Chapter 8

It was the dead of night yet Richard remained sat at his desk, pouring over the details of his official report to be delivered in the morning. Though all those in power would no doubt already have been made aware of the details that had been discovered today, he still knew the reports had to be as thorough as possible. He had all but a few last reports to gather and then tomorrow the fate of Atlantis may very well be decided…finally.

He sat back from the screen and pulled his glasses from his face to rub his eyes. They seemed to be burning into his head, but then it had been a terribly long day. Though truthfully it had only been the afternoon that had been the worse of it. The hostage situation had been short lived, but it had felt like it had lasted all day and the consequences of it had changed everything.

He pushed his glasses back onto his nose and set his elbow on one arm of his chair. He looked out through the floor to ceiling glass that looked out over the Gate room below. The lighting was subdued, presenting the suggestion that it was late, if the darkness outside the tower was not clear enough. The darkness called to him to go to bed and it was a good idea, but he doubted that he would be able to sleep in the state he was in.

Once again he began to play through what he would say tomorrow to all the officials. Everything was in the reports, both from himself and the others in the city who had been involved. A traitor, two traitors, had been found in their midst and though they had been stopped it did not lessen the impact. For months there had been a tiny signal pulsing out from Atlantis and it was likely that at the end of that signal Michael had been watching. Did that mean that he was on his way to Earth? Had the signal been strong enough to pinpoint Earth? And Michael – what had he been doing back in Pegasus, clearly aware that Atlantis had left its stars? And if Kanaan and Tolim were to be believed then there wasn't just one Michael – there were clones.

It had been nice being back on Earth. These last months had seemed peaceful compared to the last year in Pegasus, but it had been a lie. They had left a terrible enemy behind them and had left those of that galaxy without support against that threat.

Then there was the point that they would need a lot of energy to get back to Pegasus if they did return. The wormhole drive might work again, but that would put them right back in the same position – cut off from Earth without the intergalactic bridge and with barely any power. Was it right of Richard to want to go back anyway?

He sighed again and pulled his gaze away from the high ceilings of the Gate room and back down to the laptop in front of him. And Colonel Sheppard…his ultimate fate was unclear - the mutations of the past and Michael's manipulations had turned him into something new. Woolsey understood enough about the basics of genetics to know that what had been done to the man was an alteration on a deep basic level and may not be possible to undo.

Though it had appeared that the treatments for those who had been turned into Hybrids had seemed successful, they now had to question whether it had worked properly. Had Kanaan and Tolim been altered in a way that body scans and the eye could not distinguish? Had they not returned to themselves despite the best complete treatments of Doctor Beckett? Or had they, as Teyla had suggested, possibly been involved with Michael before the treatments? Or had Michael done something to them even before that? It was far too complicated and worrying, and he was never going to find any answers sitting up tonight, but it did not feel right to go to bed. His people were suffering in a variety of ways and no doubt everyone in the city tonight would be seeing the world a little differently, some more than others.

For now there was only one thing he had control of and that was his own report and planning for the meetings tomorrow. So, he sat forward again and found the last paragraph he had been reading.

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The device had been broken into tiny little pieces, the disassembly employed by Kanaan no doubt involving a hammer. Rodney reached for the liquid cement and touched a tiny amount to the edge of one piece and carefully, slowly, joined it up with another tiny piece of metal. The casing didn't matter, but the wires and other pieces of strange technology attached to it were important. Slowly and carefully he had been able to fit some pieces together and had been able to identify some of the broken smaller components that had been attached to those pieces. It was a complicated little twisted 3D jigsaw puzzle, but he had always been good at what was difficult.

"You still up?" Ronon's deep voice echoed around the quiet lab.

Rodney held the tiny pieces together before he looked up at his team mate, the magnifier attached to his headband making half of Ronon appear massive and blurry.

"No, I do this kind of thing when I'm asleep," Rodney muttered sarcastically, but he didn't really have the energy to make it sell.

Ronon moved forward into the room and Rodney returned his attention to his bizarre little jigsaw.

"How's it coming?" Ronon asked as he reached the other side of the desk across from Rodney.

"Oh, you know…really slowly," Rodney replied honestly. He set the cemented pieces down carefully and they remained together. "I think I'm getting somewhere, but even then it might not mean I can get the thing working enough for me to be able to analyse what the signal was."

"I thought you had the signal recorded from when it was still broadcasting?" Ronon sounded tired, which was unusual for him and Rodney suspected it was more from an emotional tiredness…if Ronon was anything like him. Then again they weren't all that similar.

"We do, but it was so mixed in with the other normal signals of Atlantis. This was brilliantly done," he admitted gesturing down to the pieces before him. "It was even designed not to look Wraith and possibly to break apart easily. If you didn't know what this was most people would think these were pieces of a broken stereo or something."

Ronon's hands rested down on the other side of the table as he peered forward down at the pieces recovered from Kanaan's quarters. Thank God the man hadn't had time to dispose of it all properly.

"You sure Michael made it?" Ronon asked.

"Well, I hope so otherwise we've got two big bad enemies out there. Yes, I'm fairly sure some of these smaller components here," he picked up a tool and turned over one piece of tiny circuitry. "See this, this part here is organic, very Wraith-like. It's very clever." He set the tool down. "But, then that's Michael isn't it? Clever. Fooled us pretty well," Rodney muttered, the late hour and the stress of the day really making themselves felt.

Ronon dragged a stool forward and sat down opposite, setting his forearms along the metal desk. A grumpy growl was his answer.

"You seen Sheppard?" Rodney asked. He had been trying not to worry about John all the time he had been working tonight. Carson had assured him that Sheppard seemed relaxed enough and they had everything they needed to find a cure for him.

"Yeah, I dropped in on the way here," Ronon replied.

"How'd he look?"

"Same, Carson says what Michael did to him may disappear again, or settle or something like that," Ronon half shrugged, and it was clear to Rodney that the guy was feeling frustrated. "It'll take time whatever happens," Ronon added with clear disgust.

"He seems okay though," Rodney offered. "You know apart from the insults he wrote on that whiteboard." He had actually been pleased to see that clear Sheppard-ism.

"Carson says you were pestering him," Ronon replied with a slight smile.

Rodney frowned at the reminder of the failure in his research. "I have no idea how he got that specific section of the pier locked down and completely cut off from Operations."

"What did he say?" Ronon asked, though Rodney suspected he already knew.

"Says he doesn't know how he did it," Rodney muttered. "Apparently he's been acting all Ancienty as well as his bug power in beating up Kanaan." He let out a frustrated sigh – he and Ronon had missed all the action having been stunned through it all.

"He's quiet," Ronon added.

"More like you, you mean?" Rodney teased, but again his heart wasn't really in it. "He certainly expressed himself clearly on that whiteboard."

"You're lucky he didn't do to you what he did to Tolim," Ronon replied, some amusement in his voice again.

Rodney nodded at that. When he had woken up in the Infirmary he had seen Tolim. They had been setting the man's fractures at the time and clearly the morphine hadn't kicked in yet.

"You seen Teyla?" He asked next, his eyes dropping to the pieces of the device that Kanaan had hidden in their quarters.

"Not since earlier. Said she wanted to be alone," Ronon added. And it was like Ronon to take her at her word with that. Rodney wasn't sure if he should visit her, say something. He was pretty sure that Sheppard would have come up with something, even if it was a weak excuse to visit to take Torren off her hands for awhile. But, Sheppard had his own problems. And besides it was very late.

"Poor little Torren," Rodney uttered quietly as he looked at the broken pieces in front of him.

"He's better off without Kanaan," Ronon stated, his anger clear. Rodney nodded his agreement.

They lapsed into silence, the silent dark corridors outside the open lab doorway only made the late hour all the more obvious. Early tomorrow Rodney had to present his findings to Woolsey, and as yet he didn't have much to offer. If he could just get these pieces back together without falling asleep, then maybe he could find out something…anything to tell them how much mess they really were in. The previous petty details of the research teams in the city didn't seem so difficult now. He would take on all the research teams the world wanted if it would mean he could make what happened today to…not have happened. But, he couldn't. These past months on Earth seemed rather like a holiday now, a vacation from the stress and strains of how life had been in the Pegasus galaxy. Those darker days were back though – and they had brought all new terrifying friends with them.

"Has Kanaan or Tolim said anymore?" He asked hopefully.

"Woolsey wants to leave them for tonight, start interrogating them tomorrow," Ronon said the word with great distaste. Rodney wondered what Ronon's version of an interrogation would be if he was left completely alone with Kanaan.

"Well, maybe they'll tell us something," he suggested weakly.

"Don't count on it," Ronon replied grimly. "Besides they probably don't know what Michael's really up to." The idea only depressed Rodney further. He looked back to the metal pieces before him and with renewed determination he reached for them. They needed to find out what that signal was and maybe track it back to Michael. And perhaps find something that would help Sheppard. Rodney just needed to get this device back together.

He worked silently, finding another small piece and fitting it carefully against another, only to find a separate piece needed to sit between them. Ronon shifted in his seat, reminding Rodney of his presence and he glanced up at the man, but Ronon didn't look like he was going anywhere. Normally Rodney hated people proverbially looking over his shoulder as he worked, but Ronon wasn't like that here. He was simply sitting with him, and Rodney felt a little more hopeful with his friend's presence.

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The single Earthly moon glowed down through the white clouds high outside the window. Teyla shifted in her seat, the blanket wrapped tightly around her where she sat perched on a chair looking out of the window to the alien world outside.

A short distance away she could hear Torren's heavy sleeping breaths as he dreamed. She glanced back round to see his twitching slightly in his sleep, but he stilled again, his breathing softening almost to silence. She looked from his sleeping face to the boxes at the far side of the room. She had barely managed to wait till Torren had fallen asleep before she had begun to gather up everything that was Kanaan's from around the room. Even gifts from him had been all but thrown into the boxes, until her eyes full of unshed tears, she had removed every trace of the man that she could and she had shut the boxes tightly. They sat now, far from her, right by the door and she was tempted to place them out in the corridor out of her sight. The darkness of her room cast the boxes into deep shadow and she pulled her eyes from the irony of it to look back out at Earth's single moon.

It was her who had been living in the dark – the reality around her all but ignored. All these months she had known something had been wrong. Her dreams had even contained images of Michael and had even made her feel slightly uneasy of Kanaan at times. How foolish she had been to ignore her intuition, so precisely crying out for attention it had been. By ignoring those instincts she had placed herself in this situation – and those around her.

Her thoughts returned to John, shut down in that isolation area, his future unclear. The clarity of his communication with her gave her hope, but it had also made her feel all the more uncomfortable. He had been altered and Kanaan had been responsible, and she realised that she therefore felt responsible herself. Her actions in choosing Kanaan and ignoring her own intuition had changed so many things. If she had not welcomed Kanaan back into her life, and her arms, after his return from Michael…but she had not known then. She had wanted the family he had represented. The chance for things to return to how they had before, before her people had been taken, before she had felt so responsible and lost, before Michael. Now, she was back in that same place again, only it felt even worse.

She looked from the moon to the faint sparkling of stars through the breaks in the cloud cover. She knew there was no way for her to see her lost home galaxy from here, that she could not see her people's world, but she still looked up at the stars in hope. Where were her people? Were they safe? Or was there a new familiar shadow bearing down upon them, or had it perhaps already crushed them?

The pain of betrayal, of broken safety and fears made it feel as if her heart were breaking in her chest.

A tear slipped down her cheek and she let it roll free.

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Several floors below, John looked up towards the ceiling of the isolation room and felt the ache deepen in his chest. He had no clear comprehension of how he knew that she was sat in pain, but he did. It could be that he knew her well enough to know how she might react, but this feeling inside him…

He looked away from the ceiling, turning to look over his shoulder through the glass wall into the lab beyond. Carson had fallen asleep, slumped onto the desk, his cheek resting on his arm. He felt responsible. That knowledge angered John, but he also respected Carson's need to exorcise demons…John understood all about that.

He looked away from the sleeping scientist to the open doorway from the small isolation room. Outside there were two guards, both bored and playing cards quietly by the main exit of the isolation area. It wouldn't take much for John to get out of here. He knew they wouldn't be able to stop him without getting violent and that they would be more inclined to step aside. Maybe they would follow him all the way up to her quarters.

He looked away from the temptation of the open doorway. Though the drive to leave was strong, and the overwhelming desire to go see Teyla was making his skin itch, he knew that he had to stay. The two parts of him warred inside. The tiny space of the isolation room was getting to him, but at the same time he had sat here barely moving for what had obviously been hours. Sitting and simply thinking felt comfortable and the peace of stillness was satisfying in a strange new way. Maybe this was how meditation was supposed to feel.

Yet, the walls around him also felt limiting and a part of him itched to be away. He wanted to feel space around him, to feel free. The subtle restraint of the guards' presence was enough to annoy that part of him. That and the knowledge that she was sitting alone and in pain. He wanted to be close to her, to help her. To support and at the same time to push her to break out of her tight control. It was her normal nature to be truthful, but not always with herself. She would blame herself and feel the swell of aggression that she had before when her people had been taken. He understood that fierce drive to make your enemy pay. He had enjoyed stopping Kanaan.

His fist was clenched tightly against his thigh and he looked down at the visual display of his growing aggression. It pushed him to make a break out of here, to slink into the darkness of her quarters and sit near her. He would willingly knock the guards out to do it too.

The sharp edges of his nails bit into the softness of his palm and he stopped his racing thoughts. A faint line of blue ran along the edge of his index finger and over the back of his hand. He followed the line with his gaze, tracking it up along his forearm to where it disappeared under the sleeve of the medical tunic he wore. He looked up from his arm to the glass wall opposite him, through which before Teyla and the others had sat. That room was now empty and it was dark inside, changing the glass wall into a mirror, reflecting John's image back at him.

He frowned at the new dark areas around his cheeks and along his brow. He leant slightly forward, staring at the darkness of his eyes. He could just make out the slits of his pupils in the reflection.

She had been frightened of him. He regarded the version of himself looking back at him and knew why. It wasn't so much how he looked, but how he had been before. He could feel it in him, though it was greatly diluted from before, but that wild untamed sense was like last time. And he had enjoyed releasing it upon Kanaan.

He sat back and looked back down to his fist. He unclenched his hand, laying it on his thigh, seeing the changes across his skin. The areas were faint enough compared to his sharp precise memories of how he had been last time, and that was something. This was different to last time, very different, but the situation felt worse somehow.

He looked up to the ceiling again, up to the sky, though there were floors, walls, ceilings and a cloak between him and the stars. He drew in a breath and the knowledge arrived. Like a storm on the far horizon he knew something was on its way. A storm was preparing to break, and if this had been the prelude, then it worried him. Through his new calmness he felt the sense of importance to what was to come, but it also penetrated into the untamed parts of him and he felt his belly fire up at the threat.

Bring it on.

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THE END