DISCLAIMER: see chapter one
All the grub had been eaten and the dishes taken away for cleaning. Daemon, who had led his small team of kitchen staff to provide the delicious food, had snatched away some of the team before they could even try to leave for kitchen duty.
The others, ever thankful that, at least for now, they had managed to escape kitchen duty, left as quickly as possible, some going to have a quick kip, others following Jet and Jason as they left to continue the briefing.
Jet briefly scratched the nape of his neck, as it was starting to tickle a bit. Maybe he needed a hair-cut. Who knows?
Behind him, he could faintly hear Z muttering under her breath, and starting to gasp. He also heard the unmistakable sound of a paper bag being opened, and the gasps started to become deep breaths.
He saw Jason look at him, eyebrow raised. "Four McKay's, remember?" A.K.A. We've been around four children of McKay for all of our lives, and we know what leads to what, and near enough all of us have some sort of item that could help save a McKay when they're having an attack, accidentally eaten some form of citrus…
Amazing what you can fit into three little words, isn't it!
Jason started to recognise the area of the city they were entering. He hadn't even noticed the corridors they had been walking through. He must really been knocked for six about everything Jet had told him for him to not have noticed where they were.
They started to enter the embarkation area through one of the many corridors that seemed to lead into the area. He could see several of his marines, (well technically they were Sheppard's but Sheppard didn't need to know that), around the room and watched as they raised their guns slightly, only dropping them once they noticed him drifting behind Jet.
He followed Jet up to the main debriefing room. Apparently they were changing rooms. He just hoped someone bothered to inform the others.
"Wait, I've got them! Had to try and be sneaky didn't they? Well, I've got you now!" Rodney loved a challenge, when the end result wasn't: Rodney does something wrong world go boom!!!
Elizabeth's head appeared over his shoulder to look at the laptop. "What have you got Rodney?"
He blushed. Only slightly! But still, he blushed. And from the hidden smiles he could see from those who could, in turn, see his face, he knew this would be around the base in no time at all.
How was he supposed to not blush? He found out he had kids with the woman, would have kids…..whatever. Thing is, those kids are on the same base as him, and he hadn't even, you know, with Elizabeth. And now he had grown up kids. Well, at least he skipped the annoying stage. With all the dirt and the mud and the grass and the blowing of noses and the cleaning of scrapes and the ………
Dammit he'd missed all those stages! Watching his children grow up and become the people they were today. In the future. Whatever.
"Rodney?" Elizabeth turned her head towards him, the tip of her nose brushing against his cheek. His warm cheek. She jumped backwards slightly. He was blushing. She coughed.
"Sorry about that Rodney." Okay, now she was blushing. She was the head of whole Atlantis expedition dammit. She was supposed to be stone; cold, hard, and near enough unbreakable. And yet she blushed like a ninth grader talking to her first crush. What the hell was wrong with her? Just because they had children in the future of that time-line, it didn't mean they would get together or have children in this time-line. No matter what she felt about him.
"No, no, my fault, should have been paying attention. Listen, I figured out a way to track them via their power usage. We know they used one of the transporters at 21:30 Atlantis standard time. I, and by that I mean Zalunka and myself,"
"Zelenka," came Radek's voice from further behind Elizabeth.
"Whatever," was the reply from Rodney.
A string of curse words in Czech followed, only a few of which she recognised, as knowing the swear-words wasn't really a necessity at the negotiating table, only when at the local bars did that deficiency make itself obvious, as she had found herself unable to understand half of what people were saying to her. They concluded with a faint, "Why do I bother?" and a frazzled Czech running his hands though his hair, making it stand on end even more.
She managed to concentrate her attention back on Rodney in time to spot the smile disappear from his face. "What?"
"The power signals. Look!" He brought up a map of Atlantis. "Have you ever seen a hackers diversion map?" Rodney looked at her.
"You expect me to have seen one of these 'maps'?" Her left eyebrow was rapidly reaching her hairline.
He floundered for a moment. "Er, well…no. Just a general comment. I mean sometimes they're shown on movies and t.v. when one of the characters is a hacker or is chasing a hacker. That's all. I swear. I didn't mean anything by it."
"Rodney." Her eyebrow dropped. He was starting to hyperventilate.
"But sometimes they don't show them correctly. I mean they use refraction patterns instead of…
"Rodney." She put her hand on his shoulder.
"But crystal patterns are…… much more…… effective." He turned to look up at her, his own eyebrow starting to raise. "Elizabeth." A statement. Better. "What was I saying?" he genuinely looked lost.
"Hacker diversion maps?" Best to get him back on track and not think about how cute he looked at the moment. Damn, she thought it!
"Ah, right." The fingers raised. "Basically, it likes bouncing a signal off a reflector without loosing clarity of signal or loss of power." He brought up a map of Atlantis. "See here, this red dot is the transporter they used. Watch what happened."
The dot blinked out and twenty dots all around Atlantis blinked into view. Those dots subsequently blinked out, and at least a hundred came back into view. Some of them blinked out and others blinked into view.
"We have no way of knowing exactly where they went." He sounded dejected.
"It doesn't matter Rodney." She patted his shoulder. "They know all of us remember. They know what we're going to do before we even realise there's a problem." His hand reached up and folded over hers, then slowly patted her hand. Her other hand went up to rest on his opposite shoulder.
It took a few seconds for them to realise what had happened. They simultaneously froze.
Elizabeth reacted first. She pulled away, almost reluctantly. "I'm gonna go get a cup of coffee. You want one?"
"Yeah, yeah." He waved his hand towards the laptop that still had dots blinking away like a Christmas tree's fairy lights. "I'm just going to..." She nodded then walked away, the people who had been watching the by-play vanishing in the blink of an eye.
((Remember readers, gossip is the only thing to reach the speed of light naturally, other than light, of course.))
((P.S. The next chapter is slightly longer than normal, and will hopefully make up for not having written for, how long is it now?))