The satellite had taken out one of the hive ships, but the line of naquadah bombs had detonated and destroyed sensor readouts. The wraith were upon them; all time had run out.
A few hours before, Gabriel had armed himself and rejoined his team. He was greeted with neither questions nor objections, only a small measure of relief. His team had been formed when they had all been assigned to Atlantis – together since the beginning. Trust was absolute between them, and their relief at having him back with them, instead of relying on an unknown at their backs, outweighed their concern. After all, if they couldn't stop the wraith, it wouldn't matter.
The arrival of backup from Earth had been a welcome shock. Trained to tactics of Goa'uld warfare, the sound of an incoming wormhole had meant that the wraith were trapping them, blocking the only escape route, and wearing down their power supply. But even with the reinforcements from Earth, it was plain that there still wasn't enough manpower to stop the wraith. And abandoning Atlantis had never been an option.
So when the sensors had screamed warnings, letting them know that the wraith were scanning the city, Sheppard sent some of his men out to comb the passages. Sweeping rays meant that the wraith were beaming down to Atlantis – and the invasion had begun. Gabe's team was spread thin, the four of them not truly enough for the massive area they had been assigned to secure. But their situation was no different than that of any of the other teams going out into the city on recon.
"Clear," Gabriel snapped tersely into his radio. He had finished the far end of the third quadrant, his team arrayed out to his right, making their way further down the passages. The rest of the hallways sounded clear as well, soft voices echoing in his headpiece minutes after he spoke. They knew that they couldn't keep the wraith out of the city – it was too big. They hadn't even explored a fraction of it for themselves. The best they could do was keep secure the areas they had discovered.
"Dammit," Hank snarled fiercely. The soft-spoken southern man only became abrasive when he was stressed to the breaking point. His worry for his team, for Atlantis, was obvious. "We know that they're here – where the hell did they go?"
The only warning they received was sudden thick static in their earpieces. The wraith had jammed all signals as they flew overhead. Dylan's eyes, wide with realization, met Gabe's only seconds before a near-invisible white beam pulled at the his body.
Gabriel dove out of the way, only able to watch in horror as the beam swept inexorably down the corridor. His team disappeared, transported up to the hive ship.
Rolling to his feet, Gabriel grabbed his weapon and raced down the corridor, intent on warning Sheppard and the remainder of Atlantis. The shield should have been powered by now; it should have been impossible for the wraith to beam them up. They had a ZPM from Earth – but obviously something had gone drastically wrong.
He ran, and nearly sped into another thick beam that was racing up the corridor in the opposite direction. Gabriel wedged his body into a doorway, sucking in his breath as the beam passed within a hairsbreadth of his skin. He could feel a cold buzz race through him at the nearness of the energy, but the wraith did not seem to know he was there.
He didn't stop to question his good luck, whatever anomaly of the sensors allowed him to escape undetected. When it passed, he quickly continued onward. But his desperate dash was interrupted countless times by the beams. They were everywhere, forcing him to halt and change direction to avoid being transported up to the hive ship. The beams increased in frequency as he slowly got closer and closer to the heart of Atlantis. But in all that time he didn't see one human, could hear no sound of anyone nearby. From the moment his team had been kidnapped, he hadn't seen a sign of any members of the Atlantis team in the city.
Gabriel's worry ratcheted even higher, his heart pounding in his mouth. With startling abruptness, the beams disappeared, and he could no longer hear anything within the city. He ran then, without care for what he might encounter. He sped straight to the 'gate, hoping and praying that most of the team had escaped to safety, out of Atlantis and away.
He skidded to a stop in the Gateroom, his hope crushed.
The iris, iridescent and beautiful, still covered the active wormhole. There was no one in sight. When he checked the stations, all the readouts were full, messages and warnings scrolling across at incredible speed – but there was no one there to see them.
What had happened? Why hadn't the shield gone up? There was no question in the hunter's mind that the people of the Atlantis team were on the hive ship. He had little time before the wraith, in their fury and hunger, would begin to torture and kill them, trying to find out the way to Earth. More was at stake here than just his promise.
Staring at the readouts, Gabriel realized that the next stage was glaringly obvious. Invasion.
Holding his weapon close, hoping that he hadn't been the only one to escape the wraith's purges, he made his way swiftly to the place he should have gone to immediately.
He opened the door to the Atlantis' main power station, and was greeted by the business end of a stun weapon. He dodged to the side, and the blue bolt of energy passed harmlessly by him, spattering against the wall and dying quickly. The wraith on the other end of the weapon was just as unfortunate. Bullets bit into its body, and the thing went down and stayed there.
There were two more inside – and they did not die easily.
But once the corpses had been kicked out of the way, it was clear what had happened. The technician assigned to loading the full ZPM into the generator was a crumbling husk, his life sucked away. The wraith had beamed down here first then, taking out the power core in order to ravage the rest of Atlantis. And they would know that their drones were dead. He had very little time.
Grabbing the ZPM, Gabriel made his way to the core and inserted it into the proper terminal, hoping that his familiarity with the system would help him figure out what to do next.
New life flared in the lights around him, and the city greedily sucked up the power offered. Now all he had to do was get back to the control room and configure the shield to tap into the new power source. Checking the wraith one last time to make certain, he set off at a dead run. He had to get the shield up before the wraith found out that they could only access Earth through the Atlantis Stargate.
His senses tingled as he poured his energy into running, and he knew he was too late. The scraping along his nerves intensified the closer he got to the 'gate, but he couldn't change course; there was nothing else he could do. He stopped just short of the entrance to the Gateroom, and slowed his breathing. Reaching out into the world around him, he opened himself fully to the senses that were demanding his attention.
They were everywhere, infesting the city in every direction. Like any and all of the plagues of mankind, they were beyond number and without mercy. He was alone with them. Gabriel felt relief wash through him at that, followed closely by the rising of a confident determination he knew well. The masks fell away.
The being who stepped purposefully around the corner, striding toward the console, was so far beyond humanity that there was no mistaking him as mortal no matter his appearance.
It took the wraith by surprise, as they milled about, hissing at one another as they strove to gain swift mastery over the Ancients' technology. It bought him enough time to get over halfway across the room, safely in the open and right where he needed to be.
Their shock at the sudden appearance of this human, the insolence of a creature that would withstand them, gave him enough time to get into the clear. When the first one stepped forward, clearly claiming him as its meal, the others laughed, a wet and disgusting noise that set the hunter's teeth on edge. The sound continued, for they stepped back and let the most dominant claim the morsel that was, to their trained eyes, glowing with untold power and life.
Gabriel ducked away from the wraith's gentle glide in his direction, and the others looked on hungrily as the one that had 'claimed' him proceeded to stalk its prey. This wraith was not a warrior-drone, but indistinguishable from the others for all that. He edged quickly away, and the laughter that had sounded before was stilled. He knew that he was the intent focus of the wraith, yet the watchers gave way before him as something primitive in them called out to prolong the chase.
Gabriel couldn't care less – his objective was in sight. Projecting the fear they wanted and needed to sense, he slipped behind a console. The human, ringed by ravenous intentions, seemed to brace himself on the computer, shaking with terror. The wraith closed in, and stood before the seemingly frozen human.
"Now," it hissed, startlingly dark eyes fixed greedily on him. The prey was tightly surrounded with nowhere to go, and the air reeked of dread. "You die." A sharp-toothed smile, opening a dark maw in the pale face, spread over the pasty features as the wraith reached for him.
Gabriel returned the wraith's gloating grin with a purely wicked smile of his own. "Go to hell," he told it. At the same time as the wraith's suckered hand made contact with the flesh over his heart, his fingers completed the final computer sequence.
With a satisfying hum of power, the shield rose impenetrably over the city. The wraith were unable to beam more forces in. At the same time, the hunter sank to his knees, gasping in pain. What he had felt before was incomparable to this. When the wraith had latched on to him days ago, its grip had been weak, concentrated on his arm. Now, the wraith grasped him tightly, and a violent ripping twisted his soul within him.
It leant down on him. "You have accomplished nothing," it told him smugly. "You have given us the power we need. Our brethren will join us later – but you have not kept us from your planet. We have your people, and soon, we will own your world. You have not trapped us here."
The harsh pull on his spirit grew stronger, and Gabriel knew with satisfaction that time had almost run out. "Yes, I have," he gritted out.
He gave the wraith no chance to misunderstand his words. In its fury, the parasite that had latched onto him increased the pull, forcing life from his flesh. With a howl of triumph, Gabriel gave in to the forces pulling at him, and opened himself to the power hidden in the depths of his soul.
The intensity that seared the air around him came from far beyond the wraith's knowledge, from a time before the legends of the humans they had evolved from. It scorched the air with brilliant radiance, setting the whole of Atlantis afire in its glow. Pure, cleansing light burned with implacable power, turning flesh to ash and roaring throughout the halls of the Ancients' city.
It seemed to go on forever, but only a few seconds passed before Atlantis was cast into shadow of daylight once more. Profound silence settled easily over the city of the Ancients, familiar with the halls and rooms that had once housed beings of great power, and would again. For now, where before there had been voracious, clinging life, there was only the dust of the dead.
(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(-(
Heh. I'm evil . . . .but on the upside, I'm not quite as stuck as I was before! And no, this isn't the end.