Vital Lies

Chapter 6

No one had questioned their presence so far. Aiden and Teyla had arrived at the Fiatyn Medical Centre just before dawn. The wide park area was deserted at this hour, but inside it was just as busy as when they had been there the previous day. They passed the reception desk without arousing any suspicions and were now trying to find their way back to John and Carson's room. As they had come from the landing pad on the roof of the building when they had been in the building for the first time, they were lost fast within the maze of corridors.

"We could simply ask someone?" Aiden considered.

"I don't think that would be wise. We might draw undue attention to ourselves." Teyla said in a hushed voice as two men passed by them; luckily neither as much as spared them a glance.

"We should try to retrace our steps. Go back to the top of this building and go down from there; I believe I can recall our path." Teyla proposed.

"You think you can do that?" Aiden questioned. He wasn't quite so sure this was going to work. The corridors in the medical centres were all painted in the same light yellow and seemed to continue for miles with unidentifiable doors left and right.

Aiden and Teyla followed the corridor until they came to the nearest staircase and climbed upwards to the top level and then stepped out into the corridor again.

"Look familiar?" Aiden asked. To him it looked no different than the previous corridor, and the one before and the one before that.

"I think so. Follow me." Teyla smiled confidently and led the way.

Aiden followed her and indeed after only a couple of turns, they stood in front of the room John and Carson had been brought to after treatment. They quickly looked around for any personnel in the area, but they were the only ones in the corridor. Teyla opened the door and they silently slid into the room.

In the dim light of the room, Aiden and Teyla stopped short immediately. One of the two beds in the spacious room was empty. It was unmade, someone had been lying in it recently, but at the moment, its occupant was missing.

"Damn." Aiden swore.

"Dr. Beckett is here." Teyla said from across the room. She had walked up to the other bed. "But he seems to be asleep."

"See if you can wake him."

Aiden didn't know what to do now. He thought the hard part would be getting into the medical centre without raising suspicion. That had been no problem. He had never considered that they might not find John and Carson in their room.

Teyla gently shook Carson.

"Dr. Beckett. You must wake up. It is important."

Carson groaned and opened his eyes. His eyes were unfocussed as he blinked slowly at her.

"Teyla?" he asked confused.

"Yes, Dr. Beckett. It is I."

"How…the guards?" Panic flashed over his face.

"The guards are gone. You were rescued." Teyla explained calmly. She put a reassuring hand on Carson's shoulder, but he shuddered away from the touch.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Beckett." Carson just looked at her absently, as if caught in memories. "Doctor, are you all right?"

Suddenly Carson moved to sit up. With his not yet completely healed injuries, it was not an easy task for him, but Teyla hesitated helped, not wanting to startle him again. Instead, she motioned for Aiden to join her.

"It's all right, doc. You're safe. We're going to get you back to Atlantis soon." Aiden reassured Carson who was looking around the room anxiously.

"Where are we? How--" He asked, as if only now registering their surroundings.

"That can wait until later. We have to leave now." Teyla urged.

"Do you think you can get up?" Aiden asked.

Carson didn't reply, but moved to shift towards the edge of the bed, only to bend over, hissing in pain a few moments later.

Teyla looked at him in alarm. He seemed to have paled a shade and breathed heavily with his eyes closed. It was going to be a long way back to the Stargate. Dr. Alley had given them medication, including painkillers to give their injured team mates in case it became necessary, but the doctor had also cautioned against it, as he couldn't predict interactions with any drugs that the Ymanhin healers might have used.

"Are you all right?" There was a pause before Carson replied through ground teeth.

"I think so. Shouldn't make sudden moves. They didn't like that either."

"Just take it slow. We'll take it at your pace." Aiden replied, shooting Teyla a questioning look regarding Carson's comment.

Suddenly, there were voices and footsteps audible from outside. A second later, the sound of the door opening had the three of them staring in its direction. Staring back was Velig, the healer they had met at the medical centre before. Behind her, she was trailing a gurney, followed by another healer that Ford and Teyla didn't know. Velig was the first to recover her ability to speak.

"Lieutenant Ford, Teyla." She bowed in greeting, polite as ever. "It is much unexpected to see you here at this hour. I assumed you would return in the morning to see your team mates." She and the other healer entered the room completely and closed the door behind them. It was now clear that the figure on the gurney was John.

"Dr. Weir sent us here. An urgent matter came up on our world. We need to take Major Sheppard and Dr. Beckett back with us to Atlantis." Teyla stated with authority.

"What has happened to Major Sheppard?" Aiden questioned before Velig had a chance to answer Teyla's question.

Velig's face twitched for a second, and then she recovered her prefect composure and smiled again.

"Major Sheppard suffered a minor complication. The wound to his back started bleeding again. Your species doesn't respond as well to our technology as we thought. He will be fine. But he won't wake up for at least the next two or three hours. He should stay on his side for the next few hours. I strongly recommend you wait until at least tomorrow before taking your people back to your world. It is in their best interest. They are no yet fit for the journey."

"I'm sorry, but we've got no choice." Aiden said.

"We value your advice, but the situation is beyond our control." Teyla tried to appease Velig. The last thing they needed was for things to escalate. The healers were not armed, but there were surely security personnel that could overwhelm them easily if Velig called for help. They could only hope that she wouldn't, in the interests of not endangering interplanetary relations. Unless of course, the game being played was an entirely different one altogether.

"Of course you are free to leave." Velig bowed again and left the room, followed by her assistant.

Aiden and Teyla shared a stunned look. That had been unexpected. But there was no time to be lost contemplating.

Velig and her assistant left the room, leaving Teyla and Aiden behind to wonder about the curious shift they had just witnessed in Velig's behaviour. Aiden didn't need to spell out that the healer's quick relenting was suspicious. Aiden had initially not been overly suspicious of Velig, but now he saw the other's assessment of her confirmed. At the moment there was not much he and Teyla could do, they would have to wait for John to wake up.

Rodney scanned the cover page. It was similar to the report that Wam Vter had shown him in the afternoon. The only difference he noted was the date; this report was dated almost three weeks earlier than the previous version. Eagerly he started to read. He wasn't paying much attention to the details of the planning phase of the attacks which was laid out in great detail until a phrase caught his eye.

'Target#2 had been classified as the greater threat. Video material taken from previous negotiations showed him carrying at least one small hand fire weapon at all times. Computer simulations in which Target #2 achieved firing his weapon frequently resulted in casualties and in 34 of simulated outcomes, failure of the mission. Incapacitating Target #2 by non-fatal shot injury reduced the failure rates of simulated outcomes to 16. Further improvement expected upon use of explosives deployment. This concludes content of strategic meeting of…'

Rodney leaned back. Target #2, they had never wanted all of them. It hadn't been about them being from a different planet. Wam Vter had told him that Denebria was made up of a bunch of xenophobic extremists. Rodney had figured that they had only grabbed John and Carson because they had been convenient and the least resisting in the chaos of the collapsing building. But they had been focussed on from the start. Why? Why them and not anyone else. If they wanted to know about Atlantis, Elizabeth would have been a better choice, she had no combat training and the terrorist could expect to get her to talk much more easily than John. Why Carson? Atlantis had no medical technology to offer to the Ymanhin. They had everything the Atlanteans could only dream of. Sure, Carson would probably talk sooner than John, but he knew less than the Major did. It didn't make any sense.

Rodney flipped back the pages, reading more closely this time, trying to find the point where the two 'targets' were mentioned for the first time. It took him over an hour before he found the paragraph. It was disappointing.

'Via the network satellite, we received a coded transmission with the target information.'

Following this was a detailed recount of the information 'Sjel' had received. Rodney read over it and couldn't believe his eyes. Not even he knew some of the details that had been known to the terrorists. Especially the part about John's training in the air force. It didn't make sense. Would the information even mean anything to the Ymanhin? Carson's training was reported in similar detail.

That could only mean that someone on Atlantis was working with them. Rodney shook his head, as if too clear that thought, but it was the only conclusion he could draw. None of the Ymanhin had been to Atlantis. They had been eager to initiate an exchange, but Elizabeth had delayed them. Now Rodney realized that maybe she too had held more reservations than she had openly shown. He trusted all of his team. Really? He forced himself to think about the question. He hadn't known them for such a long them. He trusted himself to know John well enough not to betray the expedition. But could he really tell about the others? Human beings were incalculable by their nature and Rodney had had his share of nasty surprises.

He took a breath. All the speculation wasn't helping him any. He didn't now enough yet to figure out the problem. There were too many unknowns. He turned back to his only source of information, 'Sjel's' report. He skipped larger bits until he was back at the day of the attack again.

'I lead the way to the landing deck, when an unscheduled detonation went off at close proximity. I didn't immediately notice that the structure of the corridor was affected and started to collapse, endangering our exit. As soon as I became aware of the situation, I gave the signal to abort the operation, grab the targets and head for the shuttle. The mission was a success, with a single casualty. Tragos was trapped in the collapsing corridor.'

Rodney shuddered.

The body was dropped down into the shallow grave with a thump, raising a small cloud of dust. Deakon sneezed and started shovelling the pile of stony dirt back on the body. He didn't know why he was even bothering. It was much more than he owed to the alien that had just been dumped on his doorstep.

Deakon wiped his forehead, not doing much except to smear the dust coating him, sweating under the heavy glare of the late morning sun. He grabbed his shovel, trying to dust off his clothes before heading back to the low concrete building that was his home. He hurried across the field of sand and stones, towards the dirt road. Being away from home was bad for business.

But when he reached his house, no new patients were waiting in front of his door. Another day was off to a slow start. Deakon unlocked the door and slipped inside. Cool air welcomed him. He sat down at the table, wondering what to do with the alien still in his back room.

TBC