Ophidia
A Stargate Atlantis Fanfic
Thursday, 16 August 2007

Chapter 13: Stopgap

Teyla pointed towards the ocean water. "You have to retrieve it! Go, I'll go after Rodney!"

After a moment's hesitation, Ronon turned and clambered over the railing, diving after the sinking tablet.

Now, she thought, moving after McKay again. Now we will discover who you really are.

Teyla's stunner preceded her, and this time when she caught glimpse of McKay running ahead, she fired without pause, growing ever more agitated as it missed.

Ahead, the scientist ducked around a corner, only to spin back out and fire at her. Teyla took a step sideways herself, flinching as the metal ricocheted off of the panel ahead of her. If she could keep him running like this, he would run out of ammunition eventually.

However, as they moved further from the area that was being drained, the water grew higher, making it that much more difficult to get through. Ahead, McKay ducked through a door that led inside the City. Moving cautiously, Teyla approached the same door, ducking low before stepping close enough to open it.

She was in a two storied room, near the top of a staircase. The water was running past her legs and spilling over the edges of the upper floor to fill the room below. Carefully, she scrutinized what she could see of the watery location in the early light, seeing no sign of the scientist. Hope began to diminish as she moved down the stairs— the water was very clear; he could not be hiding beneath its surface. At last on the bottom floor, submerged up to her waist, Teyla moved about, but found nothing. She exhaled loudly, closing her eyes.

"Teyla!" The voice seemed to have come from outside, but she did not answer immediately.

Letting out a small yell of frustration, the woman slammed the stunner into a nearby table. She heard Ronon calling her name again, more anxiously this time, and called, "I'm here!" As the large man emerged at the top of a staircase in the wide room, she added, clearly upset, "He escaped."

After a moment of considering what to say, Ronon realized that nothing would help, and instead climbed down to join her. When he reached the bottom, he held up the tablet— some water seemed to have seeped under the edges of the screen, but amazingly it was still working. Teyla nodded after a moment. "You gonna tell me why getting this thing was more important than getting McKay?" he asked, after another pause.

Teyla closed her eyes again, knowing full well that the latter likely would not have happened had she not stopped Ronon from going after McKay. When she opened them though, there seemed to be a fire in her expression. "There are people trapped in the lower levels of the City, including John and Elizabeth, in imminent danger. That is how he was sabotaging Atlantis, and how it will be undone," she added, nodding to the thing in Ronon's hand.

Still not happy, but at least less annoyed, Ronon gave the device in his hands a good look. "You have any idea how to work this?" he eventually asked.

Teyla hesitated before answering. "No," she eventually admitted. Glancing around, her eyes fell on another piece of technology, mounted handily to the wall. "But perhaps we do not need to."

Lorne was getting regular updates from the medical staff— in part, because he was helping run things up here. But mostly because he wanted to know whenever someone new had been retrieved. And still, the two he found himself growing most anxious about hadn't been found yet.

For a moment, he paused just beyond the city-wide lifesigns detector. Some scientists were playing with it— they could get it to display every once in a while, but they couldn't get it to shift the display. Such as, to the sublevel the chair was situated on. He had left a standing order with them to make that the first level they checked if they found a way to fix it.

Moving back to the center of the Control Room, he stood next to Weir, who was talking quietly with the technician fighting with the communication controls. After a few seconds, she rose to look at him, but Lorne shook his head. Worry lines creased her forehead, and she glanced down at the Stargate, and the many people huddled down in the room around it. There wasn't much left to say that hadn't already been said. It seemed like they were going no where, but if they didn't figure out a way to bring Atlantis under control, people were going to start dying.

"Ma'am;" the voice of the technician beside them brought both leaders out of their thoughts, but it was Weir who asked him what had happened. There was definitely a note of excitement to the tech's voice as he fiddled with the Ancient controls in front of him. "I think I've got something… give me a sec to make this work… okay, there we go," he said, and suddenly Weir and Lorne could hear a very familiar voice.

"Teyla?" she asked, leaning over the desk.

"Dr. Weir!" was the surprised reply. "You are all right!"

Weir shot Lorne a somewhat amused glance. "More or less."

"Is Sheppard with you?" came Ronon's voice, not surprising Weir too much. Her amusement faded, though, and a frown pulled at the corner of her mouth.

"I'm… afraid not," she said, reluctantly. "He's stuck in a flooded, lower level of the City."

"I believe we may have a way to reverse the damage," Teyla provided, sounding somewhat hopeful. That alone caught Weir's attention; the Athosian seemed to sense this, and continued. "We discovered it was Rodney McKay who was causing all of these disasters—" The conversation seemed to have attracted several listeners in the room, as Weir heard intense muttering going on behind her at that— even from the other end of the line, where she suspected Ronon was saying a few choice words of his own. Herself, she couldn't keep her head from hanging, deflating somewhat. Continuing; "We were unable to catch him, but we have his work tablet."

Someone nearby snapped their fingers, and said, "Of course!" Weir looked over at the scientist, who said, "We couldn't get access to the system… we thought it was a problem with our interfaces. He must have routed all command authority to a single input," he mused, and Weir very nearly laughed at Lorne's baffled expression, though she could sympathize. "If you can get that back to the Control Room," the scientist said, missing the major's look and moving closer to the microphone, "we can fix everything from here."

"I don't think that will work," someone else said, and Weir and the scientist turned to see someone seated at a console behind them. Their eyes were on the Ancient display and they appeared rather worried. "Water's still rising, including on the piers where they are. They'll never get back through fast enough."

The general atmosphere in the Control Room seemed to become that much more heavy; after a moment, Weir turned to the scientist next to her. "Could you walk them through it?" she asked, quietly.

He opened his mouth once, gaped like a fish for a few moments, before closing it and shaking his head. "Code's not single-purposed… he could have done any number of…" The man trailed off as Weir held one hand up.

"Hey." Ronon was apparently back on the radio. "If something were to, say… happen to this thing… wouldn't control go back to you? Like, default or something?"

Those collected around the microphone paused, sharing their confusion. "Possibly," the scientist said, tilting his head to one side and trying to turn the problem over in his head. "But…"

After a moment, Weir suddenly realized where this was going. "Ronon," she started—

A painfully loud sound of energy weapons' fire came through the radio, making them all jump, before quite a bit of electric crackling. Closing her eyes, Weir placed one hand on her face, groaning softly.

"Did he… did you just shoot it?" the scientist demanded in a disbelieving voice. "We might not ever be able to get control back! We might—"

"Hey!" someone interrupted from across the room. "I… I've got access to the system!" Similar jubilant cries were going up around the room, and Weir was quick to step up.

"Get us back up and get the water drained out," she ordered, voice ringing out over the many other. "Then try to fix those malfunctioning filters and the temperature control— everything else is secondary!" Turning to Lorne, she said, "Make sure the medical teams are ready to move out, and send one down to—"

"I know," he cut in, and he even flashed a smile before dashing down the stairs into the Gateroom, taking them two at a time.

Weir sighed, leaning back against the desk and watching the Control Room spring to life once more. They had survived this crisis. One thing at a time, she told herself.

The radio crackled one more time behind her, and Weir had to laugh, feeling such a sense of relief that she could.

"By the way, you're welcome."

"…Thank you Ronon," she said, somewhat impishly, before rolling her eyes.

But the cheerful feeling soon faded, along with the radio's static. This isn't a solution, she couldn't help but think. This was a temporary respite at best, a pause to recover. If we don't catch Rodney… She tried to swallow the lump that formed in her throat at that; and soon...

Even unsaid, the rest was implicit. Weir looked over the people rushing across the room, with a new sense of purpose to their movements. Her people. They needed her to keep her head above all this… because they weren't out of this boat yet— not by a long shot.