Chapter 43: Safe and Sound?

"Think… 'm gonna pass out… now."

Alex! John would've shouted if he could. The thread had been getting thinner and thinner – only a vague sense in the back of his mind let him know that he had reconnected with Alex in the first place. He wasn't sure how, but suspected the Ancient device hadn't truly been as off as Alex had hoped.

And then the connection snapped.

John jerked forward in the bed, curling in on himself as the migraine flooded in. Stabbing blades piercing the back of his skull. A hastily shoved wastebin was the only thing that kept him from making an utter mess.

He couldn't—

There wasn't—

Alex—

The lights snapped off.

He tried to breathe through the nausea.

The stabbing pain.

Ignore the piercing voices – even though they were whispering.

There was a flush of warmth along his arm – medications, painkillers, antiemetics – and John tried to relax.

They were so close.

Rodney had been sprinting down the stairs.

Alex had sounded so… weak.

So different from minutes earlier.

If only—

"Sir?" Sergeant Pilkes voice was no higher than a whisper, as low as possible. "Dr. McKay brought Alex onboard. The ship's surgeon is looking him over."

John let out a long breath, unclenched his fists.

They had him.

Alex was safe.

On the Daedalus.

Out of harm's way.

Well. One type of harm.

There was another flush of warmth along his arm. A deep relaxing pull.

Down.

Down.

Down.

He couldn't have opened his eyes if he wanted.

"You look like shit."

John felt like shit, was pissed that the doctor had drugged him to sleep again, and felt like his very teeth were being set on edge. It didn't help that he really had needed the rest.

He had been thrown around by a – for lack of a better word – dinosaur only a few days earlier. And things had just gone downhill from there.

Rodney didn't look any better though, as he slumped into the chair next to John's bed – a rickety one that had been unearthed from who knew where. His clothes were blood spattered – dried – and his expression was as haggard as it came.

"You'll be happy to know that your sprog is just as stubborn as you are," Rodney said, pressing a hand to his temple. "While in the process of losing nearly half his blood volume, he politely told me he was passing out."

John couldn't help the almost hysterical laugh at that. Alex's last communication.

"I don't think I've ever seen so much blood come from a live body." Rodney ran a hand across his face, then fixed John with a fierce stare. "They're patching him up. He'll be… he'll be fine." He didn't sound nearly as confident as he should. But then, Rodney wasn't that kind of doctor.

John wanted to demand answers. Wanted to know how they had gotten to this point in the first place.

The city was full of well qualified individuals – Marines, for goodness' sake – yet somehow it had come down to Alex, the only teenager within the city, to save all their asses.

All on his own.

"Daniels and his team rounded up the last of the invaders and found a dead goa'uld on the balcony outside Woosley's office. Gregoria. Knife to the spinal column."

John grimaced. There was only one person in the city who could have achieved that and the reality was not sitting well with him. The entire purpose for bringing Alex to Atlantis was to protect him – not force him into upping his kill count significantly.

And Daniels… he had been slated to be Woolsey's right-hand man. If O'Neill hadn't already vouched for him, John would have been suspicious. But… from his few interactions with Daniels, he had seemed like a genuinely decent fellow – the first impression they were giving by having the city overrun and in complete disarray wasn't going to earn them any points though.

"You might have missed it, but Gregoria seemed to know yours and Alex's little secret. And about your apparent… memory loss. Though I doubt Sergeant Pilkes managed to put together those facts."

Fuck.

John ran a hand through his hair. No, Pilkes probably had figured out at least some of it. The sergeant was smart enough to put things together, but O'Neill was probably safe at this point. That was a stretch no one would be able to just jump to.

Hell, John still didn't believe it half the time.

"Daniels found a disk she was carrying, the one that she claimed has some sort of explanation." Rodney shrugged and spread his hands. "It could all have been just a bluff, but…"

But… it might explain some of the Trust's sheer bullheadedness regarding Alex's existence. They wanted him – and even a galaxy away, had been willing to scuttle plans just because he was out there.

The time between being captured by Tulloch and beaming up to the Daedalus was fairly foggy – John was going to gather and burn all the zats if he could – but he remembered Gregoria's almost glee at realizing Alex was loose in the city. Her certainty that he would come to them.

She had been right.

And as much as he hated to admit it – Alex had done exactly what John would have. Methodically taken people out until he could rescue the others, regardless of the cost for his own safety.

Like father, like son.

Rodney jerked upright, putting a hand to his comm. "What!" He turned wide eyes on John, before a furious expression crossed his face. "Don't touch anything. I'll be right there."

John couldn't help the fission of panic, fear, anxiety of being so far out of the loop. This was his city, dammit.

"Alex messed with some of the security protocols in the chair room." Rodney was already standing, swiping through whatever was incoming to his data pad. "Great in the moment, bad now that we're trying to get things back up." He paused halfway out the door, before turning back to look at John. "You can't come, can you?" He almost sounded put out.

John shrugged, glancing down at his still casted leg. "Stuck here until someone releases me. Apparently getting zatted isn't good for concussions."

Rodney's mouth turned down in a frown. "Be so much faster if I could just stick you in the chair. Don't suppose they'd let you out for that?"

John snorted. The doctors would probably have a stroke at the idea of taxing his brain any more today. Between the pre-existing concussion, post-zat syndrome, and use of untested ancient artifacts, he was going to be lucky to get released back to his quarters within the next day. "Sorry buddy."

Rodney harrumphed, before turning back to his data pad, grumbling about voodoo doctors and stalked out the door.

The lights dimmed automatically, until there was just barely a hint of light. John let out a long breath.

This was reality for the next few hours.

Nothing but him and his thoughts.

That really wasn't what he needed right now.

Pawn to e5… John studied the virtual chessboard and waited for Rodney to respond with his next move. Depending on how crazy things were in the lab, it could be anywhere from several seconds to an hour. But they had already made it all the way through two games that morning, so he counted it as a win.

And although taxing mental activities weren't generally recommended immediately following a concussion, John was going a bit stir crazy. Lorne wouldn't let him lift a finger and had used Carson's reinstatement as CMO to completely shut him out of meetings. And since everyone knew how impossible it was to keep John from sticking his nose in things, he had been relegated to camping out in the observation room overlooking the isolation room.

Where Alex was.

It had been three days since the invasion and he hadn't yet woken up.

By all means, he should have.

The doctors had patched him back together, removing all evidence of the perforating abdominal wound and collapsed lung. Alex hadn't even lost any organs. They had reversed the significant blood loss. Kept him sedated for a day so that his throat and windpipe could have a rest and wouldn't swell closed. And then—Alex just hadn't woken up.

A coma, Carson had said.

Just because he could, apparently.

"You're a stubborn bastard, aren't you?" John muttered at the sleeping figure that didn't bother to respond. The lurid bruises around his throat made it look like someone had tried to crush his throat – bruises that John wasn't going to look too closely at because he almost had his own matching set. No permanent damage though.

No one was allowed into the isolation room, because apparently even though he was put back together, Carson was still worried about infection and who knew what else.

So, John relegated himself to playing chess and watching from above, in between the doctor mandated naps.

He was fine.

Perfectly capable of working toward untangling the mess that the invasion had caused.

He felt useless.

Less than useless, because Rodney was the only one trying to keep him updated.

Everyone else just wanted him to take some time getting better. If they only looked at his track record, they would understand how useless a thought that was. There were too many crises in the city to afford to have anyone sit back and relax.

But no.

There was a knock on the door and John waved a despondent hand in its direction, barely bothering to think the command at it.

Daniels stepped through, eyes flicking toward the large window, before zeroing in on John.

Director Daniels.

John hadn't missed the memo that had circulated earlier that morning, following the emergency session of the IOA to officially appoint him.

"Colonel."

"Director."

Daniels grimaced, then crossed the room. He looked much less put together than the few times John had run into him on earth. "It's Ben, please."

"John, then." It wasn't like he couldn't make nice with people. Especially since Daniels – Ben – was in some strange sense of the word, his boss. As much as non-military could be his boss. Presumably a step up from Woolsey over the past several months though.

Ben looped an ankle around a chair leg and brought the extra chair closer, before dropping into it. "I'm going to be the first to admit that I have very little idea what I'm doing here. Director Woolsey was supposed to train me into the position, after all."

And Woolsey was already back on earth going through rounds of who knew what in an attempt to reverse the brainwashing and poisoning that Dr. Madsen had subjected him to over the past year. It had been almost a relief though to know that Woolsey hadn't been in his right mind – that the man John had once trusted wasn't entirely gone.

But that it was something they had all missed right under their noses… made John worry about what future attempts the Trust might make.

"Things are inevitably going to change around here, but I'm hoping we can work together, to create something better. You've been here a lot longer than I have, you know what works and what doesn't."

John plastered on a careful smile. He wasn't really in the mood to be making nice. "I'm sure Major Lorne would be happy to help." Probably another reason they were keeping him off duty. Lorne was much more diplomatic and wouldn't run off the nice, friendly people just trying to help.

Ben seemed unperturbed and just settled back into the chair. "And I'm sure Major Lorne will have plenty to add, but you've been here from year one. And this could've all been avoided if your protocols had been followed in the first place. I don't plan on making those mistakes twice."

John grimaced and glanced away. It clearly wasn't meant as a jab, but if they had just followed protocol… If they hadn't let the Astrians into the city. If they had insisted on meeting at the Alpha site. If Woolsey hadn't been so damn stubborn. If Madsen hadn't been able to sink her claws in so deeply.

So many things could have been avoided.

Alex never would have been hurt, for one.

And John wasn't sure he was ready to get into another pissing match with the IOA about Alex's existence again.

Ben seemed to track his thoughts almost perfectly, once again looking out the large window into the room below. "You know, O'Neill warned me that there were some unusual personnel choices that were stirring the pot with the IOA. I just didn't expect it to be Alex."

Alex.

There was a tone of familiarity there.

John turned narrowed eyes on Ben.

Was this another Trust plot?

Another attempt at taking him out.

By someone O'Neill thought was to be trusted?

John's eyes darted around the room, but there wasn't so much as a butter knife present.

The data pad wouldn't do much damage—

"You realize I'm ex-MI6, right?" Ben watched him with an amused gaze. Like this was all funny somehow.

"What?" Everyone knew that. It was part of the reason O'Neill had picked him.

Ben nodded toward Alex's sleeping figure. "We've met, once or twice."

"But—how?"

"Well… back before joining MI6, while I was still SAS, this little runty teenager got stuck in with my team for training. Cub, we called him. He disappeared shortly after that. Braxton – my captain at the time – claimed he had seen Cub during a mission in the French Alps a few months later. I ran into him over in southeast Asia several months after that, and…" He trailed off shrugging. "I left the agency when I finished the mission. Didn't want to work with bosses that had teenagers doing their dirty work for them."

John opened and closed his mouth several times, trying to work through it all.

Someone connected to Alex's past.

"You can't let them send him away," John said. "The Trust… they want the city, but they also want him."

Ben frowned. "How'd he even get on their radar? Byrne assured me that Alex was keeping a low profile."

"An ex-therapist." John scowled at the window. That was another mess they hadn't ever gotten good answers for. And now it seemed that even that explanation was too shabby. Rodney had suggested that the Trust knew something about both their pasts. Had meddled somehow.

"Damn, kid," Ben breathed. "Can't catch a break."

John couldn't agree more. He had only heard vague and interspersed accounts of Alex's past three years, but it was obvious that it was nothing he had asked for.

The stint with the terrorist group was literally because he was trying to find out more about his family.

John couldn't begrudge him that. Not when Alex had turned around and took them down in the most spectacular fashion – creating an untold number of enemies in the process.

"I'm glad he's got more people looking out for him now."

John grimaced. Because that had done a whole lot of good.

He was unconscious and isolated – and would be for who knew how long.

Alex had single handedly taken out over twenty operatives – and at least another dozen with Ronon's help. And he had been up close and personal with death at least twice.

That wasn't something a sixteen-year-old should have been dealing with.

"If it makes you feel any better, he wouldn't have done any of this if he didn't at least feel some sort of loyalty toward the people here."

"I don't want his loyalty. He's my son." The words slipped out before John could stop them. "I want him safe."

And that was exactly what he had offered.

Exactly the opposite from what had happened.

If Atlantis wasn't safe… then nowhere was.

Ben studied him for a long moment, before glancing down at the sleeping figure once again. "His father was John Rider."

"One and the same, apparently," John said, bitterly. Because apparently, he had kept that one secret a little too close to the chest and was willing to bare all to a virtual stranger.

"Huh."

A stranger that actually knew Alex before.

"When did you find out?"

John stared at him for a moment. Like it was a logical question. "Just before Christmas."

Ben nodded, as if that made sense. "So, not even a month. Wow."

John sagged in his chair. It hadn't even been a month.

It felt like an eternity.

And too short a time.

"And I'm guessing that's not commonly known information."

"No."

A smile crossed Ben's face. Genuine. "I was there when he made contact with the Daedalus. Was pretty insistent that stopping your execution was crisis number one. So, you know, I think he had his priorities in line. Not many can say they've rescued their dad."

Dad.

That was a title they certainly hadn't talked about.

He was pretty sure Alex still called him Sheppard. Placing that barrier of distance between them.

The door slid open and Rodney stomped in. "You stopped responding." He caught himself and eyed Ben warily. "Daniels."

"It's Ben, really."

"Be glad he even got your name right," John said, a hint of a smile almost crossing his face.

Ben pushed to his feet, casting another long look through the window. "I'll touch base with Major Lorne and see what our next steps need to be. I realize you have several more days before they'll let you back on light duty, but I'll do my best to keep you in the loop."

John just nodded.

Ben breezed past Rodney, but paused at the door. "And don't worry, my lips are sealed."

John groaned and let his face drop into his hands.

"Sealed? What?" Rodney hissed, crossing the room and dropping into the now empty chair. "What's he talking about?"

"I may have let slip that Alex was my son," John mumbled into his hands. He still wasn't entirely sure why that piece of information had come out.

"What? Are you crazy?" Rodney's voice screeched and John held back a wince. "We don't even know that he's not with the Trust—"

"He's not." Of that, John was almost absolutely certain. If someone had gotten by O'Neill with that much scrutiny, then perhaps the Trust deserved to win. "He's crossed paths with Alex in the past. MI6. Seemed rather pleased that Alex had gotten away from all that. And O'Neill trusts him." That was probably the most important bit.

"I'm withholding judgment until a later point," Rodney grumbled.

"You do that, buddy." It wasn't like he was going to automatically stop watching his back around Ben, but it seemed that there was a relatively low likelihood that he would turn out to be evil.

Hopefully.

Rodney let out a sigh, then rummaged in his pocket. "Well, while you were busy spilling your deepest secrets to the new IOA spy—" Rodney dropped a small metal cylinder onto the table and all thoughts of protest fled John mind as he flinched away from it.

"Hey, careful with that!" He had only seen it once, but its purpose had been seared into his mind.

"It's dead," Rodney said, glaring at it with distaste. "And according to records, never worked in the first place. Won't even hum for Carson."

"You touched it?"

"Yes, I touched it. How else were we supposed to ensure that Alex isn't in a coma because of some malfunctioning ancient artifact?"

John blinked. "And is he?"

"No…" Rodney slouched in the chair. "At least, not as far as we can tell. It was created by a pair of brothers – twins. They wanted to perfect twin telepathy. Long-term use left them with debilitating headaches, so they scrapped the project."

"And it somehow made its way to the Milky Way." John blew out a long breath. Useless malfunctioning ancient artifacts were almost worse than some of the ones they pretended worked. Then Rodney's words caught in his mind. "Long-term use?"

"Several weeks, with constant use. They abandoned the project in favor of developing the earliest versions of the zats."

John's eyes widened. That couldn't be just a coincidence. He reached out and picked up the cylinder, turning it over in his palm.

It felt like an electric shock ran through his system, before the familiar hum settled into the back of his mind. Staticky and unnatural.

Something told him that—

"Are you an idiot?" Rodney shouted, yanking it away.

"Do you not feel that?" It was wrong – like it clashed with him, but it wanted to respond to him. It just… couldn't. But it was still on.

"What? No." He peered at John, like he was checking for a brain injury.

"He… When did you take the device away from him? It's still on."

"On the Daedalus. I hadn't…" Rodney glanced between the device, John, and through the window at Alex's sleeping form, his eyes suddenly growing wider. "Of course, a genetic—a fucking genetic component! It doesn't care about me because there's no one nearby with a near enough genetic match. And it didn't turn off because he never gave it a command."

John squeezed his eyes shut, tried to think through the blinding headache that was becoming just a little bit too familiar at this point. "Just give it… give it back." There was no telling why that was the right answer. Maybe Alex would be able to intuitively turn it off. Or... something.

Luckily, Rodney didn't try to ask any more questions, just grabbed the device and shot out of the room.

Hopefully to find Carson.

John let out a long breath and settled back to wait.

A/N: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Hope you enjoyed this little gift of an update. And wow, do we have a lot to unpack. Some of you predicted Ben's appearance – don't worry, the rest of K-Unit will be showing up, scattered, throughout some of the next chapters. Do you think this is it? Or do you think Atlantis has more curves to throw them…