Okay, so this one's a little slow too. Sorry! But I have to make a few things happen before we can get on to the real action. And hopefully I can start building some suspense here.


Secret

"Here." Nick hit a button and a light came on in the small bedroom.

"You can have my room," she told Jennifer. She looked around and added apologetically, "It's not much. Especially compared to Atlantis."

"After that hike, anything with a bed is more than fine," Jennifer said. She looked up and stepped over to the shelves, studying the crystals. "Where did you find all these?"

"All over," Nick said, stepping over to the shelf. "You just have to know where to look." Jennifer nodded, admiring the many colors.

Ronon, Rodney, and John were going to bed down in the main room of the compound. Teyla would be sleeping in Nick's mother's room. Her name, they discovered, had been Rayne. They had found the compound while fleeing from the wraith soon after Nick was born. She didn't know any of the details, because her mother had never really talked about it. She knew her father was dead, and assumed that the rest of her people were too, but that was all. It was strange really, how little she knew.

The three men were laying down spare blankets on the floor of the main room when Teyla came in and caught John's eye.

"May I speak to you for a moment?" she asked. John nodded and got up and followed her down the hall. Ronon and Rodney watched them leave, and then looked at each other. Ronon shrugged.

Teyla led John down the hall and down the metal steps. When they reached the bottom, she checked to make sure no one had followed them. No one had.

"Okay," John said, a bit suspiciously. "What's going on?"

"I believe Nick may be part wraith," Teyla said bluntly.

"She doesn't look like it," John said, thinking immediately of Michael.

"I have felt a constant presence since we found her, similar to a wraith and yet… different. There is none other it could be."

"That's why she can sense them," John said, putting it together. Teyla nodded.

"But it is more. I am able to sense her as well. I am not able to do so with my own people."

"You think it's more than just ancestral DNA," John said, understanding. Teyla nodded.

"Though how, I am not sure," she said. John thought a moment.

"Maybe she was some kind of experiment," he said. "Like what they did to the Athosians. Except this woman was pregnant."

"And that is why they are alone," Teyla said, adding on. John nodded.

"Does she know?" he asked, his eyes narrowing a bit.

"I do not think so," Teyla said. "She seemed… shocked to learn that sensing the wraith is a rare gift." She paused and then added, "Just as Michael was." John nodded.

"It might be better if nobody else knows," he said, thinking of Michael and the treatment he had received on the base.

"We will have to tell Colonel Carter," Teyla said. John nodded.

"But no one else," he said firmly. "And we're no gonna tell Nick, either. She's just a kid. This isn't like Michael." Teyla nodded in agreement. She had been thinking the same thing.

For the time being, it would stay their secret.

- - -

It was the silence that woke her.

Nick had made up a pallet next to her bed, where Dr. Keller was still sound asleep. When she awoke, the rain had stopped pounding against the roof. She sat up and looked around. It was dark in the room, but a small shaft of moonlight was coming in between the closed blinds.

Getting quietly to her feet, she slipped into the main room and crept around the sleeping forms of John, Ronon, and Rodney to the door. She opened it carefully and looked out. The world was still and quiet. Moonlight gently lit up the whole world. A few stars twinkled in the sky. It looked so peaceful.

After a moment she turned around and silently made her way to the pantry, which was large enough to also serve as a supply closet. She opened it and pulled out a shovel. Then she headed outside.

- - -

Doctor Keller sat up and rubbed her eyes. A bit of sunlight was coming into the room between the closed blinds. She swung her feet onto the floor, only to find the small pallet there empty.

"Nick?"

Getting to her feet, she opened the door and headed into the main room. Ronon was standing by the open door. He saw her and silently motioned her over.

Not too far from the compound, Nick was sitting on her heels, staring at a fresh pile of dirt. A tiny wooden cross marked it as a grave.

"She's been there all morning," Ronon said.

"What's going on?" John asked, getting up and coming over. He saw Nick and nodded, as if he'd been expecting something of the sort. He knew how she must feel. They all did. "Let's go ahead and get our stuff together."

Dr. Keller and Ronon both nodded and left. John stayed by the door for a brief instant, watching Nick. She had no idea...

He turned away and went to help the others.

- - -

After putting away the blankets they had been using, John, Ronon, Teyla, and a very nervous Jennifer went on a short exploration of the tunnel complex. They came back an hour later with the conclusion that the underground maze was huge, and they had only just scratched the surface the day before. Much like the Genii settlement. Rodney was too busy studying specimens from in and around the compound to even notice that they had been gone. They managed to pull him away long enough to get out the emergency rations they had all brought and start eating breakfast. For some reason it didn't feel right going through the pantry.

Finally, after a few minutes of eating in silence, Dr. Keller swallowed and said what was on everyone's mind.

"What are we going to do about Nick?"

"She can take care of herself," Ronon said, completely unconcerned. Almost.

"Yes," Teyla said in agreement, "but what if the wraith return?"

"Yesterday she got lucky," Rodney said bluntly. "That's the only reason she got rid of that wraith. If even just a few darts show up, and there's no reason to believe they won't, she's toast."

"Sam wants us to bring her back to Atlantis," John said. He had given the Colonel a brief summary via radio the night before, but had been unwilling to discuss the information around Nick. "We can figure something out from there."

"First you have to actually convince her to come with us," Rodney said, ever the pessimist.

Nick walked through the door right then. She hardly seemed to notice them sitting there, stepping right past them and into her room. An awkward silence fell. They all looked at each other, wondering how much she had heard.

A second later she came back with a bag over her shoulder.

"When are we leaving?" she asked calmly.

- - -

A few moments later they were on their way.

It was almost an hour's walk back to the stargate. All the way to the gate Jennifer kept turning around and marveling at the beauty. The rainstorm had given the leaves and grass a sudden burst of color so that the whole world seemed green. Even the sky seemed more blue. There was a handful of birds perched in trees, but not near as many as she had expected.

"I thought you said there were a lot of birds here," she said, keeping step with McKay, who was huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf.

"There should be," he said, for once saying as little as possible in order to conserve the air in his lungs.

"So where are they?" Jennifer asked. Rodney shook his head, trying to find the breath to answer.

"Don't know."

"You don't know?" Jennifer stopped walking for a second, then hurried to catch up. "That many animals don't just… disappear!"

"Oh, really?" Rodney said, his tone highly sarcastic. "I didn't know that." Jennifer stopped and watched him walk off. Beneath all the sarcasm he seemed pretty flustered. Nick, who had overheard the last bit of their conversation, let him pass her and then fell back beside Jennifer. For a moment neither of them said anything.

"They started disappearing several months ago," Nick said quietly. "It was slow at first, hardly noticeable. Then it became more rapid. Three days ago I went hunting. Spent all day and hardly saw a single living thing. Something's scared them all off."

"Like what?" Jennifer asked, getting nervous. Nick shook her head.

"I don't know."

"So you're saying that there is something else here to worry about besides the wraith?" Nick nodded. "Well, shouldn't you be telling Colonel Sheppard, or Ronon, or… or somebody who can actually do something about it?" Nick shrugged.

"You're the one who asked," she said simply.

Jennifer was about to respond, but at that moment they came upon the stargate. Nick went over to Rodney, who was just about to touch the DHD. She watched in silence as he pushed the first key, and then the second. She waited until his fingers had left the third key and were hovering while his eyes looked for the fourth before asking,

"How does it work?"

"Each key," he said, hitting the fourth and fifth before stopping to gesture with his hands a bit, "stands for a constellation. Seven symbols are entered, like a sort of address." Nick had no clue what an address was, but she nodded anyway. Rodney quickly hit the sixth and seventh keys and then looked up, eager for the chance to show off what he knew. "The first six symbols are co-ordinates, which, when connected, create three intersecting lines-"

"-with your destination as the point of intersection," Nick said, catching on. "The seventh acts as the point of origin, allowing you to plot a straight course."

"How'd you know that?" Rodney asked, disappointed.

"My mom taught me to connect the dots," Nick said, a hint of a smile on her face. Behind her, John and Ronon and Teyla exchanged a grin.

"Yeah, well..." A momentarily-deflated Rodney turned around and pushed the blue button in the center of the DHD. The stargate sprang to life; the familiar horizontal pool of thick blue water filled it. Nick gasped and took a half-step forward, only to quickly step back as the vortex shot out of the event horizon and then retreated.

"Whoa," she said, her voice full of awe. She turned to Rodney. "That's it? You just key in a code and press the button?"

"It's actually much more complex," Rodney said. "There are technically millions of possible combinations, but only a small percentage of them actually represent valid addresses." Teyla rolled her eyes, but Rodney took no notice and plowed on. "It would be pointless, therefore, to simply dial a random sequence. There are also many worlds without a DHD, making it extremely difficult to return to the point of origin without the proper-"

"That means yes," John interrupted. Rodney gave him a frustrated look.

"Not exactly," he said hotly. John rolled his eyes at Nick, and then walked over to the gate and stepped through. Nick's eyes widened in awe as he disappeared. Jennifer went through after him. Rodney, still annoyed at being interrupted, grabbed up the bag he had set down beside the DHD and followed suit, somewhat huffily. Suddenly realizing that she was now the closest person to the gate, Nick turned and looked at Ronon. He held out his arm, signaling for her to go first.

"Ladies first," he said, a hint of a grin on his face.

Nick turned back to the stargate and stepped forward. She stopped before it and looked up, remembering all the times she had played on and around it, wishing she knew how to make it work. Her mother had forbidden her from touching the DHD. She had always thought the strange device held some special power. Now she knew her mother had been afraid she would figure out how it worked and disappear.

Gathering her determination, she squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and stepped through.


Hopefully the Rodney scene at the end served to liven things up a bit. Next stop, Atlantis!

Oh, and reviews are much appreciated. I feel more compelled to get the next chapter up. (Hint, hint.)