Stargate Atlantis: S7 The Fossil Key

Part Three: Mesopredator Release6

The second Chair exploded.

It was exactly on time. The C4 ignited and with a tremendous blast the second Ancient Chair, the one that had been taken from a sister city of Atlantis was torn apart. The blast radius encompassed the entire room. Pieces of the Chair flew in every direction, smashing into walls and slamming up into the ceiling. The Chair was uprooted from the floor where it had been bolted and the blast ripped up the floorboards, gutting that section almost to the next level beneath it.

The pieces bounced harmlessly off the force field surrounding the first Ancient Chair. If John had opened his eyes he would have seen a spectacular display of sparks and lights, like a mini-nebula had come to life in the room. Colors spiraled and danced as energy met energy and fought a vicious battle for dominance.

Much like the battle John was facing as he was ensconced in the interface.

He couldn't open his eyes. He was locked in the Chair, gripped by the power and driven by sheer stubbornness to see this through, to take back control of the city and to heal the AI no matter what the cost was to himself.

He was locked in a virtual reality, facing down two very angry and psychotic AIs who appeared as women to him. Two women who were battling for dominance and who were battling for him. His ATA was the link they needed, the ultimate interface of man and machine. They were like two sisters or two halves of a single entity that couldn't exist together, not in the same city. The systems couldn't take it and John had a choice to make.

He had to figure out how to join them together, or kill one of them.

Even if the cost was his own life.

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Moira woke.

She sat up abruptly, not knowing how long she had been asleep. A loud noise had interrupted her exhaustion and she stared round, not knowing where she was. As the panic subsided she recognized the confines of her room. She was safe. John had saved her. John had freed her from the restraints and taken her out of the infirmary. She eyed her bruised wrists as her head was sore. A dull ache consistently pounded, pounded.

She stared at her left hand. There was a ring on her fourth finger. She didn't recognize it. She stared, bringing it close to her face as her vision swam in and out of focus. The ring was gold. There was a round diamond on it. The emergency lights flickered over the gem and it sparkled at her. She stared, having no idea how it had gotten there. It wasn't hers. Was it?

She lowered her hand and moved shakily to her feet. Power was humming in the floor, in the walls. The floor seemed to cant and she caught herself, made her way to the bathroom. She turned on the light and washed her face. She drank greedily. The water was cold, refreshing. She stared at herself in the mirror. She looked strange, haunted, pale; a shadow of her former self. She wondered if she was real at all; if any of this was real.

She feared she was still strapped to that bed and that this, this was a dream, a hallucination.

She eyed the ring again. It wasn't hers, unless this was some alternate reality where it was hers. She looked up and gasped, whirled. There had been a man in the mirror; a dour reflection of a man standing behind her, all in black and glowering at her. A tall man with a lean form.

But there was no one behind her.

She grabbed the glass to drink again when an abrupt knocking on the door startled her. She dropped the glass to the floor. It shattered, pieces of glass flying everywhere. She knelt to the pieces to gather them, to hide from the pounding on the door, suddenly fearful lest it was Carson or someone else coming to return her to that bed.

"Moira! Moira, open the door! Moira, open the door!" Rodney shouted, hitting it with his fist. He frowned, looking up and down the hallway as the lights danced and the walls shook. "Moira!" He waved his hand over the panel but it wasn't working on this side.

Moira cowered, hands moving. "Ouch!" She looked down to see a large piece of glass had cut her wrist. She stared at the blood oozing from the opening in her skin, at the protruding glass sticking out like an exclamation point. She pulled it out and stared, stared as darker thoughts surfaced. It was an easy way to end it all; to end the confusion and the despair and the hallucinations. To spare John from what was only getting worse and there was nothing to be done about it. Nothing.

Nothing.

"Moira! For God's sake open the damn door! I need you! John needs your help!" Rodney argued, wondering if he could override the door mechanism even with the power fluctuations. "Open the damn door! John needs you!"

Hearing John's name she moved to her feet. She pulled out the shard and wrapped her wrist with a washcloth. She moved to the door and hesitated, recalling John's warning but she opened the door anyway. She blinked, staring. "Rodney?"

"Moira! About time! What did you do?" he asked, seeing the washcloth around her wrist. The material was turning crimson. He met her gaze as suspicion turned to realization to shock.

"Nothing. What—"

"No time! Come on!" Rodney grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the room. "You're the only one who can pull John out of the interface before it's too late! If he doesn't get out now he may die in there as he repairs the city and merges the AIs!"

"What? I don't understand!" she complained, pulled into a run next to the physicist. The floor surged under them and bucked as if the city was rising off the ocean floor.

"There isn't time! You need to get him out of there once I can disconnect the force field! If we can't get him out of there, Moira, we will lose him forever!"

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John held an Ancient weapon as he moved backwards to the consoles. "I am in control of this city! Got it! You will obey me! Either join me or die!"

The women hissed at him, approaching. The city was whirling around him; things were flying in the air. John ducked and activated systems, using his codes to restore systems and activate the self-destruct. "You won't kill us. You won't destroy the city!"

"I will if it means destroying you!" He tapped the button and saw the time begin to count down. "There! This city will implode! Is that how you want it? If you help me we can raise Atlantis and take out those fuglies once and for all!"

"You will join with me, John Sheppard," the blond woman cooed, nearing with a smile. Her blond hair was golden in the light. "You are my chosen one. Join me and we can do whatever you want. You will rule this city with me."

"I already rule this city, bitch, and you will obey me!"

"You are wise to deny her, John Sheppard. She would kill the one you love," the red-haired woman agreed, nearing him on the other side. "I will help you rule this city and we can destroy the aliens once and for all."

"Ah, no, you're the reason this whole system's gone haywire. You should have died with Tir na nOg." As they lunged John shot one, then the other, then was blown backwards as they screamed in unison. He staggered watching as they shook and shimmered, merging closer and closer, becoming one blurry image that was shrieking wildly.

John's head was pounding but he couldn't look away as the two shook violently side to side, becoming closer and closer and then becoming one frenetic image of a woman with two heads; of a brain with two minds, each screaming in unison and conflict.

The scream went on and on and on and the images were whirling so fast that they were painful, as painful as that endless scream.

It was a scream of the damned; it was a scream of insanity, of utter madness.

John tried to cover his ears as it felt like his own head was splitting in two. He glanced at the monitor on the console and read the words of the program he had initiated.

SELF DESTRUCT IN THREE…TWO…ONE…

John closed his eyes as Atlantis exploded.