Disclaimer: I don't own 'Stargate Atlantis' or any related concepts or characters; you know the drill by now. Also, the basic details of the plot were inspired by 'The Phantom of the Opera', although I have naturally put my own spin on things; hope it meets with your approval
Feedback: Always appreciated, trust me
The Phantom of Atlantis
The next morning, Doctor McKay came down to his laboratory, only to find Teyla standing in the middle of the room, looking anxiously at him with a metal object that McKay recognised as her necklace clutched in her hand.
"Teyla?" he asked, looking in confusion at the Athosian woman before him. "W-what are you doing here?"
"I… wished to talk with you about… recent events," Teyla replied, looking calmly back at the scientist as she spoke.
"Really?" McKay replied, his confusion slightly abating as he sat down at a nearby desk, indicating a chair just opposite him where Teyla could sit herself. "What about recent events?"
"The presence of the Phantom in Atlantis, for one thing," Teyla answered, as she sat opposite him.
Rodney blinked.
"The Phantom?" he repeated, surprise now his dominant emotion as he looked back at Teyla. "What do you want to talk about him for?"
"Well… I have been talking about him with Elizabeth recently, and I was simply curious to know your own opinion of him," Teyla replied, her expression now becoming slightly inquiring in nature as she looked at him. "It is simply that… well, I have been attempting to understand the way you perceive him as opposed to the way that he is perceived by my people, so as to better improve the ties between us. Since you are not one of the military personnel- and hence not directly required to obey Colonel Sumner's orders regarding him-, I felt it would not be a conflict of interest to ask for your honest opinion of him, ignoring your need to consider Colonel Sumner's orders to capture him."
"Really?" Rodney said, his tone neutral as he looked reflectively around his lab for a moment, evidently taking time to collect his thoughts on the matter before he spoke once again. "Uh… just to make sure, Sumner's not going to hear about what I say here, right?"
"Not at all," Teyla assured her with a brief shake of her head. "Whatever you tell me will remain between us, I assure you."
"Glad to hear it," Rodney replied, shooting her a brief, grateful smile as he paused in thought for a moment before he spoke again. "Well… personally speaking- and I'm only even considering this because I actually saw him when he drew away that energy thing; I wouldn't even be thinking this if I didn't know for a fact that he was out there-, when it comes to the Phantom, I'm really…"
He paused again for a brief moment, as though considering what he was about to say, before he spoke once again. "Well, I'm kind of ambivalent about the guy, when I think about it."
"Ambivalent?" Teyla repeated in confusion.
"Kinda feeling two different emotions about the same thing; it's complicated, I know, but that's just how I feel," Rodney said dismissively before he continued. "Anyway, my point is, while I'm more than a bit annoyed at the idea that we have somebody walking around here who knows more about Ancient technology than I do and still isn't willing to talk with us about it- I mean, seriously, what's with the whole secrecy thing he's got going on?-, given that he's saved the city as a whole at least once since we came here- plus, of course, his little save of us last night; given how long he's apparently meant to have been hanging around here I think it's safe to say he'd have learned the control necessary to pull off a trick like that-, I'm more than a bit inclined to cut him a break."
"So… you believe that he means us no harm?" Teyla asked, wanting to ensure that she had understood her new teammate before she said anything else.
"Well, I think that he might cause some by not telling us about the technology in here that we might trip by accident, but I don't think he'd actually do anything that would cause us harm, if that's what you mean," Rodney replied, briefly turning back to his equipment before he realised that Teyla was still standing in the lab rather than having left after he'd given her his answer. "Is there something else?"
For a moment the young Athosian leader was silent, clearly uncertain about saying what she was about to say, before she finally nodded resolutely and looked up at the scientist once again.
"I… I have a theory about how the Wraith were able to find us on the planet yesterday," she said, the slightly anxious look on her face making it clear that she was at least slightly afraid of getting into trouble for what she was about to reveal but nevertheless determined to say it.
"You have?" Rodney asked, looking at her in confusion. "What is it?"
"It is… complicated," Teyla replied, before she reached underneath her hair behind her neck and removed a necklace, subsequently passing it to Rodney. "Can you… analyse this for me?"
"Huh?" Rodney said, as he took the necklace from her and looked at it in confusion. The actual string that formed the necklace he instantly dismissed as nothing remarkable- it looked like nothing more than the usual material that would be found in a civilisation on the same level as the Athosians- but the actual 'locket'- or whatever the correct term was- was actually rather interesting. It may have been only a simple metal circle with some kind of small green gem in the centre, but even the non-artistically-inclined Rodney couldn't help but admire the amount of craftsmanship that must have gone into this thing, given the Athosians' apparent lack of metallurgical tools based on what he'd heard from Sumner and Ford…
Shaking his head to force himself back on track- one of the curses of being a genius; sometimes when faced with trivial questions he tended to start thinking about wider 'issues' before he could stop himself-, Rodney turned back to look at Teyla.
"Uh… it's nice?" he said uncertainly, looking at the woman before him in confusion. "Just… what do you want me to do with it, exactly?"
"Find out if it is emitting a… signal of some kind," Teyla replied, pronouncing the words uncertainly but nevertheless continuing to meet the scientist's gaze. "I have… reason to believe that you will find something."
"Really?" Rodney said, trying to conceal his natural scepticism as he studied the necklace he now held in his hand. For a moment he thought about simply rejecting the idea instantly- the concept of something like this being the reason for the Wraith's knowledge of their attacks was almost ridiculous-, but when he recalled some of the other things that the Stargate program had encountered over the years according to the files- the age-accelerating nanites, the ZPMs, the various time-manipulating devices such as the Asgard time dilation device-, the concept of a locket acting as a tracking device of some kind was hardly that ridiculous.
Besides, Rodney mused, as he reached over to turn on his laptop and connected it up to one of the scanners they'd brought in the event of them attempting to trace radio signals of some sort, placing the locket under it even as he began to run the scans, it's not like it's going to take much time to confirm or deny this particular theory either way; just a few minutes on a broad-spectrum scan, and…
His eyes widened.
"Huh," he said, staring in surprise as he read the information currently displayed on the laptop in front of him. "What do you know?"
"What do I know?" Teyla repeated, looking at the scientist in confusion.
"This thing is giving off a signal…" McKay said, looking up at the Athosian woman in surprise. "It's not powerful enough to send a signal through subspace, but it is there; my guess is there are probably relay devices that probably pick up the transmission and alert the nearest hive ship on certain planets…"
"Such as the planet we returned to yesterday?" Teyla asked, looking inquiringly at Rodney. "It was the former location of one of their ships, after all; maybe they wish to keep those locations monitored to protect themselves from any attempts to attack them while they hibernate?"
Despite himself, Rodney had to admit that he was impressed; for a woman who'd been living in a hunter/gatherer society only a couple of months ago, Teyla was starting to grasp the essentials of scientific principles pretty well.
Of course, he mused, allowing himself a brief moment of satisfied thought, with regular access to me during our mission training sessions, how could she not improve her scientific expertise from such a basic background-
Mid-sentence, another thought occurred to him.
"What made you think the locket was the reason?" he asked, looking at her. "I mean, no offence, but the idea of this locket having a transmitter isn't exactly the kind of thing that I'd expect you to think of; what gave you the idea that it was behind the Wraith thing?"
"It was the Phantom," Teyla replied simply.
"Oh, right, that makes sense," Rodney said, shrugging casually as he reached over to continue his earlier experiment before his brain caught up with what he had just heard.
"Hold on; the Phantom gave you that idea?" he said, looking up from his equipment to stare at her in surprise. "When did he do that?"
"He…" Teyla began, pausing for a moment as she looked uncertainly around herself before continuing. "He visited me in my room last night and told me about it."
Rodney blinked.
That was unexpected.
"He actually told you that this locket was a transmitter?" he asked, picking up the object in question and holding it in front of Teyla.
"He said that he believed it was involved in how the Wraith managed to discover us during our last trip off-world; beyond that, he said that I should ask you to find the evidence for further confirmation," Teyla replied, as she turned to look earnestly at the scientist. "Please, you must not tell Colonel Sumner that the Phantom told us about this; there is no telling how he shall react to it if he knows that it comes from the Phantom."
"But it's genuine-" McKay began, only to stop as he thought more about what Teyla had said.
He had to admit, the Athosian had a point; Colonel Sumner probably meant well, but Rodney had been in the medical bay when he'd learned that it was apparently the Phantom that had been responsible for the gateship making it through the Stargate before the time had run out. Like when the Phantom had lured that energy creature through the Stargate, he'd acknowledged that the man's actions had helped them, but at the same time he'd made it clear that he objected to the man's independent manner of doing things; he could have simply told someone how to operate the chair in that manner rather than assaulting one of the expedition staff to do it himself.
If Sumner knew that this information came from the Phantom, even if McKay had confirmed it before he knew what he was looking for, it might at the very least put the information on somewhat shaky ground with Atlantis's military commander…
After a moment's thought, McKay shrugged slightly as he looked back at Teyla.
"Well, I won't tell him where you got the idea from if you won't," he said finally.
Despite the serious implications of the discovery they had just made, Teyla couldn't help but smile slightly back at him.
They had discovered their first potential breakthrough in their new struggle against the Wraith.
All that they needed to do now was report it and figure out a way to exploit it for themselves.
As McKay and Teyla discussed the implications of their latest discovery, neither knew that the man responsible for them making it in the first place was currently sitting in one of the nearby maintenance shafts, a slight smile under his mask as he studied them.
Talking to Teyla and allowing her to tell McKay about him had been a risk, of course- it had taken all of his courage just to try giving Elizabeth that shield device, and he'd had prior experience to help him determine that she wouldn't hand him over to Sumner at a moment's notice- but he'd felt that it was a risk worth taking on the McKay front. He might have some ideas about Athosian culture- they were a surprisingly well-travelled group, for all their limited technology; he'd visited quite a few planets where they seemed to have spent at least some time during his travels, judging by the similar clothing and distinctive crops and herbs he'd seen in some markets while in a cloaked jumper scouting for Wraith and food- but Doctor McKay had been more of an unknown factor; the man was a genius, but he was also more than a bit of a pain when it came to scientific breakthroughs, given that he seemed to often try to almost take credit for other people's discoveries…
But, when you got down to it, he'd seen enough to know that McKay wasn't a bad person; he was just sometimes a bit too caught up in his own genius to realise that other people could have their own opinions on things.
Plus, of course, it was somehow… nice… to know that it wasn't only Elizabeth and the Athosians who thought that Sumner was being a bit over-the-top with his attitude towards him; the expedition leader's opinion might be the one that mattered most to him in the current situation, of course, but he hardly wanted to rely solely on her good will in the event that he was ever actually captured (He was good at staying hidden, but he wouldn't kid himself into thinking that he was so good he'd never be caught; these guys were very good at what they did).
Now, as he watched them walk out of the laboratory, McKay already calling Elizabeth to ask for her and Sumner to meet him in the conference room, all he needed to do was wait to see what they decided to do with the information that he'd provided for them, and bingo; as the old saying went, Robert was his mother's brother.
He doubted they'd get much from their subsequent… acquisition (He'd long stopped thinking of the Wraith as being people; their automatic need to kill did little to endear them to him)… of course, but it was still likely that they'd manage to get something, no matter how small it might be in the large-scale picture of things.
He'd learned long ago in his new life that, sometimes, you couldn't do anything to affect the big picture; you just had to do what you could on the small scale and hope that it would be enough to turn the tide in the long run.
"So," Elizabeth said as she sat in the conference room, a still-not-quite-one-hundred-percent Sumner sitting to her left as Teyla and Doctor McKay stood opposite her, studying the locket she held in her hand, "you're saying that this is the reason you were attacked?"
"Precisely," McKay confirmed, nodding at her as he briefly exchanged a glance with Teyla whose underlying motive Elizabeth couldn't immediately determine before turning back to her. "As far as I can determine, it can't transmit through subspace or anything like that, so our best guess is that the Wraith have relay devices on certain planets that pick up the transmission and subsequently send off a signal; given that the last planet we were on was used as a location for one of their main ships, it seems like that the Wraith
"If you had this when you were a child," Sumner asked, looking critically at the Athosian woman standing before him- his body still hadn't totally recovered its strength from being attacked by the giant insect, although Beckett assured him that he'd be back on his feet in a couple of days-, "then why weren't you attacked then?"
"Doctor McKay speculated that the locket was only activated when it was picked up by Captain Gemmel while I was showing him the ruins during your initial visit to Athos," Teyla replied. "I had possessed the locket as a child when it was given to me by my father, but I lost it among the ruins years ago."
"As you might recall, Gemmel had the Ancient gene; that's probably why he activated it when it had been dormant for centuries beforehand," McKay put in, a satisfied smile on his face as he looked over at the two expedition leaders. "As we've already established, at some point the Wraith and the Ancients were at war. Therefore, it only makes sense that, at some point, they would build a device capable of allowing them to track Ancients. The device probably shut down after it went for centuries without detecting any Ancients, only to be kicked back into action when Captain Gemmel picked it up; any Athosian wearing it would have been just another human, but Gemmel's gene evidently worked well enough for him to set it off instead."
"So, essentially, when the Wraith came after you on that planet, they came because they detected the signal from this?" Elizabeth asked, looking thoughtfully at the locket in her hands.
"So, if we can find any other planets with these relay devices on them…" Sumner mused, nodding thoughtfully as he looked at the device in Elizabeth's hands.
"We could maybe use it to set a trap for them," McKay confirmed, nodding at the military commander. "I've already started trying to figure out how to detect the presence of relay devices on other planets; if we can find a likely-looking location, we might just be able to spring our own little surprise on the Wraith… if that's all right with you, sir," he added, nodding respectfully over at Colonel Sumner.
"Permission granted," Sumner replied, a slight smile on his face as he nodded back at McKay. "Nice work, Doctor; we might just be able to turn the tide of this conflict after all."
The subsequent mission went off about as well as could be expected. Having examined the next few addresses available from the Ancient database for any signs of the relay devices that sent a signal from the locket to the Wraith, McKay finally found a decent location, on a planet where the Stargate was located amid a small collection of ruins and ships had difficulty landing, thus forcing the Wraith to come for them on foot if they were going to come at all.
Having lain various explosives around the ruins, arming themselves with stun-guns and flash grenades to better take the Wraith by surprise, the team for the current mission- consisting of Sumner's usual team and around half-a-dozen extra marines- had found themselves confronted by three Wraith foot soldiers and one Wraith leader, distinguished from his fellows by his lack of armour and long dark coat. The explosives had almost instantly eliminated two of the Wraith soldiers, the third one choosing to activate a self-destruct system implanted into his armour rather than be captured, but, thanks to Teyla's actions, they had managed to successfully capture the leader of the Wraith 'strike force', Teyla keeping him occupied with her stick fighting long enough for Sumner to take the Wraith by surprise with one of their own stunners.
With the assault team having been debriefed and the Wraith technology that had been acquired from the bodies taken off to some of the labs for study- with strict orders not to take apart the stunners until the scientists were certain of putting them back together-, the newly-captured Wraith was left to stand silently inside the cage where the Atlantis expedition had imprisoned him, staring around at his surroundings with evident contempt as two guards waited outside the door to the prison area; given the Wraiths' apparent telepathic abilities, nobody wanted to remain in a room with one for longer than was necessary.
The status of the city he now found himself in was almost pathetic, when the Wraith reflected on it; these people were clearly not the long-lost adversaries of the Wraith, the Altereans, but they used their technology and thought that it would grant them the power necessary to oppose the Wraith.
They had ruled this galaxy for the better part of the last ten thousand years; did these people, who clearly had not been in this city for even the merest fraction of that time, believe that they could succeed where the Altereans had failed?
They were Wraith.
They would prevail.
Nothing could stop them…
The faint sound of footsteps outside the 'cell' prompted the Wraith to look up in the direction of the sound, only for his eyes to narrow as he saw a dark figure, apparently wearing black, standing in one corner of the room, staring pointedly in his direction.
"Again?" he said, allowing himself a brief grin as he stared at the new arrival. "Your kind is persistent; I would have thought that you would have given up by now."
The figure simply stood silently in the corner, looking at the Wraith in a manner that was difficult even for the Wraith's superior night-vision to determine in the dim lighting that dominated the cell. After a moment's silence, the Wraith spoke again.
"You waste your time," he said briefly. "I will provide you with no information."
When the man standing before him- and he was increasingly sure it was a man; the figure's bearing gave no suggestion that it was female- continued to meet his statements with only silence, the Wraith spoke again.
"You might think that you've won a victory by my capture," he said, grinning slightly as he moved ever closer to the walls of the cage where the figure stood outside, "but by bringing me here, you've only hastened your own doom. It's only a matter of time before the others of my kind come to rescue me, and when they do…"
He allowed himself a brief pause in order to ensure that his adversary- he was one of his captors; that made him an adversary by definition- was still paying attention before he spoke once again. "There will be nowhere in this world you can hide."
For a moment, the silence continued to dominate the room, until the figure stepped out of the shadows and into the dim light surrounding the cell, the faint blue-green lighting instantly striking the silver mask the figure wore…
If it were possible for the Wraith to have heart attacks, the appearance of this figure would have caused one.
The Wraith hive ships rarely exchanged particularly detailed information with each other, mainly due to the low level of technology possessed by the various other civilisations that existed throughout the galaxy. The lack of any force in the Pegasus Galaxy that possessed enough power to stand against them meant that there was rarely any need for more than a few hive ships to know about any potentially significant threat to the Wraith's continued supremacy in this galaxy. The only rare exceptions to this rule included a few distant planets where it was believed some remnants of the Altereans' technology remained- a world where any Wraith darts attempting to cull the population were never found again, worlds where Wraith hive ships had taken such damage in the past that none had ever dared to return again-, and, of course, the man currently standing before the Wraith now.
In all of the Pegasus Galaxy, this man alone had done more damage to the Wraith in the past ten years than they had sustained in the previous thousand, using technology that they had hoped never to witness again.
The Wraith might be arrogant, but they knew that, in the end, they'd only survived the war with the Alterans thanks to sheer weight of numbers rather than any superior skill on their part. He'd initially dismissed these people as a threat due to their apparent lack of skill with the technology he now witnessed- they'd only used simple ballistic weapons when they had captured him- but if this man was working with them…
He would need to significantly re-evaluate their potential threat to Wraith dominance of this galaxy.
"Phantom…" the Wraith hissed, his eyes wide with fear as he stared at the figure before him, the man in question staring silently back at him with his arms folded under his long black cloak. "You are here…"
As the Phantom advanced towards the cage, the Wraith could not help but step backwards slightly; even the knowledge that the cage would not allow the Phantom inside from this direction any more than it would allow him to get out did little to help his comfort in this situation.
If he had been facing any other human, he would never have allowed himself to show this kind of weakness, but with all access to his hive temporarily cut off from him, and faced with the one man in all the galaxy to have gone up against no less than three Wraith Lords simultaneously and come out the victory, he doubted that there were many Wraith in his position who would not show fear.
"What do you want?" he hissed, trying to regain his original control over the situation; no matter how terrible the Phantom's reputation, he would not allow his fear to control him.
After a moment's silence, the Phantom spoke.
"Make sure you play nice," he said, a slight smirk visible at the left corner of his mouth, the right side partly concealed by the mask that had become his most distinguishing feature among all Wraith. "Also, if you get out…"
He left the sentence hanging in the air, but the Wraith understood the implication all too well.
Even if he managed to escape captivity here, the Phantom would be waiting for him.
"Remember that," the Phantom said simply after a few seconds' pause, evidently wanting to make sure that the Wraith understood what he was being told.
With that, the Phantom turned around and walked away from the cage, melting back into the shadows that filled the room before he vanished from the Wraith's sight.
AN: OK, since the next few eps aren't going to be SIGNIFICANTLY altered by the Phantom's presence- substitute Sumner for Sheppard and take away his ability to manipulate the hallucination generated for him by those mist-things and you've pretty much got everything you need to know about what happened so far-, next chapter jumps straight to one of my all-time-favourite Atlantis episodes, featuring the moment when the Phantom finally breaks his silence and speaks to the expedition…
Guess which ep I'm talking about?