Chapter 48: Deception

John pinched the bridge of his nose and slouched in his chair. It seemed that the web of deception and betrayal just seemed to keep growing. The last thing he had expected was to have Sergeant Pilkes – who had been present in the city for several years now and was a vital part of the Marines – all but confess in his office.

Well, confess was taking it a bit far, but he had certainly let on that he knew more about the server than anyone else. And after a quick questioning of Alex, it had been made clear that that information hadn't been recently leaked.

Pilkes had the technical background to have some familiarity with the city systems – though utterly lacked the gene that would've made the city bow to his commands – but Rodney insisted that only someone on par with himself would have been able to create such a sophisticated server. So, unless Pilkes was hiding some untouched depths, it was highly unlikely that he had been working alone.

Which put Lieutenant Simmons right back on their radar – despite the fact that John was well aware that there was no way he could have been involved. Not consciously at least. And Simmons didn't have the technical know-how either.

For his part, Sergeant Pilkes didn't look particularly repentant, nor did he look guilty. He had had the audacity to request that any further questions be asked in front of Daniels and Rodney – and oddly enough, Ronon. That was a request John was only willing to grant to assuage his own curiosity. After all, the Satedan was all but worshiped by the majority of the Marines. To request him at the upcoming interrogation was… strange.

And then there was Alex.

No doubt grappling with yet another betrayal.

He didn't look too put out though, just confused.

As they all were.

After all, if John had been a betting man, he would've assumed that Sergeant Pilkes would've sooner died for Alex than do anything nefarious. Though the same could've been said for Lieutenant Simmons, who had already come under scrutiny.

The facts spoke for themselves though. Pilkes knew something and he wasn't about to let on to what exactly that was until everyone was present.

The others filed into the room, Rodney looking vaguely peeved that he had been dragged into yet another meeting. "What now?" He hissed, as he took a seat, darting a glare in Pilkes' direction.

"Sergeant Pilkes here claims to have information on your little… server problem." John said, vaguely. Because really, he really didn't have any answers.

Ronon finally slipped in to loom at the back of the room – but John had known him long enough to tell that he was intrigued by the specific request.

"Alright, Sergeant Pilkes, you have everyone you requested." John only felt a little bit bad that he was keeping Lorne out of these proceedings. It was good to have some control over the city once again though. "Want to explain why you have information about a clandestine server – information that Alex explicitly did not tell you?"

"Is this on the record, sir?"

John sketched a glance in Daniels' direction, before shaking his head. "No need to formalize a recording, just now." If there was anything pertinent, they could always grab it from the room recording. And it wouldn't matter in a court whether it was on the record or not.

"Yes, sir." Pilkes shifted in his seat, before facing John straight on. "The reason I know intimate details about the server is because… I created it. I believe Dr. McKay managed to track down the network traffic during one of the automatic uploads."

John reared back. He hadn't expected the blatant honesty – for a court martiable offense. Espionage. Treason, perhaps. "What the hell?"

"You created the server?" Daniels demanded. "You're not covering for someone else—"

"That's not—sort of?" Pilkes looked flustered at that accusation. "I worked alone." He glanced among the group, before taking a deep breath. "But there's something else."

Something else.

John couldn't see how it would be any more ground breaking than the first. He was already looking at years and years in Leavenworth.

"Let me introduce myself appropriately – my name is Syles Nigellus of Lo'Estra, but I have been Cyrus Pilkes for the past sixteen years." He said it all in a rush, as if he were worried that someone would interrupt him. "I was sent by Dr. McKay and Colonel Sheppard to carry out a mission to observe the movements of one Alex Rider, once he was present within the city, and to intervene when necessary to ensure he wasn't ever sent back to the SGC."

John stared. "I sent you?" He would think he would remember doing something utterly insane like that.

"Yes, sir." Pilkes – or Syles? – grimaced. "Well, a future version of you."

"Oh, for fucks sake," John breathed, pinching the bridge of his nose. Time travel. Again.

It was the last thing they needed.

They were going to have to string up timeline boards to keep everyone straight.

"Lo'Estra fell eight years ago." Ronon said, stepping up from the wall. "And no one here ever met them."

"You did." Pilkes said, a hint of a sad smile on his face. "You trained with my elder cousin, Mayam Antellus. One of the last interchanges before the Battle of Sateda."

And suddenly, Ronon's presence made a lot more sense. He was Pilkes' proof.

"Only children were rumored to survive," Ronon murmured, tilting his head curiously.

A flash of hurt, rapidly suppressed, crossed Pilkes' face. "Yes, there were five of us. Two didn't make it through the winter. The Sistai bought and sold us to the highest bidders – in the hopes that one of us would be able to take them to our planet. Kyriee and Veya were put with good families after AR-4 relocated them last year."

But that was still only eight years earlier. Pilkes had mentioned sixteen years.

"Those were children – you are not."

"It was… a long time ago for me." Pilkes cleared his throat, before glancing in Rodney's direction. "Dr. McKay, you may have to help me fill in some of the blanks, as I only understood about a quarter of it the first time around."

John grit his teeth. Right, the time travel.

"There are several prevailing theories on time-travel, commonly accepted by the greater scientific community as nothing more than science fiction – or so most are led to believe without knowledge of the Stargate program. There have been several examples of successful time-travel in the history of the program, with some notable results, such as saving Atlantis from sinking when you all first arrived here. Other instances have occurred, but have been kept under tight lock and key. I can't speak from experience here, except to say that they exist and you all know they exist.

"Parallel universes and alternate realities are also well established and can be used to explain some of the happenstance that occurs when time-travel paradoxes are established. These are generally for large changes to the timeline. However, there are other instances where causal loops can be established and maintained. In these cases, an event is the cause of another event, which in turn is the cause of that first event. Or something like that."

"An ontological paradox," Rodney breathed.

"An ontological paradox." Pilkes stated. "I am my own paradox. Although my timeline started in Lo'Estra, due to a variety of factors and choices made, my timeline will cross itself. Hopefully only once." He gave a nervous chuckle at that.

John just stared, mind stuck in an endless loop. An actual case of a time traveler. A foreigner that had snuck in amongst them without anyone – not even Stargate Command – realizing.

It was going to be an organizational nightmare. If Stargate Command couldn't even notice when an alien from another galaxy had infiltrated their ranks as a native-born American, then there was no telling who else they had missed.

There were all sorts of ramifications he really didn't want to think about. All the security measures that were compromised just by Pilkes' mere existence.

"Why me?" Alex cut in, no doubt breaking off the litany of questions Rodeny was bottling up.

This time, Pilkes sighed. "The future Dr. McKay and future Colonel Sheppard that I met with were adamant that the actions I pursued were what allowed the city to not only continue function, but to put an end to a great threat in this and your galaxy. Your presence here is more than just to keep you safe from the Trust, but to keep them from getting their hands on what could have been their greatest weapon – a multigenerational gene carrier."

"If you knew about this, why didn't you stop it?" Alex clenched his fists on his lap, lips pressing into a thin line. "Why the games? Why was it left to me to—" He broke off and looked away.

"I was sent with bare minimum knowledge – who you were, who the leaders here were, and that I would follow my best judgement to reach the end goal. Dr. McKay—" He nodded in Rodeny's direction. "—was concerned that too much information would interfere with the formation of the loop, or create an irreparable paradox that would tear the space-time continuum in half."

Which. Right.

That would be bad.

Far beyond blowing up a galaxy bad.

And Rodney's hunches were usually – unfortunately – well founded. If he had been behind the mastermind of some time traveling scheme… it would be the sorts of contingencies he would be worried about creating.

If.

If they believed that Pilkes wasn't lying to them all.

If they believed that the SGC had completely missed the alien in their midst.

If they believed that they had chosen to send back a literal child – John did some quick mental math and if it had been sixteen years, they had made that choice for someone Alex's age. A teenager into a foreign land.

"You're telling me that we—" John made an expansive gesture to the others in the room. Because surely if they had made the decision, it wouldn't have been just him and Rodney. "—decided to send a sixteen-year-old back in time to an apparently foreign planet?"

Pilkes just stared back at him, inexplicably calm. "Fifteen – sort of – and yes, sir."

John couldn't help but let out a breath. Fifteen. Alex's age. They couldn't have thought that throwing a kid into a foreign land and a high-stakes mission was smart. "With barely an explanation?"

Pilkes' expression twisted into a wry smile. "Well, you all saved my life. There was a bit of gratitude going on. And I am very convincing to myself. It was a chance for a new life – a safe life, away from the Wraith. Perhaps the most dangerous part of me never wanting to come back to this galaxy."

"You met yourself?" Rodney hissed, before turning away once again to start punching at his tablet. "The simulations…"

"The future Colonel Sheppard and Dr. McKay gave me a brief overview of what to look for and the identity I was to assume upon reaching earth. Attend high school. Find a position in the Marines, join the SGC, and make sure to arrive in the city by 2007. Of course, I didn't understand what 2007 was supposed to mean at the time."

"So, you don't even know what time you came from?" There was sketchy disbelief in Rodney's voice.

"No, but soon. Alex is here. Likely sometime within the next year. Maybe only a few months."

"How'd you end up in the city?" Daniels asked, breaking his silence. And John really wanted to know what the man was actually thinking.

Pilkes shifted in his chair, still maintaining his military composure. "Through merit, sir. Everything in my dossier is real. Had a few rotations out in the dust bowl, transferred to base duty at the SGC after a museum robbery – that's in there too – impressed the right people and got sent with a team in 2007. Managed to survive and got sent back with reinforcements in 2008. Everything is in my file. I've worked my way up through the ranks like any other Marine." And the stubborn pride in it only helped it to ring true.

It was a believable career trajectory. Nothing outstanding, but nothing out of the ordinary.

But there was no way.

"Why were you framing Greg?" Alex demanded, frustration creeping into his voice.

Pilkes straightened up, his gaze focused. "Lieutenant Simmons had nothing to do with my surveillance and has done nothing except his absolute best to keep Alex safe. You've seen that Lieutenant Simmons and Sierra Squad have done their best to shield him from outside factions."

"Then what was the point of the secondary server?" Daniels asked.

"And how?" Rodney demanded, no doubt after the technical details.

Pilkes leaned back in his chair, posture relaxed and nonthreatening. "The secondary server was set up on the back patch relay just after I got here in '07. There was scheduled maintenance, and I was assigned to guard the relay room. No one noticed the patch update and subsequent data transfers were piggybacked onto inconspicuous packets within legitimate network traffic, before being siphoned off. I manually cleaned up the results during the rest days, using a program that Dr. McKay wrote—"

"I knew it!" Rodney hissed.

"—Once Alex was in the city, I knew that records of his movements were going to be needed."

"How'd you know?" Daniels asked.

"Well, Dr. McKay's program that hijacked the city surveillance to watch Alex's particular DNA code was the most obvious clue." Pilkes shrugged. "I got the impression that there would be people in the city that had it out for him – and well, I didn't really want to risk changing the timeline by letting something slide. Alex's survival seemed to be pretty important to my past self's survival."

In more ways than once, since Pilkes had been one of those saved from the gate room.

"And the focus on Simmons?"

"When you know the right people, it's not too hard to recode the program a little. He was assigned as Alex's escort – it was clear that he would be a target too. Whether for snaking or something else… I've looked out for him for the past fifteen years, so…"

Right. Because Pilkes and Simmons had grown up in the same small town, a handful of years apart. The SGC knew everything.

"But he was also the best cover if anyone else – other than Dr. McKay – came across my server. Who else had unfettered access to Alex? There was nothing incriminating. I'll admit, I didn't expect the Spanish inquisition."

Aside from the hours of detailed surveillance and notes about Alex's every move. They had honestly all been more alarmed by the extent of the surveillance – it had suggested that something else might have been going on.

"I also hadn't anticipated the original location files to become corrupted on the one night we needed them, but was able to cobble together enough uncorrupted files to make sure that Jamison had no wiggle room. That needed to be watertight so that the court martial wouldn't look twice at it – or demand Alex's presence on Earth."

"So, you're the backup to the backup?" Rodney asked incredulously.

"Be glad you got anything from Sector K and I, because Carmichael would have gleefully left you with nothing." Pilkes snapped back, before carefully reverting back to his tense military posture.

"You… stopped the backups from being wiped?" There was almost a touch of awe in Rodney's voice.

"Technically, I restored them after Carmichael went through and trashed everything. Then tried to leave some breadcrumbs so you would find him." Pilkes shrugged it off, as if it were unimportant. "Look, rehashing everything I've done in the past four years isn't going to change anything going forward. I'm not on the Trust's side. I definitely haven't been working with the IOA. And I have no desire to see the city fall into alternative leadership. It has been well over ten years since I thought of myself as someone from this galaxy – and while I didn't grow up hearing stories of the ancestors, even my planet knew that one day the 'Lanteans would return to continue the fight against the wraith. Obviously, you're all best suited for that job, considering the whole gene thing."

"So what, we're supposed to just go back to pretending that you don't have some funky future knowledge?" Alex asked, sitting up straighter. "That nothing has changed?

"I mean, making my job easier and trying not to actively get killed would be a plus." Pilkes spread his hands in a what can you do manner. "The only real difference is that instead of tracking you from the dark, you know that I'm doing it?"

And given Alex's preferences on tracking in general, it wasn't surprising that that statement made him look less than happy. "Or you could not."

"Or you could get sent back to Earth."

"Gentlemen," Daniels cut in, looking slightly put out. "Please. Sergeant, you've offered no proof other than your words. Surely if you were sent back, Dr. McKay would've seen to give you some sort of evidence."

Pilkes leaned forward, his expression more earnest. "Yes, sir. I was given a few pieces of information. Dr. McKay gave me a piece of code he discovered in one of the ancient databases – said it would help solve a problem you had. Do you know what Ancient Killers are?"

Well fuck.

Though they knew that Pilkes had been monitoring all the signals – which, how he had managed that as a one-person team, John wasn't quite sure – he knew for a fact that those particular words had never been uttered outside of a jammer zone. So, unless they had to rethink all of the changes they had made in the past few years for operational security, then there had to be at least a shred of truth to what Pilkes was telling them.

And that they had yet another time travel mystery on their hands.

"Where'd you hear that?" Rodney demanded, face turning red and panicked.

"You told me. In… well, I'm not exactly sure how much time passes before that happens. At least a few months, but it could still be a couple of years."

"Well? Hand it over?" Rodney held out his hand, as if demanding it then and there.

Pilkes chuckled, before shrugging. "The drive you gave me is in my quarters, coded to your own personal biometric signature. I've never tried to open it, but you were also pretty clear that my feeble mind had no hope of ever cracking it and I wouldn't try if I knew what was good for me."

"Why wasn't this handed over earlier?" Daniels asked.

"It wasn't time yet." Pilkes said simply.

Rodney threw up his hands in exasperation. "Do you know what we could've done with this information? Months ago?"

Pilkes nodded. "I imagine a lot of things. But if I had tipped the scales early, what would've happened? Would you have believed me? Would you use the information for your own good? Or for the galaxy? If we had prevented all this," He made an all-encompassing gesture, that no doubt included the recent invasion. "Would the Trust have cropped up somewhere else, worse? Or at a time when there wasn't a chance in hell that we could rescue our people? If I had given you that information, but it had only resulted in them snaking our top executives, what would that have gained?"

John pinched the bridge of his nose. Time travel did his head in.

"Look, review the information. There are videos – videos that supposedly explain your… situation." He gestured between John and Alex.

"What?" John demanded, slamming a hand down on the table. "What do you know?"

Pilkes looked startled for all of a half second, before nodding to himself. "Only what you already know – and that on that drive there are supposed to be more answers and actionable steps to take down the agency that has been controlling your lives."

"How do we find the drive?" Rodney demanded.

"There's a false bottom under my bunk. A locking mechanism with the code 203394 will open the container, which has the drive given to me by Dr. McKay. There is a biometric security combination that is openable only by Dr. McKay and an auto self-destruct after 10-minutes of unsuccessful attempts. He trusted you would be able to figure it out."

"And Greg?" Alex demanded.

Pilkes straightened up and turned to face John. "Sir, Lieutenant Simmons had no knowledge of my dealings and no involvement in any of my plans. He's innocent."

"And we're supposed to believe that you were a solo actor in all of this?" Daniels asked, brow furrowed. "That you never had anyone assist you? In this part of the timeline."

Pilkes chewed on his lip for a long moment, before hanging his head. "The only assistance I have had was anthropologist Martz teaching me how to code and use the computer back at the SGC. Everything else I have compiled on my own."

Martz. John couldn't say he had run into the man, but he had heard of him. He seemed to give Jackson a run for his money in trouble making, but hadn't yet managed to die. And he had been a part of Pilkes' team before he had been transferred to Atlantis.

John was going to more than happily drop that particular bombshell into O'Neill's lap to investigate.

"Give us a few hours to look things up," Daniels said, directed at Alex. "Once we've made sure, I'll send Simmons your way."

Alex seemed to take that for the dismissal it was, because he hardly cast a second glance in Pilkes' direction before hurrying out of the room.

John shared a long glance with Daniels, before shoving to his feet. Well, foot and crutches. "Right, I'm out. Tell me when Simmons is cleared." Because he wasn't going to start pondering the ramification of all of this until he was actually back on the clock full time.

No doubt, they had only scratched the surface on Pilkes and his mission.

A/N: What a tangled web we weave. Utterly exhausted from a week of meetings, so hopefully this all makes sense. There is a plan to this all, believe it or not. And please note, this is the first actual confirmed time traveler in this story.