Twenty Questions
(Era Yachi)
AN: (crawls out of her hiding place) I've been writing a long time. I know the wrath of reviewers well. Here is the chapter that explains all…mmm, I love Zelenka, don't you? (and if you don't, you certainly will when this is over. Smiley!)
What is Necessary
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A breeze rippled through the sunny yellow-and-green leaves, and dew droplets formed on the blades of grass under the canopy. There was a warm glow touching everything under the sun. It was morning.
"C-Colonel? Teyla?" Radek half-whispered, scanning the empty trees for some sign of his missing team. "Ronon?"
Zelenka backed away from the edge of the barrier, skin drained of colour. Colonel Sheppard and the others were gone. Nothing was left. Nic.
He could not save them. Had he made enough adjustments, maybe he could have. If he had not been so entirely focused on using the computer to create a new barrier, then he might have extended the loop just a bit more.
And then he knew.
He should not be here.
The colonel should not be here. This planet was a trap of death, nothing more. Ronon, Teyla, Carson, Howell, Padley and the others did not deserve a fate such as this. McKay did not deserve a fate such as this. If they had known, before first came to the planet, and doomed them from ever returning, they would still be alive.
From the moment they set foot on this ground, they were fated to die.
And Radek…Radek wanted to fix this. This is what Rodney would do. Underground, where the computer knew how to bend the rules of time and space, he could use this. Make everything turn out to be the way it was before. Radek knew he could do something, and he would do everything.
The hologram was to blame for this. It had misled them into believing it was a compassionate machine, but it had used the cruelest weapon of all—their love for their teammate, and now they had paid dearly. Zelenka would see that remedied.
"I can fix this."
The hologram flickered on as soon as the Czech stormed into the control chamber. Zelenka's vest was gone, his shirt smeared with dirt and his face and arms just as equally soiled from the climb to the surface. Part of his hair was matted with sweat, and his face read all kinds of emotions. Grief, fear, determination and anger were just a few. There was something about the scientist that Not-Rodney didn't recognize. Nowhere in Sheppard's, Teyla's, Ronon's or even Dr. McKay's recollection was there any data on this. Radek Zelenka was acting irrationally, unusually.
"I can fix this," Zelenka repeated, ignoring Rodney's hologram and placing himself in front of the panel he'd been working at before. "I can contain the time field around this station alone, and change the buffer area from eight hours to six days, three hours and twenty-two minutes. I can drain ZPM, and stop the loop from ever happening again. I can warn Rodney and the others to go back to Atlantis. I can warn them…" The Czech turned his head towards him, narrowing his eyes behind his smudged glasses. "I can warn them about the fail-safe you placed on the 'gate, to prevent them from escape."
Not-Rodney's mouth dropped and he started to squeak a protest, but in one swift movement, Radek stood in front of him, pointing an angry finger in his face.
"I do not like things that lie," he counseled frigidly. Then he returned to the datapad on the wall.
"Radek, you're not…you're not thinking straight," Not-Rodney started to babble.
"No, Rodney, I am thinking clearly," said the scientist, tapping the console with his fingers as he trained on the virtual adjustments he made. "I believe that you never intended to destroy this facility, but to gain control over Colonel Sheppard and his team the same way you control the village. You rob the people of their personality, and their memories You…you wash their brains."
"What? That's ridiculous! What could I possibly have to gain from that?"
"You need someone to run this facility. When Colonel Sheppard and his team arrived, you learned from them the existence of Atlantis and another ZPM. I believe you were intending to use them to get that ZPM and continue the experiment."
"What experiment?" the hologram cried.
"I read the log you secreted in the construction of your barrier code," Radek informed him. "You are the one who awakens the Wraith. After every loop, you record the data collected during the culling of the village. This time field was never created to protect the people of this planet, only to imprison them. To…to torture them." Never had Radek felt so frustrated or enraged. He felt sick, too. Sick with grief. And tired, with the deceiving computer.
He didn't notice the hologram's stricken expression. Not-Rodney slowly let the corners of his mouth fall, and then they twisted into an angry scowl. "Don't interfere, Radek," he said darkly.
"It's too late," the Czech scientist replied. "I have already set the parameters of the new loop. Once I execute it, it will be over."
"But that will kill me!" Not-Rodney exclaimed desperately, stepping toward him. "Don't you get it? All I've ever worked for was to protect this galaxy from the Wraith! If you do this, it will all be for nothing! If I die, he dies," he continued, tapping his holographic chest with a finger. "Is that what you want?"
"No, you were never Rodney." Zelenka stared at him coldly. "Rodney would not put his own life before others. If you had a shred of the real McKay in you, you would truly understand what it means to protect someone."
The cloudy blue eyes of his dead friend stared directly into him. Feeling triumphant and horribly guilty at once, Radek tore away and reached for the pad to execute the loop.
"Don't do this," said a new voice behind him.
Zelenka spun around to find not McKay standing in front of the white pillar, but Dr. Weir. She still had the same, misted eyes of the hologram. She gazed at him unrelentingly. "Don't make this mistake, Radek. What I do here is for the better of all humanity. You know that."
He squeezed his eyes shut, tried to block her out. Something inside his head was trying to force its way into control, like a cold, hardened hand wrapping itself around his mind. He had to fight that, to save McKay, to save Sheppard and Atlantis. Against his will, his hand jerked back from the panel, shaking uncontrollably.
"You're doing the right thing, doc," said Sheppard's voice. Zelenka was made to look at the colonel's face as the hologram moved closer. "You can't change the past, remember? All you can do is learn from it. I thought I taught you that."
The hologram reached out to pat him gently on the shoulder. "C'mon, Radek. Let's just forget all this and take a walk, okay? It's over now. We have to move forward."
Move…forward? Radek blinked, trying to remember what it was that he was trying to do. Was he trying to go forwards, or backwards? What about everyone else? Why was he alone all of a sudden?
"We need you, Dr. Zelenka," said Teyla, resting both of her hands gently on his shoulders. "Please, don't allow our sacrifices to be in vain. You are the only one who can make the future safe for everyone."
That's right. Safe. He had to save everyone.
With a renewed strength, he shoved the fog in his head to one side and finally saw everything clearly. Teyla's form melted away to reveal the shriveled, wrinkled face of an old man—someone he didn't recognize. It had almost taken him over completely. The computer no longer had its hold on him. With another shove, a stronger one, he pushed the frail Ancient away from him. The old man was sent stumbling backwards, until his back struck the pillar.
Zelenka reached over to the keypad and smashed his palm against it. At once, the chamber around him began to hum to life, thrumming with the last strain of power from the ZPM.
He looked back to the hologram, only to find the old man replaced with Rodney again. Only this time, there was blood covering his hands. A dark red stain spread across his uniform, gushing from the ugly wound in his stomach. Trembling, Rodney lifted his head to look at him in disbelief. "What…what have you done?"
"What is necessary," Zelenka whispered sadly.
The last he saw of Rodney McKay was the painful mixture of astonishment and hurt in a pair of cloudy blue eyes. And then the white light sprouted from the ground and bathed them both in a cold, wrenching feeling.
Then it was over.
When he opened his eyes, it was dark inside the white room. The floor under his skin was no longer warm, radiating with life or presence, as would a person before it encountered death. Feeling the weight of guilt and uncertainty crushing him from above, Zelenka laboriously pushed himself to his feet. Somehow, he had lost consciousness in the passage from one time to another.
If he had done everything correctly, he should now be on H4W-020, in the control room, only minutes before Colonel Sheppard and his team arrived through the Stargate. Hopefully, he hadn't miscalculated.
The control facility was dead. A jump so extensive had cost the ZPM the remaining energy stored in its crystalline chamber. And the hologram was also gone with it, a mere fragment of the computer that died with its counterparts. It could only mean that the time field containing the loop was also gone. For the first time in ten thousand years, time itself was allowed to proceed as it was meant to be.
Zelenka felt his heart lurch. Sheppard, Ronon, Teyla, Carson and…Rodney. They were still alive. But he had been unconscious for some time—how much time did he have left? It could already be too late. McKay might already be wounded beyond Beckett's help. He had to make it to the 'gate before the Wraith made it impossible to dial out.
He activated his radio. "Colonel Sheppard? Dr. McKay?"
He waited.
Nothing happened.
Frantically, Radek pulled the earpiece away and looked at it—the microphone had been snapped in half. It either broke when he fell unconscious, or when he was climbing the rope to the ground above. But now he had no way of contacting them, of knowing what was happening. Which meant he had no time to waste.
He jolted to life, darting from the darkness of the chamber out into the slightly illuminated corridor. The rope was scarcely a challenge the second time around—he just ignored the harsh bumps and bruises he received from the lose stones and hardened dirt. Even at a running pace, it would take him nearly ten minutes to reach the 'gate. He had no time.
No time at all.
Zelenka sprinted across the dead grass and into the thinly space trees. Every step worsened his bruised ribs. He continued to run. At any moment they—
Two darts screamed past him overhead. The Wraith crafts overlooked him, obviously in pursuit of some other prey—bigger prey. They had awakened, which meant that Rodney had already detonated the stun bomb. It was only a matter of minutes before the DHD would be shot to pieces, and a short amount of time until it was too late to save Rodney from almost certain death.
He ran faster.
He ran until he felt every jarring step felt like fire to him. His lungs were ready to explode. He did not encounter any Wraith, but he did not find himself so lucky. They would find no interest in a single man, weakened, running right into their hands. It only meant that they were converging on the Stargate already, intending to hunt down any survivors of the culling that might be tempted to escape via wormhole.
Eventually the path thinned again, the heavy-set trees blending into long grass and large, jagged boulders. Zelenka forced himself to stumble into the clearing where the 'gate stood, tall and proud and welcoming. But there also stood the DHD, intact, unharmed. He'd made it. He could fix everything.
Struggling for breath, he made his was towards the dialing device. He reached out, just yards away from placing his hand on its surface and focused in his mind on the coordinates—
He heard the dart and felt the hot explosion on his back simultaneously. His world literally blew apart. Searing pain struck his side, and the warmness of his own blood flowed out of the broken skin. Zelenka collapsed just as his hand struck the face of the DHD.
The sound of darts swam in and out of his head. His life was ebbing away, swiftly. Everything hurt. But his hand, as though working on its own agenda, found enough strength to form a strong grip on the edge of the dialing device. Resisting the urge to cry out, the scientist heaved himself to his feet, leaning on top of the DHD for support. His fingers numbly punched in the symbols for Atlantis.
He heard the darts again, returning to claim their prey. Gritting his teeth, Radek slammed his hand on the orb in the middle of the device. He watched the blue wave wash over the stone dais, and connection was made. He'd reached Atlantis.
Zelenka dropped to the ground, pulling himself to rest against the side facing the blue, wavering pool. The screaming buzz was getting closer. With blood-soaked hands, he found a slippery grip on his sidearm. Pulling it out, he then slumped forward and continued to crawl towards the 'gate.
The darts were almost above him. He fought to drag himself over the last step on the dais and stretched his arm out, immersing his hand—and the berretta—into the event horizon. He released the handle of the weapon. It clattered on the stone, sticking partway out of the 'gate, ensuring that it would remain open for the next thirty-eight minutes.
There. He was finished. He had fixed everything.
Radek relaxed against the cool surface of the dais, closing his eyes and giving into the racket of the Wraith dart as it swept over him. He saw the flash of the beam before it took him.
That was okay.
It was time to go anyway.
"Colonel Sheppard, this is Weir. Are you there?"
He stopped in the middle of the dense undergrowth, for a moment not believing what he'd heard. Then, slowly, it dawned on him that Elizabeth was, in fact, talking to him over his radio. How exactly it was possible was a complete mystery to him. But this was no time to be ungrateful.
"Elizabeth, you have no idea how glad I am to hear your voice," he said, after triggering his radio. He glanced over his shoulder at Ronon, trying his best not to think about the gasping McKay in the man's arms.
"Why? What's happened?" There was concern in her voice. "Colonel?"
"Well, for starters, we're being chased by Wraith, and Rodney's hurt pretty bad," Sheppard said with a rough edge on his voice. "What's going on? I mean, this is great and everything, but what made you decide to dial in early?"
There was a brief pause. "Colonel, we didn't dial the 'gate. You did."
This, of course, was worth a significant shock to the brain. She might as well have accused him of tearing a hole in the fabric of space with his bare hands. "You know, I think we should ponder this another time. We've got a medical emergency, so get Beckett—hell, get the whole damn infirmary in there. He's pretty bad."
"All right, we're on it. Keep him alive, John."
"Yeah, I planned on it," he said, shutting off the radio. "Okay, let's move out."
The stretch from there to the 'gate was uncannily barren of Wraith. Sheppard kept his mind trained on things other than the distant wailing of darts and the strong possibility that a small army of life-sucking aliens was now chasing them. He thought of the sound of the Stargate instead, the jagged breathing of Rodney as he fought for his life with every lungful of air. He thought of Teyla's determined expression, despite the odds they were against. He saw Ronon, battling a few cracked ribs against the weight of the physicist, their teammate.
In a big way, he felt lucky that he had them. Like they had cheated destiny. That somehow, they were going to face against an enemy they'd never seen and still pull through victorious. Was that crazy?
It didn't matter, actually. They were never, ever coming back to this planet for as long as he still had blood in his veins.
They broke into the clearing, with the 'gate and it's brightly glowing event horizon tall and proud, and welcoming. The sight of so much blood pooled on the stone around it alarmed him, but there was no trace of the body it belonged to. Whoever it was, he had a pretty good feeling they had something to do with the 'gate being open. They owed their lives to someone they didn't even know. He felt that annoying tingling feeling return.
Thanks, he thought to no one in particular. It felt better to think it, anyway.
Four Wraith darts screamed at them from above the treetops. Sheppard waved Ronon and Teyla towards the 'gate, training his P90 to the closest ship in the sky. The sound of two bodies passing through the event horizon cued him to move. He backed into the blue pool.
The trip through the 'gate was longer than he remembered. By the time he landed on the other side and turned around, his mindset went from dedicated soldier to anxious friend. The 'gate closed behind him, severing any connection he had to H4W-020 along with it.
A team of medics were already pulling Rodney's unconscious body from Ronon's arms. Beckett was throwing orders around like confetti. He was remotely aware of Elizabeth as she jogged down the steps towards him, her face paled at the sight of McKay's condition. Zelenka was close behind her, looking more confused than anyone else.
"John, how did this happen?" Weir asked, directing her at him confidently for an answer.
He was fatigued, heavy with exhaustion and now delirious with the pain of his own injuries. Go figure. He was hurt worse than he'd thought. Stupid adrenaline.
"Sorry, 'lizabeth," he said, the word feeling thick and strange on his lips. "Gotta ask…a 'yes' or 'no' question."
He promptly lost consciousness.
AN: A lot's happened in this chapter, eh? One more to go. It will be titled 'In Which Beckett Gets Very Little Sleep' for obvious reasons. Smile everyone.