Sam gave a token knock on the open door of Al’s office, as he peeked in. He’d been hearing a heated telephone discussion going on and knew it was something serious.
Al, having seconds ago slammed the phone to the cradle, was rubbing his eyes.
“I take it that wasn’t good news,” Sam said with a frown.
Al slapped the mahogany desk. “Bunch of stuffed shirts got no idea what they’re doing.”
Oh no, what happened now?
“The Committee?”
Al finally looked up at him. “With Grady dead, we lost our majority vote. And now we got rumblings of the President planning an invasion of goddamn Iraq – our funding’s number one on the chopping block, now that you’re home.”
Sam’s heart dropped.
“They can’t!” He took a few frantic steps into the room, and leaned forward, his hands planting on Al’s desk. “Don’t they understand the threat we’re trying to stop here?”
“That’s what I’ve been tryin’ to explain to them, but they’re a bunch of pig-headed political hacks who’d rather chase some flimsy intel in the Middle East than try and save a few thousand parallel Earths from ruin.”
“It’s not just parallel worlds that are in danger,” added Sam. “Ours could be subject to invasion at any time. Don’t they realise that?!”
“Of course they don’t. Most of these nozzles won’t even acknowledge global warming for Pete’s sake, and that’s happening right under their noses.”
Sam dragged his palm across his chin, then balled up his hand into a fist, which he plunged onto the desk. “Fuck!”
Al’s eyebrows shot up, then a smile drew across his face. “Jeez, you must be angry. Not sure I’ve ever heard you say that before.”
“Yeah, I don’t make a habit of it.” Sam stared down at his hands, there on the desk. “Think the last time I let an f-bomb slip, it was on the day I leaped for the first time. Same reason, I guess.”
Al’s smile dropped.
“Oh…” He leaned forward. “You’re not gonna… not yet? Are you?”
“How long do we have, you think? Before lights out?”
Al shook his head. “Not positive, but it’s not long now. A month, tops. Unless a miracle happens.”
Sam straightened, crossing his arms.
“I’ll need you in the Imaging Chamber for at least this one. So that limits it a little more. How about we pencil in next week?”
Al looked at him gravely.
“Sam, if the Project is shut down, and you aren’t back home, we’ll lose you. You won’t see me again. Who even knows what’ll happen to the Waiting Room? You want your leapees starving to death?”
That’s a good point.
Sam stood silent for a good few minutes, as he thought carefully.
“Okay,” he said finally, “if the Project is about to have its power cut off, here’s what you should do: first, attempt retrieval. If that doesn’t work…”
He paced a few laps of the room, mind racing. “I’m… I’m not sure. I have the seed of an idea, but…”
He rubbed his temple. “I’ll need to assemble all the physicists, brainstorm a bit.”
Al nodded. “Alright. Sammy Jo and John just got back from their drive this morning. I’ll let ’em know it’s all hands on deck tomorrow. I’ll rope the brothers in, too.”
“Thank you, Al.”
Al gave him a weak smile. “I always thought that even if you kept on leaping, I’d be there to keep you company.”
“Me too,” Sam mumbled.
“You gotta say proper goodbyes this time, got it? No leaving us all high and dry.”
“I promise.”
* * *
That night, as Sam slept beside Donna in their large bed, his wrist link began to vibrate, rousing him with a start.
As he blearily looked down at the pink, green, blue, and yellow flashing, his heart jumped, flooding adrenaline into his system.
Oh no, the EMP sensor…
He launched himself out of the bed, and grabbed a t-shirt before he dashed outside, to Donna’s car.
When he stepped out of the elevator at the Project, Al was already there, attempting to pull open the door to Ziggy’s mainframe.
“Someone’s in there and activated the manual override on this door,” he said as Sam rushed to him.
Are we finally about to get our hands on the saboteur?
Together, they pulled the door, and it inched open. Inside, Sam could see a dark figure hunched over what looked like a laptop.
“Hey!” He called out. The door was not open enough to squeeze through yet, so he kept pulling. The figure moved, and the laptop closed.
Finally, the pair got the door open far enough, and Sam slid into the room, hand slamming on the overhead lights.
“Don’t move!” cried Sam, his body lowering into a fighting posture. Then his squinting eyes focused on the person in the corner, hugging a laptop and looking at him with wide, watering eyes.
Sammy Jo?
Sam lowered his hands. “It was you? But why?”
Behind him, Al stood in the doorway. “Of all people… how could you?”
Sammy Jo shook her head. “This isn’t what it looks like, I swear!”
Sam glared back at her. “Then you’d better explain yourself.”
Slowly, she lowered the laptop, and opened it. The screen blinked on, and Sam recognised the formatting of Ziggy’s leap reports.
“A leap report?”
“You remember the paper I had to retract, about residual temporal anomalies?” She was looking into his eyes, searching.
“What about it?”
“Well my hometown was a hotbed for the anomalies, that’s how I got all the data I did. And when I found out about Project Quantum Leap, I realised that it must have been that multiple leaps occurred there. Only, I was locked out of accessing anything regarding Potterville. I never knew why. So when I found Grady’s EMP device at his house…”
Oh…
“You kept quiet about it, because you saw an opportunity to gain access to those reports.”
Sammy Jo nodded. “I’m sorry. I had to know what happened. I swear I was going to give this device up to you tomorrow. I just needed to know, given my family history and all.”
Sam hesitated. “Did you read… everything?”
She nodded, her eyes trained on his. “Always thought it was a little strange that an old lawyer told me he loved me out of the blue.”
“Uh, so she’s not the traitor?” Al interjected.
“I don’t think so,” said Sam, still making eye contact with Sammy Jo.
She put the laptop down on the control table, and moved towards him, tears escaping her eyes. He met her half way and they hugged.
“Were you ever planning to tell me?” she asked, before burying her face in his shoulder.
“I was,” he said truthfully. “I just didn’t know how to bring it up. It’s not something you just slip into a conversation…”
Sam gave her hair a few strokes with his hand, before withdrawing from the embrace.
“I should have known you’d find it out for yourself. You’re a smart cookie.”
The sound of the elevator doors opening made Sam jump, and he turned to see Quinn racing out of them.
“Came as fast as I could. Did you catch ’em?”
Sam exchanged a look with Al.
“Uh, false alarm,” he said, before gesturing towards Sammy Jo. “Quinn, you’ve met my daughter, right?”