Amelia and Keller followed Todd down the silent hall. Todd had quickly discovered that each door they passed opened automatically with just a touch. Amelia found that reassuring. She didn't want to repeat her first doorway experience. Most of the small rooms they passed were simply furnished; minimalist chairs and small tables, work stations and desks, all with subtly disturbing proportions, as though the occupants had been only just humanoid. Some of the rooms appeared to be offices, while others were nothing more than sitting areas. They found no sign of danger in any of them, though the feeling of unease never wavered. Amelia did her best to ignore the aches and plains plaguing her body. It's no worse than post-workout fatigue, she told herself. Just work through it. Her face throbbed worse than ever, and she realized the forced aging had exacerbated her injury.
"Dr. Keller," Todd called from the end of the hall. "I think you may want to see this." Amelia had little experience with Wraith, but she thought Todd's voice sounded strained.
"What is it?" Keller asked. Todd didn't answer.
The door Todd had opened was no different than any of the others, but instead of an office he had found something much more unsettling. His fingers curved into claws as he looked into the large room. Lab, he corrected himself. Definitely a lab. The lab took up two stories and what must have been a good amount of the building's interior space. SIx work stations dotted the open floor, each consisting of a desk, computers, a small cart laid out with surgical instruments, and a table fitted with multiple restraints. Old blood, long dried and faded, stained the tables. Beyond the work stations the lab walls were lined with occupied stasis chambers.
"Oh my god," Keller breathed beside him.
Todd felt a cold anger rise. He was no stranger to death; he was Wraith, after all. Wraith killed to feed. His erstwhile companions at Atlantis, however, would be surprised to find that Todd had no interest in the suffering of others. He found the practice of creating Runners for training both misguided and ineffective, and the sadistic actions of the Bola Kai made them a favorite target of his. But this was a barbarity beyond anything he had ever seen. He slowly drifted past the tables, his gaze focused on the chambers. He was aware of the little doctor close beside him, but he couldn't tear his eyes away from the thick glass.
"I don't understand." Keller's voice was small and shaky. She stepped past him and touched the cool glass. "What am I seeing?"
"It appears to be various life forms, melded together," Todd replied. He was proud that his voice gave no indication of his inner turmoil. He wanted nothing more than to give in to his rage, to smash the stasis chambers, tear apart the lab, and hunt down the perpetrators of such an abomination.
Todd and Keller stood in front of the chambers for a long while, taking in one horror after another. An Asgard, small and thin, his limbs veined with tarnished silver. In the next chamber, a human eviscerated. His internal organs had been replaced with unfamiliar organs, all of the same silver as the building. A Wraith screamed silently, his head deformed, limbs lengthened and thinned. His staring eyes were liquid silver. Each chamber was occupied by a sentient being, a native of Pegasus, mutilated with silver. Todd recognized many as races extinct for generations. A soft groan broke his reverie, and he turned quickly.
"Amelia?" he said. Amelia lowered herself slowly into one of the work station chairs, moving as though in pain. Her arms were quivering, and he spotted sweat dotting her brow. She took a deep breath, and touched the small crystals below the computer monitors.
Todd tried to keep his concern from his face. The human was weakening. He knew that without the Gift of Life she would eventually succumb to the effects of the feeding. Few survived a feeding; those who did had only a few years taken. John Sheppard had lasted longer than any human he had ever encountered, but Amelia, strong though she was, was not Sheppard. He had to bestow the Gift soon or risk her dying.
His eyes settled on Keller, and he considered draining her to rejuvenate Amelia. Keller met his gaze, and whatever she saw there made her flinch. No, he decided, dismissing the little doctor from his thoughts. Such an act would not be acceptable to Amelia. The people of Atlantis tended to be very close-minded about anything relating to feeding. He tapped his claws against the side of his leg. His only other option was to return some of what Amelia had given him, just enough to keep her alive. It would weaken him considerably, and her frailty would leave her vulnerable to even a minor threat, but there was nothing for it. Amelia would have to remain with him until he could fully restore her. He found the thought did not displease him.
"I'm alright," she replied faintly. "Just a little tired. These controls are based on Ancient technology. I think I can access the data stored inside."
Todd and Keller joined Amelia at the work station, and watched as unfamiliar script filled the screen. Amelia frowned in concentration as she entered in command after command. Eventually, grudgingly, the script translated itself into Ancient.
"There!" Amelia said triumphantly. "I knew the original defaults had to still be in here somewhere. The Ancients were pretty canny when it came to other races using their technology. They left hidden back doors in most everything they created." She scrolled through the data on the screen, with Todd and Keller peering over her shoulders.
"This file talks about which races are the most compatible with the user physiology," Amelia said. "It lists most of the humanoid Pegasus races, and where to find them. It even lists the renegade Asgard outpost." She clicked another folder.
"These are case files," she continued, as she skimmed the flashing text. "Detailed reports on each experiment. Oh gods, this stuff is gruesome. From what I'm reading, this race was trying to assimilate their DNA with that of other, stronger races."
"Who was this?" Keller asked, appalled.
"They called themselves Sekkari," Amelia replied. "Weren't those-"
"-The beings that posed as members of Atlantis a while back," Keller finished. "But I don't understand. They didn't seem malevolent."
"I remember the Sekkari," Todd mused, running his claws across the desk. "Many generations ago they were strong, but limited in their choice of homeworlds. Then a plague burned through them. It seemed fairly innocuous at first, but they soon discovered that it changed them, made them weaker, more susceptible to injury and disease." He closed his eyes in concentration. "It was so long ago... Ah, yes. It also caused degradation of their genetic material. They began to slowly die out. They searched for ways to survive, and when that failed, they switched focus to cleaning the taint from base cells. Those became the seeds of their race, to begin again elsewhere, far from the source of the plague. But there were rumors that a group of them splintered away to run their own experiments. To save themselves. We Wraith thought it only a story to frighten little ones."
"You have little ones? Like, children?" Keller interrupted. Todd sniffed.
"Of course we have offspring," he replied disdainfully. "How else would we continue our race? You know the drawbacks of cloning. May I continue?"
"Sorry," she said meekly. She stowed that information away for later. There had been mention of a Wraith youth in one of Beckett's reports, but the details were sketchy. She had theorized Elia had been an experiment, a one-off. To hear otherwise was exciting.
"As I was saying, we did not believe the rumors to be true. But I think we have found their laboratory."
"I think you're right," Amelia said, her eyes still glued to the screen. "When the assimilation failed, they got desperate and began splicing together Sekkari and humanoid bodies, like grafting a plum branch onto an apple tree."
"But the Sekkari were silicon based," Keller protested. "It would be like trying to graft a lemon to an apricot tree!"
"Didn't stop this group from trying, though," Amelia replied. "They were desperate enough to conduct riskier, more varied experiments. They were working toward a combination of traits that would be strong enough to handle the silicon. They hoped that once they got there, a few generations of breeding would naturalize the process, assuring the survival of their enhanced race."
"But they did not achieve that goal," Todd stated. He leaned farther over Amelia's shoulder to get a closer look at the screen. His breath ruffled her hair, now thickly streaked with silver. "What stopped them?"
Amelia stifled a yawn and scrolled to the final entry. "There's no mention of anything. This last entry talks about their intention of obtaining more Wraith for experimentation. Apparently your race's healing abilities gave them hope. No entries after that."
A flicker of movement caught Amelia's attention, and she looked up. Her breath caught in her throat. A distorted face stared balefully back at her, reflected in the dark monitor sitting on the next desk. She felt her blood turn to ice. She must have made a sound, because Todd was kneeling at her side in an instant.
"Amelia, what is wrong?" He followed her gaze to the monitor and stiffened.
"Do you see it?" Amelia asked quietly. He growled in response, and whirled around to face the door.
"It's gone," Amelia said. "What was that?"
Before Todd could answer, gunshots and shouting filled the air. He pulled his stunner from his coat and ran for the door.
"Stay here," he ordered. Amelia stood quickly.
"I'm coming with you," she argued. Todd hesitated, unsure of how to proceed. His knowledge of human women was limited to prey, weak-willed worshippers, and the annoying doctor. One such as Amelia was foreign to him, and he suspected pointing out her current weakness would be impolitic. fortunately, Keller did it for him.
"Your body is too fragile in its current state," she said sternly. "Let Todd find out what's going on. He can heal. You can't."
Amelia nodded curtly. "You're right," she sighed. "Watch your back, Todd."
"I will return shortly," he promised, and slipped out the door.
"What now?" Amelia asked.
"Now we wait," Keller replied, and began rifling through the workstations for weapons.