(Oh my GOD, did I number my chapters wrong. 22. There are 22. I wasn't even close! Sorry! Oh, and, yeah, that means I've finished writing it. Now it's all about, as my friend NotTeyla...I mean, NotTasha... puts it, the smoothing. I know I'm going to miss at least one—probably more—stupid homophone in this story, though. It's inevitable. But you'll forgive me, right? Thank you so much for the reviews! Coming home from work to them is so incredible!)

THE ELEDGIAS

CHAPTER TWELVE: PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER

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"Missing?" Elizabeth groaned, resting her head on her hand as she looked across the desk at Carson. The doctor was fidgeting in her office, his expression somewhere between embarrassment and concern. He'd run here, as opposed to simply using the radio, which was a habit the colonel and other members of the military had been trying to break him from, but which Carson, when agitated, never seemed to remember. He was still panting slightly as he stood before her.

"I swear, I only looked away for a moment. I went to my office, put away some papers, sat down and tried to radio Teyla…and when I looked up, he was gone."

"Radio Teyla?" Sheppard asked, leaning against the glass and metal door frame to Elizabeth's office, the hustle of the Control Room swirling behind him in its usual controlled chaos. "Why?"

Beckett turned, gazing at the man over his shoulder. If anything, he looked even more embarrassed. "Oh, well," Beckett suddenly seemed rather fascinated with the pulling a loose thread off his lab coat, "I may have promised Rodney I'd ask her to sit for an X-Ray…."

Sheppard straightened immediately, his brow darkening. "What?"

The physician slumped a little, then gazed back up at the man. "I know, Colonel, believe me, but he's dead certain she isn't Teyla. As certain as I've ever seen him. I went along with it because, if nothing else, it might prove to him that he's wrong and Teyla would understand."

"That son of a bitch," Sheppard muttered, crossing his good arm over his sling and looking at the floor. "He lied to me."

"Rodney?" Elizabeth asked, arching an eyebrow. "About what?"

"He promised he wouldn't…," Sheppard grimaced, as if realizing who he was talking to, and shook his head. "It's nothing."

The expedition leader wasn't fooled, her expression growing stormy as she straightened in her chair to fix him with a stare. "Colonel, I thought you told me Rodney was fine. Are you now saying he's not?"

"No, no," Sheppard said quickly, waving his good hand at her. "He lied to me about something else, Elizabeth. I still think he's fine. Well...I did."

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes, desperately trying to see through his casual demeanor to see the truth underneath. She had come to realize that, as their friendship has grown, the colonel's blinders with respect to Rodney were getting thicker, Doranda notwithstanding. Loyalty and faith were important, but…

Carson snorted a short laugh, interrupting his thoughts. "So, he lied to you, Colonel? That's hard to believe. I thought you always told me he couldn't lie to you."

"Yeah, well…," Sheppard waved his good arm about. A moment later, he stopped, eyes gazing off into the distance, perhaps recalling McKay's actual words. "Okay, maybe he didn't," he admitted sullenly. Elizabeth rolled her eyes a little, then cleared her throat.

"Gentlemen," she said, trying to keep her tone calm and level, "can we focus on what's at hand right now, if you please?" She turned back to Carson, "Other than his insistence that Telya isn't Teyla, is there anything else that he has said or done that would make you think he's…" She trailed off, raising her eyebrows. She just didn't want to say "a danger" out loud.

"No," Sheppard said automatically. Elizabeth looked at him, arched an eyebrow, then looked back at Carson.

"I don't think so," the doctor offered, his endorsement a little less ringing.

She sighed, nodded. "Okay, Colonel, if you would inform Major Lorne, I'll see if we can locate him using the sensors."

"You won't find him that way," Sheppard shook his head. "He knows the City too well. He wouldn't be that stupid."

"Do you know of another way?" she asked plainly. He stared back at her, then slumped a little. "That's what I thought," Elizabeth finished. She tapped her earpiece, "Doctor Zelenka, can you please report to the control room?"

"Of course. I'll be right there," Radek answered immediately.

She smiled. "Thank you," she said, and tapped her earpiece off. "He's on his way."

Sheppard nodded, "I'll go find Major Lorne."

"You may also want to find Teyla, Colonel," Elizabeth called after him as he turned. "She's part of this. Rodney may seek her out."

Sheppard just nodded, and left, leaving a still uncomfortable Carson with a frustrated Elizabeth.

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The android had tied Ronon up with parts of his own clothing and pushed the unconscious man against the wall, none too gently. Making sure once more that he wasn't dead, it stood and returned to the database screen. A few commands, and it was scrolling through the rest of Atlantis's history, absorbing the loss of the war and the evacuation back to Earth with a sad grimace. Then there was a blip, and the history continued with the City returning to wakefulness ten thousand years later, the Gate reopened from Earth. But it was not Lanteans who came through—it was humans. What had happened to the Lanteans after they returned to Earth? The database was incomplete. The android felt a sense of frustration--there was so much information that it was barely halfway through, and even then, it had a massive ten thousand year old gap in it.

Suddenly, as it continued to scroll, it stopped, something setting off an alarm bell in the android's mind.

For a few moments, it tried to understand what it was.

Then the connection was made. Someone was mining the database for information about the eledgias on the Mainland—and about the central eledgias AI and the androids it controlled. A few keyed commands, and Atlantis happily disgorged the location of the person who did the search—a location near to the infirmary.

McKay.

If androids could swear, this one would have.

Instead, it understood that its time had suddenly become very short, unless it moved quickly. The AI had instructed it that it did not want to kill anyone until it had all the facts, but the android hadn't the time to get them all now, not if, as it suspected, the one called McKay was going to try to return to the Mainland and rescue the part-Wraith.

With one more glance at the unconscious human leaning against the wall, the android set off at a run back to the main parts of the City.

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Once Rodney knew what he was looking for, searching the database suddenly become much, much easier. He wasn't interested in the place, anymore, he was interested in what the Ancients did with their dead and dying, and it was like finding a wide-open back door to a locked house. He noted that a number of the archeologists and historians had already become compiling the information, adding in hyperlinks for ease, though they hadn't gotten that far yet. Probably distracted by the million other things to learn and discover in this City. Still, he was fairly flying through it now, jumping from where they had left off in their rambling, typically academic and unfocused way to the facts.

And the more he read, the more he understood.

An eledgias was, in essence, the Ancient version of a cemetery or crypt. Of course, considering the beauty and scale of the one on the Mainland, it was more like the Taj Mahal or Pere Lachaise than your standard town cemetery of grey tombstones, but it was still meant as a final resting place for the dead.

It seemed to have three main purposes.

The first, and most obvious, was to stand as a memorial.

The second, and here's where things started to get interesting, was to store the personal logs of the dead.

He had determined that the eledgias database was kept separate from the city's because, besides the fact that there was no reason for personal files to be stored here, the Ancients had obviously wanted those files to be more protected. If someone really wanted to read an ancestor's private files, whether they be memoirs, rambling thoughts, or a last will and testament, they could travel out to the eledgias and request it. The extra effort of flying out there, combined with the atmosphere of the serene eledgias surroundings, would make the whole thing more special. The eledgias then also had a powerful AI who guarded the personal logs, and would interact with the requestor to determine whether their request was worthy enough to allow them access.

As Elizabeth had once told him, the Ancients were advanced, but they were still people. They had secrets and hidden desires and darkness in their souls, just like all humans. Janus' flouting of the Council when Elizabeth was there was proof enough of that. And they were obviously very protective of their privacy when it came to truly personal things, such as whatever the eledgias AI stored for them out there.

And that AI was obviously still functioning. He and Teyla had woken it up…and now part of it was here in the City, walking around inside an android. Lord knows what it was thinking of doing.

As for where the android came from, that had to do with the eledgias' third purpose—to help those who are dying bid a final farewell to their loved ones.

Near as he could tell, those Ancients who were truly infirm would travel to eledgias and perform a ritual which would allow their consciousness and form to be impressed upon an android construct while they lay unconscious in one of a series of protected rooms. Speaking and talking through the android--which would feel to both them and their loved ones as if it were really them--they could say their last goodbyes. They could hug their families, play one last time with any children, kiss their husbands or wives…everything they could do before whatever illness or infirmity had struck them down. But the process was wearing—it took a great deal of energy to control the android—and often, the one using it would die from the use, or very soon thereafter. But, McKay supposed, the chance to hold your lover or child one more time was probably worth the slightly shorter time span.

Presumably, though, a healthy person using it would not be so badly worn.

Or so he hoped...for Teyla's sake.

Afterwards, the dead bodies were interned beneath the floors of the eledgias, and technology sped up the process of combining the remains with the earth. Ancient recycling, McKay thought with a dark amusement. It certainly sounded efficient.

Put that way, it seemed a highly sensitive and respectful way to take care of ones' dead.

But the damage the Wraith had wrought to the eledgias during the war, the disuse over thousands of years, and now his and Teyla's intrusion—the wires inside the AI had obviously gotten crossed somewhere. That wasn't Teyla looking out of those eyes, as it should have been, it was part of the eledgias AI. McKay was sure of it. Right there, the AI had already acted against its programming—it was clearly never intended to harm anyone, and yet, by doing this, it had. He didn't even want to think about what it might be doing to the City right now, or the harm it was doing to Teyla, even if she wasn't controlling it. All he knew is that he had to stop it.

With that in mind, he shut down the laptop, disconnected from the terminal he was working at, and started mapping out the best way to get to his lab and then the Jumper Bay without being detected.

The Ring cycle battering his skull morphed into a painful, brassy, Lone Ranger version of William Tell's Overture, because he was running out of time. It was harming Teyla and could be harming the City...he didn't have time anymore to try and convince the others. He had to go now.

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TBC...