Mathématique: Chapter 61

Sheppard, party of nine?

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Grief. Physical injuries. Mental health challenges. Panic attacks. Mentions of torture. Depression.

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: Everyone have their cocoa? Circle round.

Chapter 61

“Dave, you’re a machine.” Coral slid onto the piano bench beside him. “It’s kinda worrisome.”

Rush squinted skeptically at her. The dining room of Au Coeur was intolerably bright, full of glassware that glittered in the late afternoon sun. 

“Don’t try to British me.” Coral looked at him, indignant and backlit. “I’m immune to tricks I invent. You’re going to be playing for hours tonight. You shouldn’t also play now.”

“I’m trying to recall more of my repertoire.” Rush moved through a few broken chords with protracted precision. “This Bach won’t remember itself.”

“Buy some sheet music. That’s what the last guy used.” She tapped the piano’s empty music stand with a painted fingernail.

“Poor form,” Rush murmured.

Before she’d interrupted him, he’d been digging the Prelude and Fugue No. 1 in C Major from The Well-Tempered Clavier out of his memory. It didn’t much want to come, and he suspected he’d only ever learned the thing because Gloria had played Gounod’s Ave Maria overtop it.

As he worked out the melody, the absence of the violin was, itself, a presence.

“Question for you.” Coral watched his right hand ascend and descend through the components of each chord. “What are the things on your head? You said they were medical devices. But what are they for?”

“They’re experimental.”

“Part of a clinical trial?”

He hesitated. For all he knew, they were. (It wasn’t a bad idea.) There must be a way to determine such things. And—yes. Of course there was. There was a National Clinical Trials Database, searchable by the public.

And he knew this—how? Why?

It seemed a terribly sad fact to have at one’s fingertips.

He sighed. “Go back to medical school. Maybe you’ll figure it out, if you’re so curious.”

“I can take a hint,” Coral said, “and I’m not trying to be a jerk. But here’s the thing. They look—well, they don’t look very legit, man. There’s, like, tape on them. I’m concerned. This concerns me.”

“Noted.” Rush restarted the Prelude, moving fluidly through the opening. 

“But what’s the tape for?”

“Fuck if I know, Half-Doctor McClure. I’m a pianist. They came this way.”

“Okay, but they came that way from where?”

“Why’d you leave medical school?” Rush shot back before he’d even had time to consider the counter-question.

(What an interesting set of instincts he seemed to have when it came to interpersonal communication.)

“Because it sucked.” Coral stared into a bright sea of glare on glassware. “The culture is horrible. Medical school is like a factory for taking nice people and destroying all their best qualities.”

“There must be compensations,” Rush said. “Maybe, if you’d stayed, you’d be able to name every medical device you see.”

“Some things aren’t worth it, man.”

“Perhaps not,” Rush agreed, “though I’m curious what you’ll do with your native curiosity and strong urge to be of assistance.”

“I don’t have an ‘urge to be of assistance’.” The girl fair bristled with indignation. “I have an independent streak and I care about people. That’s totally different than having an ‘urge to be of assistance’.”

Rush looked resolutely down at his hands, and did his best not to appear (even remotely) amused. “Mmm hmm.”

“Hey. Just because I taught you how to be British, how to wait for tips, and how to get the best kitchen leftovers doesn’t mean I’d do that for anyone. Maybe I have a soft spot for people who seem like they wandered in off the set of Sci-Fi Downton Abbey.”

“Ah.” Rush moved fluidly through the Prelude. “My mistake.”

Coral was quiet, all the way through the end of the short piece.

When he’d completed it, he rolled his aching shoulders and looked up at the nearest painting, which happened to be Monet’s Rouen Cathedral, fractured by artificial lines of gold lacquer.

“Do you think they made it better?” Coral followed the line of his gaze. “Or did they just ruin it?”

“The painting?” Rush asked.

“Yeah.” Coral’s voice cracked to a whisper, her eyes wet in the too-strong sun. “The painting. All those broken places.”

“Not sure I believe in ruination,” he said. “As a concept.”

“Hmm,” Coral wiped away a tear. “Sounds nice. But it’s hard to square with everything that can happen to the human body. The human mind. It’s all ruination. All day long. All life long.”

Rush began the Bach again. “Certainly,” he agreed, broken chords coming slow under his words, “things, people, civilizations, cultures, concepts—give way.”

“Give way,” Coral said hollowly. “Yeah. Being a doctor is just a whole life of endings.”

Rush nodded. “But the going out is as important as the coming in, I expect. Maybe more so. Even ruins have their own stories. Their own afterlives.”

“Maybe,” Coral said, as the piece drew, again, to a close. “I’ll think about it, Dave.”

Shortly before the first seating, Rush stood in the narrow hallway that connected the dining room and kitchen, glaring at his phone. He’d been keeping an eye on the thing all day. That morning he’d followed a string of hundreds of real-time texts from Eli, which had included, near the end, a photograph of an inscription in Physical Chemistry: A Molecular Approach that read:

Hey Nick, I’m back on Earth. Let’s use regular email.

J Shep had written his terrestrial email address below the short message, then signed his name in the same style he’d used on the small drawing in Rush’s wallet. 

After sending the photo, Eli sent a short burst of messages, which Rush had now looked at so many times he’d committed them to memory.

::OK, heading out::

::Lots to discuss but J Shep and his Canadian friend seem legit::

::Like legit legit::

::Will call soon::

Since that time, Rush had heard nothing. At all. He’d tried calling the lad around noon, but there’d been no answer. He’d tried again at half-past two. He navigated to his contacts and gave it another go, leaning against the wall, listening to the clatter of dishes in the kitchen beneath the unanswered ringing of Eli’s phone.

It went to voicemail. Again.

Troubling.

More than troubling, he decided, as he searched Amtrak timetables for trains between New York and Boston. They ran frequently, and it seemed, if the last diners didn’t linger, he might be able to catch a train that very evening.

(Of course, what he’d do when he got to Boston and failed to find Eli was not at all clear.)

“I told you not to engage,” Rush hissed, reopening his messaging app.

“What?” One of the passing waitstaff edged around him, carrying a stack of empty trays.

“Sorry, nothing,” Rush said. “Have they started seating yet?”

“Not yet,” the waiter called over his shoulder. “You’ve got probably ten minutes? Weird vibe tonight. There’s a whole big group that’s early. They’re all downstairs in the lobby, wearing way more leather than anyone wants to see. Gotta be some kind of alt-fashion crowd?”

“Mmm, lovely.” Rush looked back at his messaging app, trying to glare it into producing something new.

::Eli, I’m extremely concerned. Please contact me as soon as possible::

He waited.

No response.

“I could use a superpositioned perspective,” he whispered into the quiet hallway.

Nothing was forthcoming.

“That tracks.” He pocketed his phone and sent a fiery look into empty air. 

As the first diners entered the dining room, Rush strode to the piano, sat, and launched into the Bach Prelude he’d been working up not an hour before. It went well, but didn’t last him long. He played it through twice, then transitioned into Schubert’s Impromptu in G-Flat Major.

His classical crossfade caught the attention of the diner at the nearest table: a blond man with an affable demeanor and an aggressive leather jacket gave him a subtle thumbs up. 

Rush smiled faintly at him.

The blond’s dinner companion brought a hand to his face, seemed to gather himself, then looked deliberately away from Rush, scanning the rest of the leather-clad clientele. The blond man glanced at his companion, then back at Rush. He shrugged, as if in subtle apology.

Odd.

Rush slowed the ending of the Impromptu to blend it into Mozart’s Fantasia in D Minor, which earned him another thumbs up from the blond man, this time accompanied by an appreciative nod. 

The waitstaff greeted the diners, offering them water and wine lists. The sommelier stepped onto the floor, beginning his rounds, as Rush played through the first half of the Fantasia. He kept the piece pensive and restrained, trying not to steal too much of the show too early in the night.

He’d just reached the introduction of the second subject with its turn to the major when the elevator chimed on the far side of the room.

(Bit late for anyone to be joining the first seating.)

The doors drew back, revealing a large, striking, immaculately dressed party.

There were nine of them.

Their collective aesthetic mounted a direct challenge to the leather-clad group already seated.

(The New York fashion scene was a fair sight more aggressive than he’d ever bothered to consider.)

Four of the nine were women: a blonde with close-cropped hair, wearing a royal blue pantsuit; a redhead with piles of curls in a short, green dress; a brunette, her hair pinned into an elegant french twist, wearing a chic black skirt with a tailored jacket; and a raven-haired woman, loose black tresses cascading down her back, dressed in a burgundy sheath and heeled boots. 

Five of them were men: dressed in form-fitting tailored suits; all of them well-built, attractive, and sporting determined facial expressions. They carried themselves well, with a wide streak of on-her-majesty’s-secret-service in their bearing.

The whole room turned to watch the Party of Nine as they strode forward, forming a loose cluster behind a man with spiked dark hair who was, of all of them, doing the best James Bond impression. He seemed like—their leader?

They approached the tables seriously. Silently.

There was nowhere for them to sit.

It was causing confusion among the waitstaff. Rush locked eyes with the sommelier and shrugged, uneasy. He crashed ahead with the Mozart, ratcheting up the volume.

The entire thing hit as pure dead bizarre.

Following musical instincts not wholly under his own control, he transitioned to Chopin’s first nocturne. The one in B-flat minor.

“Is he seriously playing Chopin right now?” The question was perfectly audible in the quiet dining room. It came from one of the men in the Party of Nine. He had short, brown hair and a face Rush recognized from dreams of a silver city on a sea without waves.

The man with spiked hair looked at Rush. “Nice,” he said, smiling.

And every window in Au Coeur exploded inward.

Military personnel in black fatigues crashed into the room in showers of glass. The Party of Nine scattered, weapons in hand, as, all around them, leather-clad diners stood, kicking over chairs and tables as the room erupted in a lightning storm of electrical discharges.

The man with the spiked hair was making for Rush.

Rush wasn’t sure how to respond to this unexpected turn of events.

He kept playing the nocturne.

He kept playing the nocturne until he was tackled.

He went down, the piano bench coming with him, as the blond man from the nearest table crashed into him. The man pulled the bench away from Rush and slid it between them and the in-progress firefight. “Hi,” he said.

“Hello,” Rush replied numbly.

His new acquaintance got a leather-clad shoulder beneath the piano and tipped the thing over with a dissonant crash. He ducked behind it, crouching next to Rush (who was still sprawled on the floor).

“Ugh.” The man looked sadly at the piano’s askew pedal box. “I feel really bad about doing that. It was a nice piano. But we need the cover.”

“Right.” Rush stared at the underside of the instrument, its action and hammers visible through cracked wood.

“You okay?” The blond man knelt next to him. He put a hand on Rush’s shoulder and squeezed.“Firefights are kinda a lot,” he said kindly. “Is this your first one?”

“I’m—” Rush began. On the other side of the piano, he heard shouting, crashing tables, breaking glassware, and the strangely familiar sound of discharging capacitors. “I’m not sure?”

“Yeah.” The blond man peered over the piano. “I know. Sorry. Anyway. Next time, stop playing the piano once it starts.”

“In retrospect—yes,” Rush agreed breathlessly. “I’m not sure why I did that. I—”

“Eh, don’t beat yourself up about it. These things happen when you get surprised. And hey. On the plus side, every time I get in a firefight, for the rest of my life, I’m gonna think about Chopin.” His blue eyes were warm. “So, thanks.”

Rush tried to slow his racing thoughts. He found it difficult, in large part because his—rescuer?—protector?—was conducting himself with an absurd calm, given the chaos on the far side of the piano’s top board. “You’re welcome, I suppose.”

The other man peered over the upper edge of the piano. “We’re gonna make a high profile break for the stairwell,” he said. “I want people to see us do it, so we’ll have to pick our moment.”

Overhead, the lights flickered.

“Not sure I should be accompanying you,” Rush said.

“Oh man, that was, like, such a good piano pun.” The blond man grinned down at him. “Plus, you’re right. In more ways than one. My name’s Dale. Dale Volker, by the way.”

Rush scraped together a few more of his wits and shifted his position, drawing his legs beneath him into a balanced crouch. “Nicholas Rush.”

“I know, buddy. We’ve met.” Dale Volker smiled kindly at him.

“We have?”

“Yeah, before I became a Space Pirate.”

“Oh,” Rush said weakly, balancing on the balls of his feet and his fingertips. “You’re a—Space Pirate, then?”

“Well, no one calls it that but me. The rest of the Space Pirates don’t really like the term.” Dale peered over the top of the piano. “They call themselves the ‘Lucian Alliance.’ Sorry. I’m not great at this.”

“Space piracy?”

“Huh. Actually, I have a little bit of a talent for Space Piracy it turns out. No, by ‘not great at this’ I meant ‘the communicating with you’ part of things. We’re both at a real disadvantage right now.”

“I think you’re doing fine, given the circumstances,” Rush said shakily, hoping to encourage the man’s expository tendencies. “Y’might consider sharpening your language? Space Pirates—well, as a term, it’s not terribly specific.”

“Inappropriate precision is as misleading as vagueness. Sometimes more so.” Dale ducked back behind the piano and grinned at him. “And they really are an imprecise, piratical mess of an organization. From space. I gotta say though, it’s hard to define them while they’re actively trying to abduct you.”

“Was that a specific case or a general case?”

“What?”

“Are they trying to abduct me? Are you speaking from personal experience? Are you generalizing to a hypothetical ‘you’?”

“Oh, um, all three. But, to highlight what’s important: they’re definitely trying to abduct you. Right now. If you wanna get technical, there are two sets of people trying to abduct you. The Space Pirates and the Air Force. They’re the ones cosplaying as James Bond tonight. That’s fun.” Dale, peering out over the top of the piano, lifted his eyebrows, clearly impressed. “They look really good. I hope someone’s filming the Sheppard versus Telford fight that’s happening right now. It’s pretty epic.”

Sheppard. Telford. J Shep? David Telford? And finally, finally, a working model fell into place.

David Telford was part of the Air Force. He knew this because he had the man’s business card. J Shep was almost certainly from space, given the dreams and the drawing and the fluency in an alien language. If J Shep was Sheppard— 

“Sheppard is a Space Pirate?”

“No, good try, but he’s Air Force. Telford is the Space Pirate.”

“David Telford?” Rush asked, his working model in pieces on the floor of his mind.

Dale looked down at him sharply. “You know him?”

“I have his business card in my wallet. It says Air Force.” Rush flinched as an overhanging chandelier took a blast from an electrical weapon and shorted out in a shower of sparks. 

“Life is, like, super confusing sometimes,” Dale said philosophically. “But, whether you want to come with me or not, no matter what side I’m on, we gotta get you out of this room alive. And there are way too many guns in here for my taste. Agree?” 

Rush nodded shakily.

Dale peered over the top edge of the piano again. “We’re waiting for a little break in the action. I want to make sure both sides see us go for the door.”

“If I’m the subject of this firefight, won’t everyone follow us?”

“Nah, they’re pretty entrenched in their positions now. And there’s a lot of animosity in the air. People are shooting to shoot, as much as they’re here for you.”

Rush brought a shaking hand to his face.

“Don’t feel too bad about it. I think both sides are trying to minimize collateral deaths, and the Space Pirates managed to buy out a huge portion of the seating tonight. Plus,” he scanned the room. “It’s mostly energy weapons in the mix.”

“What about the Maître d’?” Rush asked.

“Downstairs?” Dale glanced at him. “Intense hair? I’m sure she’s fine. The Air Force is holding the lower levels. They were late to the party; we have them on the back foot. They’re clearing floors of civilians as they go. That’s what they do. But it takes time to be responsible, so they sent the heavy hitters up in the elevator. And, er, through the windows, I guess. We just gotta get you to the second floor without getting you killed.”

“But—isn’t that in Air Force territory?” Rush, wholly lost, reseated his glasses. “Aren’t you a Space Pirate?”

“Yeah. Sorry; this is super convoluted. Even though I’m a Space Pirate? I’m trying to get you to the Air Force. Somebody’s gonna end up with you tonight, and the Air Force is definitely your best option.”

“Are they?” Rush asked, not at all certain. He’d been harboring a pro-J Shep and anti-Air Force bias for weeks; it was hard to let go in the midst of a mixed-signals firefight. And J Shep was from space, most likely. As were the space pirates. The Air Force was, presumably, terrestrial?

(None of this made sense!)

“Yeah.” Dale looked down at Rush, his expression full of sympathy. “You ready? This is a good time to go.” He reached a hand down.

Lacking context, lacking viable options, Rush took it.

Dale pulled him up and pushed him toward a door at the side of the room. He heard a collection of hard-to-decipher shouting beneath the flurry of electrical discharges. A woman called his name, his real name, high and clear, but Dale was forcing him forward, through the door to the stair, and he couldn’t turn.

They emerged in a dim hallway, lit with flickering fluorescent lights. Mold and rust stained the pale cement. Two leather-clad men blocked their path, brandishing sinuous silver weapons.

“Hey guys.” Dale had a sinuous weapon in his hand and pointed at Rush, like it’d always been there. “Hey Dannic. It’s me, Dale. Hi! Cover us, okay? I’m taking him to the beam-out point.”

“There’s no beam-out point,” Dannic snarled. “Go from here.”

“I would, but acoustic shadowing in the building superstructure is interfering with our signal,” Dale called over one shoulder, pulling Rush past them. “Gotta get to a point next to an exterior wall. Below the troposphere. Should be no problem. Cover the door!”

They descended a flight of stairs, Dale anxiously looking up and back to check for signs of pursuit.

“Acoustic shadowing?” Rush kept his voice low. “Below the troposphere?”

“Oh yeah,” Dale whispered. “I totally made that up. As a culture, Space Pirates aren’t very science literate. Say a science word, then say ‘shadowing,’ and it’ll work eighty-five percent of the time. Gravitational shadowing. Relativistic shadowing. Electromagnetic shadowing. Heck, tropospheric shadowing.”

“Ah.” Rush tried to catch his breath. 

“Technobabble won’t get us into Air Force territory though.” Dale peered over the edge of the stairwell, looking toward the lower levels. “I think our best bet is to wait for the Air Force to break through. Either from above or below. Which they will. I’m pretty confident.”

“I don’t think I want to go with the Air Force,” Rush said. 

“Okay, let’s talk about it. But, in the meantime, take your blazer off.”

“My blazer? Why?”

“Well,” Dale’s gaze shifted up and down the stairs, “if we’re standing here, we need to look like we’re doing something useful, not just chit-chatting.”

“Something ‘useful’ being?” Rush removed his jacket and dropped it on the cleanest patch of cement he could see.

“Me implanting you with a Space Pirate transponder. It’ll look legit to my side. It’ll make sense to your side.”

“I don’t have a side.”

“You do, buddy. It’s the Air Force. I get that seems weird and scary, especially since they dramatically crashed your piano party with guns and breaking glass.” Dale fished through a pocket of his jacket. “They’re the way to go.”

“What happens to you when the Air Force breaks through and sees you trying to implant me with a transponder?” Rush asked.

“Aw. Worst case scenario: the Air Force shoots me with a gun and I die. But they’ll probably use an electrical weapon, which will only stun me. Plus, they usually shout something first. They don’t go straight for the kill shot. I’ll be fine. Mostly fine. Probably? Roll up your sleeve.”

“You’re rather cavalier about what seems t’be a substantial risk.” Rush released the button at the cuff of his white dress shirt.

“Yeah, well, y’know. Space Pirate life’ll do that. Here we go.” Dale pulled a small pneumatic gun out of his pocket.

“Why are you helping me?” Rush began cuffing the sleeve of his dress shirt, fold after fold, crisp and neat, like a thing he’d done countless times.

“The Space Pirate life chose me.” Dale inspected the small gun in his hand. “Very aggressively. Like it’s trying to choose you. And it’s kinda terrible. Where by ‘kinda terrible’ I mean ‘mindblowingly intensely horrible.’ The Air Force, well, yeah. They have lots of problems. But they’re the better option.”

“That doesn’t answer the question,” Rush said, implacable. “Why are you helping me?”

Dale Volker looked at him, quiet in the dim light of the stairwell. “I like helping,” he said simply. “It’s the only thing I’ve got left.”

“Not good enough.”

The man smiled, his eyes glittering. “The real answer won’t make sense to you. So let’s say it’s for all the Chopin Firefights I’ll ever have. For this last day of October.”

“It’s not the last day of October.”

“It is for me,” Dale said, gently.

Rush shook his head, but before he could say anything, Dale spoke over him. “Hey, could you do me a favor? If you get back to the SGC, can you look up Lisa Park for me? She’s a scientist. L-I-S-A. P-A-R-K.”

“Lisa Park I can spell, thank you. What’s the SGC?”

“You’ll know if you make it there. It’s under a mountain. Can you tell her I think she’s super great?”

Rush looked at the other man, who returned his gaze with a fair fuckin’ tragic amount of hope in his eyes.

The air smelled of damp cement and dust.

“You want me to tell Lisa Park that Dale the Space Pirate thinks she’s ‘super great’?” Rush asked.

“Maybe just say Dale Volker. But otherwise, yeah.”

“Seems like y’might be able to do a bit better, mate,” Rush offered.

“What I really hope,” Dale’s voice turned hoarse, “is that she adopted my cat. They’d be great together. She’d cat-sit for me when I was away. She had a key to my place. And he liked her.” He sniffed and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his leather jacket. “I hope—I hope she thought about him, when I vanished that day.” Dale sniffed. “I hope she took him home with her. She was like that. That’s the kind of thing she was doing all the time. I bet my cat is having a great life. Her apartment was full of orchids. He’s probably always trying to chew on the leaves.”

And then, perhaps not unexpectedly, Dale Volker began weeping in the back stairwell of Au Coeur, his face turned away.

Tentatively, Rush placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Sorry.” Dale swiped at his cheeks. “Sometimes it hits me. I love that cat. And I haven’t been a Space Pirate for all that long.”

“Can y’not escape this life somehow?” Rush asked. “Defect to the Air Force?”

“Unfortunately, the Space Pirate life isn’t something you get to leave.” Dale shrugged ruefully. “If you do, they come after you. Unless you uproot everyone you care about and you all go somewhere they can never find you. Which is definitely never gonna be your old life. So, at the end of the day, Space Piracy becomes one of those things that, when it happens to you, changes your life forever. In ways you don’t really want. Kind of like a medical condition you can’t control. One of those terrible costs of living. Genes and environment, man. That’s how it happened to me. That’s how it’s trying to happen to you.”

The sound of electrical discharges echoed from above.

“I’ll find out what happened to your cat,” Rush said quietly. “Make sure it’s all right.”

Dale looked at him, eyes wet. “Would you?”

Rush nodded.

“That’s—really nice of you, man.” Dale’s expression cracked to weeping again. “He’s a male calico cat. They’re super rare. Like, the unicorn of cats. His name is Mendelssohn.”

“An excellent name,” Rush whispered.

“Thanks.” Dale’s eyes shone. “I knew you’d get it.”

There were scuffing sounds on the cement stair above them.

Dale scrubbed his face, then gently closed his fingers around Rush’s exposed forearm. “Okay, buddy. It’s been great.” He sniffed and gave Rush a watery smile. “Who knows. Maybe we meet again someday. Now, start struggling.”

“You seem like a better option than the Air Force.” Weakly, Rush yanked against the man’s half-hearted grip. “Is there no third path?”

“You’re making this really hard.” Resolutely, Dale pulled his arm up and showily pressed a device to the exposed skin. “But the Air Force is the way to go. If anyone can get your memories back, it’ll be them.”

“How did you know—”

“Most people know more than you right now. That’s the nature of the drug you got. It leaves you everything but your context.”

“A drug caused this?” Rush hissed, struggling with more energy now.

“Yeah,” Dale confirmed. “A Space Pirate drug. Telford calls it the TTRC, which stands for Top Tier Recruitment Cocktail, because he loves acronyms. Most of the Space Pirates won’t use its name, if they even know it. Most of them won’t even admit the drug exists. But when they do, they call it the Greeting.”

“The Greeting?” Rush repeated, sending a chill down his own spine.

“Back off!” 

Dale and Rush looked up to see two men in well-cut suits descending the stair. Rush recognized them from their memorable entrance into the dining room. In the lead was the man with spiked, dark hair, his cheekbone bruised, a cut at his hairline, his immaculate suit torn. He carried a sinuous metal weapon that flowed in a wave from his wrist to his hand.

“You back off!” Dale tugged on Rush’s forearm, more show than force.

The man fired at Dale, who released Rush before the electrical discharge hit. Dale was knocked back by the energy blast. He hit the floor hard. Rush followed him down, too late to break his fall, he knelt next to him, two fingers at his neck.

A pulse beat there, steady and strong.

“I can’t believe you just fired,” the second man hissed, his gaze passing over Dale to settle on Rush. “What if he hadn’t let go? Humans are conductors, not insulators. Some people have highly sensitive EM fields applied over their cerebral cortex, modulating in real time! Some people might be uniquely susceptible to Zat fire!”

“Some people were about to get abducted by the Lucian Alliance,” the man with the spiked hair said mildly, eyeing Rush over the top of his weapon, which was still trained on Dale. He licked the blood from his split lip. “Hi, Nick. Whatcha doin’?”

Slowly, Rush withdrew his fingers from Dale’s neck. His gaze flicked back and forth between the pair of them as he got to his feet, hands open, palms out. It seemed the thing to do.

“You can put your hands down,” the second man said, exasperated. “Do you see any guns pointed in your direction?”

Rush ignored this. “I know you,” he said, directing his words to the second man, the one with short brown hair. “You’re Canadian.”

“Er. True? Though I don’t think I ever told you that? And even if I had—” 

“Do you remember me?” the first man broke in. He flashed a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, but did reopen his split lip. “John Sheppard. Hi. One time we approximated magnetic reconnection by ripping Christmas lights out of an alien ceiling?”

“Sorry,” Rush said, “doesn’t ring a bell.”

“No offense, but I don’t know that you have ringable bells,” the Canadian snapped. “Dr. Rodney McKay. Hi. Not really that nice to meet you. Again. Now we’ve introduced ourselves, can we get the hell out of this stairwell?” His silver weapon was out, and he sighted along its curving barrel, in the direction of the upper levels.

“Sorry about McKay.” Sheppard shifted his stance to cover the stairs below them. He reached up, swiped a hand along his bleeding lip, then wiped it on his pants. The motion very nearly concealed the way he pulled a small device out of his pocket, similar to the one Dale had theatrically brandished.

Rush stepped back as Sheppard lunged forward.

The backstep nearly sent him down the flight of stairs at his heels, but he turned, he saved it, and Sheppard, who’d been going for his forearm, was forced to rebalance, transitioning from  lunge to a sloppy shoulder throw Rush torqued to his own advantage. 

They hit the cement of the landing. Hard. 

The fight was vicious and short.

At its conclusion, they paused, tangled together, breathing heavily, Sheppard with the device pressed to Rush’s left forearm, Rush with Sheppard’s sidearm held against Sheppard’s temple.

The stairwell echoed with distant gunfire and electrical discharges.

Rush stared into Sheppard’s eyes.

Sheppard stared back into his.

Neither of them moved.

“I cannot believe you,” McKay hissed.

“Thought I had it,” Sheppard said, slow and even and holding Rush’s gaze.

“Well you didn’t!” McKay snapped.

“I can see that, Rodney,” Sheppard replied.

“You know, you’re actually so insubordinate that you undermine even yourself? You just disobeyed your own primary mission directive. Has that occurred to you? I’m only picking up on this now but I bet if I go back and think about it—”

“Any time you’d like to start paying attention would be fine with me.” Rush cocked the weapon he held.

Sheppard and McKay stopped talking.

McKay shifted his aim to Rush, rather than the staircase above.

“No,” Sheppard and Rush said simultaneously, their gazes flicking toward McKay, then back to one another.

“Cute,” McKay muttered, shifting his aim to the stairwell. “I hate you guys. Both of you. Individually, but also and especially in combination.”

“Hey.” Sheppard held Rush’s gaze.

“Hey,” Rush echoed darkly.

They stared at one another in silence.

“I shouldn’t have tried that,” Sheppard admitted, all slow control.

“I agree,” Rush replied evenly.

“I want to give you the device I’m holding,” Sheppard said. “Take it and back away. Keep my gun. I’m not gonna try anything.”

Rush snatched the device and stepped back in one smooth motion, the gun trained at Sheppard’s left eye. 

“Okay.” Sheppard raised his hands. His lip was bleeding freely now. “Good. Let me start over. Hi. How’s it going?”

“John Sheppard,” Rush said. “J Shep?”

“Yup,” Sheppard said. “It’s me. The ecce-modo-te-cognovi-et-hoc-insanum-est-sed-numerus-meus-hic-est-ergo-fortasse-me-voca guy. I wrote the note you kept in your wallet. We’re colleagues. Hell. We’re friends. We share dreams, I’m guessing. Or at least I share yours. Plus, we’ve got this in common.” Sheppard pointed to his temple and turned his head so Rush could see a small device, blending into the man’s hair. “I’ve got a lotta answers, Nick. About what happened to you.”

Rush glanced at Dale, unconscious on the floor of the landing.

“You’re with the Air Force?” Rush asked.

“Yeah,” Sheppard confirmed.

Rush readjusted his grip on the weapon, undecided. His heart pounded in his chest.

“Why do I feel like that was the wrong answer?” Sheppard’s voice was low and even.

“He’s an amnestic cryptographer.” McKay glanced at Sheppard. “Dumped in Cambridge with only the clothes on his back. If he’s ever seen a movie in his life? Of course he’s gonna instinctively distrust the Air Force.”

Rush backed toward the opposite side of the stairwell. “Kick your—” he paused, “Zat,” he said, the word offering itself to him as he glanced at the weapon. “Kick your Zat over to me.” 

“Don’t stun us behind Lucian Alliance lines!” McKay hissed. “We came here to rescue you, you absolute brat and a half. Mathematicians are the worst. How many times have I said it. What are you going to do? Run away? To where? Those guys in leather aren’t messing around. Think it through. We’re your best option.”

Rush glanced again at Dale, who hadn’t moved. “Would a conversation be too much to ask?”

“Believe it or not, that was always my plan.” Sheppard applied his boot to his Zat and sent it across the floor in a smooth slide. “But then Eli lost his phone, the Alliance made their move, and I found you in an unsecured stairwell in the middle of a firefight with your shirt sleeve rolled up and—well, can’t blame a guy for trying.”

“Eli,” Rush repeated evenly.

“Yup. Eli Wallace. Your intern. The Lucian Alliance tried to jump him in an alley after I met him at Rational Grounds. We stopped them. He’s okay. He’s totally fine. On an Air Force ship in high Earth orbit right now. Worried about you. Worried about his mom. Nice kid.”

Rush fanned his fingers on the weapon, readjusting his stance.

“I recommend against shooting me. It’s going to complicate your life. A lot. We’re really not that bad. C’mon, Nick. Work with me here. What if I get Eli on the phone? He can tell you we’re the good guys.”

Above them, the door to the dining room slammed open.

“Damn it.” Sheppard licked his split lip, eyes flicking up. “Everett’s gonna kill me.”

Rush backed up a step.

“Go,” Sheppard said. “We’ll cover you. That transponder is your ticket out of here. Hold it against your forearm and press. I’ll buy you coffee on the other side.”

“This?” McKay whisper-hissed. “This is your plan?”

Rush looked at Sheppard, uncertain.

“You want time to make up your mind? I’m giving it to you. You have my email.” Sheppard stepped laterally to sight down the stairwell, the bruise across his cheekbone dark in the dim light. “This operation is a last-minute mess. On both sides. Holes in lines everywhere. Cut across the third floor. It’s the upper half of a two-story suite the Air Force already secured. If we’re lucky, you’ll make the fire escape and drop into a back alley. Don’t get caught. Don’t get shot. If anyone grabs you, use that transponder. It’s programed to go live with a beam-out signal as soon as it’s injected.”

Rush kicked Sheppard’s Zat back toward him, grabbed his blazer, and—hesitated.

“You wanna stay? We’ll protect you. You wanna go? We’ll cover you. Sorry I tried to get the jump on you. We really are friends. Use that email.” With that, Sheppard turned and began firing at the leather-clad group descending the stair.

With a last look at Dale, Rush turned and fled. He made the third floor exit just ahead of a group of Air Force personnel sprinting up from the second floor.

He slipped into the empty apartment and paused, his back to the door, his heart pounding wildly.

He pressed a closed fist to his mouth. 

This was intolerable.

He was making terrible choices.

Was he?

There was no way to know. 

No possible way.

He’d had so many of his assumptions reversed. Colonel Telford, a Space Pirate? J’Shep an Air Force—person? (Rush had no idea what his rank might be.)

And now the Air Force had Eli.

Dale (Space Pirate) had said the Air Force was the best option.

Sheppard (Air Force) had let him go. If he only had time to think it all through—

He squeezed his eyes shut.

“I could use some help.” Rush leaned into the door at his back.

The building’s foundation trembled with a blast from several floors above.

He opened his eyes.

No help was forthcoming.

“Right then.” He pushed away from the door and made his way through a set of empty rooms, in search of a fire escape.

He emerged into an October wind that tore at his hair and jacket. The setting sun turned the glass of Manhattan gold beneath the darkening sky. Around him, the city began to ribbon itself with electric light.

He shoved the pneumatic gun Sheppard had given him into his pocket. He pointed the man’s sidearm away, reapplied the safety, then tucked the weapon into the back of his trousers. As he climbed down the fire escape, the brisk wind lifted the tails of his blazer and cut through the thin material of his dress shirt. The ladder didn’t stretch all the way to the ground. When he reached the end of it, he lowered himself as much as possible, then dropped the remaining distance to land on his feet with a painful jolt.

He steadied himself, breathing hard.

He looked up. No sign of pursuit. 

Rush shook his hair back, squared his shoulders, and straightened the lines of his blazer. He pulled the sidearm out of his trousers, not inclined to store the thing there for any length of time.

Either end of the street was blocked by flashing lights.

That presented a problem.

He was alone in the alley.

Scratch that.

He was nearly alone in the alley.

Across the way, leaning against the brick wall of the opposite building, stood a familiar silhouette. Tangled brown curls. Kind eyes.

He wished, with a bone-deep longing, that he knew the soldier’s name.

Rush’s quantum mechanical visitor looked a bit worse for wear. He was dressed in civilian clothes, leaning on a cane. He stared at Rush with an expression of abject astonishment.

Yes well, he supposed he cut something of an unusual figure, descending a New York fire-escape at twilight, wearing his best outfit, lit by the last of the sun, carrying an Air-Force issued sidearm.

“I realize,” Rush offered, “y’have certain metaphysical laws by which you’re forced to abide—but would it be too much to ask for a practical suggestion regarding where I might responsibly leave this thing?” He held up the weapon, careful not to point it at the other man.

There was a long silence, broken only by the hissing of the wind around corners, the wail of distant sirens.

The man with the tangled hair looked at him searchingly, his expression cracked-open. Raw. Full of hope and disbelief and subtler things that Rush hadn’t a prayer of parsing. He didn’t answer Rush’s question.

“Are you all right?” Slowly, Rush closed the distance between them.

The man stepped forward, pulling Rush into a hug so tight it ran a serious risk of displacing a rib. There was a terrible tension in the other man’s frame. Half his back was a knot of contracted muscle. 

“Rough day in the quantum multiverse?” Rush asked, wrapping his arms around the other man, returning the embrace with more circumspection, given he was holding a firearm and the soldier seemed to’ve suffered a significant injury.

“God, hotshot,” the other man said, his face buried in Rush’s shoulder, his voice cracking, “I forgot how weird you are. But it’s coming back to me. Real quick.”