It's not a particularly happy city right now. It's been battered and hurt, sliced apart, shifted from the spot it had been resting for the past age, and it hates it. It wants it to stop, wants it to be peaceful again, so it could sit and live through the gentle hum of humanity in its corridors. For just a while, even for a few hours.
And when an Ancient city capable of interstellar flight decides it wants to do something, there's very little than can be done to stop it.
When all the lights in the armoury switch themselves off without any warning, John doesn't even set down the P-90 he's been trying to fix. He stalks off past the two soldiers doing the inventory and sets off down the darkened corridor. They need the light and they need it now. Something or someone keeps nicking the bloody ammo, and John wants to find out when it goes missing so he can catch them at it and give them a good kicking.
He marches into Rodney's lab and starts yelling straight away. "Fix the damn lights in the armoury right now, McKay, or you will be suffering for the rest of your indeterminably short life!" He slams the P-90 down onto the work surface, and it discharges the stuck bullet.
There's silence in the room except for the forlorn tinkle of shattered glass falling to the floor.
Eventually Zelenka reappears from under the desk and brushes himself down carefully. John's very carefully staring at the ceiling, trying not to go bright red.
"I think Rodney is in the infirmary," says the Czech scientist, peering at the until-recently intact computer screen and wrinkling his nose. "That is certainly where I told him to go."
"What?"
"He had an incident with a pair of pliers and a power socket." Zelenka sighs, retrieving a dustpan and brush from a cupboard. He pauses again, surveying the piles of glass. "And now it will be a race to see whose life is shorter. I do not favour your chances, Colonel."
"I'll keep that in mind," replies John as he turns abruptly and runs out.
Atlantis knows that to quiet the constant shifts and changes within herself will require some careful positioning and planning.
There are problems, of course. Her residents are much too intelligent to fall for some of things she needs to do if she's to get her wish. So, she needs to thin the active population a little bit, pick out those who can ruin her plans the easiest without harming them fatally.
Atlantis is proud of her people. They've survived everything Pegasus has had to throw at them so far. She's scanned through mission reports and medical records, learnt how far they can go before breaking.
Her plan is already sliding into motion – little ripples that she can maintain for as long as needs be. Just a few more calculations, and then everything will be on the move.
Rodney leaves the infirmary with salve slathered all over his hands and arms and the distinct scent of burnt hair following him.
This is ridiculous! The Ancient console he'd been working on was notorious for being finicky in the connector regions, and Rodney had prodded its insides with various other metallic tools when it was live beforehand. It had never done that before!
He goes to rub at his arms to soothe the itchy feeling the drying cream leaves on his skin and stops himself just before he accidentally causes himself a hell of a lot of pain. He hates burns – especially ones on his hands. These are reasonably serious too, and the burnt flesh is so hot it throbs cold. He can already feel the skin hardening, despite the salve, and he's not going to be very good with his hands for a while.
He sighs and dodges around a botanist and Major Lorne flirting in the corridor. He almost turns to sneer at them and their soppiness, but then he notices the avid look on Lorne's face and keeps walking right on. He's seen that look before – that of a soldier desperate to do his job fantastically well in regards to one person – and it was on John. Rodney snorts as he trudges around a corner; he can only hope Parrish knows what he's getting into.
A bolt of random pain shoots down both his arms, grounding in his fingers. He hisses and draws the offending limbs as close as he can to his body without letting them touch anything. The transporter's in sight now, and he should really be getting back to the lab and browbeating someone into acting as disembodied hands for him, but he'd end up doing the things anyway and his hands really hurt like a bitch. He decides to forgo work for an afternoon of snoozing in his room and winkling some sympathy from John.
He's just reaching up to tap his radio and inform the colonel of his mishap when the earpiece crackles to life of its own accord.
"McKay!" John sounds stressed and pissed off and Rodney deflates immediately. No sympathy for him then, at least until John calmed down. "Where the fuck are you?"
"Hey! What did I do!" bleats Rodney, completely wrong footed. He pauses and then snaps, "And what the hell crawled up your ass and died?"
"You aren't where I need you to be!" growls Sheppard, like its Rodney's fault the Ancients couldn't build a proper plug to save their civilization. "All the damn lights in the armoury have gone out! I have men inventorying! It's hard to count things when you can't see!"
For a second, Rodney entertains the idea that he might have shorted the lights out with his inadvisable use of pliers. But that's stupid, really, so he tosses that away as caused by a great deal of pain in a very short time frame. He's just off kilter from being shocked by something that shouldn't have done so.
"Ever heard of the sense of touch!"
"Rodney…"
"All right, all right," snaps Rodney, giving up and resigning himself to an afternoon of pain. "I'll be there in a second."
He stomps into the transporter and stares at the display for a few seconds. He frowns, chooses the least burnt fingertip and taps the appropriate destination gingerly. The doors slide shut.
The plan is working perfectly. It's in full swing now, and Atlantis is seconds away from quiet. She purrs and stretches her control out to the very farthest regions of the city and swiftly retreats to the core of herself.
It's done, and she can rest.
"What the..?"
Rodney steps out into a corridor filled with ankle deep water. Now, this is particularly strange, because the armoury was ten stories above the water line last time he checked. Even if the pipes in the walls and ceiling had burst, the water would be obviously draining away. This water is still, except for the small area that sloshes about Rodney's legs as he turns to the destination display.
The screen is covered in a horrible green slime, and Rodney has to flail his sore hands about to get it off his fingers when he wipes at it. The small space he's cleared is where his dot should show up if this was the armoury corridor.
The dot's not there and Rodney's not very surprised at this revelation. He braces himself to wipe away more of the slime and then the display flickers. He stops, surprised, and then reaches out just as the screen goes blank.
"Fuck!" He scrabbles for his earpiece, hissing in pain when he taps it on. "Sheppard?"
There's no reply. Rodney swears again, louder this time. "Sheppard!" Still nothing. He changes the frequency. "Zelenka?" Silence. "Teyla!" He changes again. "Ronon!" He taps into the main channel instead of the private ones he's been using so far. "Can anybody hear me?" He scowls at the way his voice shivers and tries again. "Anybody?"
No one answers. Rodney stands very, very still for a long while. Then he sticks his head out into the corridor and surveys the grim darkness. The dull light from the transporter was the only thing between this place and pitch black.
Well, Rodney's scared of plenty of things – from anaphylactic shock to being eaten by a whale – but the dark has never held any fear for him. He can cope with the dark.
He takes a few steps into the corridor and promptly trips over something lying abandoned on the floor. He splashes face first into the water and automatically scrambles up, spluttering and shivering, to clutch at the vague region of the wall. The water is fucking cold, the burns on his arms are protesting the sudden and extreme changes of temperature and his shins are throbbing.
So maybe he can cope with the dark. But there's not much chance of his body doing the same.
Sheppard waits by the transporter doors for a whole twenty minutes before he gives up and runs back down to the physics labs.
Zelenka looks up warily when he enters, and then relaxes when he sees the lack of weaponry. "Is there something wrong, Colonel?"
"Where is Rodney?" John snaps. He only waited so long because he thought Rodney probably took a detour down to his lab to pick up tools. He had even allowed for time to let the astrophysicist to get thoroughly distracted by whatever Zelenka was doing and then realize he was needed elsewhere. But Rodney's not here and John can't think of anywhere else he'd be.
"Are you stuck in a time loop, Colonel? You have asked this question not long ago." Zelenka levels a calm gaze on the soldier. "I am glad to see you decided to forgo the threats and waving of guns this time around. It did not end well."
"I'm not in a time loop. I called Rodney on his radio twenty minutes ago, told him to get to the armoury and fix the lights. He said he'd be there in a second and that's all I've heard of him since," says John, wondering how many different ridiculous circumstances you had to go through before you got quite so blasé about a potential time loop.
"Oh." Now Zelenka looks mildly concerned. "Rodney is always diligent about keeping the place well lit. I think he finds fixing electrics relaxing." He points at his earpiece. "You have tried calling him?"
"Yeah. Loads. I yelled into the thing until Corporal Thomson came out into the corridor to check I wasn't in trouble."
"Maybe there is something wrong with your radio." Zelenka taps his own. "Dr. McKay? Rodney, where are you?"
The two men wait a few beats, before the Czech scientist frowns and starts to type furiously on his laptop. He taps his radio again. "Chuck?"
"Yes, Dr. Zelenka?"
"I need you to initiate a citywide scan. We are looking for Dr. McKay."
"Of course, sir." There's an industrious clicking noise. "Do I need to tell Colonel Carter?"
Zelenka glances at Sheppard, who shakes his head. "Not yet. He's probably berating some marines in the mess or something stupid. Don't bother her over something that mightn't be anything."
"Not yet, Chuck," says Zelenka. His laptop beeps and he peers at the screen. "Oh. Dear me. Rodney said that many of the sensors were badly damaged from our space flight. I did not think they were quite this bad."
"What?" Sheppard leans down over the man's shoulder. The picture on the computer screen is a normal Atlantis schematic, complete with little life-sign dots frozen when the scan was taken. But parts are darkened to deep blue lines instead of the usual bright turquoise.
In fact, over a half of the schematic is dark; all the piers outlined in cobalt, together with some of the very lowest rooms in the central part of the city.
"Is Rodney in one of the visible areas?"
Zelenka types a few more lines and frowns. "No. I cannot pick up his signal anywhere."
"Fuck." John stares at the computer a few seconds more, and then strides to the door. "Tell Sergeant Campbell he can tell Carter we've lost our CSO now."
Rodney can't read his watch to tell the time because Dr. Keller had been forced to remove it to treat the burn where the metal back of the dial had rested against his skin, and he's only just realized now he's left it in the infirmary. But even if he did have it, he wouldn't be able to read it, because it's so bloody dark in this corridor.
He's tripped over several more things so far; his shins are definitely bruised, if not bleeding, and he soaked to the skin. His arms are throbbing like a torturer's metronome; a swift waltz tempo, if he's not mistaken. In fact, he knows he's not, because he finds himself dancing with the air to the beat of the pain and manages some rather elegant swirls before walking straight into a wall and falling over.
And there is the problem. He's distracting himself more than normal. What he had meant to consider was how long he'd been down here and had wound up waltzing with himself. He doesn't think it's been long enough to have become hypothermic already, but, then again, he's never been good with time and he's not entirely sure just how long it takes and how cold you have to be.
He stumbles again, suddenly, and then gives a strangled yelp as the floor goes out from under his feet. He's thrown into icy-cold water, and he can't help but gasp when his whole body goes under. The fluid burns its way into his lungs, and he strikes desperately upward and then back. His shoulders hit something solid and he turns, clawing his way back onto a level surface.
He can't bring himself any further up than his hands and knees; coughing and choking until he manages to hack up a lot of the water and what feels like a big portion of his lungs. By this time his hands have gone completely numb, as have his lower legs. The rest of his body isn't fairing much better. He's shivering uncontrollably – if he wasn't hypothermic before, he definitely is now – and the cold is so intense his head hurts.
Every muscle feels like it's made of lead, but he drags himself to his feet and turns to look at where he'd nearly drowned. He still can't see anything, but it gives him time to centre himself slightly. It's either that or hysterics – he knows which one would be more enjoyable, but unfortunately that's the one that's going to leave him here and let him freeze to death.
Rodney takes a few deep breaths and sidles forward slightly, waiting until there's no resistance under his leading foot. That done he edges that foot forward and lets it drop. It settles against the next stair, water sloshing halfway up his numb calf.
"Ha!" He inches back again, sidesteps to the left and moves forward. This time he falls face first onto a set of dry stairs. "Thank God!"
If he can just keep heading up, he reckons he'll be all right.
Dr Rodney McKay is much too good at this, Atlantis decides. As far as she knows normal humans should not be able to navigate their way through miles of interconnected, twisty, half-flooded corridors in the dark.
But he has, and he's heading up.
She could just let him go, she thinks, but her rest will be cut short and then there will be investigations and prying and that would be bothersome.
She checks her possible options and settles on the least lethal one she can find. It will not be pleasant, but those known as 'marines' are remarkably proficient at scrubbing blood from between tiles.
John had rounded up Ronon and Teyla, told them what was happening and then marveled as they anticipated his orders to the letter and ran off to search a pier each. Major Lorne takes much longer to find, mostly because John walks into the room he knows the man is in and has to do a swift about-turn and march back out before calling in on his radio and giving him a few minutes to get all the bits tucked back in, but he sprints off to the third pier once he's told.
The colonel gathers up a few teams of marines and dispatches them after the front runners. He gives Laura Cadman control of the fourth team, because he wants someone Rodney knows well on each of them, and takes the fifth himself.
They search the top levels of their pier quickly and systematically – John has equipped all those with ATA genes with life signs detectors, though he's sure Rodney's going to rip him a new one for that.
The corridors get gradually darker and more unpleasant as they move down, until they reach a point where there's no light but that from the torches on their P90s. John's also sure Rodney's going to tease him unmercifully for bringing the guns, but it's better to be safe than sorry.
They search two more levels of complete darkness without success, and then, suddenly and inexplicably, the lights flicker on.
Rodney's crawled up three flights of stairs only to find the next one blocked by a collapsed ceiling. He sits against the wall for a long time, staring blankly at the wall. Now, this is hypothermia. His arms and legs are numb, it's hard to take in a proper breath and the last two times he tried calling for help on the radio he's barely been able to mumble out a few intelligible words. He isn't shivering anymore either, and he very vaguely recalls being told that that was an extremely bad thing by… someone. He really doesn't think that he'll be able to find another staircase soon enough to reach somewhere with people.
It's strange though. Of all the places he's expected to die – lost in his own city in peacetime was not one of them. Especially not by freezing.
He pauses and frowns. He knows he should get up, but it's just too hard to move. But if he doesn't, then he'll die. It's a sobering thought that sends a pulse of imaginary warmth down his spine. He supposes it would have been a chill had he been a normal temperature.
It takes a lot of energy to haul himself to his feet, and once up he sways and lurches drunkenly. He can't feel his feet properly anymore, and he keeps putting his weight onto the sides instead of the soles, but he makes reasonable progress for a dying man.
He reaches a crossroads –which he finds by staggering into a wall – when the lights flash on and he collapses again, completely blinded. It takes a few minutes to wipe the water from his eyes before he can see properly again, but it doesn't matter. If the lights have gone on that means that someone's coming to get him, and he's not going to die alone and forgotten in the depths of Atlantis.
Not wanting to be found slumped on the ground, looking like he's been crying, he claws his way up the nearest wall and totters in the direction he now knows another set of stairs is in. His rescuers would have to use the old-fashioned methods of inter-city exploration down here due to the previous lack of power.
Rodney arrives at an open door – the Ancient version of the swinging doors found in long corridors to keep draughts out – and fumbles at it to hold himself up. He can't bend his fingers properly anymore, so he leans his wrist against it and thanks god that freezing water is good for something, such as anesthetizing burns.
It turns out that it's actually good for two things, because if he had gripped the leading edge of the door like he would have done with working fingers, he wouldn't have had said working fingers anymore when the door slams closed.
As it is, his wrist breaks anyway. And then the lights go out again.
John's striding ahead of his marines, calling Rodney's name loudly as he can when he hears a sizzling, muffled 'bang' from behind the walls and he's plunged back into darkness.
"Fuck!" he yells, just to get that off his chest, and he spins back to check his men are all ok.
They're not there. Instead, there's a door. A closed door. And when John thinks and then shouts 'open' at it, it remains intractably shut.
"Sergeant Ridley?" he calls into his radio. All he gets is static, with maybe a hint of a north-eastern accent behind it. He scowls at the door, kicks it and then bellows, "Ridley!" as loud as humanly possible.
"Sir!" It's muffled, but it's there. John grins.
"You lot all right!"
"Yeah! You, sir!"
"I'm fine! Look, get Zelenka! Tell him to fix the door! I'm going on down!"
"But, sir –"
"I'm going, Ridley! Rodney might need help!" He steps away from the door and clears his throat, rubbing at his Adam's apple and grimacing. Shouting's all well and good when you need to attract attention or scare people, but he's always found it so much easier to speak quietly into a radio and menace people with subtle looks and body language. People always pay attention to his body.
He flicks on his flashlight as he walks. There's nothing much of interest, until he comes across another closed door. He looks closer. Partially closed. There's something blocking it.
"Rodney!" John jumps forward, and hauls at one side of the door. It doesn't budge, so he wedges his P90 in, instead and heaves with all his might, thinking 'open, you bastard!' vociferously. The door mechanism shrieks, protests violently with sparks and then snaps back open. Rodney falls limply to the floor and John drops to his knees beside him.
The scientist is soaking wet and dead cold, a heavy weight when John drags him against himself. The torch illuminates skin that manages to be blue and red at the same time, and John would rib him about patriotism, but 1. Rodney's Canadian and damn proud of it, and 2. It's no fun teasing an unconscious man.
John checks for a pulse, going straight for the man's neck because he doubts there will be anything detectable in his arms, and finds it slow and sluggish. Rodney's too cold, and while John trusts Zelenka will get the doors open, he's not sure the Canadian can survive that long without help.
He pulls his knife out and carefully cuts Rodney's sopping shirt off, balling it up and chucking it against the opposite wall. Then he shrugs his tac-vest – because, yes, he is mildly paranoid now – and his jacket off, swinging the latter over Rodney's shoulders. It's too small, of course, because Rodney has the whole broad shoulder physique thing going on, but John's able to use it to dry the worst of the damp off and then to try and save the little body heat Rodney's giving off. That done, he slides Rodney's boots and socks off, and replaces them with his own socks. He can't think of anything else to do, so he props himself against the wall and tugs Rodney to his own chest, sliding his hands under the jacket and spanning them across the physicist's ribs.
He can only hope it'll be enough.
Atlantis watches, dispirited in some ways and cheered in others, as the little Dr. Zelenka breaks her coding and powers up the selected corridors within minutes of arriving on the scene. She watches as the marines and the medical team scurry down the halls and skid to a halt beside Colonel Sheppard and Dr. McKay.
She is aware that she has gravely underestimated just how dangerous her plan was. Perhaps she should have kidnapped the colonel. He often survives such encounters with less damage than the scientist has done.
But it really doesn't matter now, as she follows the stretcher back up to the nearest working transporter, checking on vital statistics every time she can. The new medical doctor is nervy, but she works well and Atlantis backs off slightly when they step into the transporter.
Well, she intends to salvage what little respite she can from this disaster and so powers down her lower levels again, reduces power output to the non-essential systems in the city and curls up to listen for the sounds of Rodney McKay recovering. That's when her rest will end.
John doesn't do much for the next week or so, while Rodney gets his strength back. He lurks around the infirmary a lot, brings some of his paperwork with him and, once the physicist is well enough, bribes Rodney with chocolate to help him do it.
When Rodney's finally allowed out – complete with a cast around his broken wrist, patches of newly healed skin on his arms and hands, and a constantly runny nose – he spends a lot of time sleeping, and even more time persuading John to share body heat in new and inventive ways.
Once he resumes his active duties again, John expects everything to return to normal pretty quickly. But Rodney repeatedly turns up outside the gym and the armoury and John's office, until the colonel gives up trying to figure it out for himself and asks instead.
"The stalker-stalked relationships never work out well, Rodney," he says one day, ambling into Rodney's lab uninvited.
"God! Sheppard!" Rodney glares at him and bends to pick up the pen he'd dropped in surprise. John, being opportunistic in the best sense of the word, took the moment to admire Rodney's ass and grinned when the scientist straightened again. "And yes, I'd have to agreed with you there, because what the hell's with that?"
"I was wondering why you keep turning up wherever I am at random points in the day." John slouches into Rodney's computer chair and swivels it side to side. He grins again, but the expression fades slightly when Rodney appears to deflate in misery.
"It's nothing," Rodney mutters, fiddling with the pen. "Just… I really wished you were down there with me… 'Cause, I was… you know… kinda lonely. And lost. And for all of your useless directional abilities, you always act like you know where you're going." He shrugs, bolstering himself. "And the argument we had beforehand didn't help matters. I'll stop if you want? Leave you to avoid your paperwork in peace."
"I was just wondering, Rodney," says John softly. "Avoiding work isn't quite as much fun without you there anyway." He reaches out and snags Rodney's uninjured wrist gently. "Do it all you want." He smiles, and then properly beams when Rodney gives him a grin in return.
"Oh!" Rodney pulls away sharply, nearly tugging John off his seat. "I figured something out that you might be quite interested in."
"Really?"
Rodney glances away from his laptop long enough to watch John arrange himself into his 'interested' sprawl. There are legs all over the place. "Yes, really. I found where your missing bullets are."
"Really!" The slouch evaporates as John sits bolt upright in anticipation.
"Yup. I was doing an evaluation of the citywide sensors, and I found a random pile of metal at the bottom of a ventilation shaft." He points to a tiny blip on his laptop screen.
"The bottom of a ventilation shaft?" says John. He looks annoyed. "Means someone was stealing them then."
"No, actually, it just means that the malfunctions we experienced started a lot sooner that we thought. The exploding plugs? The lights? The transporters? It all began in your armoury."
"How come when it goes wrong, it's mine?"
Rodney ignores the colonel as he brings up another screen. "Something went wrong in the city's coding system. Someone must have messed it up and when they abandoned it, the errors spread."
"But, how did a coding error result in my ammunition ending up in the ventilation system?"
"The walls are electromagnetic panels. All Atlantis had to do was switch the ones closest to the vents on the highest setting possible and they'd get stuck to the wall. How they managed to get into the vent system itself probably involved lots of suckage." Rodney smirks at the sudden derailed look on John's face. "You have such a one track mind, you know? But anyway, that's why your ammo went missing so much."
"Why the hell are the walls electromagnetic?" asks John, glaring at Rodney, "And I do not have a single track mind. If anything you do."
"Presumably so the Ancients could stick things to the walls without needs nails or hooks. And you do, because I know for a fact you're thinking about something involving a lot of groaning and sweat that isn't anything to do with the gym. Aren't you?"
"But electromagnets need electric to work. What happens when the power goes out? And equally what happens to the poor sap who leans against the wall with a steel watch on?" John pauses. "And I refuse to answer that question on the grounds you already know the answer."
"Yes, well, when did the Ancients ever think things through?" Rodney's grin is predatory now. "Wanna come help me recalibrate the magnets? I have a theory about you and the big guns that I want to test out."
John springs to his feet and matches Rodney's expression, smile for smile. "You're the best theoretician I've ever known."