Waves are Universal - Chapter 5
“Alexandra.”
“Teal’c.” She smiles and drops her shoulders, exhausted from the day of gate travel. Dakara is no longer an easy trip; from Earth, it takes eight other planets to arrive safely and avoid all known Rak’har nets.
He embraces her warmly. It’s the first time he’s seen her since he heard that the Rak’har had attacked Earth. To anyone else she would simply look tired and in need of a good meal, but he recognizes the haunted look in her eyes and holds her to him a bit longer than usual. “Are you not supposed to be on Earth?”
“Long story.”
He nods and takes her bag and gestures for her to join him.
“We’re close to a solution,” she says, grateful that he’s shortened his stride to match hers as they walk in the dusk. The Jaffa considered not rebuilding Dakara after the Ori destroyed the temple, but they chose it as their home and decided that no enemy could take that away from them. They pass buildings and temples and homes and though the structures may not be old, age and honor and history permeate the entire planet. She finds it comforting, as she always has.
“That is good news indeed.”
“There’s time travel involved,” she admits. “Sorry,” she laughs when Teal’c looks at her with a slightly-nauseated expression on his face.
“Still,” he says with a hint of a smirk, “it is good news.” He leads her to his tent and holds back the flap for her. Most of the Jaffa, himself included, have never felt comfortable in solid walls. “What brings you to Dakara?”
She pushes her hair out of her face. “Got a couple hours?”
Teal’c works to build the fire and prepare dinner as she begins to tell her story. She speaks of things he knows - the warnings, the attempts to fight an unknown enemy, the fallen planets and allies - and he aches again for everything that has been lost. Not even the Ori achieved such total domination. He is still unsure how or why the Rak’har neglected Dakara and, not for the first time, wonders if his is the only untouched planet remaining. He offers her a plate and a glass of water and she smiles her thanks, a smile that reminds him of her mother and he is briefly distracted by thoughts of Samantha Carter before his stomach encourages him to eat.
She waits until after they have both finished eating and darkness has completely fallen on the settlement to speak of the things he does not know. She stares into the crackling fire as she tells him about the attack on Earth and the disease that stole the lives of many Tau’ri. He is not one of them, but he feels that his time among them has made them his family and he hurts for the loss of life.
Her voice cracks when she describes the trip north and how it felt like it would never end, that she wasn’t sure what would greet them a continent away. He closes his eyes when she tells him of the funeral pyres she and her fiancée built in each town they passed and of the bodies they burned and the prayers they said. He smiles with her when she talks of the people they met, who joined them on their journey, and he feels relief when she tells him of Nicaragua and radio contact with Area 51 and learning of her parents’ survival. He’s puzzled when he does not see the same relief echoed on her face.
And then she speaks of prison.
Flames reflect in the tear tracks on her cheeks and she tells him what happened to her, what was done to her. She speaks of pain and blood and torture and screaming, of days without food and nights without sleep. She closes her eyes and describes the dirt floor and four stone walls in such detail that he can see the cuts in the stone in the back corner attempting to keep track of time. He knows that the worst is not over.
She opens her eyes and stares at him across the fire, but does not see him. His heart breaks when she whispers they killed them. He wants to stand up and walk around the fire and sit next to her, draw her into his arms and protect her. But he does not; her story is not over.
She wipes her cheeks and talks about no longer carving the days into the stone, about wanting to give up. She tells him that she once recited every Shakespearean soliloquy she could remember during a torture session and it only made them whip her harder. She swallows and tells him that, of all things, she worried about infection.
And then, out of nowhere, she speaks of hope.
She tells him of a guard that was never thorough, of counting and marking shift changes. She talks about getting lucky. His heart swells with pride when she tells him of her escape. He is confused when she describes awakening in the infirmary, unable to remember anything.
When she tells him of Major Carter and Colonel O’Neill, he remembers why alternate realities make his head hurt.
She looks across the fire again and again does not see him. She tells him of the Tok’ra and memory devices and his heart sinks.
She speaks of remembering.
This time, he does rise and sit next to her. He silently places his arm around her shoulder.
Alle smiles sadly and leans into his strong embrace. She succumbs, finally, to tears and clutches at his shoulders, searching for the sense of normalcy she hasn’t felt since this began. Teal’c holds her tightly while she cries, remembering times he offered the same comfort to her mother when O’Neill was missing and all seemed lost. Body-wracking sobs slow into sniffles, which turn into hiccups and eventually her breathing evens again and Teal’c feels her shoulders relax in sleep; he wonders when she last had a solid night’s rest. He slides one arm underneath her legs and keeps the other supporting her shoulders and carries her into his tent. He gently lays her down on his bed, determining the sleeping bag hooked onto her pack to be unnecessary for the night, and brushes her hair out of her face.
“Sleep well, Alexandra,” he whispers before slipping back outside to keep watch.
***
“Aren’t you worried?” Jack liberates the Costco’s shelf of a 36-pack of toilet paper and looks through the new hole at Zach.
“About Alle?” Zach takes two sickeningly-large jars of mayonnaise off the shelf and drops them in the cart. “Nope.”
Standing on his toes to grab the paper towels, Jack raises an eyebrow. “She’s been gone for over a week.” And, hell, he’s worried.
“Did they say Dijon or honey?”
Jack digs into his back pocket and pulls out the crumpled list. He squints, trying to read Troy’s handwriting. “Both.”
Zach drops one jar of each kind of mustard in with the mayonnaise. “She’s been gone longer before,” he points out and moves down the aisle to tackle the pickles. He looks up, sensing Jack staring at him with something resembling disbelief and has to remind himself that this Jack isn’t Alle’s father. “Alle wouldn’t run away, Jack. She likes to pretend that she’s working on the reboot for grand reasons of humanity, but she’s full of it.” He checks the expiration date on the bottom of a pickle jar and frowns but places it in the cart anyway. “She needs the last seven years to go away more than anyone still alive. She’ll be back.”
Jack nods and continues down the aisle, collecting garbage bags and zippered plastic bags and variously-sized reusable plastic containers. There’s an underlying note of concern in Zach’s voice, worry that Alle will get herself into trouble, stumble into a net, that her offworld information is two days too old, but Jack knows that’s all the emotion he’ll get from Zach on the matter: energetic worrying won’t bring her home any faster. “You are a very patient man,” he observes; he knows that if Sam wandered off in the middle of the night without so much as a note, there isn’t a power in the galaxy that could keep him from following her.
Chuckling, Zach shakes his head. “Hey, I’m just a soldier. I’m lucky she puts up with me.”
Lifting his eyebrows in agreement, Jack knocks a case of storage containers into his cart. He knows the feeling.
A squeaky cart wheel attracts the attention of both men. Troy pushes the cart in their direction, full of frozen fruit and vegetables, with Sam walking next to him, licking at a vanilla ice cream cone.
“Carter got the ice cream machine working,” Troy says with a smile.
Jack grins. “Of course she did.”
***
Sam has almost gotten used to the idea of working alone again when she hears shouting coming from the base’s front entrance. She detours away from the mess, choosing to eat lunch later, and heads toward the voices.
“General, my apologies. I should have left a note or taken someone else with me or at least said hey, I’m leaving for a bit. And I didn’t. I’m sorry.” Alle crosses her arms and stares defiantly up at General McLaggen.
“You shouldn’t have gone at all, Alle,” he says. “You didn’t know if new nets had appeared, if the Rak’har had taken Dakara…”
“I’m not an idiot, General,” Alle interrupts, “and I know you know I’m not an idiot so I don’t appreciate you treating me like one.”
Sam’s eyebrows shoot up. She’s thrilled that Alle seems to have found her fire again but she’s shocked at the attitude that comes with it. No Air Force General she knows would put up with that from a civilian, no matter how much war they’d been through together or how well they know each other. General McLaggen does not disappoint.
“Doctor Carter-O’Neill, you are our best hope of erasing the past seven years of hell. We would all be dead in the water if you disappeared on us simply because you needed a break. Go to Utah next time you need two weeks off.”
Sam jumps when Jack places his arm on her shoulder.
“How long has this been going on?” He whispers in her ear. He had been eating lunch when he heard the shouting.
She shakes her head. “I got here a couple minutes ago.”
“I get it. I screwed up, I am not allowed to go offworld again, and I will forever lament the fact that we will be stuck in this hell for two weeks longer because I needed to clear my head. May I remind you that I took absolutely no time off when my parents were killed? That I took no time once my body was healed to attempt to heal my mind? And perhaps I was due a bit of a break?”
Jack mutters “Let it go, Alle,” under his breath. Sam nods in agreement.
“Again, Doctor Carter-O’Neill. Utah. Colorado. California. Hell, drive back to Chile.”
“General, I have been traveling for three days. They dropped a net between Chulak and Hokar while I was on Dakara and it took me a while to find a way around it. I need a shower, a sandwich and maybe a nap. Then, if you’re still not done with the scolding, we can pick this up again.” She hoists her pack onto her shoulders and walks off in the direction of her quarters.
***
The next morning, Sam resigns herself to working alone for the day when Alle doesn’t arrive after a few hours. The silence still bothers her; she hadn’t realized how much she’d grown accustomed to the steady thud of music or Alle’s constant tapping of her pen against the table until both are missing. She smiles to herself and wonders if she’s going to need to invest in a set of speakers when she gets home. She’s in the middle of setting up a diagnostic on part of the warship’s engine when she hears Alle’s chair squeak.
“Hi,” Alle says.
Sam smiles at her. “Hi.” Sam watches Alle play with the hem of her summery skirt.
“I feel like I owe you an apology,” she says suddenly.
“You don’t.”
“Yeah,” Alle nods, “I do.” She takes a deep breath and sighs. “I’m sorry I told you to watch the tape.”
Sam shrugs. She’d like to say that she’s seen worse but the truth is, she’s not sure she has. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
Alle nods again and bites her lip. “Thanks for the CD. It helps.”
Sam smiles; she found that splicing together the happy memories had done wonders to lift her mood after watching the entire recording and thought it might do at least a little of the same for Alle. “You’re welcome.”
“What are you working on?”
Sam accepts the topic shift as the end of the discussion and turns back to her computer. “Figuring out their power source. It’s a weird mix of naquadah and something I haven’t seen before.”
“May I?” Alle gestures to the screen.
“Sure,” Sam stands up and lets Alle start to work.
***
Unable to concentrate in her quarters any longer, Sam glares at Jack - who pretends to be innocent, as though his fingers hadn’t just been dancing up her leg in an effort to encourage her to put her laptop down and pay attention to him - closes her laptop and unplugs the power cord from the back. “Later,” she promises, and kisses his forehead before leaving. She sighs in the hallway, deciding where to go to work. Settling on the mess, she tucks her laptop under her arm and heads in that direction.
She hears laughter before she reaches the open doors and hesitates for a moment before deciding that the company might help. The dulcet tones of Dusty Springfield singing about the son of a preacher man filter out of someone’s laptop and Sam smiles and heads over to the table occupied by Alle, Kate and Troy. “What are you guys working on?”
“Inventory,” Troy says glumly and deletes a line. He consults a notepad next to him, covered in scribbled pen, and changes a few numbers on his screen.
“Giovanni! How are we on flour, sugar, yeast, baking soda and baking powder?” Alle shouts in the direction of the open kitchen door. Numbers and pounds are shouted back at her and she enters them on her spreadsheet.
Kate gestures for Sam to take a seat. “McLaggen wants monthly inventory reports. Misery loves company.”
“You know what we need?” Alle takes a swig of her beer and props her feet up on the unoccupied chair next to her. “More cows.”
“I don’t think cows like Nevada.”
“Neither do I, and I’m not complaining -”
“You just did.”
“ - but we only have three and we’re running through milk and butter a little faster than I’d like.”
“Talk to the Utah guys. See if they’ll bring some back for you.”
“You think they’d do that?”
Troy shrugs. “They’re killing a bunch. How hard can it be to tag a few to live and herd them onto a truck?”
“Sure.” Alle writes a note to herself on a Post-It and goes back to cataloging baking ingredients. “G! Cardamom, chili powder, cinnamon, clove, coriander, cumin and curry powder, please.”
“Is that his real name?” Kate frowns at her screen.
“Doubt it. But it’s what he wants to go by, so.”
“Bad news, guys,” Kate says. “We’re out of birth control.”
Alle sets her beer bottle down on the table with a little more force than is required. “Are you kidding?”
“No. The pill expired a year ago, so we need to toss it, and we have two months of patches and shots left. And you,” she points at Alle, “have maybe a month left on your IUD before I absolutely have to take it out. You’re pushing it as it is.”
“Shit,” Alle curses and finishes her beer.
“Can I ask a stupid question?”
“Why not use condoms?” Kate fills in the question. Sam nods. “They all expired two years ago. Birth control pills have at least some effectiveness a year or two past their expiration date; condoms have maybe a month.”
Under normal circumstances, Sam thinks that the lack of birth control options wouldn’t be much of a problem: the planet needs to be repopulated. But the frustration makes sense since they’re trying to reboot, at which point the last seven years - and anyone who was born - would not have happened. She keeps silent about the condoms she and Jack have; they’re standard offworld kit supplies (“If you can’t be good, at least be safe,” was Janet’s stern warning after a member of SG-7 came back with a painful, but treatable, alien STD; the condoms became required of all offworld teams after that) and definitely not expired, but the two of them need them. Her birth control ran out months ago and there is no time reset when they go home; they’ll have aged and will remember everything and if anything physical changes, it will stick. She’s not sure how they ended up with as many as they did - probably Daniel, while trying to make room in his pack for an extra language dictionary, stuck his in her pack - but she’s glad it happened.
Alle exhales loudly. “The Rak’har are screwing with my uterus.”
“I’m sure they’re doing it on purpose.”
Sam watches as Alle reaches under the table and pulls out a small dart gun from an ankle holster hidden underneath her jeans. Calmly, Alle points it at Troy’s head and shoots him square in the forehead.
“Oh, bitch!”
“Gimme your target, buddy.” She holds out her hand expectantly and wiggles her fingers as Troy digs a crumpled index card from his back pocket and slaps it into her palm.
“I thought this was over,” Sam says.
Kate shakes her head. “Nope. Dart Wars ended in September. This is Assassins.” She calls up another spreadsheet and grays out Troy’s name and drags his target next to Alle’s name.
“You guys get really bored, don’t you.” It’s not a question.
“This is nothing,” Troy says, reaching down to the floor to pick up the stray dart. “This one,” he gestures to Alle with the dart before handing it back to her, “once replicated an entire season of Mythbusters in a week.”
Alle shrugs and tosses a piece of popcorn in her mouth. “My parents had just died and I woke up from a coma to find out that you losers hadn’t gotten any further in three months without me. I wanted to blow stuff up.” She gets up and collects everyone’s empty beer bottles.
“‘Cause that’s healthy,” Kate grouses, but lets it go; she’s had enough time to disapprove of her friend’s coping methods. “We’re also about to be out of Band-Aids. Whoever’s making the Utah list, can you put those on there?”
“What’s in Utah?” Sam asks, helping herself to some popcorn.
“A small group of Mormons who keep us stocked in beef and apples. It’s their way of thanking us for trying to fix this whole mess,” Troy says.
Alle returns to the table with a fresh round of beer for everyone, including Sam. “There are similar groups around the country. Some of them came out here; most of them chose to stay where they were. Occasionally we make it to them for supplies or they come here to trade.”
“Oh, God,” Kate practically moans. “Max should be coming in soon.”
“Guy from Maine,” Alle fills in Sam. “Has this tiny two-prop plane, brings in lobster twice a year for us. He has a little crush on Kate.” She says the last bit mostly to irritate Troy.
Troy patently ignores her. “Why do I even need to do this? My guys don’t go through supplies as quickly as your people do.”
“If your guys didn’t manage to get themselves hurt…” Kate says at the same time as Alle says “If your guys didn’t eat as much…” and they both laugh.
Sam laughs with them and takes a swig of the beer. She checks the label: hand-drawn and colored with Rajan’s Winter Brew lettered over an image of a sun setting over a lake. It’s good. “Why are you doing food inventory?” She asks Alle.
“‘Cause McLaggen doesn’t trust anyone else in the kitchen to count properly.” She sighs. “And we are out of couscous. And curry powder.”
“Not gonna find either of those in Utah.”
“Better step up the science, Al. Otherwise you’re going to start having babies and they’re going to have to eat very bland food.”
“Were you this annoying when we were on a team together? Or did I just walk far enough behind you that I didn’t have to hear it?”
Sam lets the banter fade into the background and focuses on the condensation dripping down the sides of her beer bottle. She hadn’t thought about the future of this reality beyond her participation in it; if they find a way to send everyone back, she has no doubt that Alle and General McLaggen will insist on everyone going home even if there isn’t a functional weapon yet. And if what Kate says is true, and they’re about to be completely out of artificial birth control, things will get very complicated as soon as babies are involved. Sam swallows a mouthful of beer and resolves to work even harder so no one is faced with that problem.
***
TO: Boyd, Carter, Carter-O’Neill, Donovan, Hafley, Orlean, Rabinowitz, Torrini
DATE: 1/16/35
FROM: General McLaggen
RE: Meeting
0930, Alle’s lab. You figured out how to work this stuff. Now what?
Sam idly takes notes and tries to pay attention but finds herself distracted by the doodles of robots that Alle draws in the margins of her notepad. After about half an hour, they begin to start chomping on words and names until the entire page is taken over by science-hungry machines. Alle catches Sam staring and grins, immediately adding horns and a tail to the robot overlord at the top. Five minutes after beginning, the meeting devolved into a series of time travel arguments that aren’t doing anything except giving Sam a headache.
“If we hop into an alternate reality to reboot, there’s no guarantee that we’ll end up where we should. We need to do it from our reality.”
“No, we can’t. The first rule of time travel is that you can, in no way, chance an interaction with your past self. We’d run into that problem if we did it from ours.”
“But my original point still stands. What makes you think that an alternate reboot would send us home?”
“Because by rebooting and taking out the Rak’har, it ensures that the actions that cause our reaction never occur. Alle, what do you think?”
“I actually don’t understand this argument,” she says, dragging her eyes away from her robots, her fingers tangled in her hair as she rests her head in the palm of her hand. “Both of you have legitimate points, but they’re both based on assumptions. You are both assuming that the reboot has to occur at the moment where everything went to hell. You’re also both assuming that the reboot has to be a direct action on our part. Both of you have completely overlooked alternate, less-invasive possibilities. And while I agree that we’re pretty much past the point of inaction being a viable option, I’m a little disappointed that you two have somehow managed to ignore all other possibilities here.”
“If you want to add anything to this - by all means, speak.” Boyd tosses his pen on the table and sits back in his chair, crossing his arms.
“Going back in time, to this reality or another, and taking out a few Rak’har warships just means that there’s a future us hanging around. It doesn’t negate our time jump and clean up the timeline.”
“Why not?”
“Because the attack on Earth is not the inciting action. We’ve all been operating under that chief assumption for years and it’s wrong. The inciting action that needs to be prevented is something else. Earth was not the first target, so fighting off the Rak’har once they’ve shown up at Earth is a useless exercise and they’ll just keep sending more ships. We need to prevent them from ever getting a foothold in the galaxy. What was the first incident?”
“The Land of Light.”
“Nope.”
“Chulak.”
“No.”
“Langara.”
“No. Don’t make me find the grad student to embarrass you.”
“The Asgard,” Sam offers, recalling a single line in a stack of mission reports from that year. She remembers being impressed that her father had an Asgard ship named after him.
Alle points at Sam and smiles. “Bingo.”
“No, it’s not. The Asgard left, they have nothing to do with this.”
“They have everything to do with it,” Alle argues. “They left because the Rak’har attacked the Jacob Carter and they didn’t have the proper defenses. They figured that if the most technologically-advanced ship their scans picked up couldn’t handle them, nobody else could. If we can upgrade the Jacob Carter’s weapons and keep the Asgard in the galaxy, we’ll solve the problem.”
“How do we do that?”
“I don’t know.” Alle stands up and wipes off the chalkboard. She writes PROBLEM #1 on one side, PROBLEM #2 in the middle and PROBLEM #3 on the other side. “Okay. Problem Number One is developing weapons.” She writes big space guns on the board. “Problem Number Two is getting the Asgard to go along with it.” Thor goes on the board.
“Wait, what makes you think they won’t go for it?”
“Have you met the Asgard?”
“Right.”
“Problem Number Three is getting everyone who’s in the wrong reality back to the right reality and time.” no place like home makes it underneath PROBLEM #3. “We don’t know if rebooting here will cause everyone else to magically go home or do something really weird. So I’d like to get people home first.”
“Uhm…” Sam raises her hand.
“Sam has a question,” Alle says, nodding to her.
“As one of those people who shouldn’t be here…do you have any idea whether we’re going to remember everything or not? Normal time travel -”
“Exactly how far out of the box are we that we have to qualify something as normal time travel?” General McLaggen interrupts from his spot at the head of the table.
Sam ignores him; the correct answer is so far we don’t even know what a box looks like anymore but she’s pretty sure he knows that. “- and resetting the timeline correctly means that nobody remembers anything. That’s how it works. But leaving the reality before the reset means that we’re outside of the affected timeline. But since we only showed up here because your reality was screwed up and I assume the goal is to put us back when we came from, will we remember any of it?”
Alle thinks for a minute and sets the chalk down by the eraser. “From a preservation of the timeline philosophical sense, you shouldn’t. You’d be going back in time with detailed knowledge of the future - a future that isn’t yours, but a future - with the ability to change things you otherwise wouldn’t be able to change. But from a scientific, what will actually happen sense? I’m pretty sure you will. As you said, you’re leaving this timeline and re-entering your own before the reset happens.”
“Actually,” Jeff, a quantum mathematician with a disturbing sense of humor, raises his hand, “that part I’m confused on. Wouldn’t we want to do it simultaneously? Send everyone home and reset? If we just send people back and then wait a few days before resetting, there’s a very large chance that everyone could end up back here before the reset happens.”
Alle nods. “Yes. That’s a detail thing at the moment, since we don’t know how to send everyone back and there’s no point in resetting until we can do that and fight off the Rak’har. But the plan is to do it really fast. Plus,” she returns her gaze to Sam, “it might be handy to have a few people in other realities who know how to get rid of these guys so this doesn’t happen in your future.”
“Okay,” McLaggen stands up. “Alle, I’m officially putting you in charge of this. Figure it out.”
Alle cracks her neck and waits for him to leave. “Shut up,” she says when everyone starts talking at once. “One thing at a time. No sense in dealing with the Asgard if we don’t have anything to give them. And no sense in figuring out how to send everyone home until we have a reason to do so. Problem number one is top priority.”
***
“Zach!” Jack jogs down the hallway to catch up with him. “Have you seen Sam recently?”
“Recently?”
“Last couple of days?”
Zach shakes his head. “Nope. Have you seen Alle?”
“No.”
The two men look at each other and groan. “Lab,” they say in unison, both aware that they’re going to encounter two very caffeinated women when they get there.
“What the hell?” Jack speaks first.
The second room of Alle’s lab, previously ignored in favor of containing the chaos, has been turned into a fully-operational engineering lab. Power tools and bits of metal and discarded circuitry are scattered on the concrete floor. The two laptops facing the door are running diagnostic screens, and Jack assumes that the five he can’t see are doing something similar. Cables criss-cross each other and hang in the air in a complex system of wiring that will create the world’s most frustrating knot when finally unplugged. In the middle of the thinly-organized chaos stands a six-foot tall machine that looks like it belongs in a Jules Verne novel. Part of it beeps. On the top step of a ladder, Alle leans over and pushes a circuit board into its place. She pulls a welder’s mask over her face and turns on a soldering gun, sealing the circuit board in place.
“What are you guys doing?” Zach asks hesitantly, not sure he wants to know.
Alle climbs off the ladder and sets the soldering gun down. She pulls the mask off and smiles. “Building a weapon.”
“Uh huh,” Zach says. “What’s it do?”
Sam rolls into view and sits up. She pushes against the floor and rolls back and forth on the mechanic’s seat underneath her, smiling widely. “It creates a negatively-charged positronic emission field that disrupts the temporal-realistic shifting phase, effectively forcing everyone to stay where they are. The Rak’har technology is quite amazing, actually. It defies all laws of conventional physics…”
“Ah! Carter!” Jack puts his hands over his ears. “Don’t need the physics, just need the purpose.”
“She’s right, though,” Alle says, cracking open an energy drink can that Zach immediately takes away from her. She pouts at him and reaches for it and he simply holds it over her head. “It is kinda cool.” She punches him in the arm. “Give it.”
“When was the last time either of you slept?” Zach gestures at Sam and Alle with the can before drinking half of it himself. He makes a face. “Did this stuff always taste this bad?”
Sam squints. “What day is it?” She brushes her forehead with the back of her hand and leaves a smudge of grease.
“Okay,” Jack says. “Break time.”
“No,” Alle shakes her head and finally succeeds in getting the remainder of her drink back from her fiancée. “We’re almost done and then we need to test it. If I take a break now, I’ll never remember what the hell I’m doing.”
Sam points at Alle with a water bottle covered in NASA stickers. “What she said.” She unscrews the lid and takes a sip.
Jack recognizes sleep deprivation when he sees it, but also knows that Sam isn’t one to pay attention to her body’s need for sleep when she’s in the scientific zone and he can’t very well order her to stop for a few hours. He shrugs. “Don’t blow yourselves up.”
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