"Our deep-space sensors have been activated," Dylan muttered lowly. The commissary was abuzz with the news, and Gabe mouthed the words slowly.
"I didn't know we had deep space sensors," Hank commented conversationally. He seemed determinedly cheerful, as if he was trying to willingly ignore the fact that the Atlantis team was flying by the seat of their pants, and knew it.
"And the Major's offworld," Pete couldn't resist adding. The fact that their CO was currently elsewhere, and not likely to return soon, did not in the least dismay any of the men at the table. They were more than capable of dealing with the situation independently. The worry was more at the unknown, and being caught once more unawares.
Dylan grunted sarcastically. "Any more doom and gloom and I might consider throwing myself off the southwest pier."
Gabe couldn't hold in the laugh.
"What's so funny?" Pete asked, running a hand over his newly cut blond hair. Most of it had been shaved off, giving him a stubby, buzzed look.
"You lot," he answered, wagging his fork to indicate his three teammates arrayed at the table around him. "Our deep space sensors have been activated." They gave him blank looks, and he rolled his eyes. "So whatever activated them is still far enough away for us to do something about it. It's not breathing down our necks and blowing the city out of the water without warning."
Realization dawned, bringing a bit of hope with it.
"I was wondering when you were going to catch that," Hank nodded knowingly. "You're not as dumb as you look."
Gabe snorted, easily seeing through his team leader's attempt to cover, but he said nothing. He was here to help. There were enough leaders at Atlantis, though he easily could have become one as well. What was truly needed were people to support those leaders. So he did what he could when he could, despite the fact that he sometimes disagreed with them.
Glancing at his watch, the SF swore and shoved back his chair.
"Hey, what's up?" Dylan asked him.
"Infirmary," Gabe apologized with a smile as he stood. "I'm late."
"They still don't know what's wrong with you?" Hank scowled. "I don't like one of my men being out of commission."
Gabe rolled his eyes. "I'm not out of commission," he explained patiently as he gathered his tray. "The doc just wants some blood. He's got more tests up his sleeve."
"Tests for what?" Pete asked, concerned suspicion in his eyes.
Gabe shrugged. "Beats me. 0930?" he confirmed.
"On the dot," Hank warned him.
Gabe nodded and set off. But the others wouldn't accept his lack of a real answer for much longer, and he mentioned this to Beckett.
"Anemia," the Scotsman told him, inserting the needle into the vein. Today, he wanted a goodly amount to work with, and had decided to siphon off a pint. "Perfect explanation for the repeated tests; we're checking to make sure you don't have an iron deficiency. It can develop at any time, if you're prone to such."
"So you take more of my blood?" Gabriel queried in amusement. "If I didn't have an iron deficiency before, I do now," he muttered.
Beckett nodded distractedly. He looked over the skin on the inside of Gabriel's arms, and frowned. "Do ye see that?"
Gabe tensed, and said, "What?"
Beckett held one wrist, extending the SF's arm to get a closer look. "No bruises." He flicked on a light, and looked closer. "No redness – nothing." He'd been taking blood from that arm every other day for about a week, before he decided to simply take a good deal at once. Beckett looked at him sideways. "Ye seem to heal remarkably quickly."
"Why do you need so much, anyway?" he asked curiously. The fear was stuffed down deep, beyond thought or recollection.
"I'm doing tests with wraith cells," Beckett told him. "But due to contamination of the samples after these experiments, the blood is unusable. It's procedure, even though I can't detect anything different about it."
"But-"
Carson held up a hand to cut him off, and explained. "The effect of a few wraith cells on your blood is nearly negligible – they are devoured in the same manner as every virus, disease or infection I've tested. But there is a curious effect that occurs when larger amounts of cells come into contact with your blood, and I don't quite understand it."
A frown furrowed over Gabriel's brow, and he glanced at the bag that was slowly filling with blood. "So-"
"So I need more," Beckett said apologetically.
Gabriel nodded. "It's fine – I just wanted to know what was going on." He blinked, a little woozy from loosing so much blood. The bag was half full.
Carson smiled at him. "At least you won't have to fake the anemia today," he told him.
Gabriel lay back slowly, his mind on the interactions between his cells and those of the wraith. It would be disturbing to Carson that he had no idea what was going on; the man was a brilliant researcher and a fine doctor. The only explanation for it was that it was something he couldn't understand. That, of course, meant –
"Well, ye're free to go." Carson smiled down at him, and the SF blinked. The needle had been removed, and the puncture bandaged, while he had been lost in thought. Swinging his legs down and sitting up quickly proved to be a mistake as the room blacked out, slowly fading back in. Beckett handed him a piece of chocolate, and Gabriel stared at it.
"From my stash," the Scot explained, looking around furtively. "Don't tell, or I'll have half of Atlantis beating down my door."
Gabriel smirked, enjoying the explosion of sugar on his tongue. "Thanks."
"Now, rest. For the day – nothing strenuous. Unless ye want to add passing out to the list of things ye'll have to explain to your teammates."
Gabe grimaced.
Alarms went off, and he jumped off the bed, about to make for the door. Beckett grabbed his arm, but Gabe stared at him. The doctor's glare was a fierce expression, determined to protect his patient, even from Gabriel himself. Something tickled in the back of his consciousness, lurking darkly behind coherent thought. Gabriel stiffened, unfamiliar with this feeling but knowing that it boded evil.
The alarms died. They waited; an announcement was made. A wraith dart had flown overhead, scanning the city. It had self-destructed. The danger was over.
It wasn't. Carson loosed his grip – in that moment, Gabriel pulled free and made for the door. The doctor sprang in front of him, blocking his way. "What? What is it?" he demanded.
"There's a wraith in the city."
"What? How do ye know that?" Surprise, confusion.
The truth was no good – he couldn't explain it, anyway. "I don't know how. I just know. I have to go!"
He made for the door again, and Beckett moved to the side. "Be careful. Good luck," the man wished him as he left.
Gabriel was surprised enough at this to halt, for half a moment. Scrutinizing the doctor, he saw that Beckett truly was concerned for him, as a person and not just a patient. He had no time to dwell on it as he brushed past, but some part of him wondered. He'd done nothing to become so deeply embedded in the minds and affections of the people around him. Beckett, Dylan, Pete, Hank – he did his best to be unobtrusive, to slide from their memories and remain a nameless face to the people in Atlantis, even among his own 'team'. Somehow, it didn't seem to be working, and for the life of him he couldn't understand it.
But there was no time for that thought now. He was following a sense that mortals didn't even have – one that was leading him further and further from the inhabited parts of the city and into darkened corridors. The cloying sense of something veiled in death grew thicker as he proceeded, and he realized at that moment that he was weaponless. Shrugging, he discarded the thought. He had trained himself well – a gun would make this faster, but no simpler.
When he came upon the wraith, it was pasty white and garbed in strange, flowing clothes. The skin glistened with cool wetness, shiny in the half-light filtered down from somewhere above. The hunter wrinkled his nose in distaste. The thing reeked on every level of his senses, emanating such a sense of evil that he sneezed.
At the sound, the wraith whirled, catching sight of him for the first time. "Human," it hissed, gargling the word deep in its throat.
Gabriel could have stepped back then, moved to find cover, but it would have been a pointless venture. So he stepped forward, and the wraith laughed to see his empty hands.
It lunged for him, and the angry surprise on its face when he wasn't where it expected him to be was priceless. It lunged again, and again the hunter was faster than the oversized parasite. He really disliked these things.
When their quarters closed, it was on Gabriel's terms; but it proved to be an advantage to the wraith, regardless. Whatever destruction he brought to bear on the creature, it healed almost instantaneously. Broken bones, internal injuries – every blow he landed was designed to disable, but the creature healed quickly enough to almost negate the impacts. It laughed, a disgusting, ugly sound.
More annoyed than anything, Gabriel closed with it once more. Anticipating the move, the wraith surged forward, planting its hand on his arm.
Something inside the hunter tore loose from its moorings. A surprising pain seared through him, and he dropped to his knees, panting. The wraith smiled a smile of ecstatic, obscene gluttony. The pain tore, and something ripped from his soul –
When Gabriel came to himself, he was lying on the cold floor. He blinked slowly, and turned his head. The blackened, charred face of the wraith was staring back at him, horror in the ashen lines of its face, mouth open in a dying howl. He jerked back, heart racing, before sense returned to him and he realized that it was dead.
He rolled away from it, onto his hands and knees. It was several moments before he could gain his feet, leaning heavily on a nearby support column. There was a deep ache within him, and he winced at the weal on his arm. The wraith had tried to consume his life, his soul, and had instead found the power within him all-consuming. It had been blasted from life, burned to death by the fiery force of his spirit.
Gabriel scowled at the body, which was crumbling slowly to dust before his eyes. A part of him had wondered what might happen should he encounter a wraith. Now that his question had been answered, more problems had arisen. Now, he could no longer chance that the rest of the wraith had not realized what had happened, and did not know of him. They must know of this one's death . . . in Atlantis. A new weapon in the hands of the humans of Atlantis would not be ignored, and they would come with vengeance in their twisted hearts.
Grimly, he pushed these thoughts to the side and concentrated on returning to his quarters. A strange, lethargic exhaustion tugged at all his limbs. Try as he might, he could not shake it off. It followed him all the way to his bed, and thankfully no one saw him as he stumbled, barely conscious, into his room. Once there, he dropped onto the bed and was asleep in moments.
But not for long, it seemed. Someone tugged at his shoulder, and he pulled away in pain. Blinking, he found several faces not far from his. One was concerned, and the others were a mix of worried and angry. Someone was tugging at his sleeve, lifting the cloth to –
Gabe jerked upright, a startled, "What!" bursting from his lips.
Hank was glaring at him, but Dylan was plainly worried and Pete was staring in a curious mix of the two. Beckett intervened as his team leader opened his mouth, ready to chew him out.
"About an hour and a half ago, ye're team came bursting into the infirmary, demanding to know what I'd been doing to you. Ye missed something at 0930 -"
"What time is it?" Gabriel blurted, still trying to make sense of all the people surrounding him.
"0345," Hank informed him coldly. "You're not out of commission?"
"We checked your quarters half an hour ago," Dylan told him compassionately. "You weren't here."
"That's not possible!" Gabriel gasped, stunned. He'd left the infirmary well before 0900 – had found the wraith when he was supposed to meet with his team. After that, all sense of time blurred to nothing. There was no way he had been unconscious for five hours or more.
At his bewildered confusion, Hank seemed to soften. "Gabe," he said sternly. "What happened?"
"You went to go meet someone," Beckett prompted him warily. He was eyeing Gabriel's arm, which in his confusion the hunter realized he was cradling protectively. "Did you?"
"No. I don't remember much," Gabe admitted. "I remember thinking that it was 0930, and Hank would be pissed and then – I woke up." Not entirely true, but basically correct.
Pete gaped. Dylan and Hank exchanged clearly worried looks, and Beckett said firmly, "Out."
"What?" three voices in something close to unison.
The doctor raised his hands. "I'm going to examine my patient. Out." Despite their protests, the three men were hustled out posthaste.
"Let me see," Carson said firmly.
"See what?"
The bluff failed miserably when the doctor stalked over to yank up his shirtsleeve. Gabriel hissed as healing flesh was torn, and the sucker-shaped wound was revealed. The skin around it was yellow, still stained with the wraith's acid secretions. The wound itself was running with both blood and pus, and stinging angrily. Carson froze at the sight.
"The wraith?" he asked, eyes never leaving the wound.
"Dead," Gabriel muttered.
"How?"
The thirty-something SF shrugged, seemingly as baffled as his doctor. "I don't know. It latched on to me, and the last thing I remember was how much it hurt. When I woke up, I came right back here. It's gone."
Carson opened the first-aid kit he had been carrying with him, and began to clean the wound. "What happened to it?" he asked carefully.
Gabe snorted. "There's no body to dispose of, if that's what you're wondering."
Beckett winced at the slightly crude phrasing.
"It was – vaporized."
Beckett blinked. "What?"
"It – burned. Charred, somehow, and turned to ash. Gone."
The doctor was turning this information over, but Gabriel knew that it wouldn't help him. The doctor had wanted to know, and telling him would only serve to confuse him, send him further from the truth, and so Gabriel revealed what had happened.
"That's . . ." Beckett turned to see Gabriel's defensive eyes, and words seemed to fail him. "Thank you for telling me," was what he said instead.
Gabe's eyes, however, had turned to the door. "But what do I tell them?"
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Just to reiterate, this story is a whim. A quite persistent one, but a whim nonetheless. That means that I'm not beta-ing as carefully, not really planning out what's going to happen or where it's going to go. Should I find that out, I'll probably end up bouncing back and forth, reposting chapters, to make it fit better. This is more for fun than anything; let me know if you're enjoying it. It'll motivate me to work harder, especially when I have several other things clamoring for my attention in real life . . .