Elizabeth was just passing through the Control room on the way to her office when the alarms began to wail and the chevrons on the Stargate glowed into life.
"Incoming wormhole," the tech bellowed, per protocol, just as Elizabeth whispered to herself, "That's odd…" No one was scheduled back for several hours. Sheppard's team had only been gone a little over an hour. Stopping by the DHD console, she crossed her arms to wait for the gate to open.
The instant a connection was made, Rodney's voice blared over every radio in the room. Sounding thick with panic he was yelling over and over, "Lower the shield, Sheppard's coming through. I can't stop him, I'm sending my IDC but Sheppard's already through. Lower the shield! Lower the shield!"
Elizabeth didn't even think. She pounced on the control to turn off the shield that disintegrated any unwanted travelers into a splatter of molecules. The technician in charge of the security protocols was looking at her in shock, but within a mere instant of the shield's collapse, Sheppard's body flew horizontally through the event horizon to land with a long, graceful slide nearly the length of the platform. He seemed stunned and remained on his stomach where he stopped.
"Get a medical team down here," Elizabeth snapped and was dashing towards the steps.
Sheppard finally bellowed, "Raise the shield!" still from his prone position, but Elizabeth thought his voice sounded shaky and weak, even as she heard the hum of the shield going back up.
"Atlantis, come in! Please come in. Did you get him? Did Sheppard make it?" Rodney sounded terrified and Elizabeth quickly tapped her headset, dropping to one knee beside a rigidly quiet John. The two guards stationed by the gate were hovering uncertainly nearby, unsure what to do.
"He's here, Rodney. He's OK, we got the shield down in time."
"Oh, thank goodness," the relief in his tone was palpable.
"He told us to raise the shield again."
"Well lower it again. I'm coming through. Teyla collapsed and is only semi-conscious. Sheppard was raving nonsense before he took that swan dive into the gate. I don't even know where Ronon is. He isn't answering his radio."
"Understood," Elizabeth replied, although there was very little about the whole situation she actually did understand, "see you in a minute." She tapped off her radio, ordered the very confused security technician to lower the shield again, and turned her full attention back to John. He was hot and gasping as if he'd just run from the devil himself. He lay frozen on his stomach, locked into a rigid half-pushup, his forehead drooping towards the floor. "John, are you OK? What happened?"
He turned his head slightly towards her voice and mumbled, "Wraith cruiser was bearing down on us. Elizabeth is staying behind in the cloaked jumper until it's safe to come through…" It made no sense to her but before she could question him more, two paramedics were gently nudging her aside and coaxing John to roll over and sit up. She stood and backed off to let them work. John continued to talk as if holding a conversation with someone who wasn't there, "His name's Eldon, he helped us escape…"
"That must have been some park…" she whispered to herself.
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Rodney took a brief moment to collect himself before returning to Atlantis. However irritated he had sounded as he bullied Elizabeth to let them through, deep down he was shaken by Sheppard's close call. They almost never thought about the force shield on Atlantis as dangerous to them, even he who was prone to worry about most everything. They sent their IDC and they went through. In that order…
Thinking for a bit, he suddenly scrabbled in a pocket and pulled out the Ancient equivalent of a screwdriver and popped open the cover on the DHD's control panel. Wiggling his fingers over the glowing crystal disks, he spotted the one he wanted and pulled it out. He took the time to replace the cover after shoving the stolen crystal into another pocket. "That should keep Ronon here," he spoke out loud to an unresponsive Teyla. Both Sheppard and Teyla had been affected by something in this stupid place that rendered them confused and incoherent. If Ronon was just as incapacitated, then Rodney assumed it would be a bad idea for the man to gate to other planets and wreak havoc in a delusional rampage. Sheppard had said Ronon attacked him…
Finished with that task, he looked down at Teyla who was sitting on the ground, resting her head on her knees and rocking agitatedly. All the time muttering nonsense that sounded like one-sided conversation or snatches of dialog from a play. Stretching his back with a groan, he took a deep resigned breath and heaved on her arm, slinging it over his shoulder and wrapping his around her waist to hook into her belt. None too gracefully he lumbered towards the gate. Feeling relief wash over him he lurched through into the cool air of the Atlantis gateroom.
Elizabeth and two more Med techs were waiting for him and he gratefully lowered Teyla to the floor as the Stargate shut down behind him. With another stretch, he hastily stepped out of the way to let the paramedics work. Elizabeth walked over and touched his arm in a gesture of reassurance, and they both watched silently for a moment longer.
Suddenly looking around, McKay searched for Sheppard until he caught a glimpse of him just rounding the corner down the corridor to the Infirmary. He seemed to be walking under his own power, but the two medical escorts had their hands firmly on his arms to guide or support him, Rodney couldn't tell which. "How is the Colonel?" he asked abruptly, turning back to Elizabeth.
She sighed and gestured towards Teyla, "About like that. Unresponsive and muttering nonsense… Rodney, you can take that off now." He saw her looking with weary exasperation at his nose for some reason.
"Oh, sure." With an embarrassed swipe, he yanked the dust mask over his head and crumpled it into his pocket. He'd forgotten he'd been wearing it.
"What the hell happened?" Elizabeth added.
Pausing for a moment to move aside again so the paramedics could guide a now standing Teyla towards the short steps and the corridor beyond, McKay began walking after them before answering. "I don't exactly know…" he sighed, taking a deep breath and wringing his hands. "After Teyla collapsed and I started back towards the Stargate, Sheppard and Ronon didn't answer their radios for a long time. The first time I heard Sheppard respond he was yelling into it about 'Get back to the jumper', which made absolutely no sense. I was nearly to the DHD when he spoke again and that time he sounded somewhat lucid. He told me that Ronon attacked him, that he had run from him, and to get to the gate. That reminds me, I pulled a DHD control crystal so Ronon can't leave the planet, but it also means he can't dial here for help…"
Elizabeth nodded as they stopped walking to pause in the infirmary door and answered quickly, "We'll dial back at intervals to check the MALP relay. If he needs to come home, we'll send the crystals through. Why did John dive through the gate without sending his own IDC?"
"He must've zoned out again, because the second I finished dialing, he came out of nowhere pelting for the gate like the Wraith were on his tail."
"He told me the Wraith were on his tail."
Rodney just shook his head in confusion. "The idiot almost got himself demolecularized by the wormhole's initial vortex he was so close. Be sure to thank the techs for getting the shield down so fast. I was positive the man was bug juice on a windshield." He was too overwhelmed by re-living the all-too-fresh incident to notice Elizabeth's proud smirk.
Suddenly shaking, and desperate to keep Elizabeth from noticing, Rodney turned away from her to flop himself into an infirmary chair. He still reacted in certain ways to certain death. It just seemed that lately, he was worrying more about other people's certain deaths than he used to. It was an annoyingly inefficient waste of mental energy that he really needed to knock off, he decided. There were certain advantages to egocentric selfishness. Speaking of which… he bolted out of the chair again so quickly that he saw Elizabeth startle in surprise and freeze halfway through sitting down herself.
"Everyone else on P1C-270 freaked out and went insane. What if I'm next? Hey, I need a doctor here!" And he pounded further into the infirmary bellowing for medical attention.
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Elizabeth paced for some time at the edges of the activity in the infirmary, not wishing to interrupt or inhibit the care of her people, but growing more anxious by the minute. She needed information to make sure her city wasn't in danger, and she needed to know how she could help. Spotting Dr. Carson Beckett, the head of all medical departments on Atlantis, she started towards him with a purposeful stride. Either because he saw her coming, or because it was his intention anyway, he waved to her and indicated she should follow him to Sheppard's bedside.
John was sitting with his legs slightly crossed and his arms wrapped around his knees in the middle of the bed. Someone had removed his Tac vest, weapons and shoes, but his shirt was still damp with sweat over his everyday BDU pants. At the moment his eyes were closed as if it took every bit of concentration to prevent himself from restless movement, but even then he was rocking ever-so-slightly with the effort. A bright red bruise on his left cheekbone was the only physical evidence of the eventful if short-lived survey mission.
With a glance past John, Elizabeth saw Teyla lying stretched out more comfortably on her bed, propped up on pillows. But she was equally restless, drawing her hands through her hair and turning her head back and forth as Elizabeth watched. Carson stopped just out of range to avoid disturbing John quite yet and turned to fully face Elizabeth.
"Carson, do we need a quarantine here?" The words blurted out of her and she realized that was her greatest fear; that whatever was affecting Sheppard's team would spread.
With reassuring haste, Carson replied, "No, lass. Whatever is bothering them doesn't seem to be infectious or contagious."
With a deep breath of relief, Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly. "What's wrong with them, then?"
It was Carson's turn to sigh. "I can only report symptoms at this point. Aside from the confusion and delirium you've seen, they both show elevated blood pressure, heart rate and respiration. The Colonel much more so than Teyla. We've got full blood workup on both of them being run as we speak."
"They were only on the planet for a little more than an hour. What could have done this to them so quickly?"
"The speed leads me to believe perhaps some kind of direct chemical agent. Perhaps they were struck by a tranquilizer dart of some sort or…"
"No. It couldn't be that." Rodney interrupted loudly from the bed behind them where he'd obviously been eavesdropping, and they both turned to face him. "We were in an open field with miles of view. There was no one else around to shoot a dart or anything else at us. I'm sure of it."
Elizabeth was studying McKay closely. "Why wasn't Rodney affected?" she asked at last.
"Who says I wasn't! Just because I haven't started babbling nonsense and making suicide runs into the Stargate yet doesn't mean I'm not a heartbeat from…"
"She's right. You're fine Rodney. In fact you can get down from there and go if you want." Carson was well used to ignoring McKay's hypocondriatic drama.
"You said my blood pressure was high." McKay seemed to be looking for an excuse to stay.
"It was high a month ago at your checkup and I believe we talked about cutting salt and caffeine out of your diet, now didn't we?"
The veiled threat in Carson's voice was enough to propel McKay off the table with undignified haste to stand next to Elizabeth, looking just a touch like he was avoiding the Doctor… "So. She's right. Why wasn't I affected?"
They were interrupted by a plaintive call from John, "McKay? Where's Ronon and Teyla?" He was still in the rigid knee-lock, but he was looking over at them. His eyes, while shadowed with effort and stress, were lucid.
"Teyla's right here in the next bed. She's loopy like you, but OK." Rodney moved closer and managed to sound both reassuring and excruciatingly awkward. John glanced quickly to his other side to confirm the statement.
"Where's Ronon?" there was a hint of impatience as he repeated the question.
"He's still galloping around on that planet. Probably beating the stuffing out of the daisies since you ran off and denied him a human punching bag…"
"Go get him." John's brusque delivery spoke more of the massive effort it seemed to cost him to speak rather than real anger and Elizabeth could hardly stand the strain in his voice.
"We will, John. I promise," she soothed, stepping near herself and resting her hand on his leg. "As soon as we figure out what is causing this and how to protect a rescue team, we'll go get him. You don't have to worry about Ronon, just worry about getting yourself better."
John squeezed his eyes shut and shuddered, dropping one hand to brace himself on the bed. Beckett bustled closer and slapped a blood-pressure cuff on the extended arm. Just as suddenly, Sheppard blinked his eyes open and stared at Elizabeth, "I can feel it. I can feel it changing me inside…like he did."
Completely confused and not a little concerned, Elizabeth leaned even closer, "What do you mean, John?"
Like a sleepwalker, John continued his own personal conversation in a distant voice, "No….No, it's ...One of the best weeks of my life was when I got my wisdom teeth out. I was on codeine for a full seven days. This is kinda the same. I know I should be in pain, or at the very least freaked out by this, but I'm not... and that freaks me out more than anything…"
With dawning realization, Elizabeth shot a look at Rodney, "He's reliving a memory. That's not random nonsense, it's exactly what he said to me that night he found the Iratus Bug scales on his arm, when he was infected by the unfinished retro-virus." John seemed to be staring at her expectantly, and she dove into her own memory to recall what she had said next all those long months ago.
"We're gonna beat this, John."
Without pausing a beat he replied, " 'We're gonna beat this?' 'Beckett'll figure this out'? 'You're gonna be fine?'? You really suck at the whole bedside manner thing."
Rodney snorted, but Elizabeth was too intent upon testing her theory. "I know," she murmured, giving him a shake to be sure he would listen. "But I appreciate the effort," they spoke the phrase in unison, proving her point to a now startled Dr. Beckett and a suddenly intent Dr. McKay. With another confused grimace, John closed his eyes again and resumed his painful not-quite-rocking, arms again around his knees.
Rodney pulled Carson and Elizabeth away with animated urgency. "That's it!" he said with breathless excitement. "It's the flowers that did this to them!" At the very skeptical looks he was receiving, he suddenly went to annoyed and ploughed on, "Hear me out. Carson, don't they say that scent is one of the strongest triggers for certain memories?"
"I've heard that, I suppose. But Rodney, smelling roses and being reminded of your Great Grandma Elsie isn't quite the same as being driven to delusional memory recall…"
"I just mean it fits. Perhaps the pollen or the scent of those very alien flowers," he emphasized the 'very alien' with great significance, "is evolutionarily designed to trigger such extreme memories. Or maybe it interacts with humans stronger or differently than it should, but I was the only one wearing a mask, unable to smell them or inhale pollen, and I'm the only one not drooling down memory lane."
Carson still seemed ready to argue, but Elizabeth cut him off, fixing McKay with a direct look. "What do you want to do, Rodney?"
"Let me take another team back to P1C-270. I'll take a botanist and a biologist and see if they concur with the theory at the site. We'll look for Ronon and bring back samples of the plants so Carson can use them to derive an antidote if he needs one. Maybe for once we can get out ahead of the problem…" He looked at her with expectant request.
She thought it through as quickly as she could. "How will you protect yourselves from further exposure to the flowers?"
"Standard issue Field Protective Masks should be more than sufficient…"
"Go, Rodney." He nodded once and shouldered his way out of the infirmary.
Watching him leave, Elizabeth then turned back to Carson, intending to offer a word of encouragement before she returned to the control room to help coordinate Rodney's team. His serious expression and deliberate look halted the words on her lips, "What is it, Carson?" she asked instead.
"The Colonel's heart rate has nudged up even higher, just in the last few minutes." Elizabeth remembered he'd been checking on John during their conversation… "Extended Tachycardia can lead to all kinds of problems, although I'm still hoping it won't come to that. I need to get a heart monitor on him, and we may need to consider sedating him."
"Then do that." Elizabeth wasn't sure why Carson was being so deliberate about explaining what seemed like perfectly reasonable treatment options.
"You just need to know that resorting to pharmacological solutions when we don't know what's causing the problem in the first place can be risky. Our lab is working as fast as they can, and right now it's not worth the risk but…"
"I understand, thank you Carson." Her voice remained steady, even though she was sure that if he checked her heart rate, the doctor would also find it well above normal, racing with the spike of fear that sank deep into her chest.
"We'll do our best, Elizabeth."
With one last look back at John, and a hint of regret at having to leave his side, she walked out of the infirmary towards the gateroom. Towards her best opportunity to help.
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In fact, Elizabeth ended up organizing the bulk of Rodney's return to P1C-270. In one of his brilliant but obsessive fits of insight, he disappeared early on to the jumper bay to reprogram the life signs detectors in an attempt to expedite their search for Ronon. Hastily checking through the city's roster of scientists trained for offworld missions, she contacted Dr. Nathan Miles, biologist, and Dr. Katie Brown. Katie was in fact the only botanist on the list who had so far spent any time familiarizing herself with this planet, so despite Elizabeth's concerns that she would distract McKay, the relevance of her expertise in this particular situation won out over other…considerations.
Major Lorne quickly volunteered to fly the jumper and with easy professionalism handled the security details. Barely an hour after leaving the infirmary, Elizabeth was waving off the group and stepping back from a slowly closing jumper hatch. She quickly turned and skipped down the steps to the control room and watched as the stubby space-worthy craft slowly lowered itself into position before a sparkling, active Stargate. After the briefest of pauses, it scooted forward and disappeared into the event horizon with an extended "splut" of sound and a footprint of ripples on the blue-white surface of the wormhole.
Chewing her lip for a long moment, Elizabeth was unsure what to do with herself next. One last glance at the MALP relay showed no sign of Ronon near the gate on the other side, and the jumper was already out of sight, heading off in a direction other than that in which the MALP's camera was pointed. "Shut it down," she told the technician softly and wandered towards her office, thinking briefly of burying herself in memos and brainless paperwork.
Instead, without even realizing she'd made a decision, she found her feet carrying her to the infirmary. She was unsettled more than she would admit by how quickly her day had gone from comfortable routine to crisis management. Not that any day was boring on Atlantis, but somehow she felt cheated, angry even, that a simple survey of some pretty flowers had three of her people suffering. It was exhausting to feel constantly on guard, to feel like she could take nothing for granted. If things continued like this, she'd have nothing but worries and sorrow to look back on in her time spent here.
She shuddered, unable to even imagine how horrible it must feel to be trapped reliving memories over and over. John's face had looked so haggard, so stressed as he fought to keep himself lucid. And medical explanations aside, she knew that was what he'd been doing: Fighting with every over-stimulated breath to stay in control. It had been no coincidence that the memory he recited to her was from the last time his body and his sanity had been compromised. That time he'd lost the fight and the Iratus bug retro-virus had ultimately overwhelmed him. They had nearly lost him, and she couldn't imagine how frightening it must be for him to face the possibility of losing control again, even if the flowers' effect were temporary and wore off soon.
Just as she was turning into the door, somewhat encouraged by the thought that perhaps the stimulant, or drug or whatever had affected her people had already worn off, she heard a hiss in her ear and Carson's voice followed the sound of an open channel, "Elizabeth, when would you have a chance to come back down here for a minute?"
"How about now!" she announced out loud, stepping up close behind the doctor so that he whirled in surprise.
"Ah, good then," recovering quickly, he tugged lightly on her arm over to Teyla's bed where the young woman still lay moving idly and muttering. A pretty Athosian woman, Teyla's age or a little older, sat next to her listening closely. She looked up and smiled as Elizabeth and Carson drew near. "I had one of our pilots go to the mainland to find someone who might understand better some of Teyla's 'memories', if in fact that is also what her verbalizations are. I prefer not to make assumptions because Teyla and the Colonel are reacting so differently to whatever agent they were exposed to, if in fact they were even exposed to the same agent. This is Eylana."
"Thank you for coming," Elizabeth told the woman warmly, and then to Carson she added, "Teyla seems…quieter than John was earlier. Is that what you mean by reacting differently?"
"Aye," the worried expression was back on Carson's face, "we got their initial blood work back. They both seem to be reacting to something that is stimulating the memory centers of their brains as you observed, but the Colonel's body is also producing massive amounts of adrenaline and stress hormones, which is what is driving up his heart rate and blood pressure. The problem is that we still haven't identified any chemical agents that could be causing this stimulation. There are no foreign drugs or chemicals in their systems that we can detect…and it doesn't seem to be improving over time like you would expect a drug to metabolize and clear from the body."
As he spoke he nodded gently to Eylana and led Elizabeth away from the two Athosian women. John was no longer in the next bed, so she followed, looking around hopefully for a glimpse of him. "Have you had to sedate him yet?"
Carson nodded, "Once we knew that adrenaline was cause of the physical symptoms, we tried Clonidine, a common antihypertensive to no effect. Something is stimulating the adrenal glands directly. We've just administered a low dosage of diazepam hoping the sedative will relieve the stress response, but that's why I wanted to talk to you. It's imperative we monitor his heart as a possible side effect of the sedative is reflex tachycardia, the opposite of what we're trying to do here. But the Colonel is too restless and agitated; he hasn't let us wire him up. I think we need to restrain him…"
Feeling like he'd kicked her in the stomach she closed her eyes and breathed, "Oh, Carson…" From Carson's expression, the suggestion hurt him just as much as it did Elizabeth.
They turned a corner into a secluded niche to find Sheppard pacing by the unused bed. He spotted them, turned on his bare feet to walk away the length of the bed, then spun back again. "Feel better, Doc. Thanks…" He thumped the mattress with a fist for a moment, then paced the length again.
"THIS is sedated?" Elizabeth whispered to Carson.
"Aye," he whispered back, then more loudly to answer John, "I'm glad to hear that Colonel, can you tell me in what way it feels better son?"
John shrugged, this time following the bed around the end and up the other side. "Not so tense…still hard to think." His voice faded and he pressed his palm into his temple. When he looked at Elizabeth again his eyes were clouded with delusion and he whispered, "Your own mortality staring you right in the face. I can't imagine how you must be feeling…"
"John? I don't understand." The words sounded familiar, he was reliving another memory but she couldn't quite pin it down.
"Just when you thought this place couldn't get any weirder…" Then he was pacing again. The truth of the statement struck her as uncomfortably amusing now as it had over a year ago when she'd been looking down at a 10,000 year old version of herself in a bed very much like this one.
"Carson, he seems at least to be in control of himself to some degree. Couldn't we just coax him to lie down? Maybe he'd lay still long enough to get the leads on, then he could walk around again…" She was desperate to find an alternative to restraining him. He was confused enough without adding betrayal and confinement to the mix. And she knew that was how he'd feel about being tied into bed against his will.
"Be my guest lassie, I've been watching him longer than you have and he's delusional more often than not. But maybe you'll get through. I wouldn't be surprised if he was a wee bit wary of me after all the time in the past year we've spent together." Elizabeth knew he was referring to John's extended stay in the infirmary fighting the Iratus retro-virus… Carson casually moved over to the EKG machine and began to quietly fiddle with the wires and paper circles of the sensors.
Hoping she looked familiar and reassuring, she stepped into John's path, forcing him to react to her. When his eyes met hers, she said calmly, "John, you need to lie down for a while. Can you do that? Can you rest for a while?"
He just looked warily to the side, and stepped around her to continue his walking. She stepped into his path again on the return circuit. "Sit down, Colonel. That's an order." She tried for command, hoping to maybe get an automatic compliance response. This time his look was cocky, annoyed even…
"How does that go again? Red, Orange, Blue or the other way around? You mind if we go over that again when I get back?"
"John…"
"You don't have to remind me of our respective positions or that you outrank me, sir." He shouldered past her roughly and she realized she'd miscalculated. He was more agitated and she let him walk by several more times before trying again.
Thinking that rather than trying to keep up with his random memories, she should maybe try to provoke him into one deliberately. She searched through her mind for some event, some conversation in their recent past that was calm…normal. It saddened her how difficult that was, they always seemed to be working or madly trying to survive. Finally settling on a memory, she made a promise to herself that going forward, she would make more of an effort to spend quiet, pleasant time with her people. Time when she could just be Elizabeth, and leave Dr. Weir behind.
As John walked past her again, she just started talking to him, "Hey, what are you doing up so late?" And then she continued the conversation for him, to prompt him into remembering that night on the Daedalus when they had shared coffee and looked out the viewport into a swirl of hyperspace. "Couldn't sleep? Must be the burden of command… you know ever since you were promoted to Lt. Colonel?" He had paused, and to her relief he finished the sentence with her.
"When are you going to stop bringing that up in every conversation?" She fed him her next line.
"You gotta understand -- there's a lot of people in the Air Force who never thought I'd make it past Captain!"
"Well obviously, the people whose opinions matter the most thought otherwise… sit down John." There was her ruse, he had sat with her at the table… maybe he would sit now. Holding her breath she watched him as he considered the bed, then slowly sat down on the very edge. She threw Carson a triumphant look, and motioned him closer to take advantage of the moment.
"What about you? What are you still doing up?" He was looking at her, but seeing only the memory in his mind.
"You're not well, John. I'm here to help. Carson is here to help. You need to rest for a while and sit quietly on the bed. Can you do that? Please do that for me?"
"Elizabeth?" his voice was soft and forced and as he shook his head a little and blinked, she could see him struggling through the visions. For the moment, he'd fought to the surface and was lucid. The effort and fear he was desperately trying to conceal broke her heart. He still looked like he'd been running from the wraith. His face was slicked with sweat and his usually fluffy hair was damp and spikey.
"Just lie down, John. You'll be ok. Lie down." And unable to resist, she reached to brush the clinging strands away from his forehead, her fingers lingering on his cheek in a gesture of comfort.
It was the wrong thing to do…
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John was swimming in a rushing current that pushed and carried him wherever it wanted. Sometimes he would be able to struggle to the surface and with a refreshing gulp of sanity reorient himself for a moment, only to be dunked back into memory after memory in a mixed up random jumble. The weirdest ones combined reality and memory in a bizarre overlay of experience.
Walking helped. It relieved the feeling of anxiety that was gradually building into an incredible urge to run again. The impulse had nearly become unbearable at one point and the effort of staying in control had forced his body into aching tension… But Beckett's small dose of Valium had provided some relief, after the initial struggle over holding him still long enough to inject the drug was won. It didn't help the mental drowning, but he didn't hurt as much anymore, and was able to continue pacing, pacing, pacing.
At one point he recognized that Elizabeth had joined Beckett nearby, her voice floated fresh and new memories into the eddies. "Just when you thought this place couldn't get any weirder…"
Then she started to get in his way. He needed to walk. He walked around her. His frustration triggered more memories, "You don't have to remind me of our respective positions or that you outrank me, sir."
She let him walk, she was talking to him and this time the memory was soothing. A gentle conversation between friends.
"Sit down, John."
He could do that. And he broke through for a moment to see her quietly urging him to lie down. Her tone and manner were still calm and soothing, but she didn't understand. He had to keep moving or he'd start running. Something of his fear must have shown because her look was pure sympathy and he hated it. He tried to tell her to stop feeling sorry for him and to get out of the damn way so he could walk.
And then she reached gently for his face, brushing away sweat-slicked hair and stroking his cheek.
The memory slammed into him with almost physical force.
"Kneel."
The words were spoken, but they also reverberated through his head. Despite every effort to fight the impulse, he dropped to his knees to look up at the Hive Queen. She was going to question him. He must not answer.
"The ship. Where did you get it?"
He must not answer. "You mean the Dart? We call them darts because they're so pointy…"
"Tell me. Where?"
"I really don't want to say." The Queen's sultry smile was the only warning she gave before her hand struck his face and he fell off his knees with the blow. After he righted himself, she leaned closer and gently ran her clawed finger down his cheek.
"I don't even know your name." He struggled to remain brash. He must not answer. He had to get free of the Queen, get off the Hive…
John felt rough hands pull him off the floor and in a moment of blended awareness, he somehow knew that they were the hands of his own people. At the same time he was certain they were wraith warriors escorting him off the Queen's dais to return him to a cell. "She didn't even tell me her name," he whispered.
"I'm sorry Elizabeth, I can feel his pulse racing just by holding his arms. We've got to get him restrained and monitored…" He heard the words, struggled to make sense of them.
John felt the hold on his arms loosen ever-so-slightly as he watched Carson fiddle with the bed, preparing to strap him into it. Understanding shot terror through his gut and he realized in both realities he was betrayed. He'd die if he couldn't move, tied into a bed. He'd die if he couldn't escape the wraith.
With an almighty wrench born of desperation and honed by training, he twisted out of the grasp of the men holding him. Ducking a grab, John easily planted his elbow in the overbalanced security guard's face, grabbed for his stunner as he fell and dashed through the infirmary door into the corridors beyond.
"John! Please come back."
The anguish in Elizabeth's voice almost…almost stopped him. Then he sank into the maelstrom again and knew nothing but running from the wraith. From the memories. From himself.
