Chapter 2

Elizabeth had trained herself as a diplomat to wait. Waiting was everything. Waiting for the response from the translator, waiting for the response from an Ambassador, waiting for the unofficial response, then waiting for the official response. She'd spent most of her life hiding her emotions and practicing her poker face.

It was a skill that had served her well in Atlantis. The only thing she could do in most situations was to prepare as thoroughly as possible and wait for the cards to fall in whatever way the Fates decreed.

Today, she didn't want to wait and her patience had deserted her. She had to will herself to remain at her desk and not demand a report from Carson. Carson had made it clear that he would report to her when he was good and ready and that he did not want her, or Sheppard's team, in the infirmary. He'd understood the need to determine what had happened to Sheppard, and if it posed a threat to Atlantis but he'd been equally adamant that he expected to be left in peace and that the entire examination would be conducted in privacy. In fact, the medical information would only be shared with Elizabeth, if at all.

Rodney hadn't taken kindly to the order and had gone to his lab to sulk. Teyla had been disappointed but seemed to understand. Ronon had decided to run off his excess energy.

So now, here she was. Waiting. She tried to do paperwork. She tapped a pencil against her desk. Stared at a piece of pottery. Sent a prayer to the universe.

"Elizabeth?"

She looked up. Carson was in her office. He appeared subdued.

"How is he?"

Carson keyed her door shut. He sat down in a chair. "Before we begin, I'd just like to register my official concern with the security protocols."

"That bad?"

"Yes - and no. Elizabeth, I know we agreed on the new procedure, and I can see the need for it, but I don't exactly enjoy potentially traumatizing my patients all over again."

She was instantly alert at that statement. "What happened?"

He held up his hands, signaled for her to calm down. "I'm probably just overreacting. I just think that maybe we could have implemented it better, or practiced more."

Elizabeth got out from behind her desk, forgoing the usual barrier between herself and whoever was visiting, and went around to sit in the spare chair beside him.

"Carson, the reason you're on this mission is because you're a brilliant doctor, a geneticist, and more importantly, you care about your patients. I'd think something was wrong if you weren't in here protesting. But we put the protocol in place for this very reason. If someone comes back too injured to talk we have a method for trying to determine what happened to them."

The doctor sighed, nodded once. "Aye. You're right. I just don't like it."

"And you don't have to like it. You just have to do it."

She got up, went back behind the desk. There wasn't much he could say to her response and she noticed that he seemed to have decided not to push her any more. Instead, he changed back to the main topic of conversation.

"Colonel Sheppard's still in the infirmary. I've got Richard and Marcy finishing up for me."

"And?"

Carson tapped on his laptop with his stylus, reviewed his notes.

"If we're very lucky, he'll never remember a thing, and I'd prefer it that way."

"Because?"

"Whatever happened, he was restrained for an excessive amount of time in the same position. He may have escaped once – the bruising and cuts on the feet seem to indicate that but I can't sure. The memory loss could be assigned to anything. Probably sedation."

"We need to get Kate involved."

"No arguments there but this is a delicate situation. It might be better to leave well enough alone."

"You can't tell me you don't want him to remember what happened?"

"Given a choice, if you suspected you'd been a victim, would you want to remember everything in excruciating detail, or prefer to remain in ignorance?"

She honestly didn't know but she gave the answer she thought would argue her case more strongly. "I'd want to remember of course."

"I doubt that. I doubt that very much."

There was no reply to Carson's adamant response. A response that said he'd seen too many people confronting the same issue for his concern to be purely academic.

((--))

He was lying on his left side, Richard concentrating on dressing the ulcer on his back and Marcy was working on his feet. He was still hungry. His wrists and ankles were bandaged and Marcy had injected copious amounts of lidocaine into the cuts on his feet, began stitching and then she'd moved onto the ulcers. Richard had smeared the ulcer on his back with a numbing agent but that didn't take away the hurt from everywhere else. Sheppard wished the results of the blood tests would come back because apparently after the results were back, he could eat. If he could eat, it would stop the feeling that his stomach was trying to digest itself.

They were both trying their best to explain everything to him, but he couldn't concentrate anyway.

Richard had washed the ulcer out with saline, did an initial sharp debridement that involved picking out any clearly necrotic material – something he'd had to grit his teeth to get through. Then Richard has said something about autolytic debridement for the rest of the treatment process if the test results were okay. Carson had ordered a swab for a bacterial culture before they'd started. Marcy was bandaging his feet. He didn't really care.

Richard finished, putting a gel sealant over the wound and then attaching gauze before pushing back his stool and pulling the warming blanket up around Sheppard's shoulders.

Sheppard was about five minutes away from getting up and leaving and he didn't care how much it hurt to get back to his quarters.

Marcy cleaned up her tray, putting the used sharps into the biohazard container. Richard came around to sit in Sheppard's line of sight.

Sheppard asked the question he'd become obsessed with. "When's Carson coming back?"

Richard smiled his patented health professional smile. "He can't be too far away. How are you holding up?"

"I'm good," he lied. He didn't even know why he was lying. Probably because he couldn't stand anyone else checking him out like a side of beef.

The man in question breezed back into the room, looking slightly harassed. He rapidly composed himself and Richard vacated the stool, went to help Marcy clean up.

"Good news, Colonel. Just got your test results back and everything looks normal."

"Does that mean I can eat something?"

"Yes, and it means I can give you something to take the edge off the pain if you want."

"Yes, I want."

Carson read through his notes. "There's no nice way to put this. You're going to have to stay in the infirmary for a while."

He pulled a face. "Define the term, 'a while'".

"We're going to have to keep you off your feet until the cuts heal and I can remove the sutures. That's around ten days, maybe less. As an added bonus those pressure sores are going to be difficult to manage and you're going to need regular wound care for a minimum of four weeks. Normally I'd release you back to your quarters but the fact is, you need to be lying on a proper foam mattress, with your feet elevated as much as possible, not to mention trying to minimize the pressure on your back."

Sheppard shrugged. He didn't care. He was caring less as time wore on. Bring on the food. Bring on sleep. Bring on whatever it was that Carson was going to give him. Personally, being able to spend a few hours without awareness was beginning to hold a lot of appeal. He seriously regretted waking up on that stupid planet.

He closed his eyes because Carson was giving him a strange look, like he'd been expecting the usual rounds of protest. He heard Carson ordering someone around.

"Go down to the cafeteria and see what they're serving."

"Anything in particular?" A woman's voice. It was Marcy.

"Protein. If there's nothing suitable try and get the cooks to rustle something up."

"I'll be back as soon as I can."

He listened with detached interest, idly watched the weird light show that always happened when you attempted to watch the back of your own eyelids.

"Richard, can you go and get the ibuprofen with the codeine out of the meds cabinet for me?"

"Sure."

Okay, so the nurses had been banished for whatever reason. Maybe he was dying or something. That would be a great joke ending for the day. Hey, Sheppard, by the way – you're dying.

"Are you asleep, Colonel?"

"No."

There was a pause, as if Carson was wondering what to say next but Sheppard didn't bother to open his eyes. In the darkness he remembered playing hide and seek when he was four. Close your eyes. Count. Open your eyes and try and find where your friend was hiding. Unless of course, it was in the basement. He never did like the basement. It was large, and it was dark and he was sure monsters lurked down there, in the same way he was sure that monsters lurked under his bed.

"Today has been crap," said Carson.

He wanted to laugh. Every so often Carson was prone to summing up a situation in just one word. Crap. He opened his eyes, regarded the way Beckett had himself perched back on the stool, worry etched all over his face.

"Keep frowning like that and we'll have to request SGC send us a plastic surgeon."

"Don't worry, Colonel. I've resigned myself to looking like my father when I hit fifty-five. It's not going to be pretty. Still, I'm sure I could convince Biro to give me a shot of Botox if I get desperate."

Sheppard snorted. Started to roll onto his back, winced, changed his mind. It occurred to him that it was going to be hard to find a comfortable way to sleep or sit down for at least a month.

"What did you say to Elizabeth?" He was curious to know. Undoubtedly he was off duty for a while, but it would be interesting to see what else Carson had thought it was necessary to share.

"There wasn't much to tell. We make sure you heal up. You stick around Atlantis and do paperwork."

He pulled a face. "Paperwork. Not my most favorite work related activity." He pondered another question that had been bugging him. He needed to check it out. "Did you recommend I go and see Kate?"

"Elizabeth requested it."

"I don't blame her."

"Quite frankly, I think Kate can wait a few days until you're feeling more settled."

"Oh no, I'm really heart broken."

Carson managed a small smile. "I'm sorry about the exam. Upon reflection I'm not entirely comfortable that I agreed."

"That's what this is all about? You're apologizing for something that you needed to do to ensure the safety of Atlantis?"

Carson shrugged. "I felt it needed to be said."

"Carson, sometimes you freak out over all the wrong things."

"So Rodney and Lorne keep telling me."

Silence came back again. Just for a visit. It sat itself down in the middle of the room, and brought its sidekick – awkwardness – with it. Sheppard shifted his arm and managed to prop himself up onto his left elbow, and that was slightly better than lying on the pillow. Lying flat didn't seem to hold any appeal.

"What do we do now? I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little bored."

"We wait for your order to arrive. Then you eat. Then we work on getting you a decent mattress, and some foot pillows. I imagine after that you'll be out like a light. Failing that I can always get a laptop in here and you can play a game of Half Life 2 on the network with Rodney. He'll be thrilled."

"I've never understood why a guy who's so hopeless at handling weapons in real life keeps smacking me over in the virtual world." Sheppard was genuine on that point. Rodney was a very good game player. If only he could apply the same First Person Shooter skills he seemed to naturally possess to the actual shooting of Wraith and other bad aliens.

"That's Rodney for you. Full of surprises."

The conversation ran short again and Sheppard began to have the idea that perhaps Carson was on babysitting duties. That would explain why he was still here.

"Doc, I'm a big boy. Feel free to go and hassle some other patient."

"I don't have any other patients at the moment. You're it."

"That explains the dedicated attention."

"I'm just making sure you don't disappear on us again." Carson seemed to honestly believe that.

"Like that's ever going to happen."

Thankfully it was at that point that Marcy arrived back with a tray, Richard in tow. She put the tray down on the cabinet beside the bed. He took a look at what was on the menu. Scrambled eggs. On toast. Fantastic.

Between Richard, Marcy and a terminally fussing Carson they managed to prop him up into a position where he wasn't in too much pain and could eat. That had involved raising his feet so that his ankles weren't resting on the bed and making sure his lower back wasn't resting against anything else and then sliding the tray across.

Carson grabbed a small plastic container of ibuprofen, shook out two pills. "It's the stuff you like. Mixed with 30 milligrams of codeine."

Sheppard took the two pills, washed them down with a glass of water. Everyone liked them. It was an analgesic that kicked in faster than standard aspirin or ibuprofen and wiped out nearly all standard pain. It was a post mission chaser that went down well after a thumping from some hostile aliens.

It was just a pity that Carson was so stingy about letting the military arm of Atlantis stash it in their rooms. Everyone had to visit Beckett and his infirmary just to get some aspirin for a headache. It was annoying.

It was even more annoying that after he'd finally managed get a mouthful of scrambled eggs and had chewed and swallowed, he abruptly broke out in a sweat. He had enough time to say, "I think something's wrong," before he got his previous wish about going back to sleep. The last thing he remembered was the sound of his fork hitting the plate.

((--))

Biro really loved Ancient technology. It allowed her to speed up her work and that meant she could devote more time to research. Not that she didn't mind autopsies but back on Earth she had assistants to help with the workload. They were the ones that did the Y incision, emptied the body cavity if there was excessive blood, and removed any organs she particularly needed to examine. They also did most of her paperwork. On Atlantis she didn't have any assistants, presumably because they didn't think she'd be swamped with customers.

That made her all the more grateful for the laboratory gear left behind. They'd discovered one of them was a DNA sequencer. It sped up the preparation work to separate out the DNA and produced a much cleaner and more detailed output than even the most modern dye terminator cycle sequencers back on Earth.

Mind you, right now, looking at the results, she wasn't so sure.

"This can't be right," she said to herself. As she was alone, no one disagreed with her. She'd been excited to find epithelials from the scrapings she'd taken from under Sheppard's fingernails. It appeared the Colonel had managed to accidentally, or deliberately, scratch one of his captives. They weren't great samples, but Ancient technology seemed to be very good at recovering samples that had begun to degrade. Or at least that's what she'd thought.

She checked the results again, shrugged and decided to rerun the test.

((--))

Rodney had decided that he was going slowly out of his mind. He needed to talk to someone before he took out all of his pent up energy on some unsuspecting lab technician and that someone was Kate Heightmeyer.

He'd been seeing her ever since he'd arrived on Atlantis – in between crises and off world missions – mainly due to the fact that it had been a prerequisite for going to Atlantis and it had been an order from both O'Neil and Weir. Apparently Kate was somehow going to keep him from having a total meltdown at some point and so far, she seemed to be doing just that. Of course, back in the early days, his game plan had been to see her for a few weeks and then get really, really busy and subtly avoid her for the rest of his life. It wasn't like Elizabeth could do anything about it anyway. He wasn't in the military and he didn't have to follow an order per se, but Elizabeth was technically his boss. He wondered if they could actually fire anyone on the Atlantis expedition. Considering he was still around, probably not.

Unfortunately his plan had been sunk by the fact that try as he might, he couldn't seem to outwit Kate. Nor could he shake her sense of calm, put her off, or drive her to despair. Kate Heightmeyer was doggedly determined when it came to her job and if that job entailed talking to Rodney McKay once a week, then by God, she'd do it.

After the first month she'd joked that she didn't know whether she should get Carson to prescribe him Ritalin or Xanax. He'd returned the compliment and said he didn't know whether he should get her some taste, because her office decorating sucked, or a typing course because he couldn't stand to watch her chicken peck her way across the keyboard any more.

Strangely that one exchange had somehow broken the ice and they'd both managed to gain a grudging respect for each other. That didn't mean Rodney was going to admit to being one of Heightmeyer's regulars. He still checked to make sure the immediate corridors were deserted before sneaking into her office and after bumping into Teyla that one time coming out of her office, he made Kate open the door before he'd leave. Somehow, despite it all, he had to confess to himself that she'd actually helped him. Even when he'd had Cadman sneaking around in his brain and committing acts of atrocity that included running his unfit body around Atlantis, sleeping in the nude and kissing Carson. It had taken nearly a month before Carson had been capable of looking him in the eye and it had taken a month with Kate before Rodney had given up planning his revenge on Cadman in ways that involved diverting the sewage line into her bedroom.

He swung into her office, having checked on his radio that she was free. She'd replied, "When it comes to you Rodney, I've always got the time."

She was finishing up some paperwork on her laptop. Being forever paranoid, Rodney just assumed that they were probably notes on himself. God knows what his file looked like. It was probably half a meter thick by now.

He sat on the couch, twiddled his thumbs. "They found Sheppard."

"I know. Elizabeth told me."

He twiddled his thumbs some more. He couldn't think how to phrase what was on his mind. Kate didn't break into his thoughts, although he noticed that she did seem a teeny bit surprised that Rodney McKay was actually having a moment of silence.

"Do you think he's going to be okay?"

She sat forward in her chair. "I don't know. I haven't seen him yet."

He sighed. Made his thumbs circle each other with a forwards motion and then did the same action in reverse. "You wouldn't tell me anyway."

"Client confidentiality, Rodney. You know that."

"He seemed okay when he came through the stargate. Sort of."

She sat back in her chair, regarded him with a thoughtful expression on her face. "You're feeling guilty about something. You're always like this when you feel guilty."

Yeah, guilt was a great way to describe it. "I keep thinking that maybe if I'd woken up sooner - if I'd woken up, maybe I could have-"

He didn't get a chance to finish. Kate interrupted him. She did it out of necessity because letting Rodney finish his thoughts could occupy the entire hour.

"-Have what? Fought them off? Got the team back to the 'gate? Got out your tricorder and followed their warp signature?"

"Sarcasm. Always good coming from a psychologist."

"Rodney, if I tried being nice to you all of the time, you'd walk all over me."

He did manage to smile at that. "True. I'm not a big respecter of someone who can't hold their own in a conversation."

"What did you plan on doing if you'd somehow managed to wake up for the big event?"

"Something…"

"What?"

He pursed his lips together, irritated. "I don't exactly know."

She came over to the couch, sat down beside him. "You did everything you could. You raised the alarm, you helped get Teyla and Ronon back to Atlantis, you helped the SAR team, you went with Teyla and Ronon to interview the villagers. You were there every step of the way."

"It didn't help though, did it? We didn't find him. We failed. I failed."

It was Kate's turn to sigh. He knew why she was sighing. They'd been down this particular mine field strewn path before.

"You didn't fail. You did your best and the outcome wouldn't have changed."

"You don't know that. You're not a freaking psychic."

She gave him a pat on the knee. "Rodney, failure is okay. That's just life. It happens. It's not an executable offence."

He shook his head. "I hate failing. I don't fail. I can't fail. People rely on me not to fail."

"I know that. But every so often it's going to happen. I know you don't want to hear it, but that's reality."

Great, now he was even more miserable. That's what came from being a genius with pushy parents. He was forever terminally afraid of disappointing people, afraid to try anything out of his comfort zone in case he fell flat on his face and hopelessly competitive with people he perceived could possibly make him look like an idiot.

He changed the subject back to Sheppard again. "You know, he'd better not die or go crazy or anything stupid, because he's about the only person who can tolerate me."

Kate gave him her supportive psychologist's smile. "Rodney, at this rate we're going to be seeing each other for a very long time."

((--))

He woke up with a start, and realized he was still in the infirmary, and he was lying on his right side instead of his left. An automated blood pressure cuff was on his left arm. He was hooked up to a cardiac monitor. He still had the IV catheter taped to the back of his hand, but thankfully no actual IV. There was a pulse oximeter on his finger. He wasn't fond of the cardiac monitor. It usually meant that some nurse would have entertained him or herself by shaving little patches in his chest hair before sticking on the electrode pads. It also meant he would end up having to pull the electrodes off in the shower, and they were a bitch to get off.

Richard was standing beside him, reading off the figures from the monitor. Noticed he was awake. "Glad to have you back."

"What happened?"

"You fainted. Let me comm Dr. Beckett and he'll explain it to you."

Carson was in the room so fast, Sheppard felt dizzy. Or maybe he really was dizzy.

"What's up Doc?" He'd decided on a different tact. He still didn't care, but if he let himself delve into self pity, he'd never get out. The best method was just to grin, bare it, and pretend it wasn't really as bad as he thought it was. It seemed appropriate to fake feeling okay by using the line that drove Carson endlessly crazy and could be used for the entire length of an infirmary stay.

Beckett made a face. "We are not doing that again. We agreed. No more torturing the nice doctor with quotes from Looney Tunes. Or The Simpsons. Or Futurama."

"Where's your sense of humor?"

"Having a holiday at the moment. It should be back tomorrow."

"I can go back to doing this tomorrow?"

"Would you like me to explain why you fainted?"

"I believe the term is: passed out."

Beckett let out a put upon groan. "If you keep this up, I'm violating patient confidentiality and telling Rodney."

Sheppard winced, but it wasn't from the pain. "You're not supposed to threaten your patients."

"My patients aren't supposed to drive me crazy." Carson had crossed his arms in a gesture that indicated he was moving towards a lowered tolerance for excessive jocularity from Sheppard.

"Okay, okay. Let's back to the passing out scenario." Sheppard signaled he would take the conversation seriously.

"You had what we like to call an episode of vasodepressor syncope. Basically in certain circumstances, people faint. Certain sights, smells. Hunger. Your blood pressure dropped rapidly but you recovered just as rapidly. No sign of any cardiac abnormalities I'd say it was a one off incident."

"After all that, you're telling me I fainted and you don't know why I fainted."

"No, I'm telling you that you fainted, and it was not unexpected, and that I don't think it will happen again."

"Thanks. Just what I wanted to hear."

Carson changed the subject. "Are you still hungry?"

"Yeah. Starved."

"We'll get you something else." Translation - Carson was going to order his nurse to get another plate of food. Richard didn't even have to be asked.

With Richard gone, Beckett occupied himself by checking out the chart again and Sheppard was kind of glad that Carson had been giving him a hard time. After a few rounds in the infirmary Carson had learnt that the best way of reassuring Sheppard was not to use a sympathetic, gentle manner. If Carson was giving him shit, it usually meant he was going to be okay.

Notes checked again, the doctor seemed at a loss for what he should do next.

"Carson. Seriously. Babysitting. Not cool."

"I just want to make sure you've got some company for the time being. When Richard is back, and you've eaten something, we're going to need to make the bed more comfortable."

"I'm more than happy to just lie here and while away the minutes before Nurse Richard brings me another round of scrambled eggs."

"You're sure?"

"You know, one day you're going to make a wonderful grandmother."

"That's enough out of you, Colonel." Beckett smiled when he said it, so Sheppard figured he hadn't been hugely insulted. Or maybe the doctor was just relieved that Sheppard seemed to have managed to be more like the Sheppard everyone expected.

He watched him go, tried to get comfortable for a few minutes. He wondered if he could take Carson up on the offer of a laptop. Or at least get a visitor. His team members would be good for a start. A few hours earlier and he thought they'd all been kidnapped, and it wouldn't hurt to put his mind at ease. He just had to convince Carson to let them into the room and clutter up the place.

He shifted again, trying to get comfortable but it wasn't going to be easy. What he really wanted to do was sit up, so he got his arm back under him, pushed himself up on one side, and then was able to roll over enough to sit up. He managed all of this without pulling off the leads. Unfortunately now that he was sitting up, he couldn't actually rest his back comfortably because the bed kept pushing into his lower back. He squirmed around again, and the back of his feet hurt and maybe he should lie down again, but he didn't want to. Lying down felt wrong. Like he couldn't breath, or something was doing the breathing for him and it was uncomfortable. He jerked a foot, almost by reflex, looked around the room, startled to think that he knew where he was – Atlantis – and yet the room didn't seem like it was in Atlantis. It seemed that the room was somewhere else, and it was vaguely familiar and it wasn't in a good way.

His chest felt strange, like a band had tightened around his rib cage and he wasn't going to be able to get enough air, and his brain kept telling him that perhaps it would be a good time to get up and get out. He was a soldier and he never questioned his instincts. If his instincts said danger was just around the corner, then he just got the hell out or fired a shot, or whatever. Fight or flee.

His current mental indicators seemed to think the fleeing option was a good choice and he knew he was operating on automatic but it was time to go. Seriously, time to go.

He got his feet over the side of the bed, gently stood up, figured his heels would be painful and they were. But the pain could be ignored. He'd run through basic training with a broken bone in his foot. This was nothing.

The next trick was to disconnect the leads and that would mean the alarm would sound and Beckett and every nurse in a five mile radius would be in the room. The rapidly growing, irrational part of him told him that somehow he would have to run out faster than they could run in. He stared at the controls on the monitor for an unknown length of time, realized he didn't have much of a clue as to how the machine worked. Although theoretically just turning it off would have a far less dramatic result. He presumed.

"What in the hell are you doing out of bed?"

He whirled around, nearly jumping out of his skin in fright. Found Richard clutching another tray of food and Carson standing, both hands on his hips like he was getting ready for a gun fight.

"Uh, I needed to take a leak," he fibbed. No use telling Carson that he'd been ready to make a run for it and for reasons he didn't understand except that the room felt ominous.

"Did it not occur to you to use the call button?" Carson had relaxed, and instead of looking like he was going to get into a shooting match with Sheppard, he just seemed to wish that his patients would stop making their own medical decisions.

"Um, sorry," said Sheppard.

"Of course you're sorry. You're sorry and I'm the one that gets stuck with the wrecked medical equipment and having to do another round of sutures." He chivvied Sheppard back to bed. "If you need to use the facilities, you've got just one choice at the moment. Urine bottle."

"I don't recall you being this much of a bastard when I was last here."

"The last time you were here you were hallucinating from the accidental ingestion of the local's equivalent of a marijuana brownie. For the first twenty-four hours you thought you were in a hotel and I was the concierge."

Oh yeah. He'd almost forgotten about that and about the fact that Rodney had been reduced to crying with laughter when he'd spent an hour insisting that Carson charge the bill for his hotel stay to the US Air Force.

With a bit of maneuvering between the three of them they managed to get him back into bed, and there were more pillows and more propping and eventually he was ready to eat again. This time there was no fainting for which he was glad because with the eggs in front of him, his brain pretty much focused down to just one thing. Stuffing his face like a pig.

For the next thirty minutes the only sounds he made were associated with chewing.

((--))

Biro had run her test multiple times, checked her technique, checked the equipment for contamination. She had initially been confused, and had seriously pondered the contamination angle, but had then been at a loss to explain how such a contamination of the samples could have occurred.

In the end, she'd had to conclude that the test result was correct. She'd commed Dr. Weir urgently. She'd commed Dr. Beckett urgently. She's even put a call through to Dr. McKay.

They were sitting in the conference room and they seemed as stunned as she was. Rodney kept asking if she was sure her test protocols were correct.

"I've checked and rechecked. The result is right. The DNA from the epithelial are Asgard. Or I should say, Asgard related."

"But there aren't any Asgard in the Pegasus galaxy. Unless you count Hermiod when the Daedalus arrives." Beckett was confused as everyone else. "And the last time I looked I don't think Hermiod had taken to kidnapping as a hobby."

"More to the point, the Daedalus has been en route from Earth. Hermiod couldn't have done it," commented Elizabeth.

"Then why the hell have we got DNA that points to Asgard?" Rodney was giving Biro a look that seemed to imply she'd made up her result.

Biro explained. "As you know the Asgard are clones. Even though their cloning process is incredibly sophisticated, over the centuries they've introduced micro alterations and errors. Not enough to produce mutations but the genome is experiencing degradation. It's enough that if I look at the samples I obtained from Sheppard I can see that they don't contain the same errors."

Beckett and McKay both looked stunned by her revelation.

"And?" Elizabeth hated it when she lagged behind in team conversations. Served her right for getting a doctorate in political science.

"And it means the sample possibly came from the Asgard's ancestors."

It was Elizabeth's turn to look stunned. "You mean…"

"Yes, whoever – or whatever - took Colonel Sheppard is possibly the originator of the Asgard race."

((--))