Chapter VII – Vala's Family

"Hey kid, how are you doing? Heard you got yourself into a bit of a pickle…" Jacek's drawl echoed in the observation cell.

Sam huffed, "Hi, grandpa. Nothing's really wrong, just Uncle John, mom and dad being all extra careful."

"You are your parents' son, so that's not surprising, Sam." Tomin said kindly but with a lint in his eye.

"I wish everyone would quit saying that! I get it. I'm as unpredictable as mom and as accident-prone as dad." Sam grumbled.

Jacek leaned over and whispered in his wife's ear, "Unpredictability is clearly not the only thing he inherited from Vala!"

While Sam was mildly interested in what his granddad was quietly murmuring to his grandma, he had begun to feel slightly off. He had been in the observation room for three hours and had not had so much as a fit of hiccups but suddenly, his head and stomach began to feel out of kilter. He raised his hand to his sweaty head and sensed a dull throb beneath his clammy brow. His other hand instinctively shifted to hold his belly, which felt as though it were the prison of a whirligig with so much turning and revolving as if his stomach were at sea and he on land.

"Gran-"

The three other occupants of the room watched in horror as the boy, whom they now observed was clutching both his head and midriff, slid from the bed and became detached from the medical equipment monitoring him which had begun to bleep gradually quicker and quicker. Tomin was the first to react. He lunged for the boy and just about caught him before his head collided with the hard floor.

"Adria, call Dr. McKay now! Medical emergency in Observation Cell A!" Tomin bellowed with an unfamiliar sense of urgency.

Tomin heaved the limp body of his ex-wife's son back onto the bed and heard Adria radio the CMO and saw Jacek hasten out of the room heading for the infirmary, attempting to accelerate the medical team's response. All Tomin knew to do was make sure someone stayed with the child and kept a firm grip on his wrist, monitoring Sam's pulse as it grew weaker.

The next few minutes occurred in a blur to all but the four medical personnel who arrived on the scene, including Jennifer McKay. Jennifer saw the sweat holding Sam's clothes to him and saw that one of his hands was resting just below his heart. After listening to his chest, Jennifer yelled firmly to her subordinate that they needed a sedative to calm him down, while explaining to Jacek, Tomin and Adria that Sam's heart was in danger of giving out if she didn't help.

"So, it's essentially heart failure?" Tomin asked.

Jennifer looked up with shock, "No, Tomin, not really. It's much more serious than that, as it's like a heart attack combined with heart failure."

That response stunned the non-medical occupants into dreary silence. Jacek walked slowly to the radio on the wall and instructed the desk technician to get everyone down to the infirmary who ought to be there.

While they waited for Vala and Daniel, Jennifer continued working on her patient, mumbling to herself, asking why nothing to predict this had shown up on the scans and how it was all too sudden and too random. Intermittently she glanced up at the cardiograph which told her nothing good but to hurry up. Tomin could just hear her curse under her breath and blame herself for what was happening to her charge and thanking God that John had insisted on the extra observation time that he had.

"Yes! Got you, you little devil!" Jennifer exclaimed happily, "I am not letting you go anywhere."

Just as she turned away from Sam, the doors flew ajar and Vala, Daniel, Rodney and Ronon stormed into the room. Vala had tears streaming down her fair cheeks and Daniel had lost all colour in his face. Rodney and Ronon looked a right pair, both looking equally as agitated but Rodney unfortunately was huffing and puffing a great deal more than the athletic, muscular man.

"Don't worry too much, guys," she said with a gentle smile, "he's just started to improve…a bit."

"What's wrong with him, Jen?" Rodney asked tentatively.

Jennifer sighed, pinching her nose, "The truth is I don't really know. Nothing showed up in any of the numerous tests we ran that would have possibly forecast this. All I can infer is that there is something putting intense strain on his heart and brain and most likely his other vital organs too, but the heart was the first to buckle. I'll have to conduct some more tests to see if I can get a more conclusive idea of what's actually going on in his body."

Vala and Daniel gravitated towards each other and Vala willingly let herself be enveloped in her husband's arms as she examined the unconscious form of her son, who was gravely ill and there was nothing she could do to help him. Daniel was quite tempted to join his wife in her tears, but he knew from experience that no good would come from him letting his emotions overwhelm him. He had to remain strong for appearance's sake, for Vala's sake…

There was one voice and presence that was lacking in the teeming observation cell, "Where the hell is John?" Daniel inquired almost angrily.

"He said he had an idea and ran in the opposite direction once we got the call about Sam." Ronon replied with a straight face.

Jennifer felt the tension in the room rise and began to usher everyone out of the observation room where she thought it best that her patient ought to remain. If John had somehow managed to construct a theory on what was wrong with the Jackson boy then so much the better for them.

"Radio General Sheppard," Rodney addressed a junior medic, "ask him to meet the rest of us in Dr. Jennifer McKay's office."

When everyone had convened in Jennifer's office, which was the biggest out of all the heads of staff on Atlantis, including John's, they got to talking seriously about what was occurring inside Samuel Jackson.

The room quietened immediately when an orderly entered bearing a tablet for Jennifer. When she read it in silence, her heart nearly bounded out of her chest, "Lord, give me strength."

Jennifer held her head in her hands as she resisted the urge to cry for the poor child in the room down the hall. She knew she couldn't indulge herself when the parents of said child were nervously awaiting news of their son.

"Jennifer, for God's sake, what is it?"

"He's reverting. The console generated some unknown radiation that has caused him to start growing younger instead of older." She responded with a heavy heart and matching expression.

Everyone was powerless as they took in the abysmal news. Vala felt as though her life was dwindling along with her child's as she plummeted to the floor, followed soon by Daniel who knelt beside her and held her as she sobbed uncontrollably. Jacek placed a hand on his daughter's shoulder for comfort and wondered why so much pain and strife befell his only child and those whom she held in her heart.

"I suspect," Jennifer elaborated, "that the medical complications we are seeing in Sam are a result of his being a normal human child with no traces of Ancient DNA or physiology in his system. An Ancient child would be able to cope with the influx of complex information and processes, but for a human boy," she stuttered, "it's life-threatening. It'll kill him in less than a day unless we figure something out that will be able to stop it."

Rodney walked round and placed his hands gently on his wife's shoulders and announced with surety, "Less than twenty four hours? For Dr. Rodney McKay, that's not a problem, he'll be fine."

"Yeah, yeah, we get it. Dr. Rodney McKay is the world's biggest genius and ass!" John said as he strode into the nicer (in his and everyone's opinion) Dr. McKay's office.

"Hope you've got some good news, Sheppard, otherwise we're all going to need therapy." Ronon muttered sarcastically.

John slapped his friend on the back as he passed him to perch on Jennifer's desk, "Indeed I do. When I heard that Sam had collapsed and that his organs were exhibiting similar signs to what Rodney went through when a device altered his DNA making him super-smart. Not a word, Rodney!" John advised, foreseeing his friend's interruption, "Anyway, the process began to kill him and I realised then why the machine is forcing Sam to age backwards. Sam misunderstood the true purpose of the device. It is meant to allow minors to gain full access of the city's databases and mainframe but not just to use but also to learn from it. I suspect that the device wasn't actually ever used as such, it's more of Na'Tano's experiment."

"An experiment? How can you be sure?" Daniel queried, rising from his position next to Vala on the floor.

"Because I think that's what all the hush-hush is in aid of," John pointed out as he leant on the cold table, "I don't think Na'Tano was ever supposed to have made the device, let alone used it, so I believe our Sam is the first one to have ever interacted with the machine. The other thing I think I've got figured out is that the reason the device has caused some serious reversion is that he's too old."

When everyone saw the smug smile creep onto John's face, each and every one of them were confused but Ronon asked gruffly, "What's got you so stoked?"

John turned to him with a wink, "I'm just proud I worked something out before Rodney."

Once the consequent laughter had subsided, Rodney gestured for his commanding officer and friend to explain just what it was he had managed to deduce before his immensely smarter coworker.

"The reason why Sam is ageing backwards is because he's too old, meaning that The Book of Na'Tano is aware that earlier was the first time Sam was hooked up to the device. Sam being fifteen and registering physically as almost an adult male means that he has begun his 'reeducation' too late, thus the machine is trying to turn back time so that its user is young enough to be able to benefit fully from the device." John finished and looked at the abject horror reflected in the eyes and faces of his friends.

Jennifer picked up the line of inquiry, "So the device is attempting to manipulate his body making him ill, but it thinks its doing him a favour but because he's a human teenager, The Book of Na'Tano is killing him."

Daniel peered at his old friends and pleaded, "Well, now we've established what is going on with the device and the body of my son, can we please turn our attentions to the effort to fix the deageing before Sam dies?"