Chapter 9
After the team got moving, Sheppard returned to Selene and Elizabeth. Speaking in a low voice, he asked, "So, why are you and your people so pissed at the lycans?"
"Believe it or not," Selene said, "I don't really have all that much of a personal quarrel with them. Not anymore, at any rate. This is strictly business."
"I don't know, you told me they looking for a way to kill all vampires. Most people would take that sort of thing pretty personally," Sheppard said.
Selene shrugged. "Maybe. Like many wars, ours with the lycans is not exactly black and white." She shook her head regretfully. "It took me centuries to figure that out."
"Centuries?" Sheppard asked. "Just how old are you?"
Selene smiled. "Not polite to ask a lady that."
"Oh, come on," Sheppard said.
"Fine," she said. "I was born on a small farm in Hungary in 1383."
"Jesus," Elizabeth said. "You're over 600 years old?"
"And you don't look a day over 250," Sheppard quipped.
"Very cute, Sheppard," Selene said. "I was not born a vampire. I was born human, same as all of you. Viktor, one of our elders, turned me when I was a nineteen years old. He came to me after my family had been murdered. He told me lycans had done it, and he offered me a chance to exact retribution against them. I waged war in the shadows against the lycans for the next 600 years."
"Damn," Sheppard said. "And I thought my grand dad could hold a grudge."
Selene shrugged. "We might be a slightly different species, but we are still fundamentally human in our motivations and behavior. In any case, Viktor had deceived me. He had murdered my family not the lycans. My father had designed a fortress for Viktor, then murdered him and my family to protect the secret of its location. Furthermore, the lycans had rebelled against us for a reason."
"Rebelled? They use to serve vampires?"
"Indeed," Selene said. "The first werewolves were mindless beasts that would kill randomly. Eventually, the first lycan, Lucian, was born. He was the first that retained his humanity while transformed, and could transform from human form to lycan at will. Viktor spread this new strain of lycanthropy as quickly as possible. Thus, the lycans were born, and they served us. They performed tasks during the day when we had to remain in hiding."
"And the servants didn't care for their lot in life?" Elizabeth asked.
"At first, it did not bother them," Selene said. "Lucian once told me that he harbored no ill-will towards us. He even married a vampire. That's when the trouble started. Viktor was a profound racist where the lycans were concerned and Lucian had married his daughter."
"Well, I bet that made thanksgivings interesting," Sheppard said.
Selene continued. "Viktor was furious when he found out Sonja was pregnant. In his anger, he murdered his daughter and unborn grandchild. Lucian went out of his mind in rage. That's when the war started."
Elizabeth looked sharply at Selene, fury flashing in her eyes. "You've involved us in a 600 year old family blood feud."
Selene sighed. "I had no choice. Lucian has been dead for several years now, and the remaining lycans think of nothing but killing more vampires. My people are hardly any better, to be fair, however I have a daughter. I would do anything to protect her."
Elizabeth nodded, and calmed down a bit. "I suppose I can understand that."
"I don't ordinarily work for what passes as a government among my people. They've betrayed me before and I wouldn't trust any of them for even a millisecond. I'm only here to protect my daughter. Nothing else."
"Your kind is immortal," Sheppard said. "How the hell did that happen?"
"The first immortal was a man named Alexander Corvinus. I don't really know a great deal about his history. He had three sons. According to legend, one was bitten by a bat. Marcus became the first vampire. The other, William, was bitten by a wolf and became the first werewolf. The third carried the immortality strain in a dormant form. I don't really know how Alexander Corvinus became an immortal. I only met him once and though I learned much, I didn't learn that. We figure it was some kind of genetic mutation. Maybe even experimentation."
"Here," Rodney said. "This is the archive room."
Sheppard jogged to the head of the group. "Any motion?" he asked Lorne.
"None," Lorne replied.
"Alright. Standard entry just in case. Teyla, Ronon, Lorne, stack up," Sheppard ordered.
Sheppard lead the entry into the archive room, but found nothing but an empty room with a holo pedestal in the center.
"Clear!" Sheppard called out.
The rest of the team filed in. "Rodney," Sheppard said. "See what you can find."
McKay activated the holo pedestal. The hologram activated. "State your request," it said.
McKay started querying the hologram for information. He tried a number of searches, mostly related to Ancient biological weapons projects. The search was proving fruitless, however. "Search mythological creatures," McKay said. "Werewolves."
"No data available," the hologram said.
"I can't find anything," Rodney said.
An instinct tugged at Sheppard. "Let me try," he said. Sheppard walked up to the still active hologram. "Name search: Alexander Corvinus."
"No data available," the hologram said.
"Hmm," Sheppard said. "That's disappointing. Maybe the Ancients didn't have any knowledge of immortals."
"There has to be something," Selene said. "Remember what the alien said, about the truth about my people?"
"I wouldn't put too much stock in what a wraith has to say," Sheppard said. "He might've just been trying to throw you off. They're craftier than they look and playing mind games is something they're surprisingly good at."
"Selene," Elizabeth said. "This man, Corvinus, where was he from?"
"He was a Hungarian noble. Born sometime in the 5th century AD," Selene said.
"Well after the Ancients' time," Elizabeth said. "I feel like we're overlooking something."
Sheppard snapped his fingers. "Remember Merlin and Morgan Le Fay?" Sheppard asked. "Those were names that we knew them by from legends, but those weren't their real names."
"That's right," Elizabeth said.
"Wait a minute," Selene said. "You mean Morgan Le Fay and Merlin, as in King Arthur, were real?"
Elizabeth nodded. "They were, though neither of them were magicians as the legends state. Those weren't even their real names. Morgan's real name was Ganos Lal and Merlin's real name was Moros. You say that Corvinus was a Hungarian noble. What was his name in Hungarian?"
"Corvin Sandor, if I remember correctly," Selene said.
"Name search: Corvin Sandor," Elizabeth said.
"No data available," the hologram replied.
Elizabeth shook her head. "Computer, can you perform a translation from modern Earth languages to Ancient?"
"With a gestalt of any language's grammar, a translation is possible," it replied.
"Access SGC main database," Elizabeth said. "Create a gestalt for the Hungarian language."
"Operation complete," the hologram replied.
"Do a translation of Corvin Sandor into Ancient, and perform a name search on the result."
"Translation complete. Performing search on name: Sansus Coranius. Loading data."
The hologram disappeared and showed a life size image of an aging man with white hair who, nonetheless, looked well kept and physically fit.
"My God," Selene said. "That's him. Alexander Corvinus."
"Corvinus was an Ancient," Elizabeth said. "Says here he was head of biological sciences on Atlantis before the wraith defeated them."
"Let's see. Odd genetic properties, had a couple of sons with similar genetics, makes up some elaborate story to cover his true identity so he can experiment on said sons...yeah, that's got Ancient written all over it. Should've seen that one coming," Sheppard said.
Elizabeth turned to Selene. "The Ancients in their latter days were...well, they had a tendency to not recognize the danger of the things they were inventing sometimes."
"Who are these Ancients?" Selene asked.
"They were human, after a fashion. They evolved as a species several million years ago. We currently represent the second evolution of the human form. That isn't public knowledge back home yet, but it's still giving the evolutionary biologists fits. The Ancients lived on Earth and a few other worlds. Most of them were wiped out by the wraith, whom you've just recently met," Elizabeth explained. "The rest ascended."
"Ascended?" Selene asked.
"The Ancients learned how to shed their physical bodies and exist as pure energy on another plane. They still live this way to this day, but they are very non-interventionist. For the most part they simply don't interact with us on the phyiscal plane."
"He didn't tell me the whole truth. I even drank of his blood and got his memories," Selene said.
"Can you do that?" Elizabeth asked. "Read memories from blood?"
"Yes," Selene said.
"Didn't Rodney tell us that the ancients were experimenting with genetic memory?" Sheppard asked.
"Yes," Elizabeth replied. "The Ancients didn't finish the project as far as we know, but they were looking into inducing mutations in the ATA gene to get it to work."
"Well, it looks like Corvinus succeeded in completing that project," Sheppard said. "Among others."
"Corvinus was a man full of regret," Selene said. "I think he'd finally come to realize what monsters his sons were, but he couldn't bring himself to destroy them. That was left to me. I was infected by the pure strain of immortality when I drank his blood. It's how I can walk in the sunlight."
"This is very interesting, but we can't dwell it on right now," Sheppard said. "Daybreak is in an hour. We need to get to the comm tower and call the Daedalus. We're going to need reinforcements."
"Can we come back here later, I mean if we survive?" Selene asked. "I would at last like to know the full story."
Technically, Elizabeth knew she shouldn't hand over sensitive data to an agent of a potentially hostile power. But she had good instincts about people, and she felt she owed the woman for saving her life.
"Yes, if we survive, I will grant you access to the Ancient database," Elizabeth said.
"Let's get going," Sheppard urged them.