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John had gone most of his life with a minor goal of avoiding lawyers and shrinks. This woman with her law degree and her training was close to a mix of both, one of the three trained profilers that had been sent out by the FBI to help build up a police force. One profiler was also a former Chicago cop with the type of athletic build that put some of his men to shame and the last, their supervisor, was also a lawyer and had also been part of SWAT. There were also two different forensic technicians and four different investigators, two each from NCIS and AFOSI. John had thought that they were fine with the way things were going, but apparently someone with a law enforcement background had gotten promoted high enough to be read in on the Stargate program and had decided otherwise.
Several of the newcomers had some degree of the ATA gene, which wasn’t a deciding factor in their inclusion but still a decent bonus, and Agent Girardi was one of those. Her connection to the city was a little odd, and it worried him a little. Rather than just getting impressions and nudges from Atlantis, she seemed to be having full-on conversations. He would have worried about her mental state but he could sense the discussions on the edge of his awareness. One time her unit was in a hurry to get from the gate room to the brig, needing to be there to question someone on the botany side of things who had been accused of creating something plant-based that acted like a date-rape drug and she’d simply pressed her hands to a wall only for a door to open up.
Girardi had stepped through without hesitation and her team had followed, confident in her belief that she would be safe. The door closed behind her and then vanished from sight, and John wasn’t sure if there was actually a door there usually or if Atlantis had created it just for her.
And if Atlantis could do that, what else could it do?
John both wanted to talk to her about it and wanted to avoid that conversation like the plague. Of anyone, she would probably understand how it felt to communicate with Atlantis, but John was oddly offended that she might be better at it than he was.
In the end, Agent Girardi tracked him down, handing over a square of chocolate as a peace offering. “You’re still her favorite, Colonel Sheppard. She feels like you’re ignoring her and wants you to communicate more than you have been.”
John distinctly did not like the sensation of being seen, but there was no way to really avoid it. “If I’m her favorite than why is she talking to you instead?”
Girardi regarded him, her dark eyes thoughtful. “She’s not talking to me. I’m listening to her. There’s a difference. You have to open your mind up to listening a little more, or you’ll never have more than you do now. Because Atlantis has a lot to say.”