A/N: Welcome back! I'm pretty excited about this next briefing room scene and I hope I've succeeded in turning it into a dramatic moment, rather than just an info dump (as is so tempting with briefing room scenes).
Hope you like it. :) As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read and review.
"What do you mean other realities?" Sheppard said to McKay, sounding incredulous. "Lemme see that file."
The physicist obliged, sliding the folder across the long mahogany table toward Sheppard. It came to a halt just out of the colonel's reach, so Ronon intercepted it and passed it along the rest of the way.
"Whoa, Chewie. The hell happened to you?" He caught Ronon's wrist in his fingers and momentarily cast the folder aside.
Ronon obligingly turned his hand over, palm facing upward. "Oh, uh…Rogers bit me."
McKay's eyebrows shot halfway up his forehead. "She what?"
"Yeah," he said, absentmindedly scratching at his dreads while Sheppard inspected the purple-yellow bitemark. "I woke her up during the Wraith attack and she…didn't exactly like the way I did it."
"Jesus," Sheppard hissed, "you can see the teeth marks and everything. You should maybe go to the infirmary and get that checked out." He released Ronon's wrist with a grimace.
"It's fine. Beckett's busy with more important stuff."
McKay looked unassumingly down at his briefing report. "You and Rogers certainly seem to be friendlier since this whole Eva thing started," he observed.
"You call this friendly?" Ronon shoved his bitten hand into McKay's view.
"All right. Friendly? No," McKay conceded. "Erotic, maybe."
"Shut up, McKay," Ronon growled, balling his bruised hand into a fist and hiding it under the table.
"I dunno…" Sheppard opened the file McKay had passed to him and hid his face behind it, "you two seemed pretty cozy together under that sleeping bag." He peered over the top of the folder, one eyebrow raised in insinuation.
So Sheppard had noticed, too; he thought only Teyla had seen them that first night.
"She was cold," Ronon snapped. "That was it."
McKay sighed wistfully. "If I had a nickel every time a woman used that excuse with me…"
"Then the talks about discontinuing the Canadian penny must really have you shaking in your boots," Sheppard finished for him.
"Hey!" McKay protested. "I'll have you know that at least two –"
"Two what, Doctor?"
The three men looked up to see Mr. Woolsey standing at the entrance of the briefing room, Teyla behind him, looking over his shoulder.
"At least two people are missing from our meeting but not to worry, you're here now so, uh…good," McKay said with an absurd clap of his hands. "I guess we can begin."
Ronon glanced conspiratorially over at Sheppard who rolled his eyes in response.
"I'm glad I have your permission, Dr. McKay," Woolsey said with an amused expression on his face. "But I see we're not all assembled?" He took his place at the head of the table and glanced at his watch. "Dr. Rogers has not arrived yet?"
"No, sir," Sheppard replied before turning to Ronon once more. "Ronon, you happen to know where she is?"
"No," he replied, lip curled as he held back a scowl.
"It is most unlike her to be late," Teyla observed as she took an open seat across from Sheppard.
"Sergeant," Woolsey called to the technicians working nearby.
Chuck appeared at the door. "Yes, sir?"
"Page Dr. Rogers to the briefing room, will you?"
"Right away, sir."
"I am on a bit of a time crunch, so I suppose we'll have to start without her, then," Woolsey said, opening the brief Sheppard had placed in front of him.
The page for the linguist resounded over the city-wide intercom, but he continued speaking over it.
"Now, the topic of this meeting is to discuss the possibility of a return to M5R-233, the planet on which your team believes they located one of Janus' illicit laboratories."
"That's right, sir," Sheppard said.
"From what I gathered after reading your mission reports – by the way, Ronon, I have yet to receive yours."
"I'm uh…still working on it."
"Very well, then. From what I read, it seems likely that the temple Teyla, Ronon, and Dr. Rogers investigated is, in fact, the entrance to one such lab."
The memory of the few minutes he and Rogers had spent alone in that temple made him shift in his seat and for a moment, he was thankful she wasn't there. For now, he was the only person in the room who knew what had happened in there, who knew how close he had come to losing sight of the mission, to dropping his guard and yielding to a fleeting desire. If talking so openly about that place with everyone in the room made him uneasy, he could only imagine how Rogers, whose fair skin blushed wildly at even the faintest hint of embarrassment, might react.
"However, and correct me if I'm mistaken, it sounds like a return mission would be most imprudent. The planet's interference with Ancient technology makes navigating the terrain slow and laborious and, in turn, its disturbance with Ancient physiology puts the health and safety of anyone with the ATA gene at risk. I would say it's also fair to conclude that the locals are hostile to our presence, as it is likely they were the ones who informed the Wraith of your arrival on their world."
"If any of them are left," Teyla dismally said.
"Which brings me to my last and final argument: M5R-233 is a hotbed of Wraith activity. They know that the Ancient Janus now resides with us, and we can only assume that they will expect us to go back and investigate his lab."
"You think a return mission would essentially end in a trap?" Sheppard asked.
"I do."
The pneumatic system of the briefing room doors emitted a hiss and Dr. Rogers appeared on the other side, forcing her way through them before they could open all the way. "Sorry I'm late," she whispered as her eyes searched the room, eventually landing on the only seat available – one at the other end of the table, directly across from Mr. Woolsey.
Woolsey nodded toward her, then carried on. "I understand that Janus' current condition is not ideal –"
"No kidding," McKay muttered. "I'd hardly call a medically-induced coma ideal."
"But Dr. Beckett is hopeful that he will not remain in such a state indefinitely, after which time we might be able to simply ask the Ancient himself about his research rather than risk a trip to his lab on M5R-233."
McKay began speaking and Ronon maybe would have listened, had he not been so distracted by Rogers's appearance. Professional as usual, her uniform was pressed and clean, and her hair was tied back neatly into a low bun, but her skin was pale and dark shadows rimmed her eyes. He had heard McKay and Beckett mention that she had refused sleep in favor of staying at Janus' side throughout the majority of her time on the Alpha Site and, quite frankly, it showed. When was the last time she had slept, he wondered?
"This video footage we recovered gives us reason to believe that, thanks to Janus and his research, this particular Wraith's experiments go far beyond time manipulation to include experimentation with other realities, as well."
"Multiple realities?" Woolsey confirmed, his eyebrows piqued with interest. "You're sure?"
"I'll defer to Dr. Rogers on that one," McKay said. "She and Dr. Hirsch are the ones who deciphered the cataloguing system."
"Doctor?"
Rogers nodded. "We're sure. Each video file we viewed was labeled with a sort of Wraith time stamp. The first part of the time stamp begins with the term realoş meaning 'reality…'"
Ronon flinched at the way she said the word. The "r" was deep and guttural, the "s" a long, snakelike hiss – a faithful mimicry of the way the Wraith spoke in their own tongue. He had heard her speak the language of the Ancestors before with its soft, mellifluous consonants and wide-open vowels, but to hear the language of the enemy uttered from her lips… it made his stomach turn.
"This was then followed by a letter of the Wraith alphabet, followed by a two-digit number – the meaning of which we're still debating – followed by a year according to the standard Wraith calendar."
"And realoş only has the one meaning – 'reality?' Unequivocally, it can't mean anything else?" Woolsey asked.
Rogers looked down at the table. "Even though realoş ends in what sounds like a plural "s" to us, it's actually a geminated "s" sound – almost like the German Eszett – which holds separate significance in Wraith. Realoş is therefore a singular, nominative noun which has only one meaning: 'reality.'"
"But?" Woolsey prodded.
Her eyes flicked up toward his. "But… there is another, similar word, which in the nominative singular is just realo, but realos – with a non-geminated "s" – in the plural ablative. This word means 'realm,' 'kingdom,' or 'domain.'"
"Or 'planet?'"
Rogers gave a non-committal shrug in response.
"So then you admit it yourself, your translation of this term appears to be inconclusive. This naming system could simply be their planetary cataloguing system, not unlike our own."
"I don't believe so," she said with a shake of her head. "In context, the singular nominative makes more sense than a plural ablative ever would. And the fact that the one "s" is geminated whereas the other –"
"You'll forgive me, Doctor, if I don't base my entire decision on a matter as trivial as noun declination."
"Dr. Hirsch agrees that my translation is the most –"
"New information aside…"
Upon the interruption, Rogers pressed her lips together and gave her head an irritated shake.
"I remain unconvinced. Colonel Sheppard," he turned toward him, "you must agree that there is still a significant risk of Wraith attack on this planet."
Sheppard tilted his head from side to side as he deliberated his answer. "We don't know for sure that Janus will actually wake up from the coma Beckett put him in. Now, from what I've heard, it doesn't sound like he's totally out of the woods yet, and if Janus doesn't make it, we lose our closest connection to his research. So…I think whatever we might find in the lab would be worth the risk, sir," he finally answered.
"That's not quite what I asked," Woolsey said with a small smirk.
"McKay, Rogers," Sheppard said, "you're the ones who have spent the most time working on this whole Janus issue. Do you think M5R-233 is compromised?"
Rogers and McKay looked at one another, silently conferring.
"It is…a distinct possibility," McKay eventually replied.
"So you two agree that the Wraith may know we will be on this planet sometime in the near future?" Woolsey confirmed.
"Yes," McKay answered with some reluctance.
Rogers nodded ever so slightly, then looked down into her lap.
"Then I can't, in good conscience, approve another mission there," Woolsey concluded.
"But –" McKay started.
"If a life or multiple lives were at stake and depended on whatever is housed in that laboratory, then perhaps it would justify the risk. But there is no life at stake here."
"Mr. Woolsey, with all due respect, there are lives at stake. Has McKay shown you any of that video footage?" Rogers asked.
Ronon looked at her again and thought the shadows under her eyes were even more prominent than just minutes before.
"I admit I have not yet had the time to review the footage," Woolsey said, adjusting his glasses.
"Well I have." Her voice had begun to tremble with emotion. "And it's horrifying. This particular Wraith commander has been rounding up humans and raising them like cattle for centuries, treating each different reality like a separate experimental trial in order to find the best way to mass produce and optimize their food source."
"I agree; it's deplorable, but we have always known the Wraith to be deplorable creatures. If this has been happening for centuries, though, then waiting a few more days – or even weeks – until Janus can be safely awakened from the coma will not make much of a difference, will it?"
"What about Eva?" Ronon asked, tearing his gaze away from Rogers and over to Woolsey. He glanced back at Rogers to discover that her eyes, wide-eyed with gratitude, were already looking back.
"Eva is safe, healthy, and well cared for here and I will not put any of this operation's lives at risk for her," he definitively said.
"Sir, she's still a child," Emma argued. "A child who needs her parents."
"Technically she has her parents here. They're in this very room," Woolsey argued.
"That is completely different," she said in a hushed tone.
"I fail to see how—"
"Fine," she barked, dropping her already tenuous grip of her professionalism. "Forget what Eva needs for a second and think about how much her parents need her. Can you even begin to imagine how worried, how distraught they must be that she's missing? We have a duty to return their only child to them."
"I can't help but agree," Teyla said.
"I'm sorry, but my decision is final," he glanced to Rogers and then over to McKay. "Until Janus wakes up, find another way." With that, he gave his folder three short taps on the table to straighten the papers inside and left the room.
Rogers shook her head and then let it fall.
"I guess I'll keep analyzing her tracking device," McKay sighed as he, too, stood up to leave.
Sheppard and Teyla soon followed until Ronon and Rogers were the only ones left. He pushed himself out of his chair and, as he walked behind her, laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. She didn't move, didn't look back at him, didn't say anything.
After a brief instant, he left her in peace, but chanced one final look back at her before descending the staircase. She still sat alone in the briefing room, slouched over the long and empty table, her hand resting on her shoulder exactly where his had been only moments earlier.
A/N: Let me know what you think! Is the Wraith's dastardly plan starting to come together and make sense? Do you think they should go back to the planet or wait for Janus to wake up?