Sheppard was lying helplessly on his small cot behind the cell's bars when he heard a commotion outside and saw his personal guard jump out of his seat and run into the hall.
"Hey, what's going on?" he asked into the empty air.
Seemingly in response, his guard came back into the room flying through the air. He hit the far wall and slumped to the ground unconscious.
"What the hell?" Sheppard muttered.
Stevenson walked into the room wearing an oversized uniform and lifted a hand toward Sheppard's cell. The lock screeched and cracked open. The door swung free and Stevenson beckoned Sheppard forward with a simple hand motion.
"Okay…" Sheppard said slowly, not knowing what was going on but glad for the chance to get out of his cell none the less.
Stevenson pointed to the unconscious guard, then tugged on his own uniform.
"Right," Sheppard said, looking down at the orange jumpsuit that he was wearing. He knelt down next to the guard and proceeded to swap clothes with him. After he was finished he joined Stevenson at the door. "What next?"
The man muttered something in a language he couldn't understand, then, seeming to realize that fact, he drew a circle in the air then pointed through it.
Sheppard raised an eyebrow. "Stargate?"
Stevenson nodded.
Sheppard pointed out the door. "After you and your magic hand."
They moved quickly through the halls, with Stevenson telekinetically knocking aside a few personnel as needed. They passed by an armory and ducked inside briefly, grabbing some essential gear. Forty seconds later they were back in the hallway headed for the gateroom when the base alert siren went off.
"Let's move it," Sheppard urged, staying one step behind Stevenson.
A pair of armed guards stepped around the corner in front of them, ordering them to stand down. A split second later the guards were lifted into the air and clunked hard into the ceiling. Their weapons dropped to the ground a moment before their unconscious bodies did.
One of the Zats lying on the floor suddenly lept through the air and into Stevenson's hand. He tossed it back over his shoulder to Sheppard, who awkwardly caught it in mid-air.
When they reached the outside of the gate room Stevenson struggled for half a minute with the blast door before finally opening up a half-meter crack…just enough for the pair to slide through. He closed it behind them with a thud and swiped a bead of sweat off his forehead. He was expending a lot of his limited amount of energy…and he knew he had to get through the gate before he passed out again.
"How are we going to dial from down here?" Sheppard asked as General Landry's face appeared in the control room window.
"Colonel Sheppard, Captain Stevenson, stand down immediately. This is a direct order. We have assault teams moving on your position as we speak. If you resist they will be authorized to use force as necessary to return you to either the brig or the morgue. Your choice, Gentlemen."
"Doesn't look like I have much to lose at this point, General," Sheppard yelled back as he looked over his shoulder at Stevenson. "Please tell me you have a plan for getting out of here?"
Stevenson visibly gathered himself and set his jaw before stepping over to the side of the stargate. He reached out and touched it, then closed his eyes.
For a moment nothing happened. Then all of a sudden the computer readouts in the control room began showing erroneous feedback.
"Sir," Siler said from the control board. "We're reading a dialing sequence, but it's not originating from the control room. We're completely locked out."
"How is that possible?" Landry asked.
"I don't know, sir" Siler said apologetically.
"Pull the plug," Landry ordered.
"Too late," Siler noted.
The event horizon of the wormhole appeared, but without the customary kawoosh beforehand. Stevenson, looking exhausted, walked around and up the ramp, pulling Sheppard forward by the elbow.
He took the hint and followed him through the gate, but not before he paused, grinned, and waved a sarcastic goodbye to Landry in the control room.
Both men emerged into a clearing outside a wide, dark forest. Sheppard stopped just beyond the gate and looked around, trying to get a feel for where they were.
Stevenson, however, immediately went for the DHD. He touched the center bubble and closed his eyes. The gate shut down a few seconds later and he immediately started to dial another address.
"Smart," Sheppard said appreciatively. "They won't be able to follow us if we dial out again."
Stevenson nodded as the kawoosh from the newly formed wormhole jutted out into the blue, sunny sky.
"Come," Stevenson said awkwardly, as if he'd never spoken the word before.
"So you can talk? Sheppard asked as they stepped into the gate.
They emerged into a desert world with no one and nothing in site. Sheppard thought it looked a little familiar but he couldn't quite place the address.
"What now?" he asked, glad to be free again, but still unsure as to what was going on.
Stevenson pointed at the gate and started dialing another address.
"Again?" Sheppard asked. "They shouldn't be able to trace us this far."
Stevenson didn't answer. Instead he slowly input seven symbols…then he touched an eighth.
"DHD's can't dial another galaxy," Sheppard insisted. "They don't have enough power. Wish they could, then I could get back to Pegasus."
In response to his assertion the DHD began to light up randomly, as if it were having a motherboard meltdown. Stevenson input select symbols in response to the flashing lights for nearly a minute. Then all the symbols illuminated simultaneously and steadily. He reached up and pressed the center bubble and activated the gate.
"What the hell?" Sheppard asked.
Stevenson motioned him forward and led him through the gate...
Sheppard's jaw dropped when they emerged on the other side. They were inside a massive facility, obviously of Ancient design, but the most awe inspiring sight was the presence of four other gates sitting side by side with their own.
Sheppard stepped out and looked back up at the gate they had come through. "Holy crap…they're yellow," he said, referring to the chevron lights as Stevenson walked off into the distance.
"Hey, wait up!" he yelled as he looked back at the other gates. One had normal red crystals, while the others had blue, green, and orange chevrons.
Sheppard caught up with him just before he entered an alcove in the near wall that lead to an ascending staircase. He followed Stevenson up and through a latticework of hallways until they stopped before a thick, sealed door.
Stevenson waved a hand over a nearby panel and the 10cm-thick door slid into the wall. Sheppard followed him in and found himself in familiar surroundings. There were Ancient-style control panels, similar to those in Atlantis's gate room, ringing a center platform with a single podium on its perimeter.
Stevenson walked up to the podium and a holographic map materialized above the platform…identical in every way to its counterpart in Atlantis where he'd first seen a diagram of the Pegasus galaxy.
Sheppard frowned. The map didn't show the Pegasus galaxy, obviously, but it wasn't showing the Milky Way or any other galaxy either. He walked up alongside Stevenson's shoulder as he worked the controls, and with a closer look the significance of what he was seeing finally dawned on him.
"It's a map of the Ancients' galaxies," he said, half looking at Stevenson, but unwilling to take his eyes completely off the map. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the man nod in agreement.
"What is that, two, four, six…twenty two galaxies? That's insane! Where are we?"
Stevenson highlighted one of the central galaxies with a white hue.
"And where's Pegasus?"
Extra, colorless galaxies materialized around and within the cluster. One of these suddenly highlighted.
"What's that mean? Why isn't it part of the group?"
Stevenson worked his mouth around, then finally uttered, "New."
"New?" Sheppard asked. "That's right, Rodney said the Ancients built the Pegasus gates after they left Earth. I guess that puts the count at twenty three."
Stevenson shook his head and pressed another button.
All the little dots within the galaxies suddenly connected to each other in a mass of millions of tiny lines that blurred together into a reddish hue…except Pegasus, where there weren't even any dots, just a swirling mass of white.
"Not on the map, huh?" Sheppard speculated as another thought struck him. "Is that why we can't dial out of Pegasus without the Atlantis gate crystal?"
Stevenson rubbed his forehead and nodded. Apparently he was still feeling the fatigue from their escape.
"Don't supposed you can update the map?" Sheppard said offhand.
Stevenson looked at him worried, then slowly nodded his head up and down, quickly followed by left to right.
"You can but you can't?" Sheppard tried to translate.
Stevenson pointed at the map and input a new command. For a long minute nothing happened, then all of a sudden a dozen or so dots appeared in Pegasus. Then a few more appeared, and more, and more until the entire galaxy was full of new stargate locations.
"Does that mean we can dial Pegasus from here?"
Stevenson pointed at the map again…more specifically at the lines interconnecting gates within and between galaxies. None traveled to Pegasus.
"Not hooked up, huh?" Sheppard guessed. "Can you fix that?"
The Captain reached a hand up to Sheppard's chest and pushed his palm flat against it in a feeding motion.
"Don't want to let the Wraith out, I get it. Any way we can still get there? Unless you have somewhere else for us to go?"
Stevenson held up a finger, giving Sheppard the 'wait' signal. Suddenly the map zoomed in on the Milky Way galaxy alone, and for the first time he could see that the lines connecting the dots were different colors.
He glanced out the window at the different colored stargates on the platform below them and raised a curious eyebrow. "Where are we?"
Stevenson highlight and zoomed in on one small dot near the galactic core. Sheppard noticed that lines of all six colors intersected it. He frowned. There had only been five gates, and none of them purple.
"Where's the purple gate?" he asked Stevenson while pointing at the mass of thin colored lines emanating from their location to what looked like every other stargate in existence. It was hard to differentiate them all, but the colors stood out.
Stevenson pulled up a holographic diagram of them in the control room and zoomed outward through the massive complex.
"We're in space?" Sheppard realized as the diagram resolved itself into a space station with another gate floating outside.
Stevenson nodded 'yes' to his question and highlighted the gate.
"Wait a minute, how big is this station?"
Stevenson brought up a second diagram of an Atlantis-style city for comparison, which overshadowed the complex at approximately twice its size.
"If I'm reading this right, then that gate," Sheppard said, pointing to the one in space, "is a supergate?"