A/N: Before you go abandoning this fic entirely, or trying to look up my address on the internet so you can throw tomatoes at my front door, remember the tags. Everything becomes clear about a quarter of the way through.
He sat in a chair in the cold, shoulders hunched with elbows resting on thighs and hands clasped between knees. There was a clock bolted to the wall behind his head and its ceaseless ticking punctuated the silence of the room with a persistent yet precise rhythm.
And it wasn't right.
Time should have stopped instantly…
The universe should have paused, at least for a moment, to mourn for what it had lost. Not continue on as if nothing had happened.
John Sheppard felt moisture gather at the corners of his eyes, and for once, he didn't try to fight it. He just ran trembling fingers through his disheveled hair on a shuddering sigh. Let the dampness gather mass and weight on his lashes until the tears could no longer hold their shape and rolled down his cheeks to splash onto the cold grey tile beneath his feet.
John could count on one hand the number of times he'd cried, but there was no stopping the tears today. They were like some silent language of his grief. He watched them drip down onto the pale tile floor before running calloused palms down his face to wipe away the wet. When he pulled his hands away, the dampness there glistened in the garish overhead light of the morgue. John rubbed his fingertips together, contemplating the evidence of his anguish.
But it was all too raw to handle at the moment and he wiped that sorrow away on his trousers just as the door to the morgue opened on a soft hiss of air.
"I thought I might find you here."
It was an odd statement considering John was pretty sure the staff of the morgue had tracked this particular visitor down in the hopes he might talk John into giving up his deathbed watch. It wasn't going to work though. John just couldn't bear the idea of the coroner slicing into his friend just yet. Until John had a chance to wrap his head around that particular thought, they could all just fuck off.
John let out a bone-weary release of breath that shook his entire frame as Rodney shuffled up beside him.
"John," he said gently, "you need to come away now. There are things they need to come in and do for him."
"I just…" he paused, unsure of how to put into words what he really needed in that moment, terrified of what his grief might make him say.
"Just give me a damn minute, would ya?"
"We've given you two days, John. It's time to come away and get some rest now."
John pulled his tired and red-rimmed eyes away from the shrouded figure on the steel table beside him and regarded Rodney McKay heavily. The scientist was looking back at him with something like pity behind his eyes. John resisted the urge to stand up and shake the man. To scream at him for being so put together when their friend was dead and lying only a few feet away, covered by nothing more than a thin white sheet.
A death shroud.
"He shouldn't be alone, Rodney," John said thickly, turning his face away once more.
His grief was making him reckless where he needed to be strong. He had to hold it together for the sake of his team. Needed to prove to Fitzpatrick and Rodney that he could handle things like this because John was about to lead an entire expedition into the wild. People died in the wild. It was a cold hard fact, and as real as the tears evaporating near his boots on this floor.
This would not be the last death scene John took part in. But why, oh why, did it have to be Carson? Why did he have to be the first casualty of a battle that wasn't even his to fight and before their doomed little expedition ever even got off the ground?
John kept wanting to look around, half expecting the universe to have left some sort of token behind to make up for what it had taken. But it never worked that way, did it? The universe was as cold and unapologetic as the corpse beside him and lamentation, its only gift.
"He's in a better place now, John," Rodney said next and John nearly laughed. Platitudes had no place in a morgue and Rodney McKay had never been very good at them.
"You don't believe that."
"Maybe I don't. But my views on the afterlife aside, do you really think if there was some kind of heaven, or glowey infirmary up there in the sky for him, Carson would have stuck around this place any longer than he had to? He's gone now, John."
Rodney's words were far from comforting, but John let them cut through a little of the heavy grey fog of his grief.
"And the least you could do is leave the man in peace so the morgue people can do their thing."
Rodney walked over to the autopsy table then and placed his hands on either side of Carson's shrouded body. When his hands gripped the edges of the sheet, John stiffened.
"Rodney… what are you doing?"
"Have you taken a look yet?" the scientist asked. Before John could stop him, Rodney lifted the sheet. "Ugh, that's disgusting. I've never seen one look so… dead before."
"Rodney, what in the hell's the matter with you?" John demanded, sitting forward in his chair, completely shocked by his friend's behavior. "Knock it off."
The temperature in the morgue had plummeted. Ice water filled John's veins and he wondered if maybe this was some kind of weird delayed reaction on the scientist's part from having to deal with the fact that their friend had just died. Whatever the reason for it, it was completely inappropriate and the urge to preserve the sanctity of Carson's current resting place had John rising from his chair.
"Oh Relax, Johnny boy," Rodney smiled wickedly when he noticed John move. "I'm just looking at your handiwork. What I really want to know is if I'll look the same way when you eventually let me die, too. I mean, I've always been pasty, but this would be kinda pushing it."
"Rodney, if this is some sick, twisted attempt to get me to leave, bad move chief," he warned darkly, but Rodney's strange smile only widened.
"Have you looked at this?" he asked, inclining his head towards the corpse still hidden from John's view by the sheet.
"Seriously Rodney, knock it off."
"You haven't, have you!" Rodney's eyes filled with something like glee as he looked back and forth between John and Carson's still hidden form. "Do you suppose there's a special place in heaven for all the people you've killed, John? I imagine it would have to be a pretty massive place to fit them all. Sheesh, what's the body count up to these days? About two billion three? Man oh man is hell going to have a nice place all made up for you when you finally do the world a favor and kick the bucket."
"Jesus, Rodney!" John snapped, looking away just as McKay finally threw the sheet back and revealed Carson's cold, grey face. "What the fuck's gotten into you? Enough already!"
"Think that's what Teyla said right before she died? Enough already? Is that why she let the Wraith snap her neck like an itty bitty twig? All so she wouldn't have to spend one more moment in your insufferable company?"
Rodney's cruel words slashed across his body in vicious strokes, drawing blood as they passed and opening up already raw wounds John had only just managed to close.
"Or how about Ronon? Did he love it when that blade slid home because he would finally be rid of you? Get out of that suffocating shadow of yours?"
John wrapped his arms around himself and tried to keep his insides from falling out through the holes that Rodney punched into him mercilessly.
"There wasn't a coroner around to do those autopsies though, was there John? Because you couldn't even be bothered to take five fucking minutes to go back and retrieve their bodies. You just left them there on that ship to rot. You're pathetic, John, and it should be you lying here on this table, not him... Not Carson."
John's entire body shook with the force of his friend's blows. They were well-aimed strikes. Meant to inflict maximum trauma with the least amount of effort. John was crumbling under the accusatory gaze of his last surviving friend.
Rodney smirked. "Nothing to say, John? Per usual, I see. Is it just that you can't believe what I'm telling you or are you too stunned to respond because everything I just said is the truth?
John?
...oh General Sheeeeeeeppard!"
"General Sheppard?"
John was awoken from the chaos of his dreams by a warm hand on his shoulder. Sitting up suddenly, it took a moment or two for the cold grey of the morgue from his dreams to slowly morph back into the softer amber tones of the SGC infirmary. John blinked up into the shocked face of the nurse standing beside him. Her wrinkled, hazel eyes were wide with concern.
John raked a shaking hand down the side of his face, trying to escape the last terrible vestiges of the nightmare that still clung to him with cloying, grasping hands.
"General Sheppard… are you okay?" she asked nervously, stepping in closer as if she half expected him to pass out right there in the chair. John dropped the hand away from his face to give her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. She was elderly, with one of those kind faces that always managed to put people at ease. If only it could have worked on him.
"I'm alright," he lied before shakily sinking back into the uncomfortable infirmary chair he'd somehow managed to nod off in. The nurse eyed him skeptically for a moment, but apparently, the smile he had somehow managed to conjure had been convincing enough. She bustled off a moment later to resume her work on the other side of Carson's bed.
John's entire body was trembling and he took a moment to close his eyes and try to get a better purchase on reality. The dream had yet to recede from him completely and kept trying to reach back up out of his subconscious. Even Rodney's wide and unforgiving smile had managed to burn itself into the blackness behind his eyelids.
But as terrible as seeing that cruel smirk again was, John just couldn't talk his eyes into opening again. He couldn't make himself look up and over at that unmoving figure lying on the bed beside him. If he did, if the nightmare had become reality and he opened them to find that same grey face staring up at him like in the dream, John was going to lose it completely.
Scraping together the last dregs of self-control he had at the bottom of himself, John pulled in as big a breath as his irrational fear would allow and made himself open his eyes... letting that same breath out a moment later when his reluctant gaze finally settled on Carson Beckett who was still very much alive.
Though machines were doing most of the living for him at the moment, Carson's skin held nothing of the sickly grey pallor like it had in his dream. In fact, it was still flush with color. An effect, someone had explained to him earlier, of the cyanide that he'd been poisoned with.
The lower half of Carson's face was obscured by the pale blue tubing of the ventilator helping him to breathe. Above his bed, a rainbow array of multi-colored IV bags hung from a thin pole. The lines leading from IV bag to port painted strange colored patterns across the white blankets covering most of Carson and John couldn't even pronounce the names of half the drugs they had him on. But whatever their names, they were doing their jobs and helping Carson to combat against the effects of the poison wreaking havoc on his system. A poison that was slowly starving his body of vital oxygen, had sent him into a coma, and had flung his body into excruciating convulsions that John had barely been able to watch. Mercifully, all of that had happened in the chaotic first few hours after Carson had arrived in the infirmary. Now that his doctors had administered the correct drugs, and at the proper dosages, things had finally begun to settle down.
Memories of those first few hours were almost as terrible to revisit as John's nightmare. Cyanide was not a pretty poison and he had been asked to leave on more than one occasion to give his friend some privacy as the infirmary staff cleaned up after each relentless attack. But thankfully, after administering some charcoal concoction designed to absorb any more poison still lingering in his system, the drugs had finally begun to take effect. In the quiet space of relief that followed, John had somehow managed to fall asleep in one of the infirmary's notoriously uncomfortable chairs.
"How's he doing?" John asked tentatively.
The nurse who had quietly been checking monitors and jotting down notes looked over at him with something in her eyes John couldn't quite name. "There's no change, but he's holding his own."
She said it almost hopefully and leaned over to lay a careful hand on the one place on Carson's arm that wasn't crisscrossed by some vital wire. It seemed like a normal enough gesture, but it was the nurse's eyes that gave her away.
John understood what was happening then. If Carson didn't make it through this… if they lost him, John Sheppard would not be the only one to mourn him. There would be an entire mountain. This place was filled with people whose lives Carson had touched. Be it soldier, scientist, civilian, or friend. The SGC, not to mention Atlantis, would never be the same again.
"General Sheppard, are you sure you're alright, Sir?" the nurse asked again, touching his shoulder lightly as he dug his knuckles into tired eyes.
"I'm fine," he lied again. "But thank you." John was far from alright. In fact, he felt broken open and completely exposed, but he wasn't about to worry some poor old woman with all the shit swirling around inside his agitated brain.
"Well, alright," she replied, sounding far from convinced. "But if you change your mind, I'll just be outside at the nurse's station." She gave him a genuine smile that deepened the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. When she left him it was on the soft tinkle of metal as she pulled the privacy curtain closed behind her.
Finally alone again, John sighed and shifted uncomfortably in his chair, gingerly stretching out joints that hadn't been properly moved in hours. His neck, stiff from the odd position he'd slept in, was a painful mess of knotted sinew. John dug angry fingertips into the tense muscle, trying to break it apart by sheer force alone. When that didn't help he pulled himself up and out of the chair he'd been occupying for hours to try and get his blood flowing a little.
Carson's bed was situated in one corner of the infirmary in a small space cordoned off from the rest of the medical wing by a thin curtain. It was an ICU of sorts and the infirmary staff had been trying to keep people out of it for most of the night. Thankfully they'd been successful. Except for the few doctors and nurses who stopped by every so often to check on Carson's status, John had pretty much been left to himself.
John hobbled over to the side of Carson's bed on a protesting knee. He'd so thoroughly abused the joint the day before that it was threatening imminent collapse again. But John was so tired of that chair, he would take the pain any day. He stayed standing and let his eyes linger on the comatose figure lying on the bed.
It seemed so unnatural that Carson, the natural healer among them, should be under the care of others like this. Seeing him confined to a hospital bed and on life support seemed like the punchline to some tasteless joke. He shouldn't even be here. He didn't deserve this. Carson had already given more of himself than any other person in all of the SGC. If it had been the intention of their saboteur to strike at the heart of the expedition, well then they had certainly chosen their target well.
Carson Beckett was no soldier, but what he lacked for in tactical advantage he more than made up for in heart. He wore that heart right there on his sleeve for everyone to see. He was the unwavering infrastructure that kept the whole damn thing from crumbling down around them; the consummate physician whose empathy for those he treated was utterly boundless. But more importantly, he was a true and loyal friend. John just couldn't handle the idea that he might not make it through this one alive.
And if Carson Beckett died, god help the man or woman responsible because John would be out for blood. If Carson didn't make it through this, then his killer would have finally succeeded where Richard Woolsey had failed. They would have made a killer out of John Sheppard yet. They'd messed with the wrong person and there was no force in heaven or on Earth that would keep John from tracking down the one responsible for all this.
John sat back down and looked at his hands, wondering if he'd really ever be able to do it. Probably not. It was one thing to make murderous plans in his head and something else entirely to actually commit them. John had killed before. That was just part of the job sometimes. But he knew, even if he met Woolsey in the hall tomorrow, he might beat the shit out of the man, but John could never kill him. There had been enough of that already.
And speaking of enough? When was the universe finally going to stop fucking around with him? When was fate going to stop looking down at John and his little used-up life and say ok, this one had paid enough. We're done with him now. He was tired of losing his friends. He was tired of having his life disrupted. Something had to give.
John could remember a time when he used to be indestructible. When all this shit rolled off his shoulders like it was nothing. Then one unimaginable event 18 years ago had shattered him into a million pieces, stripped him of everything. And ever since that day in the sky above Earth with the Wraith, John had been trying to pull himself back together again. He'd scoured the countryside and tiny backwater towns trying to pull it off, never realizing that he had carried all the pieces within himself the entire time. Only he'd been too afraid to stop and examine what was rattling around inside his chest long enough to realize that's what the sound really was.
Christ, the things he'd missed out on because he'd been so fucking terrified of the past.
Carrie was a big one. If he would have just let that woman in the way she deserved, he probably would have found the peace he'd been so desperately searching for a long time ago. She wouldn't have hated him for what he'd been tricked into doing with the Wraith. She would have done for him what Carson and Rodney had been trying to do for him ever since he'd arrived back at the SGC: convince him that what happened that day on Atlantis was in no way his fault.
And it really wasn't, was it? What control did he have over what madmen decided in a little windowless room in Switzerland?
They'd managed to dismantle him completely, yes, but John had been the one who let those broken pieces stay broken and now look where that had gotten them. His friend was in the ICU, barely clinging to life, all because John had let the heavy weight of his past pull his focus away from what was happening right in front of him. What was truly important.
Well not anymore.
John was through with letting the past hold him back, with letting it keep him from the life he deserved. The events of that day were always going to be a part of him, that was never going to change. But instead of being hindered by it, John was going to wrap all that rage it generated up into the catalyst it always should have been, and use it to track down the person responsible for trying to murder his friend. And then he was going to fly Atlantis back to Pegasus and be the leader the expedition deserved. Because that was his destiny.
John felt it then, that last layer of the past slipping away from around his shoulders to finally release him completely. The last chunk of that big ugly nothing that had been sitting in the center of his chest breaking apart to disappear forever.
John leaned forward on the momentum of his epiphany and threaded a hand through the side rails of Carson's bed to grip the doctor's hand firmly. Carson's fingers were warm and reassuring under his own grip as John squeezed slightly.
"I screwed up," he said out loud, the sound of his own voice nearly startling him after so much silent introspection.
"You and Rodney have been trying to tell me all along that it wasn't my fault, but I wouldn't listen. And now you're in here. Well I get it now, Carson. And I'm done with it. All the bullshit, all the excuses. I'm ready to step up, but I need you to pull through this. I can't do any of it on my own. So you gotta pony up and wake up. Help me fly Atlantis home. Let's show that rat bastard who did this that it takes a whole hell of a lot more than a little cyanide to bring this team down."
"I was wondering when you were going to show back up," a familiar voice said from behind him and John looked over his shoulder just as Rodney pushed past the privacy curtain and entered the room.
"Huh?"
"John Sheppard. I've been waiting for that guy to show up all week."
John pulled a face, embarrassed at having been caught in such a vulnerable moment. Getting called out by McKay just made it worse. He let Carson's hand go and sat back in his chair. "I know I've been kind of an ass lately…"
"Kind of?" Rodney asked, his eyebrows chasing up after his hairline.
"Hey, I'm trying to apologize here."
"Well you can save it," Rodney replied. The words were a lot softer than John would have expected. "As long as you promise me you're going to put all this behind you and help me fix this, then there's nothing to apologize for. You were frustrated and hurting and we probably pushed you a lot harder than we should have. So some of that is on us. It's all water under the bridge as far as I'm concerned." Rodney made his way over to Carson's bedside and placed his hands on the rails.
"I can do that," John promised.
"Good, because it's going to be all hands on deck moving forward now."
John was reminded suddenly of another moment similar to this one. When the three of them had stood just outside the Gateroom and reaffirmed their loyalty in a silent moment of solidarity. They had been facing insurmountable odds back then too, about to dive deep into something that would change their lives forever. Carson wasn't conscious, but John knew, if he were, he'd recognize the moment for what it was. A reunion. An affirmation. The reestablishment of the last ragged remnants of a once mighty team.
Or at least, that's how it felt to John.
"So what do we know so far?" he asked as Rodney sank into the other chair in the room.
"That's actually what I came here to talk to you about," he explained. "My lab just finished with the analysis and you were right. It was the haggis he had flown in from Scotland."
"I knew it," John muttered. As soon as Carson had been revived by the medical team and rushed to the infirmary, John had suggested testing the haggis their friend had eaten that evening at dinner. "If this is an inside job, then chances are whoever is responsible got their hands on that package somehow. Maybe if we went through the base security footage..."
"We're already on it," Rodney interrupted. "Lorne started combing through security footage as soon as I mentioned the haggis."
"Has he found anything yet?" he asked hopefully, even though he was pretty sure the answer would be no. While Rodney had always had a flare for the dramatic, he would know better than and bury a lead like that.
The scientist shrugged. "The last time I spoke with him he hadn't, but that was a few hours ago now. I'm actually kind of surprised that he hasn't checked in with you yet."
John figured he knew why. Lorne was taking this personally, if not blaming himself for it entirely. He was the leader of the task force set up to investigate the sabotage. This latest attack was going to hit him hard. No wonder he'd jumped headlong into the search.
Carson had been poisoned with cyanide. The same toxin that had been used to murder all of the ATA gene carriers months before. There was no doubt in John's mind now that the same person was responsible for each heinous crime. Their saboteur was back in action, and the frustrating thing was, there were about a thousand people within Cheyenne Mountain who could possibly be the culprit.
Before John had fallen asleep in his chair, he'd been running through the very short list of people he'd met since returning to the SGC, trying to decide if any one of them could be capable of attempted murder.
Rodney and Lorne were out of the question, obviously. Landry certainly had the clout and the means to pull something like this off, but what was the motive there? Revenge for his uncle? John just couldn't see the IOA installing Landry as leader of the entire SGC if there was even the slightest chance he harbored some secret hatred for all things Atlantis. Then there was the fact that he had been on a plane headed for New York City when this had all gone down. John had watched him take off from the helipad himself, though they didn't know when exactly Carson had been poisoned.
Even though John didn't know Landry all that well, Rodney had vouched for the man in the hallway the other day. John was usually a pretty good judge of character and nothing Landry had done so far even hinted at the fact that he might be involved. John was pretty sure he trusted the guy.
That trust he also extended to Sean Fitzpatrick, though John knew even less about the former Navy SEAL than he did Landry. Even so, Fitz had been working tirelessly to get John back into shape. If he was the culprit, why put so much time and energy into helping John manage his PTSD? His work with John was ensuring the expedition's successes, so how could it possibly be Fitz?
So with all the major players out of the way, that just left the rest of Cheyenne Mountain. The SGC was just brimming with highly skilled service men and women these days. Any one of them could be their saboteur hiding there in plain sight. Not to mention the base security guys. They were highly trained and knew the mountain inside and out. It was their job to stand there unobtrusively in the shadows and observe. Most people didn't even notice them. All it would take was one uncensored conversation at a security checkpoint for it all to go straight to hell.
It was pissing John off that one person was managing to pull everything down around them, and chances were, their saboteur was likely just getting started. The task force needed to act fast before more people started dying.
John already had a plan forming in his mind. Well, reforming actually. It was something he'd brought up to everyone before.
John was the only one with the ATA gene strong enough to pilot the city home. That fact most likely meant he was #1 on any list of potential targets their saboteur might have. If John could figure out a way to dangle himself as bait, then maybe he could finally get this asshole to slip up and expose themselves.
Whoever was responsible, they were smart, cunning even, and John's only concern with his plan was the potential innocent bystanders who might get caught in the crossfire. That thought had John instantly thinking of Blue River. If what had happened today was in any way related to his mystery visitor there, John really was going to rip someone's throat out. The first thing he was going to do when he got back to his bunk was try Eddie again in Chicago and then check in with the USSF guys Landry had agreed to send out there to discreetly check up on things.
When John had reported the visitor to Blue River to the task force during one of their weekly debriefings the other day, everyone had agreed that it was a good first step. Of course, all of it could have been cleared up in an instant if Eddie had just returned his damn calls and texts. He'd even tried to leave a message on the family answering machine, but it no longer appeared to be working. Every time he tried to call now the phone just rang and rang. John knew it was highly unlikely anything nefarious had happened to his friend, but he would be sleeping a lot easier if the guy would just reach out to him.
"You got awfully quiet," Rodney said, shifting a little in his seat beside John and pulling him out of the internal dialog he'd gotten lost in again.
John scrubbed a hand down the side of his face. God, he was tired. "I was just thinking about Blue River."
"You're worried this is all related?" Rodney asked.
John nodded, "I haven't gotten an update from the guys we sent out there. It's hard not to worry that town is next."
"You know, it still could just be Woolsey," Rodney offered hopefully. "I wouldn't put it past the guy to try something like that since his last attempt at contacting you went so very well."
John grimaced. "I guess we'll finally find out once Landry gets back from New York in a couple of days. It better be nothing. I'm not sure I can handle more of this." John nodded his head towards Carson.
"I still can't believe this happened," Rodney mused.
"I know what you mean," John agreed. "This is all wrong. Carson is… I don't know. He's off-limits."
Rodney nodded. "But he also knew exactly what he was signing up for. He knew there would be risks with restarting his ATA gene research. Don't start beating yourself up over this and taking all the blame."
"Relax, Rodney," John said, knowing exactly what his friend was implying. "I said I was moving on and I meant it."
"Do you have any idea how lucky he is?" Rodney said next, apparently as ready to change the subject as John was.
"What do you mean?"
"I did some research while I was waiting for the analysis on the haggis. Most people who are poisoned as badly as he was never recover. He should have died."
John looked over at their friend, noting the gentle rise and fall of Carson's chest. It was all mechanical at this point, but John would take what he could get.
"But he didn't," he replied thickly.
"Cyanide deprives the body of oxygen, Sheppard," Rodney went on, looking a little panicked. "What if he… I mean, what if there's permanent damage?"
"You can't think like that, buddy. Carson…" But John didn't get to finish the thought. He was interrupted by a commotion just outside the privacy curtain. The fabric swayed as bodies passed by and the sounds of raised voices wafted in. Something was going on.
"Should we go check it out?" Rodney asked.
John shrugged but turned his head so he could listen to the chaos unfolding on the other side of the divider. Medical emergencies were commonplace in the SGC. Normally he wouldn't think twice about a new one, not with the constant Stargate off-world missions still going on. But one so soon after Carson's had John abandoning his chair. He just had to make sure nothing major was happening.
John had to take a minute to shake out his leg when his knee threatened to buckle beneath him the moment he got up. But all of that was forgotten the instant he overheard one word through all the din outside.
Cyanide.
John heard Rodney's chair scrape along the tile floor as he hobbled out into the open space of the infirmary. A crush of white-coated medical personnel were swarming around a gurney, trying desperately to resuscitate the still figure of the woman lying there. John couldn't see her face, but something about her felt familiar. He stepped in to get a better look just as everyone paused to step back on the lead doctor's orders. The ambu bag obscuring the young woman's face was removed and John found himself staring at the unseeing eyes of Lieutenant Macy Hayden.
"Shit!" he breathed and took an unconscious step back. That poor kid.
"Isn't that the girl you were talking to in the dinner line last night?" Rodney asked.
All John could do was nod, unable to tear his eyes away from that face. It was cold and grey, just like in his dream.
"Sit-rep," John barked out to the nearest person who looked like they actually knew what they were doing.
"We found her this way in her bunk, Sir," a young medic explained as the doctors continued their frenzied treatment. "We won't be completely sure until the lab runs some tests, but the Lieutenant is showing all the signs of cyanide poisoning."
John clenched his jaw as the sound of a flatline filled the infirmary. A few moments later and the lead doctor was pronouncing Lieutenant Macy Hayden dead."
"Who was she, Rodney?" John demanded, rounding on McKay.
"You're asking me?"
"She was an ATA gene carrier," a voice said from behind them, "and she was the best damn one we had."
John turned to find Lorne walking solemnly into the infirmary.
He knew it was just the stress of the day and the fact that he was tired and pissed, but John could not stop the accusatory tone that sharpened his words. "I thought you were supposed to be protecting them!"
He instantly regretted the accusation the moment it left his lips, but there was no taking it back now.
"I was trying to, Sir !" Lorne spat back, angry eyes flashing. "No one was supposed to know who any of them were."
"Well someone obviously found out! What kind of a clown show are you running around here Lorne?"
"What would you have me do, huh? Lock them up in their quarters? Never let them out? They're people for christ's sake! And maybe you'd see that if you weren't so busy moping around this place with your head so far up your ass..."
"Enough!" Rodney finally interjected, stepping in between them just as John took an angry step forward. "A girl is dead and your friend is on the other side of this curtain fighting for his life and you two idiots are out here yelling at each other like a couple of teenage girls! Have some damn respect for heaven's sake."
John backed off immediately, surprised at his own behavior and embarrassed by the fact he'd just been scolded by Rodney McKay. Lorne did the same as all the fight seemed to drain out of him.
"That's better," Rodney continued, dropping the arms he'd put out to keep them apart. "Now why don't you two start acting like the level headed senior military officers I know you to be, and start working together on this before even more people start dying."
"I'm sorry, Lorne. I didn't mean it," John said as everyone around them realized the show was over and went back to work.
"There's no harm done," Lorne offered back. "And I'm sorry, too. We're all under a ton of pressure right now. And you made a good point. I'm in charge of protecting them. Even though Lieutenant Hayden never made that very easy for me, she still deserved better."
"What we need to do is stop this guy," Rodney pointed out.
"I talked with the people who found her and from what I could gather, Lieutenant Hayden must have been exposed to the poison around the same time as Dr. Beckett. Unlike Carson, she went back to her bunk after dinner last night alone. I searched her quarters a few minutes ago but there was nothing there, just like last time. My team's sweeping the barracks now, looking for anything else."
One of the nurses near Lieutenant Hayden shook out a sheet and John watched her cover the young woman's body respectfully. This had to end.
"Lorne," John said, pulling his eyes away from the scene as visions of his dream earlier tried to resurface. "I think it might be time for us to do what I suggested at our meeting the other day."
Two penetrating gazes fell on him instantly.
"You mean that asinine suggestion you made about using yourself as bait?" Rodney questioned him. Lorne just looked pensive.
"Think about it guys," John pushed on. "I'm the one this guy wants. With me out of the way the Atlantis expedition can't go forward until someone else with the ATA gene is found. So why not use that to our advantage? Why not use me to lure him out in the open and end this once and for all?"
"Are you kidding me with this right now?" Rodney exclaimed, looking over to Lorne for help. But the Colonel actually seemed to be mulling the idea over. "Lorne, please talk some damn sense into him!"
"Rodney's right," Lorne said a few seconds later, even though John could tell Lorne knew he was never going to back down or give up until he talked them both into it. "It's too dangerous."
"When has that ever stopped us before?" John countered. "I came back to help ensure the safety of this expedition and stop the sabotage. So let me do my goddamn job!"
"There is no expedition if you're dead, Sheppard!" Rodney argued. "What if something goes wrong and this bastard kills you?"
"Then you keep looking for someone else with the ATA gene strong enough to pilot the city," John replied, knowing how it sounded. "And you help Carson get healthy again so he can get his gene therapy research back up and running. We all know he's going to crack that eventually, despite what he tries to tell us. You said you were waiting around for the old John Sheppard to show back up again, Rodney. Well, now you've got him."
The scientist opened his mouth as if to argue, then quickly shut it again. Rodney McKay stunned silent, now there was something you didn't see happen every day.
Chaos seemed to reign supreme the several days following Carson's poisoning and the death of Lieutenant Hayden. Complicating matters further was the fact General Landry was absent from the base. Lorne and John were doing their best to try and keep the rumors flying around to a minimum, but once word got out that the members of the Atlantis Expedition were once again being targeted, everyone started to panic.
John had spent much of the last two days sequestered in the SGC security offices trapped behind a desk and poring over mindless hours of security footage. They were looking for that one lead that would blow the case wide open. That one scrap of evidence that might get them just a little closer to who was responsible for the sabotage. John had offered up his help, such as it was, and while the work was tedious at best, it still beat sitting around worrying about his lack of a plan to lure the saboteur out.
John had agreed to wait until Landry returned from his meetings in New York to make any big moves, but the waiting was excruciating. He didn't even have his training with Fitzpatrick to keep his mind off things because the former SEAL had accompanied Landry to New York on some personal business. There were other trainers he could have worked with, but John had grown kind of fond of Fitzpatrick. Working with someone else just didn't hold the same appeal.
The lack of exercise and mindless hours behind the monitors were making him restless, but it was a necessary evil.
Every so often one of them would come across something suspicious on the feeds and the room would erupt into frenzied chaos as whatever suspect was tracked down and thoroughly interrogated. That had happened a handful of times since John had started helping out. He'd even sat in on one or two of them just to break up the monotony of watching the security tapes. But besides scaring the pants off a handful of poor scientists, and ruffling the feathers of a few of their fellow soldiers, nothing had come of it.
In light of the complete and utter lack of any tangible evidence on who might be responsible for the poisonings, security had been heightened all over the base. John, unfortunately (or very fortunately, depending on who you asked), bore the brunt of most of it. Everyone had assumed he was next on the list, and rightly so, but it had gotten to the point where he could barely even take a shower on his own anymore. While he could appreciate the precarious situation in which Evan Lorne found himself, sooner or later that man was going to have to call off his dogs. If they wanted to draw the saboteur out, it wasn't going to happen if John was constantly surrounded by a battalion of pissed off looking USSF soldiers. He needed to appear vulnerable if any plan of his was going to work.
John tried to think of how to best broach that particular subject with Lorne as they sat together in the security offices going through another round of tapes a few days later.
John was leaning back in a rolling chair with feet propped up on the desk in front of him and right next to the TV screen he was scrutinizing. The particular file he was working on was of a hallway just outside the kitchens. If their poisoner had gained access to the haggis Carson had dropped off there and asked one of the cooks to prepare for him, then this was where they were most likely to catch a glimpse of the culprit. John himself had grilled (no pun intended) each and every member of the kitchen staff hoping that one of them might be their guy, but, per the usual, it just ended up being another dead end. They'd all checked out and now John was stuck watching more footage, praying for a lead, and trying not to get frustrated by their lack of progress.
Even though there was a marked absence of any new evidence, some good news had managed to come out of all the long hours of waiting and worrying. Carson had finally been taken off the ventilator and while he had yet to come out of his coma, the doctors were hopeful he would any day now. They may not know who poisoned the physician just yet, but whoever it was had failed in their attempt and that was a win in John's book any day. Carson was going to make it, barring any lingering side effects of the poison or further attempts on his life. If anyone was going to try and get at him again, they were going to have to get through John Sheppard, Evan Lorne, Rodney McKay, and even Radek Zelenka, first.
None of them had really meant for it to happen, but a kind of continuous bedside vigil had sprung up between them and they all took shifts sitting with Carson so that the man was rarely ever alone. They didn't need to do it. There were enough trusted men stationed in the infirmary to protect the president of the United States, but there was so much uncertainty going around that none of them could bear the thought of Carson being alone even for a second. Plus, there was no way that man was waking up after a day's long coma to find himself on his own. No way in hell.
So when John wasn't sitting for his shift in the infirmary he was usually in the security offices. On this particular late afternoon, Lorne was in the seat beside him, feet propped up on the desk alongside John's with a half-eaten pizza lying on the tabletop between them. Grease had congealed on the top of the pepperonis and it was stone cold, but John grabbed a slice anyway when his stomach grumbled.
"There's nothing here, Lorne," he groused. "We've been staring at the same damn hallways for days. I just don't think our guy is stupid enough to get himself caught on camera."
"What makes you think it's a man?" Lorne asked.
"Whoever they are, they're too good for this," he gestured towards the monitors. They were old and the green footage meandered past with lines of distorted pixels rolling up and down the monitors.
"I get it, Sheppard," Lorne replied, stretching his arms up over his head and yawning loudly for a moment. "But if there's even the slightest chance we might find something here, we've at least gotta try."
"I know I said we'd wait for Landry to get back from New York, but we should seriously start thinking about ways to lure this guy out using me as bait. The only way we're going to get him to slip up is if we dangle something big right in front of him. Something he can't refuse."
"And how exactly do you suggest we do that?"
"Well, ease up on my security, for one. He's not going to come anywhere near me with Turner and Hooch out there on my six every second." John titled his head toward the two hefty USSF Privates standing guard just outside the security office door. "As for a plan, well I'm still working on that."
"Landry is going to be back from New York any time now. We'll fill him in the moment he lands, I promise. Let's just wait and see what he has to say before we start trying to lure this guy out."
"You want him to talk me out of it, don't you?" John said, coming to the realization rather suddenly. It would explain so much…
Lorne shifted in his seat but did not take his eyes off the security footage.
"You're hoping he comes back and tells me to go pound sand because they're never going to let me try anything, are they? Not when I'm the only one around who's able to fly Atlantis. Tell me I'm wrong Lorne."
But Lorne remained silent, still resolutely staring at the monitor in front of him.
"What if this psychopath kills someone else while we're sitting around with our thumbs up our asses? Atlantis is important, buddy, but getting her back to Pegasus isn't worth more people dying!"
"Except for you, Sheppard. Is that it?" Lorne rounded on him angrily, pulling his feet from off the desk and turning so he could face John full on. "Everyone else on base we have to protect, but you we can just dangle out in front of this guy, no problem? What if you get killed?"
"I knew what I was signing up," John argued.
"So did we all!"
"But those scientists and civilians?" he went on, undeterred, "they aren't connected to all of this in the way you and I are. I gotta do whatever it takes to keep them safe otherwise what's the point of me coming back? You guys keep telling me how you all want me to come back and lead the expedition but every time I try, you get in my way! You need to let me do this!"
Lorne tried not to let it show, but John could tell his little speech had struck a chord. "How many times are we going to do this, Sheppard?" he said on a sigh. "Huh?"
"I'm not sure what you mean."
"Us in the middle of some dire situation and you calmly walking out into the middle of it all to sacrifice yourself to get the job done," Lorne answered.
John knew what Lorne meant. Self-destruct buttons, jumpers through killer plant-covered towers, kamikaze missions with nuclear bombs… "I guess that's just how I operate."
"I'm starting to remember that about you," Lorne replied. "But even so, I'm not the one you have to convince. Landry will be back in the morning. That's just 9 hours from now. We'll all sit down as soon as he gets back and discuss a plan together."
John was ready to get going now, but he could tell he wasn't going to be able to sway Lorne any further.
"Alright," he agreed reluctantly and Lorne nodded as if sealing the deal.
John sat back in his chair again and rewound the footage he'd missed while talking to Lorne, trying to calm his growing frustration at the situation. Waiting around for something to happen was not exactly John's strong suit. Though he'd been doing something just like it back into Blue River. Always on guard, always waiting for the other shoe to drop and some former IOA member to show up at his door and silence him for good. He'd stashed ordinance all around his house over the mere possibility.
At least there was righteous anger flowing through his veins now, instead of fear.
John let that anger pool in the pit of his stomach and smolder dangerously. When he got his hands on that son of a bitch who poisoned Carson…
"Am I interrupting anything?" a low voice rumbled behind them and John looked over his shoulder to find Sean Fitzpatrick's tall figure darkening the doorway. The former SEAL's face was ruddy and his red hair looked windblown. He appeared to have just come in from the cold. Some people had all the luck.
"Where have you been?" John asked.
"Hey, you're back!" Lorne exclaimed at the exact same time.
If Fitz was back then that meant Landry was as well. Finally, things could start moving forward again.
"We just got in a few minutes ago," Fitzpatrick informed them before turning to John. "I just heard about Dr. Beckett. I'm so sorry."
Lorne seemed to sense that John and Fitz had some things to discuss and rose from his chair. John didn't have anything to say to the former SEAL in that moment that couldn't have been said in front of his second in command, but he was too exhausted to care that Lorne apparently thought otherwise. At the very least Fitz could provide a distraction. Maybe John could even talk him into jumping on board with the plan to use him as bait.
"I'm going to take a break for a while and maybe go sit with Carson," Lorne said. "Rodney's shift is almost up anyways. You still got your earwig in?" Lorne asked last, pausing in the doorway. John raised a hand to his ear and nodded.
"Good. If you find anything, radio me."
"You got it, chief," John replied and Lorne left the room, closing the door softly on his way out.
"Dr. Beckett's alive?" Fitzpatrick asked, sounding a bit surprised. John swung his chair around to face him. The burly former SEAL was leaning a hip on one edge of the desk with eyebrows raised.
"Yeah, the medical team was able to revive him and get him the antidote in time. In fact, they weaned him off the ventilator just this morning. His prognosis is good. I would have thought Landry would have told you that."
"Actually," Fitzpatrick said, running a hand along the several days worth of stubble sprouting on his chin. "I had some... personal business to take care of once we got to New York. No one told me he pulled through." Fitz seemed almost put out by that fact.
"He's not out of the woods completely, but they're hopeful," John reassured him, wondering if there might be a place for the former SEAL with the expedition and if he could talk the man into coming along. They could use someone of his caliber on Atlantis.
"I bet they've got that infirmary on lockdown now."
"You bet your ass they do. There's no way that psychopath gets anywhere near him again."
"You guys have any idea who it might be yet?" Fitz asked, eyeing the security footage John had stopped paying attention to.
"None," he admitted dejectedly. "Whoever they are, they're smart enough to stay off camera and never leave any evidence behind. But no one stays perfect forever. It's only a matter of time before they slip up."
"This guy sounds like he might really know what he's doing. Kind of makes you wonder what his motivations might be. Like maybe there's something bigger going on here than we realize."
John narrowed his eyes at that. "He's murdering people, Fitz. He's a psychopath, pure and simple."
"Or maybe," Fitz countered, "he's just misunderstood."
John raised an eyebrow at that. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were actually trying to defend this asshole, Fitz."
"Maybe it's just the psychiatrist in me, but after what happened with the Wraith, didn't you want closure? All I'm saying is maybe that's what this guy is after."
"Poisoning people seems like a pretty extreme way of getting closure if you ask me," John snorted.
"Yeah, but at least he's not repressing his feelings over what happened," Fitzpatrick shot back coyly and John frowned.
"I know what you're trying to do, but it..."
"Sheppard, it's Lorne, do you copy?" The comms device that had been silent in John's ear for hours suddenly came to life and nearly startled him.
"Hold that thought, I'm not through with you yet," he said to Fitzpatrick, putting up a finger. He activated the earwig a second later. "Go for Sheppard."
"The base switchboard has an urgent call for you from Blue River. They're forwarding it to the phone in the office now."
"Roger that, Lorne."
His second in command clicked off the frequency and a moment later the phone on the desk came to life in a cacophony of bells. John shot Fitz a look that promised they'd get back to their conversation in a moment, and eagerly answered the phone.
"Is that you, big guy?" he asked excitedly.
"Brigadier General Sheppard, this is Agnes from the switchboard. I have a secure call for you from an Edward Nostrand in Blue River, Wisconsin. Are you expecting his phone call, Sir?" The curt voice on the other end of the phone asked him and John nearly lost his cool.
"Yes. Put him through."
"Hold please," Agnes said.
John drummed his fingers impatiently on the tabletop as elevator music blared to life in his ear. He'd been waiting on this call for nearly a week and couldn't help but hope that Eddie would finally be able to dispel, once and for all, who the mystery visitor to Blue River had been. He kept telling himself that it was just Woolsey, but with the recent poisonings and the Atlantis expedition so close to finally getting back off the ground, his mind couldn't help but make connections. If the saboteur had visited his old hometown looking for information or a way to get at him, then maybe Eddie could at least give them a description to go off of.
"Who is it?" Fitzpatrick asked impatiently, but before John could answer, the music finally cut off and the call connected.
"John? John, are you there?" Eddie called out frantically.
"Eddie? God, it's good to hear your voice man! Why'd it take you so long to call me back?"
"One of my cousin's kids tried to flush my cell down the toilet the first night I got here. I just got it replaced and saw your messages. What the fuck is going on, John?"
"I've been trying to reach you about some guy Carrie told me about…"
"I know all that, John. I mean, what the fuck is going on around here?" Eddie cut him off.
"I'm not sure what you mean, big guy."
"I mean the two military guys they found in a car on your property this morning! They had their fucking throats cut, John! And then Eileen called me a few minutes ago screaming about how some dude in a uniform showed up at her door this morning and took Carrie into protective custody. I want to know what the fuck is going on!"
Eddie had always been a fan of colorful language, but John barely registered the profanity now.
"Eddie, did you see the guy who took Carrie?" he asked, surprised at how calm his voice sounded.
"No man, I didn't. But he scared Eileen something awful. You better start talking, Evans."
"That man who came asking questions about me a few days after I left town. What did he look like?"
"I don't know, man!" Eddie muttered. "Big… burley, and he had the reddest damn hair you ever saw."
John snapped his mouth shut. It was as if someone had punched him right in the guts.
"John? John? Are you there?"
He gripped the receiver tightly, trying not to let his eyes flick over to the burly red-haired man perched on the edge of the desk beside him.
"Eddie, I gotta go," John said, replacing the receiver and cutting off Eddie's words even as he continued to bellow John's name out over the line.
Fitzpatrick had heard the entire exchange. John could tell that right away. Trying to keep himself calm was taking its toll and his hand shook as he settled the handset back into its cradle, plastic clacking against plastic and ringing the bells in the receiver ever so slightly.
The intensity in the room went even higher as John kept his eyes facing forward, unconsciously reaching for a sidearm he realized too late wouldn't be there. Fitzpatrick was still silent and unmoving beside him.
John made himself finally look up and meet the gaze of the man he had only just recently scratched off his suspect list. The man whose eyes were boring into the side of him with enough intensity to singe.
When their sightlines finally converged, that dangerous anger flared back to life with a vengeance in the pit of John's stomach. The kid was fucking smiling at him.
"Well," Fitzpatrick said with a chuckle that sounded almost sinister. "I guess that changes my plans a bit."