Chapter 39: Hell in a Handbasket
"—does not make sense!" Dr. Z fiddled with the connections on the data pad, before once again going through the output. "Should not be possible."
Alex shared a long look with Greg.
It was supposed to be a quick five-minute fix. Just restart the power relays, make sure that the comms systems had the right inputs, and bam, connections back to the infirmary. Just like magic.
Only it hadn't worked.
Restarting had taken nearly ten minutes and then the system had just kept throwing error after error.
Missing boot drives.
Hardwired connection needed.
Poor contacts in relay station.
It was like the infirmary and surrounding areas just didn't exist.
But they had sent people there.
"Okay, okay…" Dr. Z ran an aggravated hand through his hair, before grabbing Alex's data pad and starting to input a string of commands. "Chair room has manual overrides, but needs gene carrier." He paused and eyed Alex. "Rodney has walked you through emergency protocols, yes?"
Alex nodded. He hadn't been allowed to touch the chair, but after seeing the room, Rodney had insisted that he know what to do in the case of an emergency. And with his apparent parentage… it seemed that he was the darling of the city.
"Yes?" Dr. Z paused, hand up to his comm, before frowning. "Null? Is impossible, no?" There was another long pause, before he once again looked in Alex's direction. "Manual override, yes. We are closest. Two-fork attack, ano?" He typed another handful of commands into Alex's tablet, before handing it over. "Chair room, now. Transporters are locked down."
Alex grabbed the data pad and scanned over the inputs. Generic overrides he would need. "You're not coming?"
"Rodney will walk you through." Dr. Z leaned back over his own data pad for a moment, before yanking the connections out. "But we need eyes on sector and access panel." He clapped Alex on the shoulder. "Will be fine. Adventure, even."
Alex rolled his eyes. Adventure was the last thing he needed in his life.
"Hurry."
If he took off at a sprint, well, that was just because he wanted to get to the chair room as quickly as possible.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck! Get down, get down!" Greg grabbed onto Alex's jacket pulling him down to the ground as a hail of gunfire appeared from nowhere.
They were not prepared for this.
Pilkes and Greg didn't even have anything more than their handguns. And whoever they were up against had automatics.
Alex slammed a hand on panel, all but shouting open with his mind, then shimmied back through it. As soon as they were all through, he closed it with all his might, and imagined the most intricate locking system he could come up with.
Nothing would be getting through.
Not without a good gene carrier or some serious explosives.
Alex let his head fall back onto the floor, blowing out a long breath. "Did anyone else see them?" He asked, staring up at the ceiling.
"Nope."
There was a long hiss, and Alex turned onto his side to see Pilkes dabbing at a graze on his bicep.
"Fuck, Pilkes," Greg didn't look much better, but he seemed to have completely avoided the hail of bullets.
"It's fine," Pilkes said, face pinching as he wrapped a bandage. "You two okay?"
Alex did a cursory check of his limbs, but it seemed that he had somehow managed to survive unscathed. Which meant that someone was a horrible shot, because they had definitely had the advantage.
"Those were P90s," Greg said, pushing up from the floor. "They've been to our stores, or—"
"Or, we're dealing with earth baddies," Alex said.
Pilkes wrinkled his nose at the phrasing, but it wasn't like they could argue. It was highly unlikely anyone had made it into the armory without anyone noticing. It just meant that somehow everyone had missed the city being infiltrated.
Neither were good options.
"The Trust," Pilkes spat the word. "Who else would bother us out here?"
From Greg's look, Alex figured there was probably a long list of possible bad guys, but… the Trust fit the current motive.
It would also explain why they were such poor shots.
It had taken a zat for them to finally bring Alex down back in California, after all.
"We've still got to get to the chair room," Greg said, holding a hand out of Alex to take. He pulled Alex up, then repeated the procedure with Pilkes. "We'll just have to be a little more… discrete."
Alex ran a hand down the door, feeling the hum of the city under his touch. If only they had a life signs detector right about now… at least it would give them a fighting chance against an ambush. Of course, better guns would really tip the scales in their favor.
But the life signs detector really needed to be standard issue kit…
"If we stick to the inner corridor, we should be able to hear if someone opens one of the doors–" Greg thumped on the wall, next to Alex. "—and transporters are out."
Alex held back a groan. On one hand, he understood the importance of cutting off the easy movement of enemy forces, but they could have been to the chair room in under five minutes with the transporters.
"Pilkes, lead. Alex, you're in the middle, keep your ears open." Greg drew his handgun, popping off the safety. "I'll watch our backs."
It all went to hell in a handbasket in just a matter of minutes.
The inner corridor had been a safe bet. Not the most direct route to the chair room, but also not the route that the Trust was likely to follow if they had any idea where the chair room was.
Or so they thought.
One moment – they were crossing through an intersection, Greg and Pilkes warily watching their surroundings and Alex feeling all but useless without a weapon.
The next moment – the entire world felt like it was underwater. Sounds rushed out, his ears popped, and Alex stumbled forward at the sudden pain slicing through his head. The sensation was so sudden and strong, he had to catch himself on the wall, but even that couldn't last.
The unmistakable sight of bullets biting into the wall had him ducking for cover – the world was just awash with sound. Nothing made sense anymore.
The bullets just appeared.
Aside from a blip, there was no one there.
Pilkes grabbed Alex's collar and yanked him back onto his feet. "Get out of here!" The words sounded muffled and far away, but there was no mistaking the intensity.
They were screwed.
"Run!"
There was no escape in the corridor.
Whoever was shooting at them was playing with them.
Alex flinched away from a streak of hot fire on his leg, but Greg wasn't quite so lucky. A shot hit him and he went down like a brick, nearly tripping Alex up. He grabbed the back of his jacket and pulled Greg around the corner, but they were trapped.
"Keep moving," Pilkes said, stepping back around the corner after shooting off a string of bullets. "I'll buy you some time."
There wasn't even a moment to process what buying time would entail, because Pilkes had already stepped back around the corner, pulling something out of a jacket pocket.
Greg seemed to know exactly what it meant. "Pilkes!"
Seconds later, an explosion in the hall rocked the ground.
Fuck.
"Come on, come on." Alex yanked at Greg's jacket, trying to goad him into moving. "Greg! Have to keep moving."
Because, fuck.
Pilkes had just—
There was a long moment where Greg just looked so lost and distraught, before he pushed himself up from the floor, using Alex's arm for stability and started hobbling down the hall. "We need to… hole up." His breath hitched on every other step. "Find… a room."
A room.
Greg wasn't going anywhere fast.
But they still needed to get to the chair room.
Or The Trust was going to succeed in taking over the city.
He was going to have to go alone.
Alex paused in front of a door – storage room, it looked like – and coaxed the door into opening. "I'll lock it down, as soon as—" He broke off, because he knew Greg would make more than a token protest.
And he was going to need Greg's gun.
The room was no bigger than a glorified closet, but would be plenty of space for someone to hunker down. And the Trust likely wouldn't even try to enter the room once Alex had them once again chasing his tail.
Alex helped Greg to the floor, carefully palming the handgun away from Greg's holster, then wincing at the sight of the blood staining the man's pant leg. Through and through from the looks of it. Aside from wrapping, there wasn't anything they could do without medical attention. And Alex doubted Greg carried compression bandages in the pocket of his uniform.
They were well and truly sunk.
"I'm going to fix this." Alex darted back, trying to ignore the horrified expression on Greg's face as the door slid shut between them. Close. Lock. Only let pre-authorized gene carriers through.
Please.
It seemed like it was too much to ask from the city, but… he wasn't going to have someone else on his conscience.
He let his forehead rest against the door for a moment.
It was awfully self-centered to think that the fate of the city rested on his shoulders, but…
He didn't even have a comm. There was no way to tell if backup was even on its way.
The Daedalus was supposed to arrive within the next twelve hours. Hopefully much sooner.
Surely, they would notice that something was amiss…
Alex checked the clip.
Nine rounds left.
Well… he was going to have to make sure that those nine rounds counted.
He took a deep breath, then turned back to the hall.
Pilkes and Greg's approach hadn't worked. It was time to think outside the box – do what they least expected. When he finally got his hands on them, they weren't going to know what happened.
No one ever bothered to look up and Alex was counting his lucky stars that that characteristic seemed universal.
He knew there was someone prowling through the halls below him.
Knew that they were a little clumsy, because they had knocked over an ancient looking vase.
Knew that they were trigger happy and not really concerned about being discrete.
Knew that they were somehow invisible, but didn't stay completely invisible when they shot, flickering in and out of view.
Alex adjusted his position, crouching on top of the support beam, watching the section he had last heard noise from and hoped they would do something that would give their position away.
There were no sounds of footsteps. No telltale scuffs and inevitable creaking noises from the metal grating on the floor.
Whatever was causing the invisibility was also making them near noiseless – knocking into objects notwithstanding. But not invincible.
Alex carefully wormed a finger into his pocket, searching for something he could throw. He didn't carry much on him, but there was a pen that he used with the data pad. Rodney would probably have an aneurysm at the loss of tech, but it wouldn't actually stop him from being able to use the data pad. Just slightly more inconvenient.
And if it meant he survived, well…
A door on the far side of the room slid open, grudgingly, as if someone were prying it open, and Alex knew he was about to miss his chance.
He threw the pen as hard as he could, aiming for a spot on the opposite side of the room.
The clatter as it hit was surprisingly loud.
And like expected – invisible man didn't even think about investigating, or even aiming, because his form flickered right by the opened door as he let out a stream of shots.
Alex took his own shot, trusting his own precarious balance to not be thrown by the recoil.
The man didn't even hear it coming, too engaged in his shooting.
He dropped like a rock, form flickering in and out of visibility, before finally stabilizing as visible.
Alex held his breath, waiting. Listening.
No one else appeared.
He didn't have anything else to throw just in case, so…
Alex slid down the support beam and froze at the bottom, listening for any signs that someone was coming to take him out. At this point, he didn't have much of a chance…
He crept across the room and thought close at the door. It slid shut with little effort, and an almost reassuring hum, so it seemed that he was still the golden child of Atlantis.
Now if only it would give him another life signs detector…
Alex nudged the man's crumpled form, but he had gotten a head shot. He grimaced and tried not look too closely, instead focusing on the real firepower the man was carrying. A P90 with a nearly full clip, two spares in a pocket, and—a zat hooked over his belt.
This was the Trust.
Although Alex's skin crawled at the thought of touching the zat, he couldn't deny that it was a useful weapon. It could incapacitate without killing. Or entirely remove the evidence of killing.
There was a strange bracelet – leather with a green gem in the middle – wrapped around the man's wrist. It was so out of place among the rest of the outfit that it had to be important.
He unstrapped it and then, hesitating only for a moment, wrapped it around his own wrist.
He could practically hear Rodney screaming at him about touching unknown alien devices.
But it was his only chance.
The world fuzzed around him.
It was the only way he could explain it.
As if the lights had taken on a new color scheme.
Alex reached out to grab the gun, but he couldn't seem to grasp it. He could push it around, but not curl his fingers around it. "Oh, fuck…" He muttered, before pulling at the straps on the bracelet. Thinking off. But this wasn't Ancient technology.
Oh, no… this technology didn't seem to want to give him up. "And this is how you get killed by alien technology," he grumbled to himself, fingers pressing all around the bracelet before finally landing on the gem. Almost instantly, the world righted itself around him and the proper color schemes came back.
Alex let out a long breath, then grabbed the P90 and hooked the zat through a beltloop. It would have to work.
He took one last glance around the room, then swallowed down his discomfort and hit the gem one more time.
Hopefully he had just found what caused their invisibility.
Shit.
Alex ducked back around the column, back pressed against the wall.
He was practically within throwing distance of the chair room.
But so were five bad guys.
Clearly visible, too.
And he hadn't figured out if being invisible made him invincible to shooting or not. He didn't really want to figure that one out the hard way.
Alex took a breath, trying to calm his breathing.
Dropping the invisibility would be the only way to make the shots – but he was only going to have a chance if he lured them out from their hiding places.
He really could've done with some grenades. Or smoke bombs. Or flash bombs.
Anything.
All he had was a P90, a nearly empty handgun, and a zat of unknown powers.
Really.
He stayed as far away from those things as possible.
Especially since they weren't supposed to exist on Atlantis anymore.
Alex glanced back over his shoulder, the way he had just come. There was a staircase just on the other side of the doors – doors that for some reason weren't responding to his commands to open or close.
Presumably, these invaders had forced them somehow and broken them.
And there was no guaranteeing that the five guys were the only ones that were in the vicinity, but Alex had to work with what he had.
There couldn't be that many infiltrators.
Right?
Alex darted back through the doors and jumped up to the second landing of the staircase. Carefully, he aimed at one of the closest pillars and shot twice.
That was enough to gain the attention of at least two of them, prowling out toward the doors. Alex held his breath as they got closer, until they were almost in range.
Then, one looked up. "Hey, it's the kid!"
"Oh, fuck…" They could see him.
Wasn't that just dandy.
Alex turned and sprinted up the stairs, their footsteps an annoyingly short distance behind his.
This was where he was going to die.
He slid around a corner, then shimmied up yet another pillar and squeezed into the narrow space between the ceiling and the top of the decorative wall. He held his breath as he heard them come into the hall.
"You can't just kill him." They weren't even bothering to hide their approach this time. "Tully will have your balls."
"The brat took out Fredon," The other man growled.
Alex wiggled his hand up to his chest, aiming for the gem. If they weren't even trying to be quiet, then Alex would take the shot.
Not that he had a lot of wiggle room…
"And Tully will take care of him in due time. You know those SCOR—"
The voices cut off just as Alex reached for the gem and the world reoriented around him. He blinked several times, before trying to catch movement out of his peripherals.
They were gone.
Oh, oh!
They could see him when he was invisible, because they were invisible. And vice versa.
Alex tapped the gem again and the sounds below immediately came back.
"—positive boss. One annoying teenager coming right your way." There was a quiet laugh below him. "Kid won't know what he got himself into."
Alex took a breath.
No.
They didn't know what they had gotten into.
Carefully, slowly, he unhooked the zat from his belt and shimmied it up his chest, toward the edge of the wall.
Point and shoot, Sheppard had said.
Once to stun.
Twice to kill.
Three times to remove the evidence.
It was a poor angle, but he didn't dare get any closer. Not without giving up his position.
Three steps closer, come on.
"Now where would a little birdy hide?"
Two steps.
"He doesn't have a chance."
One step.
Alex hit them gem, his targets below blinking out of existence. But hopefully still there. He tapped on the side of the zat, causing it to spring to full size.
Zinchk!
Shit.
Point and shoot.
He let off three bursts in rapid succession, before hitting the gem once more. Two found their mark and both men went down with hardly a sound. The third hit a sensor on the wall that crackled and smoked. Hopefully no one needed to get through there any time soon.
He sent a silent apology to the city.
Alex counted to fifteen in his head, then slid down from his hiding space. He took the men's weapons, dismantled them, and tossed them up into the overhead space. There was no way he could take it for all his own, but if they did wake up again, he didn't want them to have access to it. The bracelets also got ripped off and tossed.
Two down, three to go.
And now that he knew how it worked, well… he figured he had a few tricks up his sleeve.
Alex swapped out his nearly empty magazine with one of their full ones, then crept back down the staircase. The others would be on high alert, but likely wouldn't expect anyone to come back but their own.
He was, of course, the wildcard.
And they wouldn't be expecting him to know about the invisibility.
He pressed up against the wall next to the column once again, listening for any changes. He would kill for a mirror or something, but he was just going to have to work with what he had.
Which was an empty magazine as a decoy.
There would be no missing where it came from, but hopefully it would be enough.
Alex took the empty magazine and slid it across the floor as hard as he could. Until it was in the no man's land between him and them.
Take the bait, take the bait.
"What the…" There was scuff on the floor, as someone approached. "Very funny Sanders."
Yep, very funny.
Drop out, point, and shoot. Alex dove out into the open, aiming at the ghost images that had been other people, then kept moving to the column on the opposite side of the entrance.
Two shots hit in rapid succession.
Two others sent sparks raining down from the overhead lights.
And returning gunfire had Alex ducking for cover.
Only two people left.
And they knew where he was now.
Alex swapped for the P90, bracing it against his shoulder and letting loose around the corner of the column. There was no finesse with this type of weapon – at least, that Alex knew of.
"Give it up, Rider!" One of the men shouted – but it was exactly what he needed to aim true.
A target. A visible target.
He grabbed the zat, barely aimed around the corner, shot, and ducked back before the answering bullets bit into the side of the column.
A heavy thud was the only sound confirming the hit.
One left.
Alex didn't even wait, just aimed at the most recent location of gunfire.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Four times.
Five.
The gunfire stopped.
Alex froze, listening for anything.
Something.
A sign that there were still others out there.
There was nothing.
He peeked around the corner, leading with his gun, but there was nothing. Just great chucks torn out of the walls and decorative columns.
Two men down. The third was just… gone.
Alex swallowed down his nausea, then sprinted past the men to the opening for the chair room.
They weren't going to be getting up, so there was no use in wasting time taking their weapons.
The doors were sealed shut.
Open.
Open.
OPEN!
They didn't budge in the slightest.
Alex pressed his forehead against the doors, letting out a long breath through his nose.
Just… let me in. I'm a good guy.
It was sealed tight.
Locked down.
Only the faintest hum signaled that it was still active… somehow.
It needed an… an… override.
Alex yanked his tablet out, then pried the cover for the door sensor off. He had done this once, during Dr. Z's emergency security trainings during his first month. Basic door hacking was apparently a safety concern in the city. More advanced door hacking required overrides – which Dr. Z had given him.
He pulled out the data crystal and replaced it with a specially made crystal that connected to his data pad – which had miraculously survived his shenanigans across the city so far. Almost instantly, there were lines of code crossing his screen – most of it in unintelligible Ancient.
Alex groaned, then painstakingly picked his way through the words he knew. It didn't matter if he could recognize the alphabet when his vocabulary was still rather limited. And the Ancients didn't tend to use the same terminology – there was no, 'search for override.'
Security though… that seemed like a universal term.
He clicked through the options, picking out keywords here and there. At worst, it wouldn't let him in.
Or he could brick the system completely…
He wasn't considering that option.
One by one, he put in Dr. Z's override codes, heart jumping each time it didn't kick him out completely.
It accepted each one.
The last code was put through and… nothing happened.
Nothing changed.
Alex looked between the data pad and the door.
It should have worked.
There was nothing else he could enter.
Nothing else that was still missing.
"Dammit," he slapped a hand against the door. "Why won't you just open!"
The door slid open.
"Perfect, beautiful, good job." Alex hastily detached the data pad, reinserted the crystal, and replaced the door sensor cover. He slid through the doors and immediately demanded that they close and stay closed.
There was only a reassuring hum in the back of his mind that it had worked at all.
I guess we'll find out when someone else tries to get in…
And then Alex stopped and looked around the chair room.
He had only been in it the once with Rodney and Sheppard – and had been all but threatened to stay away from the chair at all costs. That there was no telling what kind of trouble Alex could get into with the chair.
Well… here he was. About to break all the rules.
He placed the P90 and zat down in front of the chair, then circled around it to find the access panel. Rodney had been fiddling around in there the last time, hooked into his data pad, and while Alex held little hope that he would be able to do anything…
"Attention residents of Atlantis."
Alex flinched at the sudden sound in the silence. A woman's voice, cutting through the air.
"As I am sure you have noticed, the city has been placed in lockdown for your own safety. Do not leave your designated areas or you will be shot. This is not a time for heroics." She sounded smug. "We have control of your chair room and have gene carriers of our own patrolling the city. You cannot do anything."
Alex snorted. They didn't have the chair room anymore. He tapped the gem on the bracelet, letting the world slide back into full color. He unrolled the cables in the access panel and attached them to his data pad, waiting for the foreign letters to scroll across once again.
"We have raised the beaming shield around the city, so do not expect help when the Daedalus arrives. And just so you know resistance is futile, Dr. McKay and Colonel Sheppard will be executed in four hours. Don't expect your usual white horses to save you. The Trust appreciates your service."
Fuck.
He had been harboring hope that Rodney had gotten away. Sheppard… wasn't a surprise, since he was all but hobbled these days and by all accounts shouldn't have even been out of his quarters. But there was that meeting—
The meeting.
With the invisibility, it would have been no issue to come through the wormhole that morning with the trading delegation. Whether the aliens were in on it or not. No one would have noticed.
"Oh, and if you see a certain teenager… Well, I'm assured you all know who I'm talking about. Make sure to thank him for this." There was a light chuckle. "We couldn't have done this without his presence."
Alex grit his teeth.
Perfect.
A fifty-fifty chance now that he would get shot by friendly fire, should he find any.
He skimmed through the override codes once again, inputting them one by one. There were no fireworks, no sparks, no sign that he had really done anything at all. And since Rodney was the one that was supposed to walk him through all this…
What was the worst that could happen? The base blow up? It was probably the better option than letting it fall into Trust hands.
Alex circled back around to the front of the chair, setting his data pad down on one of the arms. It looked both intimidating and inviting.
A device that he had been warned away from so fiercely.
A device that pulled him in.
He sat down, sunk his fingers into the cool, squishy gel, and leaned back.
A/N: Sooo…. This is what I do, apparently, when I'm trying to ignore the fact that I have to teach a topic next week that I haven't thought about in nearly ten years. I feel old. Anyway. This is the beginning of the end. Sort of. Honestly, we've got quite a ways to go. And quite a few twists, if I have any luck.