The monitors in the control room displayed the fact that they had a bit less than five minutes before the self destruct went off. John and Elizabeth immediately came forward, putting their codes into the computer to turn it off – and nothing happened. "Try it again," Elizabeth ordered, but the result was the same.
"Do we still have gate control?" John asked one of the crewmen manning the consoles. He hit a chevron, which lit up, and so nodded. "Dial the Alpha Site and everyone get the hell out of here. We'll keep trying to shut it down." Almost everyone ran for the stairs. Rodney was frantically trying to help Elizabeth in shutting down the system. Ronon stayed behind, as did another military officer. "Get out of here, Miller," John told him as he, too, turned back to the computers.
"I may be of help, Sir." No one had time to argue.
"Two minutes," Ronon pointed out as the clock continued to wind down. The Stargate suddenly shut off by itself. After staring down at the gate for a moment, Rodney lunged for the dialing computer. It no longer wanted to respond to anything he did.
"We're stuck here!" he exclaimed. "We're stuck here and about to suffer a fiery death."
"We're not entirely stuck," Sheppard replied. "We've still got jumpers."
"But without the Stargate – " Rodney started to protest.
"We'll still be alive!" John yelled. "Less talking, more running, let's go!"
No one was looking at watches by the time they got up to the jumper bay – they all knew that time was critically short. John was already halfway into Jumper 2's pilot seat before he realized that Miller, Rodney, and Ronon had gone to Jumper 3. "Miller, what the – " he started to chastise the other pilot over their headsets, then realized it wasn't worth it. "Nevermind. Just get that thing airborne."
John powered up the Jumper faster than he ever had in his life while Elizabeth sat down beside him. They lifted off of the jumper bay floor and began ascending out of the opening in the ceiling with Jumper 3 right behind them. John could hear the rumble of explosions as the self-destruct initiated. "Come on, come on," he muttered to the Jumper, as though it could hear him, willing it by thought to go faster. Flames shot out of the bay opening below them, desperately trying to lick at the underbelly of the ship. John managed to get enough altitude in time that they avoided them – but Jumper 3 wasn't so lucky. As Atlantis' main spire was engulfed in flames, the second ship disappeared.
"No!" Elizabeth cried, unable to do anything but watch as her dream broke into pieces and slowly began sinking back to the ocean floor. John didn't look down – he didn't think he could handle looking back. He made sure the Jumper continued gaining altitude and flew them away from the remains of the city.
The ceiling of Atlantis' infirmary wasn't something that most people in the city wanted to see when they woke up. And if Ronon hadn't been so surprised that he was looking at the infirmary ceiling, he probably would have been a little bit more annoyed.
Looking around, his eyes found Beckett as the doctor made his way through the room, studying some test results. "Doc?"
Beckett looked up, seemingly just as surprised to see his patient conscious as Ronon was to see the doctor alive. "How long have you been awake?" he asked.
"A minute. How are we here? What happened to the self-destruct?"
"There was no self-destruct, lad."
Ronon frowned. "I was looking at the computer – "
"No, you weren't. You were in a type of stasis; everything you've experienced over the past few days – well, past few hours, actually – has been a simulation." The ex-runner understandably looked dubious.
"Simulation?"
"Aye. The first ones to awaken were the ones that figured it out. The device that was found on the south pier managed to knock everyone in the city into a state of suspended animation, while drawing our minds into a shared virtual reality. I believe it must have been similar to the devices on the Aurora, though with a much different purpose."
"What kind of purpose?"
"The simulation would allow the person running it to try out new things within the city without actually having to make the real changes – new power systems or other modifications, simulations of situations like intruders or viruses. It's actually quite ingenious. The problem was: it wasn't activated properly. The system was never designed to be used by so many people at once."
"And that's why people started vanishing from the simulation."
"Aye. As people disappeared from in there, they woke up out here, in the real reality, and put the pieces together. It's been a hell of a morning."
"Morning?" Ronon asked.
"Yes. The simulation doesn't run in real time. What felt like days in there was really only about ten hours."
"How does the simulation get modified? Did you make the city self destruct?" Carson looked down.
"Not intentionally. There were only so many of you left inside, and we were beginning to get concerned. We thought we could remove you all externally from the system by cutting power to the simulation device, but…It was activated improperly."
"You said that already."
"I know…We didn't think it would have such an extreme effect. Colonel Sheppard and Dr. Weir are still inside, and I think we'll be leaving them until we learn more."
Ronon shrugged. "It wasn't all that pleasant, but it was survivable. Why can't you pull them out too?"
"It wasn't survivable for everyone, lad," Carson explained. "You've got a few bumps and bruises and Rodney has a concussion. But Lieutenant Miller…we didn't get him out soon enough. He didn't make it."
TBC...