It was surprising to find the infirmary quiet. I paused at the door, not sure if I wanted to go in, which was complete and utter stupidity. The location of my body wouldn't change whether or not Carson had been able to revive Sheppard. Here, there -- he was either still alive, or he was dead, and what the hell would I do with his body? Send it back through the quantum mirror; try to find the reality we'd rescued him from?
Carson walked through a side door, focused on me, and stopped.
I think I stopped breathing.
Then the smile spread and he said, "He's responding to stimuli, though his core temperature still has a few degrees to go."
"Brain damaged?"
The smile slipped a little and he shook his head. "It's too early to tell, he most likely won't regain consciousness for a while."
Great. Always making me wait on him. Funny how perverse even an alternate reality Sheppard could be. "Could I --"
"Go, sit with him." Carson pointed through the door he'd just walked through. "He's critical, but studies show it's comforting to be talked too. That is, I suppose, if you existed in that reality with him."
"I did," I said flatly.
He hesitated, and for a moment I thought he'd ask, but Carson, despite my repeated insinuations, wasn't stupid. There was only one way I could've known that, and he wilted a little before moving to a computer I'd installed myself for him against the far alcove. Shaking off the chills that I were sure came from remembering the ghostly sight of my dead face staring at me underwater, I headed for Sheppard's side.
I had thought I was prepared for seeing him – seeing him here, in this reality, but I wasn't…and the strength of the impact when it hit made me think just how incredibly naïve I'd been to even consider that I could've prepared myself. He was covered in a warming blanket, tubes ran under the blanket, and they were blood red, hooked into a machine. They were warming his blood, what was that called…extracorporeal circulation?
He was hooked to the ventilator, and I thought it was grossly unfair that the first time I got to get a good look at him, he was obscured and cluttered.
Sheppard was here, he was alive, and I both didn't care that he wasn't my Sheppard, and hated him because he wasn't.
It completely sucked that Heightmeyer had been killed in the first Siege years ago, and the UNA had never decided to fill the empty position. It'd been labeled an unnecessary civilian risk. I wasn't exactly the epitome of normal before I'd come to Atlantis, and it seemed with every year spent here, I was moving farther and farther away from what could be considered 'safe to rejoin society.' The fact that I was staring at an alternate reality of a man that was supposed to be dead, at his body that we'd misappropriated to serve our needs, only reminded me that I wasn't the only one on Atlantis to have crossed a healthy divide into possibly psychotic.
Well, they do say, misery loves company.
"I'd say you can't die, but you've all ready done that, so maybe I should just say you need to live."
I sounded squeaky, and whiny. I had meant to sound abrasive and demanding.
"Oh, this is great," I swore. I pulled up a chair and dropped into it with frustration. "You know, if you'd been here even a week ago, I wouldn't have been able to shut up, but now…now I don't remember half of the things I wanted to say." I focused on the sliver of pale skin I could see just under the blanket. How was it that every Sheppard I'd ran into made me annoyed?
I wanted him to wake up, talk, reassure me that he was compos mentis, and that everything would be fine…
…then again, I hadn't put nearly enough thought into how I was going to explain this to him. Oh, by the way, in case you hadn't put obvious and obvious together, we abducted you from your reality (you were dying anyway) and brought you to ours. Cheers.
The steady beeping of Sheppard's EKG monitor lulled me into a doze, and it didn't register at first, the gagging sound. I jerked, stared uncomprehendingly until my brain decided to join the living, and realized Sheppard was staring up frantically, choking on the tube. Shit. "Carson, get in here!"
He was all ready running in, the screeching monitors giving everyone a clue that something was happening. I stumbled back, out of the chair, off to the side. Listened to Carson soothing him, telling him to cough hard and then the tube was out and Sheppard was coughing.
The warming blanket was gone, the tubes and machine, also gone. I must have slept a lot longer than I'd thought. At the same time I heard the raspy voice ask, "What happened?"
I wasn't even aware I'd left until I was leaning against the wall in the corridor.
OoO
"He has amnesia?" Elizabeth's disbelief matched my own, but whereas she seemed flustered, I was relieved.
Ronon and Teyla were sitting with Sheppard, keeping him company and giving him some background information about Atlantis, who he was (just his name and rank), and who we were. I hadn't been back to seem him yet, because not long after he'd woken up, Carson had called the briefing to discuss Sheppard's status.
"This is a good thing," I argued. "If he'd had his memory, he either would've thanked me or shot me, for what we did. This way, he can start over with a clean slate. It's perfect." I kind of thought it was a little too perfect, and wondered if Sheppard wasn't playing a little cat and mouse, but if he was, I'd find out eventually.
"Are you saying we should let him believe that he is our Sheppard?" Lorne's disgust rode loud and clear across the table.
I stared at Lorne and said acerbically, "If you speak English, then yes."
Elizabeth turned to the one person that had been mostly silent. "Carson? What's your opinion of how we should proceed?"
His fingers fiddled with each other, with the table's surface, and finally he looked at me and exhaled heavily. "I don't like it, but I'm afraid Rodney might be onto something. We barely know what kind of mental ramifications the colonel might face --"
"Sheppard might face," Lorne corrected.
"Would you knock it off all ready," I snapped. "I realize that you have military concerns about the man in the infirmary, and contrary to your obviously small-minded beliefs, I'm perfectly capable of understanding that he might be some mirror universe crazy John Sheppard, with dreams of galactic domination, but until we are given reason to believe otherwise, let's approach him as we would our Colonel Sheppard, seeing how the entire reason we have gone through this was so that he could save our asses!" I was known for being arrogant, rude and cutting, but losing my temper to this degree was a new one on me, and from the shocked expressions around the table, to everyone else as well. I huffed and added less loudly, "I'm just saying that if we expect him to operate a weapon to the benefit of us all, we should treat him a little better than a suspected criminal, don't you think?" I aimed the last part towards Lorne.
"Look, McKay, I wasn't implying he's a criminal, I just find his amnesia a little convenient."
"Did you stop to think that maybe it's convenient because his last memories were less than pleasant?"
Elizabeth's hand rose in the air. "Stop it, both of you!" She waited till it was clear I was going to keep my mouth shut, and really, I wasn't sure I was, but before I'd made up my mind on what else to tack onto the thought, she'd begun to talk again. "For now, I'm going to accept the recommendation that we allow Sheppard to believe he's where he belongs, and for all intents and purposes, he is where he belongs…but no one is to lie to him, is that clear? If he remembers, if he asks the right question, I don't care if it's at the wrong time, I will not condone lying to compound the all ready murky ground we are on." She stared at me the longest before asking, "Is that understood?"
Dryly, I said, "I've been capable of following directions since I doodled the quadratic equation in crayon on my wall." I shot Lorne a look that said 'how about you?'
"I got it," he stated succinctly.
"Good," she said evenly. "Then we'll proceed with drawing up the plans for deploying the weapon against the Asurans if they move against us while Sheppard recovers. Rodney, if you have any further studies on the weapon, now is the time to run them."
"I need Sheppard to finish." I'd gotten as far as I could, but it needed the ATA gene, and all I or Carson had been able to do was get it to power up enough to run diagnostics. Not enough to know its full potential -- for that, we were still relying on what the databanks revealed about the weapon.
Elizabeth stood, lifted her tablet PC off the table and folded it against her chest. "Carson, when do you feel he'll be healthy enough to leave the infirmary?"
"Tomorrow." He tapped his stylus on the table and added, "Barring any complications."
"Then, Rodney, I suggest you spend time with him, get him used to you and see if he'll be ready to help with the weapon. I think we all know time has been running against us. The Asurans tried to take over Atlantis before, they'll try again, and I don't imagine I need to remind you what will happen if we fail to stop them." She swept Lorne and Carson into her gaze and said, "Gentlemen, we have jobs to do, let's do them. Professionally."
OoO
When I went to the infirmary later, after checking in at my lab on the progress of an unrelated project, Sheppard was in the main room, sitting up in bed, dressed in white scrubs. His hair flopped over his forehead and the white clothes against his skin made him look tan and healthy, for someone that had drowned.
"You're awake," I said. Stupid. Inane. But it wasn't like I was going to say 'I know you're not really my Sheppard, but I'm still relieved to see you're going to be okay.'
"Yeah."
He was watching me with hooded curiosity, and he was so much my Sheppard, that I almost left again. I couldn't do this. I seriously couldn't do this. I'd had less than altruistic reasons for going through that mirror, and now, presented with the results, I just…I never did do emotions well. I didn't handle them the right way. When other people bucked up, I crumpled. When others got angry, I got depressed. When they were afraid, I got pissed. So now, when I was supposed to be happy, because even though he wasn't the Sheppard born in this reality, he was still Sheppard – I was lost.
"So, they tell me you've lost your memory?" I picked the only thing that came to mind, and really, on his part, it had to be a pretty big thing.
"That's generally the consensus when you can't remember the last four years."
The inflections were almost the same, the low timbre on years to give it the emphasis he liked to use when he was making attempts at levity in the face of less than funny situations. If he only knew just how 'heavy' this was. Maybe he did. Maybe this was all a show, like I'd wondered earlier, but if it was, he was putting on a good one, because all I sensed behind those eyes was confusion.
I cleared my throat awkwardly. "McKay," I said.
"What?"
"My name."
He scrunched his face a little. "They all ready told me that."
Right. Teyla and Ronon, they'd been filling in background. But had they called him Major, or Colonel? Probably Colonel, seeing how that was the only rank Ronon had even known him as and that was the rank he'd held in this reality.
"Well, what didn't they tell you that you want to know?" I found a chair and sat, wishing I had my laptop with me. "I don't usually serve as a glorified omnipedia, but for you, I'll make the exception."
There weren't any tubes left sticking in him anywhere, except an IV, and he looked annoyed with that as he shifted on the gurney. "Teyla," he said, as if trying out the name, "told me I drowned in an accident, but was resuscitated. But my memories end in Afghanistan. So, they couldn't explain how I got from there to here, seeing how they are apparently from this galaxy and not Earth."
He could've started off with an easier question. But then again, this was Sheppard. "Uh," I crossed my legs, stalling. "You don't happen to remember a rescue attempt that ended in a lot of people dying before your memory cuts off, do you?" He couldn't have picked a more uncomfortable spot if he'd tried. It was like a kid waking up on week two of a month long grounding and asking 'why am I in trouble' only to find out they broke the neighbor's car by trying to enhance the engine for improved speed and fuel consumption.
Not that I would personally know anything about that (and really, if it hadn't been for shoddy workmanship, it would've worked).
Sheppard's face got even more disturbed. "Chopper accident?"
I nodded slowly, wondering not for the first time if maybe I really had been insane to contemplate this idea, but then I remembered the circular room, the Replicators surrounding us and running, Ronon punching me, being thrown to the ground, and hearing the explosion that changed everything.
With renewed sense of why, I began, "You were flying a mission to drop a Special Forces team behind enemy lines. After you did a successful drop and were on the way back, you heard over the radio they were taking heavy fire. They'd walked into an ambush. You turned around against orders to try and retrieve them." I tried to remember everything I'd read in his file because it wasn't something he'd ever talked freely about. "You had two other crewmembers at the time and a VIP passenger, observing. When you attempted to land for the survivors to get aboard, the chopper was hit by anti-aircraft missiles." The file had been impersonal. Facts on paper. I'd never blamed him, or thought he'd acted wrongly, but what I'd thought didn't matter. "You were the only survivor. The enemy thought you were dead, and a recon team extracted you, and the other bodily remains about twelve hours later."
"They blamed me." He stated it flatly, not looking at me. I felt a sharp snarl of guilt, because I really had no idea what had happened in his reality. It could be far from the events that'd happened to my Sheppard. I rather hoped it was a lot different, because when we'd first met, he'd been beaten down by the awful events, the trial, and it was only the mandatory testing of military personnel for the ATA gene that had saved him from Leavenworth.
He'd never lost his impulsive edge, always risking his life to save others, and it'd finally cost him his own.
"Yes," I agreed soberly. "They needed a scapegoat for the loss of the VIP who shouldn't have been there in the first place, and if it hadn't been for the ATA gene testing program you'd have had a much different life." For one, he would've still been alive, albeit, incarcerated. Ignoring that thought, I pressed on. "This city requires a special gene to work the technology, fly the ships – you have that gene, and it manifests the strongest in you, comparatively, with everyone else that has it. You were critical to this expedition." I really wished I had brought my laptop. Not having anything to occupy my hands with was driving me nuts. "Given the choice of six years in Leavenworth and a dishonorable discharge, or shipping out to another galaxy on a most likely suicidal expedition, you made the only reasonable decision."
"I can see that," he drawled, lifting his arms.
Seeing the haunted look on his face made me angry. "You have nothing to feel guilty for," I snapped. "It would take the better part of an hour to list all the lives you've saved since we arrived, my own included."
His eyebrow raised in cynicism. "Redemption? Is that what I've been doing for the last four years?"
This wasn't going well. Of course, I shouldn't have expected less. Sheppard never had been good at accepting his own shortcomings. Everyone had them, even me -- yes, I know, incredible -- yet Sheppard had plowed over life and tried to live as if he'd had none. It was why the trial and the subsequent public airing of a tragic dose of reality had left him with emotional scars that made me look stable in comparison.
"Look, I realize this is a shock --"
"A shock?" He laughed bitterly. "A shock would be finding out your mom's dead – this…this is a tsunami. My actions killed innocent people."
I looked fairly miserable.
"What?" he demanded roughly.
"Your mom passed away last year."
Again, I had no idea when this Sheppard's mom had really died. Fuck. I was really beginning to hate this. I stared away, and looked around the room. It was empty. Could I? Why the hell not? I was breaking every other rule lately, and some rules that the majority of my peers didn't even believe in past the theoretical. "Get up," I demanded, doing the same.
He looked like he'd lost his puppy. "Why? You're not going to line me up against a wall and shoot me or anything?"
"Trust me, after all the trouble I've been through for you, I'd pack you in bubble wrap if I could," I muttered. "Now just…come with me." He slipped out of his bed, looked down at his scrubs, the tubing running into his hand and then at me. I considered his attire and sighed. "Okay, minor detail, we'll stop by your quarters and get you some clothes."
Damn it. His quarters.
I hadn't been in there since right after, and I'd refused to let anyone pack up his personal items, because after I'd gotten over the shock of what'd happened, I'd started planning what had ultimately ended with this Sheppard looking at me. Well, I had grudgingly allowed someone to dust. I grabbed a band aid off a nearby tray and tossed it to him for him to put over the back of his hand.
He stared uncertainly at me for a beat, and I thought for a minute he was going to refuse, but then he went along with it, and yanked the IV free, quickly applying the bandage. "Where are we going?"
"Just…come on." I strode through the door and didn't wait to see if he was following or not.
O
The room responded to him, lights turning on the moment his feet touched inside. I wasn't even jealous, because I could relate. He walked in, his eyes scanning the bed in the middle of the far wall, beige gauzy curtains hanging loosely down to the headboard, the trumpet resting on the music stand, his skateboard leaning against the corner. A picture of him, his sister and his mom on the nightstand. He'd told me once they'd taken it before he'd left for Atlantis.
He went to the picture, lifted and turned it over. In a smooth motion he slid it free of the frame and read the scrawled names and date that my Sheppard had apparently written on the back. Satisfied or not, I couldn't tell, but he slid it back and put the frame exactly where it'd been.
I felt like a voyeur, but at the same time, I couldn't pull myself away. I wanted to see if he was faking amnesia, look for any reaction that would give him away, but so far, the stark blankness seemed sincere. If he'd had a sister or not in the other reality, I didn't know, and if he never regained his memory, I don't suppose I ever would.
He lifted a medal and turned around to me. "What's this?"
"The Genii," I said, moving closer to take it from him. It was a thick bar of golden metal with an outline of a planet superimposed over Atlantis etched across the top. I remembered the joint mission against the Asurans when Sheppard had earned it. I smiled wistfully at the memory, before pushing it back to him. "You saved over twenty five of their people in a rescue mission." I really had been naïve to not consider how much this part was going to hurt. I'd been there on that mission, and I'd been there after, when he'd lain in the infirmary recovering. "Redemption, Sheppard, you've been doing it to ridiculously accomplished levels."
He took the medal and put it back on the table next to the picture, then wandered to the small clothing bureau against the other wall, diagonally across from the bed. He pulled a t-shirt and socks out, then his eyes drifted to my uniform. "Do I have one of those?"
"No, Colonel, we make you walk around Atlantis in your tighty whities." I rolled my eyes, and pulled another drawer open, withdrew pants and thrust them at his chest, feeling the heat and hardness of his chest through the material. I let go abruptly, and pulled the jacket from the chair where it'd been draped.
It was almost all I could do to not to bury my face in it, to smell and remember him. Because as much as this was John Sheppard, he wasn't my John Sheppard…the smell on this coat, on his bed, it was all that was left of him. Why does it seem like someone's smell lingers on their personal items for long after what is humanly decent? I almost laughed at the ridiculous notion of grabbing him and smelling just to make a comparison.
Even from the afterlife he reduced me to maudlin and pathetic.
"As fun as this is, I have something eminently cooler to show you, so if you could hurry along," I prodded, deciding the best course of action was to run from this room as fast as I could manage without giving anything away. In fact, judging from the curious look he was shooting me, I was pretty sure I'd all ready given something up, but right then, I wasn't entirely sure I cared.
He kind of waved his head at me and stared.
"What?"
"A little privacy?"
"Like I haven't seen it before."
Just as his mouth formed a shocked 'oh,' I rewound that thought. "Uh, not…we weren't…on missions," I stuttered. "Fine, I'll…be out there." I walked backwards, hit the door, turned myself around, almost tripping over my feet, and when the door closed behind me, I leaned against the corridor wall, feeling like my face was flaming a hundred degrees of red.
When the door opened minutes later and he stepped out, fully dressed, I straightened and stared, momentarily floored. If someone could erase my memories, take away the feel of the hard pavement under my skin, the boom from the explosion, and the sight of the deep blue sky above, filling with smoke…
"I didn't really mean --"
I nodded quickly. "Of course, you knew what I meant."
"Right," he nodded back at me. Well, weren't we just a couple of nodding bobbleheads. "This way." I led the way into the hall, and when we got to the transporter I waited till he was standing near me to activate it, taking us to the command deck. "Do me a favor, and follow my lead if anyone stops us."
Seeing how Carson wasn't going to release him until tomorrow, and considering they had to have realized by now that Sheppard was missing, it was a good bet they were looking for us. I don't know why I didn't just radio and tell them I had Sheppard and was taking him for a little tour, but I wasn't Heightmeyer anyway so who cared? I mean, they obviously would care, but it wasn't like I hadn't faced Elizabeth's wrath before. When I'd stolen the Jumper to rescue Sheppard from Ford and his merry men she'd been really pissed.
When we walked around the corner and angled for the stairs, Elizabeth's, "Rodney!" caused my feet to turn into matching stumps of ice. Shit. I let go of the railing, and turned around.
"Yes?" I tried to make it seem innocent. I always did, but usually it just came out sounding guilty. Sheppard had always been better at it.
Speak of the devil. He cleared his throat and gave Elizabeth a charismatic smile. "Hey, there, uh…we were just going to…he was taking me to see…" he nudged me and hissed, "Where were we going?"
Oh, like that was so not going to save us from… "The Jumper bay," I muttered. It was worth a shot. I mean, she'd cared for Sheppard as much as anyone had, and he always did find ways of manipulating her into decisions he wanted. Sometimes I was pretty sure she knew what he was doing.
He smiled broader. "The Jumper bay, to, you know…help me remember."
Her lips thinned and she folded her arms. No no no, not the folded arms. Okay, Sheppard always said 'a best offense is the best defense' or something like that, so… "Teyla and Ronon can only brief him on the basics, because, pardon me for saying so, and no insult intended, but their specialty is primarily in physical brutality and not so much on the technological. If he's going to get back to his job," I emphasized, "then we need to get him up to speed, and preferably before we are invaded."
"Carson has been looking for both of you," she stressed. "Rodney, you know patients aren't allowed to leave without permission."
I couldn't hold back the snort. "When did he ever wait for permission?"
Sheppard slugged me on the arm. "That's not fair. You're the one that told me to 'come on.'"
I was just relieved enough that he didn't catch the 'did.' "Well, you were the one looking like someone had snatched your puppy away!"
He cocked his head and folded his arms; enough with the god damn arm folding, I thought.
"I'm the one that can't even remember your name. I'm entitled to look like someone stole my puppy!"
I stepped closer and poked him in the chest with one finger. "I bet you didn't even have a puppy as a kid."
He straightened and unfolded his arms, poking me back. "I had three," he enunciated slowly.
"Gentlemen!"
We both turned and realized that not only was Elizabeth frowning heavily at us, but half the control room was watching, bemused. I inhaled rapidly. This wasn't what I'd meant to happen. I'd wanted to show him the cool spaceships, make him smile, and feel the excitement of being here, after talking about depressing memories that might not even belong to him, and now we were bickering in the control room as if he was him, and it just…fuck.
"Just let us go," I said, not begging.
She didn't seem to know what to do, not even remotely, and I found a savage pleasure in not being the only one flailing about in the aftermath of this ridiculous, but completely necessary, decision. I didn't regret bringing him here, especially not after having touched him, been touched, even in the small way. Seeing him, hearing his voice – he would've been dead in that other reality now, long past help. No, I didn't regret this at all. I hadn't been able to save my Sheppard, but I'd saved the other 'me's' Sheppard, and it had to count for something.
"All right," she agreed softly. Her eyes met mine with a subtle warning. "Just…be careful."
I started up the stairs only to falter as I heard Sheppard mutter, "Aren't we always."
OoO
It was when we were in the Jumper that the attack came, sudden and with no warning --they'd destroyed our long range sensors two months ago. I had no sooner sat down then the ship rocked from a nearby impact against the surface of Atlantis. I stared wide eyed out the view screen, because we hadn't had time to test the weapon or prepare Sheppard, or do anything. I pushed my earpiece. "Elizabeth, how many?" I prayed it was just a probing force. They were going to do their best to take over Atlantis again, we knew that, and by now Radek would've had the shields raised.
"Five," came Elizabeth's clipped response. "Ronon and Teyla are trying to contain the Replicators that got in before the shield was raised. You and John stay put!"
Wait a minute… "No! Elizabeth, call them back, tell them to hold!" I turned away from the view screen and faced Sheppard. He was watching me, not quite sure what was going on. "I need you to do something for me."
"I don't remember any of this, Rodney."
He used my first name. Was it because it's what he'd overheard Elizabeth call me?
I shook the thought away. "It doesn't matter. You don't have to remember how to walk to do what I need you to do." I started towards the rear hatch and then amended, "Okay, you have to walk to get there. But everything else is irrelevant."
We hurried to my lab, and while I got the device from the drawer, I asked Ronon over the radio, "Do you have them contained?"
Gunfire sounded through loud enough to make me wince, then I heard Ronon shouting, "Not for long, get down here McKay!"
Before he cut the connection, I heard more gunfire and Teyla shouting, "Ronon! To your left!" Then I heard static.
I looked at Sheppard and realized he'd been listening, his head so near mine we almost touched. He frowned at the device. "Is that what you need me for?"
"Yes." I handed it to him. "Remember that gene I told you about, the one that got you sent here over prison?"
I hated the pained grimace I caused but he nodded, turning the small device over in his hands.
"Right, well, a great deal -- too much, really -- of the Ancient technology requires this gene to function and even though I have it, and others do, the gene ability is strongest in you. This weapon," I pointed at the object that would hopefully annihilate any Asurans that tried to mess with us, and their pet Replicators – the same weapon he was casually bouncing on his palm – "won't work for the rest of us, and we need your magic touch."
"I don't remember how to use it?" But he did stop juggling it.
I pushed him out the door. "It'll come to you!"
"What if it doesn't?" he asked looking at me over his shoulder, and following me as I quickly took the lead, pulling out my pistol.
"Then suddenly prison looks a lot better."
Unspoken, I added, and I've saved you only to have you die with us.
OoO
We found Ronon and Teyla kneeling, each on a side of the door, taking turns firing. It was a scene that made me go cold inside. But this time there was no bomb, there was no Sheppard pushing me forward and telling me, "I'll be right behind you!"
Although, he was behind me.
The sound of metal claws scraping over metal walls made the hair on my neck raise, and sent me back to those moments, trapped in the middle of the room with Sheppard, only a bomb between us.
"They're going to keep us prisoners here until the Asurans show up to claim us."
"Not if I can help it, Rodney. Set the bomb for five minutes, that should give us enough time to get clear, right?"
"McKay!" Ronon pulled away from his position and shook my shoulder. "They're coming through if you don't do something, now."
He forced me roughly against the wall when a Replicator broke through the door, his body shielding mine, as he aimed his blaster and blew the metallic monster into small chips.
"I'm fine," I snapped, pushing him away.
He hesitated, until Teyla called urgently, "Ronon!" then he was turning and dropping back to his knees, firing once again into the swarm. I pulled my eyes away from the writhing walls showing through the damaged door, and realized Sheppard was staring in dumbfounded surprise.
"I…I thought she said…five."
"Five Sera class ships – they deliver a cargo of a hundred Replicators. Briefing later, weapon now, because in moments, they'll be through this door and into the main levels of the city, and a hell of a lot harder to track down." I watched his mental math. Yes, Sheppard, that meant five hundred of the mechanical bugs. This is why we needed him and that weapon. This was a force only meant to soften us up for the main wave. We wouldn't last through a full out attack.
New teams arrived, and Lorne was there, shoving a P90 in my hand. I stared at it, then at Sheppard. "You need to think it on," I shouted above the noise. "Concentrate!"
He clutched it tight in his hand.
Another Replicator got loose and came skittering through the middle of the hall. I aimed and fired, and so did two other Marines; pieces of metal flew against our bodies as it disintegrated into small inert components.
I turned back to find him with his eyes closed. "Is it doing anything?" I hated to interrupt his communing with the device, but the Replicators were still surging forward.
"Fall back!" Lorne ordered, all ready pushing his men towards the next door. The bugs had managed to peel one side of the door open like a ripe banana.
The only problem with falling back is that I knew there was an access way here, on this side of the next door, and I knew if we let them get access to the interior walls, we were screwed. If Sheppard couldn't get this working…
Suddenly, a white corona began to form over Sheppard, beginning at the device held tight in his hand, and spreading out over him like a second skin of fat pearly beads suspended inches from his actual body. It shimmered like oil film on water, snaking around his arm, shoulders, legs, and everyone stopped shooting and moving, mouths agape, watching as the field began to spread to the floor, out from his feet, and up the walls. A Replicator touched inside the door, where the white field had spread, and it fell to the floor, inert.
The glare grew bright enough that I had to shield my eyes.
I heard a series of thuds echoing so loud that the silence that followed was deafening, and then the glare faded. Sheppard's eyes were open again, and he opened his palm, staring at the device in muted surprise. "Huh," he said, then his legs folded, and he hit the ground too fast for anyone to catch him.
OoO
The food on my fork wasn't really interesting, despite how many times I lifted it, swirled and poked, or otherwise rearranged it. Volcanoes, inlets, valleys…face it, I, Rodney McKay, wasn't hungry.
I know, stop the presses. Me and a healthy appetite went way back, to like, the days when I enjoyed fast food via a nipple. But I couldn't stop picturing those damn Replicators in the hall, and couldn't stop finding myself back in another building far away. And I was having an equally hard time shoving away the memory of Sheppard collapsing.
Apparently the weapon exacted a price. Not wraith-draining, or anything that drastic, but his temporary reserves, Carson had explained it, were depleted. Sheppard's electrolytes had been all over the place, and he was back in the infirmary, enjoying an IV cocktail of saline, potassium and some beta blockers to convince his heart that normal sinus rhythm really was a good thing.
"You gonna eat that?"
I looked up from where I'd been forming the Bering Strait. "Yes," I answered sharply. "Go get more if you're so hungry."
"I didn't say I was hungry." Ronon tossed back the remaining juice and set his glass back down. "I'm just tired of watching you play with your food."
"I'm not playing with my food," I grumped. Of course, I was. Completely, and as I erased the Bering Strait and began working on Mt. Vesuvius, I really didn't care. I was only here because Carson had kicked me out, saying Sheppard needed his rest and thereby implying that I would keep him from said rest. "You know the thing that really annoys me?"
Teyla finished chewing what was in her mouth and said, "No, Rodney, what is annoying you?"
"I found him. Well," at her glare I rephrased my comment, "I mean, it was my idea. Technically, you could say, Sheppard belongs to me. Finders keepers."
"He is not a possession." The glare continued relatively unabated.
"I know that." Really, I did, it was just…being kept from him annoyed me.
Ronon reached across the table and plucked the fork out of my hand. "Look at it this way, McKay, we know the weapon works."
"I know that, too." I glared at my fork still in his hand. "Are you going to give that back or am I going to have to embarrass myself in trying to pry it from your much larger, manly fingers?"
He tossed it at my plate. "No more mountains," he warned.
"Rodney, have you considered telling him the truth?"
Had I thought of it? It's all I did think about it. I hated misleading him, but at the same time, the mental balance in my mind, the one with the pros and cons, it just wasn't coming out in the 'telling him' favor, and the cons were winning...cons like imagining him shooting me when he found out I essentially kidnapped his dying body.
Of course, he couldn't shoot me unless Lorne let him have a gun, and I didn't see that happening anytime soon.
"Rodney?"
Teyla prodded again, watching me like I was some bacteria under a microscope. I sighed, stopped working on Cape Hatteras, and pushed away from the table. "Yes, I've considered it. When Radek shows up tell him I'm in my lab, studying the device."
I left before they could say anything else.
OoO
I pushed the dead Replicators to the side, some of them falling to the floor with a clatter, as I tried to make a clear area on my bench. I'd told Lorne to take a hundred and set them aside for testing, but now I wished I'd told him to stack them in my other lab. I uncovered my bench enough to work, and pulled up a stool. By the time I was resting my chin on my hand, elbow propped on the surface, I could smell that the coffee was done in the pot and the databanks access was booted.
Pouring a cup and opting for black instead of bothering with sugar or cream, I quickly typed in the new parameters for a search on the Asurans, excluding the topics I had all ready read. Once it was underway, I walked around the perimeter of my lab, sipping my coffee and powering up the few machines that I took the time to turn off when no one was going to be using them. We did have to consider the electric bill, so to speak. I had to step around the mechanical bugs that were heaped in a pile everywhere I turned. They looked like straw piles on farms; some of them were canted on their sides, barely clinging to the form of the pile.
I flipped the last switch on the spectroscope and turned around, truly seeing my lab for the first time. Maybe fifty would've been a better number.
Unlike when SG-1 had blasted them with ballistics fire, the weapon Sheppard had used had done something to these Replicators. Burned them up from the inside maybe, because all that was left was a creepy paperweight. Staring again at the piles and the ones on my bench, I had to think again, very creepy.
I should've been feeling elation that we'd been right about the weapon, that we'd just defeated five hundred Replicators without a single casualty, instead, I felt oddly empty. You know, this is why the UNA should've authorized a new psychologist. How was I supposed to save the galaxy and get in touch with my feelings?
The search was still listing findings, so while it ran I picked up the nearest Replicator and moved to the area on my bench, at the far end nearest the coffee pot, where I had the testing sensors. Without thought, I went through the motions of attaching the leads – one on each…appendage – creepy – then I attached two on the head, well, what did they call that on spiders? Seeing how the Replicators closely resembled a metal arachnid anyway –cephalothorax, wasn't it? Biology had never been my favorite. One of the soft sciences.
"Rodney!"
The radio boomed to life in my ear, and I winced, activating it and snapping, "Do you mind? In my ear, Carson, no need to speak at eighty decibels!"
"You need to come to the infirmary," he said hurriedly, ignoring my complaint, and I heard something in his voice that caused my blood to chill even before he added, "It's Sheppard."
OoO
I rarely run. I could count on my hands how many times I flat out ran to or from anything in the past year, and two of those times were in the span of the last month.
"Run, Rodney! God damn it, don't waste your time looking back, I'm right behind you!"
I'd ran. I hadn't looked back until I was clear of the building, and had met back up with Teyla and Ronon just outside. They'd followed me, not understanding anymore than I had what the colonel had intended, until it was too late, and Ronon took his final order and didn't even let me try to go back for him.
The deep blue sky, with billowing puffs of gray and white, spreading across the horizon like a cutting stain.
But now I was running, and by the time I caught myself on the frame of the infirmary door, and pulled myself up from sliding past, I saw Sheppard on the bed, his body shaking and warping, while Carson and a nurse tried to hold him down, unable to do a thing to help.
A desert formed in my mouth, and I think I held the door tighter to keep myself upright. It couldn't be.
"It can't be," I whispered. God, no. No no no!
Carson looked at me, fear painted across his face like a canvas. "You told us he was dead!"
'Oh, no." It just couldn't…it couldn't…I'd been so sure!
The rapid shifting of his features, the slurring of his physical lines, as he convulsed for another long moment before it was finally over. Sheppard slumped, exhausted, barely having the energy to ask, "The weapon?"
I swallowed, hard, still staring wide-eyed and trying to process the implications. "No," I finally forced the words to come. I'd never seen it in person, but I'd read the reports of the alternate reality Jackson; watched the video when his body had begun to shake itself apart.
"Something much worse," I breathed. "Temporal entropic cascade failure."
