The chair room was seething with agitation. Rodney smacked into the storm unprepared and had to pause to take it all in. Woolsey was hovering over the platform where the chair was - in fact - missing. Lorne and a couple of security guys were standing with him. A loud clank of metal drew Rodney's attention to the corner of the room where Jennifer Keller was hovering over a man on a stretcher that orderlies had just extended to waist height. They began pushing the bed as a group towards the door. Jennifer paused only long enough to fire off a quick report to Woolsey.
"Sgt. Knight shows evidence of intracerebral hemorrhage. We need to get him to the scanners to see how severe the bleeding is, though. I'll let you know how he's doing in an hour or so."
"Can he tell us what happened here?" Woolsey called as she walked away to stay with the stretcher.
"He's in a coma. I don't know how bad the damage is, yet. If it is severe, he may never be able to tell us." Her voice was grim and Woolsey dismissed her with a nod.
Rodney watched the injured guard roll by and felt a familiar lump of anxiety knot up his stomach. On days when he wasn't worrying about dying at the hands of Wraith and killer pathogens, Rodney was certain he would one day bleed out from the ulcers eating him up from the inside out. At the moment, he wasn't sure which kind of day this was going to be. Woolsey spotted him and waved him over.
"Dr. McKay! You'll notice that we've been robbed."
"Yeah, I see that. And what's with Sheppard? You've tried radioing him?"
"Immediately after the theft was reported and Sgt. Knight was found. I've sent people to his room and to his usual haunts. Ronon and Teyla are still looking, but it's not like Sheppard to miss a party." Lorne answered the question, the one with the most at stake in finding his CO.
"I saw him last night."
"Where? When?!"
"Around 2:00. In the residential tower. He looked like he was just leaving his room and heading towards the central tower."
"Well, that gives us a timeframe," Lorne muttered, throwing a look at one of the security officers next to him. The man was writing on a little notebook. "It seems too much of a coincidence that Sheppard and the chair have gone missing at the same time."
"Agreed," Woolsey interjected. "Tell Zelenka to use the city's scanners if Ronon and Teyla don't find him. Search for the Colonel's transponder signature. In the meantime, Dr. McKay, do you have any idea how this could happen?" He waved a hand over the empty platform.
"Give me a minute," Rodney snapped. He took one step towards the room's control console when Lorne blocked his way.
"Here McKay," put these on if you're going to type. He held out a pair of latex gloves. Rodney finally noticed that Lorne and his security men were already wearing them. "Forensics boys will be here soon to dust the console for prints."
"Oh. Sure. I've never worked in a 'crime scene' before."
"We need the information, so go ahead. Just try not to - I don't know - smear your fingers around too much."
Rodney tried. He poked at the keys with gingerly taps of the very tips of his fingers and spent a few minutes running through screens of data. "Someone unlinked the chair from the city's control systems at around 2:46 a.m."
"Can you tell who?"
Rodney chuffed at Woolsey's eager tone. "If I could, I would have said 'so-and-so unlinked the chair from the city's control systems.' Who-ever-it-was hacked themselves a command code before they got here. They unhooked it, then put the chair in maintenance mode, which is what you do if you need to work it without accidentally triggering commands."
"Or if you wanted to move it?" Lorne asked pointedly.
"Yes. And if you didn't want to damage the chair doing it."
"So," Woolsey said, tapping his chin as he thought it through, "whoever stole the chair was after the chair itself. We're not dealing with pure sabotage or terrorism simply for the sake of disabling the city."
"McKay, how bad off are we without the chair?" This was from Lorne again.
"The city has redundant controls for almost every system the chair controls. The chair is just the most efficient and user-friendly way to initiate commands."
"What about drones?"
"Drones can be launched from the control room, with some re-routing, but guidance and integration with the sensors will be severely limited."
"What can we not do without the chair?"
McKay thought about it and came up with only one answer. "Fly. We couldn't fly the city without the chair. Piloting a craft this complicated can only be done if the chair is integrating the hundreds of systems involved in flight."
"So do you think someone stole the chair to use in their own ship?" Lorne snapped his fingers and his eyes lit up in the same way Sheppard's did when he was sure he'd come up with a brilliant idea before Rodney. "The Tower. The other city that you guys traded with for the drones and jumpers. They stole it!"
"They had a working chair. They don't need ours. And their city is completely grounded, literally. Most of it has been buried for hundreds of years."
"Oh."
"Yeah, 'oh'. Not to mention that - unless someone just forgot to mention it - we saw no ships on the scanners, nor any unusual gate activity that would indicate intruders. Considering the hacked code and the relative ease with which someone got in here, this looks more like..." Rodney hesitated, realizing how his statement was going to sound, "-an inside job."
"I'm sure Colonel Sheppard's involvement is purely honorable," Woolsey intoned, "But you are correct that the evidence is troubling. Major Lorne, increase security throughout the city, especially sensitive labs and main city controls. In the meantime, Doctor, do you have any idea how the chair was removed from the room once it was disconnected?"
Rodney could only shrug. "I worked on the Antarctic chair and I know it's heavy. You'd need a lift or trolley at least."
"I'll get the forensics boys to look for marks on the floor." Lorne nodded again at his man, clearly passing on the command.
"And ask everyone on the night shift if they happened to see...anything," Rodney finished lamely. "I'm going up to the control room and dig deeper into the sensor logs. Maybe we missed a cloaked ship in the neighborhood, or something else."
"You work on the how," Lorne agreed. "I'll work on the 'who'. We'll go from the inside job angle and start interviewing. Can you loan us someone you trust to help look into the hack?"
"You can have Radek. I want to help look for Sheppard." Rodney included himself pointedly in that aspect of the 'who' search. "I'll make sure Zelenka didn't screw up the scans for his transponder and begin further sensor sweeps if needed." Like Woolsey, Rodney believed that if Sheppard had been involved in the theft of the chair, it was only in the capacity of trying to stop it. And if John had gone missing during an attempt to stop the theft, then he was in trouble. Rodney had to work fast, because trouble always included a deadline.
"Thanks, McKay," Lorne said with a grateful nod. "Is there anything you need here before I close off the room and let forensics work?"
"Let me link this console to the workstations upstairs. That'll let me remotely access anything I need from there."
Rodney typed for another minute as the room filled up with more soldiers, these wearing light uniforms and carrying lots of equipment. He allowed himself just a bit of amusement at the inclusion of scanners, LSD and various other Ancient devices these men had added to their investigative repertoire. Rodney didn't watch many cop shows, but he knew every unit on Earth would kill for the technology this one had access to.
"Done," he announced at last and stripped off his gloves. He headed towards the door, anxious to get to the tower and begin his own set of investigations. He had just reached the threshold when Lorne dropped his hand from his radio and halted him with a call.
"McKay! We just heard from one of the night shift technicians. She said she saw Sheppard enter the tower transporter a little after 0300. She said she asked him if he needed help because he was limping and bracing against the wall. He told her he'd just pulled a muscle and was going to his room for the night."
"Did they find anything in his room?" Rodney had to ask, even though Lorne's dark expression was making him nervous.
Lorne nodded grimly. "He's not there. But they found a bloody uniform and more blood all over his bathroom sink. I told them to take it to Keller to see if she can tell who's blood it is."
"Right. I'll...go get started." There wasn't anything else to say. He jogged into the hall, faster than before. Sheppard had been seen,was maybe injured, and he hadn't called for help? He hadn't alerted security during the theft although he'd been skulking around at just the right time. And now he was hiding out, and not just because he owed Rodney a Spiderman collectible comic book. It didn't make any sense. Yet.
Rodney panted into the control room and practically shoved the technician who happened to be sitting at his regular workstation out of the chair. He immediately began a sensor sweep of the entire system, then pulled up the logs for the past 24 hours. Zelenka joined him a few minutes later, perched at the next station over.
"We find no trace of Colonel Sheppard's transponder anywhere in the city," Radek said, his voice soft and concerned. Rodney just typed harder at his own keyboard.
"Expand the search. Look in the water. And start looking into how someone could have hacked themselves a command code without my noticing."
"Yes, I have already spoken briefly with Major Lorne." There was a pause. Rodney absorbed the stream of sensor data flowing into his brain from the screen. Radek became equally absorbed, and pulled yet another laptop over to start more programs running before he spoke again. "No signatures in the water."
"Check the gate logs. Make sure there was no unexplained gate activity this morning."
"We already did that. Rodney - "
"Then go check the jumper bay. Manually confirm that they are all still accounted for and check inside in case they can shield a transponder signal."
"I will but - "
"I'll run a sensor sweep of the mainland."
"That seems - "
"Radek, just do it! Stop making excuses and just look for the man, will you!"
"I am not making excuses," Radek snapped back. "I am just wishing to say... we'll find him. Colonel Sheppard is a very resourceful man. I do not believe he would be missing if he were dead. There is reason for his disappearance. When we discover that reason, we will discover him."
Rodney bit his tongue at the confidence in Radek's tone. He didn't have enough information to contradict such optimism quite yet. He did have enough to create a new-ulcer-sized worry.
"I hope you're right," he said finally. For that, at least, he could say with absolute sincerity.