Chapter 4

The Atlantis sickbay was blissfully quiet and unoccupied while Dr. Lam wrote up the death certificate for Captain Stevenson on her computer. Dr. Jenifer Keller was on some much needed vacation time, so Caroline had taken over for the time being. Suddenly one of the nurses screamed in shock.

"What is it?" Lam yelled as she darted out of her seat and around the corner…where she saw Stevenson's body convulsing again.

"What the hell?" she said as she reactivated the medical sensors.

"Call the General and Mr Woolsey," Lam ordered as she held down Stevenson's arm so it wouldn't knock the meds off the nearby tray.

"Tell them it's an emergency." Lam barked.

Ten minutes later General Landry and Mr. Woolsey walked into the infirmary in stunned disbelief.

"You said he was dead?" Hank blurts out.

"He was, for four hours. Then he just came back…I can't explain it. His vitals are stabilizing, albeit slowly. He's gone through three convulsions in the past ten minutes and each time he comes out of it a little better off than before." Lam insisted

"Explain," Landry demanded.

"I can't," Lam said simply.

"Will he recover?" the General asked.

"If I had to guess, I'd say yes, but I'm really not qualified to give you an answer on this one. I have no idea what's happening to him, but he seems to me to be improving…despite being dead earlier." Caroline persisted.

"Well this complicates things." Landry sighed.

"How so?" Lam asked.

"If he lives, what do you think the I.O.A. is going to say about it?" Landry said, stressing the 'if'.

"I don't catch your meaning." Lam said confused.

"If the Captain has the knowledge of the Ancients and lives to keep it…" Woolsey began.

"…they'll want to turn him into their personal oracle," she finished.

"Hmmn, 'oracle' is a bit more pleasant than what I was thinking about." Woolsey added.

Lam stared at him in disbelief. She'd never seen Richard Woolsey look so concerned before. Maybe that's what command did to someone.

"He's still an Air Force officer. They can't just treat him as a piece of property." Caroline offered.

"I agree, but that doesn't mean they won't try. I'll have to discuss this with General O'Neill before he leaves. Maybe we can head this one off early…and there's still the matter of how this happened in the first place." Hank planned.

"You don't think it was an accident?" Lam asked.

"I'm guessing he did it on purpose, but anything's possible. Let me know when he's lucid…or if things take a turn for the worse." Landry nodded before leaving with Woolsey close behind him.

Stevenson lay comatose in his bed, his body motionless aside from the occasional tremor. Daniel and Lam stayed with him as much as they could, waiting for a glimpse of consciousness. Days passed by with no external developments. On the inside, however, was an entirely different story.

His mind was hyper-processing a virtual reality simulation pre-programmed into the Ancient coding that had begun to rewrite his body and mind. He as living out days in a matter of minutes, facing challenge after challenge in a gruelling simulation designed to test his worth.

If he failed the test he would never remember having undergone it. He would wake up with the Repository of Ancient Knowledge in his mind, but the additional data cache hidden within the confines of the Repository would self-delete in one final security measure designed to insure that the Ancients' final hope wouldn't be discovered and destroyed before it could take effect.

This, however, was not to take place. Inside the virtual testing chamber Stevenson proved his worth and accepted the mandate given to him by proxy. He knew full well the significance of what he was getting himself into, the Ancients had made sure to give him every chance to decline the burden that was about to be placed on his shoulders.

He woke on the end of a deep breath, blinked his eyes and looked around.

"You're in the infirmary, Captain, you've been unconscious for over a week. Don't try to move just yet." Lam said from beside him.

"Can you understand us?" Daniel asked from the other side of the bed.

"Yes, Dr. Jackson. My marbles are still in my head," Stevenson said in Ancient.

Lam and Daniel exchanged glances.

"It seems a few of them have become a bit scrambled," Daniel explained to Stevenson.

"How so?" he asked a little confused.

"You're speaking in Ancient," Daniel said, making mouthing motions with his hand.

"Am I? I hadn't noticed. I can understand you perfectly, but I can't for the life of me speak English." He worked his mouth around, thinking about something, then a frustrated expression manifested itself on his blank features.

"Yeah well, we've seen this before with O'Neill. The Ancient Repository seems to overwrite your existing language patterns with its own. Eventually you may not even be able to understand English. In which case I'll be here to translate, so you're not completely cut off from society." Daniel reassured.

"I don't think that's going to happen to me, but thanks just the same. Talk to you later." Ryan said looking as if his strength was fading quickly.

"Later? You have somewhere to be?" Daniel asked sarcastically just as Stevenson's eyes rolled up into his lids and he started to convulse again.

"According to Dr. Lam, Captain Stevenson's body is also changing as a result of his contact with the Ancient device, from all indications his physiology is altering into a form similar to what we saw from the Anubis creation called Khalek. We squandered a unique opportunity for study then…we're not going to waste another opportunity now." William Parson said from across Atlantis's briefing room table.

"So what does the I.O.A. suggest? Confine him to a research lab for the rest of his life? This man is one of our own. He has rights." Landry asked irreverently.

"Don't think that we in the I.O.A. haven't considered that angle, but each and every one of our Stargate personnel know and accept the risks involved with exploring the galaxy. Captain Stevenson has essentially been hijacked by alien programming intent on remaking him into an alien. He's not Human anymore, or at least he won't be for very long." William explained.

"That's your argument? That'll never fly. He's still part of the U.S. military and he's not going anywhere unless I order him to." Landry asked, half laughing.

"That decision may ultimately not be up to us, or the President." Woolsey admitted.

"Never the less, I'm sure some arrangement can be reached to have him examined here in Atlantis. I'm sure your people are as anxious as we are to get access to the Ancient library within his mind. It's a freak of nature that he's survived to this point, and with any luck he'll hold on permanently…but if he doesn't and we've only got a limited amount of time for study, isn't it irresponsible to waste an opportunity such as this while we bicker back and forth about it here and up through the chain of command?" Parson suggested.

"Yes, there has been a bit of bickering involved, I've got Jackson with him now. If he has anything important to say we'll know about it immediately. We've also got a video feed on him 24/7." O'Neill said as he walked into the conference room.

"And I've got the biomed sensor that we took from Anubis's lab hooked up and monitoring him as we speak, not to mention Atlantis's internal sensors. Rest assured, we're not missing anything from a medical standpoint." Lam added.

"I'm pleased to hear that, It'll give us time to discuss any long-term research projects. In the mean time you will be forwarding any data gleamed from him to my quarters." Parson informed.

"Of course." Landry said, standing up. Parson nodded to both Generals then left the conference table, briefcase in hand and posse in tow.