Chapter 21 - Crash
John checked his weapons for the last time before he reset them, exactly when Ronon finished sharpening one of his sabers, and he fastened it onto his belt. McKay was restlessly pacing in circles around the two of them.
"What if they find us?" he asked for the twentieth time. "What if the coordinates Claire suggested were better than the new ones I gave?"
"Do you really believe that she gave us the good coordinates?" Ronon scoffed.
"Oh, well, I don't know," Rodney shuddered. "I absolutely don't like her, but she seemed honest to me."
"That's because Carson infected you with his delusions about her," John shook his head with reproof. "She has never wanted to help us; she has some other reasons to send us there. I stake on it the remaining part of my next salary that she is completely bamboozling us."
"Why did you say, then, that her plan was worth trying?" McKay asked, surprised from Sheppard's words.
"I hope that we can fool her too," John replied, "And if we are careful enough, we can avoid the trap in her plan."
"That's perfect," Rodney huffed, "You hope... Wonderful!"
The scientist had to stop fuming for a moment because the radio-headset of Sheppard gave a noise, and as he switched it on, they could hear Doctor Weir's voice calling them all up to the Control Room.
"If I die aboard that hive, you will be the one to blame," McKay went on pouting. "You told me that the plan was okay, and you convinced me to join you..."
"Don't worry, we'll die together," Sheppard grinned, as they were all walking in the direction of the transporter.
Elizabeth was standing among the monitors of the Control Room, clasping her hands behind her back, and she wondered how sick it was that she was more nervous about the fact that she had involuntarily taken Caldwell's hand while talking to the Wraith queen than she was about the fact that she was going to risk her life by visiting the Wraiths. The colonel was not far from her, but he neglected her presence, he crossed his arms, looking in the direction of the door, not turning to her. She did not like that he refused to talk to her again, but she was unsure what to tell him, so she kept silent as well. She knew that it was she who spoiled their slowly improving relationship by sending Caldwell away on the risky Orion mission without showing any sign of her feelings about the decision. From that moment, she felt that nothing was the same as before, and things just continued turning worse, but still, she did not regret her decision of not showing him her concerns about his safety because she knew that it would have made it more difficult for him to leave on that mission if she had done so.
When Rodney, John and Ronon entered the room, she was thankful to them for breaking her train of thought.
"The queen messaged us, we can get transported aboard her hive in ten minutes," she explained to the three arriving persons. "Let's meet Hermiod aboard the Daedalus and get ready for the mission."
Doctor Beckett joined them on their way to the ship, stepping next to Elizabeth, worryingly blinking at her.
"If something bad happens to you all, it will be my fault, won't it?" he asked silently.
"No, no, Carson, it'll definitely be nothing like your fault," Weir told him with comforting calmness. "We had no other choice, the situation is this simple. It's no one's fault, it's the only decision we could make."
Doctor Beckett smiled at her, "Thank you," he whispered. "I hope you'll be alright."
"Don't forsake Claire," Elizabeth answered. "If we got this far, it would be pointless to lose faith in her at the last moment."
Hearing her response, Carson felt that the only person in the universe who could really understand him in this situation was Doctor Weir.
Doctor Beckett gave a last hug to all of his friends. "I... I hope everything's gonna be alright," he muttered, trying to exclude the worry from his voice.
"Naturally, we'll be alright," McKay answered sarcastically, "We'll just have a nice, cheerful journey. I don't even know why I haven't packed my picnic-basket for the trip..."
"Rodney, stop it," John interrupted quickly. "Carson, don't feel ill about it, we'll make it through."
The doctor smiled sadly. "I have my fingers crossed for you all."
"Can we start the procedure?" Hermiod asked from behind a control panel.
"Yes," Caldwell nodded. "Make sure that you transport both groups at the same time, but not to the same place."
"I've already rewritten the data of the beam-technology system, so I can follow your order with no difficulties," the Asgard answered a bit dourly, seeing the colonel's skepticism.
"Alright. Do it, then," Caldwell replied. Doctor Beckett gulped, as his friends disappeared from the room with a bluish flash.
Elizabeth and the colonel arrived at a small, dim, reddish room. The place did not remind them of a salon for greeting negotiators. Armed Wraith soldiers rushed in, and they surrounded the two humans, their weapons were pointing right at the visitors.
"The beginning is not particularly promising," Elizabeth raised one of her eyebrows.
A black-haired, dark-robed Wraith captain was standing in the background at the wall of the organic room. He stepped forward now, "Disarm them and lock them in a cell," he ordered his soldiers, and he turned to leave.
"Wait. We came to negotiate with your queen," Weir called after him. The captain turned back for a moment.
"I don't think so. Maybe that was what you believed, but that's false." He left with no further explanations.
"The groups arrived at the proper coordinates Doctor McKay gave me," the Asgard reported to the doctor apathetically.
Carson respired with relief, but his anguish was still not perfectly eased. He walked back to the Control Room to wait for some results of the mission. It did not take three minutes, and one of the monitors started glinting.
"We're getting an incoming message from the super-hive," a sergeant explained to the doctor, and then he switched a code on the keyboard to let the message be displayed. Carson was expecting the Wraith queen's arrogant picture, but someone else's face appeared on the screen.
"Michael?" Beckett exclaimed, astonished. The half-Wraith's bluish, pulsating skin and his mad sneer made the doctor flinch.
"Oh, Doctor Beckett, still remember me?" Michael asked ironically. "What a pleasure to see you again!"
"I... I thought you were dead..." Doctor Beckett mumbled.
"You all made sure that I'd be dead for now, but – what a horrible tragedy! – I'm still here," the Wraith gave out a loud, sharp laugh.
"Well, okay, it's... it's nice..." Carson stammered. His cheeks grew pale as he foreboded what the half-Wraith's presence meant.
"Why don't you ask about the reason of me messaging to Atlantis right now?" Michael continued mocking him.
"Erm, what... what's your reason?" the doctor inquired diffidently.
"I just wanted to say thank you to your city for sending me such a wonderful present."
"What do you mean?"
"My worst enemies, your pathetic friends are now all at my mercy! I'll cut their heads off, and I will make a great decoration with them. It's a pity you'll be unable to see it because you'll be dead by that time..."
"No, Michael, why would you do such a horrible thing?" Carson asked; his voice was trembling. "My friends have nothing to do with your misery; it was me who transformed you into a human being. It's all my deed. If you want to hurt someone, why don't you take me?"
"It's truly touching how you're trying to take the blame of your doomed fellows, but it just makes me more determined to hurt them," the Wraith responded scornfully. "Now I'm ending my message. I'll be delighted to watch your city falling apart. Oh, and you can express my gratitude to your Wraith captive. Without her help, capturing these bastards and avenging myself on them would have been much more difficult." He burst out in a cold, mirthless laughter, and he cut off the communication; only flashing black and white stripes remained on the screen after him.
The color of Doctor Beckett's face turned into a wax-like shade of paleness as he was catching the meaning of Michael's obscure sentences. He turned away from the screen, and he left the Control Room without a word; the soldiers present looked after him with a questioning glimpse. He ran through the corridors, he stormed into the transporter, and he hit the point where he wanted to teleport himself so forcefully that the glass-map nearly cracked. The bitterness in his eyes burnt with wild flickers. He rushed into the great hall containing the Wraith's cell.
"You heartless monster!" The shout burst out of him with deep pain and despair.
Claire, who was sitting in the corner of her cell and was reading the torn pages from the book about the chinchillas, looked up at him questioningly. When she saw the emotions on the doctor's face, she put the ruins of the book aside, getting up from the floor. Carson pointed his trembling finger at her.
"What have you done?" he asked bitterly. "Oh, my God, what the hell have you done to my friends? We saved your life, we took care of you, we healed you, we protected you from the pain... And that's the reward of our good intent! We trusted you... I really did. I trusted in you."
Claire stared at him with her unemotional, somber Wraith eyes; the blackness of her narrow pupils was like a dark, abysmal hollow. "I did nothing to your friends," she said sedately.
"You led them to a trap! You filthy, vile liar!" Carson subsided into the chair in front of Claire's cell, where he used to sit so many times during her captivity talking to her, reading out to her. He buried his face into his palms. "What have I done? Why have I ever listened to your words? Why did I offer to heal you? Why? I was an idiot. I should've known better..."
"What happened to your friends?" she asked, still soberly.
"You damned liar. You did it... You truly betrayed us! Oh my God, it hurts so much..."
"What happened?" Claire repeated her question.
"Your associates captured my friends aboard the super-hive," Doctor Beckett mumbled in front of him despondently. "They were waiting for all of them, they knew about the plan... Are you feeling happy now?"
Claire did not answer; she just pursed her dark lips.
Carson turned away from her. "I began to really like you, Claire, but now... I'll do everything to organize your execution. I won't feel sorry for you. The only thing I feel sorry for is the valuable time I wasted on you!" That coolness in the doctor's voice was unlike him, Claire had never heard him speak like that before. The mourning over the loss of his friends made the expression on his face rigid and ice-cold. He got up from the chair with dark sadness. "You achieved that all my best friends are dead, even the ones who saved your wretched life. Are you contented now, you ruthless beast?"
She did not give a response.
"I should've known there was no exception," the doctor went on plaintively, "All Wraiths are our enemies, and even though we saved your miserable life you were not thankful to us in the least. Even though I gave you my trust, my affection, even though I spent days reading out to you, helping you, healing you... I did everything for you, I even argued with my best friends to protect you, though they warned me that you were an insidious backstabber. I didn't listen to them, because I believed in you. Just tell me why! Why have you done this to me? Even if you'd said you were unable to help us defeat the super-hive, I would have protected you from my friends' brutal ways to interrogate you. But no, you had to lie to me, you had to betray me! It was not enough for you to simply watch our city get destroyed; you had to send my best friends into the trap of a maniac who will chop them into pieces! So that's the way you Wraiths stand by your friends. So that's the way you Wraiths love."
"You know nothing about my feelings," she said slowly, with wintry composure.
"Yes, that's true. And I'd rather kill myself than to have any of your so-called feelings!"
She stood there at the electric wall of the cell petrified from hearing the doctor's words; she did not give an answer.
"We'll never see each other again, Claire. I'll order your guards to execute you in half an hour. And before I die with the city, the only thing I will remember about you is your foulness!"
She threw back her head haughtily. "If that's what you want to believe, I can't change that with anything I could say. Go, then. You are as stupid and pathetic as any other human being..."
The doctor came to a brief halt. "You know what?" he said finally, "Maybe you are right, I'm pathetic and stupid. Yes, I am, because I should have let you die instead of saving you and wasting my time, my feelings on you!" Carson started to walk away.
"Are these your last words to me?" she hissed after him; all her muscles tensed again. The doctor went out of the room, he headed for the transporter. All of a sudden, she smote the wall of her cell with her hands, creating a bluish energy-pulsation where she touched the surface.
"No. Doctor Beckett, no!" Claire screeched in abrupt despair, hitting the wall again and again, while Carson was stepping into the transporter. "Don't leave me! Please, don't leave! Doctor Beckett!" Her last words echoed in the empty room, for the doctor left without even turning back to her.
"Doctor Beckett!" she screamed as loud as she could. Her helpless rage made her hit again with such force that she nearly broke her knuckles.