Hee! As quite a few people caught on, the doppelgangers are "our" Sheppard and McKay. Thank you for the reviews! And thanks again to betas Kodiak and Tazmy, especially Tazmy for giving me much-needed extra help with this chapter.

Chapter Six: Wraithsign

The flurry of activity when they landed on not-quite-Atlantis was a blur to Rodney. His analytical mind vaguely registered some of the little differences from his own universe -- a slight blue tint to the lights in the jumper bay; different seat material in the jumper itself -- but everything around him ran together like watercolors in the rain. He felt cold and disconnected. He couldn't help wondering, in a distant kind of way, if crossing between universes had done something horrible and life-threatening to him.

"Psychological shock," he heard someone say -- someone with Carson's soft brogue, but who wasn't Carson, couldn't be Carson, because Carson was dead and this was just ... wrong. Everyone in this universe was cold-eyed and hard and terrifying to him. Someone draped a blanket over his shoulders. He clutched at it.

When they moved Sheppard, he came awake and rose to his feet. He tried to follow but was stopped by this universe's hard-faced fake Sheppard.

"I want to go with him." He struggled, ineffectually, feeling as if he'd been trapped in a bad dream and couldn't wake up.

"He's going to be in surgery; there's nothing you can do. And the infirmary is where you're going anyway." The other Sheppard stepped back, nodding to a soldier that Rodney didn't recognize. "Bradbury, escort this man to the infirmary, please."

He wanted to complain about being treated like a criminal in his own city (or a reasonable facsimile thereof), but he was too shaken, too confused, too scared and tired. Hugging the blanket around himself, he allowed himself to be led down the jumper's ramp.

At the bottom of the ramp, he looked up to see this universe's McKay staring at him in a wary, worried kind of way. Like everyone in this universe that Rodney had seen so far, he looked a little more tired, a little older, than the people Rodney knew. "Haven't you ever looked in a mirror before?" Rodney snapped, and was rewarded when his double jumped guiltily and then scowled.

"I didn't even want to let them bring you here in the first place. Don't blame me."

Rodney didn't dignify that with a response; instead he stepped around his other-universe clone (this was going to get so confusing, he thought) and nearly ran into the strange woman with all the braids. She stepped back quickly and offered him a brief, not very sincere smile. Rodney wondered if she could be this universe's Teyla. She didn't have Teyla's kind eyes, though. Instead she looked more ... appraising, as if wondering what use he could be to her.

When a booted step rang on the ramp behind Rodney, he saw alarm ripple across her face before it was hidden behind a polite smile. The alternate Sheppard brushed past Rodney without looking at him, and he saw how the woman tensed up when Sheppard approached her. "Hope you weren't thinking of wandering off," the alternate Sheppard told her. "Atlantis can be a dangerous place for a stranger, Doc."

Doc... Doctor? ... of what? Rodney wondered. The woman's face was set in hard lines; Rodney could see that she didn't like Sheppard, but he had no idea why. "And I'm sure it's my welfare you're worried about," she said tightly.

The alternate McKay sidled up to Sheppard with one eye on the woman. "Need to talk to you," he murmured.

"Not now, McKay."

There were so many undercurrents in this place. Rodney had never been much good at figuring out people, and now he was surrounded by people bearing the faces of the ones he knew, yet all of them with their own hidden agendas. He'd never felt so lost, and it was actually a relief when a hand closed on his elbow and he felt himself tugged away from the jumper. He impatiently jerked his arm away, and the Marine quickly let go; Rodney saw fear in the young sergeant's eyes.

Everyone's afraid of me here. That's ... freaky. It was sort of cool too ... for about a half-second, before he noticed that the Marine's hand had dropped to rest on the butt of his sidearm.

"How about the infirmary, Doctor?" the soldier asked politely.

"How about it," Rodney muttered, and marched off in front of his guard dog, the blanket fluttering behind him. At least he could gain that much control.

------

"Need to talk to you."

"Not now, McKay." Whatever McKay wanted, it could wait. Sheppard figured that he had bigger problems at the moment, like a Dorandan scientist who had probably watched the jumper pilot dial the Atlantis gate address. Looking past McKay, he saw Bradbury escorting the alternate Rodney out of the jumper bay, passing Elizabeth as she arrived with several Marines behind her. To her credit, the expression on her face barely flickered as her eyes went from the unfamiliar Rodney's back, to the familiar one's face, and then to their uninvited guest.

"Doctor Larissa." Elizabeth held out a hand. "I wasn't aware that you'd come back with the Colonel. I'm sorry that our promised tour of Atlantis couldn't come under better circumstances." Her face betrayed no sign of her distrust of the Dorandans, but Sheppard knew her well enough to note the stiffness in her shoulders.

"That's quite all right." Larissa seemed eager for the distraction, hurrying to greet Elizabeth and to distance herself from Sheppard. And McKay was still hovering anxiously. Sheppard glared at him.

McKay glared back. "Colonel--"

Sheppard made a quick decision. He didn't want Larissa wandering around Atlantis unescorted, but neither did he trust the doppelgangers in the infirmary. And he didn't want McKay in either place -- didn't trust him to be objective enough in either situation. Rodney and Larissa, Rodney and alternate-universe Rodney -- either way, a disaster waiting to happen if McKay's scientific curiosity overwhelmed his not-very-well-developed common sense.

Larissa was probably safe enough with Elizabeth and a military escort, since Elizabeth didn't trust the woman any more than Sheppard did. Which meant that the infirmary was where he ought to be, as soon as he figured out a safe place to stash McKay for a while.

He'd been a world-class Rodney wrangler, once upon a time. He wondered if he still had the touch.

"Not now, McKay! Space-time continuum, remember? Hole in the fabric of reality? Why are you still standing here?" Sheppard jerked his head in the general direction of the labs. "Get your ass down to your lab and figure out what the hell happened, before it happens again and we're knee-deep in clones of you."

McKay's head jerked back. "You've got no authority to give me orders," he said, narrow-eyed.

"That wasn't an order. It was a reminder. Elizabeth will back me up on this: We need to find out what happened over there. It's your job to find out, so get down there and do your job."

Even as the words left his mouth, though, he could see McKay's blue eyes harden. No matter what he said to the scientist these days, it was the wrong thing. He'd always had such an easy touch with McKay -- it was like flying, a thing that came naturally to him. But now ... now he tried to think his way around every statement, to analyze the outcome, and inevitably he stumbled. It wasn't his way. He was a man who acted on instinct, who trusted his gut.

As a pilot, he knew all too well that in order to fly, you had to act; you couldn't stop to think, or the unforgiving ground would smack all the thinking right out of you forever. When you were catching air in an Apache helicopter with missiles screaming behind you, there was no room for fear and doubt and second-guessing. You just did, and picked up the pieces later.

Now, though -- nothing was right; when he acted without thinking, it was wrong, and when he tried to think it through, his reasoning was wrong. And every wrong step left him farther from home.

"Don't throw duty in my face," McKay said flatly. "Shuffle me off, get me out from underfoot -- You're trying to shut the scientists out of this, aren't you?" Trying to shut ME out, his tone implied, while his hands waved to encompass Larissa and the jumper bay and even Atlantis itself. "You haven't set a foot on Doranda in months, and now you're waltzing in and taking over. It's a military operation now, isn't it?" The mobile hands made air quotes around the word military, a sharp angry motion.

"For cryin' out loud, McKay, this isn't about civilian and military. Quit being paranoid."

"Oh? So what's it about then, Colonel? If it's not the scientists and the military, what is it, then? You and me?"

Enough was enough, and suddenly the seething frustration of the last few weeks burst out of him. "Yeah, you know? It is about you. We've already got two alternate-reality versions of ourselves and a possible ... agent of unknown alliance on Atlantis --" he didn't know if Larissa could hear them, didn't want to take chances " -- all because you can't contain your scientific curiosity and jump into things without thinking them through, and you know what? I don't trust you not to --" Lead the Dorandans straight to our ZPM was what he almost said, yanking himself back at the last moment. He faltered and regained his verbal footing. " -- not to waltz down to the infirmary and form alliances with who the hell knows what." Lowering his voice so that they couldn't be overheard, he hissed fiercely, "I don't trust you not to betray this fucking city because somebody dangles a new puzzle in front of your eyes."

McKay's mouth opened and shut for a moment, temporarily speechless. But only very temporarily. "Oh, and now you're forgetting that it was you who brought our clones back to Atlantis?" he demanded, his voice rising and cracking in fury. "Well, that's all just fan-frigging-tastic, Colonel, and you can rewrite history any way you like but I've known for months that you didn't trust me and it's about damn time you just came out and said it!"

By now, everyone in the jumper bay was looking at them. "McKay, this isn't the time or place for --"

"When's a good time, Colonel? When you're out on a mission? Oh wait -- that's all the time!"

The sheer unfairness of that felt like a punch in the chest. "You quit!"

"You tried to have me fired first! What, am I supposed to stick around when my team leader's trying to get rid of me?"

Sheppard couldn't believe McKay was dredging up all of this in front of the entire room. He felt all the eyes resting on them like a physical burden: his men, Elizabeth, Larissa. It was suddenly, horribly like Afghanistan, like his entire military career up to this point -- the judgment in the eyes weighing him, the feeling that he himself walked a razor's edge where comfort and friendship could so quickly dissolve into disapproval and scorn and disgrace.

McKay had done this in public on purpose; he had to have known that for Sheppard, maintaining his position as Atlantis's military commander would limit his ability to fight back. Son of a bitch. And Larissa was right there -- representing the Dorandans -- watching Sheppard's authority being undermined by his own people. White-hot fury roiled in his stomach.

"What's the matter, Colonel? Hit a little close to home there? Feeling a little less like Mr. Victim now, hmm?" McKay had a smug grin plastered across his features that didn't quite make it to his eyes. And Sheppard felt a quick, dark gratitude to their audience, because he didn't think he'd ever in his life wanted to hit somebody this much, and at least in public, he couldn't.

Instead he stiffened his spine, dredging down inside himself for the military discipline that his instructors had despaired he'd ever learn. Tight, controlled, he leaned towards McKay, and felt cold victory when McKay flinched back, open fear flashing across the scientist's face before he managed to hide it -- while deeper within Sheppard, something died at that look.

"You want this to be a civilian-military thing, then by God, get your ass into the labs or I'll have you thrown in the brig." Sheppard's voice was low and tight. "If you're thinking about appealing to Elizabeth, you and I both know that in the Atlantis chain of command, I outrank you -- and as of today, I want you to remember that."

McKay was trying to talk, an indignant spluttering, but Sheppard rode right over him. "You take orders from me, not the other way around, and if you're thinking about turning this into a war, remember this, McKay: My side is armed."

McKay's jaw dropped, then snapped shut, his face firming up into a look of resolve. "You're threatening me! I don't believe this!"

Sheppard tried to smile; it came out more of a baring of teeth. He didn't know if there were any smiles left in him. As the anger burned through him, leaving only steel behind, he felt himself on more familiar ground. He knew how to make soldiers obey him; he'd had lots of practice at that. "You got a problem, McKay, Elizabeth's right over there. Go ahead, hide behind her -- but you know how she feels about you these days. Otherwise, get back to the labs, and I'm not going to tell you twice."

He'd thought that he'd seen McKay in every conceivable variation of angry, but he didn't think he'd ever seen that look before: cold steel, matching him glare for glare. "If it's a war you want, Colonel, then you remember this: My side's armed, too, in our own way. And we're smarter."

With that, he spun on his heel and marched out of the jumper bay. Sheppard stared after him, hanging onto the anger until the dregs of it slipped out of his body, leaving steel and ash behind.

He'd been aware of the slow change for some time, but never more acutely than now. He was becoming the thing he hated most: the good soldier, the automaton, doing his duty not because he felt its rightness in his gut, not to protect and preserve the things he loved, the people he loved ... but only because it was his duty.

He could feel it happening and he didn't know how to make it stop.

Elizabeth left Larissa with the Marines and strode over towards Sheppard, her eyes sparking fire. "And just what exactly was that, Colonel?"

Sheppard took a steadying breath before meeting her eyes. "Chain of command problem. It's resolved now."

In a quieter voice, but no less stern, she said, "We agreed that no matter what happens between you and Rodney, you have to be able to get along with each other. The city needs no less than that."

"We can still work together, Elizabeth."

"That's not what I saw just now."

Damn Rodney for pushing it to this point. "Elizabeth, what you saw was strictly between myself and McKay. It won't affect our working relationship."

Her too-perceptive eyes searched his. "It had better not," she said at last, and then turned back to Larissa with smiles and apologies.

Sheppard realized, pulling himself together, that he hadn't had a chance to discuss with Elizabeth the need to keep Larissa out of sensitive areas of the city. However, knowing that Elizabeth shared his suspicions about the Dorandans, he'd simply have to trust that she would know what to do.

Trust. He found himself less willing to do that these days, especially with something so important riding on it. Quietly, he beckoned a Marine, and gave the man orders in a low voice. Larissa was to be guarded at all times. She wasn't to be allowed near the control room, the science labs or any of the power generating stations. And if Elizabeth had a problem with this, she'd need to take it up with Sheppard.

After that he left them to it. If there was nothing else he liked about the military, you could at least trust in the discipline that it instilled in its members, in a way that you couldn't trust people to come to the right conclusions by themselves.

He didn't trust Ronon that way, definitely not. There was no one he'd rather have at his back offworld; he knew the Satedan wouldn't betray them, though Elizabeth seemed less sure. But in a situation like this, he'd much rather have a few properly trained Marines on the job. Ronon just couldn't take orders well enough. Same with Teyla. When it came to the defense of Atlantis, he had to trust his men as extensions of himself; there was no room for independent thinkers.

Like McKay.

Sheppard could feel his hands curling into fists as he strode down the halls towards the infirmary. What the hell was wrong with the man? Couldn't McKay see that he was in the wrong? Sheppard was in charge, and no one wanted that less than he did, but when it came right down to it, he was the second-in-command of Atlantis and the person solely responsible for the city's security. Even Elizabeth had to defer to him on those matters. And there came time when orders had to be given, and taken, and if the civilians couldn't learn that, then they could damn well pack up and head back to Earth before more of them died.

Oh, their chaotic way of doing things had worked well enough the first year, before they'd all really come to understand how serious their situation was -- before he'd come to understand it. As much as he'd loathed the rigidity of his commanders in Afghanistan, he was starting to understand, now that he was in their position, why they'd acted the way they had. Sometimes you had to put personal feelings aside for the greater good. Sometimes you had to sacrifice one or two, or ten, or twenty, to save everyone else. He hated making those decisions, absolutely hated it. But the more of them he made, the easier they became.

And sometimes that scared him more than the Wraith.

After the fight in the jumper bay and the turmoil of his thoughts, he found the infirmary disconcertingly quiet. The doppelganger McKay was sitting quietly on a bed in the corner while a nurse examined him and Sgt. Bradbury hovered nearby. Sheppard's reaction to the sight of McKay's deceptively-familiar face startled and scared the heck out of him: a rush of emotion so powerful that he felt sick to his stomach. He couldn't even unravel most of it -- anger, betrayal, hate, other things with no name.

Apparently it was easier to put aside his conflict with McKay when the scientist wasn't in front of him, reminding him of it. But Elizabeth was right: He and McKay had to work together. There was no choice. And he'd get Rodney to see that, at gunpoint if necessary.

Hailing a passing nurse, he asked her about the state of the doppelgangers.

"The other -- um, you, is in surgery, sir. Dr. Beckett is with him." She nodded towards the McKay in the corner. "He seems to be uninjured, just a little bit of low blood sugar and a lot of -- well, shock, I guess. Physically, he's perfectly normal, except that his ATA gene doesn't appear to work on our technology."

Sheppard glanced at her curiously. "Really?"

"Yes, and we aren't really sure why, unless it's just different enough from our version that Atlantis doesn't recognize it. We assume the same would be true of the other Sheppard if he, ah ..." Her eyes flicked towards the doors of the OR.

"Survives. Yeah. Well, in a way that makes things easier, since we don't have to worry about these two turning on anything they shouldn't."

The nurse looked over at the alternate McKay again. So did Sheppard. It was really disconcerting seeing Rodney that quiet and subdued.

"We were going to call and ask what to do with him, sir, so I'm glad you showed up down here. He wants to stay here, but there's no real medical reason why he has to be, and he's making the staff nervous."

"No medical reason why he can't be somewhere other than the infirmary?"

The nurse shook her head. "No, physically he's fine. He should probably get something to eat, but that's about it."

"Thanks." Sheppard offered her a quick, distracted smile and then approached the corner with the doppelganger. Bradbury saluted him; he returned it. The doppelganger -- Rod -- looked up and scowled.

"Oh," he said. "You."

Sheppard reminded himself that this wasn't McKay, despite the face. Best to approach him as a stranger who had a few similarities in common with their version. "On your feet."

"Why?" Rod demanded. He was still wrapped in the blanket from the puddlejumper, and now he pulled it closer as if by doing so he could shut out the world.

Dealing with the doppelganger's belligerence would be easier if he hadn't just had a fight with the real McKay. "Because I said so, and I'm in charge. Get up."

"You're not in charge, Elizabeth is. Unless there's been -- oh God, did they have a coup here?" The doppelganger looked briefly frightened, before his scowl returned. "Nobody will tell me anything."

"Because you don't have clearance and probably never will. Now get up; I'm going to get you some food and find a place for you to stay 'till we figure out what to do with you."

Rod didn't budge an inch. He appeared to be trying for defiant, but this was undermined by the beseeching look that he gave the OR doors. "I'm not going anywhere until Sheppard's out of surgery."

"And it matters to you if he lives or dies? Get up. That wasn't a suggestion."

He hauled Rod to his feet by a not-so-gentle grip on his arm. The scientist didn't really put up a fight; he was staring in amazement. "Is that a serious question? How can you, of all people --" Then a mercurial look of comprehension flashed across his face. So familiar, so painful. "Things are different with -- with everyone here, aren't they? With you and me? Where are Ronon and Teyla -- or do you even have them here? Are they alive?"

The absolute last thing he wanted to do was to discuss his personal life with an imposter version of the one person he never wanted to see again. On the other hand, he didn't feel up for yet another argument with yet another McKay, not right now. If it got him moving ... "Move your ass, McKay -- Rod -- and I just might tell you a few things. Bradbury, if he doesn't start walking, shoot him."

The soldier drew his gun. Rod stared. "You're not serious?"

"Keep standing there," Sheppard said, "and you'll find out how serious I am."

"But -- Sheppard is --"

"In surgery. Do you have a medical degree in your universe?"

"No," Rod said sullenly.

"Then you can't do a thing here, and there's no point whatsoever in you being here. Start walking."

Rod began a resentful shuffle towards the door, clinging to the blanket like a -- well, like a literal security blanket. "But I can come back, right?" he asked, looking at Sheppard hopefully. "I'll go, I'll eat, I'll come back -- hmm?"

"No. You'll go and you'll stay where we put you, because we don't know a thing about you."

Rod stopped in his tracks. "Then I'm not leaving. I need to be here when he wakes up."

"Sergeant --" Sheppard jerked his head towards the Marine's weapon.

Rod squeaked and took a hasty step forward. "Jeez! I'm moving, I'm moving! What is wrong with you? You make the real Sheppard look like Mr. Rogers."

Sheppard blinked at the non sequitur. "The action hero?"

"The children's show host. You know. Fred Rogers. Sweaters. Puppets."

"Oh. Like Schwarzenegger."

Rod stopped again. "Schwarzenegger?"

"Austrian actor, has a very popular kids' show -- and why am I discussing pop culture with you? Get moving!" Sheppard shoved him.

"I thought the real Sheppard could be a bit of an ass, but he's got nothing on you," Rod grumbled as he was escorted down the corridor. After a minute, he looked over his shoulder at Sheppard, and his eyes were open, expressive, in a way that Rodney's hadn't been in a long time. "Listen, when he wakes up -- will you explain to him what's going on? Tell him I'm okay?"

"There will be people to do that," Sheppard said stiffly.

"I don't want somebody else to do it. I want you to do it."

"Shut up and walk."

He shut up, but not for very long. In that, at least, he did seem fairly similar to the actual Rodney. "You said you'd answer my questions."

"Depends on what the question is." But Sheppard matched his stride to Rod's so that he was abreast of him.

"That guy back there, the doctor, uh ..."

"Beckett?"

The look that Rod flashed him was a blazing trail of pain. "That is Beckett, then? Carson Beckett? Scottish guy, lots of brothers and sisters, cries at the drop of a hat?"

Sheppard's eyebrows went up. "Well, I don't know about that last part, but that's Carson Beckett. Why?"

"Because in my universe, he's ..." Rod looked away, twisting at the blanket with restless hands. He cleared his throat. "Anyway, there are a lot of things different here, but a lot similar enough to make me think that this universe isn't as different as I thought at first; it's just out of sync with mine in both time and space. Obviously the rift caught us on Lantea, but we didn't come through on Lantea, so it's spatially separated by quite a lot. What's today's date, anyway? What's the year?"

Sheppard told him; it wasn't like the date was classified.

Rod nodded slowly. "About a year off from my universe, then. That would explain, um, Carson ..." He swallowed. "So the last thing that happened to you guys, let me think ..." He snapped his fingers, and Sheppard felt an unexpected twist in his gut at the familiarity of the casual gesture. "Aurora. The Aurora. Did you find an Ancient spaceship just recently?"

"Well, it's a cloud of space debris now ..."

"Ah, yeah, to keep it out of Wraith hands, that happened in my universe too." He gave a small laugh. "But that Wraith was hot, wasn't she?"

Sheppard stared at him. "You think a Wraith is hot?" Maybe Rod's universe was a lot more different than he'd realized.

"What? Didn't that happen here? The virtual environment, all of that stuff on the Aurora?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Then something clicked. "Wait, you weren't even on the Aurora."

"What do you mean, I wasn't? Of course I was! Why wasn't I?"

"Why would you be?" Sheppard countered. "I went and checked it out with my team. We couldn't find anything useful and had to blow it up."

"With your team? You mean --" Rod stopped again. "I'm not on your team here?"

He sounded like his puppy just died. And Sheppard was talking before he knew what he was saying, just to get that wounded sound out of the too-Rodneylike voice. It was almost instinctual. "You used to be. Back when we first came through the gate, I --" But he really didn't want to talk about that. "You quit. Just recently."

"Why would I quit?" From the utter disbelief in Rod's tone, Sheppard might have just told him he'd left science to become a grade school teacher.

"I have no idea. You didn't exactly give me a full analysis of your reasoning. I mean, he didn't."

"I just left?" Rod still sounded stunned. "Just like that? No wonder you're so ticked off at me! I would be, too."

"What makes you think I'm mad at you?" Sheppard was genuinely curious. Rod had left the jumper bay before he'd had that fight with the real McKay.

"What do you mean? Hello, genius here! I may be ... less than perfect with the social stuff, Colonel, but I'm not an idiot. Besides, even if I hadn't seen you and the other me trying to avoid each other, the way you've been treating me is pretty good evidence that my other self did something to you. Either that or you're just basically an ass here."

Sheppard had honestly not realized that he'd been treating Rod any differently than he would have treated anyone else. Or ... maybe that was the problem? "Look, McKay -- I mean, Rod, I don't -- I really don't hold that against McKay, all right?" At least, he hadn't, before the fight in the jumper bay. "It wasn't working out, having you -- having him on the team. It hadn't been working for a while."

McKay's mouth opened. "Doranda." Seeing the look on Sheppard's face, he pointed. "Doranda, right? Did I quit after Doranda?" He smacked himself in the forehead with the palm of his hand. "Oh, stupid, stupid me! You know, I actually thought about it? For, like, a nanosecond or two? So this must be the universe where I went ahead and talked myself into it."

Doranda. Was that really it? Sheppard hadn't tried to analyze it; there was so much about the last few months that he didn't want to think about. Things had been tense before he'd refused to help McKay get the green light from Elizabeth on the Arcturus project, but not irretrievably so. Maybe -- maybe the dissolution of the team hadn't been as inevitable as it had seemed. Maybe it had still been possible to step back from the edge, at that point.

Maybe, in Rod's universe, that had been the thing that saved them -- maybe Sheppard had agreed to help, and the project had worked and that had been the difference, the thing that made it possible for him to mend fences with McKay. In this universe, the project was starting to look like a failure, if it couldn't be run without threatening the spacetime continuum; perhaps, in Rod's universe, with a six-week head start and the active cooperation of Sheppard's contingent of Atlantis, they'd been able to solve that problem.

"Was that it? Doranda? Oh jeez -- how bad did I screw up here?" Rod's eyes were wide. "Did I -- did people die? Because of me? Oh God! Ronon and Teyla! They're alive here, right?"

They'd reached the empty quarters where Sheppard planned to put Rod, but he found himself oddly reluctant to end the conversation. Just as it had been disarmingly easy to fall back into the old give-and-take with McKay on the way to Doranda (had it only been this morning?), so he found it now, with Rod. He missed this, missed it a lot, but after today, he knew that there was no way he and the real McKay could ever mend the fences between them. And Rod, of course, wasn't McKay.

But he came from a universe where those fences had never been torn down in the first place -- or, at any rate, had been a lot easier to patch up. Because of Doranda, Sheppard thought, now more sure than ever that his hunch was right. In that other universe, the rift between himself and McKay hadn't widened because of his refusal to help, his insistence to Elizabeth that he wanted McKay off his team. It had closed, because he had said yes, had gone to Elizabeth and argued on Rodney's behalf. And Arcturus must have succeeded there, where it had failed here.

Rod was still staring at him with wide, worried eyes, and he realized that the question still hung in the air between them. "Oh, Ronon and Teyla? No. They're fine." Another thing that was different, because Rod seemed genuinely terrified at the thought of causing Ronon and Teyla's deaths, even if they weren't the Ronon and Teyla he knew. Maybe in their universe, Ronon didn't want to kill McKay as soon as look at him; the thought made Sheppard's lips quirk up slightly.

He palmed the door open. "I'll have someone stop by to bring you something from the mess," he said. "I imagine that Elizabeth will be down shortly, too, for a chat. If you want something in the meantime, just ask one of the Marines."

He didn't try to pretend with Rod, as he had with Larissa, that the guards were anything other than guards, the prison something other than a prison. Alternate-universe double or not, this McKay had surely seen enough of their protocol with strangers to know what he was to them.

"Hmm," was all Rod said. He sat down heavily on the bed in the middle of the room, pulling the blanket a little more tightly around his shoulders. Then he looked up. "Listen, about Sheppard -- my Sheppard, I mean. Ouch, that sounds weird. Don't tell him I put it that way. But ... when he wakes up --" Sheppard could hear him consciously changing the word from if -- "will you come tell me? Or have somebody tell me? If it's not too much trouble for you," he added with bitter sarcasm.

"I'll do that," Sheppard said, and started to say something else. Started to offer to let him stay in the infirmary with his injured Sheppard. Which was completely stupid, counter-productive and a gigantic security risk, so he snapped his mouth shut, and left. Outside, he gave instructions to Bradbury to make sure no one entered or left without authorization, and then went off to dispatch someone to bring Rod a meal from the cafeteria.

------

"And this is where we eat. Communal meals."

Larissa nodded. "We have a similar custom on my world. It was not always so, but since we came to the Doranda system, there are very few of us and we are like a large family, eating together in a central house."

Elizabeth liked Larissa. The other woman was intelligent and perceptive, and for each piece of information that Elizabeth offered her about Atlantis and the Earth humans, she offered something back about the Dorandans. The weeks of separation and distrust between their peoples seemed like a great mistake, now.

"Are you hungry? If you'd like to try some of our food --"

"I have eaten some of your food on Doranda. MREs?" Larissa's nose wrinkled a little, and Elizabeth laughed.

"We have much better food here. For example ..." Elizabeth picked up a chocolate chip cookie, and offered it.

Larissa took a polite nibble, then a larger bite. "That is wonderful," she said, heartfelt. "My people make a sweetening from the secretions of insects that we brought with us from our old world, but it does not taste like this."

Elizabeth mentally decoded this. "Honey?"

"We don't have that word."

"The sweetness in the cookies come from a plant ..." They discussed Earth agriculture as they wandered back out into the hall, trailed by two of Sheppard's men. The escort irritated Elizabeth, but she was willing to accept the necessity of it -- although the more that she spoke to Larissa, the more convinced she became that their suspicions about the Dorandans were unfounded.

"The city is amazing -- all that I had hoped the City of the Ancestors might be." Larissa laid her hand on the wall. "Where does your power supply come from?"

"I don't know if it would be interesting to you." Elizabeth smiled. "I'm sure what you have been doing on Doranda is much more interesting ... and much more advanced than anything we have."

She managed to dodge a couple more questions about the details of Atlantis's architecture, pleading ignorance of the finer points of its systems. The next, and final, stop on her carefully calculated tour of harmless places was one of the civilian rec rooms. Some of the night-shift scientists were watching one of the Star Wars movies -- or, more accurately, most of them were sprawled sleeping on various couches while the movie played. Larissa gasped in amazement; she seemed to be completely taken by the onscreen space battle. Cautiously she sat down on a sofa next to a botanist who had fallen asleep curled around his laptop.

"Would you like to watch it for a few minutes?"

Larissa nodded eagerly. "Oh, yes, please!"

Elizabeth was prepared to feign polite interest -- she lived the movie; she couldn't figure out why so many of the station's staff seemed to enjoy watching it -- but she was saved by the bell when Chuck hailed her with a minor personnel dispute. Quietly she slipped to the door of the darkened rec room, where the Marines had taken up duty stations, so that she could take the call while still keeping Larissa under her supervision.

She ended up staying on the radio for nearly half an hour -- now that they'd found her, it seemed that half the station had something or other that they needed answers to -- while keeping an eye on the top of Larissa's braided head, just visible above the back of the sofa. It appeared that they'd managed to convert another alien race to the ways of the couch potato, she thought, grinning, because Larissa hardly moved the whole time -- completely enthralled with the antics of Luke & company onscreen. Reluctantly, when she'd managed to stem the tide of questions and complaints, she pulled Larissa away from the movie; the woman had curled up on the couch with her feet tucked under her, huddled within the heavy jacket that all her people wore.

"Should we trade," Larissa said, her eyes bright, "perhaps some of these 'movies' would be part of the exchange."

Elizabeth laughed. "I think that could be arranged! For now, though, I've kept you much too long; your people must be wondering where you've gone. Should I send a jumper to take you back to Doranda?"

"I had hoped to see more of your city." Larissa wasn't stupid; she must have noticed that she hadn't been allowed into any of the more sensitive areas. However, she was probably also smart enough to figure out why.

"There's far too much of it to show you in a few hours," Elizabeth hedged. "But I think a cultural exchange would greatly benefit our people; we could arrange another, more detailed tour, and our ethnologists would be equally eager to see your settlement."

Larissa nodded slowly. For an instant something odd, evasive, flickered in her eyes. "I'm sure that could be arranged."

"Do you want to see Dr. McKay before you return to Doranda? I imagine the two of you have a lot to talk about."

Again that flicker. "Not today; I'm sure he'll be going over the data from the test, and I should return to do likewise. But I'll look forward to speaking to him again soon."

Elizabeth saw her back to the jumper bay, then off with one of the teams that was available to take her. All in all, that had gone well.

Now if she could just figure out what to do with Sheppard and McKay.

------

The Atlantean vessel took off into the Dorandan sky, and Larissa watched it go before heading quickly for her own ship.

The Little Blue wasn't really hers, of course; it belonged to all of the Dorandan people. But it was Larissa's expertise that kept it running, just as it was her expertise and that of her scientists that were slowly but surely restoring a very small fleet of very well-armed ships. The Little Blue, unlike the others, had no weapons -- and this was precisely why the scientists used it on their technology-scouting missions on Doranda. In case they encountered Wraith, or visitors such as the Atlanteans, it was definitely in their best interests to appear to be a small, inoffensive, ragtag group of survivors. If this meant that they had to sacrifice themselves to keep their people safe, it was a price worth paying.

Under her bulky jacket, the stolen laptop -- picked up quietly while she pretended to watch that beguiling form of entertainment they called "movies" -- pressed hard and square against her chest. Curling one hand carefully around her precious burden, she used the other to deactivate the shield around her ship.

Perran, one of her most trusted scientists, looked up from the screens as she entered. "Larissa! Thank the Ancestors. I wasn't sure what to think. Captain Seng has been here several times, asking about you."

"Is he here now?"

"No. He's out on patrol."

"Good." Very soon she would have to share her suspicions with Seng, and at that point, she knew that control of the situation would pass out of her hands. The more information that she could consolidate beforehand, the more power she'd be able to retain afterward -- and the more chance she'd have of protecting the best interests of her people. "Lock down the ship, Perran. If Seng comes back early, we will tell him that we were worried about the Atlanteans and didn't want to take chances."

She sank down into the copilot's seat and slipped her precious burden out from under her jacket. Perran's eyes followed it curiously as she placed it on the console between them.

"That's one of their computers, isn't it?"

"Precisely." Larissa patted the top of it. "In the next few hours, I am going to entrust you with retrieving and transferring as much information as you can into our own databanks. You're the best computer expert that we have; if anyone can do it, you can."

He looked up at her. "Where will you be?"

"There is a crashed ship out there that's identical in every way, as far as I can tell, to those vessels they call 'puddlejumpers'. I took a look on the way here, and they have not posted a guard on it." She smiled a little, to cover the sick feeling in her stomach -- the sense that she was setting into motion a chain of events that could not be halted or undone. "Why would they? It's only trash. But I will be taking detailed readings off every part of it, because in understanding that ship, we can understand the strengths and weaknesses of the ones they use."

"I don't understand." Perran frowned up at her. In addition to being one of her top scientists, he was also her cousin -- the Dorandans were a small group, and most of them were related to each other in some way -- and he'd never minced words with her. "Aren't the Atlanteans our allies? You sound as if you're preparing for war. I'd expect to hear words like this from Seng, not from you."

Larissa drew a deep breath. Ah, the moment of truth. "Perran, I'm about to trust you with a great secret, and you must tell no one -- not yet. It will be common knowledge soon enough. The military commander of the Atlanteans bears the Wraithsign."

Perran's mouth dropped open in a silent "O" of shock.

"I have no idea if they simply forgot about our equipment, or if they are so overconfident that they do not care," she said grimly. "Clearly they think our people backwards and ignorant. I have just been to their city, Perran, and was given a tour fit only for children and simpletons. Their leader prattled on about nothing, and carefully steered me to the recreational and meal-taking areas -- clearly avoiding anything of interest or value. It's plain to me that we've done right to hide our military capabilities from them, because they do not value us as allies, and they allow the bearers of the Wraithsign to walk freely among them."

She could only imagine what horrors lurked in the parts of the city that they didn't want her to see. People who would ally themselves with Wraithsign-bearing traitors could be capable of anything. Torture chambers? Cells filled with prisoners to be fed to their Wraith allies? Were there Wraith in the holy City of the Ancestors itself? The thought made her ill.

Perran looked lost and terrified. "What are we going to do?"

Larissa drew herself up, keeping her back straight. "First, we gather information. When Captain Seng finds out about this, he will use it to undermine my authority --" and rightly so, said a bitter voice at the back of her mind; you've been the Atlanteans' dupe from the beginning "-- and we need to play this very, very carefully to prevent the Captain from risking our people's lives in an all-out assault."

Now the other scientist's eyes were so huge she could see the whites all the way around. "We're going to attack them?"

Larissa's hands balled into fists at her sides. "Eventually, we'll have no choice. They know where to find us, and the moment they realize we're a threat, you can believe they'll attack us. We have no choice but to strike first. But Seng will want to overwhelm them with military might, and we simply cannot compete with them in that area. We must use stealth." Reaching out, she gripped his arm. "This is very important, Perran. We must say nothing, not yet, to our own people or to theirs. We cannot sever diplomatic relations with them; they must not realize that anything is wrong, if we are to survive."

And that would be hard. So hard. She had been struggling to maintain control of herself all day. The worst part was that she had truly liked McKay. He was abrasive, but she respected his intelligence and, over their weeks of working together, had developed a genuine liking for the man himself. Knowing that he had been following the orders of Wraithborn traitors made her stomach twist into a hard knot. Had all his promises about Project Arcturus been only lies, meant to gain her trust? Or -- she thought of the fight that she had witnessed on Atlantis between McKay and Sheppard, and wondered if McKay could himself be a victim of the Wraith traitors, held hostage for his intelligence.

She made herself a silent promise, then. No matter what happened, she would to her best to ensure that McKay was offered a chance to join them. And as for Sheppard -- she would see him dead.

----

TBC