Chapter 14
Pressure
Obstipui, Steterunque Comae Et Vox Faucibus Haesit
oOo
Rodney? Something, anything? What do you have?" John was alarmed, sounding almost desperate while he looked as he might fall over any minute.
"Stop looking over my shoulder! What happens if you enter a wrong password?"
John gave him a blank look.
"You get a hint!" Rodney punched the zero button until the device beeped when he hit he it for the eighth time. Eight digits.
"I don't know. It might just blow up in your face. Have you thought of that? We don't have time for games, Rodney." John's voice was almost shrill.
"Just go," Rodney yelled. "Run!"
"Not without you." John nearly lost his balance, but he grabbed Rodney's upper arm. Rodney resisted, grabbing the remote. He needed just another second. "Run." Rodney pushed John away. John stumbled out of Beckett's office, but Rodney didn't have the time to look after him, even when he heard a heavy thump outside.
Fifteen seconds. Rodney stared at the hologram. The answer had to be there.
9227465. Was that the hint? Rodney had recognized the sequence of course, but which eight-digit number?
14930352, 24157817, 39088169, 63245986, …
Ten seconds.
24157817. Rodney punched in the eight digits. For a terrifying moment, nothing happened, and then the device fell silent and clattered to the floor beneath Carson's desk. Rodney let out a breath he had been holding and steadied himself on the wall. The immediate threat gone, he suddenly realized how weak he was feeling. The adrenaline rush had given him strength, but was fading fast. Bracing himself at the wall, Rodney stumbled outside.
John hadn't gotten far. He had dropped a few feet outside the office. Rodney kneeled down to check his pulse, a welcome feeling of relief rushing through him when he found a steady beat. Rodney had many questions about what had happened, but right now, getting help for John and Cadman took precedent.
Rodney dully recalled John's warning not to trust anyone, but he didn't have the skills or the training to help Cadman, Sheppard and Dr. Millhouse. Hoping that the bomb was really disabled, Rodney staggered back into Carson's office and activated the comm. unit.
oOo
Elizabeth couldn't get warm. Despite the heavy blanket draped around her shoulders and knowing that the ambient temperature was within normal parameters, she was shivering. When the Wraith bomb had suddenly fallen off the wall, for a moment, she had thought it would fall down and explode, but it had simply crashed down on the metal floor and nothing had happened. Seconds later, the door had slid open as if nothing had ever happened.
She should be fine, Elizabeth kept telling herself, but it was as if her mind refused to process what had happened. They had come so close to dying.
"Dr. Weir." Elizabeth looked up to see Teyla standing in front of her holding a steaming cup of tea. "I though you might like a cup of tea." Teyla smiled warmly.
"Thank you." Elizabeth gladly accepted. "Is there something else I can help you with?"
"Thank you, but I'm going to be fine. I should be in my office, not here in the infirmary. Carson and Dr. Biro certainly have their hands full at the moment," Elizabeth replied. She had to admit she was glad about the moment of respite, but she knew it couldn't last; something horrible had happened in Atlantis. For the moment, a hastily assembled team consisting of men from the regular security detail and military members of the explorations team were patrolling the city in an attempt to find out what had happened and assess the damage. Without the ZPM, they had no sensors allowing them to locate individuals. Elizabeth only hoped that Lieutenant Cadman and Dr. Millhouse had been the only ones attacked by the so-far unknown assailant. The search team had yet to locate the two prime suspects, Lieutenant Shaw and Dr. Lawrence Tiding. However, a Jumper was missing from the bay, and Elizabeth could only presume that Shaw and Tiding might have used to it flee from the City once their plot was accomplished. What exactly their plan had been and who had piloted the Jumper, were among the many unanswered question Elizabeth still had to deal with.
"I was wondering whether you might want to join me to practise with the staves."
"Now?" The timing seemed odd to Elizabeth. The expedition was in its worst crisis since the attack of the Wraith and she couldn't do anything about it,
"I think it might help you get some balance back. It has been a troublesome time for all of us. As far as I have heard, it will be some time before we receive news of those affected by the poison. I spoke to one of the assistants, but she said it would be a while. It will be best to take your mind off for a while."
Elizabeth realized guiltily that she hadn't even been thinking about John and the others who had been poisoned. She remembered Dr. Biro whizzing past, telling her that they thought the darts Dr. Millhouse and Lieutenant Cadman had been shot with contained the same poison as the bombs and that they were working to find an antidote. Everything that had happened was a bit fuzzy.
"I suppose it couldn't hurt." Elizabeth dropped off the blanket and took another sip from her tea.
"I'm sure the exercise will help you feel better. We don't just train our bodies when we learn to defend ourselves, we also train the mind."
oOo
One of Carson's assistants had finally chased Rodney out of the infirmary with the relayed ordered to rest in his quarters and reassurances that someone would come and check in on him once there was time. Rodney was glad to be off his feet--for a while, anyways.
Once he had eaten a PowerBar and drunk some orange juice, he started to feel better immediately. The familiar symptoms he had been suffering from hypoglycaemia disappeared quickly. He was still left with a slightly loopy feeling, which he attributed to Carson's drugs during his stay in the infirmary, but he felt like he was part of the world of the living again.
Rodney was only now starting to realize how close he and John, had come to being blown up. Teyla had shown up while he had been waiting in the infirmary. She had thanked him for disabling the bombs. From what she had said, he had gathered there had been another bomb, one that would have blown up Elizabeth and Carson if it had gone off. Seeing that he wasn't exactly in prime condition, Teyla had then stopped talking and gotten a medical assistant. Sent to bed, Rodney couldn't sleep. His physical fatigue wasn't enough to quiet his mind. There had been no time to ask questions and talk to anyone about what had happened before he had woken up in the infirmary with Sheppard standing next to his bed. Dr. Millhouse had been vague, only telling him that he had suffered from a poisoning, but was being treated successfully with an antidote. That gave rise to all sorts of scenarios. He could have been exposed to a poison in any numbers of ways on a mission. It was a wonder something like that didn't happen sooner in a strange galaxy. Even in Atlantis, there were many dark and dangerous corners, as the nano-virus incident had shown. They hadn't come close to exploring the entire City; it would take years. It was pointless, as there were too many possibilities. But he remembered nothing that made sense if he had been poisoned. The central image that kept floating to the front of his mind was one of John lunging at him, grabbing his head with his hands. The memory was so intense that he could feel an echo of pain shoot through his head every time the vision returned.
Rodney was tempted to accept the memory for what it was, even though his work for the Stargate project had instilled in him some caution. It wasn't like there had never been a false, planted memory, but that left aside, John had no reason to attack Cadman and Dr. Millhouse. The bomb had nearly blown them both up. It would have if Rodney hadn't figured it out. John hadn't been able to run away; the poison from the bomb had gotten to him before. He wouldn't have deliberately have poisoned himself. That made no sense. John had better be all right. He had cracked the password, so he should have saved the day, Rodney thought. Bored and restless in bed, Rodney got back up and headed towards the infirmary.
oOo
"You have done quite well, Dr. Weir. Were you able to calm your mind?" Teyla gathered the staves after their sparring round. They had gone light after almost two days of no sleep.
"I'm tired. For once I can think I might actually be able to get some rest." Elizabeth smiled thankfully. The exercise had helped. Her strength and endurance had been compromised by stress and lack of sleep, but being forced to concentrate on her opponent had helped her put aside her current worries.
"I doubt I'll get a lot of sleep now, but I need a shower and a few minutes with my eyes closed," Elizabeth told Teyla. She had been up so long, she wasn't even sure when she had slept for the last time. In the Pegasus Galaxy she had learned to sleep less and work more than she had ever thought possible, having been an busy, ambitious diplomat before starting to work with the Stargate Program.
"I wish you a restful sleep then," Teyla said as they parted ways in the corridor. "I shall wait for news on the injured."
Elizabeth thanked her once again for the workout and went to her quarters.
oOo
Two hours later, the head count stood at 123. The search was still progressing, but the entire inhabited area of Atlantis had been searched. Four people were missing: Dr. Radek Zelenka, Dr. Sandra Faraday, Dr. Ian Taylor and Lieutenant Mark Shaw. Two were dead: Corporal Leon Mars and Dr. Markus Tiding. Dr. Tiding had been found dead in his quarters in the process of the search. The cause of his death was so far unknown, but Elizabeth suspected murder. There was a chance that one or more of the others were dead as well, their bodies hidden somewhere within the City. It was yet unknown how the Jumper could have been stolen, as none of the people who were unaccounted for had the ATA gene.
Short-staffed in the aftermath of the bombing, Elizabeth had her first priority assigned to the reinstallation of the ZPM. Dr. Kusanagi, currently their most qualified expert on Ancient technology, was working down in the power core, carefully making sure there had been no other attempt at sabotage.
Meanwhile members of the security detail no longer needed for the search were searching the quarters of all the missing for clues as to their possible involvement. Elizabeth hadn't yet made an official statement concerning any of the events of the last twenty-four hours, but the rumours of traitors among the expedition were starting to fly wild. It was time that she gave her people the facts, as far as she knew them.
oOo
"I want to go." Rodney had stubbornly planted himself in front of Elizabeth's desk, arms crossed in front of his desk. The official version had been broadcast half an hour ago, filling Rodney in on some of the events while he had been in the infirmary. The rumour mill was of course rife with details not contained in the official statement, so Rodney had learned that Teyla, Ronon, and Sergeant Edison were about to leave on Jumper II on a mission to find the stolen craft.
"Has Carson even seen you yet?" Elizabeth's tone made it clear that she was humouring him.
"No, but if I can be sent to my room, I can help look for the Jumper. You need me if you want to get the maximum out of the sensors anyways. There are only so many people on the expedition who know their way around delicate Ancient technology and one of them happens to be missing at the moment."
"We don't even know who is aboard the Jumper or if they are still in range. But the computers in the control room haven't registered any Gate activity since we came back from the search for Colonel Sheppard, so it is possible."
"I think they might not have been able to dial the Gate from the Jumper, but I could be wrong…"
"You could be wrong?" Elizabeth raised an eyebrow in question.
"I have been wondering how Ford, of all people, figured out how to steal a Jumper without having the gene."
"And?" Elizabeth asked, playing with a pen.
"I have done some tinkering on a program that creates a sort of remote access to the Ancient systems," Rodney admitted. He could see it now, how it had all gone wrong. It was alarming how those kinds of revelations were accumulating recently. But hindsight was always 20/20.
There was a moment of silence. "I see. It seems that your work got into the wrong hands. We can't change what happened now. We will talk about this later."
"So that means I can go." Rodney bounced softly. Maybe he had had too much coffee on the way to Elizabeth's office.
"I didn't say that. Two days ago we weren't sure you were ever going to wake up." Elizabeth paused, an expression of concern on her face. Rodney felt oddly touched at the sentiment. He knew he was vital to the expedition, but as a person, he didn't rank high on the popularity list.
"You should take it easy, at least until Carson or Dr. Biro can have a look at you."
"Every minute we waste here in discussion is a minute Zelenka could be disappearing through a Gate to anywhere in this galaxy," Rodney argued. As much as Zelenka could annoy him at times, he was a decent guy and probably the next best scientist after Rodney.
"I don't think I can dissuade you." Elizabeth sighed in defeat. "Get down to the Jumper Bay, I'll tell them to wait for you."
TBC