Malicious Compliance – 1 – Hazel

Reading Time:
24 Minutes

One:

“Power bars are not lunch, McKay.”

The CSO glared back at him from where he sat, ensconced in front of what they had only recently learned was the one computer on the city that could grant administrative access to the database.  He could feel the science minions shift nervously behind him.  John just raised an eyebrow and met Rodney’s gaze until the man huffed and shoved a few things into his bag.

He refrained from laughing at the sullen look on McKay’s face as they turned to the door, or the satisfied expression on Dr. Kusanagi’s as they left.  Instead, John smiled widely and started speculating about what the mess would be serving that day.  As they discussed food options, Rodney’s arms uncrossed and hung more loosely at his sides.

John smiled, then smiled again when they passed several closed balconies on their way to the mess hall.  “Still getting complaints?” he asked, too cheerfully to be sympathetic.

Rodney huffed.  “I should just let them out on the balconies while we’re in motion.  Maybe they’ll fall off and spare me from their own stupidity in wanting to be out there in the first place.”

It should have sounded mean and hateful.  Instead, the little pout he could just barely see hiding under the scowl made it far more entertaining than it should have been as Rodney went off on a rant about the stupidest thing one of his many minions had done that day.  Since engineering had finally gotten the hydro-electric plant they’d found a few months ago up and running, there was a lot of stupid to go around.

John swallowed a scowl of his own, but apparently not fast enough since his best friend paused in his rant to snap out, “What?  What’s your problem?  Did you break something I’m going to have to fix?  Damn it, Sheppard.  Aren’t I busy enough keeping this city functioning so we can get to the circumpolar current so we can use the hydro plant to its full potential?  Haven’t I done enough unrecognized back-breaking labor getting us this far along?”

John rolled his eyes.  “I haven’t done anything, Rodney.”

“Well,” he crossed his arms, fighting briefly with the bag hanging on his shoulder, “what are you pissy about, then?”

“I’m not pissy,” John defended.

Rodney glared.  “You’re something.”

“I’m just thinking.”

“About something that’s making you pissy!  If something’s wrong I need to know about it, Sheppard.  Science knows I’m the only one on this city that will be able to fix whatever it is that you’ve messed up that is making you all pissy.”

John sighed, then led his best friend off the main path and a ways down a side hall just before they reached the mess.  Rodney stomped after him, complaining about the extra walking.

“Isn’t it bad enough that we have to schelpp everywhere already with the transporters off during the move?  What are we doing down here?  You said you hadn’t broken anything!”

“I thought you wanted to know what I was thinking about?”

McKay huffed.  “Fine.  Yes.  What has you all pissy, then?  And how long will it take me to fix whatever-”

John cut him off before he got going again.  “I was just thinking about finding the hydro plant.”  He rubbed the back of his neck, staring briefly at the blank wall instead of explaining why such a fantastic discovery would make him upset.

He didn’t have to explain.  He looked back at his best friend and the man met his gaze, just as pissy as he was.  Because it wasn’t finding the plant that was the problem.  It was how it was found, and why it almost hadn’t been.

It was pure happenstance that he’d been walking past at the exact moment the report was being made to Weir about where the assessment team was going to explore next.  If he’d been where he usually was that time of day he’d have never known that she had intended to redirect the team to investigate some cultural something or other instead of an area that the ancients had called strength of water.

And if they hadn’t found the plant and turned it on, there never would have been a power surge in the one place that would allow them to actually fully access the database.

Rodney glared back the way they had come, then muttered under his breath about cultural significance and actual damn science.

“Still messing with assignments?”  This time, there was no cheer in his sympathetic question.  He’d been struggling with the expedition leader regarding getting and distributing military resources too, after all.

“Yes!”  Rodney threw both hands in the air.  “As if her flighty little squid obsession in any way compared to getting this city functional and looking into the actual fucking science that the ancients engaged in before they all decided to give up on everything so they could naval gaze for eternity.”

“Too bad you can’t just throw the soft scientists at her and hoard the rest.”  John started to laugh but stopped as Rodney pointed at him rather aggressively and let out a sound a little too close to a Canadian goose for his comfort.

“Yes!  That!  If I can still keep at least one translator to help Miko with the database I could actually do real science with real scientists and let the useless PhDs spin their wheels with her!”

John opened his mouth to say he’d been kidding, but Rodney turned on his heel and headed back to the main hall, shouting over his shoulder as he went.  “Well, come on Sheppard.  You can help carry an extra tray back to the lab so I don’t have to give up my valuable time to traipse out the cafeteria again later.”

John rolled his eyes and caught up with Rodney.  “If you eat your whole lunch in the mess before you head back, we could take two trays and then you’d have an afternoon snack and dinner,” he cajoled just before they reached their destination, knowing without a good reason his friend would just grab a sandwich and disappear into the lab the rest of the day and subsist on power bars.

They got in line for their food and McKay fixed him with a narrow-eyed look.  “Hmm.  Maybe all that hair hasn’t completely smothered your brain after all.”

Sheppard rolled his eyes and loaded his tray, following Rodney to a table in the middle of the room since every spot near the windows was occupied by scientists and soldiers alike staring out at the passing water.

He shook his head, then started eating.

Rodney rolled his eyes and did the same.

Knowing he probably wouldn’t manage to keep McKay at the table very long, John concentrated on his meal.  Even so, Rodney was tapping his foot and drumming his fingers with a huff as he swallowed his last few bites.  Before he could ask how the man didn’t make himself sick eating that fast, John’s radio came to life in his ear with a soft chime.

“Colonel Sheppard, the machine is finished with phase two.”  Elizabeth’s voice as equal parts excited and impatient.

Not for the first time, he kind of regretted that Dr. Kusanagi had figured out how to piggyback their intranet and radios on the city’s communication network.  Even if it did save power, there were some people he didn’t want to hear quite so perfectly.

He activated his radio with a touch and stood from the table. “On my way, Dr. Weir.”

Rodney’s expression soured but he stood and followed John out of the mess hall, lamenting quietly about extra trays.

“You know you don’t have to come with me, right?  All I’m doing is telling a machine to spit out a sample.”  A sample of the original ATA gene the ancients had engineered, according to Weir’s translation.  A gene they already had a perfectly functional copy of.

“Because heaven forbid the gene therapy not work on her.”

John looked around to make sure no one else had overheard the comment but the halls had emptied quickly as they headed away from the central tower.  Lack of windows did wonders for foot traffic since they’d started moving the city, though he didn’t quite understand the ongoing urge to look outside.  They were in the middle of the ocean, once the novelty of motion wore off there wasn’t much of anything to look at.

Fortunately for him, he had a floor show of his very own to watch as they walked across the towers that made up the center of the city and all the way out to nearly the end of pier two.  John didn’t bother to comment or question the tirade, more than aware of how irritated his friend had been by Weir’s insistence that the CSO did not need to be informed of her personal research despite it using Ancient equipment and scientific personnel, both of which fell under McKay’s purview as Chief Scientist.

He also didn’t comment on the way Elizabeth was less than pleased to see Rodney with him when they reached the Ancient genetics lab.  Instead, John made his way over to the machine he’d only seen twice.  Once when he’d turned it on about three months ago and once when he’d initiated the second phase of the process almost two weeks before.

He looked at the main screen.  He really needed to learn Ancient at some point.  “What’s it say?”

Weir made a sound in the back of her throat, clearly wanting him to get on with it.  She must have remembered the conversation they’d had the last time when John had insisted that he needed to know exactly what command he needed to give the machine before he was willing to touch it.

“Production is complete.  It is ready to release the sample.”

With a nod, he placed his hand on the screen and thought release.  Sheppard stepped back when lights started to flash and the wall next to the machine began to open.  A section slid over and then out, exposing a rather large, clear sided box-like space.

Weir started to move forward, waving him back out of her way.  But John held out a hand, stopping her as he got a look at what was inside the clear box.

She started to protest, but Rodney cursed from his other side, clearly able to see as well.

“An ATA gene sample.  That’s what you said this machine was for.”  Rodney jabbed a finger at the box.  “That is not a gene sample, Dr. Weir.  That’s a gene carrier.  That,” the finger jabbed again, “is a baby!”

Two:

Rodney waved both hands in the air and cursed in what sounded like French before pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers as Weir started sputtering angrily.

John tuned out the argument and activated his radio to tell Carson to get his ass to Pier 2 immediately.  Something lit up on the panel above the box.  It flashed off as soon as he closed the connection once the doctor acknowledged the order.

He leaned forward, carefully not touching anything then clicked on his radio again.  The light returned.  John tapped the sequence to connect him to McKay’s personal channel.

“What?”  The word was snapped out behind him as the ongoing argument paused, echoing in his radio.

The light on the panel remained steady.  “Come look at this, McKay.”  The man in question turned incredulously to him, then stomped over to the machine.

“You did not just call me on the radio from ten feet away.”  The words echoed again and Rodney closed the connection.  The light went out.

John just pointed to the spot on the panel.  Rodney paused, then turned and looked.  “What?” he demanded again.  Without responding, he selected his friend’s channel again.  The light flicked back on.

“Look.”  Sheppard clicked off his radio.  The light went out.

“Huh,” was the very sophisticated response of the Chief Scientist.  Rodney clicked on his own radio, selected Radek’s channel and told his second in command to join him.  The light stayed out.  He connected to John’s channel.  The light came on.  “Huh.”

A series of radio calls by both John and Rodney that irritated and confused a number of people throughout the city filled the next twenty or so minutes.  Interspersed by the stringent demands of Elizabeth Weir that Rodney waved off and John responded to with less professionalism and much less cool as time passed.

By the time Beckett and Zelenka had arrived all three were glaring at one another and all that they had found out was that the machine had tapped into John’s and only John’s radio channel.

Carson stepped forward first with a sigh.  “None of you appear injured, what is-”

John drew the doctor’s attention to the open section of the machine with a wave of one hand.

“Crivvens!”  Carson blinked for a moment in silence while Radek said something in Czech from the doorway, having obviously noticed the situation already.

Rodney huffed.  “Yes, yes.  We are all very surprised that a piece of Ancient technology has done something no one intended or knew it was capable of doing.”  He flashed a glare at Weir then turned back to the doctor without noticing that she glared back even harder and crossed her arms.

John surreptitiously stepped slightly in between the two and tuned back in to the exchange between medical doctor, astrophysicist, and engineer.  The three argued for several minutes before Carson asked Weir to translate something on the screen for him.

Rodney muttered under his breath something that sounded like great idea but judging from the lack of responses, only John heard it.  John heard the entirety of the ensuing discussion though he understood little of the medical and scientific terms they all started throwing around.

What he did understand was that Carson was at first insistent that the baby had to have been partially cooked before Weir had John turn it on because it had only been running 88 days and the baby was obviously at least a month old.  Rodney countered that with the incredulous exclamation of time dilation you so-called scientist.

The only thing Weir appeared focused on was that the baby had to be ATA positive.

Most of what Radek said was a mixture of Czech, technical jargon, and hand waving that only Rodney seemed able to interpret.

Most of the verbal exchange was carried by McKay which John found unsurprising and which also allowed him to stay at least somewhat interested in what was being said if for no other reason than to mentally count how many ways his best friend had managed to call one of the others an idiot.  Rodney was up to 28 when his own name wrenched him back to the actual content of the debate.

“Since Sheppard was the one to turn on the machine and start,” McKay gestured almost sarcastically at the baby still in its clear box, “the most likely conclusion is that the machine worked with at least part of his genetic code which as a supposed doctor you should understand means that the baby is probably his and therefore whether the baby comes out is Sheppard’s call, not yours.”

His genetic code?  As in his DNA.  His baby?  John froze, his brain frantically trying to make sense of what was just said, almost missing the way Weir immediately jumped in.

“I have been working with the machine, so by your logic the baby is mine and it should be my call.”

He wanted to rear back, his stomach swooping dangerously.  Oh hell no, John thought.  His having somehow inexplicably produced a baby with an Ancient machine was one thing.  Which he did not want to think about too hard.  But his having inexplicably produced a baby with Weir by way of an Ancient machine was something else all-together.  He felt a cold tingle in his hands and feet as his mind cycled rapidly through quite a few responses to that.

Thankfully his training kicked in without his conscious input and he stood ramrod straight instead, his face shuttering with the impassive mien of a career soldier.

Rodney made a sound both derisive and dismissive.  “Despite your obvious goals here, Elizabeth, you don’t have the gene and so cannot actually interact with the machine.  How exactly do you think it would have utilized your non-ATA, non-Alteran genome without you realizing it?”

McKay narrowed his eyes and fixed the leader of the expedition with a look any of his scientists would have taken as a cue to duck and cover.   “Unless you gave it a blood sample before phase one started when the overview you actually managed to send me as the head of all scientific research on this city mentioned specifically a lack of required biological material?”

The fact that McKay wasn’t even entertaining the idea that the baby was some Ancient tech combo of himself and Weir had his heart slowing from a dizzying race to a mere accelerated pace.  He looked back and forth between Rodney and Weir as she puffed up and sputtered in response.

Before she had a chance to actually speak, Zelenka stepped in.  “All is academic until we can investigate further, yes?  Our options are simple.  Take the baby out or not.  Since the machine has completed all work and does not include a clear stasis chamber we know will support baby long term only humane decision is take baby out.  Yes?”

No one was given a chance to respond to that, though all three of the others looked ready to do so.  Radek just barreled on.  “So clearly Dr. Beckett should give the baby a full check-up and run medical tests for parent and Rodney and I will look at what information the machine has to answer the many questions posed, which will require input from Dr. Weir since she led all work with machine.  Yet, someone must go with baby since CMO is not a babysitter.  This means Dr. McKay, myself, and Dr. Weir stay here and look at the machine.  Dr. Beckett and Col. Sheppard take the baby to infirmary.”

Radek held out his hands briefly but still did not let anyone interject.  “We are agreed.  Ano?  Ano.  Let us start.”  The head of Engineering appeared to completely ignore Weir’s glare and Rodney’s smirk as he stepped up to the machine.

Sheppard still couldn’t quite form a verbal response, his mind circling constantly back to the thought that the baby – baby girl, did someone just said it was a girl – in the clear box a few feet away carried half of his DNA.

Somehow, within a few minutes, John was holding a still sleeping baby girl that might be his.  He started to ask how he got designated the babysitter, but the other option was probably for Weir to go with the baby she was eyeing like an unproductive science experiment, or for her to come with him and the baby.

He snapped his mouth shut and followed Carson towards the infirmary without a word.

Three:

John stared at the bundle in his arms, trying to remember exactly how the nurse had told him to hold her.

Because the baby was in fact a girl.  And according to the sleek looking Ancient do-dad Carson claimed to know how to use, she was in fact biologically his.  The memory of almost being hit by an accidentally fired drone at the outpost made him glad that the doctor had also promised to run a standard DNA comparison with the tech they’d brought from Earth to work on the ATA therapy.

The relief he felt at the chime of his door distracting him from that train of thought was short lived since the first thing McKay said was, “The machine definitely used your supergene to make the kid.  Here’s hoping she doesn’t end up with your hair too.”

When a couple seconds passed without him responding to that tactful statement, Rodney looked at him with the same expression he’d once given him while expecting John to immediately know how to extract them from a planet of hostile natives.  Not that it had been his fault that said natives had been pissed that Rodney had accidentally insulted the chieftain’s ceremonial robe any more than it was his fault that he was now in possession of a baby that was biologically his.

“Glad to know that the mental component of Ancient tech interprets ‘turn on’ as ‘yes please take my DNA without prompting to make a baby.’  Really, that’ll be very useful information next time someone wants me to turn on some random Ancient tech that they don’t actually understand.”

Rodney rolled his eyes, throwing both hands in the air.  “Right?  So much for technological and moral perfection being the key to ascension.”

John blinked.  The Ancients had abandoned an entire galaxy to the Wraith and given up on living even their own lives.  “Moral superiority?  Who said that?”

The blank-eyed stare was almost comedic on the face of someone usually so animated.  “The same person who was supposed to be the best on the city at reading Ancient and still translated ‘gene carrier’ as ‘gene sample.’”

If both his hands weren’t full of a roughly one month old baby he’d be rubbing the back of his neck.  Angrily.  But he really didn’t have the time or mental bandwidth for that at the moment.  Thankfully, Rodney did give him time to try.

“So what did the witchdoctor manage to figure out?”

“Female.  About a month old.  Genetically mine.”

“We knew that when you left.  What did he spend all this time doing?  Waving a magic wand?  Did he make a voodoo doll of her to practice his so-called medical science on later?”

John rolled his eyes and mentally reviewed the instructions he’d once been given in training for dealing with a suspected explosive device and carefully placed the baby into a little basket thing Biro had jerry-rigged for him.  When he looked back up, his best friend was watching him a little strangely.  He brushed it off, because what was more strange than him handling a baby?

“He did a DNA test with the Ancient whatever, and started a regular one too.  He got me some formula and one of the nurses showed me a couple things.  I radio’d Teyla and she got a bunch of cloth diapers and stuff and brought them to me before I left.”

“We brought baby formula in the supplies?  They didn’t have room for more coffee but they sent baby formula?”

He stuck his hands in his pocked with a small shrug.  “Something about trade with locals or emergencies or something.  Honestly, I was kind of focused on figuring out the diaper things.  I didn’t think I’d ever wish for Pampers but these cloth things are kind of complicated.”

Rodney curled his lip.  “Well, at least it wasn’t a total waste of time.  Other than the voodoo.”  McKay waved dismissively and went over to sit in the chair of the desk John never used.  “I was able to get into several files on the machine so I’ve got quite a bit more for you.”

The baby started to cry, prompting them both to eye the basket silently.  When it was clear she wasn’t going to settle back to sleep right away, John gritted his teeth and picked her up, trying to handle her the way the nurse had shown him and not like a football.

He had no fucking idea what he was doing.  What did babies like?  Lullabies were a thing.  Did that mean all babies liked music or singing?  He didn’t know any baby songs, but if music helped it was worth a try so he started to softly sing Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down.  It wasn’t one his mother would have chosen, but it was slow and he knew the words.

When he’d been sick or upset or couldn’t sleep his mother had always grabbed the closest book and read to him.  He glanced over at War and Peace.  She certainly hadn’t read him that.  June Sheppard had loved Jane Austen.  Her favorite was Pride and Prejudice and she read it at least once a year so he’d heard it a lot.

John bit his lip, then kept singing.

She’d stopped crying just as he started Slow Rider.  He should probably learn something that wasn’t Johnny Cash but she fell back asleep before he finished the second song so he figured it would do for now.

McKay was watching him with another odd look but all he said once the baby was settled back in the basket was, “You might try skin to skin.  She’s not too old to benefit.”

One of the nurses had said something about that, he was sure, but more important than that reminder was the realization that Rodney McKay had known what it was.  “Do we have a baby info database I don’t know about that you pillaged for advice on the way over here?”

Rodney looked away and cleared his throat.  “My mom used to carry Jeannie around in a sling thing under her bathrobe.  She told me what it was.”  There was a beat of silence.  “I asked her how long she did that with me.  She said she’d do it with Jeannie until she was six months old, but she ended up doing it until she was almost nine months since my dad always stayed longer in his study when she was doing it.”

John blinked, wondering why that sounded off.  Then he realized what McKay had said he actually asked.  “Is that how long she did it with you?”

The scientist got his tablet out of his bag and situated himself on the other side of the room.  “She said Jeannie needed the emotional comfort because she was a girl but boys needed different things.”

John had the sudden urge to ask that Rodney never pass on any parenting advice his mother had ever given but he’d only just swallowed that back when McKay started talking again.

“The machine logs a record of DNA sources for every child produced.  The last one it listed used a sample that was stored exactly 88 days ago and combined it with,” he woke his tablet and read off the screen, “exemplum FA468, archivtatum lux aestiva 11732.  Apparently it was the last female sample archived before the machine was turned off.  Or left lying about like every other dangerous or risky item they played with back before they high tailed it back to Earth.”

A knot he had refused to acknowledge loosened in his gut.  Sheppard took a deep breath and nodded.  “Okay.  Good.  So I basically had a baby with an Alteran woman who died thousands of years ago.”

“Pretty much.  Also she’s not about a month old.  She is exactly six weeks old because the machine did in fact use a time dilation field to artificially age her development and growth.  I guess Ancients were impatient.”

A group of people who gave up life in order to spend literally forever floating around as energy squid and thinking being called impatient was just too damn much.  John choked on a laugh, covering his mouth to try to muffle the sound.  Rodney jumped to his feet and looked between him and the basket.

“What the hell, Sheppard?”

The baby woke again, though this time she just made warbling noises rather than crying.  McKay fluttered his hands in the air, then hesitantly took a few steps closer to the baby, looking back and forth between them.  John chuckled a little, swallowing down most of his amusement.

“You can pick her up if you want.”

Wide blue eyes stared at him for a moment, then Rodney sidled up to the basket and slowly lifted out the baby.  Somehow the man seemed to hold her far more naturally than John had managed so far.

Sheppard watched his best friend hold the baby girl he was still trying to comprehend was actually his.  McKay smiled down at her as the warbles turned to something like coos and John had to swallow hard.  Not to silence laughter, but to breath past the sudden lump in his throat.

The entire day just hit him like a freight train.  He had a baby.  He was a dad.  He would be responsible for this tiny little life for as long as he managed to stay alive.

John tried to picture it.  A lifetime of raising and nurturing and protecting that little girl.  He’d never really planned his life past pilot and career officer.  Even when he married, the idea of it had only stretched out a decade or two in his head and when even that crashed and burned without a parachute on the way down he’d stopped looking too far ahead in any way.

Now he could see it.  She’d learn to walk, and talk, and play tea party with him contorted into a far too small chair holding a plastic cup with his pinkie out.  She’d get older and make friends and enemies and…. Well, no need to get too carried away with that thought.  The point was she’d be his and he could see it so clearly.  But in that crystalline vision he wasn’t alone.  At least he didn’t want to be and that realization was almost harder to breath past than fatherhood.

When the fuck had he fallen in love with his best friend and why hadn’t he known about it?

John rubbed a hand over his face, ignoring the way it shook just a little.  He was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force and had been behind enemy lines and in enemy hands both on and off planet and if he could keep his cool through that he could damn well get his racing pulse back under control right the hell now.

A few deep breaths and some internal lectures eventually calmed him and he was able to close the distance between himself and Rodney.  The other man looked up at that moment and smiled again, this time at him.  His breath hitched and he smiled back.  He was so fucking screwed, and not in the way he suddenly realized he wanted to be.

Clearing his throat and hoping that thought did not show on his face, John reached out and brushed a finger as gently as he could across the sparse dark hair on her tiny head.  “Eliza Grace,” he said softly.

Rodney blinked.

“Her name.”  He kept stroking her head, careful to keep his fingers from brushing Rodney’s where he still held her.  She turned to look at him as he spoke.  He’d thought she’d been responding to voices in general that day, but now that he thought about it, he wondered if she actually recognized his voice in particular.  The thought suddenly meant a lot more than it would have half an hour before.  “My mom always liked the name Eliza.  She said she would have named a girl that if she’d had one.”

McKay cocked his head to the side slightly as if he was weighing the name against some unknown standard.  With a first name like Meredith he probably was.  “And Grace?”

“Like Grace O’Malley, the pirate queen.”

Rodney glanced out the window of the city ship that had helped create her and nodded.  “Huh.  That actually isn’t terrible.  She could totally be Queen of Atlantis when she grows up.”  He looked back down at her and then shot him a smirk.  “I was serious about her getting your hair, though.”

John rolled his eyes and kept stroking her soft little head.