Family History (SGA/Traders xo Hawaii 5-0) part two
Toby running ahead of him was a solidly bright light from the top of his head to the soles of his feet. Grant felt like he could almost reach out and dabble through Toby’s aura like mixing finger paints. Sunshine yellow was the predominant shade, with a more silvery cast flaring around his head like an aurora. Flyboy’s could almost be as bright, especially when he was focussed on saving people.
Like now.
Toby ran before him and there was a warm hand on his back pushing him forward as they dodged through the traffic across the street. A car horn beeped. Grant flinched away as the knife-like sound cut at him. A screech of brakes ahead. A yell behind. Grant clapped his hands over his ears.
“No. No. No.”
The hand on his back shifted and he was lost. There was a dull, fleshy sounding thump.
Grant ducked low and bolted between moving cars and honking buses, trying to find the darkest corner in the world.
“Squirrel!”
~*~
Flyboy’s baby brother -- Toby Logan, Paramedic -- crouched before him. “You back with me?”
Grant shifted further into the space between the dumpster and wall. It was tight but it wasn’t dark enough.
“It was noisy, wasn’t it,” Toby said. “And, wow, you can run fast, like a rabbit.”
“Squirrel,” Grant corrected.
Toby smiled and then snorted out a laugh. “It’s so weird. You’re thinking a mind storm. I can’t get any sense of you.” He held out his hand. “Come on, Squirrel.”
Slowly, Grant curled his fingers around Toby’s narrower span. He shuffled his way out of the little nook.
The walls curved above his head like a practical in Einstein’s physics. If he threw a ball against a wall, would the world’s spinning slow down? Grant hunched down away from their looming height.
“Hey?” Toby stooped down, head cocked to the side, trying to check his eyes.
Grant avoided him, peering up at the blue sky peeking out between the sentinel-like buildings. The warm fingers curled around his hand inched up and over his wrist.
“Grant, can you tell me where we are?”
The question was surprising. “Earth. North America. Canada. Toronto. Don’t you know?” Grant freed himself from Toby’s grip.
“Yes,” Toby said slowly, “I know.”
“Good. That’s good.”
“Okay. We should try to get back to your friend, John.”
Grant shook his head. “No. It’s dangerous. The people. The Trust. The NID. The factions in the Government we don’t know about. That’s the United States, though. We’re in Canada, so maybe we’re okay? Perhaps we should find a Mountie, hmmm?”
“We could call John? Call him on your phone?”
Grant patted his chest, ensuring that his tricorder was safely secure in the breast pocket of his new coat.
“It’s not a phone. It’s my tricorder.”
Grant could see Baby Flyboy’s eyebrows rise out of the corner of his eye.
“Do you know his number?” Toby said as a tiny smile frittered on his lips.
“Yes.” Grant knew lots of numbers. He knew Flyboy’s identification tag, social security number, blood group… but he had never called Flyboy on a telephone. “We will have to call Rodney.”
“Who’s Rodney?”
“My cousin.” Shuffling a step away from Baby Flyboy, Grant curled his shoulder protectively as he retrieved his tricorder from his pocket.
“I thought that wasn’t a cell phone?”
“It’s not.” Grant double tapped the long side of the palm-sized rectangle and it unfolded like pages of a book. The right hand screen shimmered as it mapped out the wireless-enabled, easy to hack computers in the immediate vicinity. Grant tutted under his breath as he found a computer with only a firewall as security. He didn’t want a computer; he wanted the next level, the network flowing around them…
“Where the FUCK are you!” Rodney screamed -- his voice tinny over the network.
Grant was kind of disappointed that Rodney hadn’t enabled the holographic emitter, so there was no tiny, little Rodney -- al la Princess Leia -- balanced on the matrix screen berating him.
Grant enabled the GPS and overlaid a map of --
“Right, I know where you are!” Rodney was two steps ahead of him. “Why didn’t Carson chip Grant? That is a MASSIVE oversight. Grant, you’re going to be chipped. Stay where you are. I’m coming for you.”
“Whoa,” Toby said from behind Grant.
“Who’s that?” Rodney demanded.
“Baby Flyboy,” Grant said seriously. He held his tricorder over his shoulder, pointing it at Toby.
“What?”
Grant obediently enabled the zoom function and selected Baby Flyboy’s face.
“Who are you?” Rodney demanded. “Name. Now.” His fingers clicked.
“Toby. Toby Logan.”
“Date of birth?” Rodney ordered.
“Who are you?”
“Dr. Rodney McKay and you’re with my cousin. So tell me who you are and what’s your situation. Forget it. Daedalus, this is Rodney McKay--”
The flash of light at the end of the alley, on the other side of the dumpster was familiar to Grant, but Baby Flyboy jumped when Rodney emerged.
“That red headed lieutenant, Cobby -- whatever the Hell his name is -- reported you’d run off. Sheppard got hit by a car. He’s okay, but bruised from head to toe. Running off might have been a good idea, I wasn’t there. But taking over half an hour to check in -- is so not a good idea.” Rodney looked Baby Flyboy up and down. “Paramedic? Why didn’t you stay at the scene?”
“John was conscious, Lieutenant Hall was looking after him and--” he pointed slowly at Grant, “--was running off. John told me to stay with him. It happened very fast. How did you get here?”
“You wouldn’t believe me.” Rodney lifted his chin.
“Matter transporter?” he said incredulously. “Spaceship?”
Rodney’s focus went laser-sharp. “How do you know that?”
“Toby Logan, Paramedic, is a telepath,” Grant said helpfully.
Rodney straightened. “What type? You obviously receive, can you project?” he pulled out his life signs detector and pointed it at Toby Logan, Paramedic, waving it up and down to encompass his entire body.
“Human,” Rodney announced, looking at the screen. His eyes narrowed, calculating.
Grant nodded. “Baby Flyboy,” he said.
“Gene. Ancient?” Rodney asked. Not waiting for an answer, he tapped his ear piece. “Daedalus, three to beam up.”
~*~
Toby was having a very strange day and it was the definition of strange. His friend Oz was never going to believe this. And to be frank, if he told Oz, both he and his partner were going to be locked up in a cell for the rest of their natural lives.
His life had changed in one moment and -- like out of a novel -- was never going to be the same again. He rested his elbows on his knees and just sort of sagged into the moment. The hodgepodge of thoughts from different people around him all boiled down to one thing. He wasn’t going home. But John Sheppard, and his thoughts were a beacon of solidarity and protection, had a metaphorical arm over his shoulders. From the other side of the room, where John was lying on a long sofa with his bruised leg propped up on pillows, he turned his head and looked right at Toby.
::Sorry kid, but you’re on the radar. You’ve exploded on the radar. It wouldn’t be safe for you to go home. You’d be snatched by Men-in-Black before the end of the first day, along with all your friends::
Atlantis? Toby asked.
::Is there any thing you don’t know?::
Toby glanced meaningfully at Rodney McKay, who was stalking back and forth across the length and breadth of the hotel suite’s living room, berating the fifth person he had called up on his phone since they had beamed into the premier hotel in Toronto.
::Not really discreet, is he?::
Toby wasn’t even listening to McKay’s thoughts - that was a little like surfing a tsunami. Basically, Rodney McKay’s audible conversations had boiled down to: No, he’s not going into the military, he’s a civilian; no, he’s not going to the IOA, he’s under the SGC’s jurisdiction; Medical is part of Science, so he’s my minion.
::Toby, you okay?::
He was phlegmatic; he was a telepath and used to strange. He wanted to throw up. Before he had finished the thought, he bolted across the room and down the short corridor towards the bathroom.
“Stand down! Stand down!” John yelled, as Toby slammed through the door, dropped to his knees before the toilet bowl, and threw his guts up. It was brutal and horrible, and he let his forehead rest on the cold plastic seat when he’d finished. The sanitary label was still in place; at least he had thrown up in a clean basin. He spat into the water.
“Poor thing. Poor thing,” Grant said over him. A gentle hand gingerly patted him between his shoulder blades.
::Kid, you okay?:: John asked. Grant patted his back staccato.
Fine. For someone who professed to not be a telepath, the old guy seemed to get his head around telepathy quickly.
::I heard that; I’m not old::
Toby rocked back on his heels. Grant mutely handed him a tumbler of water. He rinsed and spat.
“I stopped talking when they came for me,” Grant said abruptly, as he sat on the edge of the bath. “They put duct tape over my mouth and around my hands and put me in a box and nailed it shut. John came for me.”
Through the fractured kaleidoscope of Grant’s thought processes came a clear image of a shaft of light blinding him as a wooden lid was lifted - John and Dr. McKay looked down at him.
Grant smiled and then his thoughts became that impenetrable tornado.
“Are you finished?” Dr. McKay asked and tossed something from the doorway.
Automatically, Toby dropped the tumbler and caught the crystal ball. It lit up like a fluorescent bulb and he threw it away like it was hot.
“Knew it,” Dr. McKay said.
::Well, that was a given:: John said conversationally.
What? The bulb lay quiescent on the ceramic tiled floor.
::Kid, it’s a long, long story::
McKay’s arms were folded over his chest and he was glaring down at Toby. Grant offered him a hand and pulled him to his feet. McKay cocked his finger drawing them back into the main living area.
John was sitting upright on the sofa, hands braced behind him. The watching military officers were no longer dotted around the room.
Grant was juggling the sphere, entranced by the sunlight sparkling within as he tossed it from hand to hand, lurching every now and again as he miss-threw. In his hands, though, it didn’t gleam with that glorious inner light.
::Only people with the Ancient gene can make them light up::
Ancient gene? Is that why I’m a telepath?
::Carson will be able to tell you::
The image of a stocky, blue-eyed, white guy with an overlay of ‘kind’ came through as clear as crystal. And that was the way it was with John. There was no echo, resonance, confusing mishmash - words clear, images clear. John had already figured out how to just send what he wanted to send.
“Hey.” McKay clicked his fingers right in front of Toby’s nose.
Jerking back, he snapped, “Do you mind?”
McKay was narrow-eyed in calculation. “You’re talking to--” he turned to John, “--and you’re telepathing right back.”
“Is telepathing a word? I don’t think so.” John sagged back into his nest of cushions.
McKay’s glare inexplicably arrowed to Grant, who shuffled out of reach. “Baby Flyboy, eh? Sheppard, is this scrawny little paramedic your kid?”
John rolled his eyes. “No.”
“Flyboy didn’t have sex when he was fourteen.”
“Grant!” John yelped.
“Cousin? Baby brother. Who do you take after, Sheppard, your mother or your father? Mother. Carson’s identified that the Ancient genes -- not gene, plural -- are part of the X-chromosome. You’ve never really spoken about your mother. Did you ever speak telepathically with her? Is she still alive? Surely, Carson’s gene typed your entire family?”
“My mother is dead, McKay. She died when I was a baby,” John said flatly.
“Aunts?” McKay continued doggedly.
“Only child.”
“We need Carson. You could be second cousins.”
Is he always like this? Toby asked.
“Yes,” John replied and closed his eyes.
~*~
“I genuinely do not know,” John gritted out. The spikes of his aura forced Grant to the far corner of the room. Scrunching down, Grant distracted himself by sorting through the various interesting alien contraband that the Clone Doctor had brought in his medical kit.
“How can you not know!” Rodney demanded.
“My father never talked about her. He remarried when I was two, and nine months later my brother David arrived. She died. He said she died. Having me.” John launched an orange from the coffee table fruit basket at Rodney’s head.
Yelping, Rodney darted away.
“Serves you right!” The doctor’s accent was broad and almost unintelligible. He was ensconced at the dining room table with his laptop and the Ancient hand-held body scanner that he never let anyone from Rodney’s science group take apart. Grant had set himself just right so that he could see the screen on the doctor’s laptop compiling numbers and breaking them down into coloured block schematics.
“He could have killed me.”
“If I had meant to hit you, I would have hit you.” John flopped back on his pillows and closed his eyes.
Grant interfaced his tricorder with the Clone Doctor’s scanner just for the fun of it, and, he had to admit, curiosity. As he dabbled in the datasets, changing block schematics back into useful numbers, he chanced a glance at Baby Flyboy. He sat on the sofa opposite John, watching the proceedings with an expression that Grant couldn’t begin to read, but the translucent sharp edged spikes of his unease and discomfort matched John’s perfectly.
“My mom had dark curly hair. She kind of matches the photograph you remember,” Toby launched into the ether. He was deliberately not looking at Carson. John opened his eyes.
“Fuck. I don’t believe it. Carson?”
Sheepishly, Carson patted the edge of his laptop as if it was all the computer’s fault.
“Uhm, actually, the Siblingship Index indicates that you are probably siblings. The Ancient-enabled visual of the short tandem repeats sequences -- sharing of two alleles per locus -- I’m observing is fairly - uhm - conclusive. I need your mother’s and fathers’ DNA to run a more in depth maternity or paternity assessment. But--, Carson took a massive gulp of coffee, “the mitochondrial DNA hypervariable control regions that I’m scanning are -well, uhm, yes, Congratulations. John, meet your younger brother, Toby. Toby, allow me to introduce you to your big brother, John.”
“My mother died when I was a baby,” John said into the silence. “I’m fourteen years older than Toby.”
“Ancient genes on the X-chromosome are highly conserved. Admittedly, prone to rapid mutation, which I believe accounts for variability in phenotypic expression amongst tested, non-related individuals--”
“Carson, shut up. Please,” John said.
Grant ducked behind the doctor, who often seemed to upset people, and sought refuge in the joy of numbers.
“I had a baby brother,” Baby Flyboy announced. “When I ran. When the men came for me or my mom, or my brother. I don’t know. I was a kid, only five. I had a baby brother, they took him and my mom disappeared. I don’t even remember what they called him. My name was William.”
Grant set his chin against his chest. There were little blocks of numbers amidst reams and reams and streams of numbers. The common repeats glowed before his eyes. Streams and streams of numbers from John, from Baby Flyboy, General Jonathon - Jack - O’Neil, Evan Lorne, Clone Carson Beckett and his deceased progenitor. Grant cocked his head to the side and whistled a little tune. There were databases of DNA on Earth: criminal databases and military databases and medical databases.
Grant entered his search parameters and let the questions fly.
Their voices were loud; they were yelling. Data mining was much more fun. Grant found an interesting backdoor in the cyber ether through the Naval Criminal Investigative Services gateway to the Naval military DNA database register (or whatever the powers that be called it - Grant really didn’t care; he wanted the patterns) which rather nicely speeded up the processing power. He took a moment to investigate the code, realised in the space of a heartbeat that it was enabled by high spec-hardware and moved on into the servers.
“My father is dead, McKay!”
“Presumably there’s DNA material that we can extract.”
“Jesus!”
There were lots of data, hundreds and thousands of servicemen and women’s information catalogued and archived for the macabre eventuality of identification for a myriad of reasons.
Ping.
Grant sat back on his heels.
Lieutenant Commander Steven J. McGarrett, SEAL, Naval Reserves, currently on the Islands of Hawai’i, shared familial DNA with John Sheppard and Toby Logan.
This, Grant thought, was indeed getting exciting.
End part two.
Part Three