She brought her hand to her forehead to check that it was still in one piece, for it certainly didn't feel like it was. The nausea had abated overnight, but the pain from her concussion persisted and it still felt like her eyeballs were trying to work their way out of their sockets.
The doctor on the night shift and the nurses had kept her on a strict pain medication regimen consistent for her age and sex for the past six hours or so, but seemed to be ignoring both Eva's requests for a higher dosage and the third crucial, but apparently forgotten aspect of her biology: she was half-Satedan. In their defense, though, how were any of them supposed to know that Satedans were resistant to most Earth-based medicines? Their only basis for it would be Ronon, and she was certain they didn't have much data on pain medication dosage for him.
She didn't push the issue. She didn't have the energy for it. Besides, the pain at least gave her something to feel.
"One, two, three, lift. That's it. Watch his head."
What felt like an icepick pierced through the center of Eva's skull as she sat up in her infirmary bed and into a ray of bright morning light.
"Son of a biscuit," she hissed, shielding her eyes as she reopened them with less abandon.
She tried her best to ignore the throbbing in her temples while she surreptitiously watched a group of nurses hoist Janus, unconscious, onto the platform of the Ancient medical scanner. Dr. Beckett walked over to the control panel and turned his attention to the screen.
"Nurse Ivanov, you have the enzyme – " He leaned closer to the screen. "What the devil?" He hit a button and the body of the Ancient reversed from under the scanner. "Turn him on his side, please."
Smaller scanner in hand, he walked over to the Ancient and waved the device over his spine and neck. "Mr. Woolsey and Dr. McKay, we have a matter in the infirmary that requires your immediate attention," he said into his radio before turning to the team of nurses. "Hold off on administering that first dose of enzyme. Prep the OR for spinal surgery instead."
Only a couple minutes passed before Woolsey arrived. Upon hearing his footsteps, Eva collapsed back onto her gurney and pretended to be asleep. Stars exploded across the black curtain of the inside of her eyelids and a sharp ringing passed from her right ear to her left before petering out. She really needed to remember to move more slowly.
"What's the matter?" Woolsey asked Beckett.
"I've detected a device at the base of Janus' cervical spine, not dissimilar to the kind of device we see in Runners," he said, no doubt pointing to the image taken by the scanner.
"Is it sending out a subspace signal?" Woolsey asked.
"I was waiting on Rodney to confirm."
"Why are we only detecting this now? He underwent several security checks, both here and on the Alpha Site, to look for precisely this kind of thing."
"Because it wasn't there when we first took him in." There were some clicking and clacking sounds from the doctor's keyboard. "These are images from his initial CT scan taken on the Alpha Site. A CT scan should have picked something like this up, but as you can see – there's nothing there." More clicking sounds. "Now this is a similar image, but it was taken by our Ancient medical scanner when he first arrived in the city just a few days later."
"It's not there."
"No. It isn't. But this…this is his scan from today."
"I see." There was a moment of silence. "So then how the hell did it get there?"
"I don't know, but it seems like I may be able to extract it without damaging the spine. It doesn't seem to have wrapped itself around the vertebrae the way Eva's device was."
"And what about the girl?"
Eva felt her heartbeat quicken, which accelerated the pounding in her head.
"What about her?"
"Has she been scanned recently?"
"Aye. She sustained a minor concussion on the mission and was scanned for injuries when she returned. Her images were clear."
"You rang?" came Dr. McKay's voice.
Woolsey wasted no time in bringing McKay up to speed. "Dr. Beckett has detected some sort of tracking device inside our Ancient guest and we need to know if it's transmitting through subspace."
"A tracking device?" he repeated incredulously. "But he was thoroughly searched –"
"Mystery of the century, I'm sure," Woolsey said dryly.
Eva heard the beeping of another scanner as McKay checked Janus over.
"Well, that explains why that Cruiser changed course," he said. "I am getting a signal. The frequency is different than what we see with Runners, though. It's…it's like a distress beacon."
"Can you disable it?"
"Not while it's still in his body," McKay answered.
"Then we'll get it out right away," Beckett said.
"Scrub up, Dr. McKay," Woolsey said. "I want that thing turned off as soon as possible. We don't know how many other ships may be able to detect it."
"And the enzyme schedule?" Beckett asked.
"Once the device is removed, continue as planned. I think we can definitively say that the Wraith are on their way to Atlantis and we'll need all the help we can get."
Over a day had passed, and Eva had yet to be discharged from the infirmary due to persistent headaches. She didn't understand what the big deal was, but Dr. Beckett wanted to keep her under observation out of an abundance of caution. After all, other than baby Torren, she was his only pediatric patient (if only by a couple years).
Once the novelty of this version of Atlantis had worn off, she had found it rather boring. Without the company of her parents or friends, or even the Lorne girls to silently judge, there wasn't much for her to do and there definitely wasn't anyone for her to hang out with. They were all adults here, busy with their own jobs and personal issues. And yet, the hours in the infirmary managed to tick by even more slowly.
Due to her concussion, Beckett had implemented a strict no screens policy, which ruled out any handheld videogames or even a stolen tablet to continue planning her return home. Emma, who visited as frequently as she could, had brought a couple books for her, but the Scottish stick in the mud had confiscated those almost as soon as they were delivered. At least Major Lorne's gift of colored pencils and paper had been begrudgingly allowed under the condition that she would stop doodling if her headaches worsened.
How long she had been drawing, she didn't know; the pencils seemed to move of their own accord, the images revealing themselves from within the fibers of the paper. It wasn't until she detected the sound of voices from Janus' bed that she severed her focus. She dropped her pencil and truly saw her drawing for what felt like the first time – a deer with an arrow through its heart, slowly dying in a drift of snow. Alarmed by what she had produced, she quickly crumpled up the paper and tossed it into the trashcan near her gurney.
A nurse emerged from behind the curtain that separated Janus' bed from the others and deposited a few empty glass vials and a syringe into one of the biohazard receptacles.
"Is he awake?" Eva called.
"What's that, hon?"
"The Ancient. Is he awake?"
"I'm afraid it's against protocol to discuss one patient's information with an –"
"Can I visit him?" she interrupted, already getting out of her own bed.
"Oh well, I –"
By the time the nurse could give her any semblance of an answer, Eva was already at the foot of his bed and could plainly see that he was half-seated and conscious.
"You can have a few minutes," she conceded. "He needs his rest, as do you."
"Uh huh," she replied absentmindedly, already surveying the Ancient.
He looked pallid and frail, but his icy eyes were alert and immediately centered on her. Several cables ran along his body and under his shirt, and there was an IV taped to the back of his hand. A large quantity of bright orange liquid had been suspended in a clear bag above him, a steady drip traveling through a long tube and into the IV.
"I wondered if you'd visit," he said in a low, hoarse voice, unaccustomed to use.
She stepped closer.
"I see we find our roles reversed from the last time we encountered one another," he continued.
"You're not a prisoner," she said.
He held up a wrist, surrounded by a leather strap. "No?" His voice held a tinge of amusement. They were around his ankles, as well.
"Those are in case you have more seizures. To keep you safe."
"To keep us all safe, no doubt."
She sat down on a nearby stool, sighing. "They found a tracking device in your back," she explained.
He nodded thoughtfully. "Yes. I am aware. Another precaution in case I escaped my captor."
"You knew? You knew there was a tracker in you, but you let us take you here anyway and put the city at risk?"
"Perhaps I should have informed you earlier?" he said with an ironic lift of a brow.
Eva looked into her lap. He had been unconscious since they had taken him to the Alpha Site. "You could've said something while we were making our escape," she murmured.
"I had other pressing concerns on my mind at the time." He contemplated her for a while before speaking again. "It is old Wraith technology," he explained. "Microscopic parts for the tracker are injected into the body, but lay dormant within the system until something triggers them to bond together."
"Something like…?"
He shrugged nonchalantly. "It could have been the sudden decrease in enzyme levels, distance from the ship, perhaps even gate travel itself. The coma, which dampened my immune response, likely accelerated the process."
She nodded slowly. "The tracker you put in me, though. It was different. Not so old."
"Correct."
She looked expectantly at him and after a moment's reluctance, he continued.
"Your tracker was a prototype. The first of its kind. Most trackers function independently, but yours I tied to the mechanics of the Cruiser."
"Which is also the first of its kind? Not too many Cruisers out there can do what that one can do."
"Indeed. The Commander took advantage of what I knew of time travel and made me recreate and incorporate that knowledge on the Cruiser, much like I had done with one of our Lantean Gateships."
"With one of the Puddle Jumpers?"
He tilted his head to the side. "Is that what you call them?" He took in a short breath of air, perhaps in place of a laugh. "Yes, I had attempted to integrate time travel into one of the… Puddle Jumpers," he gave her a conspiratorial look, "until the Council ordered me to halt my research. Years later, I was captured by the Wraith who took you, and centuries of the Gift of Life gave me what I otherwise would not have had: more time to perfect my research." He smiled at the paradox. "One cannot tempt time without also conquering reality. They are two faces of the same coin." His glacier blue eyes widened and strayed from her own. "My Gateship could go through time, but our Cruiser…it could pass through time and cross realities." His gaze focused back on her. "Whenever we jumped, you followed. Your coordinates in space remained the same, but your time and your reality changed whenever ours did."
"Does this Wraith have other Runners?"
A strange glint appeared in Janus' eyes. "Many."
"But not with trackers like mine. Why?"
"Throughout our travels, it became difficult to keep account of all of the Runners and, subsequently, their Hunters. The Commander wanted to surveil you in real time while still maintaining the luxury of visiting his other experiments."
"What do you mean? What kind of experiments?"
"The Wraith of my Commander's realoş are many, and they are hungry. It is a fate that we have seen across many realities. With their current rate of growth, there will soon not be enough humans to sustain their population and so, the Commander wanted to develop more innovative means of ensuring consistent future sustenance."
"Like…like farming? Of people?"
"Precisely."
A sharp pain jabbed through Eva's temple, but she pushed the pain to the back of her mind.
"He established experimental colonies on many worlds, across many realities. With our ability to travel through time, he was able to observe – in a more condensed period – how these experiments would evolve."
"But how did I fit in to all of this?"
"Throughout our observations, a great discrepancy was found to exist in the quality of…nourishment between farmed humans and wild ones."
"Wild ones…" she echoed. "You mean Runners?"
"Our comparisons in this area of research were relatively novel, but it was estimated that the energy provided by one Runner was equivalent to three or four farmed adult humans."
Eva stared at him, wide-eyed.
"Whether that was due to the environmental conditions Runners were subjected to or due to something inherent in the genetics of surviving Runners was something we had only just begun to explore." He gave her a significant look.
"Why me? Why put the new tracker in me and not one of the many other Runners?"
"Because you were the most promising." A half smile spread across his mouth.
Something deep within her told her to stop asking questions, to stop seeking the truth here. "Promising how?" she breathed.
"At first it was merely something the Commander sensed. They can detect strength, will, defiance. That is what feeds them, after all." His heart monitor beeped quietly in the background. "But when I began to study you, I learned that your genetic makeup is…unique."
She looked down at her hands. Of course it was different; she didn't know a single other person who had parents from two different galaxies. "He wanted my genes?"
Janus nodded. "He wanted to propagate them."
A wave of nausea passed through her for the first time in over twenty-four hours.
"Eva?"
She turned to see Emma standing just a couple feet behind her, tight-lipped and wide-eyed.
"I came to see if you wanted to take another walk." She addressed Eva, but stared at Janus, who did not return the intensity of her gaze.
"Yeah," Eva replied slowly. "Yeah. We can go for a walk." She stood up, brow furrowed, with even more questions than before.
She saw Emma's hand fall onto her shoulder, but she didn't feel it. When they reached the edge of the curtain, Janus spoke again. Eva turned and his eyes were already closed.
"Back on the ship, you told me my research survived?" he asked, dreamily.
"Yeah." Her mouth was dry and she swallowed to rewet it. "A lot of it."
"I would very much like to revisit it one day," he mused.
"Let's go," Emma urged in a whisper as she ushered her away from him and out of the infirmary.
A/N: Hope you enjoyed! A little exposition heavy, but whatever! Regarding Janus' tracker, I took inspiration from something I found on the Stargate wiki for tracking devices from one of the SGA novels, which I have not read. I'll copy and paste it here to give credit where credit is due. Spoilers for the SGA novels, I suppose?
"When Todd was placed into stasis on Atlantis, Doctors Carson Beckett and Rodney McKay checked him over for trackers. They removed one and the components to make two more. Unknown to them, Todd had more inside of him in a dormant or seedling stage and grew a new tracker while in stasis. This one was described as being crude and more like an emergency beacon. When Todd passed through the Stargate to Manaria, the tracker was activated and signaled Todd's hive ship to come pick him up. (SGA: "Legacy: Homecoming")"