A call from General Landry had Xander reaching for his walky. Oh boy, this was not going to go over well. "All call. Assemble. Repeat. All call. Assemble. My place."
Soon the entire group, the Pack, Faith and the Research Team, Giles, Jenny, Tara and Willow, along with Jesse and Sarah, plus the children, six year old Abigail, two year old Morgan and one year old Allie, were assembled in their living room.
"Abigail, could you take Morgan and Allie out back? Keep an eye on them, honey, this won't take long."
"Okay daddy."
"What's up, Boss?" Kyle asked.
"General Landry called. The Pack and Faith are being requested by the President himself, to go to Atlantis. My counterpart from Jesse's reality came thru the Quantum Mirror to give us a heads up on something they found out in their reality. Recently, he and his Cordy, along with Jesse spent their summer vacation in Atlantis. They were to help the expedition get into some hard to access facilities and activate some devices that had been frustrating them. They hoped their stronger gene would help. What they found in two of those facilities is scaring the shit out them and I don't blame them. They found demons in tanks. It seems, towards the end of the Wraith War, the Ancients tried their own Initiative program. They planned to unleash those things on the Wraith. They hadn't gotten control of them before the war was declared lost and they came back to Earth. But it's what they found in the database that's really scary. The Ancients didn't encounter the Old Ones when they got to Earth. They created what we call the Hellmouths on purpose. They were an experiment. Since those dimensions are smaller, they thought they could use them as a means of travel. Worse, in order to get the demons they wanted to unleash on the Wraith, they deliberately created one in the Pegasus Galaxy. My counterpart helped close it. The President wants us to go to Atlantis and confirm for ourselves their information and if it happened here too."
"On purpose?!" Giles was all but screaming. Who could blame him.
"Yes. We have been cleaning up yet another of the Ancients messes. I wonder, did they teach our ancestors how to make Protectors just to protect Earth or out of a guilty conscience?" Xander answered.
"Thousands of years of a war in the Dark, because of an experiment gone wrong?" Willow whispered, horrified.
"Gods, and they made it worse by making one on purpose in Pegasus?" Tor said.
"Oh gods. I just had a thought." Tara said. "The Wraith eat people. They're some kind of combination of araitis bug and human combined. What if the araitis bugs originally came from the Hellmouth they created? It ended up on a world with humans, fast forward a little while and presto! the Wraith. We've seen insect demons before, after all."
"But didn't they create that Hellmouth to get the demons? Or is that the only Hellmouth they made? Maybe they tried the experiment again, before that I mean. Maybe they thought they could access a totally different dimension, one that was empty. We should check if those araitis bugs are demonic. It's something that should be investigated." Kyle said.
"Horrifying as that thought is, I agree. I'll call General Landry back . The rest of you get packed. Jesse, you're coming with. The rest of you, start researching. Find out if there is any information in our sources on the Wraith and araitis bugs. There's always a possibility that one showed up here and was terminated before it could do any damage. Wraith is a fairly common term, araitis isn't. Willow, I want you to come with, too. I want you going thru Atlantis' database itself, for information. We need answers. I pray that thought is wrong, but I'm very much afraid, it's not." Xander ordered.
It was a somber group that gathered their children and departed, to prepare for their trip to Atlantis. Praying, like Xander, that Tara's thought was wrong.
Xander called General Landry back and passed on Tara's theory. By the time they arrived at Cheyenne Mountain, the President had agreed that the possibility of other Hellmouths and the araitis bugs being demonic needed to be investigated as well. If there were other Hellmouths out there, it could start all over again.
Going thru a medical exam, brief as it was without a blood draw, was still a necessity and so the group endured it, before heading to the conference room for a last minute briefing with Jack O'Neill, who came personally to see them off.
"Your counterpart gets into as much trouble as you do. I'm confirming your orders. Determine if there is a Hellmouth on that moon. Determine if there are demons in those facilities. Determine if the araitis bugs are demonic. And finally, determine if there are more Hellmouths in Pegasus and shut the damn things down. Any questions?"
There were none and the group assembled in the gate room. Usually just the thought of a trip through the Stargate would have them all but bouncing around like children. Not this time. This time it was an angry group that assembled. The Ancients may not have originally known what was behind the dimensional rifts they created the first time. But they knew the second time and they did it anyway. The capacity for human stupidity just never seemed to go away. No matter what planet or galaxy they originated from.
The Stargate splashed open and the Pack, along with Faith, Jesse and Willow stepped through.
