I just altered this chapter a bit. (4-17-09) Again, thank you for reading! Do other people mind my writing out Carson's accent? I really enjoy writing it, but if it's interfering a lot, I can tone it down a bit.
Disclaimer: I still don't own Stargate Atlantis, Steve, and/or any other SGA character. This story is for entertainment purposes only, and is strictly not-for-profit. The only things I own are: Dr. Mira Sheckle, The Glove, the plot, and other OC/plot-related bits.
Chapter Three: Hiiissssssss!
(translation: Crap!)
Present
Knock, slap. Fan, whip.
Still pacing, the frustrated wraith stalked through his quarters. Black leather brushed the edge of his sleeping pallet as he turned to stride along the wall.
Knock, slap. Fan, whip.
The blackish-blue chitin of a corner loomed, and he turned again.
Knock, slap. Fan, whip.
The wraith's shoulder brushed the deceptively strong, orange membranes of the organic door. Clawed fingers scraped across smooth shell as he hissed softly, resisting the urge to open it and stalk the corridor beyond. He'd already expanded his path once. Now he traced a circuit around the room, outlining its furnishings with his movements to make the space feel larger. The illusion was effective. Or had been. Briefly. Now, beyond repeatedly upsetting his center of gravity…
Knock, slap. Fan, whip.
Ivory hair splayed against the dormant display of a personal data station as the wraith veered off-balance to avoid the intrusive object. Once past it, he swayed back towards the wall, regaining his poise just in time to navigate the next corner.
Knock, slap. Fan, whip.
His coat brushed the sleeping pallet…
"HIIISSSSSSSSSS!"
Giving an agitated snarl, the wraith spun and stalked across the floor, jerking to a halt barely a handbreadth from the door. Pale palms caressed skeletal chitin as green eyes slipped closed. The wraith calmed his mind, focusing on the contrasting feelings of light hair and heavy coat panels swinging from the arrested motion. When all traces of frenetic emotion were masked, he cast a telepathic net beyond the organic barrier. A thin, imperceptible ripple of thought probed the corridors…
No one was nearby…
Leaning his forehead against the door, the wraith sighed in gratitude as he withdrew the probe. Then, putting on a neutral expression, he opened his eyes and straightened, focusing his mind on the wall's internal control panel.
With a twitch of skeletal tendons, the door retracted into its frame.
Relief surged, threatening to overwhelm. Taking a deep breath of the corridor's air, the wraith turned away and pressed his back to the wall, quickly shutting the door again. He was not trapped. He could leave anytime, for any reason. He was not locked in this room. The feeling was merely a distressing illusion.
But it was getting worse…
The wraith pinched the bridge of his nose, battling down the caged panic trying to well up within him again. He was NOT trapped! This was NOT real!
His hands were shaking… The wraith's green eyes opened with a start. His mind roiled with turmoil. Everything was shifting. Changing. Everything—!
He couldn't continue like this…
A hiss of self-disgust rent the suddenly constricting atmosphere, and the wraith's gaze fastened on the data station. He had to DO something. Focus on something! Sending his thoughts into the wall, he touched the control panel again, this time locking it against operation by another. That done, he cast his thoughts deeper into the living cables, searching for a second interface. One that wasn't supposed to be there.
The wraith had grown this one himself.
Finding it, he gently brushed his mind across the telepathic sensors, carefully disarming and bypassing its self-destruct triggers. After his mental signature was confirmed, he sent a single instruction.
A soft, wet ripping sound filled the room.
Withdrawing his thoughts, the wraith strode past the station, into the corner where a section of wall was tearing open. Clear, viscous ichor oozed from the raw lips of damaged membranes, like sap oozing from prematurely opened seedpods. Accustomed to the sight, the wraith gave the torn tissues little thought. Such wounds were necessary side effects of mechanisms designed for external invisibility. Waiting impatiently until the opening had finished lengthening vertically, he thrust his feeding hand into the cavity and firmly grasped the gel-pad revealed within.
The grey, translucent substance squished, adhering to his skin and molding itself to his palm. The wraith shivered as the cool gel entered the sensitive sheaths housing his fingertips' enzyme hooks, creating an internal pressure that stimulated the opening of his feeding slit. The slippery substance invaded the exposed orifice. The sensation elicited a reflexive hiss, and the wraith clamped down, extending his injection hooks and pressing the gaping slit firmly into the gel. The layer outside the feeding apparatus firmed, immobilizing his hand, and the wraith felt the gel inside ripple as it initiated a detailed scan. Another precaution designed to verify his identity.
Blue lights snapped on. They briefly illuminated the compartment, then tightened their focus into four lines and began a slow sweep of his hand. Pupils contracting, the wraith narrowed his eyes as the intense energy beams crept up his wrist and along his forearm. A series of irregularities in his upper epidermal layers, slight blemishes, barely perceptible to the trained eye, were pinpointed and mapped. His skin tingled as the resulting pattern was analyzed and compared.
So many precautions. But necessary…
The light switched from the harsh blue of potential self-destruct to the comforting orange of recognition, and a second compartment, embedded in the bone-like structural support of the wall, slid open by the wraith's shoulder. He turned to face it, widening his eyes for a microsecond-duration retinal scan. As he passed the final test, the tingling in his forearm and the tickling in his feeding slit abated. The gel pad released.
All pretenses of calm and patience vanished. Snatching his hand back, the wraith thrust it into the second compartment, spraying enzyme from partially extended injection hooks. A hiss of annoyance, and the second hand followed. After a moment of impatient scrabbling, the dripping fingers withdrew. Clutched within them was a portable data storage device, roughly half the size of a personnel stunner. A pair of smaller data devices followed, each sized for easy hiding.
Crouching, the wraith made use of the feature, slipping one through an altered seam and shaking so it fell into the inner lining of his coat. No need to expose both.
Kneeling, he jammed the other small drive into a concealed port in the base of the dormant data station. Sensing the hardware, the console quickly hummed to life.
Just as quickly, it froze.
Translucent teeth bared in satisfaction as the wraith straightened, placing his hands on the console's twin gel controls to activate the mental interface. Glyphs and symbols scrolled across the screen faster than the eye could follow as the program contained on the drive navigated the hijacked operating system. The wraith's mind followed the digital modifications with intense focus, letting the familiar observations distract him from the unwarranted feelings still constricting his chest.
When the program finished, the console sent him a telepathic beep, signaling that it'd finished the regular boot-up process. The wraith probed it, searching for the mainframe's access points.
Nothing.
A pleased hiss whispered softly in the quiet room, followed by the click of the larger drive locking into an external port. The station queried its user, asking if he wanted to access the data within. The wraith considered the question with his usual mixture of anxiety and amusement. Under normal circumstances he would never dare even plug this drive in, much less access it, even in his personnel quarters.
The circumstances, however, were far from normal.
The wraith told it 'yes.' At the thought, strings of code began scrolling across the screen. Code that would make the station do things it shouldn't. Code that could fool the mainframe. Code that would make any number of impossibilities possible.
Code that any wraith in his right mind would kill for…
…Assuming they could figure out how to use it.
And this wraith did. Know how to use it, that is. Not that he intended to, of course. Not now. Hopefully not ever. Having it, however, was necessary. Or rather, having the options it provided. They were options no wraith should have. Or want. Well, no single male of his status, at least. For a queen or senior officer, such options were expected. Or should be. Any wraith of high status without them was a fool.
As was any wraith of his status WITH them…
The wraith paused. He might be a fool, but his queen was not. She was resourceful and smart. He wouldn't be in this infuriating situation if she were otherwise.
She would kill him if she saw this. It hinted treason, and his position was unusually precarious. There would be no lenience…
The wraith's ivory hair rippled with a shudder. Green eyes blinked in agitation. She would never see it. Ever. It was designed to erase all traces of its existence, and thanks to the program contained in the small drive, no one could spy on him when he worked on it. As far as the hive's central computer was concerned, this data station didn't even exist. If searched for specifically, it would show up as inactive.
Hissing angrily, the wraith thrust away the distressing thought of discovery. He was safe. He was NOT trapped. He was NOT found out. This code would NOT be discovered by anyone on this hive. EVER. He would destroy it first. More importantly, he would never, NEVER, use it without good reason. He was not a traitor.
For now, it was a toy, nothing more. A deadly, extremely interesting toy…
On that note of self-reassurance, the wraith single-mindedly threw himself into analyzing the code. Symbols flew across the screen. Focused on the mental signals accompanying them, the wraith barely noticed. Compiling, editing, recompiling. No way around the current efficiency threshold. Checking, simulating, rechecking… Low hisses and short-lived expressions of annoyance and dismissal. Seconds stretched into minutes. Minutes accumulated. One hour passed. Two. Everything was in perfect order, like he'd left it. Today's improvements were minor, but seemed to work flawlessly… What next? The wraith's concentration lapsed.
The constricting feeling rushed back. He was trapped. Locked in. This room was barely bigger than a—
NO! He'd locked the door himself! To prevent intruders.
Determined to avoid the irrational, alarming feelings, the wraith ran his simulations over and over, deliberately altering variables to account for increasingly unlikely and bizarre scenarios. Success, success, success, success, success. All successes. No, one failure… He reexamined the parameters. Snorted in disbelief. Fortunately planet-sized, black hole-spewing subspace amoebas didn't exist.
Perhaps he should keep to reality a bit more.
Without consciously deciding to do so, he began inputting parameters for the hive's current situation. One or two at first, then more. Success, success, success…
The date scrolling across the screen froze as the wraith realized what he was doing. He cocked his head. He was not seriously considering doing this. It was simulation. Nothing more. An idle expression of curiosity. Data started flowing again. Curiosity… Inputting more variables, the wraith mulled over other difficulties his current situation faced. Difficulties the program hadn't originally been designed for…
Exiting the simulation, he returned to the base code. Added to a few arrays. Altered a few key phrases slightly. Recompile, add, edit, recompile. He switched back and forth, from simulation to code, gradually diversifying the program's, (and the simulator's), capabilities. Test variables, predicted results, more tests. Tweak this. Calibrate that. Program freeze. Okay, completely incompatible. Reboot. Continue. Test variables now working correctly. Run simulations again.
Success, success, success, success.
Curiosity mounting, the wraith set about refining the code to accommodate current potential dilemmas as exactly as possible. He altered and added, turned unknown variables on and off. Success, failure, success, failure, success…
…failure…
Trapped. TRAPPED!
"HIIISSSSSSSSSS!"
He WAS NOT trapped!
The wraith's lips curled in impotent frustration. Abandoning logic, he started predicting the effects of unknowns. Recklessly entering it into the simulator as fact.
Success, success, failure, success, success, success…
His hands were shaking again.
In a frantic flurry of motion, the wraith exited the program and removed the data drive, flinging it viciously at his sleeping pallet. The black claw-shaped case bounced, hit a wall membrane, and bounced again, teetering precariously on the edge. Not caring, the wraith raked his claws threw his hair, hissing in distress. He paced furiously.
Knock, slap. Fan, whip.
Black coat panels fanned and swung. Ivory hair pattered, tried to swing, got caught on fingers, and failed.
Knock, slap. Fan, whip.
A telepathic command… The data station powered down, triggering the hijack program to rerun, undoing the isolating hacks it'd performed before.
Knock, slap. Fan, whip.
The program finished. Beeped, signaling a clean run.
Knock, slap. Fan, whip.
In a move that had no business being as smooth as it was given the wraith's agitated state, he crouched mid-spin and delicately snatched the small drive from the concealed base port, flinging it not-so-delicately at the sleeping pallet. The hard projectile clattered against its counterpart. It's balance upset, the heavy drive tilted and slid, sending them both skittering across the floor, directly into his path.
Snarling angrily, the wraith snatched them up. He stopped pacing long enough to shove them into the secret compartment and reactivate the fail-safes protecting it. As the tear in the wall shrank, hiding the high-tech scanner and healing as it resealed itself, an upset hiss rent the air. Why must the process take so long?!
The instant the seam was indiscernible, the wraith jabbed his mind at the wall controls and reactivated their responsiveness so visitor's could enter.
His agitated pacing resumed.
Knock, slap. Fan, whip.
Trapped.
Knock, slap. Fan, whip.
Translucent claws tangled in silky ivory. He was NOT trapped!
Unable to suppress the impulse, the wraith broke stride, almost jogging the three paces to the door and barely stopping himself from running into the corridor without scanning it first. Heart pounding, he pressed his forehead against the cool frame, recklessly probing without his customary degree of finesse.
A dismayed hiss. One of his lesser brothers was outside.
Feigning calm, the wraith deflected the request for instructions and bid the masked wraith continue on his way. Once the command was acknowledged, he turned his back to wall and tried to calm his mind, grateful that his lesser brother hadn't noticed his distress. He mustn't draw attention to himself. Not until he could control this.
A sudden sensation that the walls were closing in gripped him…
Trapped! The wraith dug his fingers into the wall. He couldn't go out. His brother wasn't gone yet. He was TRAPPED!
NO! He was NOT! Pain jolted his senses as he tensed. The wraith snatched his feeding hand up, cradling it to his chest. He'd grabbed the wall too hard, unconsciously extending his finger hooks and scraping their sensitive tips across the chitin.
Dammit. Such a stupid error. He hadn't done that in centuries. Glancing down, he saw the damage had already healed, just like the hole in the wall…
Memory echoed, distorted. …Trapped, success, trapped!
Green irises surrounding panic-dilated pupils flicked unbidden towards the corner where the data drives hid. …Failure, trapped, success…!
The wraith growled in denial and squeezed his eyes shut.
Trapped, success, trapped, success, success, SUCCESS!
The horrified growl morphed into a quasi-whine, and then trailed into a shocked hiss.
He was actually considering using it! Today!
Crap!