Edinburgh, Scotland. Doctor Carson Beckett rushed to the outside of the E.R. unit with other doctors and nurses. Ambulances were arriving. One stopped beside Carson. The paramedic in the back of the vehicle opened the door. Her colleague, the driver, came and helped her move the stretcher out of the vehicle. The victim was a man over sixty with an oxygen mask on his face and the body burnt to a limited extent.
"Take him to Doctor Robertson!" Beckett shouted because of the bombings afar and the sirens. The paramedics nodded and hurried to the building with a nurse. Carson noticed a civilian getting out of another ambulance. He recognized him. The man had been transported with someone else on a stretcher. The paramedics were taking it to the hospital and one of Beckett's colleagues was taking care of the patient. It was a woman in her thirties. She rang a bell to Carson when he saw her face while on his way to the vehicle and the other patient, but he didn't have time to search his memories right now.
"Professor Grodin? You're okay?" the doctor asked when he arrived.
"I'm fine. They raided the university. They distroyed a wing. Doctor Wayland was inside."
Grodin glanced past Beckett's shoulder when he said the name. Carson turned and remembered. He had been invited to conferences by the University of Edinburgh. This was how he met Doctors Grodin and Wayland. Unlike the two men, Wayland wasn't from the U.K. She spent a year in Edinburgh when she was a student, and fate made her come back as a teacher-researcher. Grodin had been working in Edinburgh for five years. As for Carson, he had never left Scotland... Except in another life, where he met Grodin in Atlantis, and Wayland, in another stargate facility.
"I need to go back to the university, I could be more useful over there," Grodin said, determined… and quite unconscious of the risks.
"You're not going anywhere, my friend. Your forehead's bleeding, let me see this."
Indeed, the right side of Grodin's forehead was bleeding. Not a lot, but it didn't mean it couldn't be serious. Carson checked the man.
"Their ships are attacking everything. No place is safe anymore, Doctor Beckett."
Grodin and Beckett looked up. Two Death Gliders were approaching dangerously. Without notice, they fired at the ambulances. Grodin pushed Beckett to the ground. Explosions surrounded and covered the two men, plus the people and vehicles around. Beckett felt like his head was exploding, like he was choking and burning. He couldn't move, he couldn't see, his ears were hurting him. Was he dead or still alive?
The hospital became the next target of the Gliders.
Grodin was right.
No place was safe anymore.