Stargate Atlantis: Death's Door2
Larson paused at the first door. She knocked. It was a muffled sound with her glove over her fist so she removed her glove and knocked again. "Hello? Hello?" It was a bit comical, her tone being so polite, as if she was a saleswoman making a routine call. But there was nothing routine about this. She waved her hand over the panel. The door opened sluggishly after the panel spitted a flare of dull light. She entered. The rest of the team followed her. "Sir! Major Bates!" she exclaimed.
The team froze then gathered at the foot of a bed. They stared at the body of a man who was sprawled across it. The lights from their P90s revealed the blood congealing on his chest. It was an obvious bullet wound. The man had been dead for hours. Rigor mortis was already setting in, stiffening his outstretched limbs.
"I don't recognize him. Did you know him?" Kavanaugh asked.
"No," Bates replied. "Next room. Quietly."
The team proceeded down the darkened hallway. Every room was dark, cold, stale. Every room contained a dead body. Men. Women. Old and young. Even a baby. Most of the victims had been shot, but some had been stabbed with a knife. Blood drops were scattered along the floor as the murderer became increasingly messier and sloppier.
As the murderer became more psychotic and violent the rooms revealed more extensive carnage and some destruction.
Bates halted his team at the end of the hallway. He raised a hand, sliced the air with it, indicating that they should maintain radio silence. He met the shocked looks of his team as they mirrored his own. He pointed upwards and the team proceeded to another level, to another set of rooms and hallways.
The next level revealed the same carnage. The same indiscriminate murder of everyone in their own quarters met their eyes.
As did the next level after that.
And the next one after that.
Bates and his team stood near the laboratories taking a breather and trying to assess a situation that was so far incomprehensible. Sweat was shining on Bates' forehead despite the cold air. He felt the utter shock more keenly, having been stationed here years ago. He felt shaky seeing people he had known killed one by one and offering little if any resistance. He realized that the killer was someone they had known or someone they had recognized.
Someone they had trusted.
He rubbed his temple as a headache formed. He mentally recited the names of the dead. The names of the ones he had known.
Emmagan.
Dex.
Woolsey.
Banks.
Beckett.
Campbell.
There were countless others that he didn't know. Countless others he would now never know. A blond woman found shot amid bloody sheets. A marine shot to death as he sat in his bed, the look of surprise frozen on his face forever. The only common factor was that all were dead, seemingly killed within hours or minutes of each other. He wondered about the ones that were missing. He wondered about those three life signs.
"Sir? Orders?" Watson was trying not to stammer. He was trying not to vomit as horror after horror had greeted his eyes in every room, at every level. He was dazed by the numbers of the dead, by the sheer magnitude of what they were encountering.
Kavanaugh was shaking his head. He kept looking at his scanner, but so far the readings were clear. There were no toxins or poisons in the air to explain this sudden mass death of the Atlantis crew. And each body told its own story of being shot or stabbed or bludgeoned. The culprit wasn't a virus or a plague or an infection.
The culprit was a murderer.
Larson kept flashing her light along the hallway behind them, as if expecting the boogey man to appear. She couldn't understand what had happened here. It didn't make sense that a Wraith force had invaded. It couldn't be the Replicators because they were all destroyed. It could possibly have been the Genii or some other human enemy, but why kill everyone? The city was nearly inoperable without them.
Unless it had been an enemy unknown that had invaded the city.
"Sir? Sir, we…we're under water." Watson was pointing as he stood at a window.
The observation broke Bates from his shock. He moved to the window to see. "This level isn't below water…at least it wasn't. Kavanaugh?"
"The city is sinking," Kavanaugh stated, frowning at his scanner. "Slowly. Not by accident but by design. The ballasts have been timed to trigger a catastrophic release and to sink each section but keep it intact. I should have realized this sooner! That's what is draining all of the power until the Shield rises."
"And if the Shield fails to rise?" Larson asked.
"We better be out of here by then," Kavanaugh dourly noted.
"Let's check the labs," Bates said.
Reluctantly the team began the task. There were several labs on this level, representing varying specialties of the sciences needed for an extended expedition far from Earth. Botany, astrophysics, engineering, biochemistry, biology, medical research, agriculture, on and on, with more labs on other levels containing marvelous technologies that were far advanced and sometimes inoperable.
Each lab was pristine, quiet and dark.
Each lab held a few bodies. Fallen scientists with blood staining their white lab coats were either slouched over consoles or sprawled onto the floor. Some had instruments clutched in their dead hands, not as weapons but to aid with whatever they had been working on before being killed. As if they had been killed while working and hadn't had time to react. Men. Women.
Machines were quiescent, a few still running but sluggishly as power was being diverted from them. Kavanaugh approached a console and tried to get it running, to pry any clue from it but all access was blocked. He tried another code, an older code from when he had been stationed in Atlantis but it too failed. Finally he tried a data pad and managed to get it running for a few seconds before it sputtered and died.
The machines were as much the victims as were the people.
"Anything?" Bates asked.
"No. The data's been either encrypted or erased. Deleted…even with full power I doubt I could get much from it now. It's been corrupted from an internal source."
"More sabotage?" Larson asked.
"Possibly, or it was a computer virus." Kavanaugh shrugged, having no idea.
"Let's move out. Watson, take point. Watson!"
The younger man jumped, nearly calling out in fright but he regained his composure and led the team out of the lab and into the darkened hallway.
The team paused before a flight of stairs, shaken by the gruesome discoveries. They were chilled by the absolute silence. Nevertheless they felt as if they were being watched, as if unseen eyes were tracking their every movement through the derelict city.
"Sir?" Larson was staring down the hallway. Shadows and darkness merged to play tricks on her eyes as if she could see someone but when she directed her P90 light there was no one there.
"We keep going. We need to track those three life signs before it's too late."
"But we don't even know what's happened here, sir? What if those three signs are the are the killers?" Watson asked. He was beginning to exhibit the signs of a panic attack.
"We are fully armed and have the advantage of surprise, Watson," Bates assured, but he glanced at Kavanaugh. "Can you distinguish those life signs at all?"
"No. I can only tell you they are life signs…reading human."
"No Wraith, then."
"Or Replicators or aliens or…" Larson sighed and blew a strand of auburn hair out of her eyes. "Sir, what if it's the Genii?"
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, major. For now let's proceed and try to find those three life signs. Kavanaugh?"
"Tracking now…I'm getting some kind of interference again…I can't trace the source."
Watson had moved to a window again and was staring at the waters outside. He touched the pane. The glass was cold to his fingers. He could almost feel the wetness. "We're not that deep, sir. I mean we could raise the city if we had to, right? It wouldn't inundate the 'Gate room."
"Don't worry, lieutenant. We'll get home in good time."
"Maybe we should check the armory, sir."
"Negative, Larson. I'm sure there's nothing there. We'll head up to the training rooms if we can't track those three life signs."
"Working on it!" Kavanaugh snapped, shoving his glasses up to peer at the scanner's readings. He punched a sequence of buttons, waited. He frowned, punched them again. "They're gone."
"Gone? What the hell do you mean gone? They've been eliminated?" Bates demanded. The two marines raised their guns, but so far there was no enemy to shoot.
So far there was no one to rescue.
So far there was no one.
"No, I mean gone. As in I am no longer reading them. It's like…it's like the city isn't letting me use its own tech against it. I can't explain it!"
"Wonderful. What was the last heading?"
"Sir? Does this mean they they are dead?" Watson asked in a stammer.
"Maybe they left the city somehow," Larson ventured.
Before Bates could reply or reprimand the floor tilted under his feet as if capsizing, and the team was throw across the hallway.