Wide Open Road

by VetinariVimesy

John wants to get back to Pegasus. Too bad everyone seems determined to stop him. Between the IOA, the brass, & general idiocy it looks like Atlantis is stuck on Earth. At least there's stuff going on at the SGC to keep him occupied, right? A conspiracy against the Tau'ri unfurls. Attacks on multiple fronts; kidnapping, invasion, piracy, a bomb. Amidst the chaos, who's the target?

9. Chapter 9

Apologies for the epic delay with this chapter!

Uh torturey not good times warning :- the nadir for our heroes has arrived. Uh, Athena's still being a sadistic so and so, but I'm not sure what if any trigger warnings would be appropriate here, it's very much in-line with Stargate canon level nastiness, but if anyone thinks I should add specific stuff to the tags please do say so!

---

Chapter 9:

"Is it true, Doctor Pierce fought off his kidnapping attempt with a sword?"

It was Ingram, being his usual irritating self. Ever since Rodney made the mistake of sharing that micrograph with the engineer, he'd chosen McKay's office his favourite hangout spot.

"What?" Rodney mumbled distracted, the video recovery program was showing 99% complete, "Oh, yes yes, he set up the re-enactment barony on Atlantis."

Rodney had vague impressions of a beaky nose and changeable eyes, remarkably like Sheppard's set. Pierce was one of the nuisance linguists, given the man was in the soft sciences, it was remarkable Rodney even remembered that much. But, well, even on Atlantis a sword wielding linguist stood out.

Ingram sounded surprised, "Wait, they let him bring a sword to Atlantis?"

Humming absently, Rodney replied, "He keeps it sharp too. Pierce and Ronon are always sparring in the gym. Somehow, I've lost Dr Kusanagi, Dr Okoye, and Dr Biro to Pierce's little barony. I don't understand it. As the name implies the whole thing is idiotically medieval."

Ingram sounded alarmingly thoughtful,

"Maybe I should think about signing up to Atlantis, I never seriously considered it. Too few opportunities to practice my field. There's plenty of new alloys to be analysed here. But with your progress on the hull, and swords, sounds like you'll need a smithy…"

The software beeped its completion.

Rodney tracked the progress of two of the SGC's missing personnel up the staircase on the grainy, and glitch-laden recovered video. Doctor Franklin, who hadn't even been here a day, and Sgt Spencer. There was a distinctive flash of white light. The unmistakeable glare of beaming technology. The pair vanished.

It should have been impossible, the SGC was shielded. And yet… The Trust had beamed away the gate that one time, post the dampeners being installed. Rodney heaved a sigh out through his nose, frustration making Ingram's presence secondary to the footage. Was the entirety of the SGC vulnerable? Or just certain areas?

He scanned rapidly through the rest of the recovered images.

Everyone who vanished, did so on the staircase.

The very evacuation route that was supposed to take people to safety was how they'd been taken.

Rodney dove into the investigation. He tore through a systems-check on the grid of electromagnetic field emitters the SGC used to theoretically make beam-outs impossible. Every one of them came back in the green. Which, no. They weren't. They couldn't be.

If Rodney hadn't found a workaround for the remarkably effective blocking method, after years of trying to work out how to beam nukes onto Hiveships, he couldn't fathom how anyone else could have worked it out. He pushed through the greenlit self-diagnostic reports and got into the raw data.

Oh. That wasn't good.

The emitters were fine.

There was a separate interference field, effectively cancelling out the anti-beaming interference at the source.

After a few horrified minutes of searching, Rodney got confirmation his suspicions were correct, the anti-beaming field around the staircase, specifically the staircase between levels 20-15, had been deliberately nullified.

He scanned back, until he found what he was searching for. There.

An anonymous airman placed a series of boxes on the stairwells, just the day before. He pulled the footage and saved it. How had no one spotted this? It wasn't exactly hidden. Rodney prepared to run off and go shout at some generals. Then it hit him. Rodney remembered the other footage the software had been set to recover.

He clicked over to the missing time.

It was an excellent job. If Rodney had been anyone else, it wouldn't have been possible to recover anything from the thoroughly deleted and overwritten section of the servers. But, short of taking a magnet to the server stacks, the culprit had no means to physically destroy the information. Not without being extremely obvious.

Rodney watched the scene play out with increasing rage, Kavanagh being an evil little shit.

Sheppard reacting as expected.

Vala walking in on the confrontation.

Then Ingram heading straight to the server room.

Rodney saw red, "I know what you did Ingram!"

The Brit, infuriatingly, played dumb, "What the hell are you on about Dr McKay?"

"You tampered with the CCTV footage! I know it was you!"

Comprehension dawned. Rodney watched with no little satisfaction as a look of fear crossed the traitorous engineer's face,

"It's not what you think."

"Like hell it isn't. You were in on it weren't you? You and Kavanagh! I've only gotten back half of what you corrupted but you did it together. I don't know what you did to Sheppard, but he was there, I saw!"

"No. No. Really Sheppard asked me to –"

"Bullshit! It's a wonder you got away with being a spy all these years you've got a terrible poker face!"

"That's 'cause I'm not a spy! Honestly, Dr McKay I'm not lying."

"He isn't you know."

Rodney whirled on Dr Park,

"You! You hussy! You're just like Chaya luring him in with your eyes and your lips and your wiles don't think I don't know what you're doing. You don't fool me Lisa! I saw you in the footage, being all, all, attentive! I should have known! Sheppard always attracts the evil ones, you and Vala were in it together weren't you! And Ingram! Admit it!"

A new voice interrupted Rodney's tirade,

"What the hell is going on here?"

Rodney whirled on Jack O'Neill, barely losing his stride, completely ignoring the look of displeasure on the thoroughly irritating and judgemental general's face,

"Oh stay out of it O'Neill, you're culpable! Your teammate was in on this all along, it was right under your nose and you didn't see and now, now Sheppard's missing and and -"

The three-star general gave McKay a quizzical look, part quelling disappointment, part apparently genuine confusion. It only riled Rodney up even more,

"They did something to Sheppard! Security footage is missing!" Rodney pointed an accusing finger, "He deleted it!"

Ingram's retort was low,

"If you think you know what's good for your friend, you'll drop this Doctor McKay!"

Rodney pointed at the other scientist triumphantly,

"Aha! See! A threat! That was a threat!"

O'Neill sighed loudly,

"You lot, my office. Now."

Doctor Park looked confused,

"Uh… Do you have an office here sir?"

"Oh, right. Hank's office." O'Neill walked off, clearly expecting them to follow. He turned around when he got a ways down the corridor and said, "Well? Come on!"

Through a series of embarrassed explanations, and several stops and starts, O'Neill and McKay gradually wrested the truth from Ingram and Park. O'Neill was the one who summed the whole stinking situation up. In a darkly amused tone he said,

"So, let me see if I've got this straight. Kavanagh assaulted Sheppard with an object that he knew would send the guy into a panic. Sheppard panicked."

Ingram and Park both nodded like naughty schoolchildren. It would have been comical if the situation weren't so serious. O'Neill continued,

"Then, instead of, oh I don't know, reporting yet another incident involving Kavanagh to HR, as is procedure with personnel issues. You agreed to cover it up?"

Ingram and Park sheepishly stared at their laps,

"Because Sheppard somehow convinced himself we'd kick him out because he'd seen something anyone would jump at, and reacted? All whilst under the influence of some pretty hefty painkillers?"

Nearly synchronous nodding.

"And then, you conspired with Vala to melt Kavanagh's lab in retaliation? Which got all of them kicked off base just in time for this" O'Neill gestured to encompass the whole mountain, "to go down…"

By this point they were looking at their shoes in fascination again.

O'Neill stared suspiciously into the mug of tea he'd acquired some time during the course of the conversation, looking exhausted. Rodney sympathised. He hadn't slept well since before the conference started, and that felt like a million years ago. Rodney glared at the two of them,

"See! We have procedure for a reason you untrammelled morons! Because of you, we just wasted an hour we could have spent looking for Sheppard going over yet another reason why Kavanagh is an unparalleled sore on the collective behind of humanity! You should never listen to Sheppard when he says he's 'fine' that's usually code for 'I need to go shoot something for five hours!'"

"McKay."

"What?!"

Rodney whirled on O'Neill, only to be met with a very Sheppard-esque implacable glower,

"Now that we've established these two and Vala probably aren't spies, can we get on with, you know, working out what the hell happened? Have you been working on how they blocked the gate at all? Or just fussing over this all day?"

Rodney flushed,

"Well, no, no. Not just this."

O'Neill raised his eyebrows at him and tilted his head questioningly. Rodney hurried to fill the silence,

"I've been going over the footage of the invasion itself to try and work out just what happened to our missing people."

"Any luck?"

Rodney could feel his skin going blotchy and red, he responded, trying, and failing not to sound suspicious he got out,

"Maybe. I don't want to talk about it in front of these two. They've already proven they can't be trusted!" Rodney turned to gesture at the pair in question and was startled by what he saw. Incredulously he bit out, "Why is he eating a banana?"

Ingram, still munching on the fruit in question replied, "Because this meeting is a marathon."

Rodney stared.

Ingram continued, "In a few hours I'll be laughing. You need to keep your blood sugar up for something like this."

A large vicious bite was taken out of the banana. Ingram stared pointedly McKay's way, holding his gaze as he continued to attack the fruit. Park smirked though she was obviously trying not to.

Giving up on trying to work out what on Earth Ingram was going on about this time, Rodney pulled faces at O'Neill, trying to indicate that he should send the two traitorous Sheppard-losing idiots away so they could discuss matters. Eventually the general took the hint, he waved the other two off. Park meekly rose, Ingram got up, half-eaten banana in hand, still pointedly munching.

"Right, well. This isn't over, but I can tell we're all tired. Go. Eat. Take a nap. For crying out loud, just unwind before you explode of nerves!"

Rodney waited for the others to leave, glaring as they took their sweet time getting out of the office, before turning back on O'Neill.

"I worked out how the people who went missing during the invasion got taken." O'Neill waved a hand impatiently for him to continue, McKay added hastily, "Someone sabotaged the anti-beaming field."

"Well crap."

"I've no idea who he is, no one I recognised. But well. Look."

Rodney turned his Atlantis issue laptop over to the general and watched with perverse satisfaction as O'Neill's mood visibly joined his own in the land of the utterly incensed.

"Thanks for the intel doc. I've got a few heads to bash together."

O'Neill chivvied him out of the office and slammed the door behind him. The nerve of the man! If this was Atlantis he'd recognise Rodney's genius and-

Ingram and Park were waiting in the conference room. Rodney met their gazes, embarrassed himself. The three of them trailed away from Landry's office, O'Neill's irate tones as he used the red phone to spread his foul mood around with a shovel, echoing through the door behind them.

Rodney lingered in the conference room that overlooked the wreckage of the gate room. He stared morosely at a patch of blood under the power junction, where Colonel Coburn slowly bled to death. Swallowing thickly, he turned away from the sight, Ingram stared at him sympathetically, banana nowhere to be seen.

"What do you want?" Rodney groused.

"Need help gathering the data about the invasion?"

"No." Rodney sniffed haughtily, "Besides, wasn't your major engineering?"

"Yes, materials engineering."

Radek's engineering degree flashed in his mind.

"Oh, alright." Rodney stalked off towards his workspace, "Well, come on. It's your fault I got distracted in the first place!"

Park started babbling, Rodney boggled at the talkative woman's stream of consciousness, before she could work up a head of steam, he interrupted,

"Come on, let's fetch the SFs. We've got emitters to uninstall. I want to work out where the hell they came from. But, well… Okay, if you tell anyone I said this I'll deny it and ruin your credit rating, so don't bother, I'm no CSI or AFOSI or whatever we call it under the mountain. We need their expertise."

---

Gardner was all horrified concern when Vala was dumped in the Jaffa barracks. Vala painfully heaved herself upwards and got working, ignoring her fellow captive's not so surreptitious worry as she scrubbed angrily at the walls. Anything to block out the horror of what just happened.

Under the not-so-attentive stare of their guard they worked. By silent consensus, Sarah quietly secreted their stash of chemicals in the hidden panels in the walls, after Vala very nearly killed them both when her hands kept shaking. She'd very nearly dropped the bleach into the acid, which, as Nick had said – instant chlorine gas.

An hour passed in tense watchful silence, before Vala's bubble of denial was shattered. Vala was grabbed from behind as she bent arthritically to apply bleach to the floor. Kicking wildly, Vala was bodily hauled away from the hieroglyphs she'd been tasked to clean. This was it; she was done for. They'd caught her hoarding the chemicals.

She met Gardner's eye, and tried to signal that the other woman shouldn't stop what they were doing. The plan was going to work. It had to. They just needed to secrete enough of this stuff around the place to mix something up. They were this close to rigging several of the support columns with explosives.

The Jaffa dragging her along pointedly pushed Vala's head towards the cleaning supplies,

"Work."

Gardner, fury writ large across every line of her body called out,

"What? How ca-"

The Jaffa, clearly not the brightest tool in the bunch replied,

"Clean."

Gardner crouched down and started trying to help. Vala groaned lowly, as Sarah accidentally awakened raw nerve endings in her bid to get her moving. Worriedly the other woman quietly murmured,

"Come on. They're not going to leave us alone until you get up again. Stupid power games. Soon as he's gone you can rest, promise."

Vala felt absolutely abysmal. She couldn't fathom how the hell S.O. managed to keep a clear head if he'd felt like this. She groaned and tried to help Gardner haul her up. The other woman's arm around her bicep was a welcome anchor, distracting Vala from the way everything ached. Improbably, even Vala's hair joined in with her body's complaints.

With Sarah's help Vala rose gingerly to her feet. She accepted the cleaning sponge Gardner pointedly thrust into her hands and turned to the wall.

Looking satisfied the Jaffa left.

After waiting a beat, Gardner turned to her, and patience clearly gone said,

"Oh, god. What the hell did they do to you? Are you okay?" A second later the other woman started scolding herself bitterly, "No. No stupid question, of course you're not okay. What can I do to help? Does it hurt?"

"Doctor Gardner, Sarah, I'm… I'm alright."

Oh the irony. Vala was pulling a Sheppard. She felt bloody far from alright, but what else could she do? Vala learnt that much from her father, fake it until you make it was a hell of a way to drag yourself through circumstances that should turn you into a gibbering wreck. But it was either force herself to keep going or break down in a corner somewhere and cry until Athena's Jaffa came back. And if she did that? Well, Vala might as well lie down and wait to die, that's how much use it would be.

No.

Digging deep into the reserves of sheer pig-headedness that'd gotten her through those excruciating decades with Qetesh, Vala pulled herself up to her full height, and turned to face the other woman.

"We've got to stick with the plan." Vala met Gardner's gaze, holding Gardner there with the force of her glare, even as the Tau'ri flinched away at Vala's appearance, "We're too close. There's too many people counting on us to give up."

Despair was writ large across the other woman's face, Vala found herself snapping angrily in response to it. That cussed urge to never give up, never lie down and die, never just let it all wash over her even in the face of the inevitable,

"No! I refuse to have gone through this for nothing." With inflamed aching fingers Vala found that she was the one reaching out and shaking the other woman, dragging Gardner back from the black pit of hopelessness that loomed, "We will get out of here. We're going to rescue ourselves and everyone else, and then we're going to blow Athena's ship to so much space dust and make the primta eat it."

Gardner snapped back to herself just as she'd helped Vala edge away from that looming precipice minutes earlier. She nodded, still looking shocky and altogether too frightened, but the simmer of anger that powered all Sarah's actions was back.

"You know," Gardner said, "if Athena wasn't lying and you were taken by chance… I wonder why the hell she took me? I don't have this magic gene she's obsessed with, I was just Osiris's host. Though, that seems reason enough for her."

"Huh. You know, I have no idea. It couldn't be something as simple as revenge?"

Sarah scoffed, then wryly started waterproofing the rags they'd been converting to containers. The small capsules that resulted from layering the polish/wax for the walls on the cleaning cloths seemed to hold up well enough. Better still, they didn't look like much, easy to overlook if the Jaffa took it into their heads to inspect anything.

---

The devastation to The Hammond's systems was appalling. The ship held its own in the six on one battle, yes. But this journey was intended to be the shakedown cruise, not a to-destruction test. They hadn't been supposed to go up against six Ha'taks, let alone actually enter the system that contained the damnable pulsar. Sam sighed and rubbed at her eyes. She'd been up nearly 72 hours, scrambling to fix the life support systems after everything went to hell.

The close quarters battle they'd fought had been vicious. Members of her crew were dead. Bulkheads had been breached; others sealed. Six cabins on the aft side of the ship were uninhabitable. Not to mention the hole in the hull where the breaching pod was still attached, another complication to their hyperdrive situation.

It was a mess.

Sam gulped as the imagery from the aft side cabins rose to the forefront of her mind again.

Those six cabins, right next to the hull, had lost life-support. Even the robust circuitry of the Asgardian crystals hadn't wholly been able to stand up to the intense burst of radiation received from the pulsar. Sam was grateful the only people in those compartments at the time were invaders. It could have been much worse. It should have been much worse. It was pure luck that saved her crew from being fried extra crispy, Ronon's vendetta against the brutal Lucian Alliance second, Dannic, a blessing in disguise.

As it stood, those cabins would need to undergo complete biohazard decontamination procedures before they could begin contemplating getting the systems in that side of the ship working again. That wasn't even accounting for the fact they suddenly had thirty additional bodies on board, stressing already overtaxed systems.

The scars that scorched the walls were the least of her concerns, if she couldn't get the CO2 scrubbers operating at full capacity, they'd all be dead in two days.

Too many people were dead already.

Sam only had the minor consolation of how the Expedition members conducted themselves in this affair. If they made it back alive, Sam was going to make a point of reporting how well certain members of her crew responded to the crisis. Military and civilian members of the Atlantis Expedition alike acted like seasoned veterans.

Sgt Stackhouse saved dozens of lives when he pulled the airlock controls. If it weren't for the NCO's quick-thinking, things would have gone very differently. His initiative bought Sam the time needed to isolate the life-support systems ship wide, and start choking their invaders with nitrogen.

It was a calculated risk.

They'd timed the atmosphere alterations precisely.

Two minutes, minor risk of hypoxic brain injury, but compared to the guaranteed damage once Kiva worked out she could start shooting with no immediate repercussions.

There'd been a lot of people with terrible headaches in both the infirmary and the brig half an hour later.

But the battle was over.

Sam made her way to the ship's infirmary to get a few uppers. She'd need them if she was going to keep working. Gravity was amongst the very first systems that had been restored, Sam gratefully luxuriated in the ability to walk around normally.

Sam was glad her new medic, Lieutenant Johansen, had a cool head. Carter would have to thank whoever recommended her for this assignment. TJ calmly treated Varro, despite the threat to her life from people who wouldn't have hesitated to kill her if she'd shown any hesitation. Sam was largely ambivalent about Varro's fate, but thanks to Johansen's calm demeanour, Kiva hadn't found more excuses to kill people. They'd been right to recommend her.

Now, if only Sam could get the parts to fix her ship.

Sam ran an eye around the infirmary, carefully checking the wounded LA members restrained in the corner. Cadman's report of what went on inside the mess was alarming. Ruthless as Kiva was, her lieutenants were worse. Where Kiva was coolly merciless, Dannic was a hot-headed psychopath. Given his previous glee, Simeon was being alarmingly cooperative. Sam half-wished the First Ronon admired so much wasn't out for the count. The gruff Satedan practically recited oaths about the standoff they'd shared, if Sam was interpreting Ronon's usual curt sentences correctly.

"What's wrong?"

Speak of the devil, Ronon was still up. Sam sympathised; he couldn't be comfortable with his back in that state.

"Nothing Ronon, get some rest."

"Carter. Don't pull that. What's wrong?"

Sam heaved out a sigh, even as she asked TJ to fetch the meds, earning herself a concerned stare from the medic,

"Remember how we thought it was sabotage?"

"Yeah?" Abruptly Ronon looked furious.

"It wasn't. The Lucian Alliance put a nasty little trojan in the breaching pod they boarded us with, it overloaded a few power relays."

She'd known, when she cannibalized parts for the shields that she'd come to regret those hasty repairs in future. That future had caught up with her.

"Oh."

Ronon clearly didn't get it, Sam dumped the bad news out there, "Well, one of the things it overloaded? Primary shield control."

Ronon nodded at the old news, still not understanding the significance, Sam continued,

"My fix for the shields is holding. But I can't fix both shields and hyperdrives at the same time. We don't have the parts. Honestly? I don't know how long the shields will hold, and with that pulsar? We need them."

Powering the shields with crystals stolen from the hyperdrive array meant one of the key hyperdrive crystals had also cracked. As it stood the shields were needed to stop the damned pulsar frying them all every sixty minutes, even one solar system over. Sam wasn't convinced her workaround would hold.

Carter sighed, she really should insist they start carrying spares. This problem cropped up far too frequently for extra control crystals not to be part of the standard maintenance kit.

A new voice cut across the conversation, "Did any of our Ha'tak's survive the battle?"

Taken aback Sam spun around, one of the injured Lucian Alliance members was sitting up, Ronon glared threateningly. Sam waved him off, and asked,

"Why?"

"Well, I'm no scientist, you'll need some of our guys to tell you if it's possible. But the motherships will have crystals."

"What's your name?"

"Varro. I am, I was Kiva's First."

Ah, Ronon's glower suddenly made sense.

Sam nodded at him, "Thank you Varro."

---

Jack rubbed a hand over his eyes tiredly and went to show his fellow general the footage McKay uncovered. As well as the incident with Dr Kavanagh, which he would be having words about, there were the interference laden images McKay managed to unearth of their missing personnel making their way topside. Jack dreaded to think what Hank would make of the distinctive flare of a beam out engulfing the figures evacuating in the footage.

The SGC was supposed to be proof against this tech.

And yet… There it was clear as da- well no, the footage wasn't five by five by any means, but it was clear enough.

Feeling unaccountably nervous about sharing the news Jack rapped his knuckles on the other general's door.

"Hank, we've got a situation."

"Tell me about it."

"No, on top of the ongoing situation."

Landry blanched.

"Yeah, those missing people? I know how they got out of the SGC. It confirms our suspicions; we've got rats."

Hank looked diminished, he'd been looking small and tired ever since Colonel Dixon passed under Lam's care. Cynically Jack wondered if it was the weight of responsibility for Dixon's death weighing so heavily on the other general, or the fact that he'd forced his own daughter to bear the burden of that responsibility as well.

Belatedly Jack passed over the footage, of course, Hank clicked into the wrong file first. The other general's expression went black as Kavanagh's cruelty played out on the desktop,

"Jack… What is this?"

O'Neill felt a great sense of guilt for piling more on an already overflowing plate, and yet, Landry had dealt with the Ori crisis. If he couldn't steer the SGC through this…

"Kavanagh committing a fireable offence."

Landry levelled Jack with a stern look, Jack raised his eyebrows right back at him and continued,

"Sheppard somehow got it into his fool head that you'd kick him out for reacting the way anyone would react to, well, that. Somehow it ended with half the scientists deliberately blowing up Kavanagh's lab rather than taking it to HR, and half of SG-1, Dr Rush, and Sheppard being off-base and in a position to get snatched."

Jack could only describe the expression on Hank's face as guilt.

"I fear I might have contributed to Sheppard trying to hide this."

It was Jack's turn to pull a face. Landry seemed to shrink in on himself,

"I – I was in Vietnam Jack. I should have known better. I remember what it was like to come back from that hell. Barely holding it together over the things I'd seen and done. Only to find the folks back home didn't care, hell, they thought I was invading scum, and my men deserved it."

Jack was sympathetic, but unimpressed by the sudden attack of conscience. Hank should have considered what this rift was doing to Atlantis, let alone Sheppard, years ago. Besides, unfortunate as the situation was, they had bigger fish to fry,

"Look. We need to work out who our rats are."

"Rats. Plural?"

"Well, someone sabotaged our anti-beaming field. And it wasn't Dixon."

Jack cued the other set of videos McKay had uncovered.

---

"Sheppard."

Someone was taunting him, John snapped his head around to snarl at the interloper to his own personal hell. It was bad enough he was stuck here.

"Sheppaard…"

There was something familiar about the voice, but the thick miasma of rage that meant John was feeling no pain, also made working out what the hell was going on next to impossible. John settled for lunging towards the intruder. The bonds lashing him to the wall stopped him short, pulling him back into an even more vulnerable position.

Pain sliced through his world. Shattering the anger John cloaked himself in. The anger ramped up as a slither of fear penetrated the fog of confusion. No! Anger, anger was safe, anger was useful. Fear, fear did no one any good, least of all him.

Slowly, inexorably, John came back to himself.

He didn't like what he discovered.

He was still in Athena's lab, Todd staring at him from the confines of his energy cell. Athena loomed over him, pain stick crackling angrily in her hand.

The Goa'uld grinned smugly,

"Now I know the sarcophagus works so successfully on your physiology, I don't need to be so careful."

Sheppard didn't want to let the frisson of fear that shot through him show. Beside him O'Neill 2.0 started swearing quietly. It was decidedly not reassuring. Dammit, the bitch knew how to screw with a guy's head.

Athena turned to her guards, and coolly said,

"Since he still refuses to cooperate. I see no reason he can't fulfil an alternative purpose. He'll be your entertainment. Beat him to death. Whatever. Do what you will. I don't care."

She paused to let that horrific statement sink in,

"Just make sure you get him in the sarcophagus within a few minutes if you kill him. Nothing the magic of your goddess can't fix."

Still strung up on the wall as he was, John couldn't even jerk his head away as the first fist shot towards his face.

Behind the Goa'uld shielding that separated him from the lab, Todd started to laugh. It was a sound shot through with despair. O'Neill's screams for the bastards to stop mixed with the thumps, splatters and hysterical laughter as John's world spiralled down to nothing but pain.

When he was coherent again, John was dismayed to realise Vala was cleaning the lab. Or rather struggling to clean the lab. She looked ancient, as ancient as – John shot a hateful glare Todd's way. Todd just grinned back.

Half his concentration was stuck on the knowledge Vala had been in the room during the latest round of brutality. The rest of John was busy feeling ashamed he was focusing on himself when Vala looked like a centenarian and was struggling to drag a filthy rag over the lab's hieroglyphs.

John scrambled desperately for something they could use as a signal, just in case. As his time over the cuckoo's nest had just proven, he couldn't rely wholly on hand signals. Not for this.

With a flash of mad inspiration, it came to him,

"Vala, remember that movie we watched the other day?"

The look Vala shot him was filled with dismayed concern, "Yes SO?" she asked as if indulging a maniac.

"Remember when…" John started humming a few bars from 'Wake Me Up Before You Go Go' at her. If anything, the look of dismay grew more intense.

"Well, remember what happened next?"

It took a long long moment, but understanding dawned.

"Orange mocha frappuccinos?"

"Yep."

Out of a sense of healthy paranoia John used hand signs to confirm that was the go signal.

John couldn't quite believe a throwaway sight gag in Zoolander of all things had become central to their escape plans. But hell if it worked. If they got out of this, he was so going to rub Mitchell's nose in it.

After an age Vala left, and Doc Porter was dragged in again. Athena slyly smiled at them both,

"Now behave, or she suffers."

Allison gulped, but bravely held her ground. John, feeling guilty the whole time, kept up with keeping the ancienty thing firmly turned off. The pain stick came out. John damn near gave in, but Allison quickly gave the 'okay' signal from her prone position on the floor.

Damn. The medical doc was being so damned brave. If she could do it, John could too. He could practically see Allison's faith in him shining in her eyes. Much as that misplaced faith burned, John was determined to try to live up to it. He glowered steadily at Athena, who snorted,

"You Tau'ri won't be so superior when I've removed your advantage over the galaxy."

Wait what? What advantage?

Athena smirked, "Yes Hok'tar or not, you're nothing without the technology you've stolen. I shall reclaim it and take your world."

That was rich, coming from a snake. John knew enough about the history of the Milky Way to know the Goa'uld were infamous scavengers.

Athena looked expectantly between the two of them, then angrily stormed out of the lab.

"Hey, Doc. Remember?" John hummed a few bars of that pop song.

Allison looked more concerned than John figured his current state should account for. John hastily signed that it was the go-signal, and her expression cleared some but not entirely. Eh, close enough. Between Vala's noxious chemicals and the way Athena was every bit as arrogantly stupid as the reports had led John to believe, it couldn't be long now before they had an opening.

---

MSgt Greer couldn't believe he'd gone from sorting out an invasion, to guard duty at Area 51. They must have been desperate if they trusted someone with his spotty history with upstart officers. Then again, Greer still couldn't believe that he'd ended up working with a bunch of zoombags. He hoped this was just a TDY due to the utter clusterfuck at the SGC. When Ronald agreed to join the special access project that was the Stargate Programme, it had been because they'd told him it would be an excellent career path.

Guard duty at nerd central didn't feel like a step up from his previous duties at Afghanistan. Nor a particularly useful way to spend his time after the invasion. But… Needs must. Greer was one of the few who'd been at the SGC who was confirmed not to have been whammied.

Signs of the attack on Area 51 were visible all over the place, scorch marks from energy weapons, and bullet scores littered the hallways. Hell, in a sense, he was proof of the attack. They'd trebled the security detail in its wake.

Despite what people tended to think about NCO's, let alone enlisted marines, Ronald wasn't an unintelligent guy. He'd turned down a scholarship in order to enlist and go make a difference in the world. So, yeah, he could tell that the efficient alertness of his fellow guards here was pure bullshit.

No guards paid more attention to their jobs, then guards who'd just failed.

And that was this lot to a tee.

Tacos who'd gooned up the lot of them.

Greer tried not to sneer too obviously at the pompous 'efficiency' of the others. This was still an important job, if not one that anyone particularly wanted. The shit they were protecting here at Alien Central was dangerous, the work the scientists were doing important, if not exactly glamorous. Still he hoped it was TDY, and not a PCS. He'd done his job at Cheyenne that day, which was more than he could say about a lot of people.

Ronald swallowed down the all too familiar anger that boiled up. No, it wasn't useful, not here, not now. Chain the rage, control it, don't let it control you. Only let it out when it'd be an advantage, not a dangerous fucking liability. Greer breathed out through his nose and tried not to make it too obvious that he was people watching. It wasn't just the guards. Everyone was nervous. There was a tension in the air, an atmosphere that pervaded the whole base. The scientists were anxious. It was all building to something, and no one could say what. Greer hoped they'd find their missing people.

He'd heard the scuttlebutt, the missing ranged from a member of SG-1 and that infamous zoomie that divided opinions at the SGC (half the Marines he'd talked to were convinced Sheppard was some kind of superman, the other half convinced that he was a glorified cult of personality figurehead, a dirtbag airman who was only tolerated because he let his garrison get away with murder), to a whole bunch of rookie science staff that a whole lot of people were convinced were already dead.

It rubbed his NCO inclinations up the wrong way, that urge to protect, make sure his people safe at whatever cost. He'd interacted with the FGO, in a limited fashion, Sheppard seemed an alright kind of guy. Worn down by the weight of the command the brass weren't letting him take care of, Greer recognised the sentiment, even as he'd ruefully thought he'd probably never work out which end of the scuttlebutt he agreed with. Greer didn't quite eat, sleep, and breathe the Marine Corps the way many probably thought he did, but, well. He'd stopped men in platoons he'd overseen in the past from doing the old haze the new guys by literally branding USMC into their skin trick. Greer put up with enough of that shit from dear old dad to want his men doing that to each other. He'd recognised the signs of a fellow commander who wouldn't put up with that sort of shit from his people in Sheppard.

Discreetly Ron watched as the other Sheppard and Mitchell ambled past. The civilian brother was looking stressed out, the stiff lines of his shoulders and the downturned line of his mouth spoke loudly enough of that. Mitchell seemed oblivious. Then again, Greer always thought the SG-1 Colonel was fairly naïve that way.

The guy tended to take people at face value, read their masks, not their realities.

Yeah, Sheppard was hurting all right, cooped up here in the vastness of the desert, waiting for any word of his brother.

Ronald recognised the expression on Sheppard's face, it was the same one his mom wore every time he went home for a visit after he'd signed up. That blankness that was desperately trying to be neutral, yet falling far short of it. For the longest time Ron had been convinced that the expression was disapproval, anger at his life choices, disappointment that he'd followed in his dad's footsteps. Of the two of them, Ron's mom had never condemned Ronald's father for his misplaced anger, he should have realised sooner. It wasn't disapproval that made her actions jerky, it wasn't anger that made her clench her jaw, and it certainly wasn't disappointment that meant she struggled to meet his eyes.

No, the expression on David Sheppard's face was fear.

Deeply masked, subsumed by other coping mechanisms yes, but it was the same fear Greer's mom would never voice in his presence. The fear that one day he wouldn't come home. Ronald wondered if Colonel Sheppard had worked that out yet. That's if the guy was still out there.

---

"Ah, good."

Rush stumbled as Athena's men threw him to the floor, he didn't bother to pick himself up, what would be the fucking point? The idiots would only throw him down again.

The loathsome woman seemed to expect him to respond. Fuck her. After a beat of silence, Athena continued as if she hadn't paused,

"Now I'm sure you're wondering why you're here."

"Not especially no."

Rush sent her a smile that was all teeth and knives. She glared.

"The data you pulled from Colson was useless. Since you cannot be trusted to behave. I shall be using your friends as incentive."

"You've already done that." Nick bit out, not bothering the hide the contempt, Vala… What had happened to Vala because of him was utterly unforgivable. Even if she somehow found it within herself to forgive him, Rush didn't think he'd ever forgive himself.

"Oh, no, not just that."

"What?"

Nick felt the blood drain from his face. No.

"All that time you wasted breaking into Colson was useless, there was nothing there!"

Athena was clearly caught up on this perceived failure. Irrational fury was the name of the day.

"I repeat. How the fuck is that supposed to be my fault?!"

"Until you prove you can be trusted," She met his eyes, he expected she thought the repetition would train him, like a fucking dog, "you shall not be allowed respite. I will keep punishing your cohorts. I want you to acknowledge that any further harm that befalls them is your fault Nicholas."

Vala was paraded through, looking like a shrivelled-up prune. The thugs toeing her along looked to be the only things keeping her upright. Nick stared at her greedily, trying to soak in every detail. As if burning the impression of her, haggard, yet alive, into his brain would make the situation somehow permanent.

"Mal Doran, clean. Now."

Nick watched heart in his mouth as Vala knelt down, and clearly struggling, belabouredly began to scrub at the floor.

The witch clicked her fingers at one of the interchangeable thugs that lined the room,

"Now, your other punishment. I know you're dragging your feet with Devlin Medical. You've acquired nothing. You will not fail me again."

Nick didn't bother to call out Athena's absolute fucking idiocy, there was nothing to find. Or rather Athena hadn't disclosed what he was supposed to be fucking searching for, and apparently Rush hadn't fucking found it. Though honestly, he'd gotten the accursed woman access to the company's fucking internal database, if there was nothing there, then there wasn't anything to find.

The thug returned, Nick hadn't even noticed he'd left, too caught up panicking about what was happening to Vala.

Oh.

The realisation was like a shower of ice.

Nick was to experience what Vala had been put through on his behalf.

Surrounded by four men, in shackles and chains, with a metal glove welded to his hand, was the wraith. Presumably, it was Todd, the wraith Sheppard somehow allied himself with. The way the other man relayed that misadventure in the labs, all falsely casual cheer, had revealed far more than Nick suspected Sheppard had wanted to.

Nick read loathing on the alien's face, as he allowed himself to be dragged over to Nick's prone position on the floor. The alien tilted his head mockingly as Athena made her usual imperious set of demands, body language implying that Todd could simply decline to do as he was fucking well told any time he liked, Todd casually placed his hand on Nick's chest.

Nick had seen what happened to Vala. He sucked in air, trying not to hyperventilate, not swallow too obviously.

It was every bit as terrible as his imagination had it. A visceral soul-deep wound, as deep as the sucking hole left by Gloria's passing.

The wraith was the only thing holding him upright. Through the rushing in his ears Nick heard,

"No, no. Unfortunately, I can't keep him in that state. He needs all his faculties intact to do the work. Undo it."

Afterwards, once the cycle of unending ecstasy and agony was over, as they pulled his uncooperative carcass towards Athena's lab, Rush figured he couldn't get more fucking on edge.

He was wrong.

Sheppard was there, beaten black and blue. The guards using the fucking pain stick as both a club, and for its more usual hateful function. Another man was screaming for them to stop, he was being ignored. Rush helplessly met his eyes as he was pulled through to the corridor beyond.

"There your proof of life. Now, get on with it."

"Get on with what?!" Rush hated the way his voice cracked, "Ye haven't told me what the fuck ye want me to do ye mad cow!"

"I want you to finish with Devlin. Hurry up."

Athena smiled archly at him, before he was dragged away back to his workroom, the tremors as whatever the fuck the wraith had done to him kicked in, only just starting. Right there, even under the suspicious gaze of Tweedlecunt, Nick knew he couldn't keep going as he had been.

Time to apply P=NP to this crock of shite, there was clearly some sort of advanced computer system running the place, and Nick had a computer. Albeit one with nothing on it. Covertly Nick started piecing together the coding to break out of the crippled desktop, and into the building around him.

---

James side-eyed her 'team', she couldn't work out how she'd gone from complete newbie, to escorting Doctor Jackson off-world in the space of a couple of months. But… Well, given the number of teams currently off-world hunting for clues about how the Lucian Alliance pulled off their attack. It was all hands-on deck.

As it was, Vanessa was incredulous that she was working with the legendary archaeologist, and civilian lead on SG-1 for more than a decade. She caught Teyla's eye and ducked her head embarrassed by the quietly amused look the Athosian shot her way. Okay, yeah, so sue her, she was just a blue-collar gal from Pittsburgh who'd somehow managed to get a senatorial commendation to the academy. Then, after getting tapped for AFSOC, she'd gotten tapped for the SGC. Wasn't her fault she'd bought into the hype.

Teyla was alright. The Pegasus native was just damned cool about this whole traipsing around the Milky Way thing. Probably because to her, this sort of thing was a walk in the park.

Jackson managed to get word out to one of Mal Doran's more reliable contacts, James hoped he wouldn't turn out to be yet another Lucian Alliance stooge. Given the little band of criminals they'd all happily ignored just proved they were capable of presenting a threat on par with any System Lord… Well, Vanessa figured she had a right to be feeling antsy about all this.

"Caius!"

Jackson called out to a rotund guy with a beard. James was relieved when the big guy's response was genuinely warm, after their last few run ins with the LA, she hoped he was what he seemed.

"Daniel! Welcome welcome! What can I do for you today? Any more obsolete power coils you want to trade for my services?"

"Yes… About that."

James watched as Jackson's expression scrunched up in distaste.

"Look, we need to hire you and your ship and… well, have you got any intel on the Lucian Alliance's activities that might interest us?"

James resisted the urge to groan, legendary member of SG-1 or not, this was not how you were supposed to start a trade. Vanessa could practically see the dollar signs glinting in the guy's eyes. From the exasperated expression Teyla pointedly wasn't wearing, James had a suspicion the Athosian was even more unimpressed than she was. Satterfield seemed unconcerned, but then again, the Captain was more geek than soldier.

By a series of negotiations James was not entirely able to follow, and she suspected was actually an unbelievably bad deal on their end, from the smug air Caius was radiating by the end of it… They ended up renting the services of the guy's souped up Tel'tak, in exchange for a suitcase full of Naquadah. (And bizarrely a handful of 5th Avenue candy bars Jackson produced from a pouch in his tac vest.)

Deal finally struck, they followed Vala's old friend to the shipyards, where the unimpressive Goa'uld vessel was docked.

"Come in! Come in! Any friend of Vala's."

Jackson's dry, "Yes, that's why you demanded such high rates." Only earned a guffaw of laughter.

Another incredulous look shared with Teyla over Jackson's utter lack of negotiating skills, and the little cargo vessel made its way into hyperspace. Satterfield was nearly vibrating with the urge to start taking apart consoles, James could tell.

"So, you'll be wanting to go to an Alliance controlled world."

"Yes," Jackson replied evenly, "As discussed, preferably one controlled by the Sixth House."

Caius whistled, "Woo! You Tau'ri sure know how to pick your enemies."

Teyla was the one who asked,

"What do you mean Caius?"

"Well… You know, Sixth House. That's one mean lady they've got in charge of their operations these days."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, name of Kiva. She's one ruthless wench. I think a Goa'uld ever made the mistake of trying to take her as host? The symbiote would be trying to escape and she wouldn't let it!"

Caius chuckled loudly at his own joke,

"Alright then folks. I think I know just the place. Sixth uses it as an agri planet, so security there shouldn't be that tight." He ran a leering eye over Teyla's habitual Athosian dress, "And with your excellent disguises you'll fit right in."

Teyla shot the guy a look, if he any sense he'd be protecting his crown jewels right about now. But Caius had already turned his attention back to the Tel'tak's controls.

---

Jake tried to get Sheppard to talk to him. Unlike Jake, who was getting dumped back with the others each day, they were deliberately leaving the guy in the lab day and night. O'Neill at least got the 'respite' of going back to see the others in their cells. (Though with Felger in there, it was far from restful.)

He had no idea why they'd been taken.

Oh, Jake knew it was something to do with gatebuilders who kept leaving their creepy headgrabbing tech everywhere, just as when Loki did this to him and turned his whole life inside out. But… Felger certainly didn't have any ability to turn on Ancient tech, so he couldn't have the 'ATA' gene, as all the SGC people seemed to call it now. Palmer insisted they'd grabbed a whole lab full of scientists from Area 51 since she'd recognised people when they'd first gotten dragged in and stripped of anything that could be used to escape.

It was an exercise in frustration trying to plan any sort of escape with this shower. The scientists alone ranged from incompetently trying too hard to help (Felger), to belligerently unhelpful (Franklin), and that was ignoring the decline of Sgt Spencer. There was something going on with that guy, more than the stress of captivity.

O'Neill didn't want to think about the varied and painful states Sheppard cycled through. On the one hand Sheppard's ability to keep schtum in the face of that kind of treatment warmed his twisted shrivelled black ops heart. On the other, Jake was quietly horrified about just what that must mean about the guy. Jake figured he was either a rock, or secretly completely utterly batshit insane. No matter what state he was in when Jake got dragged to the labs, Sheppard always greeted Athena with the same cool disdain, and rude quip.

Worse, Sheppard used their mutual time in Athena's torture chamber as an intel exchange. Sheppard had clearly taken it upon himself to be the relay between the disparate groups of prisoners in the Goa'uld compound, ship, place.

Sheppard had taken to humming a few bars from that awful eighties pop tune whenever he reiterated the mass breakout plan. Jake figured it was a painfully obvious signal, but Athena seemed happy to believe it was a sign she was breaking him down.

Jake still hadn't worked out what the compound was yet. He'd been here forever. The walls were that bright faux gold all snakeheads favoured, no matter which aspect of Earth culture they were claiming, and every now and again Jake felt the rumbling he associated with being onboard a Goa'uld mothership. But… it wasn't right. The place was too quiet. Run down. The architecture was weird too. Goa'uld alright, the corridors the usual weird angles and strange shapes that spoke of ship functions, rather than aesthetics – but, no. Jake couldn't put his finger on it.

He forced himself to pay attention, instead of zone out, when Sheppard used spec ops signals to convey he was waiting to gain contact with yet another group of prisoners onboard. This one numbering in the low teens. Three separate groups. Just how many of their people had this bitch caught?

O'Neill watched beadily as, post a session with the painstick, post refusing to turn on the ancient doodad, Sheppard signalled that Jake should prep for an escape. Jake shot the guy a truly unimpressed look at that bit of reiteration, he may look like a brat these days, but he wasn't one.

Besides, it was a job and a half to keep the guys back in the cells in line. Felger and Spencer kept wanting to stage a breakout there and then, conveniently forgetting that if this thing was to have any hope of working, all the groups of captives would need to act at once.

Jake half-heartedly tried to turn on the doodad when Athena shoved it under his nose. It glowed sluggishly, but that was the most response he'd gotten out of it. Honestly, from the way Sheppard was obviously straining something not to turn it on every time it was waved in his face, Jake wasn't sure if his own growing ambivalence to disobedience was a good thing or not.

Despite the flutter of light that proved he'd been trying, Jake got the painstick to the stomach for his troubles.

Athena left, throwing a look of contempt over her shoulder. Sheppard surprised him with,

"Embrace the suck."

Jake scowled, "What are you, a marine?"

Jake worriedly listened to Sheppard's too slow reply,

"Hey! Wha- no… I suppose I've just been hanging around too many of them lately. My garrison is mostly Marine Corps. Well, those parts that aren't international."

Jake absorbed that new information and squirreled it away for later analysis. Sheppard was heading up an international contingent? With the SGC? Just what were they doing these days?

Sheppard seemed to come back from wherever he'd drifted off to this time, with newfound urgency he gestured at Jake, and when he was sure he had Jake's attention said,

"Orange Mocha Frappuccinos."

A few more bars of that awful 80s song again.

"What?!"

Sheppard signed, 'go signal.'

"…Right."

Sheppard flashed a grin,

"You'll know when the time comes. On account of all the explosions."

Athena's voice echoed around the room, Jake looked up in a panic but the snakehead was nowhere to be seen. It was some kind of tannoy,

"Jaffa! Fetch the artificial ATA holder!"

Sheppard perked up at that, "Think you can find out if that was heard all over?"

"Sure…?"

"Talking I see?" Athena waltzed back in. The green guy hadn't even tried to warn them, bastard.

"Oh yeah," Sheppard drawled, "Just plotting our uprising."

Jake winced, but Athena merely looked superior.

"Turn it on."

The doodad was back. Jake hesitated, but grabbed it and got the same sickly green glow he'd managed last time. Athena backhanded him,

"Pathetic!"

Jake's head ached, Athena raised her hand again, he tried not to cringe away.

"Hey, bitch, at least he's trying. I keep telling the damned thing to stay off."

No. No that idiot.

Jake woozily signed, 'stop' but Sheppard either didn't see, or more likely, ignored him entirely.

"No wonder it won't turn on. I've got the most experience with this stuff. I know how to kill it."

Athena gave a wordless snarl, then lashed out with the painstick. Sheppard writhed, only letting out a harsh cry when she rapidly jabbed the crackling red energy into the base of his neck. Looking nastily satisfied, Athena called,

"Jaffa! Take this useless Tau'ri away, then fetch the others. Sheppard has earned another round of death."

Another round? Oh god, she was using a sarcophagus?

Jake saw Sheppard's bloody grin, and the hand signs flashing 'wait go fire' as he was hauled away.

---

Entering the brig cautiously, Sam stopped and stared down Simeon, the seemingly helpful Sixth House second who was obligingly giving them all the intel they asked for. Sam didn't buy it. The guy's happy happy 'I'm so friendly me!' act wasn't a scratch on Jack's, and she'd served alongside him for years. Besides, the other alliance members gave away the act for what it was – of everyone locked in the make-shift brig, Simeon and Dannic were the pair everyone else kept shooting nervous glances towards. If Varro were here, he'd likely be in charge. But, he was still handcuffed to a gurney in the infirmary.

Simeon watched her like a predator homing in on prey. It made the hair on the back of her neck prickle uncomfortably. Crap. Sam knew trouble when she smelt it, and Simeon was it.

Sam made the effort to look unaffected by his posturing. A moment later, as they'd agreed, Ronon stepped in. He towered over the largest of the Lucian Alliance members. Even Dannic took a step back. Sam could picture the expression on Ronon's face all too well.

The Satedan really shouldn't be up. The burns that scored his back were serious. Sam thanked her lucky stars again that the Hammond had more than its fair share of medical staff, as well as Dr Brightman, she had Dr Simms, who'd been due to become the Chief Medical Officer on the 9 Chevron Project any day now, and Lt Johansen. Dex wasn't letting any of his pain show. At least Sam hoped it was his stoic front, rather than a heavy dose of painkillers, third degree burns were risky precisely because you couldn't feel your damage.

Sam asked the relevant question,

"Anyone here know anything about Ha'tak hyperdrives?"

Sure enough Dannic looked murderous, but Simeon earned just as many nervous glances by merely sitting there.

The mousey red head stepped forward,

"I can help."

Simeon was the one who went poker-faced. Dannic moved as if to step forward, Ronon smiled back. Well, smiled, the one thing Sam could say about the expression was all his teeth were showing.

"Anyone else?"

"What do you need the help for?" A tall black-haired woman, who reminded Sam uncomfortably of Kiva stepped forward.

Sam relayed the dire news, "If we don't harvest spare parts from the floating hulk in the debris field within a few hours we're all dead."

There were disbelieving scoffing noises.

"Dead?" The woman asked.

"Yes dead. Your little stunt with that virus in the breaching pod fried several critical systems. Including shields. My workaround is holding, but when it fails? And it will fail. That pulsar is going to kill us all. If that doesn't get us? We're going to run out of air, soon."

Dannic still looked thoroughly psychotic, he was obviously too focused on plotting revenge on Ronon than actually listening to the current situation. Simeon was paying attention, and he gave a subtle nod and hand gesture.

The woman gave him a narrow-eyed glare, as if to say she didn't need his permission,

"Tasia, I'm one of Kiva's seconds." Tasia turned to the room and called out, "Ginn, Olan. Help the Tau'ri."

The red headed woman, and a nervous looking man stepped forward.

Sam met her gaze gratefully, "Thank you."

---

Vala never thought she'd be grateful to a Wraith for anything. And yet here she was, revelling in her newfound health. Even if it was an altogether artificial sensation. The guilt nagged, Gardner was currently enduring old age. Her fellow ex-host looked decidedly geriatric as they worked side-by-side cleaning the out of the way storage room the Jaffa dumped them in today.

Vala wished she and Gardner had access to the prisoners' levels of the ship, but no. They were confined to the barracks levels, admittedly it gave them access to Rush and the oh so crucial chemical concoctions, that with their combined skills as a conwoman and an art historian, they were doing a decent job of converting to explosives if Vala did say so herself. But… Their current inability to get that crucial information about just where everyone else was stuck in her craw.

Sheppard was… No, Vala refused to think about that. In the times Vala and Gardner had been forced to clean the lab, Vala had seen him run the gamut from insane off the high of sarcophagus abuse, to literally beaten into the ground. She didn't know how much longer he could take this, Vala didn't know how much longer she could take seeing him like this.

Berating herself for ruminating on this stuff when she should be trying to distract Sarah from her current decrepitude, Vala forcefully scrubbed at the floor, and slipped with the excessive pressure she'd applied.

Vala scuffed her knee painfully against something sharp edged on the floor.

Still bleeding she scrubbed angrily at whatever had cut her, then gasped. Was it?

No. Surely not.

"Sarah," Vala called quietly.

"Yes?"

"Tell me this is what I think it is."

Doctor Gardner hesitantly knelt, wincing all the way, and gently shifted some of the grime.

"Careful. We don't want anyone to know we've found thi-"

"Found what?" Recognition dawned. "Oh."

"Yes. Oh."

Silently they both backed away from the hidden ring platform. Gardner located the control panel. It was in the exact opposite position Vala had been expecting. Recognising the expression on Vala's face Gardner smiled ruefully,

"I told you Osiris was into these older Ha'taks."

Vala grinned back. All teeth.

"Shall we?"

Gardner acted as the voice of reason,

"Do you think they'll get a signal when we activate it?"

Vala hesitated with her hands over the control panel,

"It can't hurt to try."

She pressed the button.

The point was moot. The controls were locked.

"Fuck!" Gardner swore under her breath.

"We need to unlock it." Vala typed in a few Goa'uld favourites she remembered Qetesh quietly obsessing over, nothing.

"Let me try."

Vala stepped back and kept watch as Gardner typed in a variant of the Golden Ratio. Ba'al's balls! That one should have worked. The damned Goa'uld were all obsessed with that number.

"Damn. Good idea. It must be something along those lines."

"Yeah the snakes are obsessed with their holy numbers."

"Gorgeous will be able to work it out."

"Gorgeous?"

"Yes."

---

Biro was one of many SGC-read-in medical doctors who received tissue samples from Colonel Dixon's corpse, but she'd been the only one who'd spotted the abnormal folding in the protein in the man's spinal fluid. Samples taken from the victims of the invasion and Colonel Coburn's corpse confirmed it. Every sample they took from a known brainwashing victim contained traces.

However, the volumes of spinal fluid needed to detect anything were… dangerous. Despite the risks Teal'c volunteered, and under the C-13 NMR scans, and SEM his lumbar fluid contained traces of the misfolded protein, but the Jaffa was basically at his previous baseline.

Theoretically all it would take was a lumbar tap, and you'd know whether your patient was a Za'tarc or not. Of course, the amount of spinal fluid needed for an assay was inimical to life. Eventually Mindy worked out that 33S NMR required a slightly smaller sample to find a positive peak. But it still required an extremely risky amount of spinal fluid if the subject was living.

Lam argued that regardless of the volume required, a lumbar tap was no picnic, soft touch that the terse woman secretly was. Mindy bit back that the one in three deathrate for the rite of Mal'sharran was hardly any better, and the other woman shut up. They'd work out how to do these tests on living subjects eventually. Mindy had felt a momentary warning twinge from her ill-used and rusty social skills at that accidental rudeness; the other doctor looked as if she'd been gutted by that reminder.

Mindy sighed, there was a reason she and Albert Rosenfield were such good friends, even with the extreme long-distance pen pal situation, and the mutually classified nature of their jobs. Her fellow pathologist had similar issues relating to the non-pathologist segments of humanity. Though in his case the frequent misunderstandings about his peculiar brand of pacifism usually resulted in bruises. (At least Mindy didn't share Alexx Woods special brand of weirdness, as ill-fitting as Biro was with much of humanity, even she balked at her fellow pathologist's… eccentricities in the treatment of her charges. Though admittedly most of her fellows were somewhat strange, Ducky Mallard was the least of the weirdness among Mindy Biro's peers.)

It hadn't gone unnoticed by the Lanteans that Carson and Keller hadn't been invited to join the brainstorming session, or even recalled to base for their own safety. Still, Biro's contribution to the effort to get the SGC back on its feet was gratefully received. The base under NORAD might go from more than fifty personnel locked away in the isolation levels to zero, once they found a testing method.

It took several rounds of lumbar taps to acquire enough fluid for a thorough assay of Dr Caine's and Colonel Edwards' spinal fluid. Edwards at least volunteered, Caine on the other hand still frothed wildly at the mouth. Both of their living patients were looking rather rough around the edges when they found it.

Coburn's sample had degraded too much. The biopsy samples were a revelation, the mis-folded protein they found in the people who'd been dragged under by the grenade was subtly different to the variety in Colonel Dixon's and Dr Caine's tissues. They weren't anywhere near being able to release everyone quarantined within the SGC. But it was progress.

Biro suspected when the next round of testing was carried out in a couple of weeks, their grenade-manufactured Za'tarcs would have returned to normal. The levels of the simpler misfolded protein in Edwards were much lower than those in poor Doctor Caine. Mindy theorised the grenade's mysterious energy waves induced a large burst of misfolded protein to be produced by the victim's brain in an instant. Whereas the classical Za'tarc's own physiology was induced to self-sustainingly continue manufacturing the warped structure, long-after external influences were removed, over a course of several hours.

Those Za'tarcs the SGC managed to free never were clear about what the physical side of the process entailed. The generalised amnesia was concerning, though she was a pathologist Mindy largely agreed with her colleagues that it was best to let sleeping dogs lie.

The lumbar test was far from an ideal solution. Without probable cause, even the SGC balked at ordering their personnel to undergo an invasive and potentially dangerous test as a matter of course, however it was a step in the right direction.

Of course, quite aside from the volume issue, the danger of the tap came from the fact that one of the few known physical symptoms of being a Za'tarc, aside from a sudden willingness to murder your own mother and be proud of it, was on the vanishingly short list of contraindications to the procedure.

By its very nature becoming a Za'tarc ran the risk of increased intracranial pressure, though frustratingly the symptom wasn't present reliably enough to be used as an indicator, and had enough other potential causes that no one had ever seriously considered using it as one. But still, it was progress.

Mindy was sure someone else would be able to work out the practicalities of using this information. She'd only discovered the misfolded protein by assaying the entirety of the spinal fluid in Colonel Dixon's corpse. The misfolded protein was subtle enough it was extremely difficult to detect. The protein's peak nearly lost in the signal noise of the NMR process. Now, Biro could only hope someone would work out how to reliably use the information.

---

A thin blonde with a head full of curls was thrown bodily into the lab,

"I want to make it quite clear to you Sheppard; your little team aren't the only people you're protecting. This wretch was Osiris's host for several years."

"Good for her."

John automatically called out sarcastically, ignoring the pained wince the woman gave at Athena's gleeful infodump.

"The ungrateful wretch is responsible for Osiris's death."

"And why am I supposed to care?"

Athena snarled at him and kicked angrily at the woman who'd been thrown into the lab. John watched the woman tremble on the floor. She was putting on a hell of a good front, but she looked just as worn down as John felt. Feeling the need to deflect Athena's attention away from her, John rhetorically asked,

"Now, why don't I believe you?" John sing-songed mockingly, earning himself a slap. It slammed his head into the grating painfully. Gardner shot him a mutely grateful look for the distraction.

"Now, ex-host, earn your keep." The threat was smilingly issued, "I've got a spare you know."

Athena shoved a dirty rag at the woman, who had the backbone to scowl angrily, before picking the thing up off the floor. It was probably cleaner than John, but only barely. She hesitantly moved closer to John. Disguising the motion of his head by pretending to further slump into his bonds, John murmured into her ear,

"You part of Doc Porter's group? With Doc Lindsay?"

To John's gratified surprise, she didn't show any clue that she'd heard him, just continued cleaning around the hated tendrils. She murmured back,

"Yeah. Doctor Gardner."

"How many?"

"Ten of us. There's at least one other group though – I've seen them."

"Yeah I'd heard."

"I've got the run of the barracks."

"Look, we need to work together. To get out."

"Agreed. I'm usually with Vala. We can get around, plant stuff."

"Oh good." John hissed back, chagrined that he'd thought he was so central to all this.

"Fire right?"

John hummed a little of 'Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go' at her before replying, "Yeah."

"Great."

The vehemence in her tone almost had John smirking back at her, which would have been a mistake, given that he was still facing Athena's way.

"Tell Vala she'll know when it's Orange Mocha Frappuccino time on account of us locating that final group of prisoners."

Gardner blinked, taken aback. John could tell when she got it. The wry slant to her mouth was half amused half frustrated,

"Tell me why it's longer than the actual word?"

"I'll let Vala fill you in."

Nervily Gardner edged closer, in the guise of cleaning up the excess filth that surrounded him. John was beyond embarrassment at this point, his fetid situation was a thing being done to him rather than his responsibility. Gardner scrubbed away some of the muck on the floor, and hissed,

"We've found a ring platform. But we're locked out."

"Huh."

"I- we think the key will be a standard Goa'uld obsession, they worship real numbers as sacred and abhor irrational numbers with instinctive horror. Well. I remember, Osiris did, Vala says Qetesh was the same. But they both loved the Golden Ratio."

With a level of familiarity that, if he'd thought about it for more than a few moments, John would have been surprised by, Gardner rattled off the Golden Ratio (as if John didn't know it.) and then listed off the layout of the lock-out screen. It couldn't be as simplistic as Pi could it?

"We're getting the information to Rush too. But you're 'fair fucking good at mathematics' yourself. You should know what's going on. We found a way-out Sheppard. It's just a matter of time."

John's mind was already puzzling over the math, perhaps a bubble cypher? Something that maintained the Goa'uld's apparent fascination with the naturally occurring numbers. John hummed a little of Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go at Gardner. She nodded.

"We just need to get organised," John grinned, "Then Orange Mocha Frappuccinos all round."

"Oh good. I'm so glad that you've bonded." Athena's voice cut across the moment like a knife, "Shol'va. It's time for me to finish comparing Tau'ri dogs to Stella via mongrels."

Gardner's eyes widened in momentary panic, before she got ahold of herself. Unlike John she clearly knew what was about to happen next.

It clicked when Athena clicked her fingers imperiously and Todd was hauled out. Gardner was shoved into a chair. John strained fruitlessly against his bonds,

"Dammit, Athena don't do this!"

Athena grinned maliciously, and Todd, with every sign of regret lowered his feeding hand to Gardner's chest. She bravely stared up at him, until the feeding began, and her screams echoed around the lab. How could they keep looking to him for guidance when he was barely keeping it together? John forced himself to bare witness, but was shamefully grateful when Athena had her hauled away.

---

Sam eyed the tactical map with a wary eye. Everyone that needed treatment was firmly ensconced in the infirmary, including their injured …guests. After letting him out to intimidate Lucian Alliance members Johansen judiciously dosed Ronon with sedatives once it became clear the big man wouldn't heed medical advice otherwise. If he kept moving around, those third-degree burns scoring his shoulder blades would never heal.

Aside from the two scientists and the injured, the rest of their invaders were, ironically enough, holed up under guard in the same storage room more than a third of her crew had been caught in.

She'd run a scan of the Hammond over the internal sensors. Thankfully there were no extraneous life forms to account for. Between their losses and their additional Alliance guests the numbers added up. (Though the fact that the crew count was eight fewer than it had been at the beginning of this mess burned in Sam's gut.)

Novak had found the time to fix most of the software damage done by the breaching pod. The nasty piece of malware in the navigational computer that'd been used to steer it towards the Hammond that was so effective they'd initially believed they had a saboteur was now safely quarantined in a non-networked laptop so Sam could pick it apart at her leisure later. Lindsey managed kill the pod's computer too, but they needed to work out if they should jettison the thing.

Unfortunately, their troubles weren't over yet.

Several of the control crystals had cracked. Not just the primary shield crystal, though that loss was bad enough.

Between Sam's jury-rigged workaround to power the shields using several of the hyperdrive control crystals and the havoc the breaching pod wreaked, it was beginning to look unlikely the Hammond would be moving anytime soon. At least not at speeds that wouldn't take millennia to get back to Tau'ri controlled space.

Much to her chagrin, it was their Alliance guests who provided the solution.

"I can help." Ginn volunteered again in the meeting as they pored over the tactical map, "If we don't move quickly the last Ha'tak will fall into the gravity well of the gas giant, as we've agreed the first did, and there won't be any crystals to harvest."

It was a valid point. Of the six ships that attacked them, three ships had been left behind in the pulsar system, inaccessible, if they hadn't been vaporised. The three they'd left in the system of the initial ambush? One exploded spectacularly in the initial skirmish, another had been neatly holed, and before all the chaos the final ship had been in low orbit above the gas giant.

The one that had been above the gas giant was gone, a new pattern of turbulence in the ring-like patterns of the planet's atmosphere made it obvious what its fate had been.

The final Ha'tak had inexorably drifted closer to the gravity well of the huge planet, drawn in by the colossal mass that dominated all orbits in that sector of the solar system.

Lindsey nodded, "Ginn's right, we'll need to move quickly. I don't like how close it is."

"Yeah," Marks agreed, "without parts this ship is going nowhere fast."

"Let me help. I can show you precisely where to look for crystals, it'll be quicker if I come along."

Sam didn't like it at all, but once again Dr Novak nodded enthusiastically,

"Your help would be welcomed." Belatedly the captain remembered Sam was the senior officer in the room, "Uh, that is, if that's okay with you sir."

Sam shot Novak a pointed glare, but… Sam shot another glare Ginn's way,

"Any funny business out there, you won't just be condemning us to death, you'll be dooming all your fellows too."

For the first time since the hasty tactical meeting began, Olan spoke up, "They're not really our fellows. We work for them. Or our families die."

Ginn didn't deny it, her jaw clenched, and her shoulders hunched, but not with anger at Olan.

Damn. That put an unpleasant spin on things. Sam was willing to bet if – when - they got home a significant proportion of their guests would be claiming asylum. From everything she'd heard over the years in the Milky Way, Sam was inclined to believe they'd need it. Dragging herself back to the matter at hand Sam said,

"Very well. Ginn we'll welcome the assist. " Sam nodded at Lindsey, "Dr Novak, do you know what you need to do."

The other woman looked steadily back at Sam,

"Yes colonel. I'll get the parts, don't worry. You just focus on getting life-support fully operational again."

"Right, yes of course." Sam said, chagrined. Of course Novak knew what to do, the other woman knew just as much, if not more, about BC-304 systems than Carter did given she'd been the Daedalus' chief engineer for years.

"Good luck Captain, you have a go."

Sam went back to engineering and got back to her fried conduits. With bated breath Sam watched on the command monitor as the F-302 left the hangar bay and flew over to the drifting Ha'tak that was just beginning to scrape the atmosphere of the gas giant.

"Godspeed."

This mission was risky as all hell for everyone involved. But if they didn't do it, they'd suffocate to death out here. With so many critical systems completely wrecked, it was a choice between life support or sublights, and hyperdrives or shields. Neither was much of a choice at all.

Carter hoped their theories would hold up, and the Goa'uld crystals would be able to take the additional power flow Asgard systems required.

---

John realised with a sinking heart that Athena had caught yet another expedition member, it was Doc Esposito, the Portuguese expert in computer systems whose job it was to work out just what the hell the Ancients had been thinking when they organised Atlantis's database. John had a vague flash of Rodney embarrassing himself at the poor woman once or twice, before Keller came along.

Still, this was his chance. He'd never seen her here before, not like O'Neill 2.0, or Doc Palmer, or Doc Porter, or with Rush – she must be part of that third group of prisoners they'd all been so worried about finding, she must be. This was what they'd all been waiting for.

Even as he was appalled at his own pragmatism, John was grateful she was a fellow Lantean. There was a shared language and history between all expedition members that should let him get his point across to her without getting caught. He hoped. John side-eyed Athena from his position forcibly hunched over the Ancient thingy he was strung up alongside.

The Goa'uld had decided forcing him into constant contact with the thing would get him to slip and activate it, but so far he'd succeeded with his litany of ' .Off,' even as the device pressed uncomfortably up against his cheek trilled in his head like an overexcited puppy.

Doc Esposito looked appalled at the state of him. John couldn't say he blamed her; he knew he wasn't a pretty sight. And that was with the bizarre detachment of a session in the sarcophagus. But, he had to relay this information. Whilst they had a chance. Before Athena wised up to the folly of shoving unknown Ancient tech his way, when, as far as the tech was concerned, he was practically a damned spineless Ancient himself.

Thanking his paranoia for what felt like the hundredth time, John rapidly flashed through the hand signals all members of the Expedition were forced to learn. The things were a bastard mix of AFSOC signalling, Force Recon signs, SAS signals, ASL, Satedan Specialist codes, Athosian hunting shorthand and, John hated to admit he knew this was where the geeks got the idea, Clone Trooper hand signals from Star Wars.

Covertly he messaged,

'Escape soon. How many with you?'

Rafaela messaged back jerkily, but intelligibly,

'Ten. Caught w. Sgt Ng and Mike Branton.'

She was forced to finger spell the names in ASL, but the slowed trickle of information stopped Athena noticing what they were doing, so John didn't quibble the delay.

Rapidly John flashed back,

'Escape Attempt ASAP. Signal is lab fire. Acknowledge'

John hummed a few bars of Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, watching out of the corner of his eye as Athena grinned maliciously at the established sign of his slip into 'madness'. He'd never thought much of Wham, but if they got out of this, John promised himself he'd buy a whole Best Of album. John figured the Man in Black would forgive him the lapse into pop given the circumstances.

'Fire. Acknowledged. Good luck.'

John turned and acknowledged her for the first time, it wouldn't do to act completely suspicious this late in the game. As predicted, Athena backhanded him as soon as he dared turn his head away from the Ancient device he was strapped in front of.

Esposito flinched violently, making Athena laugh delightedly.

"Oh how fun! Do you know each other?"

"No." John bit out.

Rapidly Rafaela proved that she was a first-class liar, in a thick accent John knew she was exaggerating for effect, having heard her perfect American diction, she babbled,

"I've only seen Colonel Sheppard around the base. We, us people who work on the database don't really interact with others, tass cuul. Though he is giro, sim?"

Athena backhanded the doc, sending her sprawling to the floor.

"Shut up with your ridiculous Tau'ri babble!"

Esposito glared up at her, "I can't work like this! You want miracles but you do not let us near the information. You do not let us collaborate! Vai pró caralho!"

Athena raised a threatening hand, the gem in her palm glowed red,

"Enough!"

"Cuna!"

Esposito spat at her feet. John hadn't known the European expedition member had it in her. Athena used the defiance as the excuse that it was and gave the doc a painful blast with the hand device. As Esposito was hauled to the far end of the lab, she shot John a final message, before her hands were positioned in such a way that they were stuck with only the simpler military signals.

'We'll be ready.'

---

"Lindsey! Get out of there! That's an order!"

"I need one more minute Colonel."

"Captain Novak," Sam emphasised the rank, "the ship is breaking up around you now. You don't have a minute!"

"If I don't do this, none of us will Colonel."

"Doctor Novak!" Sam hadn't felt more impotent in a very long time.

A loud crash echoed over the open line.

"What? No? Ginn what the hell are you doing?"

"I have to do this."

"Ginn no!"

A loud squeal of feedback painfully echoed over the line.

The radio cut out.

Had Sam just doomed them all by placing her trust in Ginn?

She slumped at the workstation, then whirled around to shoot a glare at Olan, the other Alliance scientist. He looked just as surprised as Sam felt. Either he was an exceptionally good actor, or… No, uncomfortably Olan reminded Sam far too much of Eldon, the brutalised scientist the Atlantis expedition had taken in during their second year, rescued from a prison colony.

Sam watched the symbol of the Ha'tak hopelessly on the monitor, Holy Hannah! She did not want more of her people to die today. Hadn't space already claimed enough victims in this pointless contest with the Alliance?

The triangle that represented the Ha'tak winked out.

No!

That was it then.

They were done –

"Hope you've kept the bay doors open for us Colonel, we're on our way back."

Sam let go of all thoughts of disobeyed orders in the rush of relief,

"Come on home Captain. Well done."

"I wouldn't have gotten out of there if it wasn't for Ginn, Sam. She's a marvel."

The quiet tones of the Lucian Alliance scientist were as timorous as ever, even over the comms,

"I had to do it Doctor Novak, the systems on the Ha'tak were heavily modif-"

"Yes you did, point is we both made it, and there's crystals to spare."

---

He was shoved face first into the hated ancient device yet again, and Esposito was forced to grab her own random item. John recognised it as one of the mysterious boxes of smell that no one quite knew what to do with, or even what they were for. The real risk of the things was, whilst often there was no smell at all, or occasionally pleasant recognisable scents like freshly cut grass, or a sea breeze, all too often the wave of smell that wafted out was utterly revolting.

No one could decide if the revolting smells were deliberate, or a sign the devices had decayed in 10,000 years. John wondered if this one was another Bog of Eternal Stench in waiting.

"Well? Activate it."

Esposito was one of the two dozen or so Expedition members who'd successfully taken to Carson's gene therapy. John couldn't quite make out the expression on her face, but he signalled it was ok to go ahead. At this point it barely mattered.

Athena leaned down avariciously, looking disturbingly like a kid on Christmas morning. The device glowed dimly, showing it was working, and the little mister extended. But beyond acting as a glorified nightlight, nothing happened.

Athena announced to the room at large,

"Now, Tau'ri scum," she turned and looked pointedly at John, "you'll see the cost for failure."

"Hey! She turned it on. Not our fault it's broken."

Athena snarled angrily at him, distracted from Esposito. The doc stared gratefully back as the dead box of smell was greedily snatched away and stowed.

Shortly John found his hand lashed to the gaudy little bauble that was John's constant torment. The damned vines annoyingly multipurpose, good for more than pinning him to the wall like a bug. John redoubled his chant of 'off off off!' but the persistent little piece of crap really wanted to activate. He could feel it straining to do whatever the hell it did like a leashed dog.

Athena sniffed, "No matter. I anticipated your continued stubbornness."

The barrier to Todd's cell dropped, Athena's Jaffa shoved the unresisting wraith forward. From the corner of his eye John watched Esposito blanch. Yeah. John's spine was busy trying to flee out of his back, even as he knew there was no escaping this.

Todd was positioned in front of him and the weird cuff removed. The big guy didn't even bother to snarl when Athena's goons shoved him forward.

"Get on with it, wraith."

John's hand was still forcibly curled around the hated ancient device. He couldn't do much more than twitch. Todd's feeding hand met his sternum, and the by now familiar sensation of his life being sucked dry started. Distantly he heard a female voice screaming "Stop!" over the unbearable sensations wracking his body.

John barely noticed, what with the overwhelming agony of wraith feeding consuming every facet of his existence, but Athena jabbed the hated painstick John's way. With a detached sense of horror, after all, all of John's emotional credit was going on the here and now of his situation, John hazily realised he'd failed. The little sphere lit up.

The sensation of the unleashed ATA mechanism briefly whited out even the agony, and John was dragged into the interface.

Feeling completely cut off from what was going on, John realised the device was some kind of data storage unit. It was difficult to pay attention with the raw scream Todd was pulling from John's very being. The two sensations warred for dominance, before the device sucked him under completely.

In front of John's mind's-eye a scene from Lantis's past played out. He was utterly detached from his body. The impression of wraith feeding a distant tether to the real world. The familiar sight of one of Lantis's conference rooms, complete with weirdass spare-scaffolding modular table overlaid itself on the lab.

A group of Ancienty looking guys in the usual beige-on-beige uniforms the stuck-up self-righteous assholes favoured were glaring at each other. The oldest most crotchety looking guy started speaking,

"Janus, how dare you repeat this folly. The sheer level of arrogance to defy the council, not once, not twice but-"

John turned, the old guy was berating a surprisingly cheerful looking dude, all suspicious eye-twinkles and lanky frame,

"Oh yes Moros, and we all know how that worked out for Ganos Lai. It's a betrayal of everything if we abandon our descendants to this fate."

The old guy wouldn't budge,

"Interfering in the timeline is forbidden for a reason Janus."

The newly named Janus glared contemptuously at Moros, "I know all about your hypocritical interference. Or did you think I was unaware of your… Sangraal and your knights? …Myrrdin?"

Moros's eyes widened in alarm. Janus spun to the others in the room,

"Listen here High Council, our esteemed leader has broken the foremost of the precious rules he claims I shirk." Janus gave a death's-head grin, "He's interfered so that the Once and Future King shall return."

Murmurs of shock rippled around the table, and the convened council turned on Moros. The scene faded away. A burst of Alteran gibberish streamed straight through John's head, too fast to comprehend, it left John reeling with information overload.

Its purpose seemingly complete, the device went inert. John felt it die on a level that went deeper than that of mere biology. It overrode the distant relief that Todd had obviously stopped feeding.

"Activate it!" screamed Athena, "What did it do?"

The bitch scrabbled for the device turned paperweight, nearly dislocating a couple of John's fingers as she wrenched it from his vine-enforced grasp. John didn't bother to answer, the migraine the thing left him with was almost worse than the feeding had been. Strange ideas about time travel, Camelot, Caliburn, Excalibur, and how good an idea it would be to go looking for a lake followed him down into the dark.

---

"What do you mean temporary reassignment sir?"

Landry gave him that fatherly look Cam hated.

"Son, you're on light duty. And only because you need to babysit the other Sheppard." Landry pulled a face that showed his distaste. Cam knew what he meant, though he was too polite to let it show. On screen Landry nodded pointedly towards Cam's leg, "You know you shouldn't be on duty at all."

Cam sighed, "Yes sir."

Landry's voice did that growly thing Cam had come to associate with the general's particular brand of unasked-for advice,

"Think of it as a paid vacation, get some rest."

The frustration that'd made Cam call the general in the first place bubbled over,

"Whilst the SGC's under siege sir?"

Now Landry sounded exasperated,

"Mitchell. The programme is the most secure place on the planet right now. We've just had an attack; security's been stepped up so much I can't blow my nose without SFs storming my office. Can you think of somewhere better to stash Sheppard's older, politically dangerous, brother?"

Cam hastily bit out a, "Nossir."

Landry stared at him for a beat or two, expression gone strange.

"Since you called…" uh oh, Cam sat up straighter in his chair, "Son, I hate to ask this of you. But do you think I've been unfair on Sheppard?"

"Sir? We've only just met the guy."

"No!" Landry scowled, Cam tried not to cringe, "Not that Sheppard. Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard."

"Oh."

Cam really didn't know what to say.

"It's recently come to my attention that my attitude towards Sheppard may have coloured how people on base have been treating him. And how he's been reacting."

Cam squirmed in his seat.

"And from the expression on your face, I think I have my answer. Thank you, Colonel."

"Uh… sir… I never quite got why you took against him if that's what you're asking. I mean sure, he's got a reputation as a maverick, but the Atlantis reports show it's obviously unfair. Weir fought to keep him. Sam loved him, and I trust Sam's judgement. We both know she should have been SG-1 team leader when she came back. She just wouldn't take it, what with Cassie and all."

Landry looked thoughtful, the expression wasn't quite up to the awkwardness of that excruciating weekend at O'Neill's cabin, but it was alarmingly similar. Cam hurriedly continued,

"Hell, even Woolsey's decided he likes the guy, though I'm not sure what that says. Besides, the version of his record on file at the SGC is mostly redacted. Or at least the copy I've got access to is mostly blacked out, and we both know what that means sir."

Landry stared at the ceiling in his office for a long while before he replied. As the dark expression had hinted, his tone meant the conversation was over, "That's what I thought Mitchell. You're expected to keep at it. Dismissed."

Mitchell wandered out of the conference room with the disquieting sensation that he'd only understood half the conversation. Crap, now he really needed to work out what the hell he was going to tell Dave. Preferably before Dave realised the 'safe house' in Nellis was Area 51.

He slowly made his way over to where he'd stashed Dave. Despite Landry's clumsy attempts at reassurance Cam felt useless, he felt worse than useless. Laid up with a bum knee, the only reason he wasn't on medical leave was the SGC paranoidly keeping their assets close. Well, and someone needed to babysit Sheppard, and he was it.

It itched something awful, on the one hand he wasn't completely out of the loop, he got to sit in on enough briefings to have some idea what was going on. On the other? Cam knew he wouldn't get sent on the rescue mission when the time came. Let alone get sent out to find the Hammond, and Sam. They weren't even letting him join in the excavations to dig the chair out. (Again.)

He eyed up the elder Sheppard sibling, trying not to let his unease show. Once again the guy was veering between anger and disdain, Mitchell had no clue what to do with that. Cam knew he needed to do something to reach out; it wasn't the poor man's fault he needed to stay in nowheresville Nevada desert for fear of what might happen. And it certainly wasn't Dave's fault he was an ignorant businessman with no clue what he'd been thrown into.

David had been invaluable, pointing out there'd been a Goa'uld ship when Vala, Sheppard, and Rush were snatched. They'd never have known they needed to be scouring LA held worlds without him. They owed him one. Still, the petulance of the capitalist grated. Cam knew it was fear for his brother and his family (stuck in protective custody) talking as much as anything.

Yet Cam couldn't tell him anything.

It wasn't a matter of more than my job's worth. If Cam told Dave anything beyond the extremely basic facts, he was risking the security of the planet, and Dave Sheppard's life, to an unqualified civilian. Never mind that the unqualified civilian was Dave Sheppard.

Crap, Cam really needed to work out what he was going to tell the guy, before he was exposed to something he shouldn't be. It was only a matter of time. The stubborn idiot refused to sign the NDA, even though as a businessman he must have been exposed to hundreds of similar contracts over the years.

"Hey, Sheppard?"

A nasty glower was turned Cam's way,

"What Colonel?"

"You wanna go grab a beer?" Cam's voice turned cajoling, "I know who has a stash on base."

"No Colonel Mitchell, I do not want to go grab a beer. I want to know what's being done to find my brother!"

Sheppard's exclamation started out calm enough but grew in volume and pitch as the sentence went on. Cam winced, the SFs outside were staring.

Cam deliberately got into the taller man's space,

"Listen, Dave, David," Cam corrected himself, "We're doing everything we can to find your brother alright? I know you don't want to hear this, but he is one of the most valuable military assets in this whole stinking programme! We're not going to leave him behind. I swear."

David looked only slightly mollified, he stared down into Cam's face as if he could read his very soul before he abruptly closed his eyes and stepped away. The taller man hunched in on himself, then collapsed heavily in one of the ubiquitous uncomfortable plastic chairs, as if his strings had been cut.

"I'm, I'm sorry Colonel. I know you're all doing your best. Hell," David scrubbed a hand through his brown curls in a move eerily reminiscent of his younger brother, "Roberta tells me you guys have done everything humanly possible to make sure she and the girls are safe. And… Well, she would know."

"Huh?" Cam blurted, bewildered.

"Roberta Sheppard, formerly Draper, of the Virginia Drapers? Honourably discharged from the Marines, she'd done her twenty before I met her. She's from the political class. I swore I'd never marry into that kind of old wealth, or a military family. And well," David shrugged expansively, "Here I am."

Cam had to remind himself for the umpteenth time to look beyond the businessman,

"Hey, Shep, are you sure you're doing okay?"

The businessman barked out a harsh laugh,

"No! My brother is missing. My family are in protective custody. I'm as far from okay as it's possible to get and still be healthy." With a sudden boyish grin David ruefully looked straight at Cam, "What was that about getting a drink Colonel?"

"Alright!" Cam crowed, then revised his earlier plan, "I know just the place. There's this fun little alien hunter bar just outside Nellis where the UFO nuts hangout. Come on. Take a load off. You know there's nothing either of us can do, besides stay safe for when they find him."

David looked resigned.

They made their way through numerous checkpoints. Cam hadn't okayed this with Landry, but he figured anything to stop the elder Sheppard from going insane like Senator Armstrong's widow was likely to be sensible.

Sheppard scoffed loudly when he saw Cam's baby.

"Hey, what is it with you Sheppards and constantly dissing Winona?" Cam asked, slightly hurt.

He'd never gotten comments about his classic car before, well, no he had. But they'd only ever been admiring comments.

Sheppard snorted, "Unlike you Colonel, I feel no need to overcompensate for anything."

"Hey!" Cam repeated, this time more emphatically.

Dave snorted, reminding Cam so strongly of his brother that he nearly snapped back at the man in throttle jockey speak. Cam caught himself just in time. Sheepishly, aware David had no clue how precarious his situation was, Cam made himself ask,

"So, you hungry Shep? We could eat first, soak up the booze. We've got a decent cafeteria here at Nellis. We have to with the base this close to Vegas, it's that or we lose the civilian contractors to three-hour lunches every day."

Sheppard snorted again, "I'm not going to be appeased colonel, but very well, lead on."

They made it to the Roswell 51 UFO bar and grill without a hitch. Winona didn't raise so much as a twitch from the bar's regulars. Cam was grateful he hadn't signed out a car from the pool, the customers were very obviously the type of nut who regularly hung around outside the base like a bad smell hoping for a glimpse of whichever government conspiracy was doing the rounds online that week.

David's expression upon seeing the inflatable aliens strung up along the bar's false ceiling was priceless, but the beer on tap was decent, and, well, it wasn't the mess. For all of Cam's half-hearted talk about staying on base, as a nod to security, Area 51's mess served food only marginally more tolerable than the bag nasties.

---

Whilst he was hastening his inevitable demise, by scratching out sections of his decryption algorithm in Devlin Tech's servers and using them to attack this accursed place, Rush decided to wholeheartedly shatter himself against the immovable object that was the 9 Chevron Project. In for a penny in for a fucking pound. Nick had a tenuous grasp of sanity anyway, he was willing to sacrifice it, if that's what it took to break through the lock the Ancients placed on the address. Athena's decision to use the others, especially Vala's crippling, and Sheppard's subsequent death as motivation for him just backfired… He wasnae going to cooperate with the mad cunt. He refused.

He was going to batter his way through the obstacle to tear whatever mysteries the Ancients deemed important enough to hide behind that ninefold cryptographic lock if it killed him. Athena and Devlin and Sanity be damned. Following Mandy's advice, and attempting to exercise a modicum of self-preservation only led to the current circumstances he found himself in. The circumstances that meant he'd dragged everyone else down into the morass of his soul to drown with him.

The sight of Ms Mal Doran, Vala, a crone kept intruding. Even if he'd wanted to, Nick couldn't bring himself to focus on the problem at hand. Every time his train of thought wandered there she was, looking like old Moira McConaughey stinking of booze and piss out of the Red Road flats. No, the only thing thus far that'd proven capable of driving that image away was the complex alien code written by a civilisation long dead. The Ancients had been gone, dead, buried, so much dust and ascended light long before the pyramids were a twinkle in Ra's eye. Yet somehow the lonely remnants of their civilisation were the only thing letting Nick keep his tenuous grasp on the present. If a cryptographic problem from before the dawn of human civilisation could be deemed the present.

Still, even that imagery was better than the visions of Sheppard, John, that brilliant mathematical mind, face lit up with shy pleasure at the recognition Rush had grudgingly given him, snuffed out. The empty shell hanging in the lab hadn't been his friend anymore.

Now Rush was allowing himself to think about it, the seventh cypher looked less like an impenetrable gordian knot of exponentially complex polynomial transforms and more like a Boolean SAT that had been obscured by yet more layers of assumed knowledge about the inner workings of ancient technology. Nick's mind swam through the problem, he could almost feel the solution, fingers itching to type up the algorithms that would make short work of separating out the pure mathematics from the obscuring haze of physical science and crystallography. Now his inner Mandy pointed it out, Nick could see it looked remarkably similar to the forms obscuring that first simple stream cypher all those months ago. A simple fourier transform and a quick consult to see if someone else could factor in the shape of the unit cell for him, and Nick would have the seventh cypher he knew.

Athena came in, shattering the beautiful complexity of the mathematics hovering before Rush's minds-eye.

He screamed, a growl of wordless frustration and anger and hate.

Athena smiled smugly,

"Am I to assume you've finished breaking into Devlin Tech?"

This time the noise ripped from Nick's throat was mostly fuelled by contempt. Letting as much haughty drunken nonsensical injured dignity into his tone as he dared, Rush answered, perfectly seriously,

"No. I am summoning. The haggis."

Even as the awful consequences played out; Athena hauling in her monstrous pet, and Nick experiencing again just what he'd put Vala through. Nick thought mouthing off was worth it for the look of confused fear on the mad cunt's face. Nick willingly gave himself over to the spin of pure mathematics in his head, ignoring the sensations his body was sending.

He was left in a crumpled heap on the floor as the wraith was hauled away. Rush was already refocusing on the spin of mathematics, perhaps an n-fold transverse matrix would be a simple way to get around the mapping issue he was having?

Athena made another ridiculous demand. Grinning crookedly, aware he probably wasn't entirely sane, Rush taunted,

"Meow Meow Cry Meow Meow, that's all I heard you say."

Truth was, Nick broke into Devlin hours ago. Worse, Tweedlecunt showed his screen to Athena, and the mad hen knew it.

One prolonged session with the pain stick later, red lightning crackling down every nerve, Athena demanded,

"No more delays. I want you to break into Sheppard Industries now."

The desktop was reworked, and Nick's half-completed attack via Devlin's servers was dragged tantalizingly out of reach. He hadn't let himself focus on that task, almost superstitiously afraid of what would happen if he did. Now, Nick was cursing himself for his indolence. A wave of despair shot through him, Nick could barely bring himself to lift his hand to the keyboard.

The inaction cost him.

Athena read his desolation as defiance.

Rush was left a pathetic heap on the floor of his room by the time Athena had spent her rage. He couldn't find it in himself to regret the decision that had led to this state of affairs. Tweedlecunt glared down at him, skittishly Nick started typing.

Sheppard Industries, there wasn't the remotest fucking chance that name was a coincidence. Almost against his will, Nick drifted back to the spin of sigmoidal mathematics that was so pleasing to the mind's eye. Idly he typed out a few rough solutions for the cypher into the Sheppard Industries server, completely oblivious to the room around him.

"Gorgeous!"

Nick hrmmed, actually how about eigenvalues? It couldn't be that simple could it?

"Nick!"

A hand clamped down on Rush's shoulder and shook.

Rush turned and snarled; ready to bite. It was Vala.

"Gorgeous! What are you doing?" she hissed, "You're not helping Athena are you?"

Nick came back to himself. Brushing aside the wave of glorious mathematics that threatened to drag him under, away from the aches of his newly youthful body, and the spasms from the painstick Nick growled,

"Vala, I wouldn't piss on that bitch if she was on fire. Tell me what the fucking problem is."

"We've found a ring platform."

"We?"

"The other host?" Vala frowned at Rush's lack of recognition, "Gardner."

"Well?"

"It's locked." Vala shot him a speaking look.

Nick, who'd never been any good at reading gestures like that asked, "You're the expert on Goa'uld technology, why are you asking me?"

"You're the expert on cryptography." Vala sighed, and seemed to collapse in on herself, "Look. The Goa'uld abhor irrational numbers with a level of fear that's… Well, irrational. Yet, they worship the golden ratio and… It's all very complicated. Have you got any ideas what the code might be Gorgeous?"

"Euler's number perhaps?"

"Huh?" Vala looked blank.

"2.71828… " Rush shrugged, still feeling largely indifferent to the physical world, "Look around you Vala, it's just as likely to be something to do with all these fucking scorpions scrawled on the walls as it is to do with anything else."

Vala hurried away, but Nick felt a glimmering of hope. Fine, he'd crack Sheppard Industries, but he'd also crack into this hellhole whilst he was at it. Even if he had to spread out his attack across every single server Athena forced him to break.

---

They had the crystals they needed.

Working out if they would be compatible was another matter. But Novak and Ginn were back, and safe. Sam felt able to sit down and rest for the first time in days.

At TJ's not so subtle prodding, Sam agreed to take a three-hour catnap with ill-grace. It was only the knowledge that Lindsey and her crew of experienced engineers seconded from the Odyssey, the Apollo, the Sun Tzu, the Daedalus and Atlantis alike were working the issue that let Sam do even that.

Even now Ginn and Olan were working with Sam's team to build the necessary step-up step-down power conversion cradles for the ill-matched Goa'uld control crystals.

Ginn was a marvel. If she weren't a member of the Lucian Alliance Sam would have liked her. As it was, Sam ordered a close eye be kept on the young woman. Sam was horrified when the quiet slip of a girl admitted she'd been the one to write the breaching pod virus. Ginn was arms deep in the Hammond's systems when that piece of information came out.

The brutal efficiency of the virus she'd used to bring down the Hammond's systems had been awesome, in the worst sense of the word.

The skill Ginn displayed was even more alarming in light of the fact she'd never encountered Tau'ri-Asgard hybrid technology before she'd done it. The virus was so devastating they'd all believed it was a saboteur. Sam was uncomfortable with the newfound knowledge that Ginn piggybacked the crippling code on the breaching pod that bored a hole in her ship.

Still, between Sam and Doctor-Captain Novak's supervision, Sam figured they could use Ginn to reinitialise the systems she'd scuttled so effectively.

The worst thing was how scared the girl was. She'd been apologetic from the moment they captured the Lucian Alliance invaders. Olan and Ginn's all too believable sob-stories about getting press-ganged, with their family's lives used as leverage, was of a piece with human brutality on Earth. Sam could well believe it. But… Sam wasn't Daniel. She'd seen and done too much, even before her years at the SGC to so easily trust.

Even as she prepared to sleep, Carter continued to keep a close eye on everything Ginn was typing into the laptop that was completely cut off from the network via the hastily adapted remote conferencing software installed on the device. Sam would double and triple check everything herself, and probably get a second, third, and even fourth opinion before she'd let the program unfurling under the girl's fingers anywhere near her ship's systems.

Yes, Ginn was a marvel alright, but like so many marvels her works were beautiful and deadly.

---

John was aware he still wasn't thinking quite straight. Behind the flickering golden haze of the Goa'uld shielding that separated him from the rest of the lab Todd was pacing back and forth, shooting him worried looks. John let his head loll, uncaring of what would happen next. The ancienty gizmo had done a hell of a number on him. His thoughts kept trying to twist down avenues of swords being given out by damp women lying in ponds.

Athena's rage had been something to behold. The endless cycle of pain, sarcophagus, pain had fairly detached him from his surroundings. He'd taken every bit of SERE training he possessed and flung it out to protect himself from the horrors that surrounded him. John allowed himself to sink into deliberate numbness, detached from himself and his surroundings. He wasn't sure it'd be enough. Everyone broke. The only decision really, was when to break, and what to give.

It said something that Todd was a comfort in this place. Athena was monologuing again. The snake sounded frustrated, which John took as a sign that he was doing something right,

"We've gotten nowhere with pain. The Wraith did not faze him. Death only made him angry. Sacrificing his companions did nothing for the heartless fool. Time for alternative methods."

The Goa'uld smiled.

It was a self-satisfied smile.

John was more freaked out by the idea of whatever the hell had put that look on their face than all the torture that had gone on before. Frankly being fed on by a wraith repeatedly was no picnic, even when the wraith didn't want it either. It had been bad enough when it just happened the once. John now had some idea just what it must have taken to get Ronon to crack. He just knew they must have gotten ahold of the footage from when Kolya had taken him, John figured the snake wouldn't have the intelligence to come up with cycling him through youth and old age by herself.

Casually Athena stopped her Jaffa,

"Wait. I don't want you contaminating the rest of the place with his filth. Clean him."

The goons complied. John had the remnants of his clothing, rags as they were by now, torn from him. Icy cold water from a hose was next, leaving him spluttering and shivering in his bonds, unable to even twist away from the harsh jet.

Still shivering John's bonds were rearranged, and still cuffed by the hated tendrils, John was hauled away from the lab stark naked. He caught Todd's alarmed expression as he was pulled away. John figured it was another humiliation tactic on Athena's part, though, it was a failed one. He was military, any concept of modesty had long since been beaten out of him.

In short order John found himself being dragged along to a whole new section of the Ha'tak, up several levels, far away from the cells, and lab, even Todd.

A Jaffa hurried over to their humiliating little convoy, eyed John nervily, as if he figured he'd be in John's position after what he was about to say, and hesitantly said,

"Goddess, there's trouble up at the entrance."

"And?" Athena asked impatiently.

"The rings are acting up again."

Athena scowled eyes flashing she bit out, "Well? Use the other exit."

John made a mental note of the direction the relived looking Jaffa scurried off in.

There was a table. Oh great. Was the vivisection finally going to start now? That'd been the one thing on John's hypothetical list of greatest hits that he really hadn't wanted to try out. He threw out some general dispersions about Athena's lack of villainous style to try and make himself feel better about the ominous table, and its glistening terrifying metallic contraptions,

"Really, what sort of bad guy are you. You don't even have any sharks. Is it too much to ask for sharks with frikkin laser beams on their heads?"

John made a point of looking unimpressed, he wanted to put off whatever was coming for as long as he damn well could, not to mention the whole, possible way out of here! Thing that was flashing its neon sign across his brain,

"I mean," he added sarcastically, "What sort of bad guy's evil lair is this? There aren't even any cats to stroke evilly."

---

"Yunno, I tell you Doctor Jackson, when I first saw you I thought, 'woah that's one hot piece of ass.'"

"Why thank you Lieutenant James. I think."

Teyla added her own observation, "Does anyone else feel… strange?"

From her position rifling through storage crates of kassa, Satterfield turned and chimed in,

"Wha-? Nah. I feel fine! In fact I feel great!"

James couldn't help but laugh, "Great? Ha! Sucks to be you, I feel fantastic!"

Daniel exclaimed, "Marvellous!" in a distant tone.

"Oh, good one!" Caius laughed from his position slumped against another crate.

The world had taken on a sparkling edge. Lights gleamed brighter. Details seemed softer. Everything was brilliant.

That's what clued James in, nothing was ever brilliant. Oh, sometimes something would take the edge off, but, she was AFSOC, she'd seen and done things ordinary foot soldiers would blanch at. Vanessa hadn't felt truly happy in years.

"I, I think we've been drugged."

"Oh that's cool."

"Ye- no! No it isn't. It's very very bad."

With the false-sobriety adrenaline lent, James tried to catch Satterfield's eye. The captain was too busy poking in apparent fascination at another battered Goa'uld supply crate. She turned to Teyla, and found the petite woman staring off into space, a distant frown marring her features, but otherwise serene.

Well, crap. This was turning out just like Fallujah. This mission had gone Tango Uniform on them and they hadn't even noticed. James turned angrily on Caius, but he was as stoned as the rest of them.

"God it's another Fallujah."

Daniel frowned at her, James met his gaze quizzically, picking up on the fact she'd said something to annoy him, but unsure what.

"I …visited that city before we decided to make that country our patsy" he paused, "It was beautiful, city of a thousand mosques. Then we wrecked the place. Centuries of history, wiped out in an instant."

James felt a flash of anger, red hot, and surprising given how artificially calm she felt a moment ago,

"Nossir, the insurgents wrecked the place."

Daniel smiled cynically,

"And we had nothing to do with that. Installing ourselves as the effective government of the nation, and then doing nothing that remotely resembled governing. We told them they were free, and they should be grateful. When we'd shut down the water, the sewers, the hospitals, the schools, the electricity… I saw Lt Colonel Sassaman's Israel tactics, and… well, if they didn't hate us before we invaded, we gave them every reason to hate us before we left."

"Were you there sir?"

"Hey hey, guys dudes, Tau'ri. Stop with the fighting, you're harshing my buzz."

Vanessa's head lolled as she turned to face the smuggler.

"Huh."

"Heyheyhey."

Satterfield sounded far too fucking excited for James's piece of mind.

"What's up Captain?"

"Look what I've found."

In amongst the crates of kassa, Satterfield had dug up some kind of data device.

"Lookie here, trade manifests, plans to invade Hebridan because they're fighting back, cross-breeding data… It's a goldmine."

"That's great and all Grace, but we need to get outta here." James said.

Teyla was the one who came up with something,

"Surely we can take a leaf out of Han Solo's book?"

James whirled around, "Ya what now?"

While James was busy regretting her life choices as the world spun horribly, Teyla enumerated,

"This Lucian Alliance is just as criminal as Caius here."

"Hey! I'm a legitimate businessman lady!"

"And as such, they must have smuggling compartments…"

"Oh, hey yeah that sounds like a great idea." Daniel said, sounding for all the world like a stoner. "How'd you know anything about Star Wars anyway? Teal'c show it to you?"

Teyla smiled, even as she continued searching the gold walls for an exit,

"Oh no, that honour went to Colonel Sheppard."

"Aha!" Daniel was the one who found the secret compartment.

"Hurry up guys!" James chivvied Satterfield and Caius along.

Satterfield stowed the data device she found, and shot Vanessa a wry look,

"This better not be a trash compactor…"

---

Camile bumped into Madam Shen as she left the SGC's accounts office. The sub-NORAD base at Cheyenne churned like a kicked anthill, so Camile wasn't wholly surprised she'd run into someone she was trying to avoid. However, it was deeply unfortunate that she'd run into this particular IOA higher-up just as Camile was attempting to smuggle out information she didn't strictly have any right to access.

Fortunately, or not, the Chinese representative held… the typical views Chinese nationals of a certain class tended to hold of those people of Chinese descent who lived outside the country. Traitor, foreign, lesser like all non-Chinese races, but somehow worse, because it was a choice to be inferior and non-Chinese, not an inborn defect.

Wray could practically hear the sneer.

Hopefully that level of blind disdain would protect her.

Shen's eyes ran over her contemptuously clearly noting every flaw in her appearance. Camile tried not to draw attention to the tablet and hardcopy files tucked into the machine's case. She deliberately made a point of not hiding it behind her back. Madam Shen smiled nastily.

Crap.

For all that she was working the accounts on Strom's say-so, Camile wasn't sure she could come up with a valid excuse for getting hold of some of the files she was holding right this instant.

Madam Shen smiled shark-like and started speaking in Mandarin. Completely ignoring the accepted etiquette on base that everyone stuck to English, given it was the language the gate translation circuits latched onto.

Dr Park of all people came to Camile's rescue. Her unlikely saviour unknowingly bulldozed her way through the whole car wreck of a social interaction, utterly derailing the other woman's train of thought. Yeah, Camile was mixing her metaphors, it had been a stressful couple of weeks. Evacuation from an invasion, a crash course in whole new skillset so her boss, who hated her, wouldn't have an excuse to fire her, and then to top the whole stinking situation off… Camile discovered a line of dubious accountancy that meant she was investigating her own employers without any sort of official sanction to protect her.

Shen turned and asked in Mandarin why Park was interrupting her betters. In faltering Cantonese, that Camile was ashamed to admit she was surprised Park spoke at all, Park asked Shen to repeat the sentence. Camile had been under the impression that the foolish woman had completely renounced her heritage to try and fit in. As if being aggressively English-speaking would make any difference in a country that coined the slur 'chink' to justify slavery, then later came up with yellow peril to justify concentration camps. Camile was proudly Chinese American herself, but she wasn't blind to her home-nation's flaws. Shen's expression turned truly unpleasant in the face of the other language; it was the perfect distraction.

Camile deliberately swapped over to Korean, to piss off Madam Shen, a woman snobbish, and foolish enough to have stuck with only Mandarin, the official language of the Chinese government, rather than learn any of the popular languages the people in Eastern Asia actually spoke, especially those who weren't party members.

Two could play at that game.

For all that Camile was not overly fond of Doctor Park, she refused to allow the Chinese IOA representative to shame a fellow Asian-American for a perceived traitorous un-Chineseness, which, Camile was well-aware, as a 'foreign' Chinese herself, the diplomat viewed Wray and Park as. Albeit to differing extents, given that Park was 'only' a Korean American, and Wray was a second generation American from a 'traitorous' family who fled during the Cultural Revolution.

Park was slightly taken aback by Camile's sudden enthusiasm for a prolonged conversation about the vagaries of mineral deposition on foreign worlds vs Earth's composition, but gamely allowed herself to be drawn into a conversation. Wray happily followed Park to the civilian break room, still chattering away in American-accented Korean, when they got to the queue for the coffee pot. Their conversation garnered a few weird looks, but less than they probably should have earnt, all things considered. The English-only speakers probably didn't quite understand how unusual it was to hear this particular language spoken at length at the SGC.

---

John struggled futilely against the hands holding him down.

"Shall we drug him?"

Athena smiled smugly at John, then turned to her goon,

"No. I want him aware, to anticipate what's about to happen."

John gulped. He could sure do with some of that enzyme given strength right about now, but the Gift of Life process just left him feeling drained and ill. He'd lost count of how many times Athena had Todd drain him and revive him, over and over again.

From his prone position on the table John blanched as something that looked like it came out of Quentin Tarantino's most fevered nightmares about what people got up to during sex was pushed towards his face.

"Oh hell no. You kinky bastards." John restarted his struggles, heedless of the fact that he was getting nowhere. "No way. No way in hell."

It was no use.

The shiny black mask, with its sinister looking tubes was harshly pulled over his head.

John squirmed trying to wriggle free.

"Oh for your goddess's sake! Sedate him if you're finding it so difficult. But nothing that'll knock him out. I want him to know what he's earned himself."

There was a sharp prick at his neck.

John's movements grew even more uncoordinated. What had been jerky motions slowed to lethargic shuffling, before winding down to mere twitches. His brain was separated from his body, he could still feel, see and hear everything despite the terrifying glimpse of the mask thingy he'd gotten, but he could not get his brain's commands to connect to his limbs.

"Finally!" Athena gripped his chin harshly, pulling his now lolling head around to face her, "Prepare for torment the likes of which you've never imagined you Tau'ri fool!"

John wanted to mock her for her hackneyed villain dialogue but couldn't work up the coordination to speak. The men preparing him started moving his body around as if he was a fucking doll. All John could do was lie there and hope it would be over soon.

Alarmingly John realised that the mask had one of those horrible little tubes that inserted into his stomach, he found this out when the guy fiddling with it poked up his nose and down his throat. He'd have gagged if he could. It was like breathing around a fucking straw in his sinuses. Unthinkingly John opened his mouth to get some more air, that was a strategic error. In the moment of twitchy disorientation as he found he couldn't even control his jaw properly; he saw a hand headed his way and could do nothing to stop it as it firmly strapped the mask with its hated feeding tube to his face. John peered cross-eyed at the thing in horror. What the fuck? What could possibly need this?

The next thing he was aware of was the sensation of his hands and legs slowly being encased, gloves? Pantyhose? What the hell? Whatever the material was it was slick, and restrictive, and oh oh hell no. Athena smugly grinned at him as she used something on the ungainly mask as a handle to lift his head up. John peered past the tube; this was like the kinkiest most disturbing porn he'd ever seen on some of his marines' shared stash that he wasn't supposed to know existed. Fuck.

He was still naked, all his junk hanging out for everyone to see. But his arms and legs were encased in restraints that were covered in alarming tubes and wires, it looked just like the brief glimpse of the hood he'd gotten. Shit. He was being turned into a pincushion! He watched with detached horror as, with an ominous clicking noise, the tubes triggered simultaneously, and injectors of some sort built into the gloves started working their creepy magic. Pain registered a moment later. His hands curled up into fists, spasming involuntarily shut as whatever they were doing to him took hold. He couldn't even twitch his arms anymore. They'd taken away his thumbs.

Whatever this meant, it couldn't bode well.

The layer of tubes and needles wrapped up around both his legs activated the same way. Suddenly his ankles were attached to each other solidly. Again, with the creepy pain of the injectors, they'd completely taken away his ability to run. It felt eerily like the world's longest cramp, only he was strangely detached from it all, as if he was drifting away from his body. Fuck. If Shep could have, he'd have banged his head back against the table.

Yet another complex load of alarming tubing was hauled over to the table by two of the servants, slaves, whatever, they were helping this bitch. John tried to say, 'Oh Fuck no!' when he worked out what they were, but between the tubes, the mask and the drugs all he managed was a squeaky, "Unhgffff! Fffffnnnn! Nnngh!"

The unpleasant sensation of a catheter being inserted, and the doubly invasive feeling of something worming its way up his ass had him trying not to show fear. From the malicious grin on Athena's face it wasn't working. The implications about how long term this was all gonna be really weren't sitting well.

She patted his flank proprietarily, "Oh don't worry your pretty little head, slave. This is all to keep you healthy. Relatively, anyway."

His head was unceremoniously dropped back to the table with a thunk, John couldn't really see those alarming tubes, and their alarming positions anymore. But he was horribly aware they were there. Uncomfortable tugging sensations every time he was repositioned by Athena's goons was testament to that.

Shep's arms were pushed down to his sides, lo and behold, the tubes and wires poking out of his arms faded out of awareness. Oh, he could still feel his arms, sorta. But considering the drugs, the whole concept they were his felt foreign.

Screwed. He was so fucking screwed.

Athena mused, whilst tugging at the mask, shoving John's head around as she did so, "I want you to know your struggles are pointless. I have agents in Area 51 as we speak. I shall soon gain access to your Asgard Core, and destroy your Odyssey in the process, and… well, I could always use a spare ATA carrier. I hear your brother is there too."

Panic was everything. John didn't even have enough muscle control to practice that simple sixteen second SERE breathing technique to try and calm down. In the back of his mind he could hear himself gibbering that it was a good thing his autonomous muscles were still working given he couldn't even control something as simple as breathing right now.

To his disbelief the table lurched horribly, and he started sinking. What the hell?! Sheppard swiftly found himself peering up at the ceiling from a much lower vantage point, oh he did not like where this was going at all… It was like looking up at the world from the bottom of a well.

Yep, and there it was, the horrible twist to an already horrible situation. He realised what the lower position meant when the goo started oozing in. It was thick and cold around his bare skin. The table was a tank, a tank he was lying in, about to drown in. Sonofabitch! He couldn't even try to squirm away, just look on at the people working above him, reeling in stunned horror at the sensation of the stuff slowly creeping up around his back, buttocks and calves. It was just like the fucking Matrix. Only he wasn't Neo, and he didn't have the power to take a magic pill and escape the bad place. A voice that sounded suspiciously like McKay's snorted in his head. Oh what? With all the suggestive imagery John couldn't give in and run with it?

Shep lay there in shocked silence for a while as the inevitability of it all overwhelmed him, first the goo reached the back of his neck, he could feel his hands being submerged, the tips of his ears got wet…

Athena's face loomed over his again, unwelcome and far too close.

"I've saved the best bit to last my stubborn little ATA carrier."

She turned to, well, presumably there was someone next to her, Shep's field of view was pretty limited right now, what with being trussed up like a pig, stuck at the bottom of a rapidly flooding tank, and unable to move what few muscles were still free.

"I shall take away your hearing and your sight."

No!

"Nnnn!"

"Let's see if that's sufficient motivation. You should have obeyed your Goddess when you had the chance."

The goo was slowly oozing up over his head, lapping up over his thighs and around his torso, Sheppard couldn't move, couldn't do anything. Something oozed into his ear canals. Abruptly Athena's mouth was moving but there was no sound.

Sheppard started panicking for real then, unheeding of the terror shining in his eyes.

The goo rose inexorably upwards.

Something black closed over his eyes and he was in darkness.

He had a few more moments to panic in the dark.

He could feel it slowly rising, and finally the ooze seeped into his nostrils.

He was going to drown; he was going to drown.

If it weren't for the muscle relaxants he'd be hyperventilating. He was choking on thick viscous gunk and he couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't breathe.

If he could he'd be thrashing.

Gradually it registered to his terrified brain that he wasn't dead.

Dumbly the realisation that he couldn't really feel anything kicked in. He couldn't feel the bottom of the tank. Couldn't see anything. Couldn't hear. Couldn't. Couldn't.

There was a fleeting sensation of tightness. What? What could it be? Oh. Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. They'd closed that death tank thing over his head, hadn't they?

The already claustrophobic sensation increased tenfold as there was an abrupt shift in the oozing of the stuff that encased him, and a sensation of freefall.

Sheppard was coming down from the panic of near drowning, all that adrenaline with no output left him feeling drained and emotional. He couldn't tell if he had the shakes or not, weirdly detached from his body as he was. He had no idea what was going on, nothing. No clue what to expect.

Were they moving him? They must be? But why? Where?

After what felt like an eternity, he felt a reverberating clunk. Then nothing. He had no idea where he was. What was in the room with him. If he was even still in a room? Fuck!

There was an uncomfortable tugging sensation on the numerous pieces of tubing sticking out of his body. Oh, oh shit, that, no, Sheppard tried not to gag, horribly afraid of the consequences if he did, yeah, yeah it was. That was the nasogastric feeding tube. He was stuffed full of needles pumping god knows what into him. He swallowed around the discomfort and realised that he could sort of move again. Not that it would do him much good, in the dark and the silence.

Gradually even that limited awareness of his body faded away, the weightlessness of the goo removing basic knowledge of up and down and sensation.

Would he even be able to tell if he had vertigo like this?

It felt scarily like G-LOC.

No worse.

There was no clue. No horizon to orient against. He assumed he was still facing the sky. But nothing spoke either way.

It was how he'd imagined those who'd died in the void between the galaxies at Midway might have ended up if the Wraith hadn't got to them first.

Endless black.

Time.

How long had he been trapped here in the dark?

Minutes?

Hours?

Days?

The black nothingness completely overwhelmed him.

He started to scream silently, even the sensation of his own throat vibrating to give him some sort of anchor, missing entirely. Anything.

There was nothing.

---

The atmosphere in Caius's little ship was tense.

"You Tau'ri." Caius's tone turned from darkly cynical to a mocking sing-song,"It'll be an easy job. A quick in and out, no trouble."

Doctor Jackson, oblivious to the undertones said,

"At least we found a clue, Hebridan. The Lucian Alliance are frustrated by their lack of progress. Those reports. A rival galactic network spying on the Alliance as the Alliance spies on the rest of the galaxy. We have to go there. It's a start at least."

Daniel opened his mouth to say something else, but Caius, his attention still on the viewport didn't notice,

"You're just as much trouble as Vala, Daniel Jackson. I'm never taking another job from you or the Tau'ri again."

Teyla eyed the smuggler. It might be the kassa induced hangover talking however it had taken weeks to track the man down, and now they had, she was not overly impressed. His small craft wasn't inspiring; Teyla had sat through Star Wars often enough, on John's behest (and later despite John's protests when Ronon worked out precisely where the nickname Chewie came from), to draw unflattering comparisons with Han Solo.

"Caius." Daniel said cautiously.

"Why yes dear Daniel?"

Teyla eyed the man suspiciously. He was all too familiar, the type of individual who existed by preying on others' greed. Yet, he was the first person they had contacted who hadn't immediately tried to sell them out to the Lucian Alliance. Given how many failed missions they had been on, how many times the Alliance sent them fleeing for their lives? That was significant.

Just as Atlantis maintained an uneasy alliance with the Genii out of necessity. Teyla felt they needed this man. Besides, he had saved them.

The past five missions ended with their so-called contacts immediately attempting to sell them out. Tenat and Jup, the disturbingly alien bounty hunters had barely been the tip of the iceberg of double crosses and failed attempts to find even a trace of what the Alliance were planning over the past month.

With no little amount of disquiet Teyla watched as Daniel Jackson's blatant disdain for the man, made Caius pull further and further away from them,

"How long until we reach our destination?"

"Oh a while." Came the noncommittal reply.

Teyla could almost see the disappointment and barriers coming up behind the smuggler's eyes. Jackson started up with trying to renegotiate their deal again,

"Caius, come on, you know me. I helped get you your ship back."

Caius's response was cool, "Yes, after Vala stole it."

"Yes…" Jackson pursed his lips, "After Vala stole it. But we got it back for you. Without our help you'd still be playing monk with a broken piece of spaceship as a holy relic. You owe me."

It was precisely the wrong tack to take. If anything they owed Caius. He was the one to get them out of the kassa warehouse. Teyla watched the smuggler's posture stiffen as Daniel continued. She thought Doctor Jackson was supposed to be good at this?

"I don't owe you anything. We had a deal, we both met our ends of the bargain. Just as I'll follow through for you here by dropping you off where we met up."

"Oh, come on. You know how dangerous the Lucian Alliance are. It can't be easy keeping up the business with their territories growing. "

She decided to make one of those 'Executive Decisions' Elizabeth occasionally joked about, all the while using a chiding tone of voice that stated if Teyla had been under her command rather than Athosian, she'd be receiving a formal reprimand.

From her long coat Teyla produced the Athosian Firestarter that helped impress upon John all those years ago that her people were more than nomadic hunter-gatherers. Not that he ever looked straight through her, the way many of the military members of the Expedition tended to in that First Year of their alliance.

"A trade then?"

Caius's eyes fairly lit up with glee. He casually flipped a switch on the gaudy dashboard and came straight over to her,

"And what is that?"

"Merely a device my people manufactured millennia ago."

Teyla demonstrated its use by igniting one of the smaller bundles of dried herbs that lined the cockpit of Caius's ship. The gout of superheated plasma that shot out of the end of the Firestarter practically had Caius doing a little jig on the spot.

"Oh!"

He reached out a covetous hand, Teyla drew the Firestarter back away from him with alacrity.

"No. You get this when you get us our information."

Sullenly Caius asked, "Any other demands?"

"I have more technology you may find of interest if you decide to do other favours. The Athosians are a fair people, we have always respected honesty."

"Athosians?"

Teyla inclined her head.

"Never heard of you. You're not of the Tau'ri?"

"No." Teyla gave him a highly edited version of the truth, ignoring Doctor Jackson's pouting, and Satterfield's amusement with the ease of long practice with her own team, "Until five years ago my people's had never dealt with Doctor Jackson's, though we've since found them to be occasional allies."

Teyla let the greedy trader see a flash of Lantean crystals, they were always on the lookout for intact control crystals, and Teyla had gotten into the habit long ago of carrying burnt out examples of the most needed specimens.

"With the promise of a trade like that I'll do more than this one run. Share information? Sure. You get me some of that Gatebuilder stuff, and you've just rented yourself my ship indefinitely. You just need to get in touch, I'll come calling."

Caius moved away to rifle for something in a storage crate, he came up with a transmitter of some sort and handed it over. Automatically Telya took it, unpleasant memories of her locket and Ronon's subspace tracker in mind.

Teyla was taken aback by the man's sudden enthusiasm. She looked to Captain Satterfield for guidance, Satterfield gestured emphatically yes, Jackson was frowning constipatedly, but Lieutenant James looked pleased.

"I shall require your services as long as this… situation is ongoing."

"You've got yourself a deal lady. Just so long as you tell me about your source of gatebuilder gear."

Jackson was still scowling fiercely. Teyla struck out her hand, "Deal."

"So where'd you get all this stuff?"

"After we finish the initial contract you agreed to with Doctor Jackson."

Caius groaned good-naturedly.

"Okay lady. Sure, you're right..." Caius sighed and moved back to the strangely decorative dashboard. Settling down and adjusting the controls he said, tone all resignation, "One non-Alliance controlled world coming right up."

---

Vala stared in horror as the device was set up in the cell across from hers. No! Not that. Oh, not that the state Sheppard had been in when the Wraith had been made to feed on him over and over again wasn't horrifying, but if it was what she thought it was…

No, it couldn't be could it?

Where would a nothing like Athena even get something like that?

Even amongst the most powerful system lords that technology was rare. Let alone to a minor Goa'uld who'd been stuck playing businesswoman on Earth last time they'd met.

Eight of Athena's attendants manoeuvred something bulky and awkward into the cells.

By Seth's dribbling nose! It was!

The large grey plinth covered in Goa'uld writing was positioned in the cell, the men left.

Vala tried not to panic. That was Sheppard's cell. Sheppard had gone, so blasé at the beginning. He'd been fed on by a wraith, over and over, and it hadn't seemed to phase him. Athena had subjected Vala to the treatment twice, it was indescribably awful. As bad as anything she'd ever subjected anyone to whilst she was Qetesh, worse even than the pain the Tok'ra had inflicted. It rivalled punishments Qetesh had meted out whenever Vala displeased her…

But this? This was prolonged torment of the sort that the Wraith, Todd, had been unwilling to subject his fellow prisoners to. And oh how Athena had punished the predator for that inaction. She'd give that to the monster, no matter how much Athena threatened, the wraith never drew it out.

The technology was founded on the same principles as Sarcophagus tech. The myths the Goa'uld liked to spread had it that when Ra, Osiris and Isis had been allies rather than enemies, they'd developed it together, at the same time as the magic that kept the gods forever young.

The coffin-esque box was intended to keep the victim alive, healthy even, whilst their suffering was on display for the gods' subjects to watch in fear as an example was made. Vala suspected it was the self-same device that inspired all those horrible mummies the Tau'ri were so creepily enamoured of. The bindings that held the victim cocooned in position looked eerily similar to the bandages all those desiccated corpses tended to come wrapped in.

The box acted as a sort of quasi-stasis field, nowhere near as strong as the Ancient equivalents, the field kept the victim alive and aware, as they were immobilised without any sensory input for days, weeks, months, even years at a time.

Vala heard tell that Isis and Osiris had liked to keep people on display for centuries.

A cocktail of hallucinogenic drugs and the bare minimum amount of nutrients to keep the target alive were pumped into the victim, as their body was forced into a state of near hibernation, the field doing just enough to prevent them from taking the final escape.

Sure enough, Vala watched with a sinking heart, as a vaguely humanoid shape, encased head to toe in a shimmering translucent tub of fluid, and wreathed in bandage-like restraints, was laid down on the dais in a coffin-shaped transparent case and wired in. Tubes and other connectors ran into and out of the tank and the form lying vulnerably on display on the plinth.

If it weren't for his hair, Vala wouldn't have recognised him.

The expression on his face…

Vala swallowed back bile.

"Oh excellent. You clearly recognise what I'm doing to your friend."

Caught up in her revulsion Vala hadn't spotted Athena come in. Hiding her fear at her inattention Vala bit out a series of the more inventive swearwords in her repertoire, loosely translated she'd just called Athena a 'pox ridden donkey', Goa'uld was such a good language to swear in.

Athena's eyes flashed gold,

"Hold your tongue Mal Doran." She ran a hand proprietorially over the abomination that Sheppard was trapped in, "Yes, he'll be …busy for quite some time. I'm afraid you're going to have to take up the slack when it comes to entertaining my underlings."

Vala's blood turned to ice.

"Oh yes Mal Doran, it will be so interesting to see how the Tau'ri response to Wraith feeding differs from that of a Milky Way slave."

Vala wasn't sure how much more of this she could take. She was sure she'd endured worse, had done worse when Qetesh was in her head. But right then she was struggling to think of any specific examples.

She'd thought if she behaved like a 'good little slave' she could avoid more feeding cycles, but Athena had changed the rules of the game.

"What's with the face Shol'va? I told you from the beginning I wanted to compare a Tau'ri dog to a Stella Via mongrel."

---

Cam glowered over at Dave Sheppard.

The UFO nuts had begun to take notice.

The businessman had the temerity to raise a finger to shush him as he continued to take that oh so important phonecall he was having. Dammit. The little understanding they'd come to aside, the man was an ass. Cam was beginning to see where the other Sheppard got it from, it was innate, inbred.

With growing alarm Cam realised whatever the news was, it wasn't good.

"I see, thank you."

Sheppard ended the call, and turned to Cam.

"Well? What happened? That sounded serious."

"There's been a cyber attack on Sheppard Industries." Dave looked grave, "Our experts caught it as it happened, but whoever it is got what they wanted and got out."

Dave turned a pleading look his way, it was unfamiliar on the usually self-contained man's face,

"Please Colonel, we have to deal with this. Who knows- "

"Colonel, ey sonny?"

Cam groaned and turned, a UFO crazy, in full militia gear was looming. Or rather, given just how tall Dave Sheppard was, attempting to loom.

"Yeah, Colonel, and we'll just be going, get out of your hair."

"No can do sonny. We want to know what's going on at that secret base of yours up the road."

So much for talking his way out of this.

Cam tried to get in a position to defend himself, bum knee or not.

The bearded old-timer stepped forward and swung wildly. Cam felt it as Dave brushed him aside, and, in a move Cam recognised from marines on the sparring mat, efficiently, if slightly too showily, took down the idiot. If David had been up against someone who'd been trained, they'd have spotted what his intentions were, as it was the wannabe soldier was in a winded heap.

The other guys in the bar, who had been gathering, took a step back at that display. Dave took a theatrical look around and straightened his cuffs,

"Oh, good. I see common sense can prevail."

After they hastily paid and were on their way back in Winona, Cam turned to Sheppard and asked,

"What the hell was that?"

"Oh, uh, my wife taught me some basic self-defence."

"Your wife."

"Yeah." Dave rubbed at his hair in that familiar gesture again, "Ironic really. After Dad kicked John out for joining the military, I had to go and fall in love with a Force Recon marine."

---

Notes:

A few of Doc Ingram's lines are Richard Ayoade jokes. And there's a minor not quite a cameo from a character who tends to wander into most of my stories, regardless of fandom!

As always, there's an Expanse easter egg snuck into this chapter too.

*Marvin the Paranoid Android voice:* "Editing, don't talk to me about editing..."

This one was relatively important, for all that in many ways it's transitional, a load of plotthreads begin to play into each other here in ways that should become more obvious later, but it meant editing chapter 9, in effect meant I had to edit chapters 10, 11, 12 and so on, in order to make sure the timelines were still sane.