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

A/N: ... You know, I really need to work out my new life schedule with all the stuff going on now. I apologize for the lateness here; I think I may be changing the day I post in the future... but, who knows? Anyway, I hope this is a fun chapter, even if it's probably not been worth the wait. I'll try to do better.

Previously: Anna's still determined to find a way to make ZPMs on Atlantis, even though she knows the odds are against her. But at least her working with Rodney (in chapter 83) may have led to something valuable.


Chapter 103. In Plain Sight.

The mess hall had tall ceilings and bright walls. Windows replaced panels maybe three meters above the floor, ensuring that it was bright during the day and had a beautiful view of the stars at night. It was warm in the summer—warmer than usual, anyway, since the weather around Atlantis rarely changed even a little. Much like everything else around Atlantis.

Anna counted out the months and days and realized that it was basically almost June now, and, as fun as school was here… it was also a lot. She just didn't know how to ask for a little time off for summer. She doubted that any around here were going to be indulging in any mainland beach holidays, but Anna sure would have liked that a lot.

She could suggest a holiday. Surely Elizabeth, even if she was a pale-skinned redhead, would even like the sun a little. On the other hand, Anna wasn't sure Radek really knew what outside was like.

That was severely unfair now. Anna scolded herself for the tired joke of ribbing Radek for his preference for indoors. Especially since he obviously spent much more time outdoors than Anna did now, and was probably outside this moment. The planet he and Major Lorne's team was visiting was mostly an indoor affair from what Anna understood. In fact, it was almost exactly like being in Atlantis.

Maybe they all needed to get out more.

She was in another galaxy. She couldn't think how to get more out.

Anna pulled up a map of Atlantis and studied the Central Tower. The lower levels had been given a once over early on by teams, but as soon as it was decided that it was non-essential to the operation of the city, they'd been left alone. Since Anna was granted at least a day or two's reprieve from most school work, thanks to Rodney's current 'gate schedule and the fact it was technically summer, she decided it was as good a time as any to go exploring.

Alone.

She needed to get out more.

Or maybe not alone, since Iskaan might have been coming to Atlantis today with the Athosian traders. He would be leaving again tomorrow for another planet to trade, but one day was better than none. It was why she was in the mess hall. It was the easiest place for Iskaan to find her if he had a few spare hours to kill after loading the Puddle Jumper.

After an hour of waiting, she heard him speaking as he approached. She turned and saw Iskaan coming into the mess hall. With Panin. The last time Anna saw her had been… a while ago. She said hello almost whenever she visited the Athosians, except the one time they decided to go mountain climbing and Anna returned to Atlantis with a sprained ankle.

Iskaan spotted her and waved, pointed her location out to Panin. Panin seemed pleased to see Anna as they approached.

"What are you up to?" Iskaan asked without so much as a hello. He stepped over the bench and sat beside Anna. Panin slid next to Iskaan.

Anna showed Iskaan the tablet. "About to go exploring, I hope."

"Exploring the city?" Panin didn't look convinced. "Isn't that dangerous?"

"Maybe a little," Anna admitted. "But it's pretty safe as long as you don't touch anything."

Iskaan considered the map closely as he said, "Jinto got lost discovering the transporters once."

That almost proved Anna's point. "He touched the wall, then."

Panin smirked. "Is the floor alright to touch?"

"I hope so." Anna smiled and glanced down at her map for a moment. Then she glanced back up.

Iskaan and Panin were sitting together, quite close. Their shoulders were almost touching, in fact. Anna supposed she didn't know any better, but it seemed like Panin was hanging off his arm as they walked through the mess hall. Maybe it meant nothing. Maybe she was just nervous about exploring Atlantis.

After all, sometimes the floor wasn't even safe to touch here.

Iskaan was acting strangely distant to her, though, wasn't he? Anna couldn't decide. Maybe they'd always been this way. But they hadn't always been this way. The last time she'd seen him, they shared the most incandescent kiss Anna had ever experienced.

Okay, the only kiss she'd ever experienced.

Was she jealous?

She was jealous. Unbelievable.

"Are we going or what?" Iskaan wondered after apparently getting tired of waiting for Anna to try to figure out what their relationship was. If they had one anymore.

Anna nodded and picked up her tablet as she rose. "Yes. If you want to come."

Iskaan looked at Panin, who shrugged in response to the invitation. "I don't have anything better to do."

That would have to be good enough. Anna figured she wanted to go exploring today for about the same reason. Also, she just knew there had to be a ZPM-making room somewhere around here. Probably wouldn't find it today. But she wasn't going to stop looking until she'd found it.

Or until she ran out of places to look. Whatever came first.

Anna pulled up a copy of the lowest level in Atlantis on her tablet. She turned it so that Iskaan and Panin could see. "This is where we're going. It's the very lowest level of Atlantis."

"Underwater?" Iskaan looked thrilled as he said it. Panin's response was less than thrilled.

Anna nodded with a grin. "Yes."

"What are we looking for?" Panin asked uncertainly.

"I'm not sure. Something amazing." Something that would get Anna into the best good graces she could imagine with Rodney. And everyone else. But anything less, but still amazing, would be okay, too.

Panin frowned. "Not too amazing, I hope."

"Let's go!" Iskaan jumped up from the chair and headed to the nearest transporter.

Anna followed at some distance while Panin lagged even further behind. Anna sighed and turned back to look at her. She knew she had no reason to be jealous. After all… so what if Iskaan and Panin were together. From what Anna understood of Athosians… it seemed like a lot of them were, in one way or at one time or another. It was just something to get used to…

And decide if she wanted to live with.

"We'll be very careful," Anna said to Panin, hanging back to fall in step with her. "I know how to tell whether a room has something big in it to be careful about."

Panin brightened a bit. "You do?"

"For the most part. I can't predict anything for certain, but… well, if you've ever met Doctor Zelenka, you'd know that being very careful is practically in my blood."

Whether she knew Radek or not, Panin found that funny. They joined Iskaan in the transporter and touched the glowing speck for the lowest level in Atlantis…

As usual, the lights turned on for them when they left the transporter. Iskaan immediately headed off down the nearest hallway, and Anna made a notation on her map to mark which hallways they'd explored. There was another map similar to this one, made by Atlantis expedition scientists, with cursory notes made on the contents of each room. Some had a catalog number, to show whether specimens had been collected for further study. Most of the lower rooms appeared empty according to their notes.

The first few rooms Iskaan went in didn't seem to have a very high power capacity, but they were magnificent in their own way. Walls of windows lined one side of the room, giving spectacular views to the abyss outside. He skipped a few rooms ahead while Anna and Panin still stood looking at the ocean.

"Anna?" Panin wondered after a moment of looking at the water.

Anna glanced at her. "Hm?"

"I get the feeling… um… have I said something wrong?" she asked.

Anna didn't realize she was that obvious. "Oh. No. Not really. It's just…" She sighed and decided to be blunt. Athosians seemed to be that way. Even fi Anna was decidedly not. "Are you and Iskaan together?"

"Together?" Panin seemed mystified.

Anna nodded, and looked out the window. Nothing much seemed to be happening here, except for a few fish swimming by periodically. One school of shining green fished seemed to be swimming in circles around the tower. "You know. Like…"

"Together." Panin sighed, shook her head. "Not yet."

"Not yet?" What did that mean? She hoped Panin would just explain, and she wouldn't have to ask.

"I know your people don't do things this way, but…" Panin hesitated a while and then said, "Iskaan and I are sort of what you might call 'together.' But I don't think it's like what you mean when you say 'together.'"

Oh, well, that explained practically nothing. "What?"

Panin giggled and blushed. "You know our people do not have just one… um, what do you call it? A 'mate' or…?"

Anna didn't know what she'd call it, but that seemed as good as anything.

"It's important to us to keep our family lines strong, to be able to survive against the Wraith. And also it's important that no family is destroyed forever. So we have children with one person within our group—as Iskaan and I—and one person from outside our group."

"Oh." That seemed like a recipe for disaster in Anna's mind. But, then, it wasn't as though the Athosians were full of individuals who never got along and couldn't work together. Anna had to remind herself that even many families on Earth weren't that way. "So you and Iskaan are…?"

"It's not by contract, or anything." Panin sighed, and crouched to look out the window from the floor. "It was a silly agreement made between children."

Anna didn't get a chance to respond, because Iskaan came back in. "What are you two doing? There's another room where you can see the underside of the pier." With that, he left.

Anna turned back to Panin. "Maybe he'll come back around?"

Panin smiled. "You don't really hope that."

Any attempts at feigning surprise were immediately squashed. She didn't, but she didn't want anybody to be hurt. Of course, she wasn't sure she believed it was possible for anyone to not be hurt in situations like these.

"I know that Iskaan has been spending much time with you." Panin shrugged. "You're exotic."

"I'm exotic?"

"Being from another planet is nothing, but you're from another galaxy and your people are so very different from ours. And you live on our planet. I can't blame him. I would be attracted, too." Panin stood, looking at Anna sideways. "I guess Iskaan is exotic to you?"

"I don't know if that's how I would put it," Anna mumbled.

"You find him attractive anyway. We have that in common." Panin smiled and stepped closer to Anna, as if that was basis enough for them to be friends. Perhaps even good friends.

Anna was momentarily baffled. Then it occurred to her: this type of jealousy Anna felt might not have been in Panin's situational vocabulary here. Panin wasn't competing—she was never competing. She always thought they could share Iskaan. And she thought that Anna thought the same thing. After all, Panin and Anna were not from the same group at all. Panin was on the inside and Anna was on the outside.

Whether Anna thought they could share or not, she was sure she didn't want to be Panin's enemy. It was much better to be friends.

"I guess we do have that in common," Anna allowed, and they left the room together.

Most of the rooms on the outside ring of the tower consumed very little power, if any. None of the rooms reached the power consumption that any of the higher-level labs did. Anna made notes on her map of what she thought each room was for, and what was inside. Most of the rooms seemed to have nothing at all inside except for windows and benches for looking underwater. She wondered that the Ancients had observation areas for fish, but she supposed they liked to observe wildlife just like anyone else.

One room, though… one room was different. Judging by the rings on the pipes leading into the room, it used up a lot of power. Iskaan had already walked past it, apparently writing it off as another ocean observation room.

"Wait," Anna said, calling him back and looking into the room. "What's in here?"

"I didn't see anything." Iskaan started walking back toward her anyway. The lights in the hallway followed him, turning dim when he was no longer in proximity.

Anna stepped into the dark room and looked around. Like Iskaan said… it was empty. "That's weird…" With a room like this, completely bare, she was no longer mystified that the windows lining the walls looked out to the ocean.

"Weird? What is?" Panin asked, walking into the room after her to look out the window.

Anna joined her at the glass, walking along from pane to pane. The center pane seemed to have some sort of Ancient written on it in raised letters. A word with six letters. Anna recognized most of them from other Ancient notation all over the city, but she didn't remember ever seeing this word before. When Panin touched the raised letters, they glowed like one of the 'gate's control buttons up in the operations room.

"Isn't that interesting?" Iskaan observed, and joined them at the window. "Is that what you meant, Anna? That this was in here?"

"I don't think this is using enough power to account for all that…" Anna mumbled, looking up at the ceiling for a moment before entering the letters into her tablet opened to the Ancient database. She frowned at the result. "It says something like 'look' or 'see.' I guess… maybe it's how the Ancients have plaques?"

Funny thing to have on a plaque, though. What was it saying? Here's a window. Look through it.

"There should be something in here, shouldn't there?" Anna asked. Probably more asking the ceiling than anything else.

"What if it's just to see fish…?" Iskaan wondered from the window. Sure enough, a school of shimmering green fish made their way by outside.

Anna shook her head and turned slowly. "There is much more power going into this room than what would just be for a few windows…" As nice as the windows were. She imagined that sometimes the dolphin-like creatures she saw some mornings could be seen down here. She made a mental note to check, and traced her eyes over the ceiling and along each of the paneled walls.

Iskaan looked around, too, as if he might have any idea what she was looking for.

But Anna didn't see anything. It looked like a room of windows on one wall, and three other blank ones. Every other wall panel had a bench, and the panel between the outside two benches on each side had a wall sconce. These didn't seem to be working, though.

Iskaan walked to the empty wall panel in the center. "This is strange."

"I was just thinking that." Anna tugged Panin along with her to Iskaan's side.

It seemed to take Panin a few seconds to catch up with their reasoning, but she said after a moment, "You think there is something hidden here?" She bent to inspect the seam of the floor and the wall, starting in the right side corner.

"If it's a door, it's huge…" Anna mumbled.

"Maybe it's not a door," Iskaan said. "Maybe it's hiding something else."

"What would it be if not a door?"

Anna waved away Iskaan's answer before he could start. "It doesn't matter, whatever it is. What we need first is power. This room eats a lot of it…"

"The lights didn't turn on when we walked in," Panin pointed out from the floor.

Anna glanced at the sconces. "Yes?"

"She's right. All the other lights have," Iskaan said.

Anna tried not to pout. How had she not taken notice of that when they walked in? Too busy looking at the power indicator rings, probably… That was it. But it took her literal months to figure that connection out.

It didn't matter who noticed what first. She guessed she was a little happy that Panin was smart enough to help her out with this mystery. With a heavy sigh, Anna turned back to the ocean. "That means… either power isn't getting to this room… or it's shut off somewhere."

"I don't think you are allowed to redirect power, are you?" Iskaan said.

Anna shook her head a little somberly. "No. I'm not." She thought about that for a moment, while another fish—like a piranha the size of a sun fish—wiggled along outside. It seemed to be watching her with his big, amber eye. Anna spun away from the fish to Iskaan and Panin. "But that doesn't usually matter for the lights. Even in sections where power is diverted away, sections of Atlantis we aren't using, the lights still work. Unless something is malfunctioning…"

"So it's either shut off," Iskaan said, "or broken."

"Or something else may just be drawing power off the lights," Anna added.

"Three options?" Panin said from her seat on the floor against the blank wall, sounding more discouraged as they talked. "How do you know there's even something here, Anna? This room is in the very middle of the lowest floor. Your people would have found something if it were here."

"They wouldn't," Anna said. "They didn't know something was here."

"But neither do we," Panin said.

Anna sighed, and so did Iskaan. Then Panin sighed, too.

"Let's start from the beginning, then." Iskaan went to the doorway, turned around, and looked at them. "What did we see when we first walked in?"

"The ocean," Panin said, sounding bored.

"Okay." Iskaan walked to the windows and looked out at the fish. Then he looked down at the six embossed Ancient letters on the window. "Then you saw these, Anna."

"Yes. But they just say look," Anna said. She walked over to touch them again, make them shine. " We looked."

"Looked at what?" Iskaan said, and turned around to see the rest of the room.

"I don't know? Outside? The water?" Anna said, and looked at the room behind them. The empty wall was directly across the room from the letters on the window. She looked back at the window.

Iskaan looked back at the letters, too. The runes that must have seemed foreign and magical to him. They were foreign to Anna, but only as magical as they were infuriating. Why would the single inscription on a window out to the ocean have the one instruction that wasn't required to understand a window? It didn't make sense. The Ancients were a bit anal about documenting everything, testing everything, having painstaking instructions for everything… but for windows?

"Does it say anything else?" Iskaan drew his finger over them again, this time from the end of the word to the beginning.

Anna watched, entering the letters into her tablet in reverse order this time, just to see if Iskaan was onto something with the whole backwards angle.

That precise moment, she realized. She was very familiar with these ancient letters. She'd seen them everywhere, but only in a different arrangement.

"It says 'start.'"

"What?"

"Or 'beginning.' Something like that. It's on all the Ancient machines we've found so far, except for the gate," Anna said, touching the second to last letter in the word. "It's an anagram."

"Anagram…?" Iskaan mumbled, watching Anna brush her fingers over each of the letters.

They responded to her touch as they had every time, but this time in a different order than from beginning to end. She touched the last letter, and it seemed like nothing happened. The sconces didn't light and the walls didn't shift.

"Did anything happen?" Iskaan wondered, and turned to look around. Anna was still wondering if she'd spelled the word wrong when Iskaan breathed. "Oh my…"

Anna whipped around. Nothing in the room had changed except the walls. Now, it appeared Panin sat against a glass wall, but these not looking into the ocean. Beyond the glass, another room twice the side of the one they were in held dozens of shining machines and consoles.

And though the window directly behind Panin, a skeleton dressed in ragged Ancient apparel sat alone. Propped up in a chair. As if it had been watching the ocean for the last ten thousand years. Or perhaps it had been watching them.


Czech Things

Someone. Please. What is the word for anagram in Czech? Google tells me it's "anagram." I looked at a Czech to English dictionary and found "přesmyčka" also. So I assume… it's literally just anagram. But it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to figure that out. Been too long since I used Google for this kind of thing, let me tell you.


A/N: *facedesk* I did it again. A chapter with only OCs. But, I don't know, the last time this happened was chapter 38, which was a heck of a long time ago. So, could I get a pass on that? Not to mention that if I added a section for Radek here…? It'd be a longer chapter than I want to deal with, anyway.

Also. Apparently when I'm stuck for ideas, my brain goes, "Well, how about there was a skeleton? How about that?"


Next time: It's not as if your name is unique in all the Earth, either.