A/N: Thank you all for reviewing (hugs all around)as other writers would know, we read them over…and over… and thanks for all the reading and waiting patiently for this chapter.
My beta lives! I am so happy about that, minor errors on the other two chapters have been fixed, nothing you have to go back for though.
Glad to know people liked Radek in here, he's becoming another of my favorite characters to write.
On with the show…
Chapter 3- Descent
John took a deep breath as he controlled the submarine's descent to the bottom of the ocean floor, the deepest part of the ocean floor. Something was bothering him and he couldn't quite place it. The sub felt different to him than it had the last time they took it out. When he connected his mind to it, it was almost as if it was yelling at him, but a computer couldn't yell. He never felt anything like this before when he used Ancient technology, even with that same sub, and it was unsettling.
"Colonel?" Teyla's voice broke him from his thoughts. She had been paying close attention to his behavior since they left about twenty minutes earlier, to his and Ronon's. They both seemed to be uneasy about this mission. Rodney wasn't at all, or he had managed to hide it better because he was working away at the laptop he had brought along, oblivious to the other members of the team.
"Yes?" He didn't turn around.
"You seem… tense. Are you feeling well?"
"I'm fine. Just this whole 'going deeper than anyone has gone before' aspect of this mission."
She cocked her head, pondering over his comment. She knew that wasn't it, but couldn't force him to continue if he refused.
Ronon humphed in agreement, "I can see that." He wasn't one to show much emotion, but he really did not want to go on this mission. The thought of being so far underwater touched something off in him.
"It's not as if you haven't traveled under the ocean before." Rodney kept his focus on working. He felt calmer when he did, he wasn't thinking about how far they were actually going under the waves.
"The previous missions were on the plateau Atlantis was resting on before it rose; this is on the actual ocean floor."
"Once you get past a certain depth, it doesn't really matter much anymore. If the submarine fails and compresses under 20,000 meters, we die, if it fails under 1,000, we still die."
John's voice was coated with sarcasm, "That's very comforting, thank you Rodney."
"No problem."
Teyla decided to move the conversation along a bit, "How far are we now?"
Rodney did a quick check of the readings, "1,680 meters."
"Still have 2hours and 40minutes to go at our current rate of about 112.05 meters per minute. You would think this would go a little faster." John thought about that time, the time they would spend on the bottom, and then the trip back… he didn't like it at all. Not with the submarine giving off strange feelings. He didn't say anything, not knowing whether or not he was imagining it, if it was just nerves.
Rodney snipped, noticing how fast the closeted math genius blurted that stat out, "How fast do you want a water vehicle to go?"
"A little faster."
"Anxious are we?"
"Possibly."
"Well, you'll get no sympathy from me after what you pulled last night."
"I thought we were fine on that now."
"Doesn't mean I won't bring it up."
"Bring what up?"
Rodney turned around to face Teyla, "Oh, the Colonel here decided putting two orange couches in my room would be great revenge for the hair incident last month."
Ronon looked around at the three, not knowing of the reference, "Why would that be revenge?"
John ran his fingers through his too short hair for his taste, "It's a long story from a few months ago."
Teyla immediately knew to what he was referring to and directed her speech to John, "That wasn't very kind of you."
He shrugged, "I know that now."
Ronon was persistent, "We have time for an explanation."
John and Teyla glanced at Rodney and Teyla asked him, "Would you mind him knowing?"
Rodney turned back around to face the front, "Like I care. I'm just not telling it." He pulled out a pair of headphones from his vest pocket, the ones that just go in the ear, plugged them into the laptop, put them on, and turned on the music file he installed as Teyla started relaying the events of a long-passed week to Ronon.
---
Radek Zelenka was in the main lab busily keeping the scientist contingent in line, which wasn't as hard as Rodney made it out to be. The others were the best in their fields and knew what they were doing. Granted, some of the attitudes left something to be desired, but once one learned their traits, they were easily controlled.
But, Radek was glad when Rodney returned from missions so he could get a break from his de-facto position as chief scientist when he was gone. He liked the responsibility of it in short increments, but it could be an awful stack to handle and he often wondered how Rodney didn't break with his double load. That and he still preferred to do everything himself if he possibly could, though he was settling in to a little more delegation.
He got the urge to find the red pear-shaped device. Perhaps he would be able to make a break in its study. It was irking him almost as much as it was Rodney. After all, it was just a small thing, and he was debating with himself about why it wouldn't activate.
He left and went next door to where he last knew it was, sitting on Rodney's desk as he thought about the reasons. Rodney couldn't activate it, so the trigger could somehow be broken, which would be rather interesting since they hadn't come across that before and it could help them understand how it worked better. The power could of course be depleted, but tests showed they weren't. Then there was the possibility that there was something else needed to turn it on.
The door slid open to McKay's lab and he immediately saw the device wasn't on the desk. He knew it wasn't back in the main lab, so he took a walk around the room, not seeing it anywhere. Just as he crossed his arms in defeat his radio comm. activated,
"Zelenka, we have an issue in Storage Room 27D. Security did a routine sweep a few minutes ago and it seems someone was in there last night, some items have been swept to the floor, as if the shelf was bumped into. The security footage somehow missed the person."
It was that young sergeant that arrived with the Marines during the Wraith attack and was posted up in the Control Room, where Grodin used to be… "And you are contacting me because?" It wasn't often he went down to the storage rooms.
"Because the intruder could have messed with something, and Dr. Weir doesn't want anything blowing up. Her exact words were 'Have Dr. Zelenka lead the scientist team and have Major Lorne go with them.' So, that's what I'm doing."
"Alright," He thought a moment about who to have accompany him, "Have Lorne come to main lab, we'll be ready."
"Ok, You have ten minutes, doctor."
"Thank you Sergeant." He took a last look around Rodney's lab, wondering where the hell he could have put that thing and knowing he'd have to wait until the mission was over to find out. The door to the main lab opened and he practically ran into a taller blonde woman with glasses.
They faced each other, "I'm sorry Radek, wasn't expecting that." She brushed her khaki and blue issue jacket as she spoke with a light German accent.
"Not an issue, Alexa. I was looking for you, someone was in 27D and we need to make sure nothing dangerous was altered."
"Really?" She paused and continued, "Did you check the security footage? It should have caught the culprit."
Radek shrugged, "I was told it did not."
"We should check it ourselves when we get back."
"Agreed." He motioned back to the door, "First we need some equipment."
The two scientists walked back into the main lab, Alexa heading over to her station while still talking to Radek, "No one should have been down there yesterday at all."
"Very true. It is bothering me." He was standing over by his workspace, glancing over at Alexa. She was one of the newer scientists, but they had quickly fallen into a good working relationship.
They both picked up some gear as they were waiting for Major Lorne, who showed up promptly at the door in full mission attire, "Ready to go, doctors?"
Radek eyed the P90, "Do you really need that?"
"It's only a precaution, doctor. Nothing to worry about."
As the trio moved down the hall, Radek hoped there wouldn't be.
---
Silence fell over the team as Teyla had finished the story a few minutes earlier, and Rodney pulled out his earplugs upon noticing. John was focused on the submarine, still getting a creepy vibe from it and not being able to shrug it off.
Ronon fluttered his eyelids and his head twitched to the side. His sights fell on Teyla beside him, and then moved to the seat in front of her, his eyes widening as he continued to look over at John.
His gaze darted back and forth, and he rubbed his eyes. When they opened again and he saw the same thing as he had only a moment before, he shouted, "What the hell is going on here!"
McKay responded, "Can't take a little underwater exploration Dex? Who would have thought that a big, burly man like-"
He was quickly cut off by Ronon who bellowed, "Shut up! I need some answers here!"
John kept his thoughts on the controlled sinking of the sub, "What is with you Dex, calm down, that's an order."
"Stop calling me Dex, Major." He rubbed his face and muttered, "Must be some sort of delusion because I'm dying… but why this…"
John and Rodney looked at each other, Rodney mouthing 'Major' in a questioning way and Teyla leaned over and asked concerned, "Ronon, are you alright?"
Ronon sighed, "No! Stop calling me Dex or Ronon or whatever." He looked down at his attire, a pair of leather pants and a dark, hugging tank top, and started talking to no one in particular, "What am I wearing, I would never… what kind of bizarre messed up hallucination is this! I'm not even me, I'm sitting over there!" He motioned over at McKay.
The other three team members looked at each other, and then back at Ronon. A feeling that they should be delicate with this passed between them, they were under several hundred feet of ocean with a freaking out weapons specialist. John was the first to respond, "So, what should we call you then?"
"Rodney McKay. Doctor McKay, but you all know that. This may not be real, but I'm taking over this delusion, no matter if there's a hallucination of me over there. Next time I get my hands on Garin, I am not going to stop beating the shit out of him. This is ridiculous! I'm dying and my mind decides to put me into this crazy reality. Where are we?"
He looked around and out the window and saw a rather large fish with red scales and blue gills, "Must be a submarine, awful lot like a Jumper. I have always suspected there had to be some in the city, too bad I'll never have the chance to find them because my body is withering away in the back of a Jumper. Though placing myself in a made up identity is rather curious, I wonder why that happened… dissociation or something… oh my god, Kate… Zeloon…no Zelenka and Grodin should be able to help with that lunatics wife. Her running from him is a good sign though…hmmf." He crossed his arms, and looked over to the side of the sub.
During this rant the other three looked at Ronon, then at each other, and back at Ronon. They could not believe what had just come out of the man who usually didn't go off and talk for bouts that long. They all pieced together what he had said, the memories of what had happened a few months earlier suddenly came rushing back.
McKay being locked in the infirmary after punching a then Major Sheppard, at first being treated for a dissociative disorder but really being taken over by Dr. Garin Trelio, him secretly downloading his wife, Elana, into Kate Heightmeyer, being found out, Elana revealing the location of the Submarine Bay as a possible escape route, and him escaping the city through the auxiliary Control Room and crashing a Jumper in the process.
Rodney couldn't speak from the shock. He had encountered some terribly bizarre things in the Pegasus Galaxy, including being completely taken over by another consciousness and then semi-taken over by a certain Lieutenant, and they met the elderly alternate Weir, but this surpassed them all in his view. He, or a copy of him, was inside Ronon Dex's mind, talking and thinking what he would be thinking if he was there… well he was…
Teyla continued, wanting to make sure what they all thought was really happening, "What do you last recall?"
Ronon snipped, "Oh let me see, sitting in gigantic white world with a psychopath that took over my body and crashed a Jumper where you all can never find me."
The Colonel had put the sub on autopilot when Ronon had said his name was Rodney McKay, and was now facing him, "That was five months ago."
"What are you talking about?" He looked around at the group, feeling extremely odd looking at himself who was looking back at him.
John said a little quietly, "This isn't a delusion of your coma. It's really happening."
The alternate McKay snipped, "Again, what are you talking about!"
This time the real Rodney felt as if he should say something, no matter how peculiar it was, "You must be the copy of me from when Radek and Peter downloaded Garin out of my head." He shook his head in disbelief and muttered angrily, "I am going to seriously hurt Radek, I thought he said he dele-" He stopped, thinking he'd better not continue what he was about to say, he wouldn't want to hear it if places were switched.
"No, no, no. That's impossible. How would I have got back to Atlantis?" There was no way that he was going to go along with this. It had to be a delusion, he was dying after all and his mind, even with a crazed Ancient in it, would be able to come up with this elaborate hallucination.
"Elana Trelio told them where to find me."
The copied Rodney snarked, "Oh really, Garin's wife?" He had never actually met the woman, but he did have an apprehension of her. She was the spouse of a madman, though it seemed to him that Garin became one slowly, later in life.
"I didn't believe it at first either, but she did." The memories he had gotten rid of were floating around in the original McKay's mind, the waiting, the watching, the screaming… and this version of him hadn't had the time to get past all that. He shivered.
John turned back around, "Okay, I'm calling this mission off and we are going to figure out just how exactly this happened once we get back." He was weirded out by what just transpired several thousand feet under the ocean's surface. This complication certainly warranted a trip back to the city.
"What!" The two McKays exclaimed.
John turned back and replied, "We're not honestly continuing with this mission."
Teyla nodded in agreement, "We should get back to Atlantis, this will have to wait for another team." She was thinking about what had occurred with their past experiences with consciousnesses in other bodies; it never boded well in the end. Garin had almost killed himself and Rodney, Elana had died, and either Cadman or Rodney would have if he hadn't thought of a way to fix the problem with the Wraith beam.
"What is the mission anyway?" The other Rodney in Ronon's body asked, looking around. He decided that this did have a possibility of being real. From what Garin had revealed to him early on about the computer and the panel, he knew that what the Rodney McKay sitting in front of him had said could have happened. He thought that they must have copied him accidentally; they certainly weren't acting like they expected this.
Teyla replied to him, "Investigating a fissure that was picked up on sensors yesterday. It's emitting intense heat and growing in size."
The team saw Ronon getting excited exactly the way Rodney does when something scientifically large happens, acting like a kid who had been given a lollipop, "We have to check it out."
The original Rodney responded, "I know," he jerked his head in John's direction, "we have to convince the Lt. Colonel of that first."
"Colonel? When did that happen?" Ronon darted his head around and squinched his forehead.
John sighed, not knowing how he was going to handle two Rodney McKays. Different versions, but still two, "When we went back to Earth."
"What! How? Did I figure something out, find a ZedPM, a different power source?" Ronon still looked like a kid in a candy store
Rodney boasted, "Actually, the whole story is that we had a fleet of Wraith Hive ships coming, so I used a high-compression data burst and sent it through the Gate, after some finessing of the compression ratios of course, once it was powered by several Jumper's engines."
The Rodney in Ronon nodded, knowing that was exactly what he would have done.
John added, "Stargate Command sent some help and the Daedalus."
"Which brought a ZedPM."
His eyes flashed in even more excitement, "Where'd they get that?"
John shrugged, "A dig in Egypt. It was left behind by Ra or something."
It didn't all sink in for the copied Rodney just yet, it was too much. His face showed his trepidation, "Alright, well where's Ford and who is this guy?" He pointed to himself, "And how did I get downloaded into him?" It hurt him to admit that he was not the original, but it wasn't as if he could deny it.
The copied McKay's innocent question tugged at the three's hearts and Teyla responded for the team, "He was last seen being beamed into a Dart. He has been affected by the Wraith enzyme when he was fighting during the attack and is not himself. You are in Ronon Dex. We met him a couple months ago."
Ronon snapped his fingers, "Woah, hold on. Wraith made it into the city, wasn't the shield up powered by the ZedPM?"
Teyla continued, "The Daedalus arrived after the Wraith. Rodney got it installed as soon as he could, without a moment to spare."
"Oh he did, did he?" Ronon directed his question at Rodney, "What were you doing, sleeping on the job?"
"Hey! It was an insane, sleepless few days, the ship got here within minutes of a bombardment on the city, and I was attacked by Wraith on my way there." Rodney felt very odd fighting with himself, he wondered who would win… then he thought he would because he was the original.
John and Teyla were giving each other looks, wondering if they should stop this.
The Rodney from five months ago sat back in the chair for the first time since waking up in the submarine, "Better you than me." The corners of his mouth turned up in response to his own play on words.
Teyla gave John a look, "Colonel, you were going to do something."
"Right…I'm contacting Atlantis now." John turned back to the front console and activated the communication systems.
The outside headlights shut off, then the all the others followed suit, moving their way to the back of the submarine.
"What the f-"
The McKays didn't have a chance to finish as the vehicle took a nosedive in the water, forcing them all to fight to stay in their seats or be thrown around the sinking submarine.
A/N: Diddum! Now, I don't know if "Rodnon" isa curveball to some or if it was obvious to others.
I didn't know the blonde scientist's name (or if she even has one, she was in Duet) so she is Dr. Alexa Stroh in my world. I don't know the Sergeant's name either.
Questions, comments, anyone? Please? I will send more electronic hugs!