“Is this ship incomplete?” Doctor Terax blurted out as he stepped down from the transporter pad aboard the USS Republic. “Where is the carpet?” he continued, making a show of rubbing one foot against the floor and invoking the desired squeak of rubber on bare metal.

“Welcome aboard, Doctor.” Having opted to greet the surly doctor personally, Mac’s hopes for a warm greeting were dashed immediately. A handshake avoided by Terax’s crossing of all three arms, the furrowing of the Edosians brow. Any attempt at pleasantries would have to wait for another time. And so the handshake shifted to a guiding hand indicating the exit from the transporter bay. “This way, Doctor.”

As soon as they were out of the transporter bay, walking towards the nearest turbolift, Terax looked back over his shoulder, then to Mac. “That transporter chief is a child.”

“Chief Herbert?” Mac asked. “He’s actually one of the old hands aboard the ship.”

Terax huffed once. “If he’s old, you’re ancient.”

“I appreciate the welcome to the club, oh aged elder,” Mac shot back.

“Rude,” the doctor muttered as they finally entered a turbolift.

“Learned from the best,” Mac replied, smiling when he caught the faintest smirk from Terax. “I know you and Blake never really got along well on Atlantis, so thanks for coming.”

“I don’t like her,” Terax said plainly. “But I respect her as a doctor.”

“You could have said something. Or perhaps not said certain things?”

“She can be so much better though.”

“Not everyone is Doctor Terax, Terax. Ever considered she is as lively a person as she is because of her experiences?”

“Refugee camps and border patrol ships,” the doctor scoffed.

“Day to day with the truly vulnerable,” Mac countered as the turbolift came a halt, the trip barely registering for how quick it was. “Not always in nice comfy assignments.” He waved a direction for Terax, leading him to Agora, the door blocked by a security officer who stepped aside.

“She has terrible taste in music,” Terax grumbled, looking for the last word as always in an argument.

“Preaching to the choir,” Mac said, acknowledging the point.

“This isn’t sickbay,” Terax commented, looking over the young man in yellow as they passed, waiting at least for the door to close. “Another child.”

“Oh good, you’re here,” Blake said loudly as she turned to face the new voices that had interrupted the near-silence of the mostly empty Agora.

Tables and chairs had been cleared against the walls, a gurney present but unused off to one side. An array of equipment had been brought in and set up, but no one present to attend to any of it. At the bar, Terax took note of the human, Orion and vulcanoid, all keeping quiet, but all looking towards the windows and the only person in the room he either didn’t know or hadn’t judge already.

“Yes,” Terax replied tersely, as he walked across the Agora, ignoring Blake, or anyone else for that matter, picking up a tricorder near some of the equipment as he passed and flicking it open, the hand scanner removed and held at arms-length as he approached Willow, focus on his readings then on the patient themselves.

“Bedside manner of a dino-killer,” Blake muttered, getting a shrug from Mac as he retreated to the others at the bar.

“Right, you three,” Mac said softly as he approached the gallery at the bar. “I just invited the most brilliant and brilliantly annoying doctor I’ve ever known aboard my ship. I want to know what you saw or did, and I want a drink.”

“In that –” Sidda had started, but then clamped her mouth shut at Mac’s glare and raised finger in warning. “I’ll leave this one to you, Lieutenant Saez.”

“Thanks, Commander,” Cat said, sarcasm dripping from her words. “I came down to the Agora to try and cheer Lieutenant Beckman up and to rope her into a little side project. Take a couple of fighters out, scout out that interference bubble and see how bad it really would be on a shuttle.”

“She’s off duty,” Mac and Sidda said in unison.

“Removed from the duty roster, not restricted from flying,” Cat explained. “Figured roping in the second-best pilot on the ship and lifting her spirits at the same time was a good idea.”

“That’s not what you said,” Revin volunteered as she delivered a short glass to the captain. Dark amber liquid accompanied by a single large ice cube that touched the glass on all four corners. “You said third-best.”

“Thank you, crewman. That’ll be enough,” Mac said to Revin, causing the woman the shrink back slightly. And to raise Sidda’s hackles ever so slightly. “Continue, Lieutenant.”

“Well, I was talking about the planet and the field, then walked Willow over to the window. Kept talking, she didn’t respond. I looked back, and she was like that.” Cat waved at the window and the still unresponsive Willow staring at it. And the two doctors having a conversation slightly removed from their patient. “She said something about roads shrouded and broken. Hermes and how we shouldn’t be here. Honestly, Cap, kinda spooky.”

“Hmm.” Mac sipped at the whiskey, barely taking note of it, letting it burn at the back of his throat. And keep burning. Enough to elicit a faint cough. “And you?” he turned to Sidda. “You and Blake just stumbled in here about the same time.”

“We’d just finished having that conversation you and I discussed about getting Beckman to look out a window.”

Mac bobbed his head in understanding. He had approved such a stunt after all. It made sense just the timing was convenient. It couldn’t have been a long conversation, but his XO and CMO did have the same impulsive streak to them.

“So, this would have happened anyway?” Cat asked.

“Yes,” Sidda answered. “Though with a doctor on hand and monitoring her the whole time.”

“You’re not in any real trouble, Lieutenant,” Mac said after a second cough induced by a second sip. “You would have been if you’d gotten into space.” He pointed at Cat with the glass, a faint clink of ice accompanying the gesture. “Off duty means restricted flying. Understand?”

“Understood, Captain.”

“I still want you to conduct your experiment about the field. Take the lead and report back. And then report to Commander Sadovu for two bridge shifts. At the helm.”

“Aye, sir.” Cat stood from her seat. “Permission to get underway then, sir?”

“Dismissed, Lieutenant.” Mac waited, heard the double hiss of the door opening and closing, set his drink down after a third sip, holding back the cough this time. “Next time, Crewman, unless I ask for it, let’s avoid the Centauri whiskeys.”

“Stay with the Earth labels,” Revin commented.

Mac winked, offering a slight smile to the young woman. Then motioned for Sidda to join him as he started slowly towards the doctors, conferring around a small console at one of the arrays that had been set up and aimed at Beckman.

“…considerable brain activity combined with elevated body temperature –”

Blake interrupted Terax with a sigh. “Elevated body temperature is because of the increased brain activity. Just look at the data.”

“I am,” Terax grumbled. Then he stopped when he spotted Mac and Sidda. His jaw clenched, then he drew in a breath. “Show me,” he ordered of Blake. Not asked, but ordered. “Show me the data that supports your conclusion.”

“Move,” Blake said, taking over the console and bringing up a time lapse of a thermal image of Willow Beckman. It was only a few minutes compressed to seconds, but it was enough to convince Terax, showing Willow’s body warming from her head down. “See?”

“Any progress?” Mac asked.

“No,” both doctors blurted out in perfect unison. A practised ‘no’ given by all CMOs to their commanding officers at some point. And the tone was so perfect that there must have been a class given on it somewhere.

“Mac,” Blake shook her head. But instead of correcting the familiarity, she just kept going. “We’ve gotten a little sidetracked with something a fair bit more pressing than figuring out what is wrong with Lieutenant Beckman.”

“More pressing?” Terax blurted out. “That’s one way to phrase saving her life.”

“What?” Sidda was the one to ask this time.

“Increased brain activity,” Terax grumbled. “It’s making her brain hotter. We need to cool her down.”

“But we can’t move her,” Blake said, like she’d already said that a few times to Terax already. “Hey, don’t look at me. Look at the security team that can’t budge her a millimetre.”

Mac blinked a few times at that, then looked at Willow, who he knew he could pick up and move if he needed to. And then cast a glance at the door, remembering the security guard outside it. “Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Blake answered.

“Then cool the room,” Sidda said, drawing both doctor’s attention. “Set environmental controls as you want, grab some cold weather gear and keep at it.”

“We need to leave,” Willow said, loud enough for everyone to hear. She had turned to face them; her eyes consumed in the golden sheen over them now. “We need to leave right now.”

“Lieutenant.” Mac approached Willow, and her gaze locked on him immediately. “Why do we need to leave?”

“I…” she hesitated. Lacked the certainty of her previous words. “I don’t know. I just know we need to leave.”

“That’s not good enough, Lieutenant.”

“It’s not safe,” Willow said. “It’s not safe for any of us.” She then turned back to the window, pointing at Leytan III below them. “That thing broke the roads. And now they’re reforming. We…don’t want to be here when its creators come back.”