Janus

I was on my way to the gym when I came across Rodney and a familiar face.

"Daniel!" I stopped in my tracks and stared at the man who had been so nice to me during my first visit to Earth. He blinked, recognition overcoming his face, and he waved.

"Hey! Long-time no see!"

"When did you get here?" I asked.

"Oh, about an hour ago." He beamed.

"I'm here too," Rodney muttered.

"We're on our way to find a secret lab," Daniel continued. "Wanna join us?"

"But-" Rodney stammered.

"She can read Ancient, right? That'd be helpful." Daniel shrugged. Rodney sighed and gestured to me.

"Well, come on then."

I followed them down dozens of floors and to the edge of one of the piers, noting the case Rodney held. We arrived in a nondescript hallway and Rodney opened the case, displaying three round objects. Daniel grabbed one and pushed it onto a piece of metal in the wall. It made a ringing sound. The other two lights made different noises.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"Looking for the entrance." Daniel frowned. "Each of these three lights made a different tone when I plugged them in. Does that usually happen around here?"

"Not usually, no," Rodney admitted.

They argued back-and-forth for a few moments, pressing the lights every now and again, until Rodney clicked his fingers.

"Come here and push against the wall," he told us. Daniel and I exchanged glances and pressed our palms against the dead end. "Okay," Rodney continued, "on the count of three, I want you to push against the wall as hard as you can."

"Okay," we chorused.

"Okay," Rodney muttered, "one, two and three!"

We heaved against the wall as Rodney jogged along, tapping the lights in quick succession. A moment later, my face smacked against something hard. I groaned, head spinning. When did I lie down? Why was I on the ground? Why was it so dark?

"Molli, you there?" I heard Daniel ask.

"Yeah. Ow." I felt along the darkness and felt something moving. "Is this you?"

"Yeah."

We heard footsteps and torchlight almost exploded my eyes. I yelled and covered my gaze, but colour continued to explode beneath my eyelids.

"Controlled magnetic harmonic resonance," Rodney said.

"What?" Daniel groaned.

"Apparently, Tessla was close to something like this before Edison trashed his lab!"

"Is Tessla one of your team?" I asked, lowering my hands. Rodney made a strange noise.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"I don't know why Paul would trash someone's lab. Are you sure it was him?"

"Paul? Who?"

"On my team."

"Oh. You mean Paul Edison?"

"Yeah."

"I'm talking about someone else entirely, guys who are long dead on Earth."

"Oh." I felt stupid again, and it was worse because it was in front of Daniel. "So… what happened?"

"That wall," Rodney pointed behind us, "was specially designed to destabilise when bombarded with a very specific harmonic resonance. That's what the tones were! And the strong magnetic property of the particles is what keeps the door from crumbling into dust! It's a great way to hide a door because, you know, if you're looking for a door to open, it's never gonna be found! It's like a hologram, only better, because it's solid mass until the tones are played."

"Right," Daniel said, "so you could've just told us to walk through the door when you did."

"I could've, yes." Rodney didn't look sorry at all. Daniel and I slowly stood, rubbing our various sore spots from the tumble.

"Where the hell are we?" Daniel breathed. The three of us stepped forward and lights flashed, wall screens and consoles activated, and the room was filled with light. "Wow."

"Janus' secret lab!" Rodney's eyes were nearly bursting from his skull. He crossed to the nearest console. "Amazing! The level of encryption data on this thing is off the charts!"

"I doubt he wanted anyone to uncover his work," Daniel said. He sat at one of the consoles and flipped through several pages of text. "Looks like this'll take a while."

"What do these problems mean?" I asked, examining some of the Ancient words. Could I really understand them? I didn't know most of these words. Dilettante? Capricious? Equanimity?

"They're puzzles," Daniel said. Beside him, Rodney radioed his lab to ask for assistance and coffee. "Janus encrypted all his data."

"Who's Janus? What's encryption?" I hated feeling so stupid. However, Daniel seemed to relish the opportunity to talk about it.

"Janus was an Ancient who liked inventing things. His work often wasn't approved by the other Ancients, so he conducted his experiments in secret. Here." He gestured around us. "Because his work was in secret, he did things to protect it from someone trying to see what he was doing. Encryption is him writing in code so no one but him can access the data."

"Oh." I looked back at the words. "I don't know how to solve these puzzles."

"That's okay. Can you read the words, at least?"

"Yeah."

"Would you be okay translating?"

"Definitely!"

Over the next while, a group of scientists joined us in the lab. Rodney installed a generator that emitted the sound that made the wall soft. The other scientists catalogued the scattered objects around the room while Rodney, Daniel and I decrypted the consoles. I found it easier to work with people like Rodney and Daniel. They were surprisingly easy to talk to. You just had to ask them about their work, and they would happily chatter away. At one point, John came to take a look, but he couldn't stay long. I was glad he didn't stay. Since the mission to Todd's ship, I hadn't felt comfortable around him.

The rift between myself and the Lanteans was growing.

For hours we worked in front of the screens, translating and deciphering information. More than once Rodney muttered about Janus' fat ass and Daniel told me not to worry about it. Apparently it was just an expression. Earth expressions confused me. We drank coffee as we worked and after a while, Rodney showed me how to decipher some of the simpler encryptions. He was a surprisingly patient teacher. It enabled me to assist beyond translations.

Eventually, Rodney typed in the final cipher and the consoles changed from encryptions to walls of text and images. Janus' experiments. Daniel held out his coffee mug.

"To teamwork," he said. Rodney and I clinked our mugs against his. I hadn't felt this at-ease on Atlantis for a long time. I glanced at Rodney, wondering if I would be able to work with him more.

We then got to work cataloguing the data on the computers. My eyes felt like I'd been rubbing sand in them. I yawned and rubbed them, but it just made me even more tired. Beside me, Rodney also yawned.

"You know," Daniel said, "it's almost dawn. If you wanna call it a night, it's uh…" He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

"What?" Rodney blinked. "No, no, no, I'm fine, fine, but, you know, if you need to rest I completely understand."

Daniel put his glasses back on and rounded on Rodney. "Seriously, is everything a competition with you?"

"I'm not sure what you're talking about." Rodney turned back to the console; the tips of his ears red. Daniel wasn't convinced.

"I just found you a secret lab full of really cool Ancient stuff. I kind of think that should score me some point there."

"Okay, I will admit that I may have been a little brusque with you up until now-"

"Just a little."

"-but the truth is I really didn't think you were gonna find anything!"

"Well, that much I understand." Daniel sounded tired.

"You do?"

"Yeah. I've spent the majority of my professional life being ridiculed for my theories – most of which turned out to be correct, by the way. I'm kind of used to it, Rodney."

Rodney slumped back in his chair and sighed. "Doesn't that bother you? I mean no vindication, no recognition, and no credit?"

"Well, I could say the same about you. The discoveries you've made – you probably could have won the Nobel Prize five times over by now."

"It's too true." Rodney grinned. "So, I guess none of us sighed up to get famous, huh?"

"No, we did it for the money."

Rodney chuckled. "Good one!" He continued to chuckle, and Daniel cracked a smile as they returned their attention to their consoles. Rodney's smile dropped and he turned to Daniel. "Wait a minute. You don't get paid more than I do, do you?" Daniel rolled his eyes. "Do you?" Daniel opened his mouth to respond, and Rodney's radio crackled.

"Rodney, this is Sheppard," came John's voice. "Come in, Rodney!"

"What's up?" Rodney said.

"Get out of there right now!"

"Why?"

Everything went dark.

o.O.o

I woke in a dark room lit only by green lights that were surrounding us like cell bars. The entire room hummed around me. I blinked, making out two shapes in the dim green light.

"Rodney? Daniel?" I sat up slowly and felt hands on my shoulders.

"Hey, you okay?" Daniel asked. He and Rodney crouched beside me.

"Yeah, I'm fine." My head pounded. "Where are we?"

"An alien ship," Rodney said. "I think something in the lab was giving off a signal and these guys followed it."

"We've been captured?"

"Looks like it."

"Just another day at work," Daniel said. The ship jerked and the humming ceased. "I guess we're here."

We all stood and shielded our eyes as a door opened beyond the green lasers, spilling white light into the room. The lasers disappeared and I heard footsteps. Something grabbed my collar and pulled me along. I blinked against the sudden light, my eyes struggling to adjust. I tapped my finger reflexively, and my heart sank. No ring. I cursed my stupidity.

"Can we talk to somebody in charge?" Daniel demanded. "I think there's been a bit of a misunderstanding. There's no need to treat us this way."

By the time my eyes had adjusted, we were shoved into a room with a console and display screen. I got my first glance at our captors. They wore thick full-body armour and were taller than all three of us.

"Get the device operational," one of them said. It sounded nothing like a Venator, its voice instead more grating and metallic.

"We don't even know what it is!" Rodney protested. Our captors left and the door hissed shut behind them. Once the door closed, Rodney examined it. "Oh, great. Sealed shut and they've removed the door controls from this side."

Daniel stared around the room. "Where the hell are we?" It was Rodney's turn to look around the room.

"I'd say, judging by the Lantean architecture, I'd guess, you know, a secret Janus facility. Which is, you know, probably bad for us because it probably means it's hard to find."

"So, I guess that means no rescue anytime soon."

I noticed a window on the other side of the room, near the door. I crossed to it and peered through. Inside was a large device with antennae on either side. I pressed my face to every inch of the window, attempting to see if there was anything else of note on the other side. Daniel joined me, staring at the device.

"What do you think it is?" I asked.

"Hm… I wonder." He tapped his chin. "Looks like the facility's tapped into some real serious power generation. I haven't seen anything like this before."

"You'd need a lot of power," Rodney said from across the room. Daniel and I looked at him. "I think I know what this thing does."

"What?" Daniel and I chorused.

"It's an end game machine."

"A what?" I asked.

"If it works the way I think it does, it would mean the end of the Wraith once and for all."

Daniel and I exchanged a glance.

"So," Daniel said, "how do you destroy the Wraith once and for all?"

"Well, I never said 'destroy'. I mean, it would lead to that, I suppose, but this device would stop them dead in their tracks."

"How?"

"It creates a very specific sub-space static… uh, turbulence is probably a better way of looking at it." Rodney demonstrated with his hands, twisting them around each other.

"Which…?"

"Okay, look. Um, although they're all based on fairly similar technological premise, each race has a slightly different type of hyperdrive. Ours are based on the Asgard drive with our own little twist, the Ancients had their own particular system, and the Wraith, again, have their own separate hyperdrive technology."

There was such a thing as different hyperdrives? Did that mean all hyperdrives were different?

"Alright," Daniel's voice pierced my thoughts.

"Okay," Rodney continued, "so at its base level, a hyperdrive allows you to travel great distances by entering and exiting sub-space."

"Okay, this much I already know." Daniel crossed his arms. Rodney gestured for us to join him at the central console and he showed us an image of the device in the next room.

"Okay, so if this machine is capable of actually functioning safely, it disrupts the very specific sub-space frequencies the Wraith use."

"Wouldn't it affect our hyperdrive?" I asked.

"No," Daniel said, "I think I get what Rodney's saying. The device would only affect Wraith ships and they wouldn't be able to engage their hyperdrive."

"Well, that's the genius." Rodney nodded. "They would be able to engage their hyperdrive. It's just that their particular channel of sub-space would be destabilised, and their ship would be ripped into a million pieces."

Daniel pointed to the console. "When this device it turned on, every time a Wraith ship enters hyperspace, it self-destructs?"

"Yeah!"

"It's a pretty effective idea."

"I get it now," I said. Rodney nodded.

"Yeah, I mean, because even if word got back to the other Wraith that the ships should stop using their hyperdrive, they'd be stuck where they were. They'd only be able to travel using sub-light engines."

Daniel nodded slowly. "And because the Ancient ship's hyperdrive operate on a different frequency of sub-space, the Ancients could fly around the galaxy and pick them off one by one."

"Yeah, or you could just leave them to die in the vastness of space."

"So," Daniel continued, "what's the catch?"

"The catch?" I asked.

"It sounds too good to be true." Daniel eyed Rodney. "There's a catch, isn't there?"

Rodney looked at his shoes. "Ah, well, the catch is that Janus ran a three-day test about ten thousand years ago and then shut the whole project down because of unforeseen side-effects."

"Right, which were…?"

"Well, it's not clear." He pointed to the device from the lab back on Atlantis. "That's the key to the whole shebang. I mean, Janus brought that back to Atlantis but kept it connected to the main system here. One won't work without the other."

Daniel scratched the back of his neck. I mean, he had only come here to find a secret lab – not to be kidnapped. "Well," he said, "they seem pretty convinced we can make it operational."

"That's because we probably can," Rodney said. "I mean, we have everything we need here. The question is whether we should." Daniel stared at him and Rodney shifted uncomfortably. "The last time I went down this road, I… I kinda destroyed a solar system." Oh, I remembered hearing that story before. Part of me still thought that someone had made it up to annoy Rodney. Was it really true?

"I'm not too keen about experiencing those unforeseen side effects," Daniel said.

"So, what do we do?"

"It's simple. We, uh… we reason with them," Daniel finished lamely.

"Oh."

o.O.o

"Are we still alive?" Rodney asked as he peered through the window at the device. Light flashed inside, illuminating beads of sweat on his face.

"I think so," Daniel replied. "I'd hate to think heaven looks like this."

"Who says we went to heaven?"

Reasoning hadn't worked. Instead, our captors threatened Daniel and I. Seeing no alternative, Rodney had activated the device.

"It's operational," he said.

"Is anything out of the ordinary?" Daniel asked. Rodney glanced at the readings.

"No. I mean, everything's in the green. I mean, it's working great!"

"What about those unforeseen side effects…?"

"Still unforeseen," Rodney sighed. "For now, it is working and we're still alive."

"Okay, so what now?"

"Uh, maybe, uh, a nice pat on the back and an all-expense-paid trip back to Atlantis?" He looked hopefully at Daniel, who rolled his eyes. Rodney's smile faded. "Yeah." He returned his attention to the console, where he continued to look through the logs, attempting to find out what the unforeseen side effect was.

Meanwhile, Daniel paced around the room while I sat cross-legged and tried my best to stay calm.

"Ten minutes and counting," Daniel eventually said, moving over to join Rodney at the console, "still no problem."

At that moment Rodney's eyes widened and his mouth went slack. "Oh, boy."

"What?" Daniel said worriedly. "What is it?"

"I think I just found a log entry that tells us what the side effect is." That wasn't good. I stood and joined them. My eyes flicked over the screen and I covered my mouth with me hand.

"It's not harmful radiation, is it?" Daniel asked, backing away from the console unsurely.

"No, Rodney replied. "No, no, no, we're safe. It's just the rest of the galaxy that's gonna have problems, including Atlantis. I've gotta shut this thing down." He hunched down and his fingers flew over the console as he tried to reverse the damage.

"What's the side effect?" Daniel asked me. I turned to him, eyes wide, and lowered my hands.

"The Ring," I said.

"The what now?"

The door hissed open and two of our captors stalked in. One raised a weapon and aimed at Rodney.

"Step away from the device," it said. Rodney ignored it, so it shot, sending him tumbling to the ground. Daniel immediately stepped between him and the weapon and raised his hands.

"Okay, wait, wait, wait," he said. "There's a very dangerous, very serious problem with the device and we need to talk to your boss-"

I leapt at the one with the weapon at the same time as it fired at Daniel. Daniel crumpled, unconscious, and the second captor moved inhumanely fast, planting its fist into my stomach. I fell, winded and coughing, and the strangest sensation spread across my shoulder blades.

Huh, the floor was really cold.