Chapter Ten

Transported in Time


"Someone pinch me," John whispered. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. The door had opened to reveal a room as untouched by the ravages of time, as the outer room had been touched. There was a balcony, probably four feet or so in, with rails that came up to a standard size adult's hip. The metal was unadorned, burnished golden, similar to what they had seen in Atlantis. That alone wasn't the source of awe, but what lay beyond.

The room opened up from the balcony, like a great big meadow cut out from the land, and transported inside. The walkway circled the room, and Sheppard could vaguely see what were doors in different areas, and additional levels above and below them. What bothered him was the size of this complex. From the outside, little could be detected, but a building this large; they should have seen something.

John jumped from a sharp pain, like a bug bite, and he turned to glare in the direction of the individual standing beside him on the side where his arm had been pinched. "I didn't mean it literally," he ground out.

McKay shrugged, and wandered onto the walkway. "This is amazing."

"Aye," Beckett breathed. "What kept it preserved?"

John thought that was a good question. "You said there weren't any energy readings?"

"That's odd, there still isn't," Rodney's brow furrowed. "Shielding could account for it not showing before, but there should be something now."

They had all moved onto the walkway, and the door slid shut behind them. Sheppard glanced back, uneasy. "You can open that again, right?"

"Yes, simple enough really," and Rodney touched a few buttons on the console, surprised when the door failed to yield the proper result. McKay stared at the door, disconcerted by the inaction, "It should've opened," he said.

Ford tried to pry the doors apart, banging against them uselessly. He felt like he was back in time, throwing his body against the Jumper's doors, hoping to generate movement enough to send it into the wormhole. Again, his actions had the same result, which was none at all.

"Stop it," McKay grabbed Ford's wrist. "It's not going to open."

"What are we supposed to do?" he shouted, déjà vu again.

Sheppard grabbed the body of his P90, resting his arm as much as preparing for the worst. "Looks like we get to look around." John started walking to the right, not having a preference between the two options, hoping they'd find an elevator because it was a long way down.


They hadn't found an elevator, and after going down twenty levels, Sheppard was about to call it a night. He was fighting hard to not let it show how hard he was breathing. Everyone except Ford and Teyla were showing signs of exertion, but he and McKay seemed the worst of the group.

The levels had meandered down, like a brook twisting around a hillside, a slow inexorable progress downwards, but it never seemed like you were going the right direction until you looked back and saw how far you'd come. He could see the end in front of him. The area they were in had just enough lighting to allow visualization of the surroundings. He hadn't noticed any light fixtures, yet the metal glowed, reflecting a dim constant warm illumination. He knew the end was ahead because there wasn't any light, just a solid pitch black.

John stifled a jaw-breaking yawn, and smiled when he saw his action repeated by McKay. Whatever the bottom floor yielded, they'd need to call it a day soon, because at least two of them weren't going to make it much farther. "Teyla," Sheppard called. "The rest of you hang back." He didn't know what they'd find. The low lighting hadn't allowed anything beyond vague shadowy shapes of the interior.

Teyla approached him, and they found an entrance inwards, right where he thought they would. He stepped forward, and was blinded by light flooding the room. "What the "

"Major!" McKay shouted.

Sheppard turned back to tell McKay he was okay, but there wasn't a door, and there wasn't a Rodney. He looked at Teyla, confused, "Where'd they go?"

Teyla shook her head. "I do not know."

John's eyes were adjusting to the change in brightness, and what he saw left him more dumbfounded than ever. Somewhere, deep inside, he was debating whether this was all some weird hallucination, and he'd wake up in the infirmary, with Beckett telling him he'd be alright soon.

Before he'd had much time to ponder the situation, McKay, Ford and Beckett appeared beside them. "Glad you could join us," Sheppard said wryly.

"You disappeared. One minute you were there, than the next, gone, we figured if we walked in where you did " McKay said, his words running together from nervousness. He seemed to trail off, as he noticed the surroundings. "Oh, my."

"This place is getting entirely too weird." Sheppard was looking at a room full of display cubes, and inside those cubes were animals. Some he wasn't familiar with, but most he definitely recognized, and some he wished he hadn't. In one cube was a Tyrannosaurus Rex, in another a Diplodocus, and that had to be a Triceratops behind the other. Everywhere he looked were pods filled with extinct animals. Mammoths, Mastodons and other smaller cases, some miniscule, and containing what he couldn't imagine.

McKay wasn't thinking weird, he was thinking incredible. "Do you realize what this means?"

For once Beckett wasn't the only one who wasn't following McKay. Sheppard didn't know what McKay was getting at. "That the Ancients liked to collect extinct animals?"

"No, Major," McKay almost seemed deflated that John hadn't given him the answer he was looking for. "The Ancients created the dinosaurs!"

Ford looked at McKay like he was off his rocker. "That's a big assumption."

"Why?" McKay gestured at the pods, and everyone followed his hand, and looked at the rows and rows, as far as the eyes could see, and as far as the room stretched, there were pods. "They seeded human life. Maybe, it wasn't all they seeded."

"What are these dinosaurs?" Teyla asked, the only one of the group who appeared unaffected by their find.

"They were a type of animal, they died off millennia ago on our planet, we're talking hundreds of thousands of years." Rodney pointed at the nearest specimen, "This, this is a dinosaur," he gestured at the Tyrannosaurus Rex.

Beckett wasn't ready to buy McKay's theory. "The Ancients haven't been around for that long."

"You don't know that, we don't know that," McKay refuted. "Look, we know the Ancients have been alive for a long time. Ten thousand years ago, they were incredibly advanced, how long were they at that level? We don't know, but we do know they have been around for a very, very long time. They created the gates. They were one of the four races; allied with the Asgard, Nox, and the Furlings."

Sheppard didn't know the entire back-story, but he had heard of the Asgard in his inbrief. "Maybe they just kept specimens when they became extinct?"

"Maybe they didn't," McKay said, obstinately.

Sheppard didn't back down either. "Maybe you're making a lot of assumptions."

"My assumptions are usually right."

"Not always." The second that left his mouth, Sheppard wanted to take it back. It fell flat, and unwieldy between them, an unwelcome visitor reminding the two how they'd ended up in this place to begin with. The disaster with Gaul and Abrams, the Hive ship debacle continuing in space, and then here. It seemed to haunt their footsteps, even when they thought they were far enough away to escape the past.

McKay flinched, but held anything else inside. "There have been exceptions," he said evenly.

"McKay, I didn't mean  "

"We should spread out, see if there's another room down here, a command center, or something," Rodney interrupted Sheppard's apology, looking away, pretending the hurt wasn't there, but he wasn't fooling anyone.

Sheppard saw the disapproving look from Teyla before she shifted her attention elsewhere. Beckett was watching them with the concerned physician's mask, and Ford was painfully looking anywhere but at them. "Fine," John wasn't going to give him exactly what he wanted. "McKay, you're with me. Beckett, Ford and Teyla, take the right side, we'll take the left."

John saw the panic flash across Rodney's face, and thought he'd protest, but he remained quiet. Sheppard wasn't naïve enough to take that for compliance. The other three moved away from them, and he started walking along the wall that was the far left edge of this room. Their boots echoed in the vast room on a floor that reminded him of the museums from back home, marble and cold, but this wasn't marble. He was sure if he touched it, he'd find it warm.

They walked in silence. It wasn't that Sheppard didn't want to talk to McKay, though he was sure it was that for Rodney's part, but he didn't know where to start. They'd made progress, repairing the damage to both their souls, and then he went and screwed it up with two words. Funny how words could seem so little, so damn harmless, a few letters put together, and with them, everything changed. It wasn't near as funny as he wished it were. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean  "

"I know," McKay said curtly, cutting him off before he could finish.

"No, you don't," Sheppard said angrily. "Or maybe you do, and you just don't want to listen, or believe it."

McKay sneezed, pulling a tissue from his jacket, and wiping his nose. He turned towards Sheppard, "No, I do, but I got us into this mess, and I'm trying to get us out. This is all my fault, Major, again."

Sheppard stopped, "What do you mean, your fault?"

"I'm the one that wanted to go to the planet," McKay pierced him with a haunted look that Sheppard knew he'd never forget. "I'm the one who wanted to land on that Hive ship. It's always me, Major, my ideas. I'm a liability, and it's time you realized that."

"I don't believe this, are you really that arrogant to think that we all just follow along behind the Good Ship McKay?" Sheppard barked, throwing his hands up, and turning his back on Rodney. He was too tired to deal with this.

"The Good Ship McKay?"

John turned back and saw McKay smiling, a weak parody, but it was a start. "It was the best I could come up with."

"Keep your day job."

Sheppard figured he deserved that. He turned back to the front, back towards the way they were heading before giving in to emotions and past regrets. They hadn't made it very far. "Let's go, we've got a lot of room to explore." He left a lot unsaid, both of them did, but a measure of peace had been achieved in the short outburst. John hoped that this time he wouldn't screw it up by letting his mouth get ahead of his brain.


Despite his intentions for calling it a day, John had gotten sucked into exploring the room. It fell into that problem they all had with an inability to let a puzzle remain unsolved. It was a singular trait that all the members of Atlantis shared, an insatiable curiosity, and everyone knows that saying about curiosity and the cat.

Their lives weren't in immediate danger, but Sheppard had reached his limit, and he knew it. His legs were feeling alarmingly lethargic, weighted down, and stiff. His arm had resumed its steady beating in concert with his pulse. He stifled another sneeze, and searched his pocket for another tissue. He'd lost all track of time without the cues from Mother Nature. He twisted his wrist to see what time it was, and swore to himself, because he'd forgotten again that his watch had been the first victim to fall on this trip.

"It's twenty-three hundred, Major." McKay had noticed his actions.

"That late?"

"Is that a rhetorical question?"

John sighed, because he supposed it was. He knew it was late. He was a little thrown that it was that late, but his body had been telling him even if his mind hadn't listened. "Let's call it quits, get Beckett on the line, and have him come to us."

Rodney pressed the key, "Beckett, we're quitting for the night, Sheppard wants us to meet here. Head straight across the room, you'll run into us eventually, we're against the far wall."

John tossed his pack to the ground; thankful he hadn't left it back at the entrance. He dropped down, suddenly wondering if he'd left enough energy to set up camp and eat. He was beginning to wonder if it would ever end. This mission just seemed to be one question after another, and the unanswered questions were piling up at a faster rate than they could discover answers. He let his head fall against his knees, and felt the rough fabric against his hot skin.

"Major?"

John kept his head down. "I'm okay. Just tired. It's been a long day."

Sheppard felt the air shift from Rodney's movements. McKay had sat next to him. Rodney sneezed, and sniffled, and made a lot of noise getting comfortable. It was quiet for a few minutes and John sat still, dozing in a fatigued state, but not really asleep. He noticed for the first time that the complex was emitting a soft and subtle hum. He felt it through the floor, a floor that was as warm as he suspected, and he heard it in the air. "It's alive," he murmured.

"What?"

John had forgotten McKay was next to him. He lifted his head. "The complex. It's alive."

Rodney's eyes widened. "That's impossible. Buildings aren't sentient," he dismissed.

But Sheppard knew he was right. His pupils dilated, and he stared towards the ceiling, that's what he'd felt, but couldn't put words or rational supposition to. "Can't you hear it?"

McKay lifted a finger to his mouth, and bit on the edge, before pulling his fingertip away, wet from saliva. "You're freaking me out, Major," he muttered under his breath.

John wasn't listening to McKay anymore; he was focused again on the building. The hum was a foreign song, and he was fighting to understand the message. A headache was growing behind his eyes, a small ache, seeping around inside his skull, like melting jello. "Listen, McKay," and he touched a hand to Rodney's knee.

McKay stilled the bouncing of his leg, and the chewing of his nail, and gave Sheppard the benefit of the doubt, and he listened. He closed his eyes, and tried to let the extraneous thoughts stop, for even a heartbeat of time. At first, he heard nothing, but his own ragged breaths, and the Major's slower rhythm, then, a slight change in his perception, a fringe on the edge of his peripheral awareness. He focused his thoughts on that fringe, and it grew. It was a steady progress of a background noise that his mind had dismissed as unimportant. It was there, and he knew what Sheppard meant. "It is alive," he said, startled.

"What's alive?" Beckett was standing over them, Teyla and Ford on either side, and all three were staring at them with worry.

Sheppard realized they looked like stoned teenagers. "The building."

Ford didn't buy it. "It's a building," he said, dumbfounded, and then remembered himself, "Sir."

Beckett crouched in front of the two men; concerned that something had happened while they had been separated. "Major, look at me son."

John looked up as instructed, focused his eyes on Beckett, and reached out, his hand moved in slow motion, for his perception, and he touched Beckett on his knee. "Listen," he said.

Carson stared at Sheppard, but it was as if someone had removed a blindfold, and he felt the rushing in of input, a computer switched on, and he understood. "Bloody hell, they're right."

Ford was getting upset. "Have you all lost your minds? A building can't be alive!"

Teyla wasn't giving in to emotions to the degree that Lieutenant Ford was, but she was worried. Major Sheppard and Doctor McKay had looked like someone had given them a drug, and when Sheppard had touched Beckett he'd fallen under whatever was affecting the other two.

"It's not what you think," Sheppard said, reading Teyla's thoughts. "I think it's the gene. We can hear it because of the gene."

McKay was nodding affirmative before Sheppard had finished talking. "It makes sense, and you heard it first, just like everything." He managed to say it without sounding to disgruntled.

The skin under John's eyes was sunken, and shadowed. He shook his head, trying to shake off the stupor of the language. "Whatever it is, I can't make heads or tails of it right now. We need to set up camp, and we'll have to do watches."

Ford wasn't going to admit that he was feeling like someone had transported him into some ghost tale, and the thought of being the only one awake in this cavernous room, while the others slept, gave him the willies, but he didn't like how rough the Major and McKay looked. "I'll take first watch."

Beckett and McKay shook it off as well, shutting out the constant hum that seemed all the louder for the recognition of it. Everyone pitched in, and bags were unrolled, and the military's version of a dinner was served. Sheppard had hardly enough energy to get his eaten before he set the package aside, and let his eyes close. He suffered through one more sneeze, and a harsh cough, and surrendered into the arms of the sweet gentle caress of Morpheus.

McKay sought out an additional tissue, and wished he'd thought to use the bathroom. He'd have to deal with it soon, but for now, he'd go to sleep and leave that problem for later. They'd all have to figure that one out before long. He slipped into his bag, thankful for the bulky object that not long ago he'd wanted to burn rather than pack up. He ached, and he knew the cotton warmth would be soothing, for as long as he'd get to sleep.

Rodney felt Beckett creep across the foot of his bag. "What are you doing?" he whispered.

"I've got to clean his arm, and give him antibiotics," Carson whispered back. "I was waiting for him to fall asleep. He's a lot easier to deal with when he's unconscious."

McKay started to nod in agreement, when a thought occurred to him, "Just how often do you do this?"

Beckett grinned, his teeth gleaming white in his broad smile, "More than you want to know, Rodney." He handed some pills over to McKay. "Take these, you'll be needing them if you want any sleep at all tonight."

Rodney thought about asking what they were, but as he watched Carson begin to work on John's arm, he thought better of it. It didn't matter, short of being arsenic; he could care less what was in those white pills. He just wanted to sleep. Teyla handed his water over, and he swallowed them quickly, handing the canteen back. "Thanks."

"You are welcome. Rest," Teyla instructed softly.

A quiet fell over the rough camp. McKay drifted off, not a surprise, as the pills Beckett had given him had a liberal dose of sedative. Carson finished cleaning Sheppard's infected arm, and gave him another injection of antibiotic with Motrin, and cleaned up his supplies. "I'll take second watch," he volunteered, after scooting across to his bed.

"And I will take third," Teyla added.

Ford looked at the still forms of McKay and the Major. "Do you think they'll wake up before morning?"

Beckett didn't think they'd wake up on their own before anything. "They'll be out of it for a while, Lieutenant. I'm sure we'll hear about it in the morning." It had been a tacit agreement that the three healthy members would split the watches, and they'd allow the other two to sleep.

Ford smiled tightly, his exuberance diminished greatly by recent events. "Get to sleep Doc, I'll wake you in a few hours."

Beckett didn't need to be told twice. He pulled the top of the bag up to his neck, and tucked his head inwards, seeking that small sense of security, even if it was a false one.