AN: I'd like to thank my fabulous grammar beta Sorrel Rowan. Without her, this would be "kingdom of the commas" and a scramble of run-on sentences. :)
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The last out of the conference room, Elizabeth watched as her staff scattered to different parts of the city to fulfill their duties. She was concerned, but not truly worried about this malfunction; not at this point at any rate. Over the years of being in Atlantis, she'd come to expect bumps in the road. She had full confidence in her scientists. After all, it was apparently just a computer glitch. Something Rodney and Radek ate for breakfast, as you might say.
Or, she thought ruefully, what Rodney will say once he has it fixed.
Stepping out of the meeting room herself, she glanced over her people in the gate room. Chuck, the engineer come communications director, met her eyes and smiled warily. He knew something was going on but was not privy to all the information. She approached him, returning his smile.
"Dr. Weir," he greeted.
"Hello Chuck." She noticed several scientists bent over consoles and notably, one underneath, with a fond shake of her head. "We are about to evacuate all non-essential personnel to the Beta-site. How many people do you need to keep here to keep the city functional?"
He peered around at the small huddles of people, some in uniform, some not, and shrugged. "Just me, really. Everything is pretty much automatic. Although if you're going to need functions of the city shut down or booted up, I'm going to need a few."
"We shouldn't need anything complex. Drs. Zelenka and McKay and several of their staff will be staying behind as well. They should be able to help you with anything you need." She leaned against his console. "Can you patch me through to city-wide, please?"
Nodding, he turned to his laptop. With a few quick taps of the keys, he had a channel ready and gave her a thumbs up.
Elizabeth gathered her thoughts, took a deep breath, and activated her radio.
"Attention all personnel. This is Dr. Weir. Atlantis is experiencing a few technical difficulties and while I have the utmost confidence that our staff will find and fix the problem expediently, we've decided to go ahead and evacuate the city. We will be traveling by gate to the Beta site and all personnel unless otherwise directed by myself, Dr. McKay, or Colonel Sheppard, are to report to the gate room immediately. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter. Weir out."
She nodded to Chuck, who frowned at her, but cut the connection.
"Ma'am?" He asked worriedly.
"Some kind of programming error, sealing off random rooms throughout the city so we can't get inside. McKay is on it." She said, knowing that as communications officer, he was about to get a whole lot of upset and cranky scientists yelling in his ear and would need more information.
Chuck nodded and turned back to his laptop, obviously as strong in his belief as she was that it would be corrected in short order if Dr. McKay was working on it. The calls started coming in, so she left him to his duties.
As Elizabeth walked away, she heard him take the first call.
"Yes, Dr. Kavanagh, unless you hear straight from Dr. McKay, that means you... I'm sure he would have gotten in touch with you by now if he wanted... Dr. Kavanagh, Lt Snyder is in your area of the city, do I need to give him a call? Yeah, thought so. We'll see you in five minutes."
Elizabeth laughed under her breath as she entered her office.
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Twenty minutes later, the gate was open. The majority of the city slowly, and grumpily in the case of the scientists, made their way through to the Beta-site. Only a few dedicated and stubborn scientists had caused a fuss about leaving in the middle of something but Chuck had been monitoring the city wide life signs detector. He forwarded the location to the marines, who smoked them out and put them on their way. Elizabeth knew this was a major inconvenience for her people, but it was truly amazing how efficient everything was. Mostly, she knew, thanks to Col. Sheppard's drilling of the marines and gate room staff on how to empty out the city. The man could seem obsessed about the 'Leave no man behind' philosophy, but it paid off.
"Dr. Weir?"
She turned to face Chuck, who motioned her over to the big display with the life signs monitor on it. It was zoomed in to the East Pier, near the Marine Biologists' labs were. Three unmoving life signs were glowing brightly on the screen.
"We have two marines, along with Dr. Blise, stuck here," he pointed to the life signs. Then he pointed to a section of hallway right in front of the dots, in between them and the main part of the city. "This section closed down while they were pulling Dr. Blise away from her specimens. They can't get through, and there is no way to backtrack from there to another hallway. They're stuck. I've contacted Dr. Zelenka and he's sending Kusanagi out, but he doesn't think they'll have any more luck opening those doors than they did the others."
She nodded, the first trickle of true fear for her people dropping into her stomach and making her queasy. Activating her radio, she called for Col. Sheppard. "Colonel, we have two of your men and Dr. Blise stuck in the East Pier with the only way back to the control room cut off. Radek says he's working on it, but no luck yet."
"Shit. Who is it?"
Chuck responded, "Capt. Arnlon and Corp. Julien, Colonel. I have them on radio, they called in when they found themselves trapped."
"Thanks Chuck. Patch them in to the command frequency, let me see if we can find another way out."
"Yes sir," he responded, and jogged back to his laptop. A few seconds later he replied, saying "You are good to go, Colonel."
"Captain?" Sheppard questioned over the radio. "Explain your status please."
"Sir, we are stuck just a few doors down from Dr. Blise's office. The section of hallway in front of us is blocked off and not responding. We cannot force it open. We tried to backtrack, but the hallway ends at Dr. Blise's office. There is no way to get back to the gate room, sir."
"Alright. Dr. Blise's office, does it have a window or a balcony off of it?" Sheppard asked thoughtfully.
From her spot in front of the big display, she studied the outline of the East Pier but could not see any indications of one. She looked at Chuck questioningly, who told her there was no way to tell from the control room.
"Negative, sir. Closed in on all four walls, no way out," the Captain responded with a calm voice.
Chuck, who had been studying the graphic of the city, put his hand up to his ear in a standard move of someone being paged. Elizabeth returned her attention to the map.
"Okay, Captain, how about any of the other doors along your route? Check all the areas in your space and get back to me. Worse comes to worse, I can have one of the jumpers we are sending to the mainland do a scoop."
"Yes, sir," Captain Arnlon replied, and there was an audible click as he turned his mike off.
"Colonel," Elizabeth said, "How are the rest of the evacuation teams coming along?"
She heard him mumble something to someone near him, and someone reply. "We only have 8 more teams of two out and about in the city that were doing standard evac I also sent a few teams to retrieve supplies from the armory and such, just in case. We may have to blow a few doors open before this is over," He stated wearily
"Colonel, we have another problem," Chuck stated into the radio. "Lieutenant Corosen was in the munitions room when it locked down on him. He's trapped, too. I've already sent Dr. McKay down there, he's on his way."
"Son of a bitch!" Sheppard said feelingly. "Was anyone else with him?"
"No, Smigs was with him but hadn't entered the room yet."
"Well," Elizabeth began hopefully. "If he's already in the armory, he can blow himself out, right?" She had begun to realize how serious of a problem this could have been if they had waited to evacuate. But soon, the expedition would be through the gate to safety. Hopefully, those trapped would receive help and be able to join them in short order. She felt a hand settle lightly on her shoulder and turned to meet the concerned blue eyes of Dr. Beckett.
"Actually ma'am," Chuck stated regretfully, "He's stating that he is stuck in the munitions room, not in the sensitive materials room. Sergeant Smigs thought of the same thing, and went around to the other access door, but that was closed as well. It appears we have lost access to the explosives."
Elizabeth cringed at the string of curses that came from Sheppard over the radio. "I'm on my way over there," He stated shortly, then abruptly cut his mike off.
From behind Chuck, Zelenka had appeared. Elizabeth watched as he quickly approached the pair of scientists he had put to work on one of the consoles. He shooed them away with a mixture of Czech and English no one needed a translation for, connected his laptop to the console and started typing away, muttering under his breath. Both Elizabeth and Carson moved toward him but did not dare disturb him.
"McKay to Zelenka. You up there yet?"
"Yes, yes, I am here." Zelenka replied distractedly, still totally enveloped in his work.
"Rodney, what's the situation down there?" Elizabeth asked worriedly. She could hear Col Sheppard arriving at the scene in the background and firing short, clipped questions at Sgt. Smigs.
"Elizabeth, we're in worse trouble than we thought. The city is apparently not only locking the doors and shutting down power, but she's shutting down life support to the whole city. Climate controls are gone, carbon dioxide scrubbers are powered down and the water supply is completely sealed off," McKay explained quickly. "That's not all, either. Inside those rooms, the ones that have shut down? The city is reversing the air supply. She's not pumping oxygen in, she's taking it out, replacing it with carbon dioxide. And I have no clue why."
"zpropadeně", Zelenka hissed. He stared at his laptop in horror, then met Elizabeth's eyes. Typing in a few keystrokes, he turned in his seat to look at the large display screen with the map of the city, and as her eyes followed, Elizabeth realized he had changed the map. It now showed most of the city in blue, with small red sections standing out. She turned to where Carson had been, just in time to see him walking briskly through the door Radek had come through earlier, only the other way. She knew intuitively he was going to the munitions room, to be ready when they pulled Corosen out.
Zelenka nearly tripped over himself getting up and over to the display screen as Elizabeth followed
"The areas in red are the affected rooms," Zelenka explained urgently. She looked at the map again and felt faint. Fifteen percent of the city was in red and as she watched, two more areas changed from blue to red.
Zelenka turned again and went back to his laptop. "Rodney, quarantine system is on standby and seems to be running fine. Life support is shut down, but from the way it looks it is symptom of problem, not cause. Where else could it be?"
"Check environmentals Or maybe security," Rodney replied distractedly. "If it's a program we haven't gotten to yet, we are screwed," He muttered, probably not even realizing his mike was still on. Elizabeth heard a slap, then an annoyed, "Okay, ow?" from McKay.
"We aren't there yet, McKay," Sheppard said, obviously annoyed. "Lorne, change directions. I need you down here in the munitions room with that C-4. Captain Arnlon, you're going to have to hold it for a bit. But we will get to you."
"Actually, sir, we have just found a room with a balcony. We can sit tight here if you need us to, until a jumper comes along."
Sheppard's sigh of relief could be heard over the radio. "Great, captain. Sit tight, it might be a few hours."
"Yes, sir."
"Lorne, hot foot it down here," Sheppard ordered.
"On my way, sir. We are about four minutes from your location."
"I thought we were cut off from the C-4?" Elizabeth asked.
"Jumpers one and two keep small amounts of the stuff for emergency use. I had Lorne get it."
"Good thing he's so close. He's running out of air in there!" Rodney said, relieved.
Elizabeth blinked in surprise. She didn't realize they were running out of time that quickly. "Wait, Rodney, how long does the Lt. have?"
"A matter of minutes. He's barely responding to our calls now, almost unconscious. Lorne'll be cutting it close as it is."
Her eyes drifted toward the doorway Carson had left through a short while ago. She wanted to be down there, with them. The gate room floor was clear of people now, nearly everyone was gone. She wasn't really needed here anymore. However, Sgt. Bates, drifted slowly up the stairs between her and the door, and she had a funny feeling Col. Sheppard knew before she did exactly how she would feel. Bates met her eyes and nodded his head, and she knew for sure that if she was going anywhere it would be through the gate to safety whether she liked it or not.
"Damn it!" The exclamation had come from Lorne, loud in her ear. Her head swiveled automatically to the map of the city, where she saw that several more sections were now in red. Over a quarter of the city, and more as she watched.
"Report, Major!" Sheppard growled.
"Sir, I'm cut off from you. A section of the hallway has shut down on either side of us. I can blow the door, but that will take time and I only have the two sticks of C-4. If I use them on these doors, we'll be out!"
Elizabeth looked closely at the area where three dots representing Lorne and his two marines were trapped. They were indeed stuck between two hallway sections that had shut down. Luckily, the section they were in was still operable, which meant the city was not removing the oxygen. But if life support was down over the city like McKay had said, eventually they'd use up what they had and no fresh air was being pumped in.
Silence on the radio lasted about thirty seconds, before Sheppard's tightly strained voice could be heard. "Balcony option open to you, Major?"
"Hold on, sir, we only have two doors in this section and Williams is checking... That's a negative sir," Lorne said flatly.
"Colonel," Chuck interrupted nervously. "We have two more people, Drs. McGullam and Murphy, trapped ten minutes further into the middle of the city from your location. They were in their lab when it shut down. Trying to preserve their work before they left," he finished bitterly.
Elizabeth let her eyes drift up the chemist's labs where she saw two life signs all alone, and smack in the middle of a section of city that was nearly completely red.
"Right, of course. Where are they?" Sheppard said angrily.
"Somewhere you'll never be able to reach, John," Elizabeth said sorrowfully.
"You don't know that!" He shot back heatedly.
"Zelenka was able to produce a map showing the affected and non-affected areas of the city. They are surrounded by red. You can't get through." Elizabeth knew it would kill him to leave anyone still alive but there was nothing he could do. She hoped he realized that before going off and getting himself trapped.
"Okay, McKay, if you can't get them out, can't you at least restore life support?" Sheppard sounded desperate, and everyone else was silent.
From the corner of her eye, she noticed Zelenka shaking his head. She walked over to him, meeting his eyes as he spoke.
"I'm trying, Colonel, but life support system city wide is not responding," He spoke quietly.
"I haven't been sitting here on my ass reading my email, you know!" McKay sounded angry, hurt, and worried out of his mind. "I had been trying to at least stop the reversal of oxygen movement, hoping to give us more time to get the main system up and running, but it's like it's not there. The only way I could even get a reading of the room's air was to monitor the oxygen flow in conduits above the room that still have power."
"Dr. Zelenka!" One of the female scientists who had been working at another console was now standing in front of the map's view screen, pale and shaking. Elizabeth followed Zelenka over to her, and at first could not find what had upset her so much.
Then she noticed that the steady life sign in the munitions room, the one that had represented Lt. Corosen, was no longer there.