Suddenly Rodney's voice over the radio made him start.
"Colonel, you may wanna come to the control room. I think I found something."
He rushed to the control room, people had to jump out of his way, but he didn't even notice.
"What is it?"
Rodney looked up from the console he was bent over. "Colonel. That was fast. We have news concerning our missing team."
John felt his heart beat quicken. After all the weeks, after he had been so close to giving up already, there finally seemed to be hope.
"The gate just activated for a few seconds." Rodney began to explain "and though nobody came through, we i did /i receive an IDC!" he paused and looked at Sheppard, a look of triumph and excitement on his face. "Major Lorne's IDC!"
John tried to calm down and think straight. "You have the address?"
The scientist nodded. "Yes."
"Dial it and try to contact them."
Rodney sighed. "I already did, but they didn't respond. Look, they might not have their radios anymore, who knows what happened with them. We have to consider the possibility that it wasn't even them who sent the IDC. If someone held them hostage, for example..."
"I know!" John cut him off. This was nothing he wanted to think about right now. Thoughts like this had kept him awake every night the past few weeks.
"We'll go there." he looked around. Everyone of his team was present. "Ten minutes." he said and sprinted off towards his own quarters to get ready.
----------
Ten minutes later they were ready to go.
John could barely hide his excitement. Whether Elizabeth and the others were really there or not, whatever they would find on that planet would hopefully tell them something about what had happened or where they could find them.
It would highly increase their chances of finding her ... i them. /i Or rather, for the first time since they had disappeared they would have a real chance of finding them.
While the gate was dialing and he waited with the others, thoughts rushed through his head. He thought of her, of the past few weeks, of how those weeks had made him realize how much he depended on her, needed her. How much he really cared for her. How much she meant to him.
He didn't want to get his hopes up, she might not be there, but he couldn't help it, he was almost sure that in a matter of minutes he would see her again, be near her again. He could almost feel her near him already. There was so much he needed to tell her.
The gate activated and he stepped through.
He stepped out on the other side, his team following him on his heels, and looked around.
He held his breath. A grassy landscape, woods to the right, mountains to the left. And no human being in sight.
No one. There was no one here.
His heart sank. They had received an IDC. About fifteen minutes ago i someone /i had activated the gate from this end, someone who had Lorne's IDC.
Yet there was no one here.
He turned to face Rodney. "Are you i sure /i this is the right planet?" he asked.
Rodney, looking rather disappointed himself, nodded briefly. "Positive!"
"Then what happened? Where are they?" he almost shouted "We need to find them. They must have been here. Search the area."
They searched the area around the gate for some time without finding anything. There were bootprints almost everywhere, but it was impossible to determine whether they were made by their friends. And there were so many of them all over the area that even if their's were among them, it was impossible to tell where they had gone. If they had ever been here at all.
They didn't talk much during their search. None of them felt in the mood for talking. John simply was hanging on to his own thoughts and the others partly didn't want to upset him further with anything they said and partly were too worried to say much, themselves. They had all liked Dr. Weir and Major Lorne and his team also.
They were just about to extend their search to the forest, when suddenly a person stepped out from between the trees. It was a woman with long brown hair and rather earth like clothes. When she saw them, she jerked to a stop and seemed to make up her mind whether to run back into the forest or to approach them.
John and Teyla exchanged a look. Talking to locals was rather Teyla's area of expertise. She took a step forward and opened her mouth, but the woman spoke before she could say amything.
"Who are you?"
"We came through the stargate." Teyla replied "We are searching for some friends who went missing a while ago. We have reason to believe that they might have been here earlier today. If you have seen them, it would be of great help to us if you told us where they went."
The woman looked at them thoughtfully and said "I think you should talk to Arlon. Follow me."
She led them straight through the forest for about fifteen minutes before they stepped out into what appeared to be some kind of small town.They walked down a few streets, around a few corners, before she stoped outside a big red building, some kind of town hall, apparently.
"Wait outside." she instructed them and disappeared into the building.
After a few moments she came back. "You may come inside now." she informed them and they followed her down a corridor into some kind of office, where an elderly man was sitting behind a massive desk.
"Welcome." he greeted them as they entered the room. "My name is Arlon. I understand you are looking for some friends of yours."
"Yes." again, it was Teyla who spoke "If you could help us..."
"Maybe you can describe them to me. We have lots of visitors from lots of different worlds here every day." the old man said.
John nodded. "Actually, we have pictures." he said, and pulling them from his pocket handed them over to the man.
Arlon looked at the photographs of Elizabeth, Major Lorne and the other team members thoughtfully for a while, before looking up to them again, a regretful expression on his face. "Your friends have indeed been here." he confirmed
"Well, that's good!" John said.
"I'm afraid not." Arlon replied "They were killed in an accident just about two hours ago."
----------
John had locked the door to her quarters from the inside. He was sitting on the corner of her bed, staring into emptiness.
It was over. The search, the waiting, the hope. Everything was over, everything had ended in that office back on that planet when Arlon told them about the accident. He felt like he had ended himself.
According to Arlon, Elizabeth and the team had showed up on that planet just a few hours ago, they hadn't said what they wanted there, but they had been hungry, so one of the inhabitants of the town, the one who had found them near the gate, had invited them to his home. The man had obviously been some kind of scientist, and one of his experiments must have gone wrong somehow. There had been an explosion. It had destroyed the entire building and killed everyone inside. Apparently the man had been known for the various accidents his experiments caused from time to time, but none had ever been as bad.
John had insisted on seeing the site of the explosion. There was really nothing left. No one could have survived that.
He hadn't said a word on the way back to the gate and back in Atlantis he had headed straight for her quarters and locked the door behind him. His world had sunken into blackness. It felt like he had died inside. He was numb. He felt a growing emptiness around him, while his soul was writhing in pain.
Everything seemed to have slowed down. And as the realization that she was dead and would never come back gradually and ruthlessly sank in, he felt his heart break.
She was gone.