They came back sick. Their eyes had turned yellow, and their faces greenish and waxy. He started toward them, and then stopped again sharply, wavering between rushing to offer medicine or some other kind of help, and running away before whatever happened to them happened to him too. They had only gone missing for a single night. How had they been so changed?
They split off into small groups, their movements purposeful, heading toward goals only they knew. They passed by him, ignoring him as much as they ignored those who flinched back from them, or those who were strangely compelled to trail in their wake.
The flap to the medical tent opened, and the man who stepped out wasn't the doctor come to save them, but at least it was someone he trusted. He'd thought Michael had also disappeared last night, but he was too relieved to question that now. Michael was more intuned than anyone to what went on around here. He always knew what to say to calm people down and get them organized. He would know what to do about the others.
"What has happened?" He called out. He almost asked 'what is happening' but he was too scared to consider this might not be over, too scared to ask what other changes were coming.
He jerked to a halt again as Michael turned to him. Michael's hair had turned grey, and his eyes as yellow as the others.
"The treatment has stopped working on some of us." His voice had become harsh and twisted.
He pulled back another step before he could stop himself. There was no point in trying to avoid contagion. It wasn't true that some of them had come back sick. They were sick all along. They all were. That was the whole point of them being in this camp, so they could get help. He couldn't make himself feel reassured, because something in this was different.
"What about the rest of us?"
"So long as the drug still works." It sounded like a command. It also sounded like cruelty, and disgust, though there was no reason for any of these things.
It wasn't like Michael. Something more than his body had changed overnight. Something in his mind had changed as well, something about who he was had turned dark. Why was he so angry?
There was a loud noise like that made by the weapon Colonel Sheppard carried, and a deep shout. Both ended as suddenly as they started. He froze in place, but Michael seemed unconcerned, walking toward the noise unhurriedly. He crept behind, and caught a glimpse of the soldiers who ran this camp going into the supply depot with the sick men who had just returned. He didn't follow any further. He wanted to believe they'd gone in there to talk about new treatments. He felt like if he watched any more, he wouldn't be able to keep believing.
These strangers who had saved them had built this place in order to help, but everything was falling apart now that most of them had left. He knew it wasn't their fault. He kept telling himself it wasn't. They hadn't meant for people to start getting worse, to start acting strangely, to disappear overnight to do things no one would explain. They must have honestly believed the group of plague survivors were up to spending a few days alone. They hadn't left knowing things would turn out this way. Their leaving hadn't been an act of defeat, of abandoning those left behind to a pre-determined fate. There was no way they could have known. He refused to believe they had known. Things would get better when they returned. He and his people just had to wait.
When the daily injections were handed out, he made sure he was first in line to get his dose. It would be enough to stave off the sickness, surely. He tried to return to the tents afterward, but his steps led him back to the line of patients, watching each man take his turn. Did any of them look different from yesterday? Were any of them about to wander off and come back changed? What if the drug stopped working on him? What if it stopped working on all of them?
Eventually the line ended, and the empty vials were cleared away. The yellow-eyed ones hadn't taken any themselves. If the drug didn't work on them, there wasn't any point. They were likely saving it for people who could still be helped. The strangers had talked endlessly of supplies, and he hadn't paid attention himself, but Michael had. He was just making sure it would last.
Those of them who hadn't changed went about as if things were still the same in their camp, though they looked to one another nervously. He looked to the yellow-eyed ones, watching them for what would come next. Why were they carrying weapons, the same one the people helping them had carried? The soldiers hadn't come back out of the tent they'd been taken into earlier. He'd thought he'd heard screams, but no one else had mentioned anything.
He regretted not finding out more when two men turned up dead. Both of them had suffered changes from the plague, but they hadn't died of any sickness. Lathan sprang painfully to memory, recently dead of a broken neck. The Doctor said the disease played with their minds, and Michael agreed, but now if it could drive people to these kind of accidents, how long did the rest of them have? More than an explanation, he wished this new Michael would finally become concerned about something, and start caring again.
The sky flashed bright, and then there was a terrible roar, and the camp was on fire. People were clutching weapons and running between tents, both useless for protecting anyone, and all the time the roaring didn't stop. Geyers of soil shot up in dark splashes against the light, and he fell, the ground shaking too much for him to stand. He clung to the earth, unable to run away or to save anyone.
The ground eventually stopped shaking, the noise changed, and the sky turned to shadow. He raised his head, staring past the burning wreckage, and an emotion twisted up inside him that he wanted to be relief. The ship was returning, its massive dark body angling toward the planet's surface. The people who had helped them were coming back. It was finally over.
He dropped his gaze back to the shattered ground, rolling his shoulders to spill the loose dirt from his back. Someone's arm was next to him. He searched for the man it belonged to dazedly, for a moment expecting someone to come along and claim it, before realizing he didn't know how to put an arm back on. Cries of pain were all around, but Michael went without looking back. He pulled himself to his feet and followed. He wanted to be on that ship.
A little trailing group of survivors formed behind them as other men pulled themselves from the wreckage, each picking their own way toward the same destination. Michael had promised them rescue, and that was all any of them had to hold on to anymore. An opening gaped in the massive hull of the ship, and when Michael stepped through, he took it for an invitation for him as well.
He looked around, searching for the faces of Doctor Beckett or Colonel Sheppard. They must have come back and rescued them again. It had to have been them. Who else had a ship, or knew they were down there? He didn't see them, but something about this place felt familiar. The darkness was comfortable, the air pleasantly humid. Was it home? It wasn't anything like a village, or like what few details he'd been given about his life before the amnesia. Past the shoulders of the other men who had followed them into the ship, people appeared out of the murk, greenish skinned and yellow eyed.
He recoiled from them. Were they all plague carriers? Had they fled their world on a stolen ship, only to take the plague with them? Michael had been right at the start, when he said trying to leave the planet would only spread the disease. Why had he changed his mind? Surely now he would see how wrong everything had gone. They could still go back to the planet and rebuild the camp while they waited, or find Doctor Beckett's people again with this ship. They could get help. He looked to Michael for guidance, to see what decisions he would make.
"I'm afraid things aren't what you were led to believe." Michael said.
The man beside Michael was masked, and he couldn't help but wonder how badly the plague must have disfigured some of their people to drive anyone to wear that ugly, featureless thing. The man slammed a hand on his chest, and the pressure stabbed into his flesh like a bite. He cried out, but the hand, and with it some other organ, stayed clamped on his chest, tearing something from him even as he fought to tear himself free. His muscles and flesh withered, and his strength vanished. Whatever this was, this wasn't disease. No illness could work so quickly. He realized he could feel himself dying. All he could do was scream.