Chapter 7 – The Never Ending Nightmare

"I disappeared? How?" John asked as he continued to walk along the corridor with Rodney.

McKay could feel his heart pounding in fright over what he had just said. Somehow, the revelation to his friend had suddenly made the situation more real to him. He rubbed his side absently and winced at the pulling pain from the stitches as he moved.

At length he replied, "I don't know. I can't believe I was out for two days!"

John's eyes widened and he glanced across at Rodney, "Out? You mean you did sleep after all?"

Rodney reached up and rubbed his temples with his eyes narrowed, "Um, not really sleep, no. I, uh, passed out again."

"We've seriously got to get that thing off you. Come on, let's hurry this up."

Rodney was surprised that John had not shouted at him again and was now showing concern after his recent telling off. They quickly walked the rest of the way to the lab in a tense, but once again friendly, silence.

As they stepped into the lab, Rodney was shocked and slightly touched by the fact that all the scientists were still in there working almost tirelessly to try and help him. It was late, but time was now meaningless to McKay and he quietly asked Sheppard, "What time is it anyway?"

"11pm."

Rodney nodded and adjusted his watch back with a soft sigh.

Radek looked harassed and on edge as he came over to the two men. He turned to Rodney and smiled bravely as he asked, "How are you?"

McKay looked down and did not say anything. He drew in a quick breath as his head throbbed again painfully.

John had to answer, "He's all stitched up, but he's still complaining so probably fine for the moment."

Rodney grimaced and clutched the top of his head tightly. Radek's face fell and he walked over to his side. He put a friendly hand on McKay's back and led him over to the chair next to the laptop he had been working on.

Rodney sat down heavily and huffed out a breath. He slowly lowered his hand down from his head and stared at the screen.

John kept his distance and waited by the door. He was still within earshot, but seemed to have decided to leave it to the scientists for now. He tapped his radio and spoke to someone under his breath so that no-one else in the lab heard him.

"Found anything?" Rodney asked through gritted teeth.

Radek spoke sadly, "Only a few things. You can have a look. This is the laptop you brought back with you. Some of the files are partially decoded."

Rodney typed through the screens and willed his assaulted mind to take in some of the data as his eyes tracked across the screen. He sighed angrily and set his lips in a thin line. "Is that it? I'm never going to get this thing off me am I?"

Radek looked a little hurt and pulled the laptop out of reach of Rodney's fingers. He typed a few keys and then spun it around to show McKay. "There is more. You did not see it properly."

Rodney furrowed his brow as he saw a gate address and a schematic for a modified scanner flashing across the screen. "Oh, do you think…"

"Yes, whatever is going on with you, the solution is probably on the planet where this gate leads. According to Ancient Database, it was a Wraith outpost ten thousand years ago."

"And the scanner?"

"You were gone for a while, so I sent someone down to Janus' lab to have a look around."

Rodney was horrified that anyone was going anywhere near the lab after what had happened to him.

Radek walked over to the other side of the desk and grabbed an ordinary looking hand scanner. Rodney had not even given it a second glance and as Radek came over to him he said, "Janus had already made that one, huh?"

Radek pushed his glasses up with his free hand as he studied to small device. "Well, we found it in the lab, but have no idea what it does yet, if anything."

Over by the door, someone handed something to John. He nodded and thanked them under his breath before they left the room. Zelenka and McKay did not see this as they were both intently studying the scanner.

Rodney stood up and frowned at the device Radek was wielding in his palm. "Maybe it isn't affected by the interference and can scan me?"

John was already walking over to them, but Zelenka beckoned him over needlessly anyway. Sheppard raised his eyebrows and handed a small packet to Rodney as he passed. He said, "Painkillers from Keller, for the headache I know you're trying to hide."

Rodney grimaced, but took a couple of the pills with some water from the bottle in his tac vest.

John walked over and stood next to Zelenka as Rodney tucked the rest of the tablets into a pocket on his vest.

John asked, "Want me to activate that for you? See if we can find out anything we don't already know about McKay?"

Rodney glared at him suspiciously and folded his arms over his chest protectively, "What's that supposed to mean?"

John raised his eyebrows, but did not grace McKay with an answer. He took the scanner from Radek and said, "Hold still."

Rodney lowered his arms to his sides as he stood a short distance away from the table. He felt a little afraid in anticipation of what the scanner may reveal.

John stood directly in front of Rodney and lifted the blank screen up at him. He activated it and tracked it from the scientist's head down to his neck.

Rodney's headache quickly flared to an unbearable level; to him it felt like his temples were suddenly being compressed in a vice. He cried out and flinched violently. He stumbled backwards and lost his footing as his coordination failed him in the haze of pain. John frowned at the scanner as readings were picked up and recorded onto the device.

Rodney landed heavily and curled up into a tight ball as he shivered and held his head. He opened his bloodshot eyes to look around at the faces all peering down at him in concern. He sniffed as blood tracked down his face from his nose and closed his eyes again as he got weaker and the pain began to recede slightly.

John quickly deactivated the scanner and handed it back to Radek when he saw the affect it was having on McKay. He ran over to the scientist who was panting shallow breaths and had his eyes tightly closed. John crouched down and held onto Rodney's shoulders to try and stop the tremors wracking the scientist's body.

He said in alarm, "Rodney? I'm sorry! I didn't know it was going to do that!"

McKay grunted and whispered harshly under his breath, "Drills. Pneumatic drills..."

John relaxed his grip as Rodney's shaking slowed and then stopped and his breathing evened out a little. McKay reached up a hand and wiped at his bloody nose. He grimaced when he opened his eyes and gazed at the back of his hand.

"Can you get up?"

Rodney lifted up one of his hands and John grasped it and pulled him upright. He felt a little light-headed from his recent ordeal and swayed a little. He wondered what data the scanner had been able to gather. "Maybe I'll be alright if I work over here?" He pointed to the far side of the room away from where Zelenka had deposited the offending device on one of the desks. "I'll work on the rest of the code while you keep that thing away from me."

Radek shrugged, "Okay, as long as you do not collapse once more."

John smirked, "Wouldn't be much point in carrying on if you flake out again, McKay."

Rodney grimaced as he rubbed the remaining blood from his face with a tissue he had retrieved from his pocket.

John stayed with Radek as McKay carried the unnetworked laptop over and shoved a scientist out of his seat as far away from them at possible. He hoped the proximity was what had affected him so badly.

He started to look over the partially decoded database and noticed that some of the files were close to complete reconstruction. Solian had made fast work out of the decryption which had had Rodney and everyone else stumped for such a long time. There seemed to be fewer layers of code to get through before the data would finally be his.

He sighed and started working on the first line, looking for patterns. After a few minutes he had already worked through the top layer of the remaining encryption. The data was still unreadable, but he smiled at the achievement and silently congratulated himself at his brilliance as he had a crack at the next layer.

He suddenly found that his face was feeling hotter and his breathing was becoming more difficult. He looked across the room and choked slightly as he saw John and Radek frowning down at the active scanner. He tried to call out to them but his voice got stuck in his throat in a strangled gasp.

He screwed up his face tightly and wheezed through his narrowing airway. With difficulty, he reached up his worryingly heavy arms and felt the metal band around his neck. It had a slight give in it and bent under his touch. He panicked as he felt that it was embedded in his skin and becoming tighter as it constricted his breathing and the arteries supplying his brain.

Rodney staggered out of the chair and kept one hand on his throat as he lowered the other one down and placed it over his hitching chest as he laboured to inhale a noisy and rattling breath.

He sensed, rather than saw people dashing towards him as the world around him wavered and crashed. All colour leeched out of everything in sight as people and objects vanished out of existence to him. He fell forwards and landed heavily on something sharp in one of the pockets of his tac vest. It slammed into his ribs, but he was unconscious before the pain registered in his blood and oxygen deprived mind.

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As Rodney became aware the first thing he noticed was a whooshing sound. The noise was constant and never paused or faltered. He cracked his eyes open and took one look at his surroundings as he lay on the floor before he covered his face and muttered, "This isn't happening."

Rodney sucked in a few deep breaths and winced at his sore throat and what felt like at least one cracked rib. He tried to calm his nerves and lowered his hands again after a few minutes. He hoped and prayed that things would be back to normal when he had gathered enough courage to look at his surroundings. Although, he seriously doubted they would be as he could not close his ears to the sound of the howling winds all around him.

He took a chance and opened his eyes. His breathing sped up again in fright at the rippling walls and the strange and constant swishing noise. He glanced with wide and fearful eyes at his new location.

Rodney wondered whether this existence would eventually become his eternal fate if he could not find a way to release the loop of chain around his neck as it tried to permanently bind him to the place he was now in.

He reasoned that lying on the floor was not really doing anything to help his situation, so he steeled himself and stood up. He hugged one arm around his chest and touched his throat to inspect the damage. He shuddered a little as his fingertips awoke the bruising encircling his neck, but the band had loosened enough so that he could breathe.

Rodney walked out of what appeared to be a twisted version of the science lab he was standing in before his collapse and into the corridor. He glanced up and down the hallway and narrowed his eyes at the walls which were shifting unsteadily all around him. It was almost like water was flowing over them in several directions at once, distorting his vision and what the city should look like.

He stepped up to the wall and cautiously lifted up a shaking hand towards the surface. The noise all around him continued to blast against his ears although he could not localise the source and he felt no breeze against his skin.

He hesitated for a moment as his fingertips reached out to the rippling wall, but then shrugged and muttered, "Things can't really get much worse…" and touched the surface.

Rodney frowned in confusion as his hand connected with the normal and perfectly solid metal. He closed his eyes and traced his fingers over the surface, but it was as smooth as it should be and he felt no rippling sensation on his skin as his eyes had shown him.

After a few seconds, he lifted his hand away. His other arm was still wrapped around his ribcage and every breath reminded him of the damage.

He muttered under his breath as he slowly walked without any purpose up the hallway, "This is one of the circles of hell." He cursed himself that he could not remember which one. "Possibly the second…"

He suddenly stopped in his tracks as he wondered if it would be possible to die while he was out of phase. He grimaced as he reasoned that all the pain and blood was very real to him so probably.

He thought of his team and the other scientists. He even thought of Radek and furrowed his brow in realisation, "Oh, oh! And they'd never find out what happened or ever find me!"

He leant his back up against a visibly moving, but physically stable wall and closed his eyes in sorrow.

"Dr Rodney McKay? Um, Dr Rodney McKay?"

He started and winced as a timid voice broke through the gales blowing nothing at him in the timeless place. He slowly opened his eyes and saw Solian standing in front of him, peering at his face in concern.

Rodney kicked himself for letting his guard down. He had been lucky it was only a voice and not a spike that had shaken him out of his reverie.

Solian smiled at him more warmly than McKay had ever seen and he could not help returning the expression a little incredulously.

Solian said, "Thought you had gone."

"Yes, it has been a while hasn't it?" Rodney smirked. "I missed this place so much. Although, I don't think much of the décor now that I can see it properly."

Solian frowned in confusion at the comment and then pointed at McKay's neck, "Hurt."

Rodney automatically reached up and pressed his neck gently and said, "That and the more than likely broken ribs which will probably puncture my lungs soon."

"Rorkan?" Solian asked in alarm with his eyes wide.

"No, just me falling over again and one of Janus' old toys."

Solian gazed at him blankly and Rodney sighed as he pushed himself away from the wall and stood up straight.

He suddenly snapped his fingers a few times and Solian flinched backwards a little at the gesture. McKay did not notice and pulled a pad of paper and a pen out of his tac vest. He turned around and scrawled the gate symbols from Janus' data and held it out so that Solian could see it.

He spoke quickly, "I don't know how much time I have here during this phase. We think the answer is on this planet somewhere. Do you recognize the address or have any more information for us?"

Solian frowned down at the messy dots and lines and mumbled, "Seven stars. Eleven…"

"…Wraith. Yes, I know. It's a Wraith outpost or at least it was ten thousand years ago in the normal plane of time."

"Do not remember."

Rodney sighed in frustration and said, "That's a shame."

Solian suddenly tensed up and whispered, "Rorkan comes."

"What? Does he follow you around or something? How have you survived all this time?"

Solian glared back at him and muttered, "He knows me. He will know you too."

McKay's eyes widened as he misunderstood, "I sincerely hope not!"

They both spun around and watched as Rorkan ran towards them. The corridor all around him rippled in his wake and then reformed back to how it had been before. Rodney glared at the approaching man intensely and drew his knife forwards.

He felt a bubble of fear in his throat and tried to swallow it before he choked. Solian lifted his hand up and offered it to Rodney. McKay narrowed his eyes, first at the hand and then at Solian's eager and beckoning face. He sighed and took hold of the other man's hand.

The corridor stopped moving suddenly and Rorkan was frozen in his tracks mid stride with the spike he ever carried ready to strike at either of the men in his path. The colours were washed out to a bright whiteness and Rodney heard a voice next to him say, "I survived."

McKay's face was bathed in the reflected glow of the white world around him as Solian maintained his grasp tightly. He kept Rodney with him in the second layer of time he had created to save them both from Rorkan.

Rodney sheathed his knife as he turned to look incredulously at Solian's bright and grinning face. Solian motioned with his free hand at Rorkan and mumbled, "He does it too, but not as well."

Rodney felt his temper flaring and snapped angrily, "Oh, so you help me now! What about earlier when he stabbed me? He was just about to kill me and you left me alone!"

Solian looked away sadly and muttered, "Did not know you. Thought you were also to kill me."

Rodney continued to glare at him and Solian glanced back up at him in hope, but his face soon fell again at the scathing look Rodney gave him. He whispered, "Come…"

Rodney did not have time to ask as he felt a savage tug on his hand. The bright walls around him spun dizzying as Solian pulled him along through time, away from the corridor and away from Rorkan who remained frozen in his act of violence. Flashes of lights and blurry visions of walls flowing in darkness passed across Rodney's sightline and he had to close his eyes to keep the nausea down.

He felt a new sensation suffusing his whole being, a sense of unreality as if nothing had ever existed and nothing ever would. He tried to nail down the feeling in the hope of recalling it if he ever needed to learn how to control the layers of time on his own.

McKay opened his eyes as he finally managed to tear his hand out of Solian's painfully tight grasp. He held his head as the pain flared again and his vision of the white and rippling halls of Atlantis darkened. He flew across the corridor as he was wrenched out of the timeless place and slammed into the wall. He staggered slightly before he recovered and straightened up.

He kept his eyes closed for a few seconds as the flashing lights continued as though they had been burned into his eyelids. He felt light-headed and his breathing was too fast in fright over Solian's actions and the shock to his system of the multiple time phasing he had just experienced for the first time.

He opened his eyes but was terribly disorientated, as there were no windows and no people about in the empty corridor. He wondered whether he was still frozen in time or whether it had gone back to how it was originally.

He pulled an ammo clip out of his tac vest and threw it towards the opposite wall. It did not stop in mid air and landed with a loud and normal sounding clatter.

Rodney sighed in relief and then another horrible thought came to him. He very reluctantly pulled back his sleeve and looked at his watch.

He glanced at the watch for a moment and his eyes widened. He looked up for a second before he did a double take of the offending chronometer. He muttered in shock, "Three weeks!"

He hoped with all his might that the time distortion had not meant as much time had passed for everyone else on Atlantis, but he needed to be sure.

He walked rapidly, almost breaking into a run, up the silent corridor towards the science lab.

Before he got there the corridor rippled and shifted and he shouted uselessly into the void, "Not again!" as he was once more knocked out of phase.

It was so close to the last shift, he thought it might be permanent this time with no hope of ever returning or seeing his friends or any other humans from Earth ever again.

Rodney cried out in despair and had to force himself to swallow a hysterical laugh down his throat. He sobbed in frustration at the rippling walls once again surrounding him. They mercilessly taunted him with an eternity of being trapped in the prison he had now entered.

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TBC