Chapter 70

2008

They didn't say a word on the way as they walked. Minutes passed during which nothing but their muffled footsteps and the low, almost inaudible sound of the ship around them could be made out. They must have hurried along the same corridors when they'd been brought aboard. When had that been? Hours ago? Days? She wasn't hungry or thirsty, she wasn't tired, but that didn't have to mean anything. Not in their current circumstances. All she knew was that Evan wasn't looking at her and that she couldn't bear looking at him.

His arm was still around her shoulders, but with every step they took following Ronon and Sheppard, she felt him gain strength. Like the life the Wraith had given him was slowly but surely reaching his limbs. He finally let go of her and took the gun she was still holding from her hands, his skin brushing against hers for a split second.

"Almost there," Sheppard whispered, before gesturing for the other three to duck into a niche. Alex held her breath as Evan put his arms around her again, holding her close, smashing her glasses into her face, but she couldn't bring herself to care or acknowledge the painful pressure. His own back was to the corridor as the hurried steps approached and then passed their location, but didn't break stride for even a second. The explosions had ceased and by now the entire ship must be looking for the intruders. Not long now and they'd figure out that three of their own were dead and that the prisoners had escaped. They really didn't have any time to loose.

She closed her eyes, grabbing Evan's shirt and allowing herself a brief moment of revelling in the sound of his beating heart and the scent of sweat. Swallowing hard, she touched his chest, determined to feel it too. When the footsteps had vanished in the distance, he kissed the top of her head and she looked up briefly to see him nodding at her in the eerie light.

"Let's move!" Sheppard could be heard saying and Evan let go of her. He was right behind Sheppard as they started off again, keeping close together.

"You sure you're okay?" Ronon asked, looking her up and down almost fearfully. She couldn't remember ever really talking to him outside that one short interview he'd given her on his homeworld Sateda. He wasn't really talkative, and he'd refused to go back to his homeworld with her and her team to look for artefacts that were worth preserving. It was almost like he couldn't understand her determination to keep cultures in living memory, when there was next to nobody to tell their tales anymore left alive. But the sincerity in his eyes now made up for his brusque dismissal now. It made him look almost fragile and her feel like she could trust him. Even with this.

Alex nodded and brushed her hand over her eyes, pushing her glasses up her nose again as she did so. "Almost," she whispered. She wasn't quite sure, though. Still she could feel the kick of the gun against her hand, could still feel the warmth of the metal against her skin after she'd fired the shot. No, she wasn't sorry for what she'd done… and yet… she'd killed two other beings in cold blood. Not in self-defence, but she'd sacrificed two lives to safe Evan's. Willingly and without hesitating. What did that say about her?

Ronon put a hand on her elbow and smiled at her. The first smile from him she'd ever seen directed at her. "That was really impressive," he said, his smile turning into a grin and his approval almost made her walk upright. Almost.

He clapped her on the shoulder, then motioned for her to keep going.

Evan and Sheppard were waiting for them at the end of the corridor. Evan looked at her briefly, nodded again, then followed Sheppard out into the corridor and Alex found herself falling into familiar patterns. Patterns which first Evan and then her old team had taught her, Oliver especially. Being alert, forcing her body to breathe normally, to watch for anomalies in an unfamiliar environment, making sure everybody's back was guarded and relying on others to guard hers.

"We're almost there, McKay. You alright?" Sheppard asked into his radio, waving them on into another foggy corridor. Within seconds they'd rushed through a narrow opening and were out in the open again, facing an abandoned landing pad.

"Get in, just… quick warning, we took Johnson with us."

Johnson.

Nora.

Alex froze for a second, then let out a long breath before following Sheppard as soon as Evan touched her arm. They stepped through the invisible barrier and instead of the vast cavern that was the Dart Bay, they were on the Puddle Jumper's lowered ramp. Immediately Alex's eyes jumped to the motionless, shrivelled-up body lying on the passenger bench. She stepped aside to let Ronon pass as Evan's arm fell around her shoulders. Heavy and steadying at the same time.

It was Johnson, alright. The clothes were the same she'd worn down on the planet, but that wasn't the first thing she noticed. Somehow that face, the shape of it, reminded Alex of her mother. Of what her mother might look like in death. At least that was what Alex wanted to think of, because in all honesty, the woman lying there looked too much like the aged version of Evan she'd seen mere minutes ago. And maybe it was just because she now knew that Johnson was partly her blood, but the mere thought, that Johnson, in some weird and sick way might have been her own child, the realization that this could never be, made her want to collapse on the other bench. But Evan pushed her forward until she was in the front compartment. McKay was already sitting in the co-pilot's chair and never looked up from the instruments, not even when Sheppard sat down next to him to start up the engines.

Fed upon.

Their daughter had first been taken from them, then experimented on, turned against them, made a host and now she'd been killed by the Wraith.

Evan's hand was on the small of her back, as he guided her to the chair behind McKay and he kept standing right behind her, shielding her view from the back of the Jumper where their daughter's dead body was lying. A grown woman before she was even four years old. Dead without ever having known life. Alex shook off the grief which was slowly but surely starting to creep up on her and instead focused on what she could see through the windshield as the Jumper took off and effortlessly soared through the narrow tunnel, the walls of which were infinitely thicker than the ones inside had been, or at least they looked sturdier. It was easier to think about that now. To focus on the colours and trying to keep herself from tearing up as her heart raced, because she felt Even standing right behind her. Alive and well.

Because she'd been willing to commit murder.

She wasn't sure she could ever regret it. But even that was easier to think about right now.

"The doors are closing," McKay said, his eyes on the readouts in front of him, making Alex blink. "They must know we'd be trying to escape."

Were they even close to the exit by now? Alex couldn't tell, but then Sheppard steered the Jumper down into the tunnel, following its curve and next second she could see the two dark blue panels slowly but surely sliding shut.

"Hold on," Sheppard hissed through gritted teeth and Alex followed his suggestion, digging her nails deep into the padding of her seat and fought against closing her eyes as the Jumper shot through the narrow gap.

"Do they know we got out?" Ronon sat down behind Sheppard, who shook his head.

"There'd be Darts on our tail if they did," he muttered, turning off the engines again and allowing the propulsion to keep pushing them forward towards the silvery white dots against the dark emptiness ahead. "Just trying to minimize energy output." He took a deep breath and leaned back.

"Did you keep the Jumper cloaked the entire time?" Evan leaned against Alex's chair, his hand brushing her shoulder almost casually.

Sheppard shook his head. "We landed it several miles to the south of the fortress and hid it there to conserve energy."

"Where's Ba'al's ship?" Alex asked, her voice thick with emotions she had no intention of showing.

"The Wraith blew it up before we had a chance of taking a closer look," McKay answered visibly annoyed. "I mean, we didn't have a real chance to sneak onboard, but I still would have liked check it out." He sounded almost like the chance of looking at a particularly beautiful piece of art had been taken away from him.

"It was a piece of junk," Evan said with barely veiled derision. "Shields and weapons weren't working. That's why they needed your help to get away. The only thing that worked was the cloak."

"Yes, and that would have been nice to look at."

Alex shrugged. She found she didn't care much about that right now. She was just about to get up and force herself to retreat to the rear compartment, when she spotted a massive pile of papers and several storage crystals stashed under Ronon's seat. "Is that…"

"All the papers we could find? Yes," McKay said. "At least that's all we could gather up and smuggle to the Jumper before we stowed away on the Hive. I doubt it's enough, though."

Alex nodded thoughtfully, and turned her head when Evan gently touched her shoulder, shaking his head. She held his gaze, the concerned look in his eyes making it hard to keep looking at him. They were safe. They were alright. And that body in the rear compartment was just that: a body.

They'd buried their daughter. That had to be enough. But she also saw that he was struggling too and one thin was perfectly clear: this wasn't natural. This wasn't right.

"Why'd you take Johnson?" Evan asked, turning his gaze to look at Sheppard instead. "She's dead, isn't she?"

Sheppard cleared his throat and looked at McKay, then at Ronon, as he turned around in his seat. Apparently there really weren't any Darts following them, so there wasn't anything for him to do right now. "As soon as you," he nodded at Alex, "went missing, things happened pretty quick. Johnson dialled the Gate minutes before she went to fetch you apparently, but nobody was really bothered about that at the time."

"To contact me," Evan said quietly and Sheppard nodded.

"Dialling Gates and passing on messages was kind of her job. But as soon as she took one of the Jumpers and disappeared, we were kind of locked out of the Gate system for a while. That's why we didn't follow you straight away. Radek broke through her program that kept us logged out pretty quickly though." He looked at Ronon again and shrugged, but before he could continue, McKay spoke up:

"We looked into her personnel file and found a couple of anomalies, it was all a bit too clean, you know? And then Jennifer checked her bloodwork again and… well, she discovered something. There's never really been the need to do a DNA test on mission members, you know? Just to find out if they have the ATA gene if at all… well, and she had a hunch, did some cross-referencing with DNA samples and kind of stumbled across the data which Carson kept of, well-" he broke off, for the first time since Alex had known him, looking slightly uncomfortable.

"I get it," Evan said, crossing his arms over his chest and Alex sat down again. She wasn't feeling too good. They still weren't out of danger, though the imminent threat of being killed by the Wraith or Ba'al wasn't there anymore. The illusion of safety, knowing that although they felt safe, they still weren't was making her feel slightly sick. And then there was this conversation and the corpse lying just a few metres away.

"Yes, well… he kept looking into the old files of your kid apparently, trying to find if there was something he could have done and then there was-"

"We know," Evan interrupted him again. The incident in Germany. The woman Alex had killed there. The one who had some of Nora's DNA, but who clearly wasn't Nora. Another person whose life had been lost because of her.

She put the back of her hand to her mouth and closed her eyes, fighting the nausea.

"Alex?" The concern in Evan's voice made her shiver.

"I'm okay," she lied. "Just tired." Evan must know she wasn't telling the truth, but what was there to be done here at this particular moment? She felt his hand on the small of her back, supporting her, and she took a deep breath.

"We figured… if it's okay with you, Jennifer could take a look at Johnson and see if, given she's a clone, she can find something useful to help Carson?"

Beckett was still in stasis. Another clone… it made sense… what didn't make sense was McKay pretending to ask for permission for using Johnson's body. Or did it? Before Alex could respond, she heard Sheppard speaking up again.

"Daedalus," Sheppard mumbled and Alex opened her eyes to see Ronon getting up and approaching Sheppard from behind, as though giving Alex and Evan some illusion of privacy. Out of the corner of her eye she saw that the Earth ship had appeared straight ahead. "Hive's launching Darts," McKay commented and Alex looked up at Evan, who brushed the hair from her forehead, his eyes so tender it hurt.

"Hang on," Sheppard said and Alex felt the engines come to life again as the Jumper started heading for the battle cruiser. "Hailing them."

"How far away are the Darts?" Ronon asked, clearly uncomfortable being stuck on a ship like this with nothing to do but let Sheppard to all the work.

"Still plenty of room." Sheppard cleared his throat. "Colonel Caldwell, this is Colonel Sheppard on Jumper One, please respond."

The answer came promptly and Evan let go of her straight away, standing upright the second Caldwell's face appeared on the viewscreen ahead. Never before had she been this pleased to see the weathered Air Force Colonel with his grim expression and the determined brown eyes. "Sheppard, we got your message. Good to see you have Major and Doctor Lorne. Would you mind getting out of the way so we can blow this Hive to bits?"

"Not at all, Sir," Sheppard said. "There's a fortress on the ground as well, Colonel. Just so you know. With an Ancient database on it."

Alex flinched when she saw Caldwell's eyes widen in surprise and she got to her feet the moment he nodded.

"Understood."

"Colonel," she said, before the connection could be severed, her hand holding on tight to McKay's seat. She threw one look at the physicist and knew instantly that she wouldn't have to face opposition from him. All the nausea, all the pain had evaporated. "You can't be thinking about blowing it up."

Caldwell frowned at her, the creases on his forehead signalling that he wasn't up to talking. "Doctor?"

"She's right, Colonel," McKay spoke up, "if this place is what I think it is, it might very well hold the key to building or own ZPMs! You can't-"

"Can you assure me that the database won't be taken over by the Wraith or another Goa'uld? Where is Ba'al incidentally?"

"Dead, Colonel," Sheppard said quietly without looking at Alex. "And, no, we can't ensure that. It's quite likely the Wraith already started hacking into the system."

"Understood," Caldwell nodded and before Alex could speak up again, she felt Evan's hand on her elbow, but she shook it off.

"Colonel!" she said again, more forcefully this time, "You can't destroy it! That database is the only one of its kind we've found in the Pegasus galaxy!" She leaned forward, her face burning, her heart racing. This wasn't happening! Not after months of research! Not after all the trouble they'd gone through to get to this place. "It's the meeting place of three cultures, you-"

"Decision's been made, Doctor," Caldwell said coolly, shaking his head. "Sheppard, you may land in the F-302 bay-"

"No!" McKay protested, "No, you can't-"

"We got all the papers, Rodney, and Ba'al's notes. That'll have to do."

"It won't!" Alex said, a hollow feeling in her chest. This was bad. Almost like blowing apart the Acropolis. Why wasn't anyone seeing that?! Why were they just letting it happen! Evan understood what it would mean. He had to. And yet, he still just stood there, not talking, just looking at the screen as Sheppard cut off the transmission and steered the Jumper out of the way so the Daedalus could deal with the Darts, the Hive, and the last unexplored legacy of the Ancients, the Nox and the other race whose name they might never discover.


A/N: Another update, this one's a bit longer than I intended, which means there'll be six more chapters to go. This fic keeps expanding somehow… but hey, at least I still get to work on it, so that's something 😊 Hope you liked it! Please let me know what you think!