responded. "And we'd love to have you involved, in whatever capacity you're comfortable with. There's even talk that they're setting up shop here in L.A."

"Well, you've got my blessing, but unless you get any leads on Sam, there isn't anything left at that Project for me anymore. I've got my family, I've got Beth and the girls and that's enough for me right now." Al leaned back in his chair.

"Roger that, Admiral," Magic said.

A new Project Quantum Leap? Perhaps this was finally her chance to prove herself, to show that she could succeed where so many others had failed! But that dream came crashing down when she received the rejection letter signed by Herbert "Magic" Williams. Which is how she came to be bursting into his office as his secretary attempted to hold her back.

"It's all right, Susan, let her through," Magic said, not looking up from his paperwork.

"I'll be just outside," Susan said as she released her grip on Janis' jacket.

Janis brushed her jacket off before stomping up to Magic's desk and banging her palms onto the desk to get his attention. Magic looked up at the furious woman standing before him.

"I can't believe this! My father built this Project with his bare hands and you want to shut me out of it?" Janis shouted.

"It's exactly because your father built the Project, and because you were so close with Dr. Beckett that you're a liability! Hell, if your father hadn't been necessary in maintaining contact with Dr. Beckett, he'd have been pulled off the Project the moment that Sam leaped!" Magic retorted.

"You can't do this!"

"Watch me!"

"You haven't heard the last of me." Janis spat, and then stormed out of the office as Magic sighed and returned to his paperwork.

Months later, in a crowded bar, a Korean man sat at a table with a drink in one hand and his phone in the other, going over complex codes and equations. He was so engrossed by them, that he almost didn't notice the woman standing over him, clad in a leather jacket.

"Dr. Ben Song?" she asked.

"Yeah, who's asking?" Ben responded.

"My name is Janis Calavicci, I think we have a mutual friend in common," Janis said. "Sam Beckett."

Ben looked up and locked eyes with Janis, her name ringing a bell, her father had been involved with the original version of his Project.

"I think we've got a lot to discuss," Janis said. "Mind if I sit down?"

Ben thought for a moment and then nodded, making space at the table. Janis sat down across from Ben and pulled out some papers.

Back in the present, looking over her invention, Janis smiled as she remembered Dr. Beckett's advice, if she put her mind to it, she could accomplish anything.

The End