"Has he said anything?" Dr. Lam asked Daniel when she returned to Stevenson's bed after taking a brief lunch.

"He woke up for about thirty seconds, complained about a headache, and passed out again."

"In English?" she asked.

"Yep," he answered, then shook his head in disbelief. "Why would he do this knowing that it was going to kill him?"

Lam looked at him quizzically. "You don't know?"

Daniel stared at her. "Know what?"

She hesitated. "I'm not exactly supposed to reveal personal information, but I guess it won't hurt in this case. You probably need to know anyway if you're going to be talking to him. He has a degenerative genetic disease. He's not expected to live more than three more years."

Daniel turned back and looked at Ryan. "I didn't know that."

"He wanted it kept a secret, and I was ethically forced to oblige as long as his illness didn't disqualify him from duty."

"How could it not?" Daniel asked.

Lam shrugged. "As long as he can handle the pain and carry out his daily tasks there's no medical reason to take him off the active duty list. His disease moves slowly, it's not like it's going to develop to a critical level during a mission. He'll slowly be subjected to more and more pain until he can't take it any longer or his superiors notice a physical inability. He said he didn't want them to know so that they wouldn't pull him off duty without reason."

"I grudgingly agreed and have waited for a medical incident to indicate he was no longer fit for duty, but so far that hasn't happened. Either his condition isn't progressing as fast as predicted or he's hiding the pain well. Either way it's a moot point. The Ancient device is going to kill him long before his disease will."

Daniel sighed. "I guess he figured he didn't have anything to lose. Maybe he'll be able to tell us something useful and make his death worth something."

"He made it clear to me he didn't want to die helpless in bed, slowly withering away," Lam confided. "At least this will be quick by comparison."

Suddenly the status monitors started wailing and Stevenson's body began to convulse. Lam reacted instantly and ordered up a cocktail of drugs. "Did this happen to O'Neill?"

"No," Daniel said confused. "His physical deterioration happened after his mental conversion."

"This isn't good," Lam said, alarmed. "His blood pressure is spiking, and his neural patterns are erratic. I don't know how long his body can take this…"

The constant tone of heart failure sounded as Stevenson's body fell still.

"Get the crash cart over here, now!" Lam yelled.

Daniel watched dejectedly as Dr. Lam worked feverishly to revive the Captain, but to no avail. Ten minutes later Lam finally gave up and deactivated the medical equipment. She morosely pulled the bed sheet up over his head and hobbled away from the dead patient.

"There was nothing you could have done," Daniel said, trying to comfort her.

"I know," she said, not happy in the least.

"We knew this would happen, we just didn't think it would be this fast."

"A patient died in my infirmary," she said icily. "I don't like that."

Daniel put a hand on her shoulder supportively. He knew there wasn't anything that he could say to make it right. Losing people was always hard.

"You really blew it this time, Sheppard," O'Neill said as he paced back and forth across the confinement room.

"With respect, sir, as much as I could use a pep talk, what I really need is an ally who can do something about these ridiculous charges," Sheppard said exasperated. The more days that passed the more he was beginning to lose his patience…and his already limited respect for authority.

Jack shook his head. "I can't get you out of this one, Sheppard. Both the President and the I.O.A. want your head. If you'd just defied the I.O.A.'s orders then maybe I could have done something, but stealing from the Air Force ticked the Commander in Chief off royally. They're going to eat you alive in the hearing tomorrow, then shuttle you off for the official beheading," O'Neill said metaphorically. "Just, tell me. Why'd you have to go and do it?"

"Because it was the right thing to do. And I'd expect you of all people to understand that, General." Sheppard said with a bit of venon in his voice. He felt like he was being betrayed by everyone he'd ever remotely respected back on Earth. He seriously wished he'd gone awol back in Pegasus when he'd had the chance.

"What good did it do?" O'Neill asked. "You've been found out and your operations stopped. Are the people of Pegasus any better off than before? The Wraith are still there and nothing you did was going to stop that. You threw your career away for nothing?"

"At least I'll have a clear conscious when I go to sleep at night. I'll know that I did everything I could to save those people," Sheppard said determinately. "Can you say the same, General?"

"Actually, I can," O'Neill countered half-heartedly. "I fought the I.O.A. on this one, Sheppard...and I fought hard. In the end it didn't change anything. Too many people see the logic in bringing back the technology we've found and destroying the Wraith's one and only route into our galaxy. They don't care about some faceless people they've never met nor ever will meet millions of light-years away…and there's nothing I can say or do that's going to change their mind."

"But you're the one that has to give the final order to destroy Atlantis," Sheppard reminded him.

O'Neill thought about saying something, then stopped and swallowed instead.

"The I.O.A. isn't doing this," Sheppard argued, "we are. They may be giving the orders but we're the ones that have to do the dirty work."

"You won't be, if that's any consolation," O'Neill pointed out.

"Whatever happened to disobeying orders when it was the right thing to do?"

"Ah, yes…the right thing to do," O'Neill said slowly, remembering back.

"I know you've been in this position before, General, and that you did the same thing as me."

"But you got caught, Sheppard!" O'Neill said, half joking, half sarcastic. "If you're going to pull a fast one you've gotta be able to get away with it. Did you really think Woolsey wouldn't notice?"

"I…didn't think about that," Sheppard admitted. "I was too busy worrying about people getting life-sucked by the Wraith to worry about the sleeping monsters among our own people."

O'Neill sighed. "I sympathize, Colonel. I really do. If it was up to me you'd be out bagging more bad guys, but the big wigs have stepped in and taken it out of my hands. And despite my best efforts to convince them to preserve Atlantis, they've decided that the remaining power in our ZPMs is too precious a commodity to waste flying the entire city back here. They'd rather strip it down to the carcass and then blow up the carcass. I'll do what I can for you at the hearing, maybe get them to go easy on the confinement request, but it doesn't look good."

O'Neill started to say something more into the silence, but thought twice about it. Neither he nor Sheppard had anything more to say so he finally, awkwardly got up to leave.

"Why is it that we shoot the bad guys on other planets," Sheppard asked, "but here on Earth they get a free pass?"

"Job security." O'Neill said deadpan as he left.