Chapter 2

In the Control Room the technicians on duty looked from one to the other as the alarm began before returning their attention to the screens of the laptops hooked into the Atlantis mainframe in search of what had set off the alarm.

Peter Grodin studied the display on the console in front of him and frowned. He tapped in instructions on the laptop connect to the console, waited, swore quietly, tapped in more instructions then swore again, less concerned this time about being overheard. While he watched, Atlantean glyphs started to overwrite the English characters on his laptop's screen.

Elizabeth Weir looked at the main screen in the Control Room, frowned as the plan of the City displayed there winked out and was replaced by column after column of Atlantean code tracking across the screen, too fast to read.

Andrew Baines saw the diagnostic programme he had been running abort, then crash altogether. He was looking towards Grodin and Weir for instructions when the jack connecting his computer to the mainframe exploded in a fountain of sparks.

Around the Control Room connection hubs smoked and failed. Scientists leapt backwards as the equipment they had been working likewise burned or exploded. Energy crackled around suddenly exposed power cables. The sharp tang of ozone and the more acrid stench of burnt plastic filled the air. Behind the hubbub, the alarm warbled on as, unnoticed by the people in the control room, an incongruously calm voice intoned alien words.

"Talk to me, Peter!" called Weir, fighting to be heard over the chaos. "What's happening?" Around the rest of the Control Room cries for help and medical assistance merely added to the din.

Grodin looked up at her, his face smudged with soot from the smoke billowing from the burning remains of his own computer. "I don't know!" he shouted back. "Some sort of power surge maybe. Whatever it was, it must've been huge! It's blown straight through the surge protection we have installed." He was about to go on when the familiar sound of the Gate Shield being activated drew everyone's attention to the presently inactive Stargate.

"Did you…?" asked Weir.

Grodin shook his head, slid his chair over to the Gate's control console and pressed the deactivation key. He looked up to see the shield still in place, leaned back over the console and tried other buttons but all to no avail. "None of the controls are responding, Doctor," he reported redundantly, before kicking his chair over to another console. "The same thing here. It's dead."

Other voices rang out. "The City's communications grid is down!"

"Internal monitoring is offline!"

"All secondary controls are unresponsive!"

"Everyone calm down!" ordered Weir firmly and a slowly a semblance of quiet descended over the room. "Concentrate on assessing the damage to your own stations. Someone get on the radio and get what people up here you need. I'll want a preliminary status report in fifteen minutes!"

Muttered affirmatives were the only response as those able to tried to work out the extent of the damage. Minutes passed, Weir looking over Grodin's shoulder as he ran through permutation after permutation on the main control panel, before deciding that it was as inert as the rest.

Out of the corner of her eye Weir glimpsed an approaching figure and looked up at the cautious approach of a woman whom she recognised as the linguist attached to the scientific team and who she knew had not been on duty in the Control Room. "Doctor Meidani," Weir greeted brusquely. Since their arrival, she had seen little of her. Leila Meidani had not been on Weir's initial short list for the Atlantis expedition, but both the linguists she had approached for the expedition had demurred and recommended, amongst others, the Iranian born Meidani. After checking her academic credentials, Weir had gone along with their suggestion. The reaction to her selection from the people running the security checks on the expedition members had been interesting, to say the least.

"Doctor Weir," Meidani returned with a brisk nod of greeting. The Iranian was about Weir's age, though less tall, her long black hair tied back in a severe ponytail. She went on, speaking with only the barest hint of a Middle Eastern accent. "I was wondering if you have been listening to the city's automated announcement?"

Despite the polite words, Weir could not help but hear the urgency in her tone. Closer scrutiny revealed the worry in the face of the normally unflappable Iranian, and for the first time since the crisis began, she directed her full attention to the announcement. She was, she freely acknowledged, much better with the written rather than the spoken form of the language, but even so as she listened she could understand enough to appreciate Meidani's concern. Their eyes met, and Meidani caught the request implicit in them. She began speaking, softly enough not to be overheard, but murmuring for Weir's benefit a running translation from the Atlantean. "Attention! Attention! This is a security announcement. The presence of an unauthorised active alien power signature has been identified within sector 3-182-76. Detected power output has exceeded permitted limits and has been classified as a level two threat. Standard security protocols have now been implemented. I repeat, standard security protocols have now been implemented: all personnel should report to assigned stations immediately. Atlantis is now operating at level two security."

As the Iranian woman finished speaking, Weir caught sight of the approach of her two top computer experts, Baines and Grodin. Meidani saw the seriousness in their expressions, murmured her excuses and moved away, leaving Weir to take their report in private. "As far as we've been able to determine, all external links we set up between our computers and the Atlantis mainframe have been broken," explained Grodin. "I can't be sure, but it's looking like there's been some kind of huge feedback or surge across the whole system. Atlantis' own secondary controls went down the same time and are still inactive. As best we can tell, all primary systems are functioning, but so far we've been unable to re-establish access."

"There's been a significant amount of damage to every computer that we had hooked up to the City when the surge hit," Baines continued, "and those that weren't physically damaged seem to have been infected with a virus that's overwriting any data on the hard drives. My maintenance team can salvage some of them and we'll have to cannibalise others for spares, but the bottom line is it'll take time and we'll still be down a lot of machines."

Weir nodded: she had expected worse. "Do your best," she said with a tight smile of encouragement.

Baines headed away leaving Grodin with Weir. "We still haven't been able to access the controls of the Gate or the Gate Shield," he reported. "I've tried everything I could think of. Although Atlantis' primary systems such as the Gate controls and the Shield are, in fact, fully operational, the computer refuses to accept any instructions from us. Doctor Weir, Major Sheppard's team is due back in a little over two hours. Without being able to dial out, we've no way to contact him, to warn him. We've even thought of trying to get to a Puddle Jumper to use their on board systems to access the Gate, but bulkheads have come down blocking access to the hangar, and we've no way of knowing if we would be locked out of their controls as well. If the Major tries to come through…" Grodin's words tapered off. Both knew only too well what the result would be.

Weir sighed, closing her eyes as the once overheard morbid humour of a technician back at the SGC sprang unwanted into her mind. Bug on a windshield.

She opened her eyes, mouth set in a determined line. Not on her watch!

"Get McKay up here!" she ordered.

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