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CHAPTER 22: Old Grudges

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After McKay proudly announced he had shut down the generator and a destruct code would be initiated if anyone but him tried to turn it back on, Kannar could feel the fury ebbing off his father. When Sakar rose to his feet, Kannar instinctively put himself between his father and McKay. "Dad," he began to placate but his father growled over any words he might have said.

"You turn that back on now!" Sakar roared at McKay, attempting to shove his son aside so he could get to the scientist. But his son was an unmovable rock, jerked him back instead of stepping aside. The gesture made him turn his heated gaze on Kannar. "We offer them our trust, and this is how they repay us!?"

"Trust?!' Rodney snorted. "You needed something from us, a cure. You got that and me giving you this generator was out of the kindness of my heart."

"Kindness," now Olpwen was there, hissing behind McKay. "Your kind knows nothing of kindness."

McKay turned around to glare at Olpwen, his own temper soaring, was unleashed in his best sarcastic raised voice, "Huh, this from the people who let my best friend lying in the dirt, writhing in pain! You wouldn't know how to be kind if God Himself came for a visit! You're mercanary, so I decided to play your game. Only give something so you can demand something back."

"And what is it that you want?! Our lives?! Our homeland?!" Sakar bit out through clenched teeth. "The air we breathe! Everything else you've taken before."

McKay spun back to the leader. "For the last time we're not Ancients!" Taking a furious step toward Sakar, he wished Kannar wasn't blocking him, had to let his cold expression convey how deadly serious he was right then. "But you know what, what they did to you, that will be a blessing if you interfere with our people taking care of Sheppard! We're gonna stay here until he's stable and leave only when he's up to traveling. And then, and only then, will I give you the codes for the generator. Else it stays a big old monument to your own thick headed, immoral, blind…"

"McKay, enough!" Kannar frigidly commanded, and surprisingly that brought McKay up short, not knowing in that moment he reminded the scientist of Sheppard.

Assigning himself the role of arbitrator, Kannar turned to his father. "If those are his terms, certainly we can abide by them in order to get the generator."

Olpwen was livid at even the suggestion of acceding to the coercion. "We should kill them where they stand!"

McKay paled at the threat but didn't back down. "Do that and I hope you like being Wraith main courses until your entire rotten village is just husks."

"Listen to him! He has no honor!" Olpwen accused. "He speaks of kindness but knows none."

McKay couldn't let that insult stand, shot back, "I do for people who deserve it! You started his war between us when you murdered our people on Atlantis!"

In his peripheral vision, Kannar saw his soldiers, alarmed by the yelling, quickly headed toward them. Afraid how things would escalate, he roughly yanked McKay behind him, revealing that he would protect the Lantean with his life, even from his own people. "Enough! Hating each other isn't solving any of our problems," he fiercely announced. It had his soldiers halting, uncertain, looking to Sakar for orders since their commander seemed compromised. Kannar too looked to his father, hoping he would see reason, even if no one else did. "Dad, we need the generator. You saw that is works, right?"

Sakar had to concede, "Yes but…"

Kannar had the audacity to cut his father/leader off, "Yes, it works. Is it so unreasonable that they are asking for something in return?"

"I want all of them gone!" Olpwen roared.

"They will be," Kannar assured, his eyes holding his father's as he added the stipulation, "..after their military leader is well enough to travel. Is that more than we can offer them when we are gaining a way to safeguard our people from future Wraith attacks?"

"What of the illness he brings?" Olpwen's next question was a bold challenge to Sakar's leadership ability, "Will you let our people die of that illness? We may be all dead before the wraith have a chance to consume us."

Kannar was ready for this debate. "The doctor has treated our people, and if Sheppard is kept in quarantine, no others will become ill."

"Can you guarantee that, Kannar?" Sakar grimly asked his son. "That more lives will not be lost in this bargain you stand for? I fear that if more die, you will carry their blood on your soul, son."

Kannar knew if this makeshift alliance blew up and more lives were lost, he would indeed carry the sin of those deaths on his soul. But knew also, so would Sheppard. This deal they both needed to work, without further loss of lives on either side. "Sheppard's illness will no longer be a threat to our people," Kannar vowed earnestly to his father and then held his breath, praying he hadn't lost all the faith his father had put in him.

"He can't promise.." Olpwen objected but broke off when Sakar raised his hand.

His eyes holding his son's, Sakar decreed, "I will uphold this pact with the Lanteans until their military leader is either well enough to go home or has succumbed to his illness." Then he turned to McKay, "Will you give your word that if your leader should die of no fault of ours, you will still honor your agreement, turn the generator on and leave us in peace."

Rodney flinched at the callousness of "if your leader should die" verbiage but knew John wanted to give them the generator all along. For his friend's sake, he would honor this pact. "It was Sheppard's idea to give you the generator in the first place. So if you allow us to stay and do our best to heal him…I'll honor the offer he initially made you that you were too proud to take. When we leave, I'll leave the generator here and turn it on."

Sakar nodded, wasn't so much trusting McKay but his son. He didn't know why but Kannar unfailingly believed these people were not Ancients and moreover, had faith that they knew the meaning of honor.

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Dr. Zelenka was usually more respective of social niceties than Rodney. Niceties like knocking on doors before bargaining in even as he bragged how lucky Atlantis was to be blessed with his brilliant presence. So Elizabeth was startled when Zelenka dashed into her office without requesting permission, began speaking before she could even give an opening salvo for his rudeness.

"The 2nd gate, we've been thinking about it all wrong," Zelenka announced excitedly, pushing his glasses further up his nose.

Sitting back in her chair, Dr. Weir recounted, "We know it's been hidden, was used by our attackers to gain access to Atlantis, that it somehow booted our main stargate offline. Might…might have some healing capabilities. But of course with McKay's type of "illnesses"…" she put the word in air quotes, "..I'd like someone a little less hypochondriacal to make that determination."

Zelenka nodded as if in agreement. "Precisely. It couldn't be substantiated because we didn't know what Rodney's immune system or blood work looked like before he came back through the gate. So I coordinated with the medical staff to perform some experiments."

"Medical experiments?" a sharp note of censure carrying in her tone. "Seeing as you don't have a medical degree, I assigned you the task of getting the main stargate open, or finding a way to lock down the 2nd gate so we're not vulnerable to other attacks. It wasn't my understanding that you had accomplished either task."

Radek shifted on his feet, wasn't expecting the reprimand when he'd had such a wonderful breakthrough. Thought ruefully maybe that was why Rodney got into such a tiff when his breakthroughs weren't praised as highly as he thought they would be. Putting away the disturbing idea that he was taking Rodney's side on something, he addressed Dr. Weir with the confidence of his findings. "Had I remained fixated on that alone, I wouldn't know that the gate had a boobytrap." He purposefully didn't elaborate, wanted a little respect from Dr. Weir before he did that.

The word 'boobytrap' got Elizabeth's attention, had her sitting up, her keen attention fixed on Zelenka. "Boobytrap?" she echoed back in the form of an inquiry.

Nodding, Radek felt appreciated enough to continue to explain. "Since we could open the gate to the planet where Major Loren had been, I connected the wormhole and then sent through blood samples provided by medical. One sample had bronchitis, one normal…" here he paused to build up the anticipation but Weir wasn't looking as if she were on tenterhooks, appeared more annoyed than intrigued so he rushed out, "..and one sample was of the stored Ancient cells Carson found in medical when we arrived in Atlantis."

"And you came up with conclusive evidence on how that 2nd Stargate reacts to antigens in the blood, I take it," Elizebeth drawled, hoping she'd understood Dr. Zelenka's technical explanation of whatever revelation he'd made. Sometimes she wished she'd stayed in the political sector and not gotten involved in scientific research, but only days when Rodney's long winded technical explanations gave her a migraine.

Dr. Zelenka actually smiled. "The gate cured the bronchitis antigens, had no reaction upon the normal healthy blood sample and…on the ancient cells..it…or I should say "they" bonded with them forming an unknown antibody."

Knowing when she was being lead and needed extra info, Elizabeth asked, "Ok, you made a point to say "they"? And what does this unknown antibody mean for us…for John?"

Zelenka claimed a chair and turned his computer tablet around so she could watch as he pointed to the screen. "They are nanites," he excitedly announced. The very word had Elizabeth's whole body tensing. "I tested the Ancient cells that were bonded with the nanites and put them through the gate again." He pointed to the computer's left side screen which showed a molecular picture of the Ancient cells. "This is the ancient cell sample before the gate..it's red coloring and movement shows it to be healthy and active." Then he pointed to the right side of the screen. "This is the cell after having gone through the Stargate once." The coloring was muted and there was a black ring around it and the cells were more bumbling into each other rather than the easy flow of the first slide. Then Zelenka swiped his screen to show two more comparisons. "The one on the right went through the gate a second time and the one of the left went through five times."

Elizabeth made the conclusion easily enough when the cells on the left were nearly all overcome by the black rings and were more mere vibrating than moving. "The gate kills Ancient cells?" feeling incredulously that something dangerous to Ancients would be on Atlantis.

But Zelenka had already made the logical jumps for her. "I thought it strange too that they would have something so harmful to them in the Stargate until I remembered what Rodney said about these people who attacked us, have Colonel Sheppard. They built the 2nd Stargate and they used it as a means to escape their servitude to the Ancients. It would stand to reason they didn't want the Ancients to pursue them."

Now Elizabeth saw the picture Zelenka was painting. "So they put in a boobytrap for Ancients. If they followed them through the gate, they would be infested with the nanites. And whenever they went through that 2nd Atlantis Stargate.."

"Any stargate after that initial passage would further animate the nanites," Zelenka clarified.

That grim news solidified why John was so very sick. "The nanites attack the ancient cells whenever the Ancients traveled through a gate. That's why John got sicker and sicker the more gates he went through."

"Yes," Zelenka bleakly agreed with her supposition. "It would also explain why the 2nd gate was abandoned and that wing of Atlantis mothballed. The gate was a deathtrap for Ancients."

At that wording, she cringed before she worriedly asked, "What about Rodney? Carson? They have the Ancient genes too."

"I thought about that," Zelenka countered. "The medical staff and I theorize that their ancient genes affect so small a degree of cells in the whole composite of their DNA that the nanites most likely weren't even triggered. Meanwhile Sheppard had the highest count of Ancient genes among us before he took the ATA gene therapy. After that serum, his cells configuration was sufficiently similar to a true Ancient's that the nanites activated. Did the job they were assigned, as it were."

"And you think these nanites are affecting his brain functions? Causing the seizures? But he had a seizure before he even went into the gate."

"Carson was researching Sheppard's initial reaction to the ATA serum before he got called to the planet, so we don't have a definitive reason yet on why he seized. But my working theory is that the nanites amped up that infliction because it was where Sheppard's immune system was weakest. Remember when we were first exploring Atlantis and my research group was infected with nanites? With those nanites we determined they had a specific form of attack."

"I remember. Those infected had brain aneurysms. But in that scenario, having the Ancient genes or the ATA treatment actually saved lives. The nanites were bred to spare Ancients…." Elizabeth's eyes narrowed as she tacked on, "..and kill humans. Do we think…is it possible the Ancients were devising the nanites to kill their disobedient human servants? Who escaped through the 2nd gate instead?"

"I was thinking that could be true. And it wouldn't take much tweaking to modify the program of the nanites to target Ancient cells instead of them being the turn off switch. After all, reading the genes was already in the nanite's programing." Radek fought down a shiver, remembered watching his fellow Atlanteans die after screaming and thrashing away from specters only they could see. Rodney and his ATA genes were the first survivor and then John, bless him, risked his life to detonate a nuclear blast to short out the nanites. "Since our first contact with the nanites, we've done some experimenting on how to shut down the nanites without a nuclear blast and had some success."

"What about the EMF like we originally tried back then?" Elizabeth posed, but knowing in her gut if it were that easy, Radek would have mentioned that solution.

"We experimented with that but it had no effect on the nanites. They are on an entirely different level of electric wavelengths."

"Speaking of electricity, can we overload it instead of cancel it? Use a defibrillator to send an electric charge and short out the nanites?"

But Zelenka was shaking his head, refuting her suggestion. "No. When one of our team on the excursion had his aneurysm, Dr. Beckett attempted to revive him using a defibrillator, but he was gone. Afterward McKay tested his cells and since by then he knew what to look for, he found the nanites were still fully functional. I'm afraid the strength of electric charge needed to destroy the circuits would be more likely to incinerate the host body."

"So that's out as an option," Elizabeth sighed, course things couldn't be easy. The Pegasus galaxy abhorred easy. "Ok, well great work finding the nanites as the source of John's deteriorating health, Dr Zelenka. In light of the discovery, I want you to make finding a way to turn off or abstract the nanites from John's DNA your priority."

"Over working on the Stargates?" Radek asked for clarification, though his own priorities had already shifted to saving the life of a man who he respected and liked..and who Atlantis very badly needed.

Elizabeth hesitated a moment, torn between the duty she had to keep Atlantis safe by restoring the main stargate and saving John Sheppard's life. "Seeing as we've had little success fixing our gate issues, our next priority is healing John so he and the away team can come back home," she rationalized.

Radek smiled, glad he didn't have to defy her orders if she'd commanded that he abandon further research to remove the nanites from John Sheppard's system. "I'm running scenario analyses as we speak," he announced before his face clouded with their next hurdle. "But when we do discover how to turn off or eliminate the nanites, how do we contact Carson to let him know what the problem was, let alone the solution? Because right now, we can't dial into that gate where they are to establish communications."

"One problem at a time, Dr. Zelenka. You deal with the nanite problem and then we'll just have to have faith that John and the others find a way to communicate with us," Elizabeth confidently stated, all the while hoping her anxiousness wasn't evident. John was the one who thrived on beating bad odds, not her. His perchance for ignoring the odds had gotten him in this particular situation in the first place, trading off the risk to his health with the benefit of tracking their ZPM thieves. It left her wanting to heap vile curses on John for thinking the risk to himself didn't matter. But that was John for you, always taking risks himself for the greater good that he wouldn't want anyone else to take.

Radek gave a curt nod and then left Dr. Weir's office, mind already deciding which members of his team would be most useful joining his nanite research. He had to admit, even if it was only to himself, that he wished Rodney was there. After all, the man's hubris wasn't entirely unjustified. And if anyone could find a way to move heaven and earth to save John Sheppard, it would be Rodney McKay. Because when it came to the friendship between those two men, there wasn't much they wouldn't do to save the other.

However, the current trouble was, Rodney didn't know exactly what John needed saving from. 'Figure it out, Rodney! Be as smart as you usually are. Nanites, it makes sense…sort of,' he internally implored his colleague, rival…and begrudging friend to come to the same conclusion he had. He was mostly confident that, if they could open communications, he and McKay together could surely devise a way to shut down the nanites. Had to because, if they couldn't, if they took too much time to figure it out, John Sheppard would die…or have irreparable brain damage. Neither outcome was acceptable to him and certainly not to Rodney.

So Radek resolved to do would they always had to do in the Pegasus galaxy: find a way to beat the odds, to survive, to save the ones they cared about. As he hurried back to his workstation he mumbled, "Just another horribly stressful day in Atlantis." Then he continued in a litany of Czech, bemoaning that he could be driving a nice car, having weekends off and facing absolutely no life-threatening crisis every week if he'd joined a corporation. But not him, he wanted to help people, to have adventures, to contribute something to the world. Sometimes he just resented his better nature.

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TBC

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Thanks for the wonderful encouraging supportive reviews! They keep me merrily writing this story (and torturing John to my heart's content) And a shout out to all the silent readers out there.

Have a great day!

Cheryl