Specters

[The First Doctor]

Chris eyed Sarah curiously as her hands began to shake. He cocked his head slightly to one side - just for a moment - then sipped at his coffee. Then he turned his chair slightly and addressed Lutessa. "I have to apologize - I really hadn't intended to ignore you. Would you like me to show you how I did that trick with the origami swan? I noticed your... mother?... expressed some interest in it."

"Jim, why don't you call it 'The Majestic Twelve' like the rest of the American Public? Or why not 'M - 12' for short? May I ask why the two separate names? And why you call it 'OEI' internally?"

Jim shrugged. "I wasn't involved in it at all, not until after I got brought into the SPECTERS program about a year and a half ago." His face twisted in the grimace that passed for a smile. "Heck, I didn't even know the OEI was involved in it until... oh... about nine months ago."

Chris balanced his mug on the Klein bottle head of his cane, and pulled a small dayplanner out of his pocket. Carelessly pulling a page loose, he made an initial fold. "It really isn't all that difficult, once you see how it's done," he said, angling his hands so that Lutessa could watch. First, you fold it like so..."

He sipped his own coffee, less enthusiastically then Chris. "Until then, I was like most everyone else. I just assumed the Office of Extraterrestrial Intelligence was created because of the Year of Ghosts, and all that stuff that went down in England, and those doll-aks things dragging the Earth off across the galaxy."

"Dah-leks," Chris corrected without thinking, a snarl twisting his lips. "It's pronounced dah-lek." For a second there was a flicker of pain and rage in his eyes, before his expression calmed.

"All right," Jim answered. "Dah-leks. Whatever."

Chris manipulated the paper. "Then you fold it like this, and like this."

"Anyway," Jim continued. "Majestic-Twelve is for crackpots, right? Conspiracy theory nutcases. People that believe the Reticulans are Enlightened Space Masters here to help us spiritually evolve into our own Higher Selves."

"The Reticulans," Chris interjected, "are a pack of sadistic jackals that wouldn't know a Higher Self if it poked them in the eye." He turned back to Lutessa. "Anyway, so far I haven't done anything really different, right?"

Jim fell silent, glowering at Chris. After a moment, Chris looked at him. "What?"

"I'm just waiting for you to finish."

"What?" Chris echoed.

"You keep butting in to my explanation. I figured you'd want to finish it up for me."

Chris rolled his eyes. "Rod and Eye, Jim. You kvetch like a fishwife."

"I... I don't even know what that's supposed to mean."

They looked at each other for a moment, then both started laughing. "All right, all right," Chris said, wiping his eyes. "You win. I'll stop tossing my two denarii in."

Jim chuckled again, then turned back to Sarah. "Where was I? Oh, yeah. So, Majestic-Twelve's been officially denied by the government since 1947, right? Well, the government wasn't going to come out and reassure everyone that things were under control by announcing 'We've been lying to you about aliens for 60 years, now. Our bad. Sorry.' Wasn't going to happen. So MJ-12 is still the deep, dark, highly classified secret framework of the OEI."

"Now here's the trick," Chris said. He did something, and his fingers blurred a little, and a little bit of the paper folded in an impossible direction and vanished. "That fold, right there. It acts like a simple gearing mechanism, stores a little bit of kinetic energy."

"So why do I call it the OEI, instead of MJ-12?" Jim shrugged. "Operational security. You use the correct name, instead of the accustomed name, to make sure everyone's on the right page."

"See? Simple," Chris concluded. He handed Lutessa another page from the planner. "Here. You try it."

[Sarah Jane]

It was like falling into an abyss, the heavy knowledge of what she was up against. And he was talking to Lutessa.

"I noticed your... mother?... expressed some interest in it." He was saying.

In that moment, she had very little protection to give the girl, but she'd give what she had.

"Tess is my daughter." She agreed when the Time Lord hesitated, not leaving the child to have to fill in the blank. Then she threw little red riding hood to the wolf for a moment, thinking little harm could come from origami.

[Archetype2]

The redhead looked up and watched the man with his paper folding, it was interesting to watch, seemed to much simpler then it had before when she'd only seen the bird itself and not how to do it. Once seeing how to make the bird she understood.

She heard everything being said but didn't completely follow, Wasn't the phrase to put your two cents in? It was right??? The oddest part was about fish, fish didn't have wives...did they? Merpeople did but they were fictional well....that may or may not be the case but still, normal fish did NOT have wives!

She took the paper from Chris and began to mimic the actions he'd done, having mentally memorized the exact length each fold had been placed at and watched to make sure she got it correct. The tricky part, was the fold he'd done at the end. His hands had moved very fast but she had seen them and mimiced in a much slower way as best she could his actions.

Holding it up a little once she'd finished she smiled slightly "done." she stated simply, only having taken a few minutes to do the task.

[The First Doctor]

"Done," Lutessa said, holding up the origami bird.

Chris blinked in surprise, and craned his head around to look at it from different angles. "Yes..." he said slowly, "yes, your are."

And then he laughed, a raucous outpouring of joy. "Amazing," he said, wiping his eyes. "Simply amazing. I didn't actually think you'd be able to do that last fold..." He frankly beamed as he looked at Sarah. "You should be proud of your daughter, Sarah. She is a wonder. A genuine wonder."

---

With a slight squeal of brakes, the van pulled to a stop in front of one of the long, low buildings that were the visible tip of Camp Franklin Rock Army Proving Grounds. The side door slid open, and Chris Mesler lept out. "Jim? Martin? I've got to go check in on a few experiments in progress. Why don't I catch up with you and with our guests in an hour or two?"

The van rocked upwards as Jim stepped out. "Sure thing. You better make it back in time for dinner, though, or Mandy'll skin you alive."

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," he called back. "Seriously, I've just got to check one or two things."

Jim shook his head as Chris Mesler disappeared through the door into the building. "Unbelievable," he said with a stiff smile.

[Sarah Jane]

She gave the Time Lord the most complex look. Obviously Mesler had learned to behave himself in public and had learned enough about humanity to get along even with children. She did rather like the idea of Lutessa brushing wings with such a creature, and there was much she could learn. However, it was becoming clear that she and Mesler had some negotiating to do about the currant situation. A lot. Also in her eyes was a look as fierce as the Doctor ever gave when defending one of his companions. it said, "She is not part of the deal. She is not a bargaining chip. You will not harm her, she is under my special protection."

Then she looked to Lutessa, catching her hand and giving her a smile, even as she spoke to Mesler. She couldn't think of him as 'Chris' anymore. Time Lords were not named 'Chris' as far as she was concerned.

"I am very proud of her." She said, giving Lutessa's hand a squeeze. "Very. She is a genius." Circumstance had forced her to choose before she was really ready, but effectively, she had adopted Lutessa as her daughter on the Van ride. Not for just this day or this adventure, but her real daughter for always.

They got out of their harnesses and out of the Van. Sarah Jane payed very much attention to the chit chat while pretending not to. Who was Mandy?

"You seem quite willing to believe him, Jim. I wonder why that is?"

[The Inventor]

The Inventor opened his TARDIS door and saw a banner that said Burning Man Festival. He shut the door back, locked it, and ran off too do some research... Aaah...there it was, Burning Man Festival a giant party in America. Off to the wardrobe again, oh nevermind, what he was wearing would do, on second thought maybe so. Time for more research, interesting, nice, okay, and facinating. Hmmm... time to go see if there was anything better suiting to this party.

(Anyone who wants to join Burning Man, please go to this link whoniverse-rp.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=guest&action=display&thread=5381 )

[The First Doctor]

If Chris noticed Sarah's burning expression, he gave no notice. Instead, he continued to look at the origami bird with an expression of mixed bafflement and wonder.

"I am very proud of her." She said, giving Lutessa's hand a squeeze. "Very. She is a genius."

"You should be," he agreed. "And she is. Once, we would have..."

His voice trailed away and, for just a moment as he looked at Lutessa and her origami swan, he looked very, very old. And very, very sad.

"Once," he whispered.

And then he drank some more coffee, and the moment was gone.

---

"You seem quite willing to believe him, Jim. I wonder why that is?"

Jim watched the door swing shut, watched Chris' cooler-than-human footprints fade as they warmed to ambient temperature. He didn't answer for a moment as he scanned through the signals from his integrated radio and wireless computer pickups, checking for anything important.

"Why am I willing to believe him, Ms. Smith?" he echoed.

He knew the answer. But he paused a moment, acting as if he were considering.

Blackness.

Silence.

The only sensations were the feel of the eggcrate mattress underneath him and the air and cloth on his skin. And those were muted by the morphine. He didn't like the way it made him feel, but he hated the way he felt without it.

Because without it, there was pain.

And then there was a tapping on his chest. Morse code. He concentrated, picking out the meaning.

"Hi. I'm looking for volunteers. For a test. If it works, you will be able to see. And hear. And walk. But there's a good chance it will fail. And at least a small chance it could kill you."

"Interested?"

He twisted his face into the grimace that approximated a smile on his face. "I could tell you that I believe him, because he gave me my life back. He made all of this - " here he raised an arm and flexed a hand, "- possible. And that I'd follow him into Hell, if he asked."

He looked down at Sarah. "And that's even true, but it's not the reason I believe him."

Looking back at the door, he considered his words. "I know he's not who he says he is - not that he's said a lot about who he is. I'm pretty sure he's not even human - I can hear his hearts beat, and I can see that his body temperature is about 10 to 15 degrees lower than ours. I don't think he sleeps, and that's not just because of the coffee. I know that the top brass and the civilian authorities in this project are almost as scared of him as they are excited to have him around."

He paused, and thought some more about his words. "But, well, I've gotten to know him pretty well over the past two years. Mandy and Jasmine seem to have adopted him, and he enjoys visiting them as well."

Another pause. Talking about this sort of thing didn't come easily. "Two years, and he's been part of my family for most of that. And that's why I believe him. Because he's not just some mysterious human-looking alien that turned me into a cyborg 'super-soldier'. He's family."

The wind whistled past. Doctor Sambur finally stepped from the car. "I'm afraid I have to meet with the General. Ms. Smith, would you mind terribly if Captain Hayes shows you around the camp first, and then we have our meeting afterwards?"

[Sarah Jane]

A thousand yard stare, they called it, but in Jim's case, it was a stare that went past the horizon right to the sunless side of the world. All it took to send the cyborg man into a fuge state was one wrong question. With a thread of horror, Sarah Jane wondered what did battle do to him.


When he seemed to come back to himself, speaking again, she listened to Captain Haze quite carefully, looking out at her surroundings for the most part to give him a little privacy as he shared more deeply than she had expected. She expected him to quote some sort of classified rating that he did not question.

"Thank you for being so open, Jim." She said, giving him a soft, empathetic smile.

Family? Really? Well, she was not in any position to judge. With a Time Lord, she was certain that was a possibility. They both contemplated the enormity of all that in a companionable silence. Well, Sarah Jane did, she assumed he did, or he thought about whatever Soldiers thought about until Dr. Sambur emerged from the van, finally done with his call, and made his offer. She took it. Perfect.

"It would be lovely, if Jim will indulge Lutessa and I."

Lutessa would do what Lutessa would do. There was no predicting it, all she could do was keep one eye on the girl. On her daughter. Sarah Jane took a deep, steadying breath. She knew that Lutessa would enrich her life in ways she couldn't even guess yet, but in the meanwhile she had a not-quite-two year old going on forty, with all the complexity of her teenage-developed form and mindset. Sarah was riding the Tiger now, but she had always enjoyed such things.

[The First Doctor]

"Thank you for being so open, Jim." She said, giving him a soft, empathetic smile.

Jim nodded his head. "It's the least I could do," he said. "I know you're worried about the SPECTERS program, and about Chris-" He didn't add how he knew. How he could hear her pulse rate pick up and her breathing deepen at certain questions and statements, sure signs of a fight-or-flight response kicking in. How he could see muscle tension as patches of increased body temperature. And how, as a father, he could see how much the conversation about her daughter had distressed her.

No. That was the sort of thing that made people more nervous. "So I wanted you to understand a little more. Show you that he's not the Nazi mad scientist you might have built him up to be." He twisted his face into one of his stiff grins. "Really, he's more of an absent-minded mad scientist."

Doctor Sambur climbed from the car, and asked if they could change plans and show their guest around first. "It would be lovely, if Jim will indulge Lutessa and I," she answered.

"It would be my pleasure," Jim answered. He looked at Doctor Sambur. "Is there anything off-limits?"

Doctor Sambur laughed a little at the question. "Captain Hayes, I've read Ms. Smith's file. I can assure you that, if there were, it wouldn't matter." He looked at Sarah with a soft smile. "I don't mean to offend, and I hope you aren't offended. I'm aware of your reputation as both a journalist and as a UNIT agent, and I know some of the risks you've taken to find out the truth behind secrets and classified projects. You may have full and unfettered access to anything that goes on here. I only ask that you talk to me first, before you reveal the details of any classified projects to anyone else."

He checked his watch. "Shall we meet in... two hours? To discuss what you've seen, and to share information?"

After he left, Jim checked his watch and his e-mail. "Well, about half the team is on site right now. Why don't I take you the long way around, let you see some of the other things we've got buried here, and introduce you to the rest of the SPECTERS?"

[Sarah Jane]

Dr. Sambur was quite a puzzle. One she thought she had figured out already. The full clearance he offered her did not fit her conception of him. Sarah Jane was pleased to go back to the drawing board. She smiled at him, and perhaps only the slightest ice got through.

"Agreed, Dr.Sambur, unless I find out you have direct plans to eventually turn the human race into a bunch of Cyborg enhanced units. I reserve the right to spread the word if the trail is crystal clear." Her tone was light, but it was seriousness made jest to help them both save face. And the truth.

She took a deep breath as she and Lutessa were left alone with the only person so far that she was inclined to trust. The Cyborg.

She looked over at Lutessa to see how she was holding up. Splendidly, it seemed, and carefully guarding her questions.

"Tess. Stay where I can see you. Jim, lets take the long way around, I really would like to see what you folks have in place here."

[The First Doctor]

"Agreed, Dr.Sambur, unless I find out you have direct plans to eventually turn the human race into a bunch of Cyborg enhanced units. I reserve the right to spread the word if the trail is crystal clear." Her tone was light, but it was seriousness made jest to help them both save face. And the truth.

"I can assure you, Ms. Smith," Doctor Sambur answered with an easy grin, "that the budget for my BOND VILLAIN WORLD CONQUEST program was an early casualty of our recent debt ceiling negotiations." He held his expression for just a moment longer than he had to, before laughing. "But no, I take your point. And I rather expected no less." He checked his watch. "Two hours, then."

With a wave, he passed through the same doors Christopher Mesler had taken a few minutes earlier.

"Tess. Stay where I can see you. Jim, lets take the long way around, I really would like to see what you folks have in place here."

"Sure. Follow me."

---

They had crossed the dusty street and entered a nondescript Quonset hut. Inside, the three rode a service elevator down some eighty or a hundred feet.

"Everything's down this deep to make it hard to find with thermal scans or ground-penetrating radar. It also makes it harder for anyone to break in." He paused. "Or out, for that matter. And that's a concern, in two cases."

The elevator settled to a halt. Jim slid the door open, revealing a nondescript, wide white hallway that wouldn't have looked out of place in any hospital.

"The first thing I'm going to show you? It blew me away, the first time I saw it. It's down this way." He turned left and strode along, unconsciously marching. A few people passed waving and exchanging greetings.

"See, it turns out that something did crash at Roswell, all those years ago." There was a large set of double doors at the far end of the hall, with Military Police standing guard. "Not a saucer, though. We don't really know what it is. The brass had Chris look at it a couple of years back, and apparently he just laughed and said 'good luck' when he saw it."

The MPs, despite obviously recognizing Captain Hayes, still insisted on seeing his ID. He then signed Sarah and Tessa in, and watched as they inserted their keys into the locks on either side of the door.

"So, yeah. We don't know what it is. All we know is that it isn't a 'flying saucer', and that there weren't any alien bodies around it. Heck, it was hermetically sealed until about two years ago."

The doors opened, and air flowed out. The trio walked in, the doors closed behind them, and a second set of doors opened in front of them.

The room on the other side wasn't all that large, perhaps the size of a gymnasium. It was packed with computers and other electronics, all of which focused on or connected to the object in the center of the room.

The object was a dull, faceted sphere, perhaps 5 meters in diameter. Part of the sphere sat open, double doors in the side of the smooth curve revealing an interior that was much larger than the exterior. Just barely visible was a hexagonal console surrounding what appeared to be an abstract crystal sculpture.

[Sarah Jane]

All this money and they were screwing it up anyway. They'd let the beast loose in the heart of their sanctuary. Sarah was not poor, but she wondered what it would be like to have even twice the space, and not have to keep the spare weaponry in her bedroom lock box.

She had heard rumors about the Roswell ship, and had been fairly certain it existed. Here it was now. Sarah Jane always wondered if she would recognize it if she saw it, and nearly laughed aloud when she did. As it was, she managed to contain herself to stand there looking like she was holding a large ice cube in her mouth as a smile threatened to arrive full blown. She shifted her hips and made a small, painful sound as she contained her mirth. It was a TARDIS.

When Jim said what the Time Lord had told them, Sarah Jane had to cough to keep from laughing and slapped her thigh once before she could get fully under control.
"Good luck." She said, echoing one Mr.Christopher Mesler. She also wanted to say something that moment that would sabotage the Majestic -12's budget, but decided she couldn't do that to the rest of the United States.
"Let me guess. Chris opened it for you?" She asked, wondering if it was his TARDIS. Surely it must be. Had he parked right inside it? Replaced it? Waited within like a Trojan horse?

[Archetype2]

The redhead followed suit, listening closely to the conversations between everyone, enjoying the praise she'd received for the bird...it wasn't that hard though to make.... Sarah Jane had been slightly nervous it had seamed, nervous abut their task maybe? Eyes fixated on Jim as he spoke in response to Sarah Jane's question or was it a statement, about trusting Chris? He'd become lost in thought in a way that was the girl didn't think to be normal. Was he O.K? She wanted to ask him about it but...would that count as one of her questions?

They'd begun to move then, headed around the base. Lutessa began to make a map, not a visual one for all to see but one in her head. Memorizing all corridors, codes to be punched into doorlock number systems, anything she could. As she walked, she thought, about the strange look she'd noticed when Sarah Jane had said she was a genius, Chris had responded oddly, saying they would have done......something. What would they have done? Who was the they?

Finally they reached a room, it was large and contained a spherical ship like thing that had a larger exterior then interior. "It's...bigger on the inside." she stated rather matter-of-factly with a hint of curiosity. She looked over then, emerald eyes landing on Sarah Jane, watching her...her facial expression was rather funny, was she ok? Tilting her head to the side a little she blinked a few times and screwed her face up a bit with different emotions till it went back to normal...well normal for today. Sarah Jane was holding something back, keeping something from being said maybe? No, anything she might not want to have said, Tess figured herself to already have blurted out by now..come to think of it, the redhead was rather impressed with herself for not having said that much thus far.

"The dimensions within the ship...are different then those around them so its bigger inside...." she mumbled to herself barely audible to normal people except maybe Sarah Jane..and who knew about Jim.

Her eyes scanned the thing as she moved slowly to circle the object, up and down she scanned over and over.

[The First Doctor]

Jim watched Sarah carefully as she looked at the Sphere. She did a good job of hiding it, but he could see the flush of... excitement? Amusement? Recognition, certainly.

"Good luck." She said, with just the barest hint of a cough that might have been a laugh.

He smiled one of his stiff smiles, and wagged a finger at her. "You know what it is, don't you. Or, at least, you have a pretty good guess." He held up a hand to stall any protestations. "No, don't feel like you have to answer - I doubt I'd understand it anyway. But, if I'm right, you're holding the aces when you and Doctor Sambur do your little information exchange meeting."

"It's...bigger on the inside." observed Sarah's daughter.

Jim laughed. "Yeah, that's about the only thing we seem to know about it."

"Let me guess. Chris opened it for you?"

"No, actually," was Jim's response. "It just opened on its own about, oh, six months ago. Around the time your Prime Minister killed the President. Chris was off at a conference, or something, around then."

He gripped the railing. "They showed it to him when he got back. He just looked inside and said something like, 'Doesn't matter. I won't help you with this.' And he refuses to talk about it now."

Sarah's daughter wasn't finished. "The dimensions within the ship...are different then those around them so its bigger inside...."

"Wait, what?" He looked at her in surprise. "Seriously? How did you figure that out, just from looking at it?"

[Sarah Jane]

((I don't do this often, but here it is. . .I pass my turn.))