Chapter Thirteen - Secret Track

"Hello?"

A perfectly manicured lawn bordered by roses provided a picturesque front to the house. A wide pebbled driveway, home to two cars and a girl's bike, curved up from the suburban street to the door - a dark, wooden affair, set with a cheerily fake pane of colored glass. It pushed aside easily beneath McKay's hand, allowing light to fall on polished floor boards and pale cream walls. Several paintings hung on the walls; a rocky landscape, a vase, a hunting party. Between them, at a slight angle, hung an aging family photo. A stiff-backed, middle-aged man in a suit, a woman with shoulder pads and an expensive perm, a teenage girl with a familiar, defiant jut to her chin and a ten year old boy, pudgy and sickly looking. All four stared out from the photo with expressionless eyes, oblivious to being an object of study.

For the first time in almost twenty years, Rodney McKay was home.

He paused before moving off the door mat, looking from his boots to the shoe rack purposefully placed in the space to his left. Habit had him bent down, fingers on his laces before he realized what he was doing and stopped.

Straightening, McKay looked around the empty hallway and ventured, reluctantly: "Mom?"

There was no reply, much to his intense relief. Trying a different tack, he called: "Major? Lieutenant Ford? Teyla?"

Then, desperate: "Jeannie?"

Nothing. He hadn't expected one to the latter; his sister had left home six years before he had, and as far as he was aware had not been back since. But he expected his teammates to answer.

"Huh." He tried the front door, hoping to exit but finding it locked. "So much for group playing."

The hallway opened out into an open plan living room and kitchen area. The sofa was cream, matching the walls, and a completely unsuitable color for a young boy and his variety of science experiments.

Sometimes Rodney had thought his mother had deliberately designed the house to ensnare him. It wasn't his fault that in his attempt to build a bottle rocket, he had accidentally destroyed an entire shelf of her beloved glass animals; it was his mother's for deciding the den was a suitable place to display them. And if she hadn't wanted him to use the den, then she shouldn't have banned him from the kitchen.

Eventually, in a fit of frustration, she had sent him down to the basement armed with a broom and the promise that if he cleaned it up, and ensured all his experiments stayed in the one room, he was free to do whatever he liked down there. She could close the door on him, and the sounds of her protégé son building his first nuclear bomb could be hidden from her judgmental, supercilious friends.

During the end of his parent's relationship, during the worst of their fights, Rodney would hide down there. He could shut the door so the sounds of their voices were muffled, and bury himself in an experiment, and pretend to himself that it didn't matter, that it didn't hurt.

The kitchen was empty, but a kettle stood on the countertop and was coming to a boil, whistling brightly. McKay approached it cautiously, wincing when it automatically flicked off. He looked out across the sink to the kitchen window and beyond, to a deserted garden. The charred remains of something that had once been a tree house clung to an overgrown oak, and he could make out the form of a small black cat making good use of his mother's rock garden.

He had always liked cats.

A sudden thumping sound from the upstairs caused him to jump. Turning, Rodney left the kitchen behind and headed back through the living room to the stairs.

"Mom?"

No reply. He paused nervously at the foot of the stairs, one hand clutching the banisters tightly. The house was silent, eerily so, and McKay couldn't repress a convulsive shudder as he started to climb the stairs.

"Oh, this is so not fun. Damn Ancients. Supposed to be all knowing and all powerful and yet they can't even program a damn computer game…"

Another loud thump uttered from somewhere to his left, prompting McKay to yelp and freeze halfway up the staircase. After a long pause he managed to force his body up the remaining steps, though his heart was thundering in his chest and he could feel himself breaking out into a cold sweat.

The stairs led to a wide landing and several doors. To his right lay his and Jeannie's rooms. His was shut, and plastered over with a sharp 'keep out' sign, but his sister's was open and he glimpsed a flash of pink walls and fluffy cushions. Straight ahead was the guest room, and to the left lay the bathroom and his parent's room.

It was from this room that there issued another, dull thump. McKay approached it slowly, drawing his gun from its holster, and wishing desperately that one of his teammates was with him.

Cautiously, and with a slight tremble, his free hand reached out and pushed down the door handle. His mind rebelled, demanding his body had better damn well listen to reason and stop this right now, because it was quite clearly insane to be walking in the direction of the thumping, and he had seen enough horror movies to know that this approach never ended well.

His body refused to obey. The door creaked ominously on its hinges as it swung open.

The curtains were drawn; McKay's first clue that something was wrong. Facing the front street, his parent's room was gifted with natural light for most of the day, making it a pleasant, if a little stuffy, environment. The bed was pushed close to the outside wall and separated only by a small bedside cabinet, allowing his mother a perfect position to survey the neighborhood without having to get up in the morning. A large wardrobe stood on the nearest wall, housing racks of his mother's overpriced designer clothes and his father's expensively tailored suits. Numerous cosmetic products covered the surface of a small dresser, several bottles of perfume and shampoo hiding a single photo frame containing the only shot of his parent's wedding that Rodney had ever seen.

A full length mirror hung on the wall beside the dresser, and gave McKay a view of the woman sat on the floor, leaning up against the opposite side of the bed. She was staring up at the curtains, and didn't move as McKay entered.

"Jeannie?"

Her dark hair was streaked with white, and as McKay moved around the bed he caught a glimpse of pale, papery skin. "You've changed."

"Oka..ay." He paused uncertainly. "How are you?"

"You really want to get out there."

"Um…" He frowned, and took another step towards the bed. "It's been a while. I meant to write to you…"

"I'm impressed." Her voice was rougher than he remembered, weaker, but her words touched something within him, something dark.

Slowly McKay stepped around the corner of the bed, getting his first proper look at his sister.

She was aged, hideously. Jeannie was seven years older than him, a rebellious eighteen year old when he had last seen her in the flesh, and in her early thirties in the last photo. He had, in the brief pauses between his work, thought of how the ten years might have changed her. Whether she had followed their mother, and hidden behind make-up and hair dye, or whether she had given in gracefully, like their great aunt, plump and healthy with warm eyes behind the wrinkles.

But not like this. Not even in nightmares.

Skeletal thin, skin mere tissue, hanging from her bones in swathes of gray, translucent cloth. Her white hair hung around her face, hiding her eyes. Her slender legs were drawn up to her rib cage, long hands resting limply in her lap. She coughed, and McKay could hear the breath rattle.

There was a bloody handprint on her chest.

"You want in the fight."

"What?" He shook his head, confused, dropping to his knees beside her. "Look, Jeannie… it'll be alright. Oh god… it'll be alright."

"No." She laughed, bitterly, a twisted hiss of air between her lips. "Rodney, it's okay."

He shivered involuntarily, forcing himself to reach out and take one of her fragile hands in his, cradling it gently. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I never replied to your letters, I know I forgot Christmas cards, but I…"

She curled one finger around his thumb and squeezed weakly. "You and I both know I'm not going to make it."

"Stop it." His mouth was dry, his brain acting on autopilot. "You're getting stronger by the minute."

And then it hit him.

"I'm dying, Rodney. I can feel it."

Gaul. He tried to recoil, to escape the false shadow of his sister but his body refused, frozen to the spot on the carpet beside her. Sun trickled into the room through a gap in the curtains, and failed to warm the air.

"Stop it." He swallowed hard, feeling his sister's thready pulse beneath his fingers. "

"I'm not getting better. I'm getting worse."

"No." He closed his eyes briefly, willing the vision to be over, praying that when he opened them she'd be gone, that he could jerk back out of the game and return to the safe white.

His sister was silent.

Panicking, Rodney opened his eyes, tugging on her hand firmly. She uttered a soft gasp and stirred, resisting his touch, the movement grounding him.

"Oh, thank god. I thought…"

Slowly she lifted her face towards him, the white hair falling away to reveal white, milky eyes.

His voice broke on a whisper: "Jeannie…"

Blindly she reached out to him with her free hand, her entire arm trembling with the effort. He caught her fingers and encased her hand in his, moving closer. She was icy cold, her breath stuttering in her chest.

"Go, Rodney."

"No."

"You want to."

"No," he repeated, desperately, massaging her hands with his fingers, just as he'd done for Gaul, just as he'd done so Brendan could lift the…

There was a sound from somewhere outside the room, coming from the outer hallway. A voice that sounded a lot like Teyla. McKay froze, listening intently, Jeannie cocking her head to search out the sound.

"You hear that?" he asked her, nervously.

She shook her head. "No."

"I thought I heard something. Maybe…"

"No."

He turned back to his sister, still absently rubbing her hands with his fingers. "Can you move?"

She gave another laugh, and despite the frailty of her voice it still sounded like her, the laughter he had heard from behind a door when she'd been in her room with friends, the laughter they'd shared on the rare movie nights, sat before a film by their absentee mother. "I'm not going anywhere."

McKay paused, torn, glancing between Jeannie and the bedroom door. She pushed at him feebly with her hands, pressing against his chest.

"Go, Rodney. Save the day."

He dropped her hands gently, glancing back at the door before finally, slowly getting to his feet, leaning on the wall for support. The sound from outside seemed louder, clearly Teyla, and although he couldn't make out any words she sounded frightened.

Teyla was never scared.

"If I had a radio…" His hand rose to pat his blank cheek. "No, of course not. But it's okay - if Teyla's there, then maybe Sheppard and Ford are too, and we can figure out a way of getting out of here. We can get you to Carson. Although…" He paused, filled with self-doubt. "If there's a Wraith, what chance do we have? If Teyla can't fight it then how can I?" He took a faltering step towards the door, his hand slipping down to grasp at his gun holster. "I was hoping to be strong enough but I…"

The sound of a gun reverberated around the small room, muffled by fabrics. It was followed by a soft, strangled moan.

"Oh… god."

Slowly he turned, his hand still twitching at the empty holster. His gun, his gun, his sister, Jeannie… Blood on his parent's duvet, pooling on the pristine carpet, blank, lifeless eyes…

There was a twitch in the curtains. McKay turned quickly, ripping his gaze away from the bed, breath caught in his throat, turning in time to see the curtains pull apart and brilliant white light spill in through the window, blinding him…