Part X: Another shorter section. Lots of twists and turns, so keep your seatbelt fastened and your tray tables in the upright position!
John dropped Rodney off at his quarters after repeatedly assuring him of his safety and making sure that he went to sleep. John felt like he could sleep for years, but he had to get some answers. That meant recon- recon of his people. He shook his head at that thought. He never saw this coming, he always thought that through everything, he could at least count on his team to support him and help keep Atlantis from falling. He was wrong. He hoped desperately that he was the one who was wrong about all of this.
Rodney squeezed his eyes shut in desperation of his own. He wanted to sleep, needed to sleep, but he couldn't turn his mind off. Why was John still so weak? Carson had said that he couldn't find anything wrong with him. He didn't know if John was aware of it, but John was looking worse by the minute, like the life was slowly being drained out of him. Sure, he would put up a brave front about it and assure Rodney that he was fine. John would say he was fine if his own arm was hanging off and he had a broken leg. Needless to say, Rodney didn't believe anything the Colonel said about his health without a grain of salt or adamant support from the Doctor.
Why did Elizabeth and Carson both deny that they knew where the Colonel was when John said that they had to have known? Forgetfulness? Covering something up? Goddamnit, they knew that he could never let a mystery stay that way. He had to chase down every lead to their natural conclusions and solve the problem. Hell, that was what he did and with flair, if he did say so himself.
Why was John jumping all over the place, seeing the future, different versions of the past and present? Was it due to the involvement of an Ancient as John thought? What would be the point? Why has he stopped?
How were the Wraith involved? John had been pretty sure that he saw Wraith text on an Atlantis laptop, with two officers observing with no obvious problems with it. John swore that he couldn't remember ever having seen those two before, but that could make sense if this John was from another dimension or timeline or something. Of course, he didn't remember them either, but all of the military types looked the same to Rodney. He had checked their personnel files when he had returned to his quarters and they seemed standard issue, nothing out of the ordinary.
What was he missing? Something that would tie all of this together.
John wandered around as unobtrusively as he could, especially trying to avoid members of the upper level leadership and the medical staff, all of which whom would thwart his plans to prowl around Atlantis, looking for something out of the ordinary. He needed to investigate those two officers, Captain Brown and Lieutenant Smith. C'mon, Smith and Brown? Those were the most generic names he could think of. He made his way to a lesser-frequented area of the South tower data station and accessed their personnel files. He reviewed them quickly, scanning for anything anomalous, something to jump out at him. He huffed in frustration, there was nothing weird about either one; their service records read like textbook examples. What did that mean? One, they were regular military officers who were assigned Atlantis and they accepted, based on their average computer programming skills? Or two, the more paranoid possibility, that they were plants, spies for organizations unknown. He couldn't rule out either possibility. His exhaustion was suddenly catching up to him and he felt drained. He slowly made his way back to his quarters and slipped in. He crawled into bed and didn't remember falling asleep.
John's dreams were anything but tame normally, but his on this night were positively terrifying. He kept dreaming about being captured by the Wraith and having the life being drained out of him, one excruciating minute after another. In others, it was his team members, Teyla and Rodney specifically, as Ford looked on and laughed. He felt powerless and without options in all of them and he finally woke drenched in sweat as the sun just rose above Atlantis' horizon.
He sat up and mentally reviewed each dream as if they were missions gone horribly wrong and thought about what he should have done differently. No answers came of it and as he stood up to stretch, his door chime rang out. He thought the door open and Rodney stepped through. "So, Colonel, anything new?" Rodney asked lightly, but John could tell that he was holding something back.
"No, not that I can think of. Why, is there something?" John sat on his bed and pulled on his boots and proceeded to tie them as Rodney remained silent. "Well?"
"I'll wait until you're done, this is important."
"Oookay, spill it."
"I don't think that anyone here is a spy for the Wraith or replacements or clones or anything like that. I think that it's us."
"Rodney, what the hell are you talking about?"
"I thought about this all night. I know, I know, sleep is good and all that. But I couldn't get all of these questions out of head, you know? You know how I can't turn down a problem or challenge. So, I looked at it like one of the problems that we would encounter here. First, define the problem. Second, figure out what you know. And third, figure out what you don't know. Go from there."
"Again, okay, but you're losing me." John really was losing him, but he knew from experience by feeding Rodney's ego a little bit, he tended to get to his point a little faster and in a more clear fashion.
"I know, try to follow." John nodded in response. "Yes, well, maybe the reason everything is all wonky for you and the reason why everyone seems to be trying to either work against us or worse…guiding us to divulge certain sensitive information. Maybe the reason is, we're the plants in this scenario and we're being pumped for information. That sounds crazy, I know. But think about it, what would be the point of an Ancient helping you, showing you the past, future, and other alternate realities? How much information have you shared with everyone as you've been trying to figure out what's been happening to you? What would that information mean to enemies of Atlantis? Heaven knows how many passwords, security protocols, and other sensitive information you or I inadvertently shared."
"Wait, wait." John put his hands up in surrender. "How do I know what you say is true? How do I know you're not one of them trying to get on my good side?"
"C'mon, Sheppard. Do you think that I would waste my time trying to explain this to you if I were just trying to get you to trust me? Have you noticed anything else weird?" Rodney stopped to catch his breath.
"Weird? Everything here is always weird. Don't you think that we should be looking for things that were too ordinary? When do we ever get ordinary?"
"Like what?"
"Like Smith and Jones for one. Their service records were too regular, too ordinary. Never grab anyone's attention. How would they have been tapped to go to Atlantis? Didn't you notice that?" John tried not to look smug when he saw the scientist's face fall a little.
"Well, um, no. But, I wasn't looking for it of course, and I'm not military. I'll leave that stuff to you." Rodney recovered his pride a small amount.
"How do explain the fact that I've been jumping all over the place and you haven't noticed anything different?" John was beginning to buy into this theory of Rodney's.
"Like you said, you're more suspicious of something that's too regular or ordinary, so they gave you an adventure, a huge mission, if you will, to carry out. Then they just sat back and waited for you to complete your mission, follow your training. For me, they left just enough breadcrumbs for me to follow and be distracted from what was really going on. The whole EEG suggestion from Zelenka when I was starting to ask too many questions about your situation. Getting me to talk to Heightmeyer so you could get pulled somewhere else without my noticing. Very, very slick. They just didn't figure on my figuring it out."
John looked around his quarters, thinking about where the cameras or the bugs could be hidden. It may not matter where they've been; they had been watched the whole time. Rodney noticed that the Colonel began searching his room and he placed a hand of John's shoulder. "It doesn't matter, we're not really here."
"What? Of course we are. I can touch you and everything else around here. I can think and I feel the same. What do you mean 'we're not really here'?" Realization dawned over the Colonel's face. "We're still in those damned Ancient artificial reality pods, aren't we? Everyone here is a Wraith, huh?" John sat down hard on his bed, cradling his chin in his hands.
"Bravo, Colonel, I didn't think that you'd come to that conclusion just yet. And yes, I don't think that we've ever left those pods. That everyone here is a Wraith or at least programmed to collect sensitive information. They may not even know that they aren't real. The Wraith could have found that ship, programmed all the intel they had and left it for us to find. We played right into their hands. What blows me away is how detailed everything is, everything just perfect. Did they perfect mind-scanning techniques or something?" Rodney started to look around the Colonel's room with a new appreciation for virtual reality constructs.
"They didn't have to, somehow they've tapped into my Ancient gene capabilities and have been able to influence me to a very great extent. They could have just convinced us that everything we see is just how it's supposed to be. You have the Ancient gene, too. But since it's not natural, maybe they couldn't affect you in the same way. Somehow, one of the Ancients must be involved here, maybe that's how they are making these connections."
"Hmm, makes sense. Big problem, though. We don't know how long we've actually been in here and if those involved can communicate with the outside world. If so, Atlantis is in great danger." Rodney started pacing.
"They'll know that Atlantis wasn't destroyed and they'll come back to finish the job and get to Earth."
"Precisely."
"We need to get out of here."
"And that worked so well last time."