Chapter 7

Sheppard opened his eyes and then immediately shut them again.

"Ow," he said. "Too bright."

"Sorry, Colonel," Keller's voice replied. There was a soft click, and then she asked, "Is that better?"

Tentatively, he cracked one eye open. She had dimmed the light above his bed so that it was little more than a golden glow. Nodding, he said, "Better. Thanks."

"How's your head?"

He shrugged as her cold fingers probed the skin at his forehead. Truthfully, his pulse banged behind his eyes, and his jaw hurt, but he was never one to complain much. "Okay, I guess."

"Do you remember what happened?"

Sheppard took a moment to think before answering. Then, he cautiously replied, "Yeah. I got dizzy all of a sudden. Must've passed out."

Keller nodded. "Your blood work was pretty much all over the place, so that's not really surprising."

"I'm gonna live, though. Right?"

She gave him a wry smile and tapped him lightly on the shoulder. "You'll live. But your first stop after here had better be the mess hall. And I'm giving you some sleeping pills to help with the insomnia."

"I don't have insomnia," he argued. "I can grab at least a few hours every night."

"Either you take these," she replied, shoving a box into his hand and giving her best no-nonsense stare, "or I'll make Ronon force-feed them to you."

Sheppard rolled his eyes, but took the pills from her. "Fine. Can I go now?"

"Yep. All set."

"Great."

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and then stood up. He was about to leave when a thought came to him, and he turned back.

"Hey, Doc?"

Keller looked up. "Yeah?"

"Have you seen Ford lately?"

"Who's Ford?" She asked. The puzzled look she gave him sent goose-bumps up his arms. His stomach lurched, as if he were on a roller coaster that had reached the top, and he was now looking at the steep drop below.

Recovering quickly, he grinned sheepishly and said, "Never mind. Must just be remembering something from the dream I had while I was out."

"Okay," she replied slowly, her expression telling him she was reconsidering letting him leave.

"I'll be in the cafeteria if anyone needs me."

Before she could call him back and subject him to more tests, complete with jabbing needles, he swung around and left the infirmary. He met Rodney in the hall on the way there, the scientist's nose nearly pressed against his tablet.

"Hey," Sheppard greeted him.

"Hey," Rodney replied without even looking up. "Sorry I didn't wait for you to wake up. I had to get back to work on the cooling system."

"Power relay."

Now, Rodney did look up. "What?"

"We were working on the power relay when I passed out, remember?"

Worry crossed the scientist's blue eyes, and he stopped in the middle of the hallway to stare at the colonel. "Are you sure you didn't damage anything in there when you fell? No, we were working on getting the cooling system back up to as near a hundred percent as we could. I thought that's why you passed out – because the heat was getting to you."

Sheppard shook his head. "No. The power relay to the Chair was fried. You said it would take at least a couple hours for you to fix it."

"The power relay is fine, John."

"Yeah?" He asked, and Rodney nodded. "Okay, then. Prove it."

McKay shrugged. "Fine. Let's go."

Together, they walked toward the Chair Room, Rodney worried about Sheppard's strange behavior and Sheppard worried that he might actually be going crazy. He was sure of what he'd seen; Ford had been so close, had looked so real, that Sheppard could have reached out and touched him. Could he have been imagining him, as he had imagined Elizabeth earlier?

"Where are you going?" Sheppard asked as Rodney stepped inside the room.

"To the power relay?" His friend replied, his eyebrows knitted even further.

"We were in the hallway before."

"Well, that would be pointless, as the relay is less than a foot from the actual Chair."

"You sure?"

"Seriously?" Rodney asked, almost angry now. "How long have I been lead scientist on this expedition? Yes, I'm sure. There is absolutely nothing in the hallway that has to do with anything in here!"

Sheppard walked into the room, following his friend over to the middle of the room.

"See?" He heard Rodney say then, and he followed the man's finger as he pointed at the Control Chair. "Everything's fine."

Sheppard stepped up onto the platform the Chair sat upon, chewing thoughtfully on his bottom lip. "We'll see," he replied, and then promptly sat down in the Chair. The lights under the Chair came on at once, seemingly responding to Sheppard's presence, and when he touched the gel-filled controls on the arms it began to hum quietly. He felt the feather touch of the city's artificial intelligence gently prodding at the back of his head, and he sighed in relief. He hadn't realized how much he had missed that connection until this very moment.

As he shut the Chair down once more and stood up, he gave a shrug of his shoulders and said, "I guess you were right. Sorry, Rodney."

Rodney sniffed. "Yes, well. It's not every day I get accused of lying, especially about something as important as the city's defense system."

"I said I'm sorry, okay? It's just...it's been a rough couple of months."

"Months?" Rodney scoffed. "Try years."

Sheppard grinned. "Yeah."

"Now, if you're done having your little...memory lapse...could we go eat? I'm starving."

"Sounds good."

As they made their way to the mess hall, Sheppard pondered what was happening to him. Maybe what Rodney had said before had been true – maybe he was having a psychotic break of some kind. Stress was damaging not only physically but mentally, too. Maybe the intense strain he had been under lately was causing his body to try and reboot – causing hallucinations and similar phenomena – and it couldn't help that he hadn't slept a full eight hours in almost six months. He figured that Keller was right to give him sleeping pills, after all. He just hoped they would help. Still, he couldn't forget the way he'd felt when he had seen Ford, nor could he pretend that Ford had been a mere figment of his imagination.

Something else was bothering him, and it had taken the entire walk to the mess hall before he understood what it was. The moment he had started questioning reality was also the moment when the cold had shoved in on him, knocking him out. The odds of that being a coincidence were astronomical. The only question was: who or what was controlling it? Was it just his brain shutting down and then restarting, or was there something more at play here?

He hadn't realized that he'd stopped walking until he heard Rodney's voice, calling him. "Sheppard? You coming?"

His gaze snapping upward so fast his vision swam, Sheppard nodded. "Yeah."

He took a step into the mess hall, inhaled a large breath, and then smiled widely. They were serving pie today. Pumpkin, by the smell of it.

His favorite.

The mystery would have to wait, at least for a little while.

TBC...