John pokes his head carefully out of his room into the brown hallway. The framed pictures seem to watch him as he checks that Not-Kelly's nowhere to be seen.
Arbiter: She left for work an hour ago.
Johnson: Don't that mean she'll have taken her stuff with her?
John shuts the voices out and stalks as quietly as he can across the hall to Not-Kelly's room. He can't afford to have doubts.
Arbiter: We are your doubts. You can afford to have us.
Shut up and stop reading my thoughts, John snaps at his common sense.
Arbiter: We are your thoughts.
John goes back to ignoring the Voices and quietly pushes the door to Not-Kelly's room. He winces when the white door squeals loudly.
Then he's in. Her room is bright, with a simple bed of mahogany wood, covered in pink and green covers, dominating the center of the room. It's also larger than his room, and painted a deep purple. His room is a deep lapis lazuli, and without the bed.
He sits down at her small desk, and looks around for a computer. There's just a small metal plate inset in the wood, so he presses it.
Something flickers into being above the plate, a sculpture of intricate wires and glass. It fluidly coils in midair, wires writhing like an eel, the glass glinting menacingly.
"Intruder," it say in a voice simultaneously machine and blood.
Cortana: An AI. Not a cute and cuddly one, either.
"Who are you?" John asks in return.
The thing seems to ponder this for a few seconds. "I am Cæná."
"Hi. I'm John."
Cortana: Really?
Cæná seems to brighten at this. "Do you know the password?"
"Umm... No? Can you give me a hint," he asks, hoping desperately that it would.
"Truth is truth and lie is lie, bridge this gap and you will see."
John thinks. Little help here?
Johnson: Can't help ya here.
Arbiter: Ask your intellect.
His intellect remains quiet. Hello? Intellect? It looks like it's gonna bite me. Hurry up.
Cortana: This statement is lie.
"This statement is a lie," he repeats. Cæná bounces where it hovers, then vanishes.
"Access granted," it says, sounding like it would rather have ripped his face off than disappear quietly.
"Thank you." No response. Just a computer screen that pops up, displaying something that looks really classified.
"Here goes nothing," he mutters to himself, and taps the screen.
As he browses through all the military secrets, he realizes something; these are secrets from what he remembers.
They have absolutely bugger-all to do with anything here.
"Shit," he says and sits back.
Johnson: Told ya so.
The AI appears again. "Do you like what you see?"
"No," he growls. It bounces. "Do you have any actual files?"
"No."
John sighs. He's already had to deal with enough annoying AIs in his life, even if they were just 'dreams'. "Do you know me, Cæná?"
It writhes happily, or at least what he assumes is happiness. "Yes! You are John!"
"Great. Do you remember what I used to do for work?" Not-Kelly hadn't told him. Actually, she hadn't told him a lot.
"Yup! You worked with Mistress!"
Mistress?
Cortana: Apparently it's Not-Kelly's AI.
Arbiter: No, really?
Cortana: You're really annoying, you know that?
Arbiter: I believe I do.
John rests his head on the desk, bracing himself for another petty squabble between Voices.
It doesn't come. He hears real voices, the Voices themselves, not in his head but echoing down a long tunnel. Sparks flicker in his eyes, and for an instant, one glorious instant that he never wants to end, he feels armor, sees familiar faces hovering over him, hears gunfire.
Then it's gone.
"Are you okay, John?" Cæná asks.
For the first time since he heard it speak his name, he realizes that it puts strange inflections and sibilant hisses in random places. All of a sudden, he doesn't trust it.
Not that he ever did, but this just brings his distrust to another level.
"I'm fine," and with that he stands shakily and stumbles out of Not-Kelly's room.
Cortana: At least that answered some questions.
Like what, exactly?
Arbiter: What you used to do for work. And now we know where you can go to get information.
Cortana: You. Stop interrupting me. But that's right. It also raised some questions.
Such as...
Arbiter: Such as just how bossy your intellect can be?
Cortana: Shut up. Such as, what the hell happened? What triggered that 'episode'?
Excellent question. I have no sweet clue. He sinks down onto his bed, huffing at a strand of hair in his face.
Arbiter: You also need a haircut.
Thank you.
Arbiter: You're welcome.
Just shut up, he groans. Then he snorts. Now I'm having arguments with the Voices, he thinks to himself, trying not to broadcast it to said Voices.
There's no answering jibe, so he must have succeeded.
Well, I guess I'll just have to persuade Not-Kelly to let me go back to 'work'- the only question is, how?
Cortana: You'll think of something.
A/N: Sorry this took a while! We lost power for a week, cause of some hurricane that smashed through here, then I went to Ottawa for a weekend.
But anyways, thank yous to Sergeant Dreamer (awesome name, btw), dragonbreather4568, twigggy and all the other people whom favorited this and added it to their alerts. You guys make me happy.
I finally found the SGA episode that inspired this . It's the season three episode 'The Real World'.