Reconstructing Rome

By Indygodusk


Chapter 22


"I wanted to get across the idea that underneath Rome today is ancient Rome. So close. I am always conscious of that."

FEDERICO FELLINI


Lips thinning, Meredith lowered her tablet and looked over at John. "Okay, there are several active programs right now. They're interconnected and the biggest one is stuck in a loop, I'm trying to pick them apart to shut them down but the little programs keep resetting when the main program loops back again."

"Are you saying you're not smart enough to figure it out?" John sent her a skeptical and challenging look.

"No, I'm the smartest person in two galaxies! Of course I can figure this out. I'm just saying that it's broken so I have to not only figure out what each program is trying to do but also fix what went wrong and turn off the ones we don't want without disabling something that might be keeping us alive or containing something dangerous."

Moving to stand next to her, John examined the symbols racing across her tablet and the Ancient console. "Then do it. Our people need you so figure it out."

"I am! If you would just leave me alone to—" ideas sparking, Meredith snapped her fingers and stopped messing with the loop to focus on isolating the floor program she'd already identified instead. If she could get the looping program to leave that alone, she could disable it and make the rest of the workload more manageable. "Okay, this might work. Let's see what it does."

Squeezing her shoulder, John stood sentinel by her side and waited for his miracle. He had no idea how difficult this really was. Years of boasting had certainly come back to bite her here in Pegasus. Though when not abjectly terrified of failure, she rather liked being John's miracle worker.

"Aha, so the floor program has two layers, not just one. I can only get to one right now." Meredith wrote a bit of code and slid it in just before the main program looped, managing to shift the program she wanted into a new directory. "I just need to write a few… more… tweaks and… there. That part of the program should be deactivating in 3, 2, 1, now."

Meredith looked up. John stood with his feet apart and P-90 at the ready. The subtly rippling floor in front of the archway transitioned from opaque to a patchwork of translucent pale gold and clear geometric tiles.

The area beneath the now-translucent tiles revealed an underground cell sheathed in white walls. All of their missing people were inside. About to sigh in relief, Meredith's eyes shot to Kindall and she felt her lungs seize. Her friend was lying unconscious in the middle of the floor on his side with a knee and arm bent in the recovery position. A blood-stained bandage wrapped around his head and a thin emergency blanket covered his body.

Both sight and sound now escaped, as they could hear Captain King talking. "—has to be a door here somewhere, there has to be." She ran her fingers along the seam where the floor met the wall.

"We heard you the first four times you said that and no, there actually doesn't have to be," Rigo answered with stress and irritation from where he was crouched over searching the opposite corner. "This could be a death pit."

"Not if I have anything to say about it," John told them, kneeling down at the edge of the tiled energy field.

Only three pairs of eyes snapped up to look at John and Meredith felt her stomach sink when Kindall didn't even twitch in interest.

"Sheppard!" Rigo fell back onto his heels and rubbed his face with shaking hands. "Gracias a Dios!"

"What's your status?" John reached out to touch a flickering gold tile on the edge of the pit, immediately yanking his fingers back with a hiss and shake.

"You idiot, that could've killed you!" Meredith went back to working on isolating the floor program that had just shocked John. "Don't do that again."

"What's your SITREP?" John called down, ignoring her.

McLean moved to stand beneath where John crouched. The underground cell didn't look more than eight or nine feet deep. "We're stuck. We got attacked by a second cougar-crab just after you disappeared after Mckay. Was that her berating you? Is she alright?" He went up on his toes and craned his neck to see around John, the energy shield's gold tiles reflecting in his dark eyes.

Warmth filling her chest, Meredith lifted a hand off her keyboard to lean over and wave. "I'm here! I'm working on getting you out." Seeing McLean's concern made her renew her efforts at cracking the code. It was proving surprisingly and frustratingly slippery.

"Good." McLean relaxed back onto his heels and turned back to John. "When you and Ronon ran after Mckay, we picked ourselves up and checked on the downed Kindall and Emmagen. She escaped with no more than a few bumps and bruises and jumped up to assist you with Mckay, but Kindall wasn't so lucky."

Meredith's heart skipped a beat and her breathing grew tight. Kindall was like a brother but much too nice and not neurotic enough to be a true Mckay. He had to be fine. "How bad is he?" She didn't take her eyes off her screen, trying attack after attack that slid off the code in front of her like water off a pane of oiled glass.

"Head injury with potential rib fractures and internal damage. He hasn't woken up yet," McLean reported tightly. "The second 'cat attacked and since Rigo had opened the door to this place we retreated inside in case there were more of them. We were firing through the door and dragging Kindall back at the same time when the floor dropped out from underneath us. We landed in this cell. The ceiling reformed overhead, some sort of energy shield, and shocked us whenever we touched it, as the Colonel discovered for himself." McLean tilted his head at John. "Our radios wouldn't work and there's no door that we could find."

John walked the edges of the energy field. When he paused in the center, the tiles shuffled, forming a golden path to the archway with clear sections on either side. John's fingers struck out like a snake into the clear section. He jerked it back just as fast, obviously hurt, and fisted his hand with a grimace and slow exhale. "Any other injuries, Major?"

"Nothing that won't keep except for Kindall. He needs some serious medical care ASAP. His vitals are dropping and we're not sure if it's shock or internal bleeding."

"Right." Turning, John strode back to where Meredith was feverishly working. "Where are you at on getting them out?"

"Stalled," Meredith grimaced, hating to admit it. "I have it so the floor won't pull 'unworthy,'" she made finger quotes, "visitors in anymore and won't go opaque and block sound, but that's it. It would take me days or even weeks to brute force the rest of the programs, even with Miko and her entire department."

"They don't have that kind of time," John told her evenly, staring at the side of her face expectantly.

"I know." Abandoning her current efforts, and cursing the labyrinthine Ancient filing system, Meredith moved over into a completely different program directory and called out, "Hey Rigo?"

"I'm here, Mckay. What do you need?" he answered.

"Although it's a waste of my talents, I'm going to read out some of the historical logs to try and figure out the purpose of this place. If you're in a trap for the unworthy, what makes someone worthy enough to get through that door? I think that the door program is the one malfunctioning and glitching the rest. If we can get it to run to completion instead of looping when it hits the error, I think the other programs will turn off and let you all out of there. Let me know if anything I read makes sense to you."

"Will do, Mckay," Rigo confirmed.

Moving to the doorway, John called Teyla and Ronon and told them to listen in case they had any ideas.

Meredith's muscles were stiffening up from the earlier attack and vociferously protesting at how she now stood hunched over her tablet and the console, but Kindall's still, waxy features reminded her that she didn't have much choice but to endure the discomfort. Not if she wanted to save him.

Over the next hour, Meredith read and debated the meaning and translation of a mind-numbing number of entries saved in the archives. Myshla's lab assistants really were immature idiots. In the end, one idea stood out over the others: the mother seeker.

"I'll say it again," Rigo said doggedly, "you have to be a literal mother to get through. That's what they're talking about. Actual childbirth."

"What if it's a mental thing? There are women who adopt kids that are way more mothers than the person who gave birth to them." King sounded like this wasn't a purely theoretical remark on her part and like she was angry at her birth mother. Meredith didn't want to know why. Thinking about King's anger made her stomach burn with acid.

Rigo heaved a loud sigh. "Look, those records say that the mother seeker readies herself and goes through the door, remembers the sacrifice of mother-becoming— which uses concepts that are much closer in translation to childbirth than child-rearing—and then uses the lessons learned to break through to the next station of enlightenment, each step lifting her to ascension. All of Myshla's assistants were screened to be virginal and unattached because Myshla's research was about using motherhood to reach ascension and she didn't want any of them to ascend before she did or disappear before she was done getting her use of them. We need a woman who's given childbirth, thus physically and spiritually changing to become a mother, a mother seeking ascension." He turned his frustration from King to Meredith. "You know I'm right, Mckay!"

Lips pressing tight, Meredith kept her gaze locked on her tablet. She couldn't meet anyone's eyes. "Maybe." Her fingers hurt from how hard she was holding onto the edge of her tablet. She needed to be careful or she'd break this one too and be forced to type on the Ancient console directly.

John paced between the door and the prison cell. "I don't think we have any mothers in Atlantis considering that the SGC screened this posting for the unattached and that sort of thing turns up during background checks. Well, except for the pregnant Dr. Kushumba." Meredith opened her mouth to eagerly agree but John continued. "That might not count because childbirth hasn't happened yet but in the end, it doesn't really matter. I know Mckay said she thinks walking through the doorway and being recognized as worthy will short-circuit the loop, but I can't authorize asking Kushumba to put both herself and her baby at risk if something goes wrong, even if she was willing to volunteer. There has to be another way."

Sagging, Meredith tried for the thousandth time to turn off the force field over the holding cell. She failed. She tried to hack the looping door program. That failed too. It felt like she was hanging off a cliff over a turbulent and unforgiving ocean by her fingernails. Even if the fall didn't kill her, she'd drown.

"If childbirth isn't required, maybe being female with the potential for motherhood is enough," Teyla suggested.

"But I got trapped and I'm female," King argued.

Ronon spoke up from the entrance to the room where he stood keeping watch. "King might've just been caught up with the rest of the men on her team."

"Good idea," Meredith said quickly, licking her lips. "Yeah, Teyla should try." Meredith desperately hoped it would work.

"I'm willing to try." A few seconds later Teyla moved past Ronon to enter the anteroom. Looking around, she moved to stand in front of the cell below. The shifting energy field solidified at Teyla's feet into a golden path leading straight to the stained glass archway. The lights on the arch brightened, casting gold, copper, and cream shapes across the ceiling and floor. Teyla looked over at John.

Lips pursing, he gave a curt nod. "Go ahead and good luck."

The door program on Meredith's tablet activated and started to run. New programs appeared out of sub-directories she hadn't previously been able to access. Meredith dived through as many new areas as she could, trying to figure out the purpose of each program and how to inactivate them if necessary, but there were so many, too many. Despite that, Meredith found her attention split between Teyla and the symbols scrolling across her screen.

Shoulders straight and head held tall, Teyla carefully placed one foot onto the golden path. Meredith wasn't the only one to breathe a sigh of relief when it solidified under Teyla's foot and held, neither shocking nor dropping her. Teyla stepped out onto the pathway with both feet. Below her, McLean and Rigo had their arms extended to catch her if she fell and King crouched protectively over Kindall's body. Slowly, step by measured step, Teyla made her way across the pit until she reached the stained glass archway.

Reaching out, Teyla touched the honey-colored field filling the doorway. Her fingers glided over it, sending out a mental ripple felt only by those with the Ancient gene. The golden light made her hair and skin luminous as if she was a central figure of worship in a Catholic frieze. Teyla pushed her hand in to the wrist.

Multiple programs activated on Meredith's screen, but nothing obvious happened at the doorway.

Taking a deep breath, Teyla stepped forward. Honeyed light coated her from head to foot. The golden light pulsed once, then twice, brighter and brighter until… something went wrong.

The program on Meredith's screen flashed an error and then a new subdirectory opened and activated more programs. "No no no, that's bad." Meredith frantically tried to shut them off, but electronic defenses stopped her every attempt.

The golden light dripped down Teyla's body and seeped away into minute cracks in the floor, a flood of nanobots, leaving a grayish-green film over the once-honeyed doorway like rapidly spreading decay. Teyla went from looking like a goddess to looking like a corpse.

Abruptly the light crackled and flung her backward out of the doorway. Teyla gave a shocked cry as she flew through the air.

"Teyla!" John shouted as Teyla landed on her back on the glowing golden tiles in a sprawl of limbs. McLean and Rigo tensed to catch her but she didn't sink through. Instead, the patch of gold energy under Teyla snapped up like a bucking bronco, flinging her towards the door. She hit the ground and rolled until stopped by the back wall.

Teyla pushed herself to her feet with a hand on the wall, rubbing her hip. If she'd been a cat her ears would've been pressed flat and she'd have slitted eyes and fur standing on end. Tangled hair covered her face. Teyla flung it back with a snarl, her breathing rapid.

The door program had resumed looping and all of the extra directories had disappeared, once more locking Meredith out. The golden path over the prison cell had disappeared too. Meredith shoved her tablet onto the console in frustration and turned to Teyla. "Are you okay? I wouldn't be okay. That looked like it hurt."

"Teyla?" John asked.

"It deemed me unworthy," Teyla said, bringing her breathing under control as she glared at the once more honeyed door.

"Yeah, we got that message loud and clear. Did it hurt you?" Although part of Meredith was genuinely worried about Teyla since the other woman was her teammate and friend, it wasn't a purely altruistic question. Meredith had a personal stake in the answer.

Rolling her shoulders, Teyla turned away from the door to look at Meredith and brought her expression under control. "No, I am well. I could feel the program reject me but it didn't physically or mentally hurt me beyond throwing me around and even then, the energy field cushioned my impact with the floor."

"That settles it," John said. Movements jerky, he ripped off his tac vest and jacket, placing the jacket on his pack against the wall before buckling his vest back on over his black shirt. "I'm going to do what I should've done an hour ago and make a run for the jumper. I'll call for help from Atlantis and see if I can't find a closer landing site. Maybe we can get a mother to volunteer from one of our allies like Athos. The rest of you stay here while Mckay keeps trying things to get you out. Teyla's in charge until I get back."

Meredith hadn't thought of getting a mother from somewhere else. Hope filled her chest.

"Kindall's vitals are crashing. He can't wait that long," Rigo cried, reminding her of what was at stake.

"He's going to have to. Just do your best. I'll be fast." John turned to go.

"Mckay hasn't tried yet." McLean's deep bass voice filled the room like a peal of thunder.

Or maybe it had been lightning because Meredith felt for a moment like an afterimage—pale and insubstantial.

Distantly she heard John respond. "There's no point. She's not a mother and Teyla already proved that just being female isn't enough. If Mckay breaks something being flung across the room like that, we lose what little chance we have of eventually cracking the program."

"Mckay." Just that one word in command, her name and nothing else, but Meredith's body jerked like a puppet on a string. "I don't know why they called you a Matriarch on Manudia, but they believed it. You believed it. Maybe that mental component is enough for this to work."

Meredith couldn't breathe. McLean had gone back to Manudia with her but he still didn't understand. No one did.

John's eyes shot to the side of her face. The weight of his interest was too much, like being thrust out into a blast of noonday sun with ninety-percent humidity pressing her down. Sweat prickled in the small of her back and beaded on her upper lip. The air dragged roughly over her tongue and caught in her throat. She shifted away from John to escape his eyes, but McLean's implacable stare caught her instead. It felt like a trap closing.

"Rome? What's he talking about?" John's voice sounded muffled in her ears. "What's so special about Manudia?"

Meredith ignored him. She did not want to do this.

She. Did. Not.

There had to be another way, but… she'd tried. All of her genius had proved useless. She couldn't find another way.

Like Meredith, McLean ignored John, speaking only to Meredith. "I know it's uncomfortable but—"

A bark of sharp laughter escaped her throat. "You know nothing!" Meredith clenched and unclenched her hands by her sides, the pinpricks of pain as fingernails broke the skin making her feel more jittery, not less. Her voice turned pleading. "You don't know what you're asking."

She'd gotten a glimpse of the door program when Teyla had tested it. It didn't just test for worthiness, it forced you to prove it by reliving your memories. Muscles shivered up her legs and back, prickling over her scalp, reawakening bumps, scrapes, and bruises. They hurt but nowhere near as much as the memories flooding her brain. Gibbering spectors clawed up from the abyss of her nightmares. She turned away from the memories, trying not to see, but there was no escaping her sins.

"Just what happened on Manudia?!" John demanded. "If there's a way to save them I need to know!"

McLean kept his eyes locked on Meredith. "Maybe I don't know everything, but you're killing Kindall with inaction and cowardice. I know you care about him. Stop being useless, Mckay, and do your job. You have to at least try."

His words landed like a sucker punch, the soft tone doing nothing to dull the pain or make it easier to breathe. She'd heard that exact challenge before—to stop being useless and do her job—just before the worst experience of her life. The experience they wanted her to relive. Meredith felt a hot tear escape to slide down her icy cheek. She hiccuped. She hadn't even realized her eyes were welling. A bitter laugh fell from her lips, cutting like shards of glass.

Rodney Meredith Mckay wasn't allowed to be useless. Her mother had taught her well, followed by every other authority figure in her life. Her job was the evidence of her value. She should be used to chopping off pieces of herself and flinging them on the altar of work. What was one more piece?

And she was killing Kindall, the one man who'd never let her down. Even John had let her down. Why couldn't she fall in love with Kindall instead? That would be more logical. Safer and smarter.

"Mckay—"

"Rome—"

Two voices in stereo, but she heard only one message: do your job, Mckay. Prove you're not useless. Give us a reason not to throw you away, a reason to keep you around. Meredith tightened her lips to still their trembling but she couldn't stop one corner from drooping down. The rapid beat of her heart fluttered like a trapped bird clawing to burst free from the cage of her skin.

That last day on Manudia, her heart had raced even harder, but then again, being electrocuted would do that to you. She'd been lucky to survive. No one else she knew had. They'd died because of her hubris.

She couldn't let that happen to Kindall.

The scent of her sweat became nauseating. Her scalp prickled painfully. Breath rasped through dry lips. Nerves buzzed across her body and her fingers and toes started going numb.

Now or never.

She'd tried for never, but the universe had other plans. No matter how often she saved others, no one ever saved Meredith, not really. They took but never gave anything back. She always had to go it alone.

(—but what about—)

Always. Just like now.

John's fingertips left a fleeting line of fire across her shoulder as he reached for her, just a shade too slow as she flung herself with grim determination across the golden path above McLean and Kindall's too-pale body. She would do her job and she would save them. They would see her worth.

(And her worthlessness.)

Damn them! Damn them all for forcing her to do this! And damn herself for being too smart to fool herself into thinking that the person to blame for the pain to come was anyone but herself.

Tiles of gold formed beneath Meredith's feet as she ran across the pit and threw herself through the stained glass archway, one arm raised protectively in front of her face. She knew it was a useless gesture but couldn't stop herself. The honeyed light caught her like a bug in amber and examined her with as much thoroughness as any scientist with a microscope, tweezers, and a burning question.

She'd seen the program running when Teyla had tried earlier so she knew what to expect. The golden light surrounding her body blinked. Nanobots cascaded from the archway overhead to invade her body, scanning for signs of childbirth such as fetal microchimerism—fetal cells that lingered in the bone and blood for decades after giving birth. They transmitted their findings and deactivated. What didn't slough onto the floor would be harmlessly flushed from her system within twenty-four hours. If she was still alive then.

The golden light surrounding her body blinked a second time, an unnecessary affectation that had nothing to do with the function of the program. Meredith disapproved. She didn't have a lot of respect left for the Ancient scientist Myshla, though despite the silly dramatics the Ancient's coding had certainly forced Meredith to participate in this experiment against her will. Ancients never did care much for getting permission for experimentation. Myshla's style may not be sleek or sophisticated, but it was certainly effective.

Just as well the woman was already dead. Meredith had a feeling she'd be wanting to kill someone for putting her through this again once it was finally over. She'd survived this once. She just hoped a second time wouldn't make killing herself feel like a viable alternative.

The light blinked a third time. A feeling of crisp acceptance filled her mind. Meredith's status as a mother seeker was confirmed. Check.

Everything flared to a blinding white. Meredith shut her eyes, but there was no escaping it. She drowned in the taste and sound of white light. The Ancient program knifed into her mind and cracked her open as easily and mercilessly as a diver shucking open a clam to extract a pearl. The next phase of the program activated, forcing her to fall back and through her memories.

Bitterness and fear dissolved. Into the mental opening a small and quiet part of Meredith bobbed to the surface, rejoicing at the chance to see her daughter alive again, to hold and smell her one more time. Then that too dissolved into the white.

She was lost.


AN: Dear readers, brace yourselves for the rollercoaster of memories to come. If you have specific concerns, message me. There will be angst and sadness. However, I still promise you a happy ending to this story. As always, I love to see your comments. Thank you!