A WEEK LATER

"It's Sheppard's team Doctor Weir."

"Lower the shield"

The five-person team tumbled through the event horizon, weapons pointing backwards. As soon as they were through John yelled, "Raise the shield!" As soon as it was up he collapsed backwards, his arms falling out to the sides.

Lilah rolled over and crawled to John's side. "MEDIC!!" She yelled, pressing her hands to John's left side as Rodney rolled over onto his side and started coughing.

Brianna had been meeting with Doctor Weir. Since John's team had been overdue they had both rushed out to the control room.

When Lilah called for a medic, Bri's face had turned white, but then she had bolted down the stairs, heading towards her lover and her brother.

After five minutes of complete and utter chaos, John was on a stretcher, Rodney was being lead to the infirmary with an oxygen mask on, Teyla and Ronon were dragged after him to be checked out. As soon as Carson had the team dragged off, he grabbed Lilah and Bri and carried them off as well, telling them to keep their bloody hands out and to NOT touch anything under any circumstances.

Elizabeth entered the infirmary, and once again found herself in the midst of complete and utter chaos. She swayed dizzily for a second, feeling like she was going to be sucked into the madness with no way out. She jumped as a hand on her shoulder helped her anchor herself. She turned and found Lilah standing beside her, gloves on her hands, and a mask covering her nose and mouth.

Lilah didn't give Elizabeth time to ask questions. She simply grabbed her shoulder, and towed her to a decontamination shower. Lilah shoved the woman inside, and shut the door. The rubber suited nurse already inside helped Elizabeth out of her clothing, and proceeded to give her a scrubbing more thorough and harsher than anything else she'd ever had.

When the nurses were satisfied, she was let out, where Lilah helped her into mask, gloves and gown. Only then did Elizabeth get around to asking questions. Since Carson was nowhere to be found, she asked Lilah.

"What's going on here?" She asked, severely concerned about the speed with which she had been hustled into the decontamination shower.

"We ran into a few…issues on the planet ma'am." Lilah seemed rather reluctant to expound on what exactly those issues were.

"Oh, what kind of issues exactly?" She knew that she would have to force them to tell eventually, but having some idea of what she was getting into would be a good thing.

Lilah winced. Elizabeth sighed "This is going to be one of those briefings I would rather NOT hear isn't it?"

"I suppose you could say that, or you could say that this was one of those times you warned me about. Those times when it would be simpler to shoot Sheppard and McKay as soon as the word 'ritual' was mentioned and then make a run for it. Frankly it probably would have gone better if I had done that." Lilah winced again as one of the nurses beckoned to her. "Time to go get stabbed and prodded." She saluted, and then she followed the nurse to the exam table.

"Lilah wait, where's Bri and Colonel Sheppard?" Elizabeth called out.

Lilah turned and walked backwards. "In surgery." She pointed to the appropriate room, then turned back to face the nurse and continued onward.

Elizabeth sighed, and headed for the observation room. When she got there she was startled to see Carson already standing there, giving instructions over a headset to Brianna who was already covered in blood and wrist deep in John's intestines.

"Doctor Beckett, what's going on?" she asked.

"It's some kind of toxin, we're still not sure if it's transmittable, but we're not taking any chances. Which is why Brianna's doing the surgery. She already had his blood on her and if this thing can be transmitted through contact with the skin, well, it was just safer in the long run." He picked up the headset and continued to give instructions.

Brianna eventually sighed, and rested her hands on the edge of John's bed, her head dropped as she took several deep breaths, then her voice filtered up through the speakers to the observation room.

"I got it out and closed the artery, but he lost a lot of blood, whether he makes it or not is all up to him now." She staggered over to a chair in the corner of the isolation room, and collapsed into it.

"Carson, got what out and is she okay?" Elizabeth was still worried, for all of the team, but mostly for the siblings still in the room below her.

"A knife made of some kind of bamboo like substance, and aye, she's just a wee bit exhausted. Surgery is stressful enough without having to operate on your own sibling." He glanced at Elizabeth out of the corner of his eye, watching her reaction to the revelation.

"How did you know?" Elizabeth wasn't really surprised that Carson knew, she just wanted to be sure that he knew to keep it quiet.

"She told me. Bit of a surprise that, wasn't really aware that John had a sister, much less that she was coming to Atlantis." Carson shrugged, "But since she asked me to keep it a secret, I had to have her do this operation. There was no way for me to assign someone else without raising suspicion."

"I'll talk to her, see if there's anyway we can reveal at least some of who she is, I don't want her to have to go through that again."