Brain of Blood

The Trust stole Rodney McKay's brain while he was on vacation. Since no one at the SGC wanted anything to do with him, no one noticed until Lt. Col. Sheppard stopped by his Colorado Springs apartment and found his body licking Cheerios off the floor.

Lt. Col. Sheppard stood in the kitchen doorway for a while and watched.

"That's not normal," he remarked.

"What's not normal?" Teyla asked from the living room, where she was contemplating Rodney's couch and the suspicious looking underwear poking out from under one cushion and whether she really wanted to sit down anywhere in the apartment, considering she was wearing a denim mini-skirt. "Oh," she said when she joined Sheppard in the kitchen. "No, Dr. McKay prefers cornflakes."

"Rodney," Sheppard said. "This won't get you out of helping me take Teyla shopping."

"Colonel?" Teyla asked, giving him one of her looks (Number Thirty-Eight: I Will Beat You With Sticks and Spank You). If it had been Number Thirty-Eight B (I Will Beat You With Sticks and Spank You in My Bedroom), Sheppard might have taken her up on it. But Number Thirty-Eight just promised to hurt.

"There's something wrong with him," Sheppard promptly responded, smoothly adding a flat-out lie,  "I know how much he was looking forward to showing you the mall."

After making sure he'd recorded the anomalous behavior (taken pictures) as evidence (for blackmail), Sheppard cleaned up the shambling Rodney-thing and took him back to Cheyenne Mountain.

Dr. Lam did several tests and returned with a diagnosis, announcing her findings to Daddy Dearest, all of SG-1 and the vacationing Atlantis team (sans Ronon, who had managed to get his dreads so full of pine tar on MXAB90 that they'd been forced to abandon him, still stuck to the tree, after he refused have his head shaved). Not that Sheppard ever left anyone behind. He had every intention of swinging by and picking up a much thinner Ronon once they got back to Atlantis.

Rodney had been working on an extra-powerful pine tar solvent. Oops. Maybe he'd better invest in a case of Nair and have it shipped back to the city.

"His brain is gone," Lam declared.

Sam Carter snorted.

Sheppard glared at her.

"Gone?" he asked.

"Where?" Teyla asked.

Lam nodded. "A very good question."

"Indeed," intoned Teal'c, who really thought Teyla should be more impressed with him than she was.

Lam waved her hands around distractingly. "Why ask me? I'm a doctor, not a detective!"

Sheppard waited for someone, anyone, to make the inevitable Star Trek reference. When no one did, he realized he would have to get McKay's brain back. Without Rodney on his team, he would have no one to trade meta references with when they were stuck in direly dangerous situations. He'd probably end up with Dr. Jackson, who had biceps that needed their own apartment (what kind of geek works out with weights?), a pissed off ex-runner with a shaved head (hey, maybe he should ask Teal'c and get some pointers for Ronon about growing back hair after having his head shaved) and an alien woman who could out shop Paris Hilton. Nope, he needed Rodney back. Rodney, bless his whiny, shrunken, black heart, made Sheppard look good.

"So who would steal McKay's brain?" he asked.

"The Goa'uld?" Dr. Jackson suggested.

Mitchell shook his head.  "They like to steal people with good-looking bodies as hosts, not pudgy astrophysicists — "

Sheppard glared at him. "McKay isn't pudgy! He's just not...svelte." Everyone stared at him. "What?!" Everyone looked down at the legal pads filled with doodles and notes they surreptitiously passed under the table when Daddy Dearest wasn't looking.

Teyla said, "Rule Fourteen: No one gets to mock anyone on the team, except the team, and possibly Dr. Beckett, because he has the needles."

Sheppard nodded and pointed at Teyla, "What she said."

The three original SG-1 members all nodded understandingly, remembering Janet Frasier and her very, very big needles.

"So, if not the Goa'uld, who?" Sam Carter wondered.

"It's got to be the Wraith," Sheppard said. "They're the sneakiest albino, catfish-whiskered, mindbending, really tall, soulsucking space vampires ever!"

Daddy Dearest — oops, General Landry — frowned.  "May I remind you, Colonel, that there are no Wraith in the Milky Way yet? Unless you have some news you haven't shared with us?"

Sheppard blinked at him. "What — you didn't watch the last — Never mind. Besides, like I said, the Wraith are sneaky. And they have minions, you know, humans who worship them! They could have snuck some through somehow."

"That would have to be you or Teyla Emmagen," Daniel pointed out.

Sheppard looked at Teyla, blanched, and mumbled, "Okay, so it wasn't the Wraith. Who does that leave?"

Mitchell looked at Carter. "The Ori?"

"Oh, no," she said, shaking her blonde head. "They'd just fry him."

Teal'c looked at Daniel. "Vala?"

Daniel pursed his lips, and said, "Well, she is a thief, but she's stuck in another galaxy at the moment. And, really, honestly, who would pay for McKay's brain?"

Sheppard looked at Teyla. "The Genii," they both said, but then he grimaced. "But most of them are nuked or at least radiation sick. Also, not in this galaxy."

Teyla sighed. Ever since finding out about the secret underground bunkers, not to mention the whole trying to hijack Atlantis and tricking them with promises of ZPMs, Teyla thought the Genii were behind everything that went wrong. She was still really pissed at her ex-girlfriend, too.  Sheppard made a note to check on whether Sora was still stuck in the brig. Losing track of prisoners was just bad form.

General Landry slapped his empty coffee cup down. "The Trust," he declared.

"Those rat bastards," everyone chorused, then looked embarrassed.

"Do you know where they are?" Sheppard asked, fondly laying his hand on the butt of his pistol. Teyla was cracking her knuckles in a distracting way.

"Of course," Mitchell said.

Sheppard narrowed his eyes at him. "Where?"

Mitchell looked over to General Landry. "Sir?"

"Sir, we're not leaving until we have McKay's brain back," Sheppard said. Teyla cracked her knuckles again.

"Perhaps," she said, "I will do some more shopping."

It was Landry's turn to blanch. Teyla was shopping on the SGC's credit card. "No," he said hurriedly, "no, I can see that it is vital that McKay's brain be recovered from these nefarious no-goods. The Trust is currently hiding their headquarters in a secret underground bunker buried beneath a elite Caribbean honeymoon resort."

"And you haven't shut them down?" Sheppard wondered out loud, while thinking, Another secret underground bunker? Who builds these things? Villainous Excavations, Incorporated?

"I believe O'Neill expressed the opinion that it was better to know where they were than have them go underground again," Teal'c said. He furrowed his brow. "He also said something about surveillance being more comfortable on a beach than in East Bumfuck."

"Teal'c!" Carter hissed.

"Those were his exact words."

"I'm sure," Daniel muttered. "He probably said something about thongs, too."

Teal'c nodded.  "Indeed."

"But you figure that's where they have McKay's brain," Sheppard asked, leaning forward eagerly.

"It seems likely," Gen. Landry said.

"Then get us in there and we'll get it, err, him, I mean his brain back no matter what it takes," Sheppard declared.

"No matter what?" Landry asked and smiled.

Sheppard paled, but lifted his chin, and replied defiantly, "No matter what. Unless you want me to wear heels.  Because I don't do that."

Teyla smiled.  "I will  wear the heels.  Just make sure they are steel tipped."


"Hi, I'm Tracey and this is Bob," Sheppard said as they stepped off the plane  and onto the white candy sand. He wrapped his arm around Teyla's shoulders and squeezed,"I mean, I'm Bob and this is Tracey." He grinned toothily.  "The little woman."

Teyla shoved an elbow in his ribs.

"Oooph." Sheppard kept grinning, while wondering if he could go on breathing with only one lung.

"Hello, I'm Dr. Trenton," the Vincent Price look-a-like said with a patently false smile.

Sheppard shook his hand and then surreptitiously wiped his palm on his Bermuda shorts the minute Trenton looked away. Slimy. Snaky. Icky.  He looked around the oh-so-tropical vision of sun, sand, and sea that was the Mango Beach Honeymoon Resort and secret headquarters of the Trust.  Everybody wore brightly colored sarongs. Including Dr. Trenton. Sheppard pretty much tried to not look at Trenton. The colors hurt his eyes.

"Your resort is beautiful," Teyla said sweetly.

"We hope to make your honeymoon an experience you'll remember fondly the rest of your lives," Trenton replied and kissed her hand.

"Oh, yeah, we feel exactly the same," Sheppard said.


"It's about time!" a mechanized voice complained as Sheppard and Teyla slunk into the sub-basement of the super-secret underground bunker headquarters of the Trust that night.  They were still dressed in the sarongs all the guests had to wear, but carrying the P90s Sheppard had smuggled in inside a guitar case.

All around them were green glass tubes holding naked women.

Sheppard kept stopping to stare.

Teyla kept slapping the back of his head.

"Bob!"

"Hey!"

"If you two are done?" the voice asked. Despite being mechanized, it managed to be Canadian, obnoxious, and slightly nasal.  "I want my body back!"

Sheppard swung around, looking for the source of the voice. He spotted a glass tank filled with bubbling blue fluid and a pale, slightly pudgy, excessively large brain bristling with wire leads like a chia pet.

"Rodney!" he cried out and embraced the tank lovingly.  "It's you!"

"Yes, yes, it's me," McKay's brain said through its artificial voice box. It sounded suspicious and long-suffering.  "How did you know?"

Sheppard stroked the glass.  "Like I wouldn't recognize that big brain anywhere."

"I knew it! I knew it!" McKay's brain cried out. "You only love me for my mind!"

Sheppard just grinned dopily and kissed the glass. "Hermiod will beam you back into your body."

"Only if you get her back to Cheyenne Mountain!" Dr. Trenton cackled evilly, appearing at the other end of the laboratory, backed by several goons dressed in black leather. They were all red-faced and sweaty and creaked when they moved.

"What do you want with McKay's brain anyway?" Sheppard demanded, aiming his P90 at Trenton.

"What?!" Trenton screamed. He turned and began beating one of his goons over the head with his bare hands.  "You idiot! I told you I wanted Colonel Carter's brain! How could you make such a stupid mistake!"

"What!?" screamed McKay's brain. "You stole me and it wasn't even on purpose!?"

"Kill them!" Trenton yelled. "Kill them all!"

He barely had time to duck away as a firefight exploded between Sheppard and the goons.

"Watch out for the tank! Hey, delicate equipment here! No, don't duck behind me – !" McKay's brain screeched.

Meanwhile, Teyla was busy stomping an albino dwarf with her steel-tipped stiletto heels.  "Bob!" she yelled.  "A little help for your wife, please."

"Okay, okay," Sheppard said. He kissed Rodney's tank again. "Gotta go, be right back."

"No, wait, what did she mean wife!?" McKay's brain squeaked.  "You went and got married! I hate you!"


Of course, it wasn't quite that easy. Trenton escaped.

Hermiod couldn't get McKay's brain back in his body. Someone had absconded with it while Sheppard and Teyla were masquerading as Bob and Tracey. On the other hand, Hermiod could get it into one of the mindless clone bodies Dr. Trenton had engineered using stolen Asgard technology.

McKay picked the Sam Carter version.

Sheppard never did forgive him.

And Ronon languished, alone and stuck to a pine tree, until a kindly Wraith took pity on his plight and shared secret Wraith hair care products with him that let him get free.

As soon as he was free, Ronon shot him, of course.

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