Time Immemorial

Chapter 32: Divide and Conquer

July 17th
0855 Hours

He bolted upright with a start. Breathing heavily from the shock, he fought a sense of vertigo as his eyes darted around, attempting to latch onto anything discernible before him. He felt like he was falling, tumbling in a vast void of nothingness. He braced himself with one arm on whatever solid surface he was sitting on, a lone island in an ocean of blackness.

Calm down, John, he told himself. Control your breathing. There you go.

As his breathing and pulse normalized, so, too, did his vision, finally adjusting to the dim light of his surroundings. He was able to make out the perimeter of a small room.

Still in Atlantis, he thought, noting the distinctive architecture. Still not dead.

It was that last thought that brought a wave of memories rushing back like a torrent. Antigonos, the pier, Wraith, Rodney... a knife to the gut.

Instinctively he touched his abdomen. But his fingers, suddenly shaky with the memory, did not find the wound that he expected - that he knew - to be there. There was no blood, no tear in his shirt, no gouge in his flesh.

Sheppard swung his legs over the edge of the table upon which he had awoken. He rubbed his temples in vexation. What the heck is going on here? he wondered. The last thing he remembered was bleeding out on the floor of a hallway, Dr. McKay there with him and Dr. Beckett too far away to do any good. There was no doubt in the major's mind that he shouldn't - couldn't - have survived. He should be dead.

But I'm not, obviously, he told himself. I feel good. Hell, better than good, and definitely better than I have during this whole ordeal.

Looking around the darkness for answers, his eyes landed on the very table on which he sat. The sight caused him to jump to the floor in alarm. He stumbled a few steps away before wheeling back round.

There was no mistaking the shape. A human body lied atop the flat surface, a sheet draped respectfully over its form. The major was more than a little creeped out to think that he had been on top of the thing for who knows how long. But the feeling passed as something else took hold of him, an inexplainable curiosity that drew him toward the body. As he reached for the sheet, a singular question he feared he already knew the answer to but couldn't rationally accept formed in his mind: Whose body...? He tugged off the sheet decisively.

Sheppard swallowed. He stared wide-eyed at the corpse before him. "I am dead..."

The prone body - his body - faced the ceiling, eyelids shut. John examined it - him - warily. His eyes picked out the physical trauma of the past day: a gunshot wound to the shoulder, a black eye, a broken nose, the letter lambda carved into his shoulder, cuts, scrapes, and bruises aplenty. He then spotted dried blood, lots of it, caked into the jacket near the body's stomach. Pulling back the fabric, he saw the very wound he had been searching for on his own self minutes ago, the ragged gash from the blade that had finally did him in.

Once more he found his fingers trembling, touching the same place on his own abdomen. Nothing but smooth skin.

He yanked back both hands. "Okay, this is weird..." His anxiety quickly gave way to irritation and a need for answers. "Just what in the hell is going on here?" he shouted to no one before looking sharply at the dead body. "And you'd better not answer, or I'm really going to wonder if I've lost it-"

The major cut himself off as he spotted an object on the body incongruous to the uniform. It was the ascension device, affixed to the body's shirt. It laid dormant, or what John deemed to be dormant. Was it even operable?

He picked up the object and brought it close in. John tapped the faceted glass. It remained dark. He shook it. No change.

Sighing, he tossed the device back onto the jacket, the results inconclusive. Focus, John. What do you know? He thought for a beat. Nothing. Not a damn thing.

Okay, then what do you think?

"I think I'm not a ghost," he answered himself, feeling ridiculous. "I think that damn device never worked, so I think I'm not ascended, either. I think I'm not going to find the answers in this room, and I think I'm crazy for debating myself out loud," he concluded, turning resolutely toward the door. "Time to regroup with..."

He trailed off as his eyes passed over the rest of the room.

"... my team," he finished quietly.

Bodies, much like his own, laid on similar tables, each covered with their own sheet. More were spread on the floor along the walls. God, there are so many, John realized, unable to stop himself from tallying the dead. He let out a breath as he counted, shaky with frustration and anger, oblivious to the water vapor that formed in the morgue's frigid temperature. Nine. I sent nine of our people to their deaths.

It wasn't a surprise. Antigonos had told him the count. But hearing the number was one thing; seeing it was another. And these are only the bodies that made it to the morgue.

Before he knew what he was doing, his feet carried him to the nearest table. John ripped off the sheet. Sergeant Elliot. He had likely been the first to die at his post outside the Lacedami's quarters. John looked at the young man's face. His expression was peaceful, devoid of any pain, despite a Lacedami bullet to the chest. John tore his sight away from the singed wound. The sergeant couldn't have been older than 26; Sheppard was ashamed to admit he didn't know how old exactly. Oddest of all, though, were the soldier's eyes. They weren't open, but rather covered with two gold coins of a currency he didn't recognize.

John stormed to another table and hastily uncovered the figure. Sergeant Gragowski, Elliot's partner. A similar wound to the chest, a similar fate. An identical pair of coins over his eyes.

Stumbling almost drunkenly across the room in distress he found another body. Dr. Michael Inouye. Another: Corporal Sinclair. Another: Private Nylund. Another: Sergeant Singh. Another: Sergeant Juarez. More gold coins. He grew more frantic as he ripped the sheets off each one of them. He didn't know what he'd hoped to find under each of them - maybe nothing. Maybe that would prove to him that this was all some sick delusion, a cruel joke. Each time, though, he was disproved.

He grabbed at the second to last sheet and hurled it away. John paused. Suddenly the scene made sense. This body, unlike the others, was not dressed in an expedition uniform. It had no coins adorning its eyes, and that, through all the macabre atrocities that surrounded him, saddened John most.

In accordance with Kyros' beliefs, the thoughtful kid had placed tolls for the Boatman on all the bodies so that each soul would be ferried across the mythical river to a peaceful afterlife. Before he was murdered himself, John bitterly recalled. No one had been able to repay him the favor.

The noble effort did not surprise Sheppard. Rather it sickened him. Did no good deed truly go unpunished?

"Kyros, you were a far better man than your father could have ever hoped to be," John voiced. He was glad his people had taken care of the body, despite his blood-ties.

He looked back to his own body and noted the lack of tribute. Just as well, he thought. There's not going to be any Boatman waiting to take me anywhere after the things I've done.

Ready to leave this purgatory, John turned toward the exit. But there was one last figure between him and the door. He knew whose body laid beneath that sheet. It could be no one but. Suddenly the exit seemed a mile away. His feet remained rooted to the floor, his eyes glued on the lifeless form. If this whole thing was a test, a means of forcing him to face his inner demons, then this was his proverbial devil. He wasn't sure he'd ever be able to slay this monster.

From somewhere deep within he found the courage to take a step forward. He moved slowly, apprehensively, but before he knew it he had arrived beside the covered figure.

You don't have to do this, half of his brain protested. You don't deserve to torture yourself. But the other half buried the thought away.

Reverently he pulled back the sheet. At the sight, he immediately shut his eyes and turned away, less prepared for the moment than he'd initially thought. He steeled himself with a few deep breaths and opened his eyes.

John's first thought was that she was still beautiful. Though her lips were icy blue and skin pale white, her natural grace gave the illusion that little more than a winter's breeze had kissed her cheek. He cast the morbid thought aside. She was dead. No amount of waxing bathetic was going to change that.

Two gold coins laid atop her shut eyes, too.

He swallowed. He struggled to compose himself, the thoughts of the last time he saw her in this state running through his head.

"Elizabeth, I..."

He didn't know what to say. He thought talking to himself was mad; talking to Atlantis' dead leader was not a step in the right direction. He wanted to breakdown and scream and cry all over again; to tell her how he really messed things up for all of them; how he didn't want to admit that he was confused and scared by whatever was happening to him; how sorry he was he couldn't live up to the responsibility she had entrusted him; how unnerved he felt by his ever slipping grip on morality; how he didn't know how to save his friends.

John absentmindedly brushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead, taking another deep breath to calm himself. Somehow, he knew, she would have had the answers to all of it. He dutifully straightened her shirt collar, untwisted her necklace. If you had only told me how to be as strong as you were...

"I'm glad you're not here to see this," he said, envisioning the horrors outside. "But dammit, do I wish you were with me, now more than ever."

With one last look at her serene countenance, he returned the sheet over her form, saying, "Rest well. You deserve it."

Turning finally for the door, Sheppard blinked twice to clear the moisture threatening to well up in his eyes. He added one more thing to his mental list. "I don't know how to save the City, but I think a good place to start is out there, not in here. Time to blow this Popsicle stand.

"And stop talking to yourself."

After ten minutes of excavating, McKay had one of the three ZPM receptacles as clean as he was going to get it. It wasn't sterile by laboratory standards, but he had cleared out the rocks and rubble that had clogged it only minutes before, exposing the electrical contacts. He hoped it was sufficient.

The physicist now lied underneath the secondary display console, acutely aware of the ticking clock. Atlantis wouldn't last for much longer without its shield, and the shield couldn't be raised until power-

The thunder of a distant explosion signaled that the barrage outside had not yet abated.

"Yes, yes, I hear you," Rodney groused.

McKay was buried in a jungle of wires. He twisted the ends of two of those wires together, no easy feat to accomplish one-handed. It was the ninth, and hopefully last, such pair he had joined and his one good arm was getting tired. Tired is better than dead, he reminded himself.

He immediately regretted the insensitive notion, his thoughts landing on Elizabeth and Sheppard.

Suddenly feeling particularly churlish, Rodney used his teeth to tear a piece of duct tape from its roll and hastily secured the bundle of wires out of the way. The tape, like the other items he had procured for his crusade, had come from a very unlikely source: Kavanagh. The scientist's botched power experiment from two nights prior had at least yielded something useful.

"May these words never escape this room," Rodney grumbled as he worked, "but thank you, Kavanagh."

Sitting up, the Canadian wiped the sweat from his brow. He was working as quickly as he could, and much quicker than he should. He hadn't slept in far too long, though neither had the rest of the expedition so he was unwilling to cut himself any slack. Neither the Wraith nor the Lacedami cared much for his sleep schedule-

Rodney's gaze snapped toward the room's open doorway. He listened closely.

The physicist felt the adrenaline spike in his system. His breathing quickened as he heard the distinctive rhythmic pounding of approaching footsteps...

No, that's your own pulse pounding inside your head, you nit.

With a shaky breath Rodney stood, hustling to the triangular dais at the center of the space. He made sure to re-aim his rifle's flashlight accordingly. He had left the free ends of three wire bundles at the ZPM receptacle, their far ends now attached to the secondary console, making sure to leave enough slack for what he was about to do.

Though he still clutched his injured left arm tightly to his chest, he pinned down the last six inches of each wire between his elbow and the podium's surface. Painstakingly he used a pair of wire cutters to strip the shielding off each twisted pair. It was awkward, it was inefficient and it hurt like hell, but he didn't see any other option.

"All the more reason to work quickly," Rodney muttered through gritted teeth. "Not that the suffocating darkness wasn't motivation enough..."

Once complete, he opened a small, flush-mounted panel in the side of the triangular podium, exposing rows of conductive crystals. McKay plucked out the ones of interest and tossed them carelessly over his shoulder. He barely noticed as they shattered on the floor behind him. In their places he secured the three wires' ends.

Next he labored back to the secondary workstation, grabbing five of the remaining wires he had rigged to its underside. These he connected underneath the primary console. Though it was most assuredly out of commission, Rodney's theory surmised that only its display and interface were inoperable, while its brain remained active. He simply needed to bypass that display and interface, use those of the secondary console, leave all the heavy subroutines with the primary console, and voila: a daisy chain. Primary console to secondary console to ZPM bridge complete.

At least, that's what he hoped.

"And if my theory is incorrect, which it isn't, we're all dead," he muttered as he worked from his back. "Story of my life."

Besides, he thought dolefully, I made a promise. I've got to save the day

Again he took to his feet. He eyed the one remaining unsecured wire, last but certainly not least. McKay walked it from its terminus at the secondary workstation to the ZPM, laying at the ready atop the triangular hub. Delicately, with the skill of a practiced surgeon, the physicist clamped the wire to the the top of the power source.

Everything was now secured where it was supposed to be. The primary and secondary workstations, the ZPM port, and the ZPM itself were all now connected.

He looked around the room at his masterpiece: a Frankenstein cluster consisting of tape, a rat's nest of wire, and a mess of alligator clamps holding everything in place. It wasn't pretty.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," Rodney said to himself. "All right. Showtime."

Carefully, the physicist inserted the ZPM into its awaiting port. The receptacle recognized the power source and automatically pulled it down flush with the tabletop. It began to glow a faint orange. It was a good sign.

Rodney rubbed his hands together in anticipation as he sat down in front of the secondary terminal. The displays blinked to life. After a few moments, the system welcomed him to its home screen.

"Hello, hello," he greeted. The screen was one he was familiar with, despite the fact that the expedition had gone without a ZPM thus far and he had had no justifiable reason to work with it. "Luckily for us all, I am one nosy scientist. Now Mr. ZPM, let's see what you can tell me."

For the next few minutes, Rodney rooted around the displays' parameters, soaking up data on the ZPM's health, projections of the City's power usage, and detailed schematics of the City's power flow. He ran a diagnostic on the ZPM just to be sure. The results were in the green. It was ready for use.

"Okay, now let's see what I can tell you," he said to the power source.

While the ZPM was fully operational, it lacked direction on how to operate. Meant to function in concert with two other ZPMs, Rodney didn't want their only one to automatically triple its power output in order to make up for its missing siblings. Its usable life would then only last a fraction of what they needed. He needed to fool the system into throttling the power source's output back to that of a singular ZPM, and to do that he needed to fool the system into thinking the City's three-ZPM power consumer - namely Atlantis' star drive - did not exist by removing it from the power distribution loop.

This was the tricky part. Rodney eyed the console's limited interface. Designed to monitor, not direct, it lacked all but a few basic controls. He would have to rewrite an entire subroutine on it. It would be like trying to code in C with only the single button and wheel of an iPod.

Wishing for a bottomless cup of coffee, McKay got to work, but not before one last worrisome look at the room's exit.

Teyla, where are you?

Running as if the hounds of Hell were nipping at her heels, Teyla raced away from the Power Room, sprinting as fast as she ever had before. Her life-sucking pursuers provided good incentive.

The Athosian had always been fast. She'd easily outran all the boys in her village when she was a child, and while on hunts she'd often had to slow the pace at the behest of others. Today was no exception. The three Wraith struggled to keep up. Now, two minutes into this hunt, the bulkier drone had fallen behind, splitting the chase group in two.

Teyla allowed herself a small smile of satisfaction. So far, her strategy had proven effective.

She turned left at an intersection, slowing to keep the two Wraith males close on her tail. Their cat and mouse game would fall to pieces if the cats lost sight of the mouse, and her goal of keeping them away from Rodney would be put at risk.

Quickly she ducked into an alcove, planted herself flat against the wall, and slowly drew her Athosian blade. With the threats now divided, it was time to start conquering them.

Waiting quietly, Teyla strained her hearing, listening for the sounds of the approaching Wraith duo above her own labored breathing. She clutched her knife backhanded against her chest, ready to pounce. There - footsteps, slowed, wary of something afoot. She sensed their proximity. She smelled their stench. Only inches away now...

With a roar, Teyla spun back out into the passageway and plunged her Athosian steel into the heart of the lead Wraith. He bellowed in pain and hunched over on his knees, down but not yet out, Teyla knew. She would finish him off later.

With the grace of an acrobat, she climbed up the stooped creature like a ladder, planting one knee firmly on its back while her other leg lashed out with a fierce, sweeping kick. Her booted foot caught the other hissing Wraith square in the jaw. He stumbled back, surprised more than hurt.

Teyla never stopped moving. Letting her momentum carry her through, she pivoted off the first Wraith, reaching down for the handle of her knife as she did so. She wrenched the blade out of his chest and rolled nimbly to the floor. But she didn't stop there.

Like a cat she sprang to her feet again. Teyla hurled her blade at the far scout. The sharp knife planted itself firmly in the Wraith's throat. With one hand the creature clawed at the wound, gurgling and spewing its own blood as he stumbled. His free hand found his stunner. He waved the weapon wildly, trying his best to draw a bead on the nimble human as he fought for air.

By then Teyla had drawn her own P-90. She fired resolutely at the armed monster before he ever got a shot off. She emptied an entire magazine into the Wraith before he fell for good.

Immediately she turned her aim to the first Wraith. This time, though, she was not fast enough. With one hand the Wraith swatted her rifle away, the gun spewing stray rounds before it was dislodged from her grip. It clattered to the floor yards away. The Wraith stood and with its other hand swung around its spear gun - a longer, thinner stun rifle. He depressed the trigger.

Teyla ducked low, the rifle and its blast passing inches over her head. Without missing a beat she grabbed the length of the stunner and pulled, drawing the Wraith in close enough to deliver a brutal kick. It connected, landing directly on the knife wound in his chest. The scout hissed in agony.

The Athosian attempted to wrest the spear gun from her opponent in his moment of distress, but the Wraith was too strong. He yanked the weapon out of her grasp, causing her to spin off balance and tumble to the floor. She landed clumsily on her stomach, the wind knocked out of her and her adversary at her back.

She sucked in a lungful of air. My weapon, she realized, spotting the P-90 directly in front of her. She scrambled on all fours toward it, reaching out-

Teyla howled as she felt five claws rake down her back.

She collapsed to the ground, paralyzed with pain.

In the near pitch black of the frigid makeshift morgue, a single finger flexed.

TBC