Chapter 9

I've Given Up, Stop

Running a briefing without the command staff was not unusual. Lorne running a multi-discipline briefing as the entire command staff was unusual. Caldwell would normally step in-- no such luck today. Finally, the Daedalus was on its first return trip to Earth after its battle with the last Hive and was past the point of no return. They were on their own and Carson thought, the cowboy in Lorne liked it. Lorne looked at Beckett and Beckett thought for a moment that he was going to have to run the meeting or say, "Howdy, y'all."

That was until Lorne opened his mouth.

"As you all know, we have a situation." Lorne did not even look like he wanted to push a Stetson back on his head or twirl his pistolas. However, Beckett could still imagine it.

While listening to Lorne, Beckett thought command looked good on the young man and it needed to stay firmly with him never to sidle over his way. Radek was going to start out and then Beckett would give the medical side. They would end with an overview of the demands and how to proceed. There would not be any stalling. Michael would probably start on appetizers if they did.

Speaking of Michael…

Carson had nearly melted into a puddle of nervous goo when his conversation with Michael was over. Lorne had patted him on the back and said, "Good job, Doc." The entire Gate area was still buzzing over the conversation when he left to return to his patient in the infirmary. Before his return, Zelenka had hurried out to scour the database with the new information from the scanner as a starting place.

"Dr. Zelenka." Lorne gave an appraising look in Radek's direction and waited for the squirrelly little man to start.

"First, the signal is not using sub-space. So when the Stargate shuts down and the signal is lost, Dr. Weir regains consciousness because the device automatically shuts off."

"Why?" Lorne asked.

"It is an automatic shut down which I can only assume keeps the victim strong if the Wraith can't get to them right away. Maybe so they can go get food and drink. Runners are more of a challenge that way, right?"

Lorne just nodded and motioned for him to continue.

"Dr. Weir remembers nothing upon awakening. We're assuming Col. Sheppard and Dr. McKay's devices are similar. The device itself has a phase discrepancy similar to a cloak. It is invisible to the naked eye, but can be seen using a shorter light wavelength. It is interesting that that is the technology Michael wants and his captives have it in their heads." Radek shook his head and looked at his laptop before continuing.

"In order to remove it, we're going to have to find the transmitter he is using to send the signal and hope that it can retract it. It is too heavily embedded in the spinal column and higher brain functions to be removed by conventional methods, but Dr. Beckett will discuss that."

Radek took a moment and a few cleansing breaths before concluding. "We are attempting to isolate the signal and jam it."

Everyone's gaze shifted to the large window and the shimmering Gate on the other side.

"It should be shutting down soon," one of the technicians noted perfunctorily.

Lorne nodded because he probably knew down to the second when it would shut down as did Radek. "Anything further, Doctor?"

"We'll keep trying and studying any pertinent data from Ixion." Radek leaned back in his chair and looked around the table. "Rodney is grumpy enough without amorous, brain octopus adding to it."

It was not that funny, but it was appreciated. Small self-conscious smirks crossed more than one face.

"Dr. Beckett." Maj. Lorne conceded the floor to him.

"Yes, well, as Dr. Zelenka already said, surgery is out of the question. There are little hooks at the end of each arm penetrating the soft tissues of the brain." Carson stood up and used his finger to point to a schematic of Dr. Weir's brain. He showed a few cross sections and magnified views of the ganglia. More than one person twitched and/or grimaced.

"What we do know is that once removed correctly, no ill-effects are felt. These devices are similar to the one used by that delightful chair on the planet Ixion. Whatever function it's serving, does not seem to harm the one affected unless told to by the transmitter."

Of course, that was pure speculation and hypothesizing from their previous encounters with the damned chair. There were no guarantees this time because the modifications and the differences in purpose created unknowns in the technology. He had to go with what he knew and trust in that little angel sitting on his shoulder.

"We need the device that removes the little bugger. It is the only way in which no harm will be done."

No harm, nowhere in the Hippocratic Oath did that term reside. It was thought to have been said by Galen, an extraordinary physician to the Roman Legions, a man, centuries ahead of his time. Yet, here it caught Carson short and he paused for a moment. Harm was all around him lately.

"Doc?" Lorne waited patiently.

"Sorry, where was I?"

"We need to get the control mechanism to safely remove…"

"Ah yes, can we add that to the terms of the trade? Getting our people back with those things still in them is ultimately futile. What's to say they wouldn't try something like this again?"

"Agreed, even if he doesn't want to give it up, we need it." Lorne shifted in his seat and tapped the table with his pointer finger. "I just don't see how we can give them a cloak."

"They also have the bomb," another major reminded him.

Lorne closed his eyes, "Yeah, there's that."

Carson could guess what Lorne really wanted to know…

"What kind of info could they possibly have on the queens?" Lorne asked.

"Whatever it is, he must think it important enough to bargain with it," guessed one of the biologists.

"Or it could just be their favorite colors," asserted Zelenka. "The problem is, as long as the three of them are incapacitated, Atlantis is vulnerable. We don't know what is going on in device or in heads. Is it downloading information or just a creepy sleeping aid?"

"Aye, we need to figure out if we sacrifice or if we deal," said Carson. He could not believe he had just said that. Had he become so jaded as to have a situation so cut and dry?

"Oh, we'll deal Doc, it's just with what and how," Lorne answered.

Radek perked up from his seat at the table. "I believe we can give them what they want and keep a certain amount of control of the situation."

Lorne cocked his head to look at the disheveled man. Seeing the light bulb going off over Radek's head, Lorne grinned, "Well now, do tell, Dr. Z."

Carson thought maybe the cowboy in Lorne just like to play hide and seek.

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"Rodney, what happened?" Elizabeth's only view of John was of the top of his head. She could not see his face.

However, Rodney could and his mind was beyond panic mode. He was a chaotic, mangled, and jumbled mess. Vacancy, if he had been a motel, his sign would have been flashing red. One lone motorist finally ambled in so he could answer.

"Is dead a good enough answer for you?"

He could not be right.

"Then why is he still here. If he were dead…?"

Rodney was a boiling pool of magma waiting to explode to the surface.

"Calm down Rodney. What exactly did she do?" Elizabeth's own desperation welled from deep down inside of her.

"Calm down?" he asked with a coldness she never wanted to feel from him again. She wondered where the magma got displaced to so quickly.

"Calm down?" he asked again. "She just literally shut him off. Flipped a switch and turned out the lights. She sucked him dry in yet another despicable way than she already had. Calm down? Is that calm enough for you?"

"Thank you, Rodney." Elizabeth sat Indian style facing the lump of pixels in the next chamber, impotent.

Rodney remained on his hands and knees staring at the Colonel. The song started organ grinding again and the only thing they could do was ignore it, barely. Every ounce of concentration was aimed at what had become the middle tomb. The black hole left by the representation of the body in the next spoke was all consuming. If she relied so heavily on John Sheppard, then how much had Rodney?

"I've never had a friend like him before. Never needed one," he answered the unspoken question.

She had known that. Everyone could see that. She never thought that Dr. Rodney (The Ego) McKay would ever grovel to another. He had done exactly that for the return of trust by John Sheppard. If he had never earned back the little piece that John had given of himself, Rodney would have been devastated.

"He asked me to trust him…" was the explanation John gave for going back to Doranda. It was the greatest gift John Sheppard had to give. If she read his file right, from early on, trust had not been given to him or, more accurately, respect in the form of unconditional love. Overbearing and emotionally distant fathers were hard that way.

Rodney hung his head.

"It's commendable Rodney because neither one of you ever lets anyone that close. You found each other when you needed one another the most. He needed you to earn that trust back as much as you needed to do it."

Rodney silently agreed. But he wondered: why John (or in his mind, the Colonel) had folded so quickly? He also wondered: why Sheppard had born the brunt of the onslaught by himself? Why had he hidden it and not trusted his team?

The program had been softening John up for months. Of course he had hidden it because he had never been cured. There was no cure available except for removing whatever was in their heads. It dawned on both of them about the control it must have taken to keep functioning while his brain kept fighting. It must have been astronomical and completely grueling. In true Sheppard fashion, he just adapted to the constant barrage.

Lucy had attacked and won so easily because he was completely exhausted from the assault. The entire point of the changes in the implant was to conquer John Sheppard and it did so with frightening ease. It all came back to his sense of duty and need for self-reliance-- his need to return to Atlantis. Elizabeth realized the reverse was true as well-- Atlantis' need for him. John would not have had it any other way and he was going to do it on his own.

"Is there anything we can do?" She asked.

"Off."

"What?"

"She turned him off."

"Yes Rodney, you already said that."

"She's the pilot. She's piloting the Good Ship Sheppard. We're not in our brains. The devices have linked with our electrical impulses and brought us here. It's pirated our synapses and diverted them to this fine establishment. That's why we can't remember anything when we wake up because it's being stored here. She's trapped him here and run off with the Black Pearl."

Rodney's brain shuffled, and like playing cards, fell into discordant order.

"She hasn't downloaded into his brain; she's just sending signals to his brain through…" He paused and waved his hand in a circle behind his own head. "…the whatever in his head. When the device is removed, she'll go with it. I'll even bet she doesn't want to stay. He's said it himself on Earth, who wants to give up immortality?"

Elizabeth thought back to her first official meeting with John Sheppard in Antarctica particularly when she was at the end of her this is the greatest opportunity you'll ever have spiel. She was sure it would have worked. It should have worked. It had worked on most of the people on the original expedition. Shit, it still worked on the ones that even knew about the Wraith. He remained seemingly unimpressed.

"Major, the expedition needs you. I'm not going to beg but no one has been able to do what you just effortlessly accomplished in that chair."

She gave him the most earnest, used-car salesman face she could. He was a hard man to read. Hell, she had found he was a hard man to sell. There was disinterest, amusement, and a you've go to be kidding me undercurrent as he sat across from her.

He said no. He was not supposed to say no. She had talked countries down from nuclear war. She had kept brittle alliances strong. She had negotiated peace treaties with warlords. One Air Force major should not have been able to say no. This opportunity was a free ticket out of purgatory and he said no. That was when she appealed to Gen. O'Neill.

She soon discovered she had tried to appeal to John's sense of vanity. Her tack had been what it could do for him. How it would help him out of his current posting. Obviously, that had not swayed him nor would it ever.

O'Neill had known better. O'Neill had appealed to his sense of adventure and, most importantly, to his sense of duty- the how it would help others spiel. John Sheppard had a strong sense of duty. He had confessed to flipping a coin, but she did not think that a single coin toss had made the decision.

The John Sheppard she met in Antarctica, and failed to convince to come on the expedition, was not the only facet. Affectations, all of it. He reminded her of the game show To Tell the Truth. Nipsy Russel and Kitty Carlisle asked questions of three contestants. The answers let little tid-bits of information about the contestant leak out so they could take an educated guess at the real person.

Sometimes, Elizabeth wanted to ask, "Would the real John Sheppard please stand up?" She had experienced so many personalities in the time she had known him that the truth must lie somewhere in the middle. Day by day, she peeled back the layers and met her second in command hoping that one day he would feel comfortable answering the question.

She had learned one thing though. John Sheppard lived in his head. This hiding in plain sight had been going on for a while. It did not start with his capture on the Hive ship or even his move to the Pegasus Galaxy or even Antarctica. It was deeply ingrained and most likely from a very young age. Lucy had stolen his last hiding spot. She had broken open his last place of refuge and destroyed it and him.

But not just him.

Elizabeth stared at Rodney and felt every conflicting emotion and thought that escaped his head. He apparently felt hers.

"We'll fix this…I'll fix this." He wanted to be positive. He wanted her to know that this was not outside of his capabilities. He fought to prove his confidence and reliability. He was failing because he was in the same state as her, shock.

"Yes, we will," she emphatically agreed.

Neither one knew how yet. The worst part was: when they woke up, they would not remember needing to fix anything.

So they kept the vigil until Elizabeth felt as if she were climbing up a cliff. She guessed at the next sensation. "Rodney, I'm leaving soon."

He nodded in recognition. "Don't let the door…" He stopped and rethought his response. "I'll be waiting."

Elizabeth started her plummet and thought over and over and over, "He's not John. He's not John. He's…not…John!"

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A/N: The dreaded exposition chapter. The first part was the hardest to write and the second the easier of the two. Still not happy with either. Weird.

Thanks again for reading and leaving feedback. It is truly appreciated.