Chapter Five

Jo was sitting very straight and stiff at the GD director's desk trying to channel her inner Fargo. It was one of the more disturbing aspects of her day that already had a long list of disturbing events. She hoped she looked okay. She hadn't needed to tie a necktie in a while so that had taken her a few minutes to figure out.

So far, Warren seemed none the wiser but he was distracted getting his evaluation materials together and assuring her he wouldn't take up too much of her time, or 'Fargo's' time, rather.

She really hoped Grace and Allison were having some luck figuring out how the hell she had gotten into Fargo's body. Jo had already gone through this once with Fargo's ex-girlfriend and she'd almost died. It felt just as stifling as that last time, sitting in her cell thinking of ways to convince her friends that there was an impostor walking around in her form. At least this time people believed her.

It didn't help that her instincts told her she should be out somewhere investigating or kicking ass. Instead she was sitting in Fargo's office trying not to get him fired.

"Okay, Dr. Fargo, we're just going to do some association exercises. It's no big deal and it'll only take a few minutes. All you have to do is tell me what you see."

Great. Psych tests were some of the worst forms of torture that human resources had ever adopted. Like laser tag, Jo was hoping to speed through this and get down to the infirmary for a report.

Warren held up the first of a series of pictures and she answered without really thinking. "Looks like the dust cloud from an M2 Bradley coming off a land strike."

A pause greeted her response. "It's a tank," she explained in a hushed tone, now quite self-conscious.

"Hmm. What an oddly aggressive imagination you have." She tried to read Warren's expression but you could never really tell where you stood with him. That's what made him so good at his job.

Had that been too blunt? This was Fargo, she had to remember. Think nerdy and science-y.

Warren held up the next card and Jo took the time to concentrate on it for a moment before answering. "Conservation of angular momentum in a series of pirouettes? Time elapsed, of course."

"Ballet fan, Dr. Fargo?" Warren scrutinized. Jo nodded weakly. Strike two.

He switched up the cards and presented a new picture. Jo sat back and tried to think of something appropriately intellectual or ridiculous enough to have come from Fargo. After a few moments, Warren glanced at her expecting an answer.

Jo shrugged. She could only go for what she knew. "Uh, looks like a the aftermath of a standard third generation fuel air explosive device." That got a squint and a head-cock from Warren. "Or it could be from a volcano." She pointed to the card and outlined the cloud formation to punctuate her observation.

Warren chuckled and dropped the cards on the desk. "I have to say, I'm a little concerned, Dr. Fargo. These aren't typical answers for someone with an IQ of 163."

Jo's panic warred with her sense of indignation. She hated feeling stupid, not that Warren was implying that directly. But panic was winning out because things weren't going well at all. She didn't want to be responsible for getting Fargo fired by screwing up his interview.

She straightened and wracked her brain for some kind of reasonable explanation. "Uh, well, my observations probably sound strange to you because, d'uh, I'm totally kidding!" Her mind backtracked wondering if she sounded enough like Fargo to be convincing. "I've learned since this whole Astraeus thing, that you've gotta keep things light-hearted, take things in stride." She cringed, wondering if Warren was buying any of what she was saying. It was a gamble but if she stalled long enough maybe she could think of a way to get out of this before she dug herself any deeper into this Fargo-sized hole.

They both turned as the elevator door opened and Zane walked in with a tablet in hand and a suspicious looking smile on his face. Relief flooded her entire being. She was almost always happy to see him but his timing right now was particularly amazing.

Yet her instincts were on high alert at that shifty smile. He was definitely up to no good. Jo could spot trouble from him a mile away.

"Sorry to interrupt. This'll only take a second." Zane directed his apology to Warren and then turned to Jo. "Dr. Fargo, I need your approval on an extension for that, uh, project we were discussing this morning." His words were too formal to be anything but a ruse. She knew him too well. He handed his tablet to her, expecting a thumb print as verification.

Jo looked down and saw that he had pulled up the orders for the Matrix mainframe dismantling. Zane had changed the storage deadline to the following week.

Jo glanced at Warren who was recording some notes rather than listening to what he probably thought was mundane GD business. "Mr. Donovan, I'm not sure it's appropriate to get approval for that right at this second, under these circumstances." She tried to indicate with her expression that she knew what he was doing and that he was walking on thin ice. Tinkering with the mainframe behind Fargo's back was one thing but taking advantage of this screwball body-swapping scenario to override him was quite another. It felt like a violation of trust. And to try and pull it off in front of Warren when he knew they couldn't have a real discussion about it? Zane was going to be in so much trouble when she got her body back.

"So pushy, these scientists." Even though she offered a strained laugh, her eyes were steely so Zane would know how pissed she was at him. Zane held her gaze, steady and insistent.

Misreading the situation, Warren popped his head up and waved her off. "Don't worry about the interruption, Dr. Fargo. I understand that you're a busy person. I anticipated that we might get sidetracked once or twice so that you can handle your regular duties. It's a good thing! Having a sense of normality and routine is a great recovery method."

Zane was grinning from over Warren's shoulder and Jo vowed to wipe that smirk off his face when she got her hands on him; Fargo's would do until she had use again of her own.

"It's just one tiny approval, Fargo," he emphasized. "Pushing back the date won't affect anything else going on at GD and I think we can learn a lot in the extra time that you are allotting. I know how important it is for you to have some answers about the—what was it you asked about? Extraction anomalies?"

Sometimes it sucked being intimate with a cocky genius.

Jo scowled at him, mostly because he had a good point. And there was also the feeling from before that he was on to something. She was sure of it now by his willingness to go this far to find her an explanation. If it gave them answers to what happened to Holly and why she had seen her inside the Matrix, she wanted every opportunity to explore it.

"Fine," she said around gritted teeth. She grabbed the tablet and gave Fargo's thumb print approval for the new deadline. "But we should still get this taken care of as fast as we can, okay."

"Got it," he answered. He took a step backwards but stopped when she called him back.

"Hey, have you heard anything from Grace or Allison?" she asked, as nonchalantly as she could muster.

Zane glanced at Warren quickly and frowned. "Nothing yet, but they're working on it."

Warren observed them, a hint of suspicion in his expression. "Anything, I should know about?"

Damn. They couldn't afford to have him looking over their shoulders right now.

"No, no," Jo responded quickly. "They're just working on something that I was particularly interested in getting the results of. It's nothing critical."

Warren smiled. "Good! I'm planning on meeting with them later and I'd hate to interrupt something important. That goes for you too, Mr. Donovan. I'll see you tomorrow."

"I can't wait, Warren," he replied, flashing his most charming smile at the administrator. Walking backwards towards the door he pointed to Warren's back and mouthed, "He LOVES me!" Laughing, he retreated to the elevator. It took everything Jo had not to roll her eyes.

Instead, she returned her attention to Warren and offered a smile of her own.

"So, let's try a few more images."


Zane returned to the infirmary in a remarkably better mood than when he left. He was still worried about Jo but the situation had worked to his advantage for a change. He counted it as cosmic payback for the trauma of what had happened back in Jo's office with Fargo. Sure, Jo would make him pay for his subterfuge later but she was complicit now and it needed to be done.

He had to keep digging into the Matrix mainframe. What he'd already figured out was enough to concern him, all the revelations about how the program worked. The cache of personal information, the predictive algorithms, the sophisticated projection models? They were just the tip of the iceberg. The things he'd discovered since last night, though, were directly related to what had happened to Jo. The implications of it went beyond simply confirming whether she had been hallucinating in those last few minutes in the simulation.

He wasn't ready yet to go to Grace with what he had or even to confirm it to Jo. He wanted to be sure of what he was seeing. Jo was becoming suspicious but with this extra time, he'd have something solid to report before long. And he had a feeling it was going to be major.

But that could wait. First, they needed to figure out this body-swapping thing. There was no way he was letting Fargo take over his girlfriend's body, even if he had to pry his friend's brainwaves out himself.

When he walked in, Fargo was still lying in the machine fidgeting as usual. When he saw Zane, his eyes lit up. Zane had to again shake off the cognitive dissonance of seeing Jo like that and remind himself that it was Fargo peering back at him.

"Hey, did you go see me? How's Jo doing?"

"I'm sure she's doing fine, Fargo," he answered not giving anything away.

Fargo crossed his arms in a huff. "No need to get snippy. It's not like it's my reputation and livelihood on the line." The time away had done Zane some good but it certainly hadn't helped Fargo's mood at all.

Zane stood with his hands on his hips. "I'm sorry you're freaking out about this. But there's nothing you can do about the situation right now. So why don't you lie back, and chill out and stop adding stress lines to my girlfriend's face."

Fargo pursed his lips, clearly annoyed. He was silent for a while as Zane leaned against the wall and tapped on his tablet. After a few moments, he glanced at Zane with a smug smile.

Zane looked up from his work. "What?"

"Nothing really. While you were gone, I was just thinking, you're either going to have to date me in Jo's body …" They both cringed at that prospect. "Or date Jo in mine."

Zane's face was full of irritation and then filled with panic as he thought about the prospect of Fargo being some kind of fixture in his relationship. "That's low, Fargo."

Fargo shrugged, unmoved. Apparently, being cooped up so that Grace could run her tests had brought out the nastiness in him.

"Quite a Sophie's Choice," Fargo muttered, adding fuel to Zane's panic. "Who's freaking out—"

His words were cut off when his eyes began a rapid blinking and rolled into the back of his head. Zane scrambled over to the exam table and stared in shock as a spasm tore through Jo's body. Alarms begin to sound on the scanner and Grace consulted her computer to see what was wrong.

"We're getting a neural spike." Allison called over to Grace.

Zane curbed the impulse to touch the woman lying there, now slightly convulsing. "Is he having a seizure or something? Fargo! Fargo, can you hear me?"

His eyes shot open and then a groan echoed off the walls as Jo's body slowly and painfully sat up.

"Jo?" Zane was searching her face for signs of the woman he knew and loved. "Are you back?"

She raised her eyes to meet his before nodding, although her expression contorted with pain after doing so. Her hand reached to massage her head and she blew out a steadying breath.

"Ugh, damn this town sometimes," she moaned.

He wasted no time taking her in his arms and holding her tightly against him. She held him close as well and relaxed into his embrace as he kissed the side of her head.

"I'm so happy you're okay. Sophie's Choice was total bullshit."

"What?" she asked pulling back from him as Allison wandered over to examine her.

Both she and Grace chuckled. "He's been a little worried," Grace explained.

TBC …


AN: Thanks so much for reading, alerting and reviewing (Lady of Imladris, I can't respond to your reviews personally, but it's always a pleasure to hear your feedback).