Reminder:
"This is spoken English."
"This is spoken Czech."
This is a thought.

To Linda: It's true. This is my AU so I can do what I want. But I like to change the story in ways the single character I've added could have changed it. I don't know why. But, then, you can't change a character so significantly like I did with giving Zelenka a daughter and expect everything to stay the same. So things veer off course, it just takes time. ... ... Maybe I just like to hear myself talk. haha

Last time: Anna's first trip through the Stargate is to check out a downed Wraith dart Doctor McKay happens to be trapped in. This can't possibly go worse than it already is. Right?


Chapter 23. Complex.

"What do you think?" Sheppard asked.

It looked like Earth, like they'd just been traveling outside a major city somewhere near home. They traipsed through a wide open field ringed with trees, dotted with wildflowers and ragged with grass. It looked like the perfect place to put a farm or settlement. Not the perfect place for a bunch of scientists, though. If stereotypes held true, some of them probably had horrible allergies. And it looked like the season for tree pollen.

Anna looked at Colonel Sheppard. "It's nice," she said. "If you ignore the Wraith dart."

He smiled at that.

"Do you think the Wraith will come back?"

"If they were going to, they would have by now," Colonel Sheppard said.

She arched an eyebrow. "Really?"

"It'd make your dad feel better, so that's what I'm going with," he said with an impish grin. Anna looked toward the sky with that declaration, but... well, she probably trusted Sheppard. He wouldn't put people in danger for no reason, and Wraith were nothing to mess around with. "As far as the Wraith are concerned, they're done here."

Anna glanced around and tried to imagine living here. Tried to imagine the sky streaked with the ebony darts, her friends and family scooped up. No survivors. It made the Wraith's return unlikely. But it also made Colonel Sheppard's cavalier attitude a tad inappropriate.

On the other hand, he was serious at the same time. It was hard to explain.

"How's it going?" Colonel Sheppard walked over to Radek. "Did you find what we want?"

Doctor Beckett was leaning over his shoulder, looking at the screen and nodding as Radek explained, in Czech, what needed to happen next. Anna had seen this sort of thing happen before. Doctor Beckett was interested in everything, even things he wasn't interested in. As long as someone wanted to explain what they were doing, Doctor Beckett was a listening ear.

"Um, well, yes," Radek said. He fiddled with his glasses again and gestured at the laptop he'd been showing Doctor Beckett. "But it's very complex. This interface controls the machine that dematerializes people, stores their information, and then rematerializes them again when commanded to."

"Great," Colonel Sheppard said. "Command it to."

"Did he not hear you say 'it's very complex'?" Anna asked.

Doctor Beckett smiled at her, almost chuckled.

"I can't," Radek said to Colonel Sheppard. "The rematerializer is storing two lifesigns."

Colonel Sheppard looked at Anna. Probably scolding her for mocking him in another language. "Well, that's good," Colonel Sheppard said.

"Yes," Radek agreed. "But there is only enough power in the Dart's energy cell to successfully rematerialize one of them." He pointed at the two signals shown on the laptop. "Power to the rematerializer has been completely severed and emergency back-up power is completely run down."

Anna sighed when she saw the signals indicated on the laptop. Of course, they were completely androgynous signals… She didn't know anything about it, of course, but both of them looked about the same, anyway. At least, Anna thought with some form of macabre amusement, there was no difference in taste between the male and female life force, or else they might take a little bit more care to label the food in their dart refrigerators.

"Okay?" Colonel Sheppard said.

"You have to decide which one to beam out," Radek finished.

Doctor Beckett shook his head. "That's a terrible choice to have to make."

"No, it's easy," Colonel Sheppard said. "Beam out McKay. He'll figure out how to get Cadman free."

"No, no, no," Radek said. "I'm sorry. I was unclear."

"You can't tell who is who," Anna spoke up. Even she could see that, but maybe the colonel wasn't looking. Besides… why did they need McKay for this?

"Yes." Radek smiled at her, but quickly replaced it with a dutiful frown when he looked to the colonel. Sheppard didn't seem to share his mirth. "They just read as lifesigns."

"Perfect," Colonel Sheppard muttered. "Alright. That one." He pointed to one of the life signs.

"Can't we wait?" Anna asked. She looked at Radek. He looked like he'd been punched in the stomach, but he glanced at Colonel Sheppard for approval.

"Go," Colonel Sheppard said. He motioned to the scientists standing around to move back.

"We've been here half an hour—what if something goes wrong?" Anna asked.

Radek sighed and shook his head. "Colonel, we should bring the dart back to Atlantis. We will probably be able to reverse-engineer a power source that—"

"Probably?" Colonel Sheppard said.

Anna frowned. She glanced at Radek.

"No," he said. "No, we can."

Colonel Sheppard stood next to the gaggle of scientists, out of the line of sight of the Wraith beam. He motioned at Radek to get on with it.

Anna stepped back. "This isn't good," she mumbled. "This can't be good."

All the same, she watched in dismay as Radek gave the unit the command. A white beam of light shot over the grass a few feet away, leaving Doctor McKay in its place. Half a second later, Doctor McKay collapsed in the grass.

Doctor Beckett—and everyone else—was at his side a moment later. Doctor Beckett checked for a pulse, then looked back at Colonel Sheppard. "His pulse is stable, but I need to get him back to Atlantis." He motioned for one of his medical team to bring him something. It was apparently some special medical team sign language.

Radek stood back, looking horrified. After all... he could have killed someone. At least, to hear Radek tell the story of how much he simply didn't know about the machine he'd just entered a few commands into.

Colonel Sheppard tapped his radio. "Teyla, Lorne, help the Doc head back to the city with McKay. We're gonna stay here with Zelenka and try to bring back as much of the dart as possible."

Anna stood back and watched Doctor Beckett and his team load Doctor McKay onto a stretcher. She didn't know anything about Wraith beaming technology, but he seemed to look okay. Despite the fact that he'd immediately collapsed. Not pale, and all his arms and legs were present and accounted for. Maybe just getting down to business was the way things worked in the Pegasus galaxy.

On the other hand, she couldn't ignore how irritated and distressed Radek looked. Jumping in feet-first might have been the way Colonel Sheppard did things, but it wasn't the way Radek did them.

She went next to Radek, where he crouched on the ground next to the dart. "Why did you do that?" she asked quietly, kneeling next to him.

"With Rodney's help, we can cobble together a solution for Cadman," he said.

"Cobble together?" Anna asked. She was unconvinced. This wasn't the person she remembered. Didn't people usually complain that he took too long, went over things ten and twenty times before going over it another couple dozen times?

But everything he ever did was perfect.

"It will work," he said. "This is Pegasus."

Pegasus. She sighed, and nodded. She shouldn't be questioning him. But he had sort of let Colonel Sheppard bully him into a solution that wasn't really a solution at all. What did Colonel Sheppard do? If needed someone to shoot Doctor McKay, Colonel Sheppard would be the one to call.

But as long as someone was stuck in a Wraith rematerializer, Anna could think of a few people she'd choose over Colonel Sheppard to call.

"Can I help?" she asked.

"Yeah, yeah." He looked up at one of the other scientists. "Schreiber, let's get this moving." He looked at her. "We'll need a winch."

Anna nodded. "I'll help Schreiber pick up the pieces."

Schreiber was on the top of the dart, peering down into it, probably trying to figure out how to tow it back to the 'gate with as few problems as possible. Anna saw the German flag on her shoulder. "It looks like a dinosaur skeleton," she said.

"It does, doesn't it?" Schreiber laughed, but it died away pretty quickly. "Mixed with an arachnid."

Anna shivered at the mental picture of an eight-legged raptor while she looked at the underside of the dart. It seemed a lot of its mechanical parts were encapsulated by something less… mechanical. And more slimy and disgusting. "Is it supposed to be gooey like this?"

"Wraith ships are partly organic," Schreiber said. "Fortunately, this is probably what we need." She held up an obviously broken black thing. It was a strange shape and slick with whatever organics made up the ship. "This…" she said, then pointed around on the ground and broken fragments of the dart's undercarriage. "And that. And that. That over there."

Anna laughed. "I get it." She went around and picked up all the small bits from the grass she could find, laying them out carefully on a tray. She heard Radek swearing at his computer a few steps away. He slammed it shut a few obscenities later.

Colonel Sheppard better hurry with that winch.


A/N: This episode irritates me a little as far as Zelenka goes. He seems too careful about the things he does (Trinity?) ("What are you? Union?" –potentially my favorite line regarding Zelenka ever) to just haphazardly pick a random thing and go. John? Not so much (except… Trinity? Somebody help…). So I decided John instigates this whole mess against Zelenka's wishes.

All that to say, forgive Zelenka for the next little while. He's very stressed and very unlike himself. He'll get back to normal. Eventually. It's just one thing after another for this poor guy right now…


Next time: Things are happening on Atlantis! This is the most exciting thing to happen to me in months, at least! So why do I have to be here?