OSI Interview: Shae

Posted on Tue Apr 30th, 2019 @ 11:18pm by Special Agent Mathew Richards & Civillian Shae & Special Agent Mark Badger & Special Agent Brick Johnson

Mission: Interlude 1
Location: Cheyenne Mountain: Project New Dawn (Conference Room)
Timeline: Current

Supervisory Special Agent Matthew Richards looked over the scant information in the Kitsune woman's file. They knew next to nothing about her other than what she'd told them, and they currently had no way of verifying any of that. Still, Matthew didn't really believe in his gut that Shae had betrayed the team.

"Okay, gentlemen," Matt said. "This woman has been through a great deal of trauma. Nobody is going to get confrontational with her without really goddamn good reason. Everyone clear on that? We're just going to ask questions and see where the answers lead us. If she trusts us, feels safe, she'll be more likely to be open with us."

Brick simply nodded, then made a sharp turn for the door to go retrieve the little alien.

"I've already told you my thoughts on this one," Badger said, leaning against a desk with his arms folded over his chest. "If she's any part of the leak, then it's also connected to Andrews. And I just don't think that's the case here. No, the aliens here aren't the ones we need to lean on. But, if she is involved in the leaks then I don't care how 'hard' her life was, our own people's lives come before feelings."

Shae was wary of the tall man who had come to fetch her. She looked up at him with wide eyes because he was just so broad and tall, and likewise he looked down at her with some amazement that such a tiny woman could have survived as much as what had been documented, and she certainly didn't look very alien...

"Your presence is requested," Brick said simply in his almost melodic baritone, and this seemed sufficient to gain her compliance. Of course, she had been cautioned earlier that someone may be coming around to talk to her and that she should cooperate as best she could, so she vacated her quarters and followed the tall, broad man to the conference room.

"Hello?" Shae said shyly as she entered the room, approaching the table with caution and sitting down while Mr. Tall Dark and Mysterious remained like a statue near the door.

Mathew smiled. "Hello, Shae," he said. "I'm Supervisory Special Agent Mathew Richards. The large man over there is Special Agent Brick Johnson, and the shorter man is Special Agent Mark Badger. We work for the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations. We have a lot of jobs that we do, but the main one we do here is try to make sure that no one compromises our operation here by gaining access to information they shouldn't have and using that information to do bad things to Project New Dawn or to anyone else, for that matter. The four people claiming to be officers in our Public Health Service and our Centers for Disease Control, they seemed to know exactly where to find SG-1 and that SG-1 might be in need of the services of CDC medical personnel. Can you understand why we're concerned about this?"

He spoke clearly enough, but he still used some names that she was not familiar with, but after a moment of working his words through her head, she was able to figure out what he mean. "You mean the medical people who tried to help us that were actually Jaffa?" she asked, just to be clear. "I can understand why this would be a cause for concern. Please, how can I be of assistance in this matter?"

"Well, Shae," Matt said. "Part of our problem is that we're concerned about how they knew to come there at that specific time and how they knew to use not only those personas, but those specific people. You see, those Jaffa weren't completely dishonest with you. Each one of them was at one point an officer in our Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and Epidemic Intelligence Service Officers with our Centers for Disease Control. Those are... basically they investigate outbreaks of diseases. But you see, all of them disappeared without a trace sometime over the last ten years. So people who we thought were dead were somehow turned into Jaffa and turned up on P3X-842 with knowledge they shouldn't have. We suspect we know how they got off-world, and we're getting into that, but the question we're trying to help answer with these interviews is how did they get their information? You have a tablet that Major Asher gave you, correct? And you've been given access to the internet from that tablet and from computers here in the mountain, right? Is it possible that you communicated with someone outside of Project New Dawn and maybe said something that might have given a clue they could have used to figure out where SG-1 was headed?"

Shae was mildly insulted that he thought she was the source of this information getting out, but then dismissed it as something she had heard here and there around the base, due diligence, so he was probably asking everyone who knew about the mission, just to be safe. "I do not see how, I do not know anyone off base, nor have I made any mention to anyone through the messages about where we were going," Shae stated. Shae had her tablet with her, she carried it everywhere with her when she was on base because sometimes it was easier to look things up than to interrupt people to get explanations for things she didn't understand. She set the tablet on the table and unlocked it, revealing the last thing she had been watching which was a video of a cat sliding across the floor in boxes. Blushing, she stopped the video and opened her messages, then offered the tablet to the man sitting across from her, sliding it across the table closer to Richards.

"Mostly, I use the tablet to study," Shae stated. "I do message Major Asher often, Ree has, eh, I mean Sergeant O'Conner sends me links to funny things, sometimes I send funny things back, and there's a message of apology to the Wolf General, but I don't really use my tablet to communicate, I like to do that in person since I do not read so well. Instead, I use a program to teach me English, and since returning from the world of the Lost Children, I have been studying the markings on the device we lost and comparing those marking to other writings from all over the world; I know the device is gone, but I thought if we found it again we should be able to understand the writing, but so far I have not found any writings like it. Truly, we did not have much time to make any communications before we left, we were informed and had to leave immediately. In that brief time before we left, I asked a clerk to help me find and save to my tablet the languages I have been studying, but I never told him why I needed it or where we were going."

Matt hid a grinned when he saw the cat video. "I love this one!" Matt said. "It always makes me laugh! Okay, if you could give the name and rank of who you spoke with to Mark before you go, I'd appreciate it. Don't worry. The clerk isn't in trouble. We just need to get their side of things and figure out if maybe they said something to someone, even inadvertently, that could have led to those Jaffa finding the team. Shae, you've traveled around quite a bit through various stargates on various worlds. Did you happen to recognize any of those Jaffa, once you got a look at them with the hoods of their suits off?" Matt opened a folder and slid four 8 X 10 photos of the four Jaffa, all from their official USPHSCC files. "Here are some better photos of them. I know it's a long shot, but I thought I'd ask. Do they look familiar at all?"

Shae took a moment to look at the pictures, studying them carefully. Once she was absolutely sure she didn't recognize them, she shook her head. "I am sorry, I have not seen them before we encountered them on the world of the Lost Children. But I can tell you this: their Prim'ta, the Goa'ulds in their bellies, were young. I cannot say for certain how young the larvae were, but you said these medical people went missing over ten years, but I can say for certain that these Prim'ta were not that old."

"And you're certain of that?" Matt said. "That the--Prim'ta? Sorry, I'm learning a lot of new terminology rather quickly here, so bear with my poor pronunciation. Anyway, you're sure that the Prim'ta were less that ten years old?"

"Yes," Shae replied with a nod. "I was the one to take them out so we could bring them back for study, I got a very good look at them. I do not know the full maturation cycle of the Prim'ta, but I know it to be many years and these were far from ready to take a host."

"That, ma'am, is exactly the kind of information that may prove helpful," Matt said. The interviews were being recorded, but he still made a note of Shae's observation. "Did anything else stand out about them? Any markings or perhaps any equipment they might have had? I know we recovered four Zat'nik'tel--I hope I pronounced that correctly, and what the science folks are calling 'the Jamming Sphere' for lack of better term. Think back. Is it possible that the team missed anything when they searched the bodies and the surrounding area? Or is there anything that you can think that they should have had that they didn't? Something missing that stood out in your mind as odd?"

Again, Shae thought long and hard. "The medical people died where they stood. I found many footprints and scents at the Chappa'ai that went no further than where the bodies were. I could not tell for certain the number or if they were human or Jaffa or something else, there were simply too many tracks obscuring everything and the scents of the bodies made it impossible for me to learn anything from these foreign scents lingering. The best I can infer from what I observed was that a group of people came through the gate, and at least one of them had to have a Goa'uld staff weapon because that was how the medical Jaffa were killed. I have seen enough of those wounds to know for certain that this was how they were killed. The few clear tracks I was able to observe informed me that whoever came through the gate did not come from Earth; the shoes did not leave behind designs like I see on the boots here."

Matt nodded. "Thank you, Shae," he said. "That's all I have. Gentlemen, do you have any questions you'd like to ask? Remember, please, that this is a friendly interview and that Shae has already freely offered a lot of information that either confirmed things we already suspected or in some cases was entirely new to us."

"I don't have anything for now," Badger said, "Other than to remind you," he turned to Shae, "this is an ongoing investigation. You orders regarding this is that you are not to discuss this interview, any other interview in which you may be involved or any other information gained as a result of this investigation. Doing so may subject you to criminal charges or other administrative punishments. You are not to discuss it, gossip about it, speculate regarding any of this, with anyone. Not Sergeant O'Connor, not Major Asher, any other member of your team or anyone that is not one of the three of us. Is that understood?"

Shae blinked in stunned confusion, but eventually nodded. Then the great statue of a man guarding the door was behind her, causing her to jump slightly; she hadn't seen or heard him move!!!

"Name and rank of the clerk," Brick said, setting a notepad with a pen in front of her. He wasn't mean or rough in any way, but very firm.

"O-okay..." Shae said nervously, then quickly wrote down the clerk's name, and she couldn't remember the name of the rank so she was able to make a little squiggle of what she remembered it looked like.

"Have a good afternoon," Brick then said just as firmly before, almost like it was an order, then stepped aside so that Shae could back out of her chair while he reclaimed the pad of paper and went to go investigate the clerk. Meanwhile, Shae was still somewhat in shock as she accepted her tablet from Richards.

"If there is anything else I can do to assist, please let me know, and I will come find you if I remember anything else," Shae said uneasily.

"Thank you, Shae," Matt said. "You've been very helpful. We'll be in touch if we need anything else. You can get back to your work now."

"Told you, waste of time," Badger said after she left the room. "Best that we could hope for is that she's here as a distraction, but that would still put her as a pawn of someone else. I'm just not seeing it. Who do we have next?"

"Mark," Matt said. "Did you not hear her give us the information about the age of the prim'ta? That was a piece of information we didn't have before. Is it important? I'm sure yet, but I think it may be. It suggests that Valenti, Chow, Vasquez, and Djebar weren't turned into Jaffa prior to their disappearance. It also suggests that the other gate was in operation as recently as a decade ago. Was it the men in black from NID like General St. John believes? I don't know, but she and her former partners have been on this longer than us. They have information we don't. Make sure that bit of info gets back to St. John's office ASAP."

"That's not our investigation," Badger said, "ours is the leak that allowed these CDC people to get there. Anything else we get helps other investigations, sure. But, this Shae person admits herself she's not an expert and is only guessing by her 'experience'. How much has she really studied and been around the Jaffa to be able to tell the age? When the CDC people were infected also isn't relevant to our investigation here and focusing on that aspect is a false trail that we don't need to go down." Badger shrugged. "So, as I said, for purposes of our investigation, waste of time."

"As I told you before, Mark," Matthew said. "We're in on the larger investigation as well. You're going to have to multitask here, Mark. There's a lot of very big, very dangerous shit going down. Our job is to protect these guys and that means we have to be able to look at that very big, very dangerous picture. The leak is connected to whoever sent Valenti and her team. Part of the finding the leak is trying to determine who benefited from the information and from taking control of the device. Valenti and her team didn't come from here, so where did they come from and who sent the them through? If they came from Earth, then it's possible they came through the gate St. John thinks that the NID has control of. Think about that for a second, Mark. These guys were US government employees before they disappeared, all over the last decade. If Shae is right, they only became Jaffa over the last ten years or so. They were Jaffa, Mark, and it seems possible, maybe even likely that they came through the NID gate. Which tells us that a) it's possible that NID has access to PND information, and b) there are Jaffa working for the NID. Who do Jaffa work for, Mark?"

"Of course, any information we get is typed up and sent on, but if we continue looking at the larger picture, we're going to miss details here to plug up this leak. We get a suspect on these leaks, that leads us to other places and other information. That's what I want for the here and now. I'm saying Shae isn't a suspect, at least in my mind. Is she in yours? If so, clue me in because I'm missing it. As I said, she'd have to be working with Andrews in that regard and I'm willing to see her as a suspect, her own disappearance fits the larger problem and she could be the cause of the leak here, but that's jumping to conclusions before we have even really started. I don't believe this Shae is capable of the skills necessary for this duplicity."

"My opinion of Shae hasn't changed," Matt said. "I'm good with crossing her off as a suspect. I never thought she was involved in the first place."

Mark sighed. "We have to face it, the NID have had the last twenty years to do what they've been doing while our side stuck its head in the sand and left it alone. Now we're rushing to play catch up and I'm not liking it. If it's okay with you, then we can allocate resources, I'll care about focusing intently on this incident and where it leads, and you can keep us rowing along toward the larger picture by not becoming so tunnel-blinded on the here and now, sound fair?"

"Fine," Matt said. He grinned. "But let's try and remember that my business card says 'Supervisory Special Agent' and 'Detachment Commander' on it, and that you're a member of the 'Detachment' that I'm supposed to be'Commanding'. Otherwise, sure keep focusing on the leak for now. I trust you or you wouldn't be here."