Type: genfic/drama/HC

Rating: PG-15 if I was going to use that type of rating
Spoilers: set early second season

Betas: LKY and Dr. Dredd (thank you both kindly – any mistakes left are all my own)

After posting to SGAHC, Crockett clarified some points relating to the use of MRIs and CAT scans.

Contact: Sealie

Frame of Reference series.

Cusp

By Sealie

The early morning meeting was usually a thing of beauty or, more accurately, entertainment, Sheppard thought. By no sense of the word could McKay be described as a morning person. Beckett by definition could operate at any time day or night but his preferred time was the later hours of the day as the sun set and the world quieted down. Elizabeth was a morning person – through and through – too awake at 0-six hundred hours to be anything other than offensive to a confirmed night owl. Lorne, he hadn’t figured out yet, but he suspected that he was an A-type morning person. Kray, head of the newly created technical services section was a nine to fiver, excellent with the day to day administration of the City, but a bit pedantic otherwise. Sheppard knew that he was a morning person -– the cold crack of day as the sun rose couldn’t be beaten -- but today he felt sluggish and lethargic. They hadn’t been on a scouting trip or any other mission type for over a week and obviously he needed some fresh air.

Beckett poured himself into his preferred seat and reached blindly for the carafe of coffee in the centre of the table. Eyes sharp, Sheppard didn’t miss him palming a couple of Tylenol as he took his first mouthful of coffee.

“Hey, Doc.”

“Major. Sorry, Colonel.”

“You could just call me John, you know.”

“Yes,” Beckett said blearily – obviously it was far too early.

“You all right, Doc?”

“Fine,” he said immediately, but the man couldn’t even fib. “Got a headache the size of Atlantis.”

“I can sympathise.” Sheppard held out his hand. The pencil pushing geek who had not allowed them to secret their own supplies of painkillers when first leaving the SGC for Pegasus Galaxy was destined to burn in a place where the residents had pointy sticks. Even now, with the interstellar starship Daedalus carrying out semi-regular supply runs between Earth and the city of Atlantis, everyday, over-the-counter, painkillers were still prescription only.

Beckett wasn’t stupid. He pulled out a child proof canister of pills and decanted two tablets onto Sheppard’s palm.

“Thanks, Doc.”

Elizabeth sauntered into the meeting room, fresh and bright eyed and bushy tailed. Sheppard hated her instantly.

“Carson, John.”

Both man saluted her with their coffee cups.

Rodney dragged his sorry ass into the room, weighed down with two laptops and a diagnostic data tablet. “Is that real coffee?”

“Yep. Made it myself.” Sheppard refilled his own mug and poured one for McKay.

McKay worshiped at the altar.

Lorne came in with Kray.

“Good, we’re all here,” Elizabeth said. “If you could begin as normal, Carson.”

Sheppard tuned out the minutiae, registering the important details. Housekeeping was an automatic yawn. Kray got into a battle with McKay over the environmental controls, which McKay felt as an astrophysicist and not a repair man, wasn’t his remit.

The Tylenol wasn’t putting a dent in the headache. Sheppard blamed Rodney.

“Colonel?” the tone was insistent and Sheppard guessed that Elizabeth had called his name – without any response – more than once.

“Yes?”

“You have an offworld mission scheduled.”

“Tomorrow,” Sheppard said succinctly. “Teyla is taking us to the imaginatively named ‘Market World’. Apparently it’s the planet’s annual solstice and they have a massive gathering. A number of planets’ inhabitants attend. It should be good for intel and trade.”

“You will of course be careful. It is paramount that we maintain Atlantis’ secrecy.”

“Of course,” Sheppard said easily.

Elizabeth quirked her eyebrow in a distinctively head mistress manner. Sheppard met her chastisement placidly. So his attention wandered – discussions about sewage systems weren’t that interesting.

“Major Lorne,” Elizabeth began.

Sheppard rubbed the bridge of his nose and only listened to the important stuff.

The final summary of the meeting had the section heads updated and day’s duties outlined.

“We’ve finished? About time.” Rodney packed up his laptops with a little more than his usual alacrity.

“Rodney,” Elizabeth stopped him dead, “is there a problem?”

“No.”

“McKay,” Sheppard interjected.

“Things to do. Things to do.” McKay scooped up his laptops. Huffing, he stalked out of the room.

“John?” Elizabeth asked a multitude of questions.

“You know how it is when he’s got something on his mind. It can’t be important otherwise he would have told us succinctly and too the point, but somehow at great length, that we have a problem. I’ll track him down later. He probably just wants to play with some Ancient doodad.”

Elizabeth nodded, accepting the wisdom of his words. Sheppard leaned back on his chair, stretching to ease the kinks in his shoulders. More coffee and a sparring match with Teyla would put him to rights.

“Major,” Beckett said.

“Yeah, Doc?”

“Infirmary.” He pointed over his shoulder.

“Why?” Sheppard manufactured a cough as his tone rose squeakily.

“Headache.”

“It’s just a headache. You’ve got one.”

“Aye, and I’m the doctor and I’m saying infirmary, Colonel. The Tylenol coupled with your morning coffee haven’t eased your symptoms – that warrants further study.”

“I’m fine!” Sheppard winced at the slight whine in his voice.

Beckett’s bottom lip firmed. “Don’t make me make it an order, son.”

Grimacing, Sheppard picked up his pristine notebook. “This is going over the top, Doc,” he noted as he followed the man out of the room.

~*~

“Blood pressure’s fine.” Beckett released the cuff.

“I told you, Doc, I’ve just got a headache.”

“Believe it or not there’s normally an underlying reason for headaches.” Beckett shone a penlight in Sheppard’s right eye watching as the pupil constricted satisfactorily. He didn’t miss the furrow forming between his eyebrows. “Is your neck hurting?”

“It’s stiff.”

“Touch chin to your chest.” Beckett demonstrated.

Sheppard easily craned his neck.

“And to the side.”

Sheppard rolled his eyes heavenward, but complied. “Glad to see that you can do it, Doc. You going to let Dr. Biro check you out?”

“She’s a forensic pathologist. No.”

“You’ve got a headache too. And the Tylenol haven’t shifted it.”

Beckett stepped back from the bed and crossed his arms. Sheppard took the opportunity to swing his legs back and forth like a kid.

“Probably tense muscles. Take a couple of hours off. Get some exercise. Go hit Teyla with some sticks. If it hasn’t shifted in a couple of hours come back and the nurse will give you a muscle relaxant.”

“And you?” Sheppard persisted.

Beckett rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll go for a walk.”

Sheppard hopped off the bed. “You know, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to learn some self-defence.”

“Get a way with you, lad.”

“I’m serious, Doc.” And he was. “Given the situations that we get in, learning some down and dirty self-defence techniques could save your life.”

“Son, I was a hooker throughout college and university. I know how to take a man down.”

Sheppard knew that his mouth had fell open as he processed that obviously innocent little statement from Beckett’s point of view. He started to say something, paused, knew he was gaping. He smiled a crazy smile and finally said, “It guess that’s a position. No, no, no – that’s a bad choice of words. That’s a soccer term, or something?”

“Rugby not football.”

“Right,” Sheppard drawled. “Word of advice, Doc: don’t tell anyone else that.”

The faintest of blushes touched Beckett’s cheeks. “Aye, probably sensible.”

“Seriously, Doc. You’ve got the physical strength; moving patients about can’t be easy. But, you know, I’m going to make this an order. You go off world. You need some hand-to-hand training.”

Beckett peered up at him under thick eyebrows. “When, Colonel?”

“You’ve took me off duty for a couple of hours. As the designated Military leader of Atlantis I’m saying now, at this time, today. Two hours in the gym.”

“I don’t know about this,” Beckett said worriedly.

“It’s a good idea. Tell your staff.” Sheppard executed a little shimmy to the left and then to the right. This could actually be fun.

~*~

“I’m done.” Beckett looked at the ceiling once again. His headache had been beaten into submission by the padded mat.

Sheppard leaned over, hands resting on his thighs and grinned down at him. “We haven’t even started.”

A healthy sheen of perspiration covered the colonel. Carson was sure he was a bit grey and pasty.

“You’re doing fine, Doc.”

“Do you make Rodney do this?”

“Yep. He’s not very good at it. Thinks too much, like you. He doesn’t get into the Zen of the moment.” Sheppard hauled him to his feet.

“Nooooo.”

“Let’s try it again.” Sheppard shifted his feet until shoulder width apart. He balanced on the balls of his feet. “Your centre of balance is in your gut.”

“Ileum or—”

“Doc.”

Beckett smiled at the chastisement. “Sorry, I’m listening.”

Sheppard poked his own gut just below his navel. “A woman’s centre of gravity is situated around her womb. A man’s is a little higher. When you throw a body you need to be aware of the distribution of mass. If you try and pull me from my shoulders, I’m not going anywhere unless you’re Conan the Barbarian.”

“Aye. Seems logical.”

Sheppard wiggled his fingers enticingly. “Try it.”

Gingerly, Beckett gripped Sheppard’s shoulders and gave a half hearted yank. “I see.”

“But if I.”

Beckett winced as Sheppard stepped closer, leaned his hip into his side and pivoted. The world flew around him and realigned with the ceiling where the walls had previously been.

“You’re what twenty-thirty pounds heavier than me?” Sheppard grinned.

“Don’t rub it in, son, ‘cause I’m doing your next medical.”

Sheppard hauled him to his feet. “You saw what I did. You try it.”

Biting his bottom lip in concentration, Beckett carefully placed his foot between Shepard’s, swung his hip up against Sheppard’s providing the fulcrum which he levered the soldier’s body over. Sheppard sailed ever so satisfyingly head over heels to land flat on the floor.

“Good one, Doc.” Sheppard bounced to his feet. “Try it again.”

Beckett could learn to like this.

~*~

Beckett’s ear piece chirruped. Both men stopped dead and looked at it on the bench against the far wall.

A tiny voice said, “Dr. Beckett, to the infirmary, please.”

“Sorry, Major.” Beckett picked himself up off the floor and ran from the room. Sheppard collected their bags, wrapped a towel around his neck and set off after the man.

Beckett turned a few heads as he ran past, barefooted in baggy black shorts and old, soft-washed white rugby top.

Beckett had already pulled on a white coat and was checking over his first patient by the time Sheppard reached the infirmary. The man could shift with enough incentive. Medical bedlam reigned. There were at least fifteen sopping wet casualties coughing into buckets or curled up in balls around oxygen masks.

“I need some information,” Beckett bellowed.

“Containment leak in the chemistry labs. Aerosol inhalation of chlorine gas,” a marine supporting a coughing scientist supplied

“Concentration?” Beckett rapped out.

“52ppm,” McKay supplied from the doorway. Sheppard started having missing his arrival.

“How long?” Beckett focussed a scarily intense gaze on the astrophysicist.

“Short term. The room was contaminated by a leaking pipe and then Atlantis initiated emergency responses. Air extraction took place and water ducts opened to shower the inhabitants. Kay and Tremayne were closest to the source.”

Beckett cocked his head to the side, looking as if he were reading from a text book. “Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve been exposed to a chemical at levels which will make you feel uncomfortable but will not cause permanent damage. Medical staff will help you providing oxygen where necessary and saline eye washes.”

“Doc?” Sheppard called. “You need extra help?”

Carson had already counted heads and hands. “No.”

The dismissal was obvious and Sheppard didn’t take it personally. He withdrew pulling McKay with him.

“Were you there?” Sheppard asked.

McKay only spared him a fragment of his attention as he pulled up schematics on his data tablet. “No. I helped with the aftermath.”

“How?”

“Got the door open. Helped the walking wounded to the infirmary,” McKay said absently, fingers clicking against the LCD screen. “Perhaps, I should become a repair man, it’s seems as if Atlantis is falling down around our ears. Hah.”

Sheppard craned his head to look at the screen, but upside down it was all gobbledegook.

“We have system phase modulation errors cropping up in the system,” McKay grumbled. “I suspect that it relates to our interfaces with ancient power conduits. We have created some fairly sophisticated calculations to allow our naquada generated power to align efficiently with the Ancients’ system. It’s an energy transformation problem. We’re probably looking at a maladjusted link which is setting up a cascade error. A little often over time.” McKay shook his head. “It shouldn’t be happening. The Ancient redundancies should counteract the problem. It’s very random.”

“Can it be fixed?”

“Hmm, Chair Room.” McKay flicked a glance at him and screwed up his nose. “You’re very sweaty. Go away. Shower. I have work to do.”

It was proving to be a pretty typical day in Atlantis.

~*~

“You look tired,” McKay observed as Beckett approached their preferred table in the commissary.

“Knackered more like.” Beckett dropped his tray on the table and plopped down on a seat. Every molecule of his bearing screamed tired.

“What’s up?” McKay twirled his finger in the air. “There’s been no emergency.”

“Remember the chlorine incident?”

“That was minor, wasn’t it? Bit of saline. Some O₂.”

“Essentially yes,” Beckett said. “But Lieutenant Hillier took a fall and sustained a serious fracture to his hip and pelvis. There was an outbreak of food poisoning--”

McKay spat out his mouthful of tofu burger.

Beckett continued without pausing, “From an incident where a couple of environmental scientists stored their chocolate in a biohazard refrigerator. Idiots.”

McKay retrieved his piece of burger and popped it back in his mouth.

“Now, that is disgusting, Rodney.”

“Well,” McKay mumbled, “it actually tastes okay. Why waste it?”

Beckett stirred his tea, absently watching the eddies. McKay took the silence. Beckett finally sipped on his tea, settling back in the uncomfortable plastic chair and finding comfort. The inhabitants of Atlantis moved around them, selecting food, finding tables, eating as they read or chatted with their friends and colleagues.

Sheppard appeared, edging along the bank of heated catering trays. Food chosen, he meandered between the rank and file of tables to where they were sitting.

“Hey,” he greeted and then sat.

“Sheppard.”

“Major,” Beckett said and eyed the contents of the tray. “Is that all that you’re having?”

Sheppard hummed introspectively. “Yes,” he finally drawled.

“Did you have breakfast?”

“I always have breakfast, mom.” Sheppard dug into his evening meal bowl of cereal.

Beckett quirked a tiny smile. “That doesn’t constitute a real meal, especially after the type of days that you have.”

“I’m not hungry. It was a paperwork day. I wasn’t running away from T-Rexes or Wraith. I’ve been sitting working, apart from this morning when we sparred for a couple of hours.” His discontent at spending a day in front of a laptop, report writing was evident.

“It’s nice that it’s been quiet,” Weir volunteered as she sat.

“Oh, no.” McKay thudded his head on the tabletop. “Now you’ve done it.”

“I never took you as being superstitious,” she said.

“Ha. I don’t believe in fate and I don’t believe in karma. But that’s just asking for it.”

Sheppard laughed lowly. “That’s a contradiction.”

McKay shrugged, deciding not to get into that coffee table discussion. They needed a late night, alcohol and preferably an impending Wraith attack to dissect religion and mysticism and logic. McKay eyed his table mates. Actually as a group, Carson, Weir and Sheppard were probably intelligent enough that they could have a discussion without too much emotionalism. Although Carson might get a little overwrought.

“What?” Sheppard probed as McKay cogitated.

“Hmmm?” McKay pondered on the fact that he was actually considering chewing over that hoary old chestnut with people in a casual setting.

“McKay?” Sheppard tried again.

“I just remembered that I need to check the phase invariance on the final naquada generator.” He stuffed the final mouthful of burger in his mouth and scooped up his banana and Athosian punt cake for dessert.

“Do you want some company, McKay?”

“No. Finish your cereal.” McKay stood. “Carson, Elizabeth.”

“Rodney.”

Mouth full, Elizabeth simply nodded.

Pocketing his supplies, McKay beat a hasty retreat. He really did need to check the naquada generator on the fifth pier.

Radek peeked up from his behind his laptop screen as Rodney barrelled into their lab.

“McKay,” he acknowledged.

“I’m going over to the fifth pier.” He grabbed his laptop, control screen and the required interface cables.

“Is the naquada generator on the north east pier causing a problem?” Radek called up the power schematics on his computer.

“So Dopy--”

“Dopiachsky,” Radek corrected.

“--says. The idiot said that the reactor’s acting up. There’s nothing wrong with the generator since I configured it myself. It’s probably the interface with the city’s power conduits. Dopyshy must had misaligned the power modulation when he reintegrated it into the system. It could be causing the error I’m picking up.”

Radek closed his own laptop and stood. “There is nothing wrong with the interface.”

“Yes. Yes, Yes. But no. There’s a 0.00002% shift which I can’t account for.”

“Yes, we will check.”

“I don’t need--”

“Any help. I know. But I will come. I need to stretch my legs. And I wish to show that the interface is working correctly,” Radek said.

“It could be the interface.”

“It is not the interface. I designed the interface with the Ancient technology.”

“And I helped design the mark two reactor,” McKay said pompously.

Both scientists smiled.

“So Dopy’s obviously mucked up our brilliance.”

Radek smiled impishly. “We shall check.”

~*~

“The Naquada generator is not malfunctioning,” Radek said.

“Your interface is okay,” McKay returned.

“Have you thought of--”

“Yes, yes. We have checked each others’ work. The fault isn’t here.”

Zeleneka rubbed his chin as he pondered the problem.

“Generator.” McKay pointed. “Cable. Transformer. Interface. Ancient power pathways.”

“The generator is working,” Zelenka said.

“So is the interface-transformer.”

“Cable.” Zelenka moved to the scroll work panelling protecting the power conduits. “Or the pathways.”

“Which one do you want?” McKay asked.

“I am here.” Zelenka prised of the decorative façade revealing the light flexes entwined around crystal matrixes.

McKay crouched by the heavy duty black cabling. “You do realise that this is a profound waste of my valuable time. Checking cabling.”

Zelenka hummed under his breath, ignoring him.

McKay tapped is earpiece. “Operations tower?”

“Heaton, here.”

“McKay. I’m powering down the naquada generator at north east pier for three minutes.”

“Acknowledged. I’ll…”

“Protz--!” Arch of lightning, searing crack and Zelenka was flung straight across the room. He slammed into a supporting pillar and dropped.

“Radek!”

McKay grabbed the arrow piece on the central column of the Naquada generator, yanked it up, turned it ninety degrees and slammed it down in the off position. Without pause, he clambered over the generator taking the shortest route to the engineer. Slapping his ear piece, he dropped on his knees by Radek’s prone form. The Czech engineer’s head was twisted to the side at a scary angle.

“I need a medical team to the generator room in the north east pier! Carson, I need you.”

Radek was floppy like a dead thing. McKay didn’t want to touch him.

“Rodney, what’s the problem?” Carson responded immediately.

“It’s not me. It’s Radek.” McKay heaved a terrified breath. “I think he’s dead.”

Carson’s voice was calm. “A medical team is on the way. What happened?”

“Radek was shocked. He was thrown across the room.”

“Is he breathing?”

“I don’t know,” McKay wailed. “The resus-dummies you made us practice on were always face up.”

“Rodney, you should be able to tell if he’s breathing.”

McKay dropped to his stomach and brought his ear as close to possible to Radek’s mouth. A whisper of a warm breath brushed his ear.

“He’s breathing,” McKay reported.

“Excellent. We’re almost with you.” Carson’s tone was still calm and level, although now it was interspersed with the huff of exertion. “Check his pulse. Place your hand on his wrist. You’ve done it before in training.”

“Yes. Yes.” Fumbling, Rodney felt the inside of Radek’s wrist. “Carson, I can’t find anything.”

“Calm down, Rodney. Try his throat. But try not to move him.”

The skin at Radek’s throat was cool and damp with the faintest prickle of bristles. “I got it. No, I don’t.”

“Calm, Rodney.”

Carefully, Rodney flattened his hand so he could rest fingers and palm along the whole side of Radek’s throat.

“Carson!”

“I’m here.” Beckett barrelled into the room, lugging a large orange box. McKay thanked the deities that he didn’t believe in for the invention of the transporter systems. The transporter door behind Beckett closed and then re-opened disgorging the rest of Beckett’s team.

Rodney rolled way with a relieved sigh, folding up against the wall. One of the medics moved to his side. He pushed her away.

“There’s nothing wrong with me. I was helping Radek.”

Carson leaned over the unconscious engineer, his hand was under Radek’s t-shirt holding a stethoscope in place.

“I have a beat.” But he sounded concerned. “Rodney, how far was he thrown?”

Silently, Rodney pointed to the open panel on the other side of the room.

“We’ll need the back brace,” Carson directed.

A white shirted medic unfurled the portable unit.

“I don’t know what happened.” McKay finally found his feet. Hand on the wall, he stood. The network of crystals were intact except for one in the middle of the central column which was charred. “That shouldn’t have happened.”

A clatter heralded the entry of the rest of the med team with the transport gurney. McKay turned away from the conduit. Carson had Radek trussed up in a network of black fabric straps and Velcro strips.

“Right on my mark. Turn. Mark.”

All hands moved to turn the engineer onto his back.

The gurney was placed alongside Radek’s body.

“One, two, three.” Carson directed.

As one they moved and smoothly lifted Radek onto the gurney. The transport was ratcheted up to waist height and in a blink the team was out the door leaving medical debris in their wake.

McKay bent down and picked up a plastic cap from a used syringe. He held it up, contemplating the efficiency of the design and then let it drop.

Mechanically, he tapped his ear comm.. “This is McKay. I want Passat and Bourbon here ASAP. And initiate a system wide shut down of all non-essential accesses to the power grid. And when I say non-essential I mean non-essential – that means only leave the infirmary, containment fields and the deep space sensors. That doesn’t include Kavanaugh’s PCD study.”

“Yes, sir.”

McKay sighed heavily. “Keep me informed of Radek’s condition.”

Hair flying, Sheppard appeared in the power room. He skidded to a halt, sliding on the shiny floor. His usually pale skin was flushed with exertion.

“You okay?”

“Yes.” McKay said shortly.

“McKay?” Sheppard asked, concerned.

“Radek took a belt. It threw him across the room. Carson got him to the infirmary.”

“Why are you still here?”

McKay snatched up his laptop from the floor and jabbed at the on button. “I don’t know why it happened. I have to find out before it happens to someone else.”

Blue light from the screen played over his taut features.

~*~

Beckett slowly walked out of the infirmary to the corridor which had become the designated waiting area when the doctor did not let concerned friends and colleagues into the infirmary proper.

“Carson?” Rodney erupted to his feet.

“He’s going to be fine,” Carson said without preamble. “Significant concussion which will keep him off work for a few week or so, first degree burns to his right hand and feet. He cracked his shoulder blade when he hit the pillar.”

McKay heaved out a sigh. “A couple of weeks?”

“Yes,” Beckett reiterated. “A couple of weeks.”

“Dumb Czech, don’t know what he did.”

Beckett rested a warm hand on his shoulder. “Would you like to sit with him for a wee bit?”

“When’s he going to wake up?”

“Properly wake up – sometime tomorrow morning, more than likely. But he’ll be in and out. We’ll be monitoring him closely. Keeping an eye on his concussion.”

“Okay.” McKay scooped up his laptop. “Do you think that he’ll be able to answer any questions?”

“Questions, laddy? He’s just sustained a serious concussion.”

“I haven’t been able to figure out what happened.” McKay grimaced at the laptop. “The central crystal matrix plate in the middle column blew. If it was a power overload sufficient to throw a body across the room the whole series should have blanked out. The crystal might be flawed. I’ve got crystallography doing a spectrophometric analysis.”

“He’s not going to be answering any questions, but you can sit with him.”

“Okay.” McKay shuffled into the infirmary.

~*~

Carson trudged tiredly down the corridor, his thoughts on a hot, hot shower before falling into bed. He did not need to consult his SGA-issued, big-faced watch to know that it was three o’clock in the morning. Ah, but since they were military and scientific staff perhaps he should call it zero three hundred hours. Whatever, he was so tired that his skin was crawling and he was rambling in his own head.

Radek was fine and in the care of his professional staff. Rodney had been turfed, reluctantly, from the infirmary around midnight.

On autopilot, Carson turned down a darkened corridor. He was halfway down the gloom when the oddness stopped him dead. Corridors didn’t stay dark for him – Atlantis usually illuminated his way.

“Hello?” Carson squinted to pierce the darkness, memories of the energy-devouring entity rising. Atlantis was still bloody creepy at night.

‘Lights,’ Carson structured the thought into a solid resonance. ‘Please.’

The lights immediately flared, warm, amber and welcoming, surrounding him in an oasis of safety. Carson took a step and the lights directly ahead of him awoke. The ones just behind ebbed and died. Carson took another step. The light ahead flared into life those behind flicked off.

“Happy joy,” Carson mumbled.

Each step was dogged by darkness and guided by light.

“Uhm, control?” Carson flicked his ear piece. “Uhm, you having problems with the lights?”

“Dr. Beckett? Where are you?”

“I’m on my way to my room.”

“Dr. McKay requested a power down while he ran some checks.”

“Is he still up? I sent him to bed.”

“I don’t have that information.” The voice said immediately. “He’s not here, sir.”

“Yeah right…” Carson said slowly and took another light filled step. The darkness around him was impenetrable.

“Are you all right, Dr. Beckett?”

He swallowed, hard. “Yeah, fine. Just tired. Going to bed.”

Carson slid a foot forward. The light kept with him. He wanted to pick up the pace but he didn’t want to get ahead of the lights.

“It’s just my imagination,” he muttered under his breath. “Imagination.”

A flare of bubbles in a water column almost made him jump out of his skin.

~*~

“Imagination!” Unable to help himself, Beckett scurried forward. The lights kept pace, keeping him cocooned. Sweating, he slammed into his door. It opened as he reached up to the door panel, anticipating his request. He fell into his room and all the lights flared on. Stumbling down to hands and knees, he heaved in an anxious breath. The door behind him slammed shut.

“Jesus Christ.” He twisted on to his bottom. “I need a holiday.”

The omnipresent feeling of terror faded now that he was in the warm confines of his familiar quarters. ‘A little bit of darkness and you’re a complete and utter baby,’ he chastised himself. Luckily, the city itself had lit his way. Sometimes it paid to have the ATA gene.

He pointed at the door. “Lock.”

The click was audible and immensely satisfying.

Sighing heavily, he stood. For the longest time he simply stood staring at the closed door. Then tiredness and discomfort rose. Grimacing, he peeled off his ear mike and dropped it on his bedside table. Boots came next and then he stripped. He cast his clothes in the plastic crate – his laundry box – in the corner and staggered into his en suite bathroom. There were some privileges of rank.

The water was deliciously warm as it cascaded over his head. He stood for a lifetime, just allowing the warmth to ease the tension.

“What a day.” He rested his head against the cool, metallic glasswork and then found the energy to grab his shower gel and soap up.

In his bedroom the ear mike chirruped. He let it ring, half meditating to the cadence as he allowed the hot water to wash away the soap, leaving him so wonderfully clean and comfortable.

The chirruping became repetitive and annoying as he rinsed the soap residue from his feet. Belatedly, he realised that for all intents and purposes he had been sleeping standing up and had ignored a possibly important call. Swathing himself in towels he staggered to the mike.

“Beckett?”

“It’s Rodney, Hanson said that you were having problems with the power?”

“Rodney, I sent you to bed.”

“Well, funnily enough, I’m an adult and I go to bed when I want to.”

“Radek’s going to fine, Rodney.”

“I know that. The power problem?”

“The lights in the corridor leading to my room were playing up.”

“Playing up?”

Carson dropped sideways onto his bed, his head thumping on the pillow. He yawned widely.

“Carson?” Rodney prompted.

“They only initialised around me.”

“But they came on?”

“Yeah,” Carson mumbled sleepily.

“Okay,” Rodney said introspectively.

Carson listened to him cogitate. He couldn’t find the energy to get up and get dried.

“You still there, Carson?”

The towels were toasty and his body was turning into warm lead. As Rodney talked, he felt himself inevitably drifting off. His final thought was since he hadn’t dried his hair, he was going to be vying with Colonel Sheppard for the daftest hair style in the morning.

~*~

“I’m not going,” McKay announced loudly as he stomped into Sheppard’s quarters.

Sheppard looking up from lacing his boots. “Is Radek okay?”

“No, he’s sustained a significant concussion and fractured his shoulder. Weren’t you at the briefing?”

Sheppard took a moment to concentrate on the loop and twist of the intricacies of lacing. He could have sworn that he locked his door, with an extra-special Atlantis request. Talking to Rodney was so difficult at times.

“So why aren’t you coming on the mission?”

“Because I haven’t figured out the problem yet. I’m not leaving Atlantis,” Rodney underscored his words by executing a fairly good parade turn on his heel and stalking out of the room. He called over his shoulder, “It’s a boring meet and greet wandering around a market – take someone who likes shopping.”

Sheppard grabbed his BDU vest and shrugged into it. McKay was right, but the team that worked together and played together should also go on boring missions together. McKay should be going with them.

Sheppard reran through the mission spec as he ghosted through the armoury and picked up his P90 and a couple of extra clips of ammunition.

Teyla and Ronon were waiting in the embarkation platform by the Stargate. Sheppard gave them a ‘wait a minute’ wave and jogged to the stairs to the Elizabeth’s office. As he crossed through the operations tower balcony, he spotted a familiar pair of legs poking out from the bowels of a unit. Sheppard accidentally on purpose clipped McKay’s kickers.

“Oi! Man working” McKay bawled.

Sheppard bounced into Elizabeth’s office. “McKay’s begging off this run ‘cause he wants to check something out here. I’d be happier if we had a geek to assess any finds.”

“You could take Kavanaugh,” Elizabeth said.

”No, seriously.”

“De Santis? He’s cool, calm and collected.”

“Really?” Sheppard shook his head. “That would be… refreshing.”

Elizabeth smiled, her lips moving a mere fraction. “I’m sure De Santis would jump – a very little jump – at the chance to go off world.”

“Well, he’s got five minutes to kit up and join us in the embarkation platform.” Sheppard jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m going to bug McKay for five minutes.”

“I’ll just have a quick word with De Santis before he joins you.”

Sheppard quirked an eyebrow at her words. He left her to contact the geek.

“Hey, McKay, find anything?” Sheppard poked him with his toe.

The scientist sighed. “You are such a child.”

“Do you think that the 0.00002% modulation error is responsible for Zelenka’s injury?”

McKay shuffled out from under the booth. “No. A flawed crystal matrix was responsible.”

Sheppard crouched down on his haunches. “And that wasn’t spotted when the reactor was interfaced with the Ancient power conduits?”

McKay pursed thin lips. “No. I don’t know how I missed it. Maybe it was a tiny flaw. Likely a resultant mis-resonance accelerated the decay in the crystal structure.”

“Ah.”

“What do you mean ‘Ah’?” McKay sat up. “This isn’t about guilt. This about the fact that we have a problem. This place is ancient – funnily enough – and systems inevitably breakdown….”

“McKay, you’re gonna have a stroke if you carry on this way.”

“This is the way that I am. People let little things go until they become big things. Things that go boom. This is a boom situation. We’re now at 0.000034. Go away do the math. Tell me when we’ll be at 1%.”

“85, 714 hours and 29 minutes,” Sheppard responded immediately.

“Very good. Now go away.”

Fondly shaking his head, Sheppard stood. There was only one McKay. Thank god. “You do realise that is 9.8 years.”

“Yes.”

“Suit up. You’re coming on the mission.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re coming on the mission because this hardly constitutes an emergency. You don’t get off because you’re allergic to shopping.”

McKay glowered.

Sheppard was resolute. He rested his hands on the butt of his P90 and smiled. McKay watched him from his supine position, reading his intent. Sheppard’s decision was made: McKay didn’t get to pick and chose his missions. Well, to be frank he did but this hardly constituted a good excuse to duck out of a mission.

McKay suddenly hissed out a frustrated sigh. “Okay. But don’t blame me if it’s jumped up to 0.00007 when we return in six hours.”

“It will be at 0.00007 in six hours, McKay. Get dressed. You’ve got two minutes.” Sheppard jogged down the stairs to the embarkation platform. De Santis was there, a gleam of excitement flared in his brown eyes. “Sorry, De Santis, McKay’s coming.”

“Typical!” The man stormed kyboshing Elizabeth’s character reference.

“So Dr. McKay will be joining us,” Teyla said.

Sheppard grinned.

De Santis drew in a meditative breath. “Colonel Sheppard, in the interests of ensuring that the scientific community gets experience in working with the military, rather then just during emergency situations, it might be an idea for you schedule our inclusion in some offworld missions in the future.” With a calm nod, the scientist strode off the platform.

De Santis met a red-faced McKay hauling his BDU vest and backpack. McKay came to a stuttering halt before the taller scientist. They made an interesting contrast: calm-collected, slim, tall, dark Mediterranean and shorter, pudgier, hyper, pale North American.

“De Santis.” McKay nodded. “Next time.”

“Sure, McKay,” the man said easily.

“Rodney, why aren’t you wearing your fatigues?” Sheppard called out.

“You only gave me two minutes!”

“Dr. McKay?” A voice called from the operations tower balcony across from the platform. The scientist who had replaced Grodin poked his head over the top of the DHD.

“Yes--” McKay clicked his fingers. “What’s your name again?”

“Sir, you asked me to monitor your phase modulation errors while you were offworld?”

“Yes. Yes. Get on with it.”

“Sir, it’s jumped to 0.009.”

McKay slid a speaking glance in Sheppard’s direction. And Sheppard watched as he metaphorically dug his heels in.

“Go on.” Sheppard jerked his chin in the direction of the control balcony. McKay was away before he finished speaking. “De Santis, you get to come.”

”Excellent.” De Santis smiled.

The team stepped to the side as Grodin’s replacement dialled up the Stargate address. Sheppard admired the whoosh. He doubted that it would ever get old. Once it stabilised, Teyla and Ronon entered the wormhole. De Santis raised his chin high and face cut in stone strode forward. Sheppard turned around to nod to Elizabeth on her balcony above. She craned her head regally.

Of McKay there was no sign.

Sheppard stepped through the event horizon.

~*~

Beckett increased the flow of the saline through Radek’s IV fractionally. He had yet to keep anything in his stomach and Beckett didn’t want the scientist to get dehydrated. The man had a significant grade 3 concussion but the CAT scan showed no evidence of bleeds, and the longer he went without showing any complications the less probable it was that they would occur.

He picked Radek’s chart and made a note of his observations and the increased saline output. Radek opened his eyes and looked at him without really seeing.

“Hello, Radek,” Beckett said softly.

The Czech swallowed harshly which had the doctor reaching for the emesis basin, but the contents of his stomach remained in place. Not that he had much left to regurgitate.

“Cars--”

“Yes, Radek.” Beckett leaned over his patient to check his pupil response. As he shone his pen light in his eyes, Radek twisted away from the brightness. The pupils responded. “You’re doing fine, son. You’ll be up and about in no time.”

The words out of Radek’s mouth were unpronounceable and probably very offensive.

“Radek, how old are you?”

The engineer ignored the question.

“Radek, how old are you?” Beckett persisted.

“Forty,” he finally said.

“Good lad.” Beckett patted his shoulder.

Radek closed his eyes and eased back into sleep. Beckett padded softly across the infirmary. Lieutenant Hillier, racked up in traction, looked up from his comic book as he passed. Automatically, Beckett catalogued the young Lieutenant’s readouts and everything was on an even keel.

There was a skyscraper of paperwork to catch up on. Foolishly, he had assumed that being in a whole other galaxy that mundane paperwork would become a thing of the past. And now since the Dadaelus made regular supply runs they were a necessity instead of a thing that you did sometimes… when you had time in between emergencies… or felt the urge to review working practices. Beckett made himself a cup of milky tea and then settled down to summarise the previous fortnight’s medical activities in a format suitable for the SGC archives.

He was bogged down in the minutiae of the first day of what he was inwardly calling hell week when his ear piece chirruped. “Beckett.”

“Carson,” Rodney said. “You want a break for coffee?”

“Oh, yes, indeed.” Beckett stretched until his back and shoulders cracked satisfyingly.

“Commissary in three minutes?”

“Yes.” You had to love the man, he was so precise. Beckett saved his work and closed his laptop. A little break would be good since his headache was back from staring at the bright laptop screen.

His head nurse was checking Radek when he made his way through the infirmary.

“Love, I’m just stepping out for twenty minutes to get a coffee. Do you want anything brought back?”

“I’ll have one of those fruit pastries if there’s any left.” Nurse Andaman smacked her lips in anticipation.

“I’ll even fight Rodney for the last one.”

She laughed a deliciously robust laugh. “You’re too good to us, Dr. Beckett.”

Marines greeted him by name as he sauntered his way to the commissary, deliberately taking his time so as to annoy his friend.

McKay was filling up his tray with an assortment of snacks. Beckett reached over him and snagged the promised fruit pastry.

“What took you so long?”

“Are any of them for me?” Beckett pointed at the full tray.

“The cheese sandwich and the tea, made to your exacting specifications by our dedicated kitchen staff.”

“Good. Good. Good. I’ll grab our table.”

~*~

Beckett leaned back in his chair and patted his satisfied stomach. That cheese sandwich had just hit the spot.

“How’s Radek?” McKay asked as if he hadn’t been thinking about him throughout their second breakfast.

“He’s fine, Rodney.”

“What do you make of this?” McKay said inelegantly changing the subject. Theatrically, he produced a thin, white plate -- it was approximately five centimetres by two. He deposited the wafer in front of Beckett, who eyed it suspiciously for a moment.

“Carson?” Rodney grinned. Teasing humour flared in his eyes.

“Idiot, it’s one of those new Ipod thingies. I saw you pouring over all the new hardware when we were at the SGC. What were you going to do when I failed to actualise it?”

“I’m amazed that you even recognised it.” He pulled a silvery sphere from his pocket which bore unmistakable scroll work around its circumference. McKay rolled it across the table so it would deliberately fetch up against Beckett’s fingers.

Beckett felt the unmistakable energizing jolt of Ancient technology as it touched him. He yanked his hand back as the hemispheres separated with an audible click, revealing an identical but smaller sphere within.

“Rodney!”

“It’s okay, it’s just a series of spheres like one of those Russian dolls. I was just conducting an experiment.”

“An experiment,” Beckett said darkly. “You know I don’t like this stuff, Rodney.”

“Yes,” McKay said ignoring his complaints. “But I was observing you when you were sitting in the Chair during the siege.”

“And?” Beckett stroked the ball and revealed the next level.

“It initialised the second you sat in it when it mattered. Either the environment is making you express your gene more or you getting better at manipulating the gene technology.”

“You can so tell that you’re a physicist. ‘Express my gene more’,” Beckett quoted.

“Isn’t that how it works? You can have a gene but it doesn’t necessarily express until it’s triggered. I would have thought that being in Atlantis would trigger it.”

“You are correct that some genes can initialise in that manner, Rodney. The ATA gene, however, is permanently switched on if you have it.”

“So why is John better at it?”

“The visualisation component, I would guess.” Without touching, Beckett mentally instructed the sphere to open. All the layers unfurled like a bud.

“It didn’t do that before.” McKay leaned over to study. “It doesn’t seem to serve any purpose other than

decorative.”

“A container?” Beckett hazarded. “You could put a ring or jewel in the centre sphere.”

“A gift box?”

“Why not? Maybe it has religious significance?”

McKay poo-pooed. “I find it impossible to believe that the Ancients were so gullible as to believe in higher powers.”

“Given that they were ‘higher powers’ to the Athosians and other cultures it would be an interesting conversation,” Beckett mused. “They’re fully capable of pretending to be ‘higher powers’.”

Rodney lined up the twenty six delicately wrought spheres across the table. “Close them.”

“Why don’t you do it?”

Rodney pulled out a scanner. “I want to get some readings.”

‘Close,’ Beckett thought, picturing all the balls simultaneously closing. They all snapped together and whole they began to roll off the table every which way.

“Whoops.” There were too many for two people to corral as they scattered. The tiny Japanese scientist, whose name Rodney could never remember, went down slapping the floor as she stepped on a sphere.

“Think them open,” Rodney directed.

For once Beckett was ahead of him. His hand outstretched, he commanded the balls to open. All clicked open coming to abrupt halts on the tiled floor. Many people joined McKay in picking them up. Beckett helped Miko to her feet.

“Are you okay, Love?”

“I am fine, Dr. Beckett. I know jujitsu; I know how to fall.”

McKay had pulled out his t-shirt and had each of the concentric balls held in the pouch. “Come back to the lab and help me put them back together.”

Having made sure that Miko was fine and was walking without any evidence of pain or injury, Beckett collected Nurse Andaman’s fruit pastry from their table.

“I’m afraid I can’t be joining you, Rodney. I need to get back to the infirmary. How come you didn’t open them?”

“Oh, I just wanted to see if you could,” Rodney said offhandedly. “I’ll walk with you.”

“Dr. McKay. Dr. McKay?” A young woman, dark eyed and dark haired and biting her bottom lip in determined resolution, came up to them.

“Yeah, uhm, Furhar?” McKay guessed.

“Nadine Furmenty, Dr. McKay. I work with you in the astrophysics lab.”

“Yeah. Yeah, what is it?”

“I was calibrating Dr. Zelenka’s deep space sensors,” she began.

“They’re not Dr. Zelenka’s deep space sensors,” McKay said authoritatively.

She waved narrow hands nervously dismissing his words. “I would you like you to confirm something that I’ve discovered.”

“What?” McKay snapped.

“I’d prefer not to say. I’d like you to check it out.” Her teeth rasped over her bottom lip worrying a fragment of skin.

“And why isn’t this a complete waste of my time?”

“Rodney, give the young lady a break,” Beckett said. It had obviously taken a great degree of courage, on the young woman’s part, to approach the abrasive Dr. McKay.

“I attempted to select competent staff,” McKay said down his nose.

“Oh right. Like you don’t check everyone’s work without needing it,” Beckett pointed out. “This young lady is asking for a second opinion it’s hardly an unusual request in the scientific community.”

McKay caved. “Okay, Dr. Furmenty, lead on.”

Head scrunched down, the short astrophysicist strode ahead of them. The men followed at their own pace. Beckett shook his head. McKay’s way of managing his staff seemed to work, but sparing the rod might engender a little more fellowship. Then again there might be a collective shocked fit if McKay was nice for the sake of niceness.

“Rodney…” Beckett began.

“Eden, hold the transporter,” Furmenty called and darted ahead to step between the closing doors to halt them.

Eden caught himself, hand hesitating over the map touch panel. He turned and smiled down at the younger woman.

“Hey, Nadine,” Eden said affectionately.

And the doors closed tight on Furmenty’s body.

Energy, faint and fragmentary strobed within the confines of the booth.

“Halt the sequence!” McKay yelled.

Inside the transporter the process was instantaneous and there was no physical manifestation of energy which moved the traveller hither and yon throughout Atlantis. The energy flare screamed of system failure.

Furmenty shrieked as the matter transporter sheared away her right leg, hip and sliced away half her torso and arm.

“Oh, my god!” Carson whispered.

The doors retracted, releasing their grisly load.

Carson darted forwards and caught the mortally wounded scientist. Viscera and blood gushed from her body. The sheared edges of the cradle of her ribs held a bisected lung and the lobes of her liver. Blood soaked Beckett.

Nadine turned her head.

“Peace, Love.” Beckett gently cradled her neck as he lowered her to the floor. She found a tiny smile for him and then between one breath and the next – died.

“Oh. My. God.” McKay had not moved an inch. His pale skin was pasty with shock and his eyes impossibly blue.

Beckett brought a bloody hand to his ear mike and triggered it. “Carson, here. I need a med team to the transporter outside the commissary. Oh--” he swallowed hard, “--Control, Control?”

“Operations, shut down all the transporters now!” Rodney screamed into his own comm.. “I repeat: shut down all the transporters now.”

Attracted by the uproar, a marine exited the commissary with a couple of scientists. Someone screamed. Rodney stepped back from the growing pool of blood.

“Carson?” he said softly, a question in his voice.

“Go, Rodney. I’ll take care of Nadine. You need to ensure that this doesn’t happen to anyone else.” He turned her onto the side so the massive injury was face down. She looked as if she had merged with the floor tiles.

Rodney nodded once. His eyes were large. He turned and ran as fast as he could.

~*~

The mood around the meeting room table was, perforce, sombre. Rodney was jiggling from foot to foot, wanting – needing – to be elsewhere, to track down, identify and eradicate the problem. Beckett, his hair still damp from his shower, sat quietly regarding his folded hands resting on the table. Elizabeth maintained her persistent air of cool diplomacy.

“Rodney, what happened?”

“The transporter sheared Furmenty in two,” the astrophysicist said succinctly. “Can I go now?”

“What are your recommendations?” Elizabeth continued calmly.

“Don’t use the transporters.” McKay rolled his eyes heavenward. “I’ve initiated a system shutdown.”

“Does this have anything to do with the phase modulation errors that you’ve been picking up?”

“It’s entirely possible.” McKay crossed his arms tight against his chest. “But that is conjecture at this point. Doctors Mackie and Del Toro are stripping down the transporter. Safety protocols should have stopped it initialising.”

“It seemed malicious,” Beckett offered.

“It was an accident, Carson,” McKay said. “A tragic accident, but an accident.”

Beckett finally raised his gaze from the table top. “The lass was fairly focussed on getting you to look at her findings. She seemed concerned.”

“Sabotage?” Elizabeth asked.

McKay scratched the tiny mole on his jowl as he cogitated. “It would require a knowledge of the Atlantean systems that we don’t have. I doubt anyone in the galaxy would be able to hack in and manipulate the transporters to that degree. They would have to know that Furmenty was in that transporter which would require surveillance.”

“The Wraith virus which almost took over the Daedelus was capable of premeditative action,” Elizabeth pointed out.

“I’ll get Kavanaugh and Miller to figure out what Furmenty was on to. When’s Radek getting out of the infirmary?”

“Not today,” Beckett said.

“I’ll look at the systems, see if there’s a virus like the Wraith AI one. Are you sure that Radek--”

“I’m sure,” Beckett was resolute.

“Can we use the Stargate?” Elizabeth asked.

“Probably, but I wouldn’t advise anyone coming through it until I’ve ran some checks.” Rodney’s pacing reached the door. “Can I go now?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said, but Rodney had left the room. “Dr. Beckett, Carson. How are you?”

The smiled that graced his face could only be described as tremulous. “It was a bit of a shock. It’s Rodney that I’m worried about. It was…it was… difficult to see.”

“We’ll keep an eye on him. It seems, though, that he’s sublimating his trauma in work.”

Beckett raised a chastising eyebrow. “Aye, well, that’s hardly unusual. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“And Dr. Eden?”

“He is understandably shocky, but he arrived at his destination unharmed,” Beckett said softly. “Are you going to inform Colonel Sheppard that we potentially have a problem?”

“Yes. Telling him that he can’t come through the Stargate should be fun.”

“Aye, the lad doesn’t like being left out of the loop.”

“Carson, you are the master of the understatement.”

~*~

“Lower the iris, Elizabeth,” Sheppard ordered.

“We can’t do that, John.” Elizabeth gripped the balcony rail and gazed out at the activated Stargate below.

Grodin’s replacement, decked out in insulated footwear and industrial thickness rubber gloves, stood poised by the DHD ready to shut down at the slightest evidence of problems. Miller, pulled over from dismantling the deep space sensor, crouched at the base of the DHD energy sensor in hand, scanning the activated consol.

“Yes, you can. There’s a problem with Atlantis’ systems and I’ve got the strongest gene. I need to be there.”

The Atlantis team members manning the consoles in the control level of the operations tower collectively winced.

“Rodney hasn’t had a chance to check the Stargate,” Elizabeth said levelly.

“Well, get him to check the ‘gate.” Sheppard’s voice rose.

“Rodney’s busy with other things.”

The unmistakable sound of flesh hitting flesh echoed over the comm.. Carson guessed the man had punched the palm of his own hand.

“I should be there, Elizabeth,” his voice was softer, more resigned.

Carson pulled his weary bones from the seat beside the environmental systems consol. The battle was over so Elizabeth no longer needed his aid. It was unlikely that his help would have been required as the woman was very shrewd. But a terse description of Dr. Furmenty’s demise would have definitely curtailed any attempts on Colonel Sheppard’s part to travel through an untested system. Beckett was grateful that he had not had to revisit Furmenty’s tragic accident. He slipped away leaving Dr. Weir verbally battling with the Colonel.

The infirmary was busy. Carson passed through the primary care section. A couple of the primary care nurses were wrapping a marine’s ankle at the far end of in the treatment cubicle. The young man’s foot was nicely swollen with a beautiful array of colours bleeding up the side of his foot and ankle. Carson took a quick shuftie at the man’s x-rays, confirming that it was a bad sprain and there were no breaks. Continuing on, he avoided pathology and Dr. Biro.

The ward had two new occupants. Passat lay with a towel over his eyes – the man had been subject to debilitating migraines recently, which was likely due to an unidentified environmental cue. The other patient was blocked from his view. Dr. Pega was examining his patient’s vitals. Professional, Beckett would not disturb his colleague with a patient unless asked. Lieutenant Hillier was still in traction and would be for a couple of weeks. In the far corner, Radek was sitting up, a rakish bandage wrapped around his head. He held an old magazine and was trying futilely to read.

Carson checked Hillier’s readouts; the young man was healing nicely.

“Hey, Doc,” the Lieutenant grinned, his freckles no longer stood out in sharp relief. In the space of a day, he was well on the way to recovery.

‘Oh, to be that young again,’ Carson thought. “You’re looking good, Tom.”

“All thanks to you guys.” He stuck his nose back in his comic book.

Carson continued, moving to the last patient on the ward.

“Hello, Radek.”

“Carson.” Radek blinked furiously, and Carson pulled out his pen light. “What’s going on?”

“Where? Here? Passat probably has a migraine, he has been working with Rodney all day.” Carson shone the light in Radek’s eyes and both pupils contracted satisfactorily.

“Stop. Please.” Radek batted at his hand.

“Can you track my finger?” He slowly moved his finger before the engineer’s eyes.

Carson watched hawk-like as Radek managed to follow his fingertip until he went into the far left quadrant. Carson hummed introspectively, but decided not to subject Radek to another scan. He plucked the magazine from his patient’s fingers.

“I want you to take a nap, Radek,” Carson instructed. He lowered the head of the bed.

Radek blinked up at him. “I don’t like sleeping…”

“I can give you something to help you relax,” Carson said soothingly as he turned off the light beside Radek’s bed. The light and the book coupled with the concussion were a bad combination. He guessed that a bored, concussed scientist had badgered for his laptop or a scientific paper until one of his nurses had given him a magazine to show him that it was a prescription for nausea.

“Cosmo?” Carson flicked through the gaudy pages. Certainly, the magazine was enough to induce nausea. He cast it through the air to land on one of the chairs beside the coffee percolator in the opposite corner.

Radek mumbled, his eyes closed he was already half way to sleep. Carson patted his shoulder and then moved on to his office.

The files were still sitting on his deck waiting to be transformed into SGC archival material. There was a pile of new files; evidently his staff had fulfilled their paperwork duties. Beckett flicked through the folder. Impressed, he noted that the minor injuries file was a couple of days early. Deciding to get the largest and more boring – medically speaking – of the pile out of the way, he opened it and settled before of his laptop. Pulling out the individual sheaves of paper, cataloguing each of the names at once allowed an incongruity to leap out.

“Huh.” He pulled up an excel spread sheet, but then decided to go the old fashioned route. He placed the individual treatment sheets on the floor in chronological order. They formed a nice line. A couple of days had multiple patients. Grabbing the other files he laid the sheets out by date. Each of the files were summarily sorted by first by date and then by severity.

Sitting crossed legged on the floor, he contemplated the problem. He reached up to his laptop and pulled up the previous week’s summary and his notes on the current week’s patients. A pattern was unmistakable. He grabbed his calculator, paper and pen and wrote out the numbers. Illness and accidents were on the increase. Misaligned environmental systems aggravated headaches and minor respiratory infections, broken pipes contaminated an entire section of scientists. A collapsing scaffold broke Lieutenant Hillier’s hip. Radek was thrown across a room by a faulty crystal.

He pulled his laptop down from the table to the floor and yanked out the DSL line. Opening his preferred stats programme, he inputted the numbers. He spent a long moment, head cocked to the side, contemplating the requisite stats tests. Fingers flew over the keyboard pulling out the different factors and combinations.

If you didn’t have the ATA gene you were more likely to be hurt.

All the serious and terminal accidents had happened to non-ATA humans.

“How?” Beckett whispered. He clamped his hand over his mouth afraid that Atlantis would hear him. This was premeditated; this was conscious targeting of the humans in the city.

He moved to trigger his earpiece, but what if Atlantis heard him? But he needed to talk to McKay without further ado.

He triggered the mike. “Rodney, where are ye?”

“Carson, are you all right?” McKay responded immediately to the inordinately heavy brogue.

“Where are you, Rodney?”

“Operations tower.”

“Stay there. I’m on my way. Don’t touch anything ‘til I get there.” Beckett clambered to his feet. He never said a word, but as he exited his office all the staff on duty on the ward turned to him.

“Dr. Beckett?” Andaman asked – concern was etched on her face. Beckett figured that he probably looked a little bit harried and worried.

All the lights went out throwing the windowless room into complete and utter darkness.

“Lights on!” Beckett bellowed. They hiccupped, flicking dazzlingly on then browning down, before flaring back to full 100 watt brightness. He jabbed a finger at the main fixture in the ceiling. “And stay on!”

Connell, the youngest nurse on his staff, made a startled meep before clamping her hands to her face and blushing bright red.

“I want none of you to touch any Ancient devices ‘til I return,” Beckett ordered. “Any member of staff that comes on duty: pass on the instructions.”

He made a conscious effort not to run from the infirmary, to not scare his staff and patients. Once outside he sprinted. Open corridors, metal framework stairs, he picked a deliberately circuitous route that ensured that he did not pass through any doorways that could be commanded mentally. He entered the Ancients’ colossal parade hall, for lack of a better description. The domed room was well ventilated with open windows on all sides. It was immensely reassuring that he could see the sea glistening in the evening light. The open plan floor bore the same crisscross patterns of the embarkation room.

Halfway across, the floor rumbled.

It split in the middle.

Beckett fell as the floor ratcheted away, sliding rapidly into the wall. Horrified, he threw a glance at the gaping maw in the centre of the room. The gulf grew as more of the floor slid away. The exit was at an angle to the retracting floor. It would be unreachable long before the floor fully retracted.

“Oh, crap.”

Beckett scrambled to his feet and, heart in his mouth, ran for the exit. The floor jerked suddenly to a halt. Running flat out he was cast down. Stunned for a heartbeat, he lay quiescent. The floor jerked again and moved more rapidly.

“Help!”

Once again he scrambled to his feet. But like running the wrong way on a conveyor belt he made little headway.

The edge of the floor slid beneath his outstretched foot leaving him only held by his momentum.

Inevitably, gravity grabbed him and he fell.

“Stop!” He screamed as he plummeted. “No. no. no. no.”

~*~

“Carson?” McKay wrenched his comm. from his head as the scream grated through him. “What the fuck?”

Everyone in the operations tower could hear the screaming, drawn out and tinny through the tiny headphone.

“Carson, where are you?” McKay yelled. There was no response.

Elizabeth looked at him, appalled.

“Zelenka--” Rodney swore, dropped his comm. and ran to the biometrics sensor array. His fingers danced over the matrix plates, moving one, shifting two others.

Elizabeth picked up the abandoned ear piece. “Carson?” she tried and then started at the terrified screaming.

“Gene, gene, gene. Ancient. Ancient,” McKay muttered.

“What are you trying to do, Rodney?”

“Trying to find Carson.”

“How?”

“Oh, crap!” that was unmistakably Carson.

“Carson, where are you? What’s happening?” there was silence. Elizabeth shook the comm. futilely trying to get a response. “Rodney? What are you doing?”

“Beckett’s human but he’s got the gene. I’m trying to configure the system to separate the Ancients from the non-ATA humans.”

“Can it do that? There’s a number of people who have the gene now thanks to Dr. Beckett’s gene therapy.”

“So we’ll have twenty id’d! Try and find out who saw him last. It’ll help me narrow it down.”

~*~

It was too far to fall, arms wind-milling Carson tumbled and he knew that death was upon him. Darkness enveloped his screams. Wind whistled through his hair as he plummeted down and down and down.

Beckett prayed for an angel.

Silvery light rose up beneath him. Open mouthed, watched it rise. Tendrils of energy probed out from the central mass.

“Oh, crap!”

Voices yelled in his ear.

The light engulfed him, the force of its impact knocking the breath from his lungs. The world turned sparkly, the silvery light blinding him to anything other than the force that held him.

‘Oh. My. God.’

Every part of his body was paralysed. The voices continued and belatedly Carson realised that it was Rodney and Elizabeth shrieking at him over his comm.. He didn’t have the breath to respond.

‘What is this? Oh, God, no. Let go. Let go.’

Abruptly, the light released him and with a castrated scream he fell ten feet. He hit water and reflexively drew in a breath. Coughing and spluttering, he flailed desperately. Magically, he brought his head out. His feet hit floor, and coughing and wheezing, he managed to stand.

He stood in pitch darkness in water that was chest high.

He coughed and coughed again, caught between being seriously winded and aggravated by the salty water he had inhaled. It was freezing. The coughing seemed to come from his toes, but finally he managed to get it under control.

Chest heaving he stood, simply gathering himself for the next round. Finally, he managed to look up. High, high, above him – the open floor now looked like a tiny crack. He watched as the two edges of the floor met and the only light went out.

He had easily fell two hundred feet.

The silvery energy blob had saved him. A forcefield?

That didn’t make sense.

Beckett scrabbled at his ear for the mike, but it had gone -- no doubt lost as he had fallen in the water.

‘What the fuck is this place?’

“Help!” he shouted, and was rocked backwards on his feet as his voice was echoed back at him decibels louder.

“Hello?” he tried. The words were picked up and reflected back at him loud and clear.

Hands outstretched he took a few, tentative footsteps in the darkness. Wherever the Hell he was it was larger than a football stadium.

“Idiot,” he suddenly chastised himself. “Lights!”

He ducked, reflexively, as a whole series of spotlights illuminated. Mouth open, he took stock. It wasn’t a football stadium, it was a truly massive auditorium. Tiers lined the walls from the lowest level to the gods. Hundreds of empty seats surrounded him.

“Echo.” He couldn’t resist. It rebounded back at him.

An ancient auditorium. He grinned at the alliteration. A flooded, ancient auditorium. Beckett cast about looking for the doors. He needed to get to the operations tower as soon as possible. He had revised his initial hypothesis but there was still a horrible problem.

He forged his way through the water, trying not to think about any beasties that might be lurking.

~*~

“Yes!” McKay exulted. “It seemed logical that the Ancients would be able to use this consol to separate humans from Ancients.”

The symbols on the screen on the far wall shifted, reforming as a map of the city. The pale glowing concentric circles which identified Terran and Athosian inhabitants throughout the city appeared. Rodney chewed on his bottom lip as he swapped two matrix tablets. The circles underwent a subtle shift. The majority turned green – the humans. The others turned golden. By a process of elimination, they were the thirty five successful recipients of Beckett’s gene therapy and four of the five natural ATA gene humans.

“Which one is Beckett?” Elizabeth asked.

Rodney scowled at the readouts on the laptop slaved to the biometric array. The graph outputs were similar to EEG readings.

“What about that one?”

Rodney glanced at Grodin’s replacement, who was pointing at the faintest glowing blob which was pulsating unevenly.

“Can we see a three dimensional representation of the city?” Elizabeth asked. “Or level by level?”

“Ah…” McKay used the laptop rather than the array-tablets.

The image on the screen rotated, providing a complex, transparent version of the city. Most of the inhabitants were confined to the three levels corresponding with sea level.

One blob was slowly descending through the complex structure.

“He’s in a lift?” Grodin’s replacement hazarded.

“It’s an open space. It’s enormous,” McKay said. “He’s falling.”

Abruptly the muted life sign flared brightly and jumped a fraction of an inch on the scaled down version of the city.

“What happened?” Elizabeth asked.

“He fell. He hit bottom.” McKay abandoned the array and crossed to the screen. His finger stabbed the large open space. “He fell two hundred and eighteen feet.” His fingertip covered the bright life sign. “He’s alive?”

“Amazing,” Anti-Grodin said. “How?”

“Where is he?” Elizabeth spoke.

“Stop asking questions!” McKay snapped. He pointed imperiously at two of the marines guarding the embarkation room. “You and You, follow me.”

~*~

Beckett finally reached the double doors. On a scale with everything in the auditorium they were immense, towering over his head. Shivering, he eyed the twisting slate grey patterns scrolling up the gun-grey blue metal beneath.

This was getting old.

Hand outstretched, he intoned, “Open.”

Despite being sealed for thousands of years, they swung outwards.

The water gushed through the gap. Beckett made a futile grab for the edge of the door. But he was caught in the avalanche.

“Oh, crap!”

~*~

For once McKay was grateful that the hours spent hiking on alien worlds and being chased around the gym by Sheppard and Teyla. The stairways seemed to go on forever. The two hulking marines ran ahead of him. McKay kept one hand on the railing and the other held a life signs detector.

“Hurry up!” McKay called up to the medic who was several floor above him. “Get your ass in gear. It’s your boss who’s in trouble.”

McKay stumbled, caught himself, jumped down four stairs to the landing and then continued his careening way downwards. The stairwell was poorly lit, only basic glow strips on the steps guided his way. It was mindless, the worst form of exercise, running, boring. At least with self-defence you got exercise and learnt how to claw out an attacker’s eyes. Sheppard was very pragmatic when it came to self-defence.

They had to be close. The marines were closer.

“Dr. Beckett!” the red headed marine called out.

McKay turned the final corner. Halfway down the flight of stairs, the two marines stood. Dark water stretched before them, filling the stair well and the wide corridor beyond. Cody – the red head -- had a flashlight and was carefully sweeping the still water.

McKay consulted the life signs detector, deciphering the gross details. All in all a life signs detector which only showed life signs a cubic space of 10 by 200 by 100m was not that efficient a tool. The resolution was poor. Somehow he expected better from the Ancients.

Carson should now be within sensor distance.

“Rodney, you’re close,” Elizabeth informed him over the comm..

There was a life signs blob of concentric circles about ten degrees to the right and fifteen meters away.

“Carson!”

The medic clattered behind them. Huffing and wheezing, he set down his medical kit. “Any… sign?”

“Dr. Beckett!” Cody yelled.

There was a splash which echoed loudly. Cody shone the flashlight straight at the noise. A bedraggled Carson Beckett raised his hand warding off the light. Cody surged into the water.

“Marines,” McKay muttered depreciatively, so eager to jump into the fray – surely there was a rope somewhere.

The young man pushed effortlessly through the chest high water. He kept the flashlight shining on the doctor like a spot light. The beam seemed to make the darkness around Beckett more impenetrable.

“I’ve got you, Dr. Beckett.”

“About bloody time. I’m having a hell of a day. Where’s Rodney?”

“Here.” McKay angled his own flashlight at his friend. Carson was clinging to a statue of a tall humanoid with the grip of the profoundly exhausted.

Cody finally reached him.

“Dr. Beckett, are you injured?” the medic called.

“No, son.” Beckett carefully unpeeled his fingers from the legs of the statue. He was moving like a glacier. Cody moved up next to him, pulling the doctor’s arm over his own shoulders and twining an arm around his waist.

McKay finally jumped into the water. It was freezing. Rodney hissed, feeling the water sheeting through his trousers. He bounced through the water trying futilely to keep as much as his body out of the water as possible. He met Cody and Carson, halfway.

“Carson, you okay?” Rodney grabbed his free arm and dragged it over his shoulder.

“Just cold,” Beckett reassured. “Rodney, we’ve got a p--problem, Atlantis has been c--compromised.”

“How?”

“It’s in the system. I thought that it was the s—sy-ystem.” His teeth chattered. “Only the… most of the accidents in the last three weeks… have been non-ATA humans. All the acc—ccidents….”

“Let’s get you out of the water, Carson.” Both he and Cody manhandled the doctor out of the water and into the waiting medic’s hands. The medic sat his superior down on the steps and immediately started pawing. Beckett pushed him away.

McKay grabbed the banister and hauled himself out of the water. He ran his hands down his trousers trying to wring out the liquid.

“All the accidents were m—m involved humans using init--initialised Ancient technology or directly with the s—sy-ystem.”

“I’ve been working on them all week,” McKay pointed out.

“You’ve got the gene, Rodney.” Beckett shivered.

Cody cracked a MRE broth mix, shaking the contents to activate the heating element. He decanted the heated contents into his collapsible cup and diluted the broth down to a thin, warm soup.

“Here ya go, Dr. B.” He handed it across.

“Thanks, son.” Beckett held it in his chilled hands and breathed in the warmth. He sighed blissfully.

“You’re welcome.”

“Rodney,” Carson began. “In the last th--three weeks the number of accidents and visits to the infirmary have in--increased significantly. But what is important is that statistically if these events were random, a fifth of the patients should have possessed the ATA gene. Only one in thirty of the latest visits were ATAs and, apart from your cut finger, it was for headaches. The people complaining of severe headaches have the natural ATA gene.”

“And?”

Carson took a fortifying gulp of soup. “I thought the Ancient technology was targeting us. But no the Ancient technology is actively intervening when ATAs are affected by whatever or whomever is targeting the inhabitants of Atlantis. The people who didn’t respond to my gene therapy have suffered the worst accidents like Radek.”

“You’re speaking like Atlantis is sentient.”

“Like it hadn’t occurred to you.” Beckett tried to struggle to his feet. Muscles had obviously seized up. He groaned and settled back on the stair. “Maybe it’s sentient like a chimpanzee and it has protocols to protect ATAs? That stands to reason.”

“Right.” Rodney unclipped the backpack from his BDU vest. It fell with a thud to the metal stairs. “Cody, Franks? Medic person, stay with Dr. Beckett and when he’s better help him up the stairs. I’m going to run up thousands of flights of stairs.”

“Rodney…”

McKay mused introspectively, “If you’re right, whatever it is it could be monitoring our communications system.” Then he made to dart away.

“Rodney,” Carson snapped halting him.

“What?”

”Cody, go with Dr. McKay,” Beckett ordered.

“Over protective…” McKay muttered as he turned and ran.

~*~

Run. Run. Run. Run, went one litany. The other portion of his brain was contemplating the problem. The virus check had not revealed a virus. That didn’t necessarily mean that there was no virus, only that their check had not registered one. Therefore it was radically different to the Wraith AI virus which had infected the Daedalus.

What was it?

McKay’s feet pounded up the stairs bringing him closer and closer to the control centre. The marine kept pace.

‘I need data.’ McKay came to an abrupt halt. “Roving virus?”

“Sir?” Cody asked.

McKay noted with absent satisfaction that the marine was a bit flushed with exertion. “A virus that moves through the system without a trace. Why not just a saboteur? But they’d have to know more about the system than I do. Conflict. A subroutine within the Ancient systems?”

McKay began running again.

“Targeting humans!” McKay tripped and fell hard against the sharp stair edges.

Cody bent down and grabbed his bicep. “Sir, are you all right?”

“We are in so much trouble.” McKay scrambled to his feet wincing at his scraped shins. He ran spurred now by the belief of genocide.

“Are you hurt?” Cody persisted.

McKay thought that since he was running it was rather obvious that the injuries were minor. He was about to say it when,

“I can’t believe that Carson said sentient like a chimpanzee – since when are chimpanzees sentient?”

“Did you hit your head, Dr. Mckay?” Cody asked between puffs of breath.

“No!” McKay continued running.

~*~

“Rodney?” Elizabeth ran from her glass office as he screeched into the control room.

Mckay ignored her questions as he yanked Zvika Chen from the biometrics sensor array. The woman fell to the floor with a squawk. McKay opened the laptop screen restarting the computer. The graphic breakdowns of the individual ATAs and the non-ATAs outputs lay side by side, scrolling down the screen. The peaks and troughs, frustratingly, bore no labels on the x or y axis. The sweep of the two series outputs were different, but not radically.

“Biology?” McKay pondered as he wracked his brains. Nanites? He sent his wheeled chair sweeping across the floor to the Zelenka’s data archive port. Three SGC laptops were hooked into the Ancients’ data archive interface, in a somewhat vain attempt, to facilitate communication with the Ancients’ stored knowledge. He pulled up their files on the nanovirus that had infected his team of scientists in the early days of their exploration of Atlantis. Fingers flying over the keyboards he uploaded their analyses onto the Ancient primary board to pull out a comparison. He needed a signature element or molecule to track any similar nano-scale devices in the system.

“Rodney, what are you doing?” Elizabeth persisted.

McKay leaned over the slaved laptop. “Working? Trying to save the day?”

Elizabeth gritted her teeth.

“Funnily enough I’m doing this for you since, if Beckett’s hypothesis is correct, you’re the one in trouble.” He smiled a little smugly. “I’m safe.”

“Dr. McKay, Rodney,” Weir said tightly. “Explain to me what you’re doing.”

~*~

“Help me up,” Beckett directed. He held his hand out to Franks knowing that Cassidy would protest.

“Dr. Beckett,” the physician’s assistant said immediately.

The towering Marine hauled him easily to his feet.

Beckett stomped his feet on the metal stairs trying to get feeling to return. It was going to be quite a hike – hopefully he would be warm by the time that he returned to the surface levels. He was merely chilled, so a hot shower would put him to rights.

“Right, son. Let’s get a move on.” Gripping the rail, he began to solidly drag himself up the stairs. It was pure, unadulterated torment. He was tired, but determined. More people at this very time might be injured. They had to get to the inhabited levels. Franks had his back, although the exertion was warming so that he doubted that he would trip now.

“Perhaps if we found a transporter?” Cassidy blurted as they cut through a corridor to next staircase.

“Not today, son,” Beckett said bleakly.

The young man had the grace to look sheepish. “Sorry, Doc.”

“Three more flights,” Franks said.

“Excellent.” Beckett found his second wind. If he stayed in Atlantis long enough, he felt that one day he might actually get fit.

They emerged on the inhabited levels and somehow they seemed warmer and less cavernous, despite having exactly the same architecture as down below.

“Operations tower.” Franks pointed the way.

Beckett mentally mapped the route; they would pass through two doors which could be controlled through the ATA gene. “Can I have your mike, son?” He held his hand out to Cassidy.

The medic immediately unhooked and handed it over. The comm. was set to infirmary mode.

“Beckett here.”

“Sir! You’re all right.” The voice was relieved.

Beckett blinked. “Uhm, yes. Thank you. Has there been any admissions to the infirmary?”

“No, Dr. Beckett.”

“Excellent.” He looped the mike over his ear. “Cassidy, get yourself back to the infirmary and stay there. And remember what I said about touching the Ancient stuff, especially if it’s interfaced with our technology.”

“Yes, Dr. Beckett.” Cassidy loped off, all long limbs and coltish indecision.

“Thee and me this way.” Carson pointed to the control room.

Each time they ran through an ATA gene controlled door, he imagined it permanently and firmly open. It took pure force of effort not to picture the doors clanging shut on the hapless passer-by.

“Can someone get me some dry clothes?” Rodney was calling stridently as they loped up the staircase to the control booth.

“Rodney, what are you doing touching that stuff!” Beckett demanded.

McKay jerked backwards and then he rolled his eyes heavenward. “Carson! You as much as said that I’d be all right.”

“Carson, are you okay?” Elizabeth moved to his side.

“I’m fine.” Beckett found a smile. “A wee bit damp. I’ve just had a little bit of an adventure.”

“Yes. Damp. Dry clothes – two pairs. Now,” Rodney insisted as everyone ignored him.

“Are you making any progress, Rodney?” Elizabeth asked.

“Yes. There’s several components in the nanite technology which is unique. I’m using that to track to see if there are any in Atlantis’ systems.”

“Nanovirus.” Beckett’s mouth fell open in a soundless ‘o’ of understanding.

“Yes.” McKay smiled. “What technology have we come across so far that specifically attacks humans? Our unknown creators of the nanovirus.”

“You think that we have nanovirus in the Atlantis computers specifically targeting humans?” Elizabeth clarified.

McKay sent a twisted smile in her direction. “It’s a possibility. Not a nanovirus capable of infecting humans but possibly nanities designed to carry out specific tasks within the Atlantis mainframe.”

“How long will it take?” Beckett waved a hand at the biometric sensor array.

“I don’t know. How long is a piece of string? Don’t answer that – stupid analogy. The errors I’ve been picking up are random and unpredictable. If there are nanites in the system, possibly they’re moving.” McKay’s’ fingers wriggled, describing little crawling creatures. “Moving inside the crystal matrices and the cables. Maybe they even have transport capabilities. If that’s the case tracking them will be difficult and will take time. I need some way to sweep the whole City over a short period of time.”

“While the sensor array is hunting for your nanites--” Elizabeth began.

“It’s a theory – hypothesis – they might not even be there,” McKay interrupted.

Elizabeth continued. “Can you check the iris so we can retrieve Colonel Sheppard while the scan is running?”

“Oh, yes, good idea,” Rodney noted. “It would be sensible to get the strongest gene back, maybe he can ask Atlantis what the problem is. Carson, have you tried”

Beckett held up his hands, wardingly. “I don’t talk to her.”

“Her? Hmmm.” McKay pushed with his legs and sent his chair careening over to the DHD. He slipped out of the chair and shuffled under the consol. He popped off a panel revealing a mess of illuminated wires. “Is someone going to get me some dry clothes?”

“Carson,” Elizabeth said. “You look a little pale. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, thank you. Just a wee bit of a shock.”

“What happened?”

Beckett patted the consol under his hand. “Atlantis saved me.”

“Right!” McKay bounced to his feet. “I’ve set up a manual control, if the iris initialises itself hitting this button--” he pointed at the enter button on the laptop sitting above the amber DHD triangular crystals, “--will switch off power to the iris causing it to fail. It will be immediate.”

“Okay. Dial up Colonel Sheppard so he can come home.”

McKay muttered under his breath, sing song, “Chevron one encoded…” as he rapidly keyed in the sequence.

Beckett accepted a towel, with a smile, from Cody. He scrubbed his hair dry and then twisted it around his neck – scarf like. The whoosh of the Stargate caught his attention. He didn’t think that the visceral shiver that curled through his bones every time he saw the Stargate would ever diminish.

“Finally!” Sheppard exulted the moment that the event horizon settled. “Can we come home now?”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said. “Rodney has checked the iris. We’ll disconnect, you dial in and then come home.”

Rodney killed the event horizon with a flick of a button.

The young marine passed Beckett a large cup of sugary coffee.

“You’re a life saver, son.” He cradled it in his hands.

The light sequence ran clockwise, the chevrons coding for Atlantis. The iris automatically activated.

“Receiving Colonel Sheppard’s IDC,” McKay announced.

“Lower the iris.”

McKay hit the normal disengage button and nothing happened. The shimmering iris remained firmly in place.

“Rodney?” Elizabeth said archly.

McKay hit his newly rigged manual control and once again the iris remained intact. Grimacing, McKay dropped to his butt and stuck his head in the consol. His hand appeared up over the consol, grabbed his his laptop and cables pulling them both down. Low swearing ensued as he connected his diagnostic programme to the DHD.

“What’s happening?” Sheppard demanded. “Are we clear?”

“No!” Elizabeth stated. “Stay where you are. We can’t get the iris down.”

“Rodney?” Sheppard drawled.

“I didn’t do this.” His voice was muffled, head first in the column beneath the DHD control panel.

“So what’s that problem?” Sheppard persisted.

McKay rocked back on his heels. “I don’t think Atlantis wants her best beloved in danger,” he said pithily.

“What?”

“And I can’t find any evidence of system errors. My tampering was set in place to take down the iris if it reinitialised after we’d powered it down. Like pulling the plug. But it’s not even registering the primary disengage protocol.” He growled. “Carson, are you sure Radek…?”

“Radek is not to be disturbed,” Beckett said firmly.

“What if…? Elizabeth began.

“No, Dr. Zelenka has a serious concussion and I am not compromising his recovery.” Beckett crossed his arms, resolute. Radek couldn’t even concentrate on Cosmo; he was in no fit state to help Rodney hunt down alien nanites. “Are ye registering any wee nanities?”

Rodney popped the back off his life signs detector swapped a few micro crystals and then scanned the consol.

“The theory’s flawed, though,” he said introspectively. “I’m assuming nanites and I’m assuming they share structures with the nano-machines capable of infecting humans.”

“So what type of nanite could infect the crystalline structure in the majority of the Atlantis systems?” Beckett asked.

Rodney’s gaze was abstracted as he stared into the middle distance. “They need to move through the lattice structure. They’ll need shielding technology to circumvent positive and negative charges, before the required manipulations take place. Either the whole system is infected or they’re transporting from area to area as required. There’s some kind of communications network in place overlaying the Atlantis systems?”

“If they’re that small, could they be floating in the air?” Beckett asked.

“If they’re moving though Brownian motion it would take them day, month, years, even decades to infect the whole system.”

“They could have had ten thousand years,” Weir pointed out.

“What’s happening!” Sheppard demanded.

“Oops. Forget about him.” Beckett smiled sheepishly.

“You can’t come through, Colonel Sheppard. We’re having problems with the iris.”

“Can’t Rodney solve it?” Sheppard said combatively.

“Rodney can solve it,” McKay said snidely, “given enough information. I’m working on it.”

“So you think that nanites have infected Atlantis and are targeting humans?” Sheppard clarified.

“Yes,” McKay said tersely as he bent his mind to solving the problem.

“So like they’re everywhere. In every structure, fermenting away…” Sheppard mused over the communications system as he pieced together the bits and pieces that he had overheard.

Beckett was once again rather impressed, the man tried to put forth a façade of easy indifference and average intelligence, but the steel trap mind never actually stopped.

“Yes,” McKay said slowly waiting for his next words. “They’re actively targeting and injuring humans. Unless you’ve got the ATA gene, then you’re protected.”

“I think the reason we’ve been having headaches is because of feedback in the gene controlled technology,” Beckett supplied.

Rodney and Elizabeth heads whipped around, focussing on the doctor. He shrugged, it seemed sensible. He was not that prone to headaches and both he and Sheppard had had rather nasty ones over several days. Miko had also come to the infirmary with migraines on three separate events, usually they only happened at certain times of the month. Passat was currently in the infirmary with a headache.

“I think your theory’s a little bit flawed,” Sheppard said laconically.

“Why?” Elizabeth demanded.

“How many electromagnetic pulses has Atlantis been subjected to in the last year? They’ll be fried.”

“Ah!” Rodney’s finger jabbed the air. “Thought of that. But if they’re within the Atlantis matrices they’ll be shielded and they’re inactive unless they’re triggered. When they’re shut down they can withstand an EM pulse.”

“But you still have no evidence that it is nanites,” Sheppard pointed out. He sounded suspiciously like he was yawning. “And since Atlantis is intervening when some of us are targeted, Atlantis is aware of the problem on some level.”

Silence reigned. Rodney looked at each of the consols on the control level as if waiting for a red flashing light which said ‘here’s the answer’. It was not in his nature to allow answers to come to him. He needed to hunt out and find the answers.

“Well, there is that.” McKay finally glared at the DHD, almost as it he blamed it for their problems.

“You have to get me there,” the first hint of ire tinged Sheppard’s voice, “so I can get in the Chair and figure out what the Hell is going on.”

“The Chair! Yes!” McKay exulted. He abandoned his laptop and life signs detector and advanced on Beckett.

Carson backed away, abandoning his coffee cup in his haste. It crashed to the floor. “What are you doing, man?”

“The Chair,” McKay directed with a pointed finger.

Carson stopped dead skirting the edge of the puddle of coffee. “That’s for weapons systems! It’s nout to do with Atlantis’ controls.”

McKay grabbed his elbow and yanked. “The Chair interfaces directly with Atlantis’ systems. The operations tower is push button and matrix plates to control Atlantis’ systems.”

“And?” The Force of McKay continued to drag him along. “Use the buttons.”

“Rodney?” Elizabeth called as he forced Beckett down the staircase to the Stargate level.

“We’re going to the Chair room,” McKay yelled. “As soon as I give you the go ahead tell Sheppard he can come through the Stargate.”

“I don’t want to go to the Chair,” Beckett protested.

“Well, you are.” McKay frogmarched him off the platform and to the corridor.

“Why are we going to the Chair?” Beckett asked. “It’s for firing drones and the like. The command centre should be able to find the nanite things or whatever’s the problem.”

“Think of it like one’s a PC system and the other’s a Mac,” McKay said. “They have different operating systems. They have some commonalities like Word and WordPerfect which give you the same output -- a document. But they approach it differently.”

“And?” Carson tried to dig his heels in to no avail. The man looked stocky, but he was strong.

“We need the direct interface. Shut down the iris and if you can get right into the system and figure out what’s happening from the inside, tell us and then we can fix it, even better.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“It’s not. You just have to tell us what not responding properly.”

“You’re bloody insane. Why don’t you do it? You’ve got the gene,” Beckett pointed out.

“Have you ever seen me in the Chair?”

“Actually, no.” Carson cocked his head to the side and looked at him directly. “Why is that?”

“Because I can make it glow blue and nothing much else.” McKay said through gritted teeth. “I can, however, make the operations tower sing and dance.”

“So,” Carson said slowly as McKay dragged him along. “To use your analogy: I’m the PC and you’re the Mac.”

McKay grimaced. “I think -- and I don’t believe I’m saying this -- you’re the Mac and I’m the PC.” McKay yanked him into a transporter booth. “That’s so insulting.”

~*~

Beckett fought every step of the way but it was like trying to hold back a tsunami with fingers and thumbs splayed. Rodney had driven him to the Chair room and it hardly felt as if his feet had touched the ground.

Rodney released him momentarily, long enough to fiddle with the laptop that he kept permanently linked to the Chair. Carson debated running for the door. He thought too long. Rodney reached for him and it was obvious that the man had been taking lessons from Sheppard in jujitsu or something. Carson was spun around and dropped into the Chair. Rodney caught his wrists and drew his hands to the touch panels on the armrests. The surfaces gave way viscously and his fingers sunk deeply.

Rodney placed his stubby hand on the centre of Carson’s chest. “Do it!”

Beckett closed his eyes and leaned back.

Warmth flared around him, seeping through his skin.

“The Chair’s more than firing drones,” McKay said tersely. “It allows Ancients to interface with their technology. You’re more than half way there already. I’ve seen you with the Ancient scanners in the infirmary, you don’t balk – you just use them. Do it. Do it now! Find the iris. Make Atlantis take it down.”

There.

Beckett surfed. The grey sea lay around him, ebbing and flowing through the inlets and coves, brushing dark green seaweed. He clenched his teeth and the scene greyed out. Vastness encompassed him.

“Find the iris,” McKay instructed.

Perspiration beaded and then flowed. He could feel the sweat trickling from his temples.

‘Iris.’ He imagined it before him, a barricade to the vortex of the Stargate. It rose without the benefit of the naquada structure, an opalescent disc hung in mid air.

His head felt hollow, gutted like the bowels after you had voided your guts. He swore his mind echoed.

“The iris, Carson,” Rodney instructed.

“Got it,” he said through gritted teeth.

“Take it down,” McKay instructed.

‘How?’ he wondered. It was solid and simply there. Hard enough to touch. Beckett reached out and laid his hand on the hard surface. It was thin. Molecule thin, if he remembered Rodney’s lectures – situated nanometres before the event horizon to prevent it forming properly.

‘Thin?’

His carefully pared nails raked the fabric ripping the iris. It shed like skin dying after a bad sunburn.

Beckett opened his eyes momentarily, staring at Rodney. The man’s notoriously fair skin was pale except for a flush on his cheek bones. He leaned too close. The gaze was intent and Beckett could see the darker grey flecks radiating from his pupils like starbursts to merge with the truer sea blue of his irises. It was disconcerting to be the recipient of such intense scrutiny. Beckett closed his eyes.

Imagination was the key. Picture it, make it, decide what was going to happen in the hollowness of his mind and make it work.

‘Don’t get distracted.’ Beckett ripped the iris down.

As he held the skin in his hands, he heard Elizabeth over Rodney’s ear piece informing him that the iris was down.

“Is it safe?” she demanded.

“Carson?” Rodney asked.