Dr. Laila Noreen first met Major Argent Helion in the Eighth Level; she was very inebriated and he was very pretty in all the sparkling club lights, blue and shining with watery shadows and Laila thought she'd been in love until he'd leaned over to her at the bar and said, "Hey, your friend is kind of hot--wanna give me her dial?"

In retrospect, Laila will admit that punching him in the face might have been overkill, but at the time, sobbing in the municipal police office, it had seemed only right that Helion had a rapidly-swelling eye for his heartless crushing of her fledgling love for him. And then she'd woken up with the worst hangover ever and her sense of reality again and decided she would never, never, never drink or interact with men again.

Luckily, he got transferred into her section, was brilliant with numbers, played with his weapon constantly, cocky and even more attractive sober, and had a tendency of pushing her out of the way and getting shot in her stead. Laila couldn't decide if it was kind of charming or just really irritating.

This is no different. "I'm getting really sick of this," Laila snarls.

Helion scowls at her. "Shut--up--!" he gasps, and tries to push her away. "Get out of here!"

"Oh, right, and leave you behind so your ex-lovers can come after me with tasers!" she snaps, and presses her hand to the bleeding wound in his thigh--just shy of his femoral artery and she can't help but think, thank the ancestors, thank the ancestors. "No thanks! I'd take shot to death by the enemy over beaten to death with decorative satchels of Major Helion's many, many bedroom conquests anyday."

"They aren't going to--oh, ow--shoot you," Helion manages through gritted teeth.

Laila knows exactly what they will do: strap her down to a machine, attach electrodes to her brain, and drain out everything they need: all the information about the program, all her knowledge, all the secrets she keeps for the city--and then they'll have Atlantica and she'll be a broken up shell and Helion will still be dead, which is why she should totally run away.

She pulls him a little closer to her and drags them more deeply into the shadows of the abandoned hall. "I'm not letting you get away with this," she hisses. "This is reckless endangerment of me--the single most important person to the war effort--and I will see to it that you get punished and demoted and have your paycheck docked."

"Noreen--"

"Shut up!" she snaps. "Save it for your discipline hearing," she tells him more softly, and closes her eyes.

----

Rodney gapes at the screen, eyes huge and horrified.

"That--"

John winces.

"Um," he says, edging out of his seat. "Rodney."

"No way," Rodney whines, turning to John and grabbing his arm. Trapped. "There's no way."

"I already looked, okay?" John complains.

"You didn't look enough," Rodney insists, desperate.

"I looked a lot," John says apologetically. "I'm pretty sure Ancient TiVo is more reliable than even our TiVo and the database swears that this was the last episode made."

Rodney stares sadly at the closing credits. "My life is so hard."

"Well," John says, upbeat. "This just means you can make up your own ending."

John doesn't know it yet, but he's totally going to regret that.