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Blair and Rodney and What Happened Next

Helen W.

So, here we go.

This is the story of how Rodney McKay found out about the Stargate project. Since it also involves Blair Sandburg, it's a bit complicated.

If you've been reading this series up to this point, you know that in the late summer of 1999 Blair Sandburg and Jim Ellison were having a bit of a hard time. After learning that there was a U.S. Air Force program dedicated to protecting our planet from the Goa'uld (his least favorite parasites), Jim had decided that it was his duty to join it. And maybe figure out what else the folks in Cheyenne Mountain were up to - principally, whether there was actually interstellar travel happening, like Daniel Jackson had said. That Blair thought that having anything whatsoever to do with the military was a really bad idea for anybody, and would probably cost Jim his freedom and his sanity if not his life - well, that was Blair's problem.

In the previous story of this series (Just Like a Baby Bird**) (go here for a pretty version), we saw Jim ditch Blair and head to Colorado Springs with Simon Banks for a long weekend of memory regression and general sanity proving (at least to SGC standards). Well, Jim's excursion achieved its objective, and in mid August Jim packed a couple of duffels, arranged for the automatic payment of most of the loft's utilities (leaving the phone bill for Blair), and headed out.

(** Couldn't make it through 'Bird'? Well, you're not alone. It even got me a note from a SA dues mod asking me to please make my future stories more comprehensible.)

Once Jim gave notice and started prepping to leave, Blair's steady state became passive-aggressive annoyance. He took the 3-11 shift at Wild America so that they wouldn't see too much of each other, and if he woke Jim when he came in at night, that was just too bad. He also started experimenting with Wild America's signature line of spice mixes, and muttering, "You're Sentinel of the Great City, not the Whole Damn Planet," whenever he thought Jim might hear him.

(Not that Blair was completely negative about Jim moving out; he was kind of looking forward to being able to have overnight guests for the first time in years. Not that he had any immediate prospects for overnight guestitude, but a guy could dream.)

So, anyway, off Jim went; and that's pretty much it for him in this story until almost the end.

Blair then had a week of relative normality, assistant-managing the produce section at work, sleeping as late as he could get away with, lunching with Cassie on Tuesday, catching a noon matinee of The Sixth Sense on Wednesday because it was cheaper and because he could - that sort of thing.

Then things got interesting. It started with a mid-morning phone call from Hannah, the head secretary for the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Rainier. She'd heard somehow that 'the cop' had moved to Arizona to become a park ranger, and was wondering whether Blair had space for a new instructor - that is, Rodney McKay - to crash for a few days while his apartment was being prepped for him.

Blair took the call while he was eating Wild America's Certified Thrice Organic Wild! Ricie! Krisps!! and reading his world.std.com email. Hannah launched into her spiel just as Blair was registering that Message 6 was from Simon Banks, subject 'Brackett Loose.' Blair said "yeah, sure" quickly so that he could hang up and read:

Hey Sandburg, I just got a call from the bureau. It seems they've misplaced Lee Brackett. I'm sure he's not headed your way, but you might want to keep the loft locked, ha ha. Also, could you forward this to Jim? [email protected] isn't working. Simon

Blair dashed off a quick response to Simon telling him to make sure the last letter of Jim's email was an ' L', not a 'one,' then banged his head against the back of the sofa a few times. Lee Brackett was, of course, one of his least favorite people, having caused him and Jim a heap of trouble three years before. He was also one of only a handful of people on the planet who both knew there was something extremely special about Jim and had some clue what it meant.

- - - - - -

Many people assume that Rodney McKay started grad school at 13, amassed three or four PhDs by the age of 27, and had been short-listed for the Nobel multiple times before hooking up with the Air Force and becoming its "stargate expert."

This isn't what the early careers of physicists are like, especially physicists that department heads fear might eat freshmen. A minor hobby of mine is reading the obituaries in Physics Today, so trust me on this. (And, what's with the multiple-PhDs in closely related fields anyway? A doctoral program in the sciences is for training people to do research. You only need to go through one once; once you get one, you can pretty much do anything if you can convince someone to pay you. In almost every circumstance, getting more than one science PhD makes no more sense than getting more than one high school diploma. Rant over.)

Yes, Rodney got through the normal sequence of pre-college math young, but headed to college only a year early. He then almost failed out, having somehow gone in thinking that attending classes which bored him was optional; spent a semester home; decided that anything was better than that; re-enrolled; and emerged with a BS/MS at 22. Dual doctorates in physics and mechanical engineering took him only three more years, largely because, once it was obvious that he was going to get through their programs, both departments wanted to be rid of him as quickly as possible. And his work was really, really good - nobody ever questioned that.

Rodney's first post-doc was at CERN; his second was at Los Alamos; and his third, funded by the Canadian Space Agency, was at Berkeley. He finally got reclassified as a visiting scholar at Berkeley in 1997, but was still basically a glorified post-doc, and the position's funding ran out in July of 1999. Meanwhile, none of the 127 tenure-track faculty positions he'd applied for over the past half-decade had resulted in an offer (though he'd made it to the interview stage 23 times); and the entire department at the Canadian Space Agency which had been funding him was retasked to work on antenna theory at about the same time that Jim was being made into a Goa'uld condo.

The antennafication of the group which he'd always seen as his safety net was the last straw. Deciding that eating and lab space were more important than pride, Rodney had finally called up his old thesis advisor and groveled a bit: "I'll take anything. I'll be an adjunct. I'll cover a maternity leave. I'll teach physics for poets as long as I'm allowed to fail them all. Anything." So strings were pulled, favors were called in, and, at the 11th hour, Rodney had loaded all his worldly goods - books, mostly - into his 1992 Jetta wagon and headed to Cascade.

When Rodney - or, as he introduced himself, Dr. M. Rodney McKay - was standing in the open doorway of the loft dripping sweat and luggage, it took Blair a minute to even remember his conversation with Hannah. Then Blair shrugged, gestured him inside, and apologized for not really being guest-ready. "I'm the 3-11 produce manager at the Wild America down the street," he explained. "So I don't have to be anywhere for a while."

"What, you're, what, a grocer?" Rodney asked.

"Yup. Swiss chard, escarole, kale, arugula, mizuna, bok choy, I'm your man."

"Those are really foods?"

Blair shrugged. "Some of your more interesting greens. But maybe some people just use them for packing material."

"Speaking of food..." And Rodney went on to explain about his citrus issues and made Blair get rid of the leftover orange chicken in the fridge and the Wild America organic lemonade mix he'd bought on a whim. He then liberated Blair's phone line and settled onto the sofa with his laptop, a bag of Cheetos, and one of Jim's beers. Surmising that he wouldn't be expected to do anything else for the guy, Blair headed to work. At the last moment he turned and called, "Uh, you might not want to answer the door for anyone."

- - - - - -

But did Rodney listen? Of course not. Around six, totally famished, he rifled through the takeout menus in the drawer labeled, helpfully, 'takeout menus,' and called for a meat lover's pizza from Randy McCheese's. Large, because he still had about a dozen boxes of books to move in from the Jetta.

When there was a knock at the door 28 minutes later, I don't have to tell you who was dressed like Randy McCheese, do I? Yup, it was Lee Bracket, flanked by two henchpeople. Rodney was just formulating a thought somewhere between "Mmmm, cheese," and, "He looks more like a spook than a pizza delivery guy," and, "I wonder if I'll end up doing this. Then when I finally figure out the cosmological constant problem or prove the cosmic inflation theory they'll all be sorry for making me waste precious minutes of my life tromping up and down tenant stairs and ringing doorbells that don't actually work and..." when Brackett tossed the pizza into the loft and pulled out a M1911 (which Rodney registered as 'gun, pointy, shiny').

Brackett, for his part, was pissed, because the man looking at him like a deer in the headlights was obviously not Blair Sandburg. He waved the pistol and Rodney backed up. "Who are you?" he demanded, and Rodney was so freaked he said, "Meredith."

"No, really," said Brackett.

- - - - - -

So when Blair came home that night he opened the door and walked straight into an ambush. Two guys who looked like they should be in the Sunrise Patriots (or maybe that was just the style?) jumped him from either side as he switched on the overhead light. One grabbed Blair into a choke hold while the other took advantage of the angle this provided to knee him in the stomach. As Blair folded the rest of the way, he saw Rodney lying on the floor of the kitchen, gagged and hog-tied but looking reasonably in one piece.

(For the record, 'reasonably in one piece' is not how Rodney would have described himself.)

And then Brackett was leaning over him. "Mr. Sandburg. So graduate school didn't work out for you so well in the end. You and your sentinel should have joined forces with me when you could have; you'd be very rich men right now."

(Yes, that's really how Lee Brackett talked. I blame Yale.)

"I," gasp, "don't recall," gasp, "you making an offer."

"Well, no, because you two screwed everything up too soon," said Brackett. "Anyway, who's this guy?"

"My new research subject," said Blair, now gasping considerably less and deciding it was time to start obfuscating.

"He's a sentinel?"

"Maybe."

"Huh," said Brackett. "This complicates things. Okay, Germaine, Oliver, let's head to the site. But first, Mr. Sandburg, I need you to make a phone call for me."

"Let me guess, I'm supposed to call Jim down at the PD."

"Heh, clever, but no, I know he's not in Cascade."

"Uh, you might not believe this, but I don't have his direct number. And he's probably asleep now anyway."

"Then call him at wherever he's staying."

"Wish I could, but I don't have that number either. Sorry."

"So you had some sort of falling out?"

"More we're pursuing differing opportunities."

"I find this difficult to believe."

"It's 1999. We email. And I guess I'm officially house-sitting now. And, you know, location, location, location..."

That got him another kneeing, followed by a trussing equal to Rodney's.

- - - - - -

Of course nobody saw Blair and Rodney being carried out like old rugs and tossed into the back of a black panel truck. As soon as the door was lowered, Blair squirmed around so that his hands, though still bound, were in front of him, then he relaxed his jaw enough to lower his gag without too much difficulty. Then, in three lunge-wiggles he closed the gap to where Rodney was trying to scream past his own gag.

"Just relax a moment, will you'" Blair hissed. Relaxing was beyond Rodney at that moment, but he tried to hold still, and Blair was able to work loose the knot holding Rodney's gag in place.

"What the fuck? What the hell? What's happening!" said Rodney as soon as he was able.

"They want to use me to get a friend to do something. I don't know what. Probably kill a bunch of people and steal some diamonds or assassinate someone or something. The usual. Uh, sorry for getting you involved, man."

Rodney banged his head against the floor. "I can't believe this is happening to me," he said. "Also, OWWW!"

"Yeah, uh, don't do that," said Blair. "Did they leave you any slack? Can you get your arms in front of you'"

"Don't you think I've tried that?"

Not that Blair had noticed, but it was difficult to tell, it being pitch-dark and all. He picked a little at the knot holding Rodney's hands together, but with being neither able to see nor move more than his fingers he got nowhere. Then the truck lurched into motion and he gave up trying.

"And here we go," he said. "I gotta tell you, McKay, this is better than being in a trunk."

"I hate you," said Rodney.

- - - - - -

And so they were off.

The first hour or so wasn't really so awful, physically at least. Blair spent the time trying to figure out whether there was any worth in playing at Rodney being a sentinel, and Rodney occupied himself by trying to keep the floor of the truck from giving him a concussion and muttering, "This can't be happening, this can't be happening," over and over again.

Seeing as he seemed to be the more experienced hostage, Blair felt obligated to try out some of the usual comments one made to the semi-hysterical - "Don't worry" and "We'll get out of this" and "We'll be fine" - but they didn't to do any more good than Blair thought they would, and eventually it just wasn't worth the effort. When Rodney's chant changed to "I don't want to die!" Blair snapped, "Well, join the club!" and when Rodney decided that their predicament had to be a dream and started sing-songing, "Wake up, wake up, wake up," Blair seriously considered trying to find and reinstate Rodney's gag.

Then they turned off onto a non-paved road; the noise increased ten-fold, and Rodney gave up competing. Blair actually found the white-noisiness (and chop) relaxing, and fell asleep soon thereafter (a little bit of (CO) might have contributed too). And Rodney started to feel the vague lightheadedness that always came before actual hunger, which just made the night perfect.

Blair woke up when the truck's door was rolled up. It was still dark out, but there was enough moonlight to tell that the man entering the truck was one of the guys from the apartment; a factoid which did them no good whatsoever. The henchperson looked them over, and said, "You two had better be worth it."

"I am," said Rodney. "I'm a physicist. I'm one of the brightest minds of my generation. You can call... you can call anyone. Let me give you some names."

"A physicist," said the guy. "Lordy, lordy." And left.

Blair decided Rodney was not only useless but nuts as well. But at least he was company; and he'd stopped chanting, a development to be encouraged. "What sort of physicist?" he asked.

"The brilliant sort!"

"I mean, nuclear? Astro? Glorified electrical engineer? What?"

"Theoretical astrophysics. Well, most recently."

"Oh. I bet the job market sucks."

Rodney scooted around so that he could get a better look at Blair. "Like a black hole on a bad day."

"Makes me feel better for being kicked out of academia."

"Well, uh," said Rodney, "glad to help."

And so they got to chatting about the joys of the grad student/postdoc lifestyle, the pros and cons of management consulting ("But, my God, I'd have to spend my days working with Business School grads!" - Rodney) and finance (Rodney: "Honestly, you do a little magic with an FFT and they think you're a god." Blair: "FFT?" Rodney: "Well, okay, DFTs of course, most of the time." Blair: "DFTs?" Rodney: "You went to college, didn't you?")

After a bit Rodney fell quiet; he was starting to feel the lightheadedness and vague queasiness that always came after three or four hours without food. It wasn't surprising, given that he hadn't ever gotten his pizza. At this thought, he felt a pang of worry about the delivery guy; what'd the goons done with him? And had they taken the pizza with them, maybe in the cab of the truck? And would they give him a piece if he asked?

"Um, Blair?" he asked.

Blair was a little surprised at Rodney's tone; it didn't hold the panic of the initial hours of their captivity, nor the jovial scorn of their later conversation. No, if anything Rodney sounded a little hurt and a little shy. Trying for his best calm-the-victim voice again - the one that had totally failed to work earlier, but was still his best bet - he said, "Still here."

"Yes of course you are," replied Rodney crossly, but then he said, "Do you think they'll feed us any sort of breakfast soon? Maybe they packed some bagels, or they grabbed that pizza I never got? I mean, certainly if they haven't killed us yet they'll have to feed us?"

Blair had absolutely no idea. "I expect they'll give us enough water to keep us alive. Don't know about food. Think of it as a weight-loss program."

"Well, that's just marvelous. How considerate of them."

"Honestly, McKay, I'm not an expert at this."

"Well, it's just that I need to eat every so often. I'm hypoglycemic."

"Shit." Then, "Or do you mean, like, pseudo-hypoglycemic? Like half the women I know?"

"What does it matter? I need food or I feel miserable."

"A professor in my department at Rainier died of an insulin overdose."

"Well, that wasn't very smart of him."

"It was a her, and it was murder."

And so now Rodney was queasy as well as light-headed.

- - - - - - - - -

Meanwhile, back in Cascade, Lee Brackett had figured out Jim's email address and sent off a message to the effect of, 'I've got your little buddy, come do my bidding.' He then did a quick background check on Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay, and things went click. Well, more like clunk, but he thought it was a click.

See, while incarcerated he'd heard that there had been a freakishly large number of high-quality diamonds entering the black market in the Colorado/Utah area. They were showing up in pawn shops, and being offered in lieu of payment for crack and heroin and to pay gambling debts - that sort of thing. Lee's associates had so far had no luck determining their exact source; by the time the ones they'd attempted to trace had made it to the bottom of the economy they'd changed hands several times. But their trails seemed to start in the Colorado Springs vicinity, so Lee had decided that his first act, upon achieving his freedom, would be to somehow coerce Jim Ellison into traveling to Colorado and determine the source of the diamonds by skulking around dives in Denver, surveying Kelsey Lake, maybe doing some eavesdropping around the Colorado School of Mines, that sort of thing.

But looking at the following:

(1) Jim Ellison had been either enticed or compelled to resume working for the U.S. military at, of all places, the Cheyenne Mountain Complex (based on his email address), which was located just a few miles from Colorado Springs.

(2) As everyone knew, there was something really odd going on in the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, requiring hundreds, if not thousands, of the world's best and brightest.

(3) Based on the presence of Dr. McKay in Ellison's home, and the link between Ellison and Cheyenne Mountain, "best and brightest" could be assumed to include physicists. SENTINEL physicists (if Blair Sandburg was to believed), no less.

Well, there was only one conclusion. The Air Force was manufacturing gemstone-quality diamonds in Cheyenne Mountain, using some method that involved a lot of physics. And it had to be a touchy, delicate method, else why would they need a physicist with sentinel abilities?

Bracket's original plan had been to have Oliver and Germaine babysit Sandburg in a secluded location within Cascade National Forest while he would holed up on neutral turf in Seattle and handled all interactions with Ellison remotely. If Jim Ellison behaved himself, he might not even have to kill Sandburg, just make sure Oliver and Germaine had a decent chance of getting well out of the area before he eventually provided Sandburg's location information to Ellison. And, if Ellison went Rambo and decided to go directly for Sandburg instead of acting reasonably, and turned out to be an even better tracker than expected, Lee wouldn't be around for Ellison to extract retribution on.

Now this plan would have to be revised; Lee needed to get information out of Sandburg and McKay before his next conversation with Ellison, both so that he wouldn't look like a fool and so that he could use Ellison most effectively. This meant he had to work quickly.

Which meant he might have to get a bit rough. A pity; a roughed-up Sandburg would probably incite Ellison to devote resources to capturing Lee and his associates, which meant that the advantages of killing Sandburg (and McKay, most likely) now outweighed the disadvantages. It meant he'd just get one job out of Ellison. Well, he'd have to make sure it was worth it.

Lee made it to the hideout location just past dawn. The prisoners were lying in the back of Germaine's truck, tied but free of their gags. And Sandburg had somehow managed to get his hands around to the front of his body. Sloppy, gentlemen, sloppy. But not really worth rectifying, since he needed his captives to talk.

Well, this was going to be fun.

- - - - - - - -

By coincidence, both Rodney and Blair had read the same $8.99 trade paperback on manly survival techniques, which included a chapter on how to deal with torture. The book had advised telling ones torturers whatever they wanted to hear, but also advised maintaining ones long-term usefulness, a contradiction that both men had noticed.

When Rodney had read the book, he'd imagined himself quoting the Charter of Rights and Freedoms; even if it wasn't relevant to the situation, it would be a brave, noble, and, most importantly, educational thing to do. In Blair's imagination, he'd written pages and pages excoriating U.S. government policies at home and abroad until his captors released him out of boredom.

Instead, this is what happened.

Brackett had Oliver lift Rodney to a more-or-less sitting position, then slapped him hard enough that Oliver lost his grip and Rodney's skull impacted the floor of the truck with a loud thud. While Rodney was still trying to figure out which way was up, Brackett knelt down and grabbed his face. "Dr. McKay," he said, "don't doubt that I'm capable of inflicting much worse. But I don't want to injure that brilliant head of your more than I have to, so why don't you just tell me what I want to know now."

"I don't know... I don't know what you're..." The Charter of Rights and Freedoms could not have been farther from Rodney's mind.

"Don't play stupid, McKay!"

"He really doesn't know anything," said Blair. "He has nothing to do with my work with Jim."

"Right. You just happen to have a sentinel physicist in your apartment."

"I have a lot of interesting friends," Blair tried.

At this point, Oliver realized that this might take a while. "Um, Mr. Brackett," he said, "If you get the back of this truck all bloody I probably won't get my deposit back."

So as the sun rose above the tree line in the valley to the south-east of their logging road pull-off, Oliver and Germaine hauled Blair and Rodney out of the truck and dumped them in the first really good spot they found, a small, pebbly depression about twenty feet from the back of the truck. Rodney's poor head hit a softball-sized rock as he was tossed down; Blair, a bit more used to this sort of thing and more physically adept in general, rolled as he hit the ground and managed to take the impact to his shoulders and swing his still-tied legs into the shins of Germaine, who was knocked to his knees. By the time Blair'd gotten into a position he could rise to his feet from, however, Germaine was back up and looking very, very pissed, and Oliver had a glock trained on him.

"Shit," said Blair. "I'm good, we're good."

"You'd damn well better be, you're going to get us killed," hissed Rodney. "Just - just tell these jokers what they want to hear."

"Well, if Lee would be more specific, it would help," said Blair, then added, "Come on, Brackett, you're confusing Rodney here. What exactly is it that you think we know? I told you, I don't have Jim's direct number, you're just going to have to figure that out for yourself."

"Oh, we're way past that, Mr. Sandburg," said Brackett. "What Dr. McKay is going to tell me is the precise methodology being employed by the U.S. Air Force to fabricate diamonds. And I'd be inclined to provide you even better accommodations if you can provide insight into why the Air Force is devoting vast resources to your endeavor."

"Diamonds?" said Rodney and Blair together, sounding so puzzled Brackett wasn't at all tempted to believe them.

"I'd suspect some sort of new weapon, but as I understand it the diamonds are of gem quality. Though whether the cutting is being done at Cheyenne or after they're being liberated by the grunts is still an unknown. So that leads me to believe that the diamonds are actually being made to fund some project behind Congress's back, perhaps behind the administration's back, perhaps even without the knowledge or consent of the Secretary of the Air Force."

"Uh, makes sense to me," said Blair. "I figured they had to have some way of financing things."

"So you do know what he's talking about!" said Rodney. "Then why isn't he hitting you instead of me?"

"That's what I like to see, mutual support," said Brackett. "Okay, Mr. Sandburg, would you like to explain the processes the Air Force is employing?"

"And make us dispensable? No thanks, Lee, even if I did know," said Blair.

"Besides, I doubt he would understand the chemistry," said Rodney.

"Well, thank you very much, but I think it's safe to say it involves carbon and a whole lot of pressure," said Blair.

"There are a number of ways of synthesizing diamonds," said Rodney, shifting himself into a position more suitable for pontification. "Not all of them require high pressures or extremely high temperatures. Mostly they just take time. As I understand it..."

"Fascinating," said Brackett, "but this doesn't explain what role you and Jim Ellison are to play."

"Hey, I'm not involved in the least," said Rodney. "I have a job teaching at Rainier. Did I forget to mention that? Well, maybe I would have told you if you'd asked me instead of hitting me in the face and then demanding a chemical engineering lecture."

"Isn't that more materials science?" asked Blair, sotto voce.

"Cute," said Rodney. "Just wait until he starts hitting you!"

"Back on topic," said Brackett. "Why does the process need sentinels?"

"Sentinel's what?" asked Rodney. "Are they an equipment maker or something?"

"Do it," said Brackett, and Oliver kicked Rodney in the side. Not terribly hard - since Rodney was a little lower than him, his angle wasn't great - but certainly harder than a second-rate thug-for-hire had ever kicked him before. He curled in on himself and gasped and moaned.

"He's telling the truth," said Blair. "He has nothing to do with the Air Force, or Jim, or Cheyenne Mountain. The physics department secretary just foisted him on me because his apartment's not ready."

"That's the stupidest, lamest excuse I've ever heard," said Brackett. "His employment history has DoD all over it. But while he recovers, why don't you tell me what you know about why Mr. Ellison is in Colorado."

"What I know isn't any sort of big secret. Jim's gone off to work for the Air Force. So I'm guessing - just guessing - it's because they have something for him to do that's more interesting than being a cop in Cascade. Or they're holding something over him. Hell if I know. We haven't been close recently."

"And the connection between Dr. McKay and Jim Ellison was made completely without your knowledge. Fascinating."

"What, now you're Mr. Spock?" That got Blair his own kick from Oliver. Blair exhaled and flexed his back as contact was made, then screamed, "Ow ow ow!" at what he hoped was an impressive volume.

Brackett cursed, then stormed back toward the truck to ask Germaine if Ellison had responded to his message. Oliver relaxed his stance, said, "Sorry, guys," and found himself a tree to lean against while he smoked a menthol.

"You okay?" Blair asked in a whisper as soon as he thought it was safe.

"I think that cretin ruptured my spleen," said Rodney. "Or bruised my kidneys. Or damaged my liver. Or broke a rib and punctured my lung. Or..."

"Man, you so do not have a punctured lung," said Blair. "Not much we can do about the rest."

"What does he want me to say? Do you know? Will he kill us if you tell him? Or does he need us alive?"

"I think he's still trying to figure out whether to keep to his original plan, which I assume involved getting Jim to do something for him, " said Blair. "Lee actually sucks at this. I thought he'd be better."

"So what makes you so - so casual about this?"

Blair shrugged, or tried to. "This just caps off a truly crappy couple of months."

"So, what, it doesn't matter if some madman kills you? And takes me with you?"

"It matters! I don't want to die. But shit happens."

"Great. I'm being held captive with someone who's suicidally depressed."

"I'm not depressed!" said Blair, loudly enough that Oliver called, "Don't make me go over there, boys!"

"I'm not depressed," said Blair again, more softly. "I've seen depression and that's so not me."

"I've seen depression too," said Rodney.

"And now you're a psychologist too?" snapped Blair. "Shit, McKay, with your ego, it's no wonder you can't land a faculty job!"

"At least I care whether or not I die here! There's too much I don't know yet!"

They fell silent, each man feeling steadily worse. Blair mulled over what would happen after Jim showed up and staged an 11th hour rescue. He wasn't scheduled for another shift at Wild American until tomorrow afternoon - would he just show up and work? Would there be any bruises to explain?

And after that shift, and the next, and the next... was it exotic organic produce for him for the rest of his life, while he metaphorically waited by the phone for Jim to find himself in some spot he needed help getting out of, or for Jack O'Neill to discover that, no, it really wasn't all that hard to kill a sentinel through neglect.

Rodney's angst was less existential and more existence-based. He really, really didn't want to die; and he was pretty sure that something deep and critical had been hurt. And maybe if he got to a hospital right now they could save him. But that just didn't look like it was going to happen.

Or maybe the doctors were wrong, he really had reactive hypoglycemia and, yeah, it was hard to die of it, but between his injuries and maybe more to come... They wouldn't even have to be trying to kill him, he could just die by mistake. There'd be mourning throughout the physics community - yes, there would be, he knew it! - but that didn't do him any good.

Damn, he was hungry.

After a while, Brackett came back, leaned over Blair, and asked, "What are they using the diamonds to fund?"

"Not a clue, man," said Blair, and Brackett slapped him.

"YOOOOOW!" Blair screamed. Bracket flinched at the volume, and Blair had to struggle to keep the satisfaction from his face. Another hit, another "YAAAAGH!" at full volume from Blair.

"You're useless," said Brackett, storming away. If he didn't get information from them soon, he was going to have to do something drastic; it seemed that Ellison, instead of accepting Lee's terms and awaiting further instructions, had commandeered something fast and was heading northwest. Brackett wanted to be long gone before he got near, with his witnesses safely dead.

"Did he break your face?" Rodney asked after Brackett left them.

"No, but I hope I broke his ear drums," said Blair. "Probably not, though, huh?"

"I, uh, I don't think that's possible," said Rodney. "Not without breaking your own."

"That was rhetorical," said Blair.

"Great, you're suicidal and you use big words."

"I mean it, I am really sorry you were dragged into this."

"It's...." Rodney stopped himself short; it wasn't okay. "I don't want to die."

"I gathered that," said Blair.

"But he's going to kill us, right? Isn't he?"

"Well... I don't want to raise your hopes, but there's actually a pretty good chance that friend of mine he keeps mentioning will show up any time now."

"How will he find us?"

"See that idiot?" He gestured a shoulder toward Oliver, now on perhaps his 10th smoke. "Jim can smell that from, I don't know, over a mile at least. I don't know what Brackett's thinking, letting him do that."

"How?"

"You know that term he used earlier, 'sentinel'? That's a term Richard Burton, the explorer..."

"...not the actor, yes, I know, I owned a laserdisc copy of 'Mountains of the Moon.'"

Blair laughed. "Mine was a Betamax!!"

Rodney banged his head back, hitting the rock behind him again. "Ow. Wow, aren't we a pair of format losers! Anyway, what about Burton?"

"He did some work in South America on the role of tribal watchmen in hunter-gatherer societies. These were guys with incredibly enhanced senses. People thought that they'd died out - that they'd all forgotten to reproduce around 1893 or something - but it turns out that modern life almost everywhere in the world is hostile toward the expression of these skills, and kids born with them essentially have them beaten out by the time they're through puberty."

"And you see these skills in me? Because I've always thought that maybe I..."

"No, sorry, man, I was just stringing Brackett along."

"Oh."

"Anyway, Jim Ellison is a living, breathing, fully-functioning modern sentinel. He was an Army ranger and the best damn cop ever and he'll find me if he's looking. And I'm sure he's looking. We really didn't have any sort of falling out; nothing major."

"Well, that's... I guess that's really good." And now Rodney looked a little less gray. Well, maybe. A little.

Well, actually, Rodney looked pretty horrible. Sallow, breathing shallowly, lying in a curled sprawl on the ground with his hands still trapped behind his back and pulled towards his bound ankles.

"Rodney," Blair started, then hesitated. But the guy needed something, and Blair was out of insults. "Rodney, would you like to know what's really going on? I don't think it matters if I tell you; I don't think Lee would believe it if either of us spill it."

Rodney just blinked at him, so Blair said, "Okay, the Air Force has, or has built, or has stolen, this thing they call a stargate. They use it to travel to other worlds. I have no idea how it works. They've recruited my friend to be some sort of explorer - I gather they send teams of people through it, or them, or I-don't-know. Sorry, man. I know this sounds crazy. You're probably going to say it's impossible."

"Yes, it's impossible," said Rodney. Then he twisted around and tried to lever himself up. "No no no, if the 'gate' is some sort of wormhole - I'd call it a gate and why wouldn't they? The trick is keeping the damn thing stable. Kip wrote a book about this not five years ago... it's straight out of Einstein's equations... A pen! I need a pen! Paper paper paper..." Rodney's hands twitched behind him like they were grasping for a pen and some paper out of thin air. "I need to write!"

"So, it's possible?"

"Well, no, it's impossible, but you say they're doing it? Using it for interstellar travel?"

"That's what they told me."

"And you're living in Cascade, Washington knowing this?"

"I'm not a physicist, man. They want Jim because he's a soldier, and I'm not one of those either. So there's nothing there for me."

"But if you're in the know, they could probably make use of you somehow. You could fetch coffee or something!"

"I'd rather manage kale."

"I can't... this is incredible! I'd give my eye teeth to be a part of something like that."

"I thought you wanted to teach?"

"I hate teaching!"

"Then what's with all the interviews and the years of postdoccing?"

"I... There just didn't seem to be anything better."

Four years ago, Blair recalled, he'd been just as excited when he'd been handed the medical file of Lt. Jim Ellison. Man, had that been a great feeling. It was pretty neat seeing it overcome someone else. Would he ever feel that sort of excitement again? Or was everything going to stay hard and pointless?

"If we get out of this... could you please, you know, put in a good word? Or any sort of word?"

"Uh, sure," said Blair.

"I really have to write..." Rodney was now doggedly trying to work a hand free, now rubbing the rope against that rock he kept on hitting his head on.

"What the hell are you doing?" Lee Brackett had come out of nowhere and was glaring down at them, a 6" knife catching the mid-morning sun.

Well, shit, though Blair. There was no way he could absorb and exaggerate a reaction to a cut.

And then he noticed Oliver behind, glock leveled at him, eyes a little scared, and for the first time that day Blair felt truly afraid.

Where the hell was Jim? Where was the spectacular rescue?

Brackett grabbed his hair and pulled up. Blair twisted, but Brackett was strong and quick and Blair couldn't...

And then Rodney was lunging for them, hands free, his right swinging the rock; his bound legs made him look like he was in some sort of race at a county fair...

And then Blair and Bracket were down in a tangle and Rodney was bringing the rock down...

Blair twisted away from them as he heard the impact, the simultaneous crash of the rock and breaking of bone. He rolled into a sitting position and yelled, "Get his knife!"

Rodney, amazingly, obeyed, and was holding it loosely - as if he didn't even know it was in his hands. But then Oliver was leaping for Rodney...

Rodney tightened his grip, turned, and stabbed Oliver in the stomach, then grabbed his gun as he folded. Then Germaine, Brackett's other thug, was charging - until Rodney blasted three rounds into his chest.

It was an amazing thing to see.

And then Rodney was sitting on the ground, his legs still tied together, aiming the gun in a slow arc past the truck and the Outback Brackett had driven up in. "Is that it? Were there more of them?"

Blair shook his head. "No, you got them."

"Are they..."

Well, Brackett clearly was; he couldn't tell about Germaine, and Oliver had about two more minutes of blood in him but was, thankfully, unconscious.

"Cut your legs free, then get me out of these," said Blair.

Silently, and with surprisingly steady hands, Rodney did so. By the time he was finished, Oliver looked soundly dead.

"Okay, let's get out of here," said Blair.

"But shouldn't we stay? This is sort of a... an accident scene, or something, isn't it?"

Actually, Blair had no idea what the proper protocol was; but he was heartily sick of being there. "Might as well find the cavalry instead of making it spend all day trying to find us."

"Oh - okay," said Rodney. "I'm just..."

"You had absolutely no choice," said Blair. "And, before things get too crazy... Thank you."

They headed to Brackett's car and got inside. Thankfully, Brackett had left the keys in the ignition; Blair very much did not feel like searching any bodies.

A mile down the road, the trees leaned back a little and... yup, those were blueberry bushes. It was late in the season, but Blair put the car into park and hopped out anyway. He quickly made a basket of his t-shirt and filled it with berries, then trotted back to the car. "Here you go," he said. "Instant fructose."

"I can't... How can you think about eating?"

"How does your side feel?"

"It's... it's okay."

"Then try one," said Blair. He took Rodney's closest hand, opened it, and pressed a berry in. "Try one," he repeated.

Rodney brought it up to his mouth and chewed, then put his hand out for more. For the next few minutes they shared Blair's pick in silence, then Blair put the car back in gear and they continued down the road.

Ten minutes later, they ran into five state police cruisers, three ambulances, and Jim.

- - - - - - -

I wish I could tell you that a big, emotional scene followed, but Blair was trying to exude calm hey-man-no-big-deal-ishness for Rodney's sake. He clapped Jim on the back, said, "Give me anything you've got edible," then gave it to Rodney and told him to eat.

Rodney didn't really realize that he'd killed three men in the space of 20 seconds using three different weapons until several hours later, when he was sitting alone in an exam room at Cascade General. He put his face in his hands and brayed sobs for about a minute. Then he looked up, noticed a pen on the counter, and started to scribble equations on the paper covering the exam table.

About twenty minutes later, he was officially released, the paper from the table stuffed into his pocket; Blair was waiting for him and sat with him while he gave his statement woodenly, his mind filled with images of wormholes swirling though space. Somehow this seemed wrong to him - fighting for his life, killing people, that should be what he was thinking about.

Blair never seemed to be very far away, and Blair's friend Jim never seemed to be very far from Blair. Finally, as they were heading to dinner God-knew-where, Rodney couldn't not ask. "So, is it real? Is the U.S. Air Force really generating wormholes in Colorado?"

"You told him?" Ellison sounded honestly surprised.

"Seemed like the thing to do," said Blair.

"And will you take me back with you?" Rodney asked. "I've been working out the math..."

"You found a wormhole physicist?" Ellison still wasn't addressing him.

"Weren't you paying attention to the debrief? He's at Rainier to teach physics."

"Yeah, but I figured that sort of position got filled by, I don't know..." Jim waved his hand around. "Not wormhole physicists."

"Well, I only just became a wormhole expert this afternoon," said Rodney. "Will you take me back with you? I have... I have references..."

And Blair found himself saying, "You know, I wouldn't mind a look at the stargate myself..."

* * * THE END * * *

The next, and at this point last, story in this series is a smarmy missing scene set during the above. I'll post it really soon.