The Reservoir

By Pansy Chubb

EMAIL: Pansy Chubb

Act IV

Ronon woke and immediately assessed his situation.

Without opening his eyes, he tried to form a picture of his surroundings. The hard stone beneath his back and lack of grass tickling his arms told him he was not in the field anymore. There was no brightness against his eyelids, so either night had fallen or he was indoors. He listened to the way the air currents moved about him and concluded that he was in an enclosed space. The only other sound was that of one other person breathing, and a light touch on his arm confirmed that he was not alone.

He opened his eyes.

Teyla released a sigh of relief as she smiled down at him. “It is good to see you awake.”

Ronon rumbled an affirmative and sat up. His whole body felt as if he’d run for an entire day without stopping (an experience he unfortunately knew intimately), but he shook off the lethargy and ignored the pain.

“Are you well?” Teyla asked.

Ronon nodded dismissively. “What happened?” he asked, scrubbing a hand over his face.

“Cador activated the Reservoir’s defense net,” Teyla answered. She cocked her head at him. “You saved John and me from its effects by pushing us to the ground.”

Ronon grunted. “Just figured we should do what Cador did.” He shrugged. “Must be a safety zone down that low.”

Teyla nodded. “Cador escaped, and John followed him. I have tried to reach him,” she gestured to the radio on her tac vest, “but there is some sort of interference in this place.”

Ronon looked around at the stone-walled corridor. At one end, he could see what looked like a set of transporter doors. “They went this way?”

“Yes,” Teyla said. “The ‘gate was too far, and I did not feel safe staying on the surface, so I brought you down here.”

Ronon raised an eyebrow at her.

“You should perhaps avoid the mess hall’s jelly donuts in the future,” she said with a straight face.

Ronon snorted as they got to their feet.  They made their way down the hallway to the double doors.

The design was similar to the transporters on Atlantis, but nothing happened when the Satedan waved his hand over the control panel.

“See any other ways in?”

“None,” Teyla responded.

Ronon shrugged. “Okay,” he said, and unholstered his blaster.

“Ronon, perhaps we should –″

He took aim and fired, blasting a giant gouge mark in the center of the doors.

“– consider other options,” Teyla finished resignedly.

Ronon used the newly-formed crater for leverage against the smooth surface. With Teyla’s help, the pair managed to pull the doors open, forcibly sliding them back into the walls.

What greeted them on the other side was a long vertical shaft leading down into blackness.

“This does not look promising,” Teyla said, leaning over the dizzying height.

“Hey,” Ronon said, pointing to the side of the shaft. Solid metal rungs, spaced evenly apart, led down as far as they could see.

Teyla gave the runner a baleful look.

“Quickest way to follow Sheppard,” Ronon pointed out.

With a sigh of resignation, Teyla nodded.

Ronon edged as close to the side of the shaft as he could, using his long arms to reach out and grab the first rung. When he was safely on the ladder, he helped Teyla cross the yawning gulf.

In silence, the pair climbed down into darkness.

---

“I totally saw this coming!”

John gave Rodney an exasperated look.

“Well, I did,” the physicist said defensively. “I mean, I might not have actually put the thought together in my mind – seeing as there really wasn’t time in between the kidnapping and the electrocution and the brain frying – but it’s just so obvious now!” He gestured wildly at the scene before them.

John had to agree – now that he could see the blue-eyed blonde-haired resemblance between father and daughter, he couldn’t unsee it.

The disturbing standoff continued, the three Valerians seemingly unaware of the Lanteans’ presence.

Cador’s eyes were wide, but his grip on his hostage hadn’t loosened. Emadara, however, was suddenly oblivious to the knife at her neck.

Her throat worked soundlessly for a moment. “What?” she finally asked. Her breathing began to speed up.

“She’s my daughter,” Garrad repeated slowly, still looking at Cador. “I have given you my reason; please release her.”

“No!” Emadara said, voice rising shrilly. Cador was too shocked to move, or else his concussed brain had thought Emadara’s order applied to him, because the blade did not waver. “You will explain!”

Garrad took a reluctant breath.

“Now!” Emadara shrieked.

Garrad drew himself up to his full height and narrowed his eyes. “My daughter was a bright young prodigy,” he began, as if the words were forcing themselves out of his mouth. “Everything she put her mind to, she excelled at.”

“Me?” Emadara demanded. “You’re talking about me?”

Garrad nodded, and it was as if the action pained him. “In a strike of good fortune, she was born with the ability to operate the Ancestor’s technology.”

“She’s got the gene,” McKay muttered to John.

“I think I could have figured that out myself, Rodney.”

“She was destined to do great things for the Reservoir,” Garrad continued. His voice took on a hard edge. “But she had too much of her mother’s softness in her.”

“What –“ Emadara said, then stopped, swallowing. Her breath came in short, rapid gasps.

“Oh god,” Rodney said softly.

“I knew she would never be dedicated to the Reservoir,” Garrad said, the only emotion in his voice a hint of disappointment. “So I used my invention.” He gestured to the cognizance altering device.

John felt his stomach drop as the pieces clicked into place.

“I erased myself from her memories,” the Valerian said, “and planted new ones of the Wraith destroying her family.” John felt sick as he saw what looked like pride in the older man’s eyes. “I ensured that she would always be committed to doing whatever it took to destroy the Wraith.”

If possible, Garrad stood even taller.

“So you see, Cador,” the older man finished calmly, “you cannot kill Dara. I have invested too much in her.”

Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. Sheppard could have heard a pin drop three corridors away.

Finally, he broke the silence. “You sick bastard.”

McKay was looking back and forth between father and daughter, at a loss for words. Garrad stood straight, showing no discernible emotion. But Emadara . . .

Emadara stared, as still as a statue, at her mentor and father. Her eyes were bright and disturbingly empty. There was no hate or anger, just a need to look, as if drinking in the sight of Garrad were using all her mental faculties.

It was John who saw Cador’s knife waver first.

The injured Valerian lowered the blade and put a hand to his head, as if the conversation had given him a headache. Sheppard was on him immediately, wresting the knife away and pushing Emadara to safety. The young woman tumbled to the floor.

Rodney saw Garrad move out of the corner of his eye. The older Valerian was heading toward Sheppard’s discarded P-90. “Oh crap,” he muttered, and lunged for the weapon himself.

Cador struggled with John, his fight instinct kicking in. The soldier decided to be merciful, maneuvering himself behind the Valerian for a headlock, because one concussion was probably enough for the day.

Rodney ended up tackling Garrad; both crashed to the floor. The P-90 went skidding away as a foot (Rodney didn’t know whose) connected with it. Garrad tried to heave Rodney off of him, but though the Valerian was taller, McKay had the advantage in body weight.

Cador yelled as John’s arms encircled him. He threw himself backward, slamming Sheppard into the wall, but the pilot just grunted and kept his hold.

The air left Rodney’s lungs with an oof! as Garrad’s boot connected with his stomach. As the physicist tried to catch his breath, the Valerian scrambled to his feet and ran for the door.

A single, loud gunshot rang out in the enclosed space.

Everyone froze. Cador ceased struggling and Garrad stopped in his tracks.

Emadara stood in the center of the room, wisps of smoke rising from the barrel of the P-90 in her hands.

Garrad took a hesitant step forward. “Dara . . .” he said in confusion.

A bright red spot bloomed on his shirt and began to spread.

Rodney scrambled to his feet as Garrad collapsed to the floor. He edged his way around the restraining chair, out of Emadara’s line of sight.

The girl lowered the P-90 to her side. There was an odd look in her eyes, as if she weren’t quite aware of her surroundings.

They watched in shock as Emadara seemed to float toward her father. Her expression was peaceful, a small smile on her lips. She knelt beside the injured man with something akin to reverence.

Garrad’s breathing was shallow, coming in quick pants. Blood stained the corners of his mouth. He looked up at his daughter with wide eyes.

Emadara smiled down at him. She smoothed some of his wild hair off his forehead and leaned down, putting her mouth next to his ear.

None of the three men could hear what she whispered, but they watched as an expression of content spread over the dying man’s face.

Emadara smiled again and pressed her lips to her father’s forehead in a gentle kiss. Garrad’s breathing hitched once, twice, and then his eyes lost focus as he exhaled a final time. His body went lax, and he breathed no more.

Cador broke the spell. “Traitor!” he cried, lunging forward, and John was so focused on the bizarre scene that he let the Valerian slip from his hold. “What have you –“

Without a word, Emadara stood and fired three shots, almost point blank, at the oncoming man.

Cador fell to the ground, his momentum sliding him along the floor. He was dead before he came to a stop.

“Whoa whoa whoa!” Rodney cried, throwing his hands up as the muzzle swung toward him.

“Hey!” John yelled, moving toward the physicist. “Now just hold on a second!”

Emadara stopped, gun pointed at Rodney, with an almost quizzical expression on her face.

“Just – just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” Rodney demanded in high-pitched alarm.

Emadara spared a disinterested glance at Cador’s body before returning her blank gaze to McKay.

“He would have tried to stop me,” she said, as if that explained everything.

“Look, you’ve had quite a shock,” John said, still edging slowly toward Rodney. As he’d done with Cador only minutes earlier, he put his hands up in a non-threatening manner. “Put the gun down and we can talk about this.”

The Valerian ignored him. “Did you know the Reservoir has a self-destruct, Doctor McKay?” she asked instead. “I can activate it with this.” She held up Garrad’s crystal pendant, which was still around her neck. “Do you agree that I should?”

Rodney tried not to shudder at the completely disinterested way she spoke, as if she were merely discussing whether there would be clouds or sunshine today. “Okay, I get it, your dad did bad stuff to you,” he said, mirroring Sheppard’s stance. “But, uh, he’s dead now, so blowing stuff up would be overkill, don’t you think?”

“We know you’re angry,” John said quickly. “I understand that you want to destroy this place.”

Emadara cocked her head to the side. The P-90 wavered. “I am not angry.”

Sheppard and McKay exchanged a glance. “Okay, you’re not angry,” John said, “but still –″

“I am disappointed,” Emadara interrupted. She frowned. “And I am disappointed in you, Doctor McKay, for not seeing what must be done.” She brought up the rifle.

John tackled Rodney around the waist. Three more bullets whizzed through the air, embedding themselves in the wall of the lab. The scientist hit the ground behind the restraining chair with a grunt, followed by an “Ow!” as Sheppard landed on top of him.

Using the chair for cover, John scrambled to his knees and drew his sidearm. He fired three shots blindly, then hunkered back down, listening.

When there were no answering shots, the lieutenant colonel chanced a glance at the room. Emadara was gone.

McKay groaned. “Was that really necessary?” he snarked. “I think you misaligned my spine.”

“You’re welcome,” John said, reaching down to help the scientist up.

Rodney arched his back as he looked around the room. “Where’d she go?”

“She ran off,” Sheppard said, checking the clip on his Glock. “Can she really set the self-destruct?”

“Well, how should I know?” Rodney said irritably. “All I know is that I did not like that crazy look in her eyes. Did you see that?!”

“Then we need to find Ronon and Teyla and get the hell out of here.”

“No!” McKay exclaimed. “We have to go after her! Look,” he said at John’s severe expression, “this place is like a – like a scientific treasure trove.” His tone became pleading. “We can’t just let her blow it up!”

“There are other people here, right?” John said. “Can’t we just alert them to stop her?”

McKay shook his head vehemently. “No no no, you don’t understand – this place is full of scientists. Brainwashed scientists at that! And without Garrad as a leader, they’ve got no one to tell them what to do.” He gestured wildly with his hands. “Plus, there are no security forces to speak of! It’s just a bunch of scientists run amok!”

“Sounds like Atlantis without the marines.”

“Exact- hey!”

“Let’s move out then,” Sheppard said, heading for the door.

“Wait!” Rodney said. “She’s wearing at least two pendants now – if I can get into a computer, I can track her movements.”

“You can do that?”

“Please,” Rodney snorted, “do you know who you’re talking to?”

John gave him a blank look.

“Oh, right,” the physicist said, embarrassed. “Uh, yes, I just need to find one that’s undamaged.”

John gestured for Rodney to lead the way. They stepped into the corridor and hurried down the hall.

---

“Ronon, wait,” Teyla said. She put a hand against the wall.

Ronon stopped and turned back to her. They had exited the elevator shaft (through use of a manual door lever Teyla had found before Ronon could bring out his blaster) and were now walking in a white-walled corridor. A few gaggles of scientists had crossed their path, but they had avoided them easily; the scientists were not very aware of their surroundings.

“What is it?” he asked.

The Athosian closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “I sense Wraith.”

Ronon immediately raised his blaster and pointed down the hall. “An attack?”

“No,” Teyla shook her head. “There are not very many, and . . .” She furrowed her brow. “They are . . . trapped.”

Ronon relaxed his stance a fraction. “Which way?”

Teyla opened her eyes. “This way,” she said, leading him down the hall.

They eventually came to a door that was larger than all the others they had seen. Teyla ran her hands along its frame. “They are in here,” she confirmed.

Ronon waved his hand over the control panel and the doors began opening.

“Security sucks,” he muttered. Then he froze.

The doors had not opened because Ronon wanted to get in, but because someone had been coming out.  The Athosian and Satedan were suddenly face to face with one of the Reservoir scientists.

Or rather, face to receding hairline, as the man’s head was bent, his eyes focused on a data pad in his arms.

Ronon and Teyla stood, stock still, as the scientist exited the room. He walked past them, absorbed in the computer, and continued obliviously down the hall.

The pair hurried into the room as the doors began to hiss closed.

“Security really sucks,” Ronon muttered again.

The room was big – at least as large as the ‘jumper bay on Atlantis – and the edges were shrouded in darkness. Ronon and Teyla slipped into the shadows behind some stacks of empty crates.

There was a holding cell in the center of the room, illuminated by a pale yellow light. Within it were half a dozen Wraith – one male commander and five drones. The commander paced the length of the cage while the others stood at attention.

“They are starving,” Teyla said quietly.

Ronon didn’t feel any sympathy for them, but he saw that the group did indeed look ragged. The commander’s black coat was torn in several places, and its hair was tangled. The drones slouched where they stood, as if standing took up all their energy.

“What is the purpose of this place?” Teyla wondered aloud.

A noise on the far side of the room prompted the pair to conceal themselves in deeper shadows.

A young woman with long blonde hair strode in through another entrance, followed closely by four other figures. She wore a strange crown-like device full of wires and crystals on her head, and the figures behind her matched her step for step as they walked.

“Emadara,” Teyla whispered as the group came into the light. Then she gasped.

Ronon felt his own breath catch as he saw the young woman’s followers more clearly. They were bald, with a multitude of stitched scars along their scalps, and eerily blank eyes. He couldn’t tell one from the other.

The four ghost-like figures stopped in a line behind Emadara. She approached the cage and addressed the Wraith commander.

“I killed your brother today,” she said without preamble. Behind her, the four blank-eyed figures’ lips moved in tandem, speaking Emadara’s words with her in a low murmur.

The commander sneered at her. “And have you come to kill us now, as well?”

Emadara cocked her head to the side, a satisfied smile playing at her lips. Her followers mirrored her movements. “Yes,” she said. “I can’t have you alive when the others arrive.” The murmuring of the four dull voices under her own made Ronon’s skin crawl.

The Wraith snarled. “It does not matter!” he roared, pressing himself against the bars. “This place, this Reservoir,” he spat, “will never defeat the Wraith!”

“I agree.”

The Wraith seemed startled by her concession.

“In fact,” Emadara continued, “in a short while, there will be nothing left of this place.” She stepped closer, and her demeanor grew suddenly cold. “But I think incineration is too kind a death for monsters like you.” Face twisted with hatred, she raised her right arm to shoulder level, pointing at the Wraith. Her followers did the same.

The crystals in the crown began to glow.

At first, nothing happened. Ronon looked at Teyla, but her eyes were riveted on the cell. When he turned back, the drones were twitching, shifting from foot to foot and twisting their heads to look around. The commander closed his eyes and lowered his head, almost like he were meditating.

Then all hell broke loose.

Teyla and Ronon watched as an awful howl arose and the drones began to brawl. They clawed and kicked and body slammed each other, and the clanging impact of the cage bars rang in the air. One drone ripped off the breastplate of another and began to feed, but another stepped up behind it and unceremoniously snapped its neck. It was madness, pure violence without reason, made only worse when the Wraith commander began screaming and clawing at his own face.

Teyla did not know which sickened her more – the carnage inside the cage, or the way Emadara watched with an exhilaration that bordered on manic glee.

Something moved in the shadows to her right. Teyla snapped her head to look, but whatever it was had disappeared.

She was about to alert Ronon when she saw it again out of the corner of her eye. She whirled around to look behind her, but there was only darkness.

Teyla felt her pulse quicken. There was something in the gloom around her. She could feel it. She could hear it – a menacing whisper in her mind.

She brought her P-90 up, ready to defend herself. The threat would reveal itself soon, attacking from the shadows. Teyla’s heart was pounding now. No – the threat was the shadows! The darkness was going to envelop her!

Something touched her arm, and the whispering grew to a crescendo. The gun fell from her hands as she lashed out, desperate to keep the shadows from consuming her.

Strong tendrils of blackness wrapped around her wrists and arms. She struggled, panicking, blind fear clouding her mind. She was caught! Captured! Trapped!

Teyla screamed.

---

Ronon did his best to hold Teyla still without hurting her, but he couldn’t keep her quiet. Her scream echoed across the cavernous space.

Emadara turned her head to look for the source of the sound. Four pairs of blank eyes followed.

At that moment, the doors Ronon and Teyla had used to enter the room opened again, and Sheppard, tucking a glowing crystal pendant back into his vest pocket, entered with another man.

“I told you,” the other man was saying loudly, “we should have gone down a level before turning –″ He cut off abruptly as he took in the scene.

Emadara turned away from the cage of dead and dying Wraith, raising a P-90 as she did so. Ronon cursed himself – he had been so distracted by the disfigured automatons she controlled that he hadn’t even noticed the stolen weapon.

John and the stranger dove for cover as Emadara sprayed the area with bullets, ending up behind a crate not too far from where Ronon still struggled with Teyla.

“Damn it,” Ronon heard John mutter, “I was hoping she wouldn’t learn to take it off single-shot.”

Teyla cried out again, and Ronon twisted around, trying to hold her and reach his blaster at the same time. He didn’t want to, but he would stun the Athosian if he had to.

“Teyla!” John yelled.

“It’s the Whisperers!” the stranger said with horrified comprehension.  The man pointed at Emadara’s followers, and Ronon realized it was Doctor McKay. “Her Wraith DNA – she must be getting some feedback from them!”

Teyla suddenly sagged in Ronon’s arms and went limp. He looked up and saw Emadara sweeping out of the room, Whisperers in tow.

Ronon lowered his teammate to the ground, checking her breathing as Sheppard and McKay ran up beside them.

“Ronon?” John said.

“She’s alive,” Ronon answered, instinctively knowing what his team leader was asking.

“Good,” the lieutenant colonel replied brusquely. “You’re with me. McKay, stay with Teyla!”

Ronon shot a look at McKay. He was wide-eyed and pale, twisting his hands anxiously as he looked at Teyla. Ronon really didn’t want to leave his fallen teammate alone with the nervous man, but Sheppard was already running across the room toward where Emadara had disappeared, and so he drew his blaster and followed.

---

“Right, uh, Teyla? Can you hear me?”

It felt like she was climbing up out of a thick dark sludge.

“It’s me, Rodney McKay. I know you don’t remember me, but, well, you did come to rescue me, so that means you know I’m on your team, even if you don’t remember me specifically, and as your teammate, I’m asking you to please wake up now.”

The constant buzz of words washed through her mind like a wave, dispelling the blackness.

“Okay, Sheppard and Ronon haven’t come back yet, and it’s really creepy in here, what with the shadows and the echoes and the cage full of dead Wraith, so I’d really appreciate some moral support in the form of another conscious person to talk to and, you know, defend me from any other monsters that might be roaming around.”

Teyla opened her eyes. “That voice,” she said.

“Oh good,” Rodney said, sagging in relief.

Teyla sat up and looked at the man kneeling beside her. “You are Doctor McKay, yes?” she said eagerly.

“One and the same.” He raised his hand half-heartedly.

“I know your voice!”

“You do?”

“Yes!” Teyla continued excitedly. “It is on the recording I sometimes play for Torren!”

“You do?” he repeated. A smile lit up the scientist’s face, and Teyla somehow knew it was a rare expression for the man. “That’s the pre-baby present I got you! Scientific theories, some musings on my accomplishments . . .” He looked pleased. “You really play it for the little guy?”

Teyla hesitated. “Only if I am having trouble getting him to sleep,” she admitted.

“Oh,” Rodney said. His expression twisted, unsure if he should be touched or insulted.

John and Ronon appeared at a door at the far end of the room and began running back toward them.

Teyla pulled the physicist into an Athosian head-touch greeting. “I am glad we have found you,” she said sincerely.

McKay reciprocated awkwardly. “Uh, yeah, me too.”

“Lost her,” Sheppard said in frustration as he reached them. “She took ‘em all into an elevator and we couldn’t follow fast enough.” He looked at Teyla. “You okay?”

The Athosian nodded. “I will be.”

“What the hell was that?” Ronon asked.

“Oh, just a woman having a mental breakdown and leading her telepathic zombie slaves through the halls of an underground bunker before blasting it into oblivion.” McKay shrugged as he stood. “Probably only a six on the Pegasus scale of ‘Things that Have Tried to Kill Me.’” He waved his hand. “Eh, maybe a five-and-a-half.”

“Long story short,” Sheppard interjected, “her dad did some pretty terrible things to her mind while she was here. Now she’s hell-bent on destroying the whole facility.”

Ronon frowned. “Lotsa civilians here,” he pointed out.

“Lotsa science here,” Rodney insisted instead. “Technology Atlantis could use! We can’t let it be destroyed!” At Ronon’s continued frown, he added, “I mean, of course we need to save the people first, you know that’s what I meant – or, actually, maybe you don’t, but if you did know me, which you will, as soon as you remember, you’d know that I’m really all about the ‘saving people’ first, and the ‘science’ second, it just doesn’t sound that way when I get excited, so –″

“Bottom line, we need to either stop her or get as many people out as possible,” Sheppard interrupted. He reached a hand down and helped Teyla to her feet.

“Yes, and soon,” McKay said, hands fluttering about his head as they headed for the exit, “before Little Miss Daddy Issues goes and –″

A piercing siren split the air. Red lights snapped on and began flashing at every doorway. A persistent alarm rose and fell at regular intervals.

“- does something like that,” McKay finished irritably.

---

Ronon tried his best to block out the sound, but the persistent whining continued, grating into his skull. The droning sometimes cycled down into a lower register, but it always rose again, and it never stopped. The runner gritted his teeth and tried to ignore it, but it was altogether impossible.

And also, the Reservoir’s alarm was still blaring.

“Do you ever shut up?” he finally snapped.

McKay barely paused to take a breath. “Oh, I’m sorry, but you’ve obviously quite literally forgotten that I tend to ramble on a bit when faced with certain death.”

Ronon glared, but the physicist didn’t even look up from the console he was hunched over. They had accessed a computer in an empty lab and the irritating little man hadn’t stopped talking to himself since.

“Just find out what’s going on, McKay,” Sheppard said with more patience than Ronon thought the scientist deserved.

“Oh, I know what’s going on!” Rodney replied, still not looking up. “She sounded the evacuation alarm – everyone’s heading up to the surface.”

“Evacuation?” Teyla said, and she, too, seemed more at ease with the scientist than Ronon would have guessed. “That is good news.”

“Good news? No, ‘good news’ would be finding a way to abort the self-destruct without the use of Garrad’s control pendant, which, yes, would normally be a piece of cake for a genius like me, but is now hampered by an unknown time constraint which ends in fiery doom –″

“She means the scientists are heading to safety!” John cut off McKay’s rant. “And that’s what we need to be doing, too.”

“What?” Rodney squawked as his team began heading for the door. “We can’t just leave everything here to get blown up!”

Ronon literally growled and quite seriously considered stunning the man and dragging him to the surface.

“You said it yourself, McKay,” Sheppard said. “We’ve got an unknown time constraint. Let’s move it.”

Ronon thought for a moment that he really would have to bodily haul the physicist with them, but then Rodney huffed and jogged after them, grumbling all the way.

They passed the occasional scientist or group of scientists running through the halls, but that level must have been sparsely populated or else quickly evacuated, because the sightings were few and far between. Ronon enjoyed the relative quiet while it lasted, which wasn’t long. When they came to a set of elevator doors, Sheppard reached into his tac vest and brought out a glowing pendant.

“Cador’s control crystal!” McKay said suddenly, snapping his fingers. “Give it here!”

John snatched the pendant away from the physicist’s grabby hands. McKay huffed as the pilot first activated the elevator’s control panel before graciously handing the crystal to the scientist.

“What are you doing?” Teyla asked.

“Calling up a crazy woman,” Rodney muttered before activating the pendant and holding it up to his mouth. “Emadara? Emadara, are you there? Can you hear me?”

There was a pregnant pause during which the doors hissed open.

“Doctor McKay,” came the absentminded response. “How nice to hear from you.”

“Look, where are you?” Rodney asked as they piled into the elevator.

“On the way to my destiny,” Emadara replied cryptically.

“Well you need to turn around,” McKay demanded, “and turn off the self-destruct right now!”

“Oh, no, Doctor McKay,” she said dreamily. “We must purge away our past before we can go forth to our new purpose.”

“What? What’s with the New Age crap?” Rodney said incredulously. “What ‘new purpose’?”

There was a hum, almost a chuckle, from the young woman. “To finish the work of my father, of course.”

McKay looked like he wanted to bang his head against the wall. “Emadara – you just killed your father!”

Teyla made a noise of disapproval at the physicist’s crass words, but otherwise remained silent.

“I hope to see you on the surface, Doctor McKay,” Emadara said, as if she hadn’t heard him. “Perhaps we will get to work together again. I know we would make my father proud.”

“What?” McKay nearly screeched. “Emadara? Emadara!”

But there was no answer.

“Well,” said John after a moment, “I think that pretty much confirms your ‘loony toons’ diagnosis.”

Rodney threw his hands up in disgust. “That’s it! We are finding her, and we’re getting that pendant, and then she can have all the psychotherapy she needs!”

“Perhaps it is deeper than that,” Teyla offered. “You said that her father distorted her memories, no?”

“Yeah, maybe multiple times,” Sheppard mused. “That’s gotta end up in some kind of brain damage.”

“Well you can feel sorry for her later,” McKay muttered, “after we make sure she’s not gonna go off and restart her daddy’s little scientific freak show.”

“Think she has the Whisperers with her?” Ronon rumbled, speaking for the first time.

The hum of the ascending elevator was loud as the three men looked to Teyla.

“I believe I can close my mind to them,” she said confidently, but her eyes were dark.

“You just let us know the moment you sense anything,” John said. Teyla nodded.

At that point, there was a slight lurch, and the elevator came to a halt. The doors opened on a narrow, dirt-walled corridor. Ronon could see a set of stairs at the end.

“Geez, how far underground were we?” Rodney complained. “That was quite possibly the longest time I’ve ever spent in an elevator – unless, of course, you count the time in college I got stuck with Julie Esserman when the power went out in my dormitory and –″

“Shut up,” Ronon hissed.

“No, seriously! And she was hot, too – English Lit. major, though, so not really my type, but –″

Ronon grabbed McKay by the collar and fixed him with a positively terrifying glare. The physicist uttered something that might have been “meep!” but then fell silent.

In the quiet, they could hear the sound of shouting voices drifting to them from above.

Ronon led the way as they jogged toward the stairs. He bounded up the steps, blaster at the ready, into the night air.

This particular entrance was closer to the middle of the field, nearly in the center of the ring of defense net poles. Perhaps a hundred Reservoir scientists, who had had emerged from a dozen other outlets scattered about the area, were calling to each other across the meadow. It reminded Ronon strongly of small rodents popping up from their holes. From what he could tell, everyone was trying to make their way toward the Stargate in the distance, but the light of the twin crescent moons on the horizon was not bright enough to let him see it.

“Okay,” Sheppard said as he joined the Satedan, also assessing the situation. “If Emadara’s up here, she’ll be heading for the ‘gate – which is good, ‘cause that’s what we want to do, too.”

“Keep your eyes peeled for the zombie entourage,” Rodney muttered.

“Teyla,” John said, “fall back with McKay.” He looked at her grimly. “Let us know if you feel anything.”

Teyla nodded as she and the scientist fell into step about thirty feet behind Sheppard and Ronon.

“Oh, and if you see those pole things activate . . .” John added over his shoulder, sweeping a hand at the ring around them, “hit the deck.”

“What?” Rodney demanded, but the colonel and the Satedan were pulling away.

“They make up the Reservoir’s defense net,” Teyla explained. “Ronon was nearly electrocuted by the energy field they produce.”

“Oh.” Rodney gulped. “Then, uh, I’m really glad they don’t normally keep it on full power.”

Teyla opened her mouth to ask a question, but quite suddenly snapped it shut.

“Teyla?”

The Athosian’s eyes widened and she grabbed Rodney’s arm with one hand and tightened her grip on her P-90 with the other.

“Teyla, what’s wrong? Is it the Whisperers?!” McKay asked twisting his head to peer at the darkness surrounding them. “Sheppard!” he yelled.

“No,” Teyla said, shaking her head. “It is not the Whisperers. Rodney,” she said urgently, “it is something Emadara said to the captive Wraith! I thought she meant other scientists when she spoke of ‘the others,’ but . . .”

Rodney looked at her in trepidation as she raised her eyes to the sky. He followed her gaze. Terrifyingly familiar shapes darted against the background of stars.

“McKay?” John called back to them.

“Wraith!” McKay shouted, breaking into a run with Teyla beside him. “Emadara called the damn Wraith!”

And then the Darts were on them.

Act V

“Get down!” Sheppard roared. He ran three steps, hit the ground and rolled, just as a culling beam swept by him.

Screams began ringing through the night air as the evacuees realized what was happening. John raised his head in time to see a group of half a dozen scientists, not ten yards away, disappear in a flash of white as the Dart swept over them.

“Teyla!” John yelled. “Ronon!”

“Since your brain is more addled than usual,” snarked a voice from nearby, “I’m going to forgive you for not including me in that.”

John scrambled up and hurried toward the sound, heaving McKay to his feet when he found him.

“Where are Teyla and Ronon?” he asked.

“I am here, John,” Teyla said, jogging up out of the dark. “We must find cover!”

“Have you seen any other underground entrances?” John asked.

“We can’t go back down!” Rodney squawked. “Need I remind you of the imminent fiery doom?!”

“It’s not like we have a lot of options, McKay!” Sheppard barked. “I don’t think we can make it to the ‘gate!”

“It’s blocked, anyways,” Ronon announced, suddenly appearing beside them. “Wraith dialed in.”

“Damn it,” John said, seeing for himself the blue glow of an active wormhole in the distance. “Okay, stay twenty feet apart at all times,” he ordered quickly, “and scatter the moment you hear a Dart headed our way.”

“Hey!” McKay said suddenly, looking beyond them. He pushed past John and Teyla and began running across the field.

“McKay!” John barked. Beside him, Ronon growled and took off after the wayward scientist.

John and Teyla followed at a short distance, scanning the sky for attack. The Darts buzzed through the air like glowing red insects, and all throughout the field panicking scientists were disappearing into the white light of culling beams.

One of the Wraith ships swooped down, forcing them to zigzag as they dived out of the way of its scooping run. When they got back on their feet, Ronon and Rodney had pulled away from them.

“Why would she do this?” Teyla asked as they resumed their pursuit. “Why would Emadara save them from the facility’s destruction, only to be culled by the Wraith?”

“Apart from the fact that she’s gone nuts?” John answered. “Damned if I know.”

---

“Hey!” Rodney shouted. “Stop!”

As the physicist approached, the spot of light he’d been following stopped moving and resolved itself into the glowing crystals of Emadara’s control crown.

“Emadara!” he said, panting as he came to a halt. “You need to . . . uh . . .”

He trailed off as the Valerian turned to him, flanked by the four Whisperers. The dead-eyed figures looked ghostly in the dim light, and McKay swallowed back a sudden thrill of fear.

Ronon ran up beside him, blaster aimed at the madwoman.

“No!” Rodney cried. “You could damage the control crystal!”

Ronon hesitated and gave the physicist an annoyed look. “So?”

“So we need Garrad’s pendant to turn off the self-destruct!” McKay said irritably. “So we can hide in the Reservoir until the Wraith are gone!”

Ronon growled and tightened his grip on the weapon, but didn’t fire.

Emadara watched the Lanteans impassively. “You cannot get back in,” she said. The Whisperers’ dull voices under her words drifted eerily through the dark. “The Reservoir is sealed.”

“Well, unseal it!” Rodney demanded.

Emadara didn’t seem to hear him as she raised her eyes to the sky.

“I am going now to finish my father’s work,” she whispered.

“What –″ Rodney began, and then he heard it.

“McKay!” Ronon shouted. The Satedan turned to run, grabbing the scientist’s shirt as he did.

“No!” Rodney cried, but the whine of the Dart was growing louder, and the runner was already hauling him away.

The culling beam materialized, and Ronon pushed McKay in front of him, urging the physicist to go faster. Rodney spared a glance over his shoulder.

In the moment before the ship reached her, Emadara dropped her gaze and looked him straight in the eye. She smiled, and McKay found that her twisted, eager expression frightened him more than either the Wraith or the Whisperers.

Then the white beam swept over both the Valerian and her servants, and they were gone.

---

“We are so screwed!” Rodney announced as he and Ronon rendezvoused with Sheppard and Teyla.

“You said that already,” John said. “Now figure out how to get us unscrewed.”

McKay gawked. “What?! How is it that you can’t remember my name, and yet you still look to me to save our lives by pulling some kind of miracle out of my ass?!”

“I do that a lot, do I?”

“Yes you do!”

“Then I must have a good reason!”

“I – you – don’t change the subject!”

“What about the defense net?” Ronon interrupted. He was scanning the skies around them, anxious to be moving again.

“I do not think the energy field would reach high enough to affect the Darts,” Teyla said.

“Yes yes yes,” Rodney said, waving his hand like he was shooing away a fly. “From what I could tell, it’s only meant to stop a ground assault.”

“Then what do we do?” Ronon growled.

“Oh, now you’re asking me, too?” McKay snarked. “Look, the Wraith are looking for the beacon that called them, and on top of that, the Reservoir’s cloak is turned off, so it’s a pretty big bet they’ll want to investigate the strange underground bunker that just showed up on their sensors!” He flailed his hands at their surroundings. “They aren’t gonna stop until they’ve culled this entire field and then –″ The physicist’s eyes suddenly widened. He did a strange double-fist snap-pop before pointing at Sheppard with excitement in his eyes. “The defense net!”

“You said it wouldn’t work,” Sheppard said skeptically, but the scientist was already speedwalking away, forcing his team to follow.

“No no no, we’re not gonna use it to attack; we’re gonna use it to hide.”

“I don’t think that –″

“You said the poles emitted an energy field, right?” McKay interrupted. “Which means they probably create a strong electromagnetic disturbance, even when they’re not active.”

“And we can use it?” Teyla asked.

“If we stick close to them, we should be hidden from the Wraith scanners!” Rodney said, as if the deduction were obvious.

“Think it’ll work?” Ronon asked Sheppard.

“Well of course I do,” McKay said, misinterpreting the direction of question. “If I didn’t I wouldn’t have suggested it!”

John turned to look at the sky behind them. “We’re gonna have to test your theory, McKay,” he said tightly.

In the distance, the glowing red engine of a Dart banked in a wide arc, circling around to make another run. It straightened its flight path and leveled out, picking up speed. The white flash of its culling beam swept through the grassland as it zoomed across the field.

It was headed straight for them.

“Move it!” John roared.

Sheppard had to hand it to McKay – the physicist kept decent pace with the team as they fled across the grass. John led the way, followed closely by Teyla and Rodney. Ronon brought up the rear, though the Satedan could easily have outstripped them all.

The low whine of the Dart grew closer and closer, the droning growing higher and higher in pitch.

Sheppard held back from a full out sprint, running as fast as he dared while still watching for obstacles hidden in the grass. He used the loud, gasping breaths behind him as a warning system for if and when Rodney fell behind.

“Pick up the pace, McKay!” he yelled.

“I . . . am!”

Sheppard could hear the whoosh of the Dart cutting through the air. The white light of the culling beam seemed too bright in the dark, casting faint shadows in front of them. It reflected dimly off the gray metal pillar that loomed ahead.

“It’s almost on us!” Ronon yelled. Sheppard heard the whine of the runner’s blaster powering up.

John’s legs burned and his heart pounded. He heard Teyla’s heavy breathing and McKay’s frantic panting.

“Almost there, Rodney!” Teyla gasped in encouragement.

And quite suddenly, Sheppard was. The pole seemed to jump up out of the dark, and he flung an arm out to catch himself. His momentum carried him around, jerking his shoulder muscles painfully as he clothes-lined the pillar.

Teyla was right behind him, coming to a stop with considerably more grace and less bodily harm. Seconds later, Rodney was grabbing the emitter with both arms, almost hugging it, as he slid to the ground in a gasping heap.

“Ronon!” Sheppard yelled.

Still out in the open, Ronon took aim and fired over his shoulder without breaking stride. His shot went wide, but the sudden bolt of red energy caused the Wraith ship to veer slightly to the side.

The runner sprinted toward his team as the Dart bore down on them.

“Not gonna make it,” McKay wheezed.

“Yes, he is!” John contradicted fiercely.

At the very last second, Ronon twisted to the side, shot his legs out in front of him, and, to Sheppard’s amazement, slid into the pillar exactly like a baseball player sliding into home base.

The engine whine grew to a deafening roar; the hair on John’s arms and neck stood up in the peripheral energy of the culling beam; and then the Dart blew by in a frenzy of noise and wind.

“Cutting it close there, buddy!” Sheppard said, trying to catch his own breath.

Ronon lay where he’d fallen, arms flopped out, chest heaving. “Nah,” he said without moving. “’m good.”

“Go away, go away, go away,” Rodney muttered breathlessly.

John looked askance at the physicist before he realized McKay was looking at the sky, watching the Dart that had just missed culling them.

“McKay?”

“It’s turning away, right?” Rodney asked, still breathing hard. “It’s not coming back?”

Sheppard watched the ship bank into a turn before it started climbing up through the atmosphere.

“Doesn’t look like it.”

“Oh, good,” Rodney breathed. “That means it doesn’t know we’re here. Probably thinks it culled us.”

Sheppard stared. “Are you telling me you didn’t know if the emitter would hide us or not?!”

McKay shrugged, sitting and leaning his head back against the pillar. “Hardly matters now. It worked, didn’t it?”

John was about to retort when Teyla spoke.

“Listen,” she said. “Do you hear that?”

They paused in silence.

“I don’t hear anything,” McKay said.

“Exactly.” Ronon’s voice was grim.

“Culling’s over,” John said in realization. “They think they got everyone.”

They looked out over the dark and empty field. The twin crescent moons had risen farther above the horizon, bathing the grass in murky gray light. Nothing moved, and the only sound was the fading whine of the Darts as they ascended through the atmosphere on their way back to the orbiting hive ship.

“Hello?” Rodney said, and John turned to see the physicist speaking into Cador’s stolen control crystal. “Hello? Can anyone hear me? Any Reservoir people left out there? Hello?”

There was no answer. McKay sighed and hung his head, running a hand across the back of his neck.

The faint sound of a wormhole disengaging reached their ears.

Rodney looked up. The blue glow of the ‘gate, less than half a mile from the pillar they’d claimed as shelter, winked out. “Well,” he said, “I guess they really are done.” He looked up at John. “Can we go home now?”

“I thought you said they’d be back to investigate the facility.”

“Well . . . maybe they’re gonna have dinner first.” He suppressed a shudder.

“Somethin’ doesn’t feel right,” Ronon rumbled.

“I agree with Ronon,” Teyla said, looking at the stars with a frown. “This is too easy.”

“Too easy?!” Rodney scoffed. “They culled maybe a hundred scientists, and then chased us down like animals, nearly giving me a heart attack in the process, and that’s too easy?!”

“We’ll wait ten minutes,” Sheppard decided. “If it’s still all clear, we’ll make for the ‘gate.”

“Do I need to remind you that there is a very large underground facility beneath us that is primed to explode at any moment?!”

Sheppard grimaced. “No,” he bit back, “but I have a feeling we don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

“Oh yeah? And how did you come to that conclusion?”

“’Cause I think it would have gone off by now.”

Ronon nodded in agreement. “It’s a dud,” he added helpfully.

“I don’t believe this!” McKay threw up his hands in exasperation. “The ‘gate is right there, and we’re just gonna sit on our –″

“John!” Teyla said suddenly. “They are returning!”

Sheppard looked up as the droning sound of a single Wraith Dart began to grow. “Crap,” he said under his breath. “Okay, everybody down, as close to the pillar as you can get,” he ordered. “We might not show up on their sensors, but I don’t want them to get a visual, either.”

The four teammates crouched close to the ground, leaning against the pole for support. They watched in trepidation as the Dart buzzed the field, circling once before the bright flash of its culling beam nearly blinded them.

John squeezed his eyes shut, but he couldn’t block out the afterimage burned into his retinas.

“Oh no,” he heard Teyla say softly. The whine of the Dart faded again as it retreated.

John opened his eyes and blinked a few times. “Everybody see that?” he asked.

“If by ‘that’ you mean the couple dozen Wraith that just beamed down less than two hundred meters from our position,” Rodney grumbled, rubbing his eyes, “then yes, I did, in fact, see just how screwed we are. Again.”

“Will you stop that?” Ronon suddenly growled. “Is that all you do on missions? Whine all the time?”

“Ronon!” Sheppard barked. He fixed the Satedan with a level stare. Ronon curled his lip, but after a moment, the big man backed down.

“I’ll have you know,” Rodney said, though his voice was shaking, “that I am a genius, and I’ve contributed more to this team than you could ever –″

“Rodney!” Sheppard abruptly cut him off. “You must be a real genius, right? The best?”

“Oh, what’s that supposed to mean? That that’s the only possible reason you can think of for why you put up with me?!”

“No,” John said calmly. “You must be the best, because you’re on my team, and I only put the best on my team.” The colonel spoke to Rodney, but his eyes were on Ronon.

The Satedan nodded grudgingly.

“Oh,” McKay said, “well. Yes, then – yes, I am a genius. The best.” A bit of the snark came back into his voice. “I mean, have you forgotten why the mad scientists kidnapped me in the first place?!”

“Good,” Sheppard said firmly, “because I’ve got a dozen Wraith headed our way, half a mile of uncovered ground between us and the Stargate, and” – he raised his eyes to the pillar standing over them – “I’m gonna need you to pull off another miracle.”

---

Ronon lay on his belly in the grass, watching two of the Wraith drones pass only a dozen paces from his position. He tightened his grip on his blaster, but otherwise remained perfectly still.

The Wraith company had spread out, searching the field for one of the hidden entrances. The two Ronon watched now were establishing a perimeter, making their way slowly around the circle of defense net poles, stunners at the ready.

Teyla was somewhere off to his right, in a similar position with her P-90. He couldn’t see her, but he knew she was watching the Wraith as closely as he was. If the drones continued on their present course . . .

There was a sudden noise from the darkness a short distance behind him. It sounded distinctly like an electrical zap, followed by a bitten off curse word.

The Wraith paused and turned toward the sound, raising their stunners.

Ronon heard the careful click of a P-90’s safety disengaging in the darkness to his right.

The runner grinned and took aim.

---

Sheppard raised his nine-mil as the sound of automatic weapons fire shattered the quiet of the night.

“You’re out of time, McKay!”

The physicist spoke around the burned finger he had popped into his mouth. “Well, as you can see by the circuit that just blew, this isn’t as easy as it looks!”

John scanned the darkness around them. The muzzle flash of Teyla’s P-90 and the red bolts from Ronon’s blaster were like beacons in the night – which was both good and bad at this point. “Ronon and Teyla are buying you time, but the rest of ‘em are gonna be here any minute, so hurry up!”

The dim glow of Cador’s pendant illuminated the scientist’s scowl as he worked on an open control panel on the side of the pillar. “Oh, I am,” he grumbled, sticking his hand back into the mess of wires and crystals, “but if you haven’t noticed, the bad guys are spread out all over the place and they’re really hard to kill!” He grunted as something sparked, but didn’t stop working. “Only two of several problems I’m trying to solve simultaneously!”

“You said you could get this emitter working.”

“And I can!” Rodney bit back. “But trust me – this is harder than it looks, it’s building up a lot of power, and you do not want it to go off early!”

John kept his eyes on the field. “So many jokes,” he muttered, “so little time.”

“Oh, I am so glad your juvenile sense of humor is intact!”

“John!” Teyla shouted over the radio, and Sheppard could hear a slight echo as her real voice rang through the air. “There are more Wraith converging on our position! We cannot hold them away from you for much longer!”

“Almost done,” Rodney said, brow furrowed in concentration. “I’m setting a five-second delay, so be ready to drop.”

“Fall back! Stand by for my signal!” John said into his radio. “And try to draw them as close as possible – we don’t know the range on this thing.”

“Sheppard!” Ronon bellowed. “Watch your back!”

“I see ‘em!” John raised his sidearm as three tall shapes – two drones and a male – seemed to materialize out of the darkness. “Now would be a good time, Rodney!”

“Just gimme a second!”

Sheppard placed himself between the physicist and the oncoming Wraith. One of the drones raised its stunner; John put a bullet in the middle of its facemask.

He immediately dodged to the side, but the remaining drone had already fired, and the blast grazed his hip. His entire left leg went numb and he crashed to the ground.

On the other side of the pillar, Sheppard could hear the intermingling of Teyla’s rifle, Ronon’s blaster, and more Wraith stunner fire as the Athosian and Satedan fended off their own attack. He saw more shadowy figures running toward them across the field.

John twisted onto his back, brought his gun out in front of him, and put a dozen bullets into the torso of the drone that had stunned him. When it finally fell, he turned the gun on the male, but only got off one shot before the chamber clicked on empty. The Wraith shrugged off the single bullet like it was a mosquito bite.

“McKay!” he roared, but the creature was already on him.

“I got it, I got it!” Rodney cried excitedly. “Sheppard, I –″ He turned in time to see the Wraith knock the colonel’s empty pistol to the ground. “Sheppard!”

The Wraith grabbed John by his tac vest and hauled him upright. “Do it now, McKay!” he ordered, trying and failing to struggle out of the creature’s grip.

“No! You –″ Rodney began.

“Ah!” Teyla’s sharp cry rang through the air. Rodney turned in time to see the P-90 fall from her suddenly limp right arm as she stumbled to the ground.

“McKay!” Sheppard yelled again.

The male Wraith lifted John bodily into the air, snarling in the pale moonlight.

Rodney turned to the switch he had rigged. Images of the charred deer-creature flashed through his mind.

Ronon was still on his feet, still firing his blaster at anything that moved, but the rest of the Wraith were heading their way now, and the Satedan couldn’t hold them off forever.

“Now, Rodney!” John ordered, but then the Wraith changed its grip, putting a clawed hand around the soldier’s throat, and whatever he’d been going to say turned into a choking sound.

Rodney made his decision.

“Hit the deck!!!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, and then he threw the switch.

Five, began the physicist’s internal countdown.

Teyla flattened herself to the grass. Left-handed, she drew her sidearm and fired at the approaching Wraith. Most of her shots missed, but it was enough to make the monsters hesitate.

Four.

Ronon fired three more shots, then jerked backward, falling, as if he’d been hit with a stunner. He pressed himself to the ground and didn’t move.  The drones stopped shooting and approached him slowly.

Three.

John clutched at the hand around his neck, kicking out with his good leg, but he couldn’t get any leverage. The Wraith ripped open the front of his tac vest and drew back its feeding hand.

A low hum began to vibrate the air, pulsing up through the ground.

Two.

Rodney didn’t know much about fighting. He didn’t even know much about American football. But he did know that if enough torque were applied at a sufficient distance from an object’s center of mass, that object would be forced to rotate.

And so McKay found himself hurtling toward the Wraith’s knees in a full-out running tackle. He got a face full of black leather duster as they tumbled to the ground.

The humming grew louder as the defense net began to glow – and not just the emitter Rodney had rigged. Every single pole around the field shone with white-blue light.

One.

John hit the dirt on his back. The impact knocked the wind from his lungs and sent him into a brutal coughing fit.

Rodney rolled away as fast as he could. He lay on his back and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to make himself as small as possible.

The Wraith leapt to its feet with preternatural quickness. The brightening light of the emitters cast its face in harsh shadows as it snarled at the physicist.

Zero.

The night exploded.

---

Lying on his stomach, Ronon was powerless to help Sheppard. He saw him struggle with the Wraith; he saw how his team leader couldn’t possibly break free and drop to the safety zone in time; he saw that he couldn’t aim at this odd angle, and how any shot he took would hit John, too.

Ronon was convinced he was about to watch his friend die.

Then, out of nowhere, McKay plowed into the Wraith. The whiny, slow, infuriating physicist crashed right into the seven-foot snarling monster, and he did it without an ounce of hesitation.  The trio fell to the ground, and Ronon had just enough time to see the Wraith leap to its feet before the defense net activated.

Ronon felt the blue wave of energy wash over him, and he closed his eyes as the light became a blinding glare. The air hummed and buzzed like a thousand insects mere inches above his head. Dimly, he heard an electric crackling mixed with enraged howls and screams.

And then, quite suddenly, it was all over. The air stopped vibrating and the field went dark. Ronon opened his eyes, waiting for the afterglow to fade. He flipped over onto his back and watched the stars above come slowly into view. Cautiously, he sat up and looked around.

The drones that had been firing at him lay on the ground, unmoving. Ronon thought they might have just been stunned – until he saw the wisps of smoke rising from their bodies. All across the field, even in the distance, the Satedan saw moonlight reflecting off patches of rising smoke, and the acrid smell of electrical burns began to tickle his nose.

Ronon stood up. “He did it,” he muttered to himself. “The son of a bitch did it.”

When he reached the pillar, Teyla was already there, helping Sheppard sit up.

“I’m fine,” John was saying, kneading his fingers into his left thigh. “Just pins and needles now. Give it a minute.”

“Teyla?” Ronon asked, nodding at the way she held her arm to her side. “You okay?”

“It is merely numb,” she replied. “I will be fine in a moment.”

“We need to get moving,” John said. “Before the rest of them get here.”

Ronon shook his head. “None left.” He gestured to the grassland around them. “Whole field got fried.”

Sheppard looked around to confirm the runner’s statement. “McKay,” he said, his tone both stern and incredulous at the same time, “what did you do?”

“I’m so glad you’ve finally decided to notice me,” the physicist said from where he lay nearby. Ronon saw the control pendant, no longer glowing, clutched loosely in his hand. “I’m fine, by the way, thanks for asking.”

Teyla rose and went to kneel by the scientist, helping him struggle into a sitting position. “We are very glad to hear it, Rodney,” she said with a smile.

“Yeah,” John said, “and thanks for . . .” He waved a hand in the direction of the Wraith that had attacked him. “I owe you one.”

“Oh, well,” McKay said awkwardly, looking wide-eyed at the dead creature, “not that you remember, but it was probably my turn anyways.” He leaned forward and peered at the smoldering heap. “Geez, that doesn’t look anything like the deer-thing I saw! Good thing I put it on full power; anything less might not have worked at all!” He shuddered.

“Is that what you did?” John asked. “Put it on full power?”

“Well, yes, of course,” McKay replied. “That, and I made every emitter in the defense net activate at once.”

The three teammates stared at him.

“You can do that?” Sheppard said. “You didn’t say you could do that.”

“Well, it was a rather ingenious last-minute idea, if I do say so myself.”

Teyla smiled as she helped McKay stand. “Well done, Rodney.”

“Yeah,” Sheppard nodded, “good job.”

“Good job? Good job?” Rodney said incredulously, arching his back and grimacing. “I pull off a nearly impossible stunt and that’s all you can say? Good job?”

John shrugged. “Hey, from the way you were talking earlier, you do this kind of thing all the time.” Ronon could see a smile tugging at the soldier’s lips. “Just part of your job description, right?”

“Honestly, why do I even try?” McKay ranted. “It’s like casting pearls before swine!” He huffed and straightened his shirt. “But I’ll tell you what’s not in my job description: back injury. Thanks to all the heroics I’ve pulled today, I’ve probably permanently damaged my –″

Something clicked in Ronon’s brain, and he quite suddenly found himself nose to nose with the physicist, who abruptly fell silent.

“Are you telling me,” he growled, towering over McKay with a glare, “that you just saved all our lives and took out over twenty Wraith,” Ronon leaned closer, “and you’re still complaining?”

Rodney’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t back down. “Um, yes?”

Ronon took a deep breath. Then, surprising even himself, a big grin split the runner’s features, and he wrapped his arms around McKay, literally lifting the man into an enormous bear hug.

“Ack!” Rodney said as the air was squeezed from his lungs.

Ronon dropped McKay back to the ground and slapped his back as he tried to regain his balance.

“’s’good to have you back, McKay,” Ronon said, still grinning.

“Yeah,” Rodney said, panting and eyeing the Satedan warily. “Good to be back.”

Sheppard suppressed a chuckle as he hauled himself to his feet, but Teyla laughed openly.

“Well, now that we’ve got that out of the way,” John said wryly, “why don’t we –″

The ground beneath them lurched and everyone but Ronon was suddenly thrown off their feet.

“What is happening?” Teyla yelled as a rumbling sound filled the air.

“Earthquake?” John ventured. Another tremor rattled his teeth.

“Oh crap oh crap oh crap,” Rodney chanted as he scrambled up. “We need to go, now!”

No one argued as they all began running for the Stargate.

“McKay?” John yelled, trying not to stumble as the ground beneath them continued to roll. “Care to share with the class?!”

“The self-destruct! It’s not ‘a dud!’” The physicist’s disdain for John and Ronon’s earlier assessment was clear even over the growing noise. “Emadara put it on a timer!” McKay spared a glance over his shoulder as he ran. “She wanted it to go off when the Wraith were investigating!”

John also looked back. They had cleared the defense net, and as he watched, the entire ring of poles began to fall in toward the center of the field.

“Move it!” he roared.

“John!” Teyla cried as she, too, glimpsed what the team leader saw.

“We are so screwed!” Rodney yelled, more a lament to the universe at large than to his teammates.

John was tempted to agree with him; as they ran, a line of destruction followed them, marking the expansion of a massive sinkhole as the huge underground facility that was the Reservoir fell in on itself.

The ground was literally falling away behind them.

“Don’t stop!” Sheppard yelled. “Ronon! The ‘gate!”

With barely a nod of acknowledgement, the Satedan was off, leaving them in the dust.

“Again with the running,” Rodney panted, “why is it always running?!”

“Do not speak, Rodney!” Teyla said. “Conserve your oxygen!”

“A ‘jumper! Didn’t I say we should’ve brought a ‘jumper? Why doesn’t anyone ever listen?!”

“McKay! Shut. Up.”

Sheppard could hear the sound of actual explosions as they came closer to the Stargate. A sudden flare of orange light cast their shadows in front of them, and John didn’t have to look behind to realize that some of the self-destruct detonations were reaching all the way to the surface.

Ahead of them, Ronon reached the ‘gate and began dialing. Sheppard spared another glance behind and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that the sinkhole had stopped expanding. The feeling was short-lived, however, as the ground shook again, and he saw the Stargate itself wobble on its dais in the light of the newly-formed wormhole.

“Go!” he yelled, waving at Ronon. “Go now!”

Ronon hesitated, waiting until he saw that his whole team had at least made it past the DHD. Teyla, a dozen paces in the lead, bounded up the steps and disappeared into the event horizon. When Ronon saw that both John and Rodney were on the steps, he followed her.

Without warning, John’s left leg gave out, its muscles apparently deciding they hadn’t quite shaken off the effects of the Wraith stunner.

“Sheppard!” Rodney yelled, pausing to look back as the pilot stumbled.

“Go!” John cried, but the physicist was already on his way back down. “I’m fine!”

“Right,” Rodney grumbled, grabbing the colonel’s arm, “I know you don’t remember, but I know you better than that.”

The most violent tremor yet rattled the very air around them, and they hugged the stairs as the tremendous sound of cracking stone filled their ears.

The Stargate came loose from its supports. It wobbled dangerously, several tons of naquadah poised to crash to the quaking ground. Then, slowly, it began to tilt.

The blue surface rushed toward them.

“Oh, crap,” Rodney said.

A few seconds later, Sheppard and McKay came hurtling headfirst into the Atlantis ‘gate room, straight into the recently arrived Ronon and Teyla. The quartet crashed to the ground in a tangled heap as the wormhole behind them abruptly disengaged.

There was a moment of what John could only describe as stunned silence. Then someone gasped, and the whole ‘gate room very nearly exploded in activity and noise.

“Well,” McKay said as various personnel rushed to help the team extricate themselves, “let’s never do that again. Ever.”

***

Epilogue

“So, you remember most of the stuff we did together,” McKay said, mouth full, “but there’s like a – a hole when it comes to actually remembering me?” He waved his spoon at his head.

Sheppard shrugged. “It’s fuzzy,” he said. “Like it’s hard to think about.”

“Huh.” Rodney seemed deep in thought as he dug the spoon back into his pudding cup.

Teyla shifted in the infirmary chair, bouncing Torren on her knee as she tried to find a comfortable position. The baby kept grabbing at McKay’s bed sheets and trying to climb onto the physicist’s legs. “It is an odd feeling,” she agreed. “I am glad it is only temporary.”

“Just a couple weeks, right?” Rodney said, licking the last of the chocolate off the spoon. He stuck the utensil back in the cup and shoved it at Ronon. “I believe I’m ready for a refill.”

The Satedan, lounging with his feet up on the end of Rodney’s bed, responded with a level stare.

“I don’t think you wanna push it, McKay,” Sheppard said wryly. “The big guy brought you a ‘peace offering’ – just leave it at that.”

Rodney sniffed, but brought the cup and spoon back to his lap. “Well, it’s certainly not my fault if certain people are feeling guilty for the horrendous way they treated a certain teammate.” He gestured with the spoon as if it were a royal scepter. “Not that those people shouldn’t feel guilty, of course, especially after that certain teammate saved certain people’s lives – multiple times over, I might add. And so if certain people want to make amends to certain teammates with chocolate pudding, especially after all that certain teammate had to put up with on the mission, all he had to put up with during the escape, all he had to put up with when –″

“I’ll put that spoon up somewhere if you don’t shut up,” Ronon growled.

“Oh, see?!” McKay ranted as John and Teyla laughed. “Is that any way to talk to the man who removed your tracker scars?!”

Ronon furrowed his brow. “No way. That was you?”

Rodney nodded smugly, then whipped the spoon around to point at John. “Or the man who let you throw him off a balcony when we barely knew each other?!”

John’s smile turned uncertain and he gave Ronon and Teyla a skeptical look. “He’s pulling our legs . . .”

“Or the man who delivered Teyla’s baby?!”

“Okay, now I know you’re making stuff up.”

“Agitating my patient, are we?” Carson interrupted, cutting off McKay’s rant. The physician gave them all a stern expression as he approached Rodney’s bed, but his eyes were amused. “And what are we discussing now?”

“Rodney was telling us stories,” Teyla said with a smile as she again foiled one of Torren’s escape attempts.

“They’re not ‘stories’!” McKay squawked.

“Aye?” Carson asked with a gleam in his eye. “Has he told you the one where he was forced to kiss another man full on the mouth, then?”

John turned a devilish look on McKay. “Really,” he said, the word not a question. “Don’t think I’ve heard that one.”

“Oh, now why would you bring that up?” Rodney said, glaring at the Scot. “You’ve got as much to lose from that story as I do!”

“Aye,” Carson said, shrugging nonchalantly, “but it obviously bothers you much more than me.” He turned and gave Teyla a cheeky wink. “I was just the victim, after all.”

“Okay, now this I wanna hear,” Sheppard said.

Rodney cleared his throat and suddenly became very interested in his empty pudding cup. “Ah, yes, well, maybe story time should be over for now.” He tried to keep his face serious as his friends laughed.  “So, what’s the damage?” he asked gruffly, glaring at his still chuckling teammates.

Beckett sighed. “I’m afraid the memory device you described did have an effect,” he said, sobering the mood quickly. “The bruising is similar to the rest of your team’s.”

“So it’s temporary, right?” John asked.

“Aye.”

“But Garrad said it was going to be permanent,” McKay said, confused.

“Good thing I turned it off so quickly, huh?” Sheppard’s expression was smug in the face of Rodney’s withering glare.

Beckett ignored the exchange. “I expect you to regain your lost memories at about the same time the rest of your team does,” he finished.

Rodney waved the spoon around again. “But I haven’t lost any memories.”

“That we know of,” Carson corrected.

“That we know of?!”

“Don’t worry about it, McKay,” John said quickly. “If it were that important, we’d know about it already.”

Rodney set the spoon down and shrugged, but he still looked unsettled.

“As part of your recovery,” Beckett said, turning to include John, Ronon, and Teyla in his speech, “Doctor Hamri will be conducting psychological evaluations, so be prepared for at least one counseling session.”

Ronon showed no reaction to the news, but John grimaced a little.

“Has Doctor Hamri received our mission reports?” Teyla asked, seemingly unaffected by the announcement. “I was wondering if she would be able to explain Emadara’s behavior.”

“What’s to explain?” Rodney asked incredulously. “She went whacko. End of story.”

Beckett looked apologetically at Teyla. “She did go on about it for a while, but I’m afraid the whole subject is a bit outside my bailiwick.” He grimaced. “Something about repression and coping mechanisms. I think the word ‘oedipal’ may have been used.”

“Well, what can you do,” McKay said dismissively. “Psychology is even more voodoo than regular medicine.” He ignored Carson’s exasperated look.

Teyla sighed and again shifted Torren away from the bed. “I simply do not understand how a rational woman could so quickly lose all her reason.” She frowned. “So much so that she would destroy all the scientists who worked with her.”

“Actually,” Rodney said, grimacing, “I’ve been thinking about that. I don’t think she really meant to kill the scientists.”

“Got them culled,” Ronon said, a simple statement of fact.

“Yeah, but she and her Whisperers got culled, too,” McKay said, leaning forward. “She might have been bonkers, but I don’t think she was stupid.”

“You think she wanted to get on the hive ship,” Sheppard said evenly, crossing his arms. “That was her plan all along.”

“Exactly!” The spoon was in the air again. “If it worked, then she and her Whisperers might have already taken over that hive ship! And,” he said, jabbing with the utensil for emphasis, “she’s probably got all those scientists in stasis, ready to use for . . . whatever the hell she’s got planned.”

Carson looked to the team in alarm. “Well if that’s true, we need to bloody stop her!”

John ran a hand through his hair. “Can’t,” he said. “Not yet, anyways. The ‘gate on Valeria was destroyed. We have to wait a week for the Daedalus to get here before we can go find out what happened.”

“And see if any Reservoir technology survived,” McKay insisted.

Beckett frowned at the bad news before a nurse’s call turned his head. “Ah,” the doctor said, nodding to the team, “if you’ll excuse me.” He left in the direction of the voice.

There was a moment of silence during which McKay picked up, put down, and again picked up his empty pudding cup.

“You don’t have to stay,” he suddenly blurted, not making eye contact with any of his team. “I . . . I’m fine.”

Sheppard leaned back and mirrored Ronon’s position, putting his feet on the bed. “Yeah, we know,” he said laconically.

“We are glad to keep you company,” Teyla said with a smile. Torren gurgled and put a tiny fist in his mouth.

Rodney looked at Ronon. The former runner had[E1]  put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes, as if he were going to take a nap.

“I’m not getting you more pudding.”

John and Teyla laughed. “Well, fine, then,” Rodney said, though his cheeks were pinking with pleasure. “You can stay – if you promise to believe my stories.”

“No problem,” John said. His grin widened. “Meredith.”

Rodney’s look of surprise turned into a scowl. “All right,” he said in disgust, “who told you?!”

“Zelenka,” Sheppard chuckled. “He’s busy now, but we talked to him while you were getting scanned.”

“He was most helpful in preparing us for the rescue mission,” Teyla said, smiling.

“Yeah, well, he’s gonna be getting cold showers for the next month,” Rodney muttered. “Where did you say he was again?”

“Down in the labs. He –″

“No no no,” McKay waved, “what department? Who’s his supervisor?”

Teyla paused the bouncing of her knee and looked up at the scientist. Ronon opened his eyes and stared.

John swung his feet off the bed and very suddenly leaned forward. “What did you say, McKay?”

“This Zelunka guy,” Rodney said, annoyed. “Or whatever you called him. Is he science? Medical? What?”

John and Ronon looked at each other, eyebrows raised in disbelief. Teyla stared at McKay in astonishment, mouth slightly open. Torren took advantage of his mother’s distraction to seize another handful of bed sheets.

Rodney had apparently decided there was more pudding to be had and was scraping his spoon around the inside of the cup. “Seriously,” he said, popping the utensil into his mouth and speaking around it, “who’s Zelunka?”

The End