So here's some entertainment to the poor souls in quarantine and those like me who're out of a job because all bars and cafes are closed because of this Coronoa mess. Of course anyone else can read this as well :D Maybe with all my free time now I can even get the next chapter done a little quicker. That said, good health to all of you!
The human smells of sadness and determination. Actually, both of them do. It's a curious mixture, two contrasting states, yet one was born from the other. And the percentage varies within both men. The wraith is not surprised though. They reap what they sow, they reap what he sowed.
He was hoping they could circumvent the discovery of that dreadful planet and the plague that came from its inhabitants. It didn't appear on all paths that were walked before, but where it did, it left the way littered with corpses.
And yet, in this case, the human part of dead bodies could have been mostly avoided. He could have told Sheppard the exact consequences outright, been more adamant they stop this experiment. But at what price? The amount of dead wraith doubling, probably. There is no doubt in his mind that the Hoffan disease would have been weaponized. The more the humans of Earth came in contact with the wraith, the less inclined they are to find a peaceful solution.
It's understandable. They meet wraith bred and raised for battle and unaccustomed to compromise, they meet wraith confused and hungry from early waking and unaccustomed to humans presenting themselves as anything else but scared cattle that will run or grovel. They meet beasts on the hunt.
This wraith has been locked away for a long time, has only seen this fall of his people from afar and through the eyes of others. But now he sees there is a lot more fixing necessary than he initially believed. If this is to end well he will need the change in the humans to be strong enough to endure waiting through him changing the wraith as well.
His Sheppard used to be a clean slate, unlike other Sheppards he met this wraith before he met his brethren before he even set a foot into Atlantis. Of course, he is still loyal to the humans, he is human after all. Yet Sheppard used to listen more and judge less. If he is to remain key to their species finding a way to coexist then this wraith will have to put more work into gaining his trust.
Yet, oddly enough, Sheppard has come to a similar conclusion all on his own. Where this wraith has expected blame and accusations for not speaking his concerns about Hoff more clearly, he has been faced with a Sheppard that almost slunk down to his cell, quiet and defeated and oddly ashamed. While this wraith can link the first two to the loss of lives he does not understand the latter.
He chooses to follow Sheppard without a fuss, curious as to what is going on. It dawns on him when he is led to the medical wing and sees five bodies lined up on their respective tables.
Four are human.
One is wraith.
Sheppard wordlessly goes to sit in the corner, gun still at the ready, as is the soldier's habit and duty, but body language relaxed. The doctor, Beckett, is here as well, yet it does not seem this wraith has been brought up here for the usual poking and prodding of his person. His gaze snaps back to Sheppard, gauging if this is truly what it seems to be. Sheppard makes a lazy gesture with his hand, a "there you go" that seems far more confident than it really is.
So here he is now, watching Beckett carry out the examination of the corpses. It's strange, this offer. He understands fully why Sheppard has yet to say a word, he himself only ever grudgingly allows leeway to those he still doubts on some level. And still, he is granted this chance to make sure the follow up of the Hoffan disaster will be positive for the wraith as well. Because that's what it is. A reluctant offer of cooperation that he did not expect yet.
His Sheppard still has the capacity to surprise him. He involuntarily smiles, but it's short-lived as Beckett now opens up the cadaver of the wraith they caught. He does not pity that one's fate nor does he regret his part in it, but it is sobering nonetheless. What's on that table is proof that wraith are far more vulnerable than many think.
This wraith's own medical knowledge is limited, he's capable but has always had a bigger affinity to math and physics. But he has the knowledge of those who tried and failed before. He has a tendril of his ghost in Beckett's mind, observing quietly because it's so much easier to learn when he can feel the thought process behind the idea.
The doctor is focused. It's the kind of focus born of trying to push other things to the side, but it's focus no less. When the wraith first speaks up the man is startled but also willing to listen. The scientists have always been easier to deal with than the soldiers, it's the same in wraith. They see less battle and are far more curious.
But Sheppard in the corner is listening as well. Soldier through and through Sheppard might be, but there is a smart and curious mind behind those attentive eyes. He can think further than orders and even though his sight is not as far as the sight of this wraith he will walk ahead of the humans one day, with a vision to guide them. Much as his Sheppard might no longer be a clean slate the man is still a Sheppard and therefore his potential is no less. And so this wraith relaxes into his task despite everything.
There is still much work ahead of this wraith, but for the moment all seems to go well and he will take what respite he can.
Todd seems to take his new schedule in stride, John thinks. The wraith is almost... pleasant to deal with. He doesn't make the mistake to think Todd has stopped scheming and playing at any point, but for now, he appears to grant them the benefit of the doubt as much as they grant it to him.
Still, his suspicion that Todd's mind never rests seems to be proven more right than ever now that the wraith has an outlet for his intelligence and is kept busy. Just like before when Todd's got a task there is no spacing out, and if there is it is on purpose. Sometimes, during his lab time with Beckett, the wraith will just stop and stare into space, probably mentally leaving their plane of existence to go take a look at what other Todds and Sheppards know about the Hoffan disease. But he comes back on his own and speaks in clear sentences.
Beckett adapts to the change in Todd's position just as quickly. John likes the doctor. The Scotsman is a kind soul, but firm when needed. He sticks to his oath to heal and not harm and treats Todd with caution but without contempt. The wraith, in turn, seems to have a grudging sort of respect for the doctor. Or at least he works well with him. Sometimes John isn't sure if he can truly tell pragmatism and courtesy apart when it comes to Todd.
The important part is that watching human and wraith peacefully work together, debating their findings in calm and polite manners, lets him hope they will one day have peace in this galaxy. It's a small and reluctant fire of hope that has to be rekindled frequently, but the little speck of warmth is worth having gone through the trouble of convincing Weir to allow this.
Ever since their jungle trip, John is not very high on Weir's list of favorites. He can live with that, by now he's pretty used to higher-ups not liking him. But it didn't help his endeavor to get the wraith involved in the cleanup of the Hoffan disaster. It took McKay and Teyla speaking on his behalf to convince her that it was worth a shot. Even if Weir likes to drone on about trying the diplomatic way over the forceful one whenever the Stargate teams meet a not so agreeable folks, she apparently has no qualms about squishing any non-human confirmed threat to her people without talks and any other preamble. It's a way of thinking that John gets. Really, he gets it. But the thing is, Todd is not precisely a confirmed threat. Even Teyla, who has more reason to hate the wraith than all of them together, understood that enough to do John the favor of speaking pros as well, instead of just contras, when he slinked up to Weir's office with the other two in tow.
In the end, it was agreed that Todd could be involved. But the Marines dutifully trailing John whenever he goes down to the brig and dutifully chaining Todd up in John's place whenever the wraith is to be taken out, speak a clear message that there is no trust involved here. Weir is plain and simply driven by the same guilt that still gnaws at John, the question if they could have prevented all this death had they made more use of their position. She won't allow them any more leeway than she has to in order to calm that shadow in the back of their minds.
Well, John did tell Todd he cannot speak on the behalf of all of Atlantis.
Weir also confirmed, that when lab time is over, the anthropologists and linguists can have their piece of the cake. Unlike with Beckett, Todd doesn't work so well with them. The first intelligence tests offend him and he throws the outstanding results back at them with an air that says "Do you really think I'd have trouble with that?!". It's only when they hand him stuff that gives most people more than a lot of trouble that he accepts the challenge and happily sits and solves puzzles. Giving away personal info still seems to be a no-go, though. Todd will neither tell them his age, nor even his name or anything else. He doesn't relent if the wraith even have a concept of names, nor does he offer anything about wraith culture at all.
John's playful "Ah, c'mon, throw them a bone!" is regarded with a frown and a tersely spoken "What has been true then is not necessarily true now."
Whatever that means. Todd does not clarify it. John does not prod. He will deal with the wraith as a whole when they have a way to deal with them. For now, he agrees with Todd that finding that solution has priority over whether or not wraith appreciate modern art. (The answer is no. Todd stares at the picture presented and promptly states that Beckett already tested his color vision and did so with a chart that made a lot more sense.)
The linguists manage to get some more interesting results. Someone tries to teach Todd French. Todd does not seem to like the sound of French much, but he seems to be the kind of guy who likes to talk circles around people so he shows interest in learning a new language anyway. They teach him by book and while the wraith still learns quickly he does not show the exceptionally fast learning he did with Czech. Three weeks later Todd turns in the middle of a simple but quite fluent French conversation to point at the guard at the door and states, still in French, "I tire of this, I want to learn what he thinks in."
That's when it truly sinks in. Todd is in their heads. The soldier that guards them that day is of German origin and unlike Todd's current, not native French-speaking teacher, actually thinks in the language that is to be taught. Having both of them brain scanned while Todd takes to German like a bear to honey reveals that Todd's brain seems to catch and reciprocate the activity in the guard's brain to read what's going on in there. It inadvertently leads to a copy of the neuron activity going on when the man thinks in his mother tongue to appear right there in Todd's head. And if Todd actually pays it some mind that info will not be deleted but processed and turned into something useable. It works especially well when Private Schulte translates a German text into English, which leaves Todd with a direct comparison of meaning. The wraith can hold an advanced conversation five days later and doesn't mix up der, die and das even once.
"Well, it makes sense," McKay muses as they watch Beckett take the electrodes off Todd's head. Despite his disregard, for the soft sciences, the astrophysicist has lingered often when they try to gather some intel on Todd's mental capacities. He's curious about the wraith's knowledge and jealous of all the attention for another smart person all at once but manages to stay professional.
"They are pod-grown, the lot of them. I'm guessing their brain is ready way before they leave their pod and everything they need to function has been neatly copy-pasted in there by that hive mind of theirs. Just imagine we could do that, just stimulate the brain to form the neural paths for a skill. It's almost like downloading knowledge, we could spare our kids having to sit through something like high school, where we only get outside input that we still have to filter for the incompetence of some teachers, all the while getting distracted by some brat thinking it's fun to grab your pants and-." McKay stops in his rant, beet red in the face. John pats him on the shoulder.
"Let the ghosts rest Rodney, you've come farther than them all."
They continue watching in amicable silence, though McKay grows all excited again when it turns out Todd's language learning concept is indeed transferable to other subjects. Todd refuses to put up with a recorder flute but quickly gets the hang of a botanist's e-guitar. Watching him play is an epic thing and the botanist who offered guitar and skills becomes his first groupie.
Of course, calm and peace on Atlantis don't last forever. John is not surprised when shit suddenly hits the fan. Something is going around, killing people. Unlike the Darkness, it's contagious and quick and drives people insane to the point where they are literally scared to death. A thought manifests in his head: They need to isolate this.
Atlantis promptly goes into lockdown.
There is a lot of yelling on the intercom. Confusion is a stark parameter in all of it. A lot of the city's sensors are water damaged, having been submerged when the shields started failing over time. The few available readings offer no explanation why Atlantis goes into all-out quarantine mode when the city herself has yet to detect the problem. It's McKay who figures out that Atlantis is reacting to John, that he is the reason for the strict and not overrideable quarantine. It shifts the focus of the yelling and berating to John.
"I'm trying, okay?! I'm trying!" he finally snaps. Silence is all that follows, but it's not voluntary. The city-wide, Lantean intercom has shut down as John is told via his Earth made earpiece. Great. They blame that on him, too. Probably rightfully so.
Todd has once told him it was unwise to let anger bleed into your ship's system. But John doesn't know how to take any of this back. He can keep a calm head and push his emotions to the side on the outside. He can compartmentalize his feelings to deal with orders first and personal problems later. And all of this works fine when dealing with humans, but not with this invasive intelligence that accesses all of his mental drawers at once, regardless of whether or not he wants to reveal what's inside. Some part of him definitely wants everyone else to shut up so he has quiet to think and collect himself. But he would normally ignore that part, power right through his reluctance and draw on the confidence in his ability to find a solution now. Until the day he stole a helicopter to go back and safe Holland he's been looked up to by his fellow soldiers for that ability. They followed him because he could lead, could stay calm and think logically in places where others couldn't.
But Atlantis' attachment to him takes his walls down. He's standing in front of a door and trying to reason with the cold AI that has yet to relent to his demand to open that very door. Or any other door. Atlantis does not obey him, she can see all the thought process a lower-ranked soldier can't see. And she reacts to it and stubbornly refuses to power up the air circulation again, or let anyone leave whatever space they are in. The smallest space of which is a transporter. It's a matter of a few hours for the person within to start suffocating. Not to mention no one can get to the infected people to try and figure out what's going on, to help them.
How does anyone deal with this? How do the other Sheppards deal with this? He'd love to have Todd's peeking ability right now.
The door opens. John raises an eyebrow in confusion and steps through. Finds other doors are still locked but one more open door. Interesting. But suddenly he knows where this is going and hones in on the idea. His earpiece wanders into his pocket as he jogs down to the brig. Doors keep opening until he finds himself standing in front of Todd's cell.
The wraith is sitting hunched over with his hands clapped over his ears.
"You humans always think so loud," he says when John steps up to the cell bars, "but usually it is nothing but background noise. Yet this fearful screaming is maddening in its volume."
"Shouldn't you be used to human mental panic, what with all the culling and feeding on our people?" John asks acerbically.
Todd frowns. "I can block that out. But this, this is too… artificial. It is stronger than would be natural. Human in origin but not in frequency. I'm trying to calm them but to no avail."
"So you don't know what it is?"
"I have my suspicions… We'll need Dr. McKay to confirm."
"That might become a problem because the city is in lockdown and I can't access her. She's listening to anything but what I want her to. How?" John asks and waves a hand at their surroundings to indicate Atlantis, "How do I keep her from latching on to my emotions rather than my rational mind?"
Todd stands, starts to pace. He looks unhappy, like someone with a headache. "I wouldn't know. A hive is not a person, but just like a person it's alive and can tell what is meant for it to be known and followed and what not. Your city is dead, John Sheppard. Intelligent, but dead. How did you deal with her before?"
"I kind of… didn't." John shrugs. Because that's the truth. Todd takes in a deep breath, and somehow that small action seems to be the equivalent of a full-on facepalm.
"I had no reason to ever command her something Or the authority. Weir, McKay, and Ford make this place go 'round," John defends himself. "All I ever do is tell her to shut it when the reminders about the missing ZPMs get so persistent they get me actual hunger pangs! Why would anyone build an AI like that?! There must be a way to deal with it, some sort of way to tell her the parameters…"
"Calibration," Todd agrees with John's revelation. Pauses and thinks. "There is a place where you might archive this."
John stares at the wraith, considering his options and trying to figure out Todd's motives and plans. What he should do is just have Todd tells him where to go. But what he wants to do is drag the wraith along so they can figure this out the first time for sure. His tolerance for failed experiments is currently rather low. Maybe Todd really won't be any help at all in this, but for the moment John is rather safe than sorry.
John does not fear for his own life, Todd still has a use for him, he's sure of that. And with the city in lockdown, the wraith can't run anywhere either. If they meet other people and Todd stupidly decides he doesn't need John's cooperation anymore and tries to make a snack out of them, John's got a gun. Odds are high that whomever they meet has one, too.
The cell door opens, taking his decision as made. Todd just starts walking, as if this is what he predicted would happen, expecting John to follow. Too bad for him the doors won't open until John has caught up to him. The human grins as the chagrined wraith rolls his eyes and deigns to walk next to John.
They enter a room with an ornate, bad sci-fi looking chair as the only furniture. While John circles the seat he comes to the conclusion that, one: he really should stop calling things sci-fi-ish when it is real and no longer fiction and, two: he has no idea what he's supposed to do now. Probably sit in that chair.
John points a skeptical finger at it. "So I'm guessing I'll sit down and that chair of illumination will explain everything to me?"
"It is the main control hub of this city ship for all that I know," Todd answers, still circling the room, looking at things curiously.
"Well, then," John says and plunks down, "explain Atlantis to me!"
And the city opens up to him.
Painfully.
Too much input.
Too much fucking input.
Quiet!
Ah.
And suddenly, just like that, it's manageable.
He's in the system. Or rather, the system is in him. He knows this, this is normal. No difference from the feeling he has had ever since Atlantis rose to the surface. But where to go from here? He must have said that out loud, or maybe just thought it too loud, because Todd's voice sounds from somewhere. "How did those who came before you communicate with it, Sheppard?"
His brain takes less than a second to identify the sounds as speech and extract the message in it. Atlantis takes less than a second to react to it by calling up files. He calls them files because he has nothing else for comparison. There are no stark data bundles marked by a visual icon, no fancy holograms to scroll through. What he sees he sees like a thought, in his mind's eye. Like the image of a pink elephant being perfectly clear in your head after it being mentioned, even though the input from your eyes is still there as well. Yet somehow the images don't conflict with each other. John can see the room he's in just fine while in his head there's that memory-like impression of someone else sitting in the chair.
He closes his eyes, concentrates on that.
John is far from stupid. And he can do some coding. But what Atlantis is showing him now as communication example is so far beyond him, he doubts even much more versed Rodney would get it. No, no he cannot fluidly think in Lantean-binary or whatever this is. Having the city wait with doing anything until a clean, coded input order is given by him would probably be the safest way to keep things under control, but he doesn't have the skills, nor is it really his style.
He prompts Atlantis for something akin to what Todd showed him, the way the hiveship communicated and obeyed.
Suddenly things are painful again. Not from too much info but from something zooming in on him. It takes him a moment to understand that it's the city's equivalent to an anti-virus system drilling into his mind to clarify if he's a threat, if he is connected to the wraith. For a moment he tries to hold against it but he has nothing to hide that would be worth his brain exploding over. Atlantis has already looked into most drawers of his mind anyway, so why not rip them all open and throw the contents at the piercing AI in his head with a big Fuck You!
So, he opens up.
The pain lessens, it's uncomfortable and he nearly gets motion sick from his own memories rushing by his inner eye so fast, but then it's just as suddenly over. He is left with a distinct feeling that something is waiting for him. It reminds him of soldiers looking at him, waiting for instructions. It reminds him of police officers and victims, waiting for him to come up with a solution to the case. It reminds him of Todd saying something and narrowing his eyes as he waits for John's reaction. Atlantis is ready to take his input again, he has passed the threat test, it seems.
Great. Now back to his task. What does he want from the city? He wants it to obey. Not to everything in his head, just selected things. Wants it to use that gigantic computing power to make a limited amount of decisions on its own but back down and let John override it when he sees the need to. But how to wrap that in a package something so entirely non-human can understand?
Non-human. Like Todd, who can learn languages right from other people's brains. Who's brain carbon copies the signal he picks up from other brains in order to process them. Download knowledge, McKay had said.
Somewhere next to the pink elephant still in the back of his mind something is blinking like a little caret.
Download, he thinks and concentrates on the code the city had presented to him. If Atlantis can't understand him he will understand her. Something is suddenly building up in his head and as he lets go of the doubt that acts as floodgates he prays this won't fry his brain.
He wakes to the sounds of an argument.
No, not an argument, his pounding head provides. Negotiations. Strained, aggressive and angry but negotiations. Someone is arguing that Sheppard got himself into this position on his own and there is no use in losing people over it. They say, stand down and wait, if the wraith won't let the hostage go after Sheppard gets off that chair they can still try shooting it. For now, deaths can be avoided.
Avoiding death, yeah there recently was something like that on his mind…
He blinks, taking stock of his situation. He's sitting in a rather uncomfortable chair. Like Sheppard. Which, oh, yeah. That's him. He is Sheppard. John Sheppard. They are arguing over him. They.
A ping in the back of his mind, the feeling that compulses one to press the button on the blinking answering machine and listen to the message it recorded.
Display, John thinks and there is info on the arguing people, faces, names, occupations, all neatly packed and presented for him to view.
Huh.
So it didn't fry my brain, he thinks as everything slowly comes back to him. He moves off the chair. His body feels stiff and his hair and clothes seem to crackle from electrostatic charges. Everything else seems oddly... normal.
Seems he got his message to Atlantis across.
Tentatively he reaches out for a status update. He gets a protocol of McKay hacking and overriding whatever doors they couldn't blow out of the way to get here. Otherwise, the quarantine is still intact and whatever kills people is still trapped. Well, that explains how the arguing party got here. Speaking off…
"Todd, let him go..." He demands, hoping to be convincing even if his voice sounds like he swallowed gravel.
The wraith turns his head just enough to look over his shoulder. He is standing between two downed (alive, Atlantis tells him) Marines, a third frozen in the wraith's grip for fear of those hands on his neck breaking it like a twig. Todd holds him there as a shield from the guns
aimed at him by two more Marines. Yellow eyes narrow and, overly sensitive for these things as this experience seems to have left him, John actually feels the quick brush of Todd's mind. He opens his mouth to tell the wraith off, but Todd's gone as quick as he was there and drops his hands off the Marine. The man stumbles but to his credit quickly dives for his weapon. Todd ignores it, choosing to turn fully towards John.
"I told you this city was built for you, John Sheppard," he says and that broad grin speaks of nothing but approval.
"Yeah? Sure was a steep way to an understanding with her for such a fated bond" John assesses and stretches his back, hands above his head. "Why did you have a hostage anyway?"
"I did keep them from interrupting the connection, which would have caused damage to you for sure," Todd says, vaguely gesticulating towards a flustered McKay and angry Weir. "And I did not relish the idea of yet another coat getting riddled with bullet holes."
"Of course… I hope there is no permanent damage?" John points at the still unconscious Marines. Threat evident and backed up by the city in the back of his mind.
A quick flicker of yellow eyes around the room tells him Todd is aware of the fact that Atlantis herself only tolerates him because John does so.
The wraith must also be aware that any attempt of his to look innocent is ridiculous, but tries anyway, probably just for the fun of it. "I tried to be nice... "
"Uhuuu… well how about for peacekeeping reasons I'll escort you back down to the brig for now?" John finally decides, because Weird looks like any minute she'll have worked through her shock and confusion and will start the lecturing and disciplining. "There we can discuss what we do about the ghost in our machine that scares people to death."
John uses the quiet walk back to the brig to asses his status. He feels a little tired, as if he just overcame a hangover but didn't yet sleep enough for a full recovery. But, otherwise, he's fine. Atlantis feels less like an intrusion to him now, it's more like a sixth sense, leaving him subconsciously aware of the city's status.
"Did any other Sheppards try this?" he wonders. He's pretty sure he wouldn't have tried this without Todd having shown him the wraith connection to a hive. And from what he understands, the other Sheppards don't have a Todd like this one.
"No, you are the only Sheppard, as far as I can tell," Todd confirms.
"And you're the only Todd who can look at the other us. Nice, aren't we a great pair of special cases?"
Todd laughs. John rolls his eyes. But it's good-natured.
As he takes a puddle jumper to explode a naquada generator high above the city and kill the nanite virus with an EMP, he thinks he can get along with that wraith. And eventually, other humans and wraith will get along, too. But there's a long journey ahead of them. They will have to go at it one problem at a time. For now, they will have to deal with the trouble on Atlantis. And after that, they can tackle whatever other blood is still in the water.