Please see first chapter for disclaimer, rating, warnings, pairings, etc.

Part 11/?

-Chapter 11-

Vanished

"Atlantis, this is Sheppard. We have Ronon and Teyla, and are headed back to the city."

Elizabeth put her elbows on top of her desk and dropped her forehead against her clasped hands as she blew out a quick breath. However, what John hadn't said quickly tempered her relief. His omission of reporting Ronon and Teyla as "okay" meant one, or both, were injured—perhaps seriously. They were alive, though. She knew she should just be thankful for that.

Looking though her office's glass wall into the control room, she saw Chuck give her a cautious thumbs up. She put a hand up to her headset, but John spoke again before she could transmit a reply. "Atlantis, ETA is nine minutes. Please have medical teams standing by in the jumper bay. Jumper One out."

"'Nine minutes'?" Pushing to her feet, Elizabeth saw her own concern mirrored on Chuck's young face. She walked as swiftly as she could from her office to the control room, nodding quick confirmation for him to put the call through to the infirmary. By the time she reached him, he had already called up a tracking display on the control room's main viewing screen.

Pointing to it, he said, "It looks like Colonel Sheppard is following a suborbital trajectory back, ma'am, rather than flying straight. It'll cut their transit time way down." He exchanged a sober look with her. "Med teams are scrambling now."

"Thank you, Chuck." Her eyes tracked the fast-moving dot representing Jumper One. "Please let New Athos know they can recall their search teams. I'm going up to the bay to meet them." She patted his shoulder before turning toward the steps leading up into the jumper bay. As she set a hand on the staircase's railing, she noticed someone standing in the door to the meteorological station, and gave him a vague, automatic smile.

In response the man took a hesitant step out of the doorway. "Excuse me, ma'am?" he questioned softly. "Is everything – all right?"

She quickly composed herself, pasting on her most reassuring smile. "Yes, of course it is. Colonel Sheppard just reported that Ronon and Teyla have been found."

Something unidentifiable briefly flickered in his pale blue eyes. "Are they unharmed?"

"We'll soon know," Elizabeth told him. "They'll be here in a few minutes. I'm just on my way up to meet them."

The scientist smiled very slightly in response. "Thank you for taking time to share the news with me, Doctor Weir."

"Thank you for your concern—um. . .? I do apologize, I can't seem to recall your name."

"Payne." He spoke softly, a blush creeping up his neck. "Doctor Payne. I came here on the Daedalus." He retreated back into the small room under the stairs.

Elizabeth continued on up the steps, feeling slightly unsettled by the encounter. Doctor Payne had struck her as being a little intense; not much, just enough to send a prickle down the back of her neck. Of course, everyone on Atlantis knew about the upcoming wedding, was deeply concerned about the fate of Jumper Seven. . . Ah! She nearly smiled as a possible explanation occurred to her: this young scientist must have a crush on Teyla! Well, if so, he was far from the first, and probably wouldn't be the last. She dismissed the encounter from her mind in favor of more pressing concerns.

-Atlantis-

Payne withdrew into the met station. He began trembling violently, very glad he was alone at the moment. He wanted to scream in frustration, to break something, to kill something—

No one should have survived the sabotaged jumper's crash! Yet somehow, Emmagan and Dex still lived. He didn't understand how his careful planning could have been unsuccessful. And not just the jumper sabotage had failed of its purpose: the laboratory explosion hadn't seemed to cause any consternation among the Atlantians at all.

He forced himself to sit again, to appear outwardly calm and controlled – again. He would destroy Atlantis; he still totally believed he would succeed in his intent. But he was unable to deny that he hadn't managed to eliminate a serious threat to himself and his success. And now, Weir posed another threat. He rubbed his hands together. She was strong, she was clever, and he had, however briefly, drawn her attention to himself through his need for information. The sooner he killed her, the safer he would be.

And not just Weir. Dex and Emmagan still had to die.

He began to weave his plans anew.

-Atlantis-

Ronon drifted by degrees back into awareness of his surroundings. There was a semi-yielding surface under him, propping his head and shoulders at a slight angle, and a faintly astringent smell teasing at his nose. He felt no sharp pains, just an encompassing ache. Sounds registered next: far-off footsteps; a chair creaking; the brushing of fabric on fabric very close at hand. He made his eyes open.

It took a moment for him to accept what he saw – a partitioned-off cubicle in Atlantis's infirmary – as real. But. . . He'd been in a jumper, though, hadn't he? He was sure he'd been in a jumper, before the world started going around and around and around—

"Hey, Ronon, buddy." Sheppard's hushed voice came from his left. He turned his head in that direction to see his team leader and Doctor Weir sitting next to the gurney serving as his bed. "How're you feeling?"

After a couple of tries, he managed to croak, "Not sure how I got here." Ronon felt as though his mind was in pieces. Sheppard helped Weir stand so they could both lean over him. Movement to his right pulled his eyes to that side. McKay and Zelenka were there, looking down at him with identically anxious expressions. He rolled his head on the pillow, trying to crane his neck to see around them. Teyla – why didn't he see Teyla—?

All the scattered pieces of his mind crashed into place at once.

"Teyla!"

Ronon tried to hurl himself to his feet. Four pairs of hands instantly reached to restrain him. Sheppard's growled, "Quit fighting us, you'll hurt Elizabeth!" cut through his sudden panic. Muttering an incoherent apology, he eased back again at their urging.

Doctor Weir kept one hand on his left arm, the other on his shoulder as she bent over him, her green eyes warm with sympathy and concern. "Teyla's in surgery, Ronon," she said soothingly. "Since none of us can be with her, and we didn't want you waking up alone, we all came here to wait. We'd like to stay – if you don't mind?"

"Yeah, thanks, that'd be good." Ronon, looking down at the clean scrubs clothing him, realized he felt cleaner in general. He took in more details about himself. His right arm rested in a sling, while an IV fed a slow, steady drip through a taped-down needle in the back of his left hand. Sliding a quick glance at the IV bag, he saw it was more than half empty. His forehead furrowed. Evidently, he'd been out for some time. Which meant Teyla had probably been in surgery for at least—

Sheppard caught the look. "About five and a half hours," he said, answering the implicit question. "Maybe getting closer to six." His lips twitched briefly in a crooked grin as he added offhandedly, "I talked them into disconnecting you from the heart monitor a long time ago -- the beeping was kinda getting on our nerves." He hooked a foot around a leg of Weir's chair, pulling it closer to the side of the gurney, then did the same with his own. Zelenka and McKay settled again on his right. "Ronon, I hate to bring this up—" Doctor Weir put a hand on his knee as if to stop him; the colonel covered it with his own and went right on "—but right before you lost consciousness, you said something about Jumper Seven being sabotaged? That we have a traitor in Atlantis?"

With an effort, Ronon forced himself to concentrate on Sheppard's questions, rather than on wondering what was happening with Teyla. "Yeah, it's the only thing that makes sense. I know the jumpers all get thorough, routine checks. There's no way ours could have gone that bad that fast without its being tampered with. I know for sure it wasn't pilot error." He met the colonel's eyes earnestly. "Lieutenant Johnson fought to the very end to bring us down safely, or at least close enough to the mainland to give us a fighting chance." His voice went raspy. "If he has any family on Earth, they need to know he died a hero. You," he had to pause to swallow the lump in his throat, "you found him?"

Sheppard nodded and looked quickly away, his jaw muscles tightening. Beside him, Weir blinked away tears. "We did. He'll be going home on the Daedalus's next trip. And -- I'll make sure his family knows what you said." He sucked a deep breath and rubbed the back of his neck. "So now we have a traitor and a Wraith to contend with. This galaxy really goes in for the two-for-one specials."

Ronon frowned and pushed up into a sitting position, grimacing slightly as his stiffened muscles protested the effort. "Wraith? What Wraith?" He looked from face to face. "Here in Atlantis?"

Weir very precisely folded her hands together. "I thought we had agreed not to trouble Ronon with this just now." She gave Sheppard a pointed look. He returned it, looking unfazed and determined.

"Hm, well, that does solve the problem of how a Wraith could have sabotaged a jumper and a lab." McKay leaned back in his chair and crossed an ankle over his knee. He gestured widely, then dropped his hands to rest on his thighs again. "It couldn't have done so. However, it doesn't explain how a Wraith got into the city in the first place, or how it's eluded our internal sensor sweeps." He caught Weir's transferred stare. "What?" He sounded genuinely bewildered. "We're helping to distract the man!"

"It's okay," Ronon said as Weir threw her hands up and rolled her eyes in disbelief. "Really." He meant it, too. Now Teyla's wellbeing was in other hands than his, he knew that without something to distract him from his worry, he would soon be kicking holes in the walls. Or tearing chunks out of them. He drew his left leg up so he could rest his forearm across his knee. "Now, what Wraith?"

He listened intently as Sheppard gave him a concise summary of recent events on Atlantis. At the end, he asked, "Do you think it's been hibernating in one of the water-damaged parts of the city ever since the attack, and only recently woke up?"

Weir sighed, apparently giving in, and said, "It's true there are parts of the city where the sensor network is down. And Carson did say Doctor Sharapov was in the habit of going off on his own."

"If he ventured into the wrong place at the wrong time. . ." Zelenka pushed his glasses up on his nose and let his voice trail off.

Ronon briefly locked eyes with Sheppard, and nodded slightly. The colonel tipped his head back in subtle acknowledgment and said, "Now we know it's here, we'll find it and get rid of it. I'm more concerned about our traitor problem."

It was getting harder and harder to sit quietly. Without realizing it, Ronon began tensely flexing the fingers of his left hand. "I know you've got procedures now to look for things like what Caldwell had. But maybe the Trust has slipped in somebody who's willing to work for them without a—" He made a couple of vague passes with his left hand over the back of his neck, the IV line flopping along his arm. Returning to his former position, he absently resumed opening and closing his fist. The back of his hand pinched and stung around the taped-down needle, but he ignored it.

Weir's eyes flickered to his hand and away again. "It's a possibility. We certainly know it's a well-documented fact how dominating the Goa'uld can be. Though," she slid a look Sheppard's way, "I do hate to think our security screening is so fallible."

"Or maybe somebody has just gone nuts," Zelenka put in with a shrug. "As we all know, this is not exactly low-stress environment."

Ronon saw McKay open his mouth, the expression on his face portending some blighting comment. At that moment, the sound of slow, scuffing footsteps approaching reached his ears. Dread shivered through him. Throwing off his covers so he could swing his legs over the left side of the gurney, he stood, eyes fixed on the screened off opening to the improvised cubicle.

"Ronon?" Sheppard and Weir were on their feet too, as were McKay and Zelenka on the other side of the gurney, worried eyes on him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Weir half-extend a hand toward him. "What is it?"

"Someone's coming." He couldn't keep the hoarseness from his voice. They all heard it now. Ronon saw tenseness stiffen their stances. Weir edged closer to Sheppard, who put an arm around her shoulders. Seemingly unaware of doing so, McKay reached out and clenched a fistful of the discarded blanket. Ronon's heart began to pound in hard, fast beats as his chest tightened.

The footsteps paused, just on the other side of the movable screen now. Ronon was certain he heard someone sigh deeply. Somewhere deep in his gut denial built to a nearly unbearable level, a passionate desire not to have to hear, or deal with, what he feared was coming. He made himself stand still, every muscle rock hard with the effort.

Doctor Beckett, still in his blood-spattered surgical scrubs, stepped around into view and halted. He looked first at Sheppard and Weir on Ronon's left; then to McKay and Zelenka beyond the gurney on his right. "Doc—" Against his will, the single syllable wrenched itself out of Ronon, when all he really wanted to scream was No!

Beckett, his long face lengthened even further by weariness, turned sad blue eyes in his direction. "Och, lad," he said, his soft Scots burr even more pronounced than usual, "we lost her—"

A red haze of grief and rage blotted out everything and everyone around him. Ronon retained just enough presence of mind to bring his left hand up to his right so he could claw the IV needle free, flinging it aside. Then, heedless of the voices calling his name, like some wounded creature seeking the solitude in which to die, he succumbed to the urge to run.

On some dim level, as he ran almost blindly through the halls of Atlantis, he noticed a few gaping faces here and there turning in surprise as he sprinted past. The first time he nearly tripped on a set of stairs, he tore off the sling inhibiting his balance and angrily threw it away. His sides and legs began to burn, his knees to ache, his lungs to cry out desperately for air. Still, he didn't stop, pausing only as long as it took to open any doors blocking his way. His heart, bursting with the agony of his loss, forced him onward until he finally staggered once, then again. He tried to regain his footing, but exhaustion weakened his reflexes. He collapsed to his knees. Only then did he realize he was actually outside the city, midway along one of its piers.

Chest heaving, Ronon knelt with bowed head, arms wrapped around his midriff. He shuddered uncontrollably with shock and disbelief. Sweat slicked his skin and glued his scrubs to his body. The ocean breeze blew cool across him, but he didn't feel it. His inner chill rendered inconsequential the outer.

Why? Why? Why? Throwing back his head, he stared up at the clear, thickly starred sky above him. Behind and to either side of him soared the towers of Atlantis, glowing golden and white with inner light. Scarcely realizing what he did, he shook his head in denial. How could such a thing still exist when beauty itself had just died? A cry of equal parts fiery rage and bitter pain irresistibly swelled within him. But when he opened his mouth, all that escaped his throat was a ragged sob.

"Teyla—" He choked on her name. "Teyla, my love, my almost wife—"

Brokenly slumping forward, Ronon shut his eyes against a world gone empty, and wept.

-To Be Continued-