SGA: Hell, Rising From A Thousand Thrones (PG-13) 2/2
Title: Hell, Rising From a Thousand Thrones
Author: mad_maudlin
Fandom: SGA/SG1/Cthulhu Mythos mashup (thus very AU)
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Through "Grace Under Pressure" with a small one for "Enemy at the Gates."
Warnings: Disturbing imagery. See "fandom" above.
Summary: That is not dead which can eternal lie.
A/N: in Part One
The hologram room was flooded. Teal'c and Jackson were fine in their heavy suits, but John hesitated to step into the chilly water even when his scanner showed the level was clear. It was only when Jackson started to offer, "We could find our own way from here," that John jumped the last two steps and landed with splash. His pants were soaked to the knee and his boots immediately started to fill.
"I'm fine," he said. "Besides, I'm the one with the scanner."
"I was under the impression that the amphibians did not register as life signs," Teal'c said.
"They don't," John answered. "But they also tend to scare off the other sea life in a given area, so we retooled these to track fish instead."
"Because the flooded lower levels function like an artificial reef," Jackson said, head bobbing inside his hood. "That's clever of you."
John just shrugged. "We need to come down here sometimes for spare parts and supplies and we like to know who's down here with us."
"The amphibians are aggressive, then?" Teal'c asked.
John couldn't think of a good way to answer, so he didn't; a jammed set of containment doors gave him a nice excuse. By the time they were past those, he'd formulated another question. "We searched the Ancient database when we found McKay. What do you think we missed?"
"I'm not sure you necessarily missed anything," Jackson said, "just that you were looking in the wrong place. We've found references to a war on Earth thousands of years before the Ancients arrived that involved this city, Relex." R'lyeh, John wanted to correct, Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, but didn't. "The Asgard database refers to an expedition to Relex mounted even before the alliance of the Four Great Races, which puts it within a generation of the Ancients coming to Earth from their home galaxy."
"In other words," John said, "we should've been searching the history books instead of the science library."
"Maybe even their myths," Jackson said, "if Ancients had those. The Asgard reference is the most detailed and it sounds a little like the Curse of King Tut-the Ancient archaeologists opened up something they shouldn't have in the ruins of Relex and they all died or went insane because of it."
John paused at an intersection to sweep the scanner around. The water was up over his knees now. "And seeing as how our own mythology keeps coming back to bite us in the ass…you think that thing on the sea floor is the Ancient equivalent of a pyramid?"
Jackson shrugged. "For all we know it's their mothership. The Asgard reference to the Relex expedition says the victims 'took the aspect of the sea' as punishment for violating the sanctum of Ctalul."
John was about to ask how the gods of the Ancients had gotten to Pegasus when they came to the doors of the hologram room. They opened automatically, letting a raft of warmer, scummy water and tiny transparent fish out into the hall. A light burned at the base of the console, sending orangey-red ripples up the walls.
"Residual power," he told the others. "It…happens, sometimes."
"Of course it does," Jackson said, and he and Teal'c started setting up the portable generator that would bring the holograms to life.
-\--\--\-
"It's not a question of brain washing," Kate told them when the number of cases broke the double digits. "Rodney's brain and nervous system have been dramatically changed. Comparing his cognitive functions now to a normal human's is comparing apples to oranges."
"Does he remember who he is?" Elizabeth asked.
"Oh, certainly," Kate said. "He remembers everything very clearly, at least if you're only thinking about facts. His emotional responses are...well, again, I'm not sure they can be explained in human terms."
"He hasn't shown any signs of hostility..." Carson said aloud.
John snorted. "He is a sign of hostility. From that thing in the ocean. Something did this to him and it's doing it to our people and I want to know why."
"I'm not so certain it is hostility," Kate said. "I mean, from one point of view, the changes saved his life-he'd never have survived so long in the water otherwise."
"McKay has a DNR," he pointed out. "He knew there are things worse than death."
Kate took a deep breath. "Colonel, I'm certain we can have a fruitful debate on the nature of a post-human existence," she said. "But I was going to continue-in nearly ten years of the Stargate program we've encountered only a handful of truly alien intelligences, ones so fundamentally different from ourselves that communication is limited or impossible. The sea floor structure might represent one such intelligence, in which case it's rather pointless to discuss intentions, hostile or not. The Wraith may view humans as inferiors, but they still recognize us as having a comparable intelligence to theirs. The abyssal structure-or the beings inside it-may not even recognize that. That makes it very hard to assign any kind of motive to them, much less to conclude they have hostile intentions."
"What about Rodney?" Elizabeth asked. "Does he still recognize us, at least?"
"I think..." Kate bit her lip for a moment. "I suspect that we aren't quite real to him. Not anymore."
John looked away from her. "You mean, not yet."
-\--\--\-
The guts of the console were water-logged, and John pointed this out, but if they were going to do a full database search this was the easiest place to start. John helped Jackson wire in the generator and an Asgard-enhanced crystal drive to record whatever the database showed. "How much useful information do you expect to get?" he asked.
"Anything straight from the Ancients' mouth is more that we have now," Jackson answered philosophically, flicking switches. "Right now I'd settle for a definitive identification of Ctalul-"
The interface hologram suddenly flared to life, guttering and deformed by the interference of the water. "Ctalul," she said, and then burst into great gouts of text, in Ancient and in something else entirely, something John thought he could almost understand. "Cthulhu," the hologram said, snapping back. She looked afraid. "In his house in R'lyeh dead Cthulhu lies dreaming."
The standing hologram became an amphibian, its pale hands pawing at the empty air. "-forty-four individuals. The Deep Ones seem to retain full memories and identity; it is simply that they do not care-"
"-stuff and nonsense," and this was nonsense, like a badly-framed photo, two Ancient councilors standing off to one side at a shuddering angle while a voice spoke from the air. "Even if the legends of Relex were true-"
Another deluge of text and numbers, and a glimpse of the galaxy, of icons for hive ships converging on Lantea's sun. "In our overconfidence, we were unprepared and outnumbered."
The Deep One made a gurgling noise, and then a long, meaty tentacle the size of a human rotated in a scanner's column.
"-cast out our own people," the hologram said, eye wide and staring. "Our own children we sent beyond the shield-"
"-a terrible risk." The council again. Moros looked off into the air, at something beyond the recording's limit. "How can we be sure we won't subject this galaxy to a plague yet more terrible?"
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu--"
Alien text crawled through the air, and hieroglyphs of octopi and something long and blunt and dark that glided on membranous wings. "We ventured into the Elder City to uncover the secrets of their long war with the star-spawn of Relex-"
"-changes nothing! Return to Terra is out of the question! You may be ready to grasp at myth and superstition, but I-"
"-course of twenty to thirty days on average. The transformation follows no fixed pattern-"
The tentacle, a scaly, slimy thing, had been hacked off at one end, not cleanly. And it was still moving. An image of the human nervous system hung suspended in glorious color, parts of the brain burning hellish red.
The interface trembled in position. "It begins with the song-"
The councilors attended to a deep, smooth voice beyond the edge of the shot, a brown hand that fluttered in and out of sight. "-but a portion of its great form. Your gateships may make the journey easily in less than a day. I assure you, the Dread One will not wake if you make the cuts swiftly-"
Numbers sprayed through the air, drawing figures of mounting dead, the growing threat, the lush curves of space and time. "-until finally only Atlantis remained."
"--ll'Tlantis h'grah'nn 'ai-h'ulnn naf'lthagn-"
"In an effort to save the last of our kind, we submerged our great city into the ocean," the recording said, the one John knew, but she changed to the interface hologram, all wild-eyed. "Let the Wraith come. Let them blast the oceans dry. Maybe that will be enough. I pray that will be enough."
"-no identifiable vector and no cure." The Deep One threw back its head and howled. "Our only hope is to evacuate the unaffected-to Terra, perhaps, or even beyond, far from the terrible call-"
That severed tentacle oozed gray-green tar from its stump. The tar thickened, shivered, and became firm scaly flesh.
Moros was nodding. "You speak with wisdom as always, Nyarlathotep."
Text and numbers and hieroglyphs and runes stained the walls with illegible warnings, unreadable pleas.
The hologram stared, and John realized she wasn't afraid. She just had the Atlantis Look, with bulging eyes that could no longer close. "Dead and yet dreaming, Cthulhu waits at Atlantis to call to his lost children," she said. "Cthulhu fhtagn."
Then the console failed with a burnt-meat smell, and they were plunged into darkness.
-\--\--\-
"I want to know what happened to you in the jumper," John said.
Rodney rose to the edge of the tank and considered him, looking down the remains of his nose in an all-too-familiar way. "You want to stop it."
"I want to understand," John said, folding his arms. "Half of all personnel on base are infected--"
Rodney made a croaking, squelching sound. "Infection? That's what you think it is?"
"That's what we're calling it," John said.
"And yet you're not wearing a containment suit," Rodney said, with either a smirk or a snarl.
John stood his ground. "And you're not calling it an infection."
That horrible grin, like nothing familiar at all. "That's because I know something you don't know."
"So tell me," John. "Tell me what happened to you. Tell me how this happened."
Rodney couldn't really blink anymore, according to scans, but the nictitating membranes flickered over his eyes a few times, side to side. His gills flared once, and then he let himself sink to the level of the water, and John thought he was going to ignore the question or toss out another smug non sequitur. It was a surprise when that high voice spoke again, soft and almost human. "It was...cold," he said, like he had to work to remember the word. "It was wet. The jumper, when it hit the sea floor, that opened a microfissure in the hull and I couldn't...I couldn't..."
"So you were drowning," John said.
"No," Rodney said. "No, not at first." And he dunked under the water, turning his wide white back to John for a moment in a gesture so very human that John had to clench his fists against it.
When Rodney came back up, he was smiling slightly, a more alien expression. "I could hear the singing. I think I could always hear the singing, from the moment we came-calling us out, and down, and into the darkness. But I was afraid...I used to be so afraid of everything. Do you remember that, John? How afraid I was?"
Rodney made that wet croak again, something like a laugh, though it grated on John's ears. "So you heard singing, in the jumper," John said, tried to steer the conversation back on track. "Where was it coming from?"
"Mmm, I think you know that," Rodney said. "You know exactly where it came from. Cthulhu ll'Tlantis fhtagn...the city by the sea..."
The words made the hair on the back of John's neck stand up. "It destroyed one of our jumpers," John said. "It killed our people."
"No. Not killed." Rodney dunked down again to wet his gills. "Just changed."
"Like you?"
Rodney's nictitating membranes flickered again, and he made a low sound, almost like a rusty sort of purr. "I was so afraid," he said dreamily, bulging eyes looking at something in the middle distance. "I was afraid of drowning. I was afraid of freezing. I was scared to do anything and I was scared to do nothing. I thought I was seeing things...I'd hit my head and I thought it was all a dream..."
John took a step closer to the tank. "What did you see?"
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," Rodney said, raw squelching syllables that hurt to hear. "A new R'lyeh, but all the same--Ll'Tlantis h'ilyaa-h'nn nafl'gof'nn ch'ftaghu--and when the stars are right-I was so afraid of everything, of everyone, but then I listened to the singing and I understood-I understand it now, John-there's no reason. I didn't have to be afraid anymore." He suddenly reached over the lip of the tank, too-long arm stretching out so he could cup the side of John's face with a wet, rubbery paw. John went rigid, but didn't flinch at the feeling of short claws that carded at his hair a bit, almost tenderly. A bit of water dribbled down his neck. "Don't be afraid. Atlantis is protected. We all are."
There was a crash behind him, and John was a hair too late in spinning around. Dr. Ward from the chemistry department was standing in the doorway of the isolation room, patches of bald scalp showing through his hair, a rifle in his hands. "Shut up," he shouted. "Shut up!"
John took two steps, wondering where his Marines were and how fast Carson could get here with a sedative. "You want to calm down, Doc?" he asked, reaching slowly towards the weapon.
Ward pointed it at John instead, hands shaking. "Don't tell me you can't hear it, Sheppard," he snarled. "Don't tell me you don't know what that thing's doing. You brought that here, you brought it in here--"
"You're gonna hurt someone if you don't put that thing away, Ward," John pointed out.
His eyes bulged out. "No," he said, "no, because it's not really human, is it? It's not alive. There's nothing left to hurt."
John wanted to argue with that logic and couldn't. Instead he said, "Excuse me if I don't really trust your aim right now."
Ward snorted, and then giggled, high and thin. "No. No, don't you see? Don't you hear? It's too late, now, it's always been too late-the Dreamer is waking-and all of us, all of us are already dead--there's nothing left to kill--"
John saw movement before he registered the sound of splashing; something big and wet and pale fell between him and Ward, landing with a thump, and Ward screamed and started firing. Instinct had John throwing himself out of the way, but Ward wasn't aiming at him; he was shooting at Rodney, at the thing that Rodney had become, and John had just given himself the perfect vantage point to watch.
Some of the bullets went wide, smashing equipment, shattering the tank. Some of them were grazing shots, tearing long gouges in Rodney's white flesh. Some struck him square in the chest and stomach, with little gouts of tacky gray-green ichor, and some smashed bones, and some tore away parts of his paws and his neck and his face. The sheer force of all the impacts should've staggered him. The destruction should've killed him.
Instead, that tarry slime firmed up and became solid, became rubbery skin. And as soon as he had a jaw again, Rodney turned to John with a grin. "You see, John? There's nothing left to fear."
-\--\--\-
For a few hideous seconds no one moved, and there was no sound but the soft constant splashing of the water on the walls. John didn't even breathe, couldn't breathe, was rooted in the cool water that filled his boots and glued his clothes to his legs; he had the sudden and irrational thought that there was something in the darkness, like one of the holograms made real, and if he moved at all it was going to pounce.
Then Teal'c switched on his flashlight, and the paralysis passed, leaving him a little light-headed and adrenaline-shaky. John fumbled for the scanner to verify that they were alone in the hologram room, just them and the fishes. But before he could get a grip with his sweaty hands, Jackson and Teal'c both froze in place, their heads snapping up in eerily similar fashion. A second later John's own radio squealed to life with Cadman's voice. "Co…arts inbou…act."
"Say again, Lieutenant, I'm downstairs," John said, slogging through the water for the doors.
"Sounds like the Hammond just engaged a Wraith ship," Jackson said as he yanked his equipment from the ruined console. "There must be darts heading our way."
John swore and juggled the scanner, his own flashlight and his gun, to make certain it hadn't gotten wet during the slog. "We need to get upstairs, now."
"Can the Wraith beams penetrate the walls of the spire?" Teal'c asked.
"They don't have to, after all the holes Caldwell put in them."
Jackson tucked away the crystal drive but left the bulky generator behind; John was relieved to see he was armed and obviously competent with the weapon. If they had any advantage over the Wraith at the moment it was their familiarity with the city in its current state, and it wasn't much of one, all things considered. The stairs they'd taken down were too close to a gaping fissure in the outer walls, so John lead them away from it, towards some maintenance shafts. It'd be a tight climb, but they'd come up near a mostly intact internal stair and from there, potentially, they could get to one of the old railgun installations. Assuming the ammunition had stayed dry and the guns were still operational and the Hammond didn't get its ass kicked by whatever hive or cruiser was above them...
This forward planning process went off the rails when John heard something splashing in the water up ahead. Or maybe not heard, exactly, but close enough that he signaled the other two to slow down and they did. There was a radial corridor up ahead that he knew was partially buckled; a couple years ago it had been easily navigable if you danced around the potholes, but Atlantis had fallen and the water was now up to his thighs. Peering around the corner, he saw a Wraith drone creeping forward, testing its footing so carefully that it barely made a ripple. He signaled the target to Jackson and Teal'c. They'd have to eliminate it before they could cross the intersection.
On a count of three, they swung around the corner and opened fire; John dropped to his knees and felt the water splash up to his shoulders as Teal'c and Jackson lumbered around in their HEV suits. The drone was at least staggered by the barrage, but Teal'c was the only one with a rifle, and perhaps the thing was freshly fed because it managed to stay standing. While John reloaded, the drone took a step forward and raised its long stunner.
Then something under the water moved.
The drone made a sudden, inarticulate noise, and a moment later it was jerked off its feet. John caught a glimpse of pale, webbed hands and the pearly shine of their flashlights in a bulging eye, mostly screened by the churning water; and then the Wraith was just gone, vanished through one of the floor's uncertain pits.
Feeling suddenly cold, John leaped to his feet and opened the scanner. The three of them were the only life signs of any species for hundreds of meters around.
-\--\--\-
The attack came at midnight, and the first volley crippled their shields with the precision of a knife in the back. John found Elizabeth bellowing into the communications station. "Damn it, Stephen, talk to me! Why are you doing this?"
Caldwell's face flickered into view, and at the very least he looked sad. "Dr. Weir, I'm only following my orders."
"You've been ordered to attack us?" Elizabeth asked, incredulously. "I demand you stop firing and let me talk to Stargate Command!"
"The IOA has determined that the expedition is a threat," Caldwell said. "And that I am to consider everyone in Atlantis compromised. That includes you, Dr. Weir."
She reeled back like she'd been punched. John jumped to her side. "We're working on fixing this. We need more time to get things under control."
"How can you control these things, Sheppard?" Caldwell asked. "How can you control people who are losing their minds? You admitted you have no idea how the mutation is spreading or why and we can't sit idle while a base as important as Atlantis is overrun by monsters and madmen. I've been ordered to eliminate the threat and that's what I'm doing."
"And if we engage?" Elizabeth asked, raising her chin. "If we defend ourselves?"
"Then you only prove the IOA's evaluation right," Caldwell said. And, "I'm sorry, Elizabeth. It's been a privilege."
The screen blinked out. Elizabeth shut her eyes.
The tower was rocked again, and John punched the emergency channel. "This is Sheppard. All personnel, prepare to evacuate to the mainland."
"We can't, John," Elizabeth said. "We can't risk spreading this to the Athosians."
"We'll separate anybody infected," he said. "We'll send them somewhere else. Somewhere safe."
"If we can't tell who's infected until they show symptoms-"
The tower was rocked again, knocking them both from their feet. Alarms began to wail.
A technician John didn't know struggled to his feet. "We've got hull breaches in the lower levels, north and northeast pier," he said. "Forcefields are holding for now, but we've lost power to the control chair."
"All personnel, prepare to evacuate now," John snapped again, and seized Elizabeth by the wrist, intent to drag her to the jumper bay.
She broke his grip easily, a little too easily. "No," she said. "The infected have to stay. We have to keep this contained."
"Even if it kills us?"
Something about her bitter smile was a little too wide. "I think Rodney's already shown how difficult that's going to be."
-\--\--\-
"What's your location, sir?" Cadman bellowed in the radio. If she was this clear, she had to be in a boat, on the water.
"We're pinned down on level twenty-three," John reported. "Wraith are coming down all the stairwells, we got friends underwater, and Dr. Jackson and I are out of ammunition."
Mitchell's voice came over the radio-stupid of them not to synchronize channels sooner. "The cruiser is disabled for now, but the Hammond lost its beam weapons and took a bad hit to the shield generators. All the darts are circling the tower-something in there they want?"
"Probably the ZPM," John said. "If the Wraith were here for the whole city they'd send more than one cruiser."
"The control chair is underwater, isn't it?" Jackson asked.
"Deep underwater, with no power for launching," John confirmed. "If the Wraith realize they can't get to the ZPM room, they might just say 'fuck it' and cull us."
"Didn't realize Wraith said 'fuck,' sir," Cadman said.
"Time and a place, Lieutenant."
Carson responded to John's actual fear. "I've already been in contact with the mainland. The Athosians sensed the Wraith coming and started the evacuation."
"And the Hammond's F-302s are on their way," Mitchell added. "ETA under two minutes."
"Well, isn't that peachy," John muttered. He wished Ronon were still here; he wished he had a P90 and a few million extra rounds. He wished, in more concrete terms, that they had a more spacious hiding place; pinned between the wall of the inoperative transporter and Jackson's rubbery HEV suit, his wet clothes were making him itch. The scanner showed Wraith life signs in two directions, a hell of a lot closer than two minutes away, though they weren't closing in. Not yet, anyway.
Not yet.
He carefully switched off his radio and gestured for Teal'c and Jackson to silence their mics. "If you leave this room and head left, there's a potted plant on your right. The panel behind that should come off, and you'll find an access tunnel that goes to a lab four floors up. It's shielded, so you should be safe in there until the Wraith are gone."
"Why are you telling us this?" Jackson said.
John held up the scanner. "Because right now there's two drones standing between you and that tunnel. We've got this theory that Wraith have a thing against salt water, which is why they're sticking to the shallows, but they'll move deeper if we give them something worth chasing."
"You mean to create a diversion?" Teal'c asked, raising an eyebrow.
"No," Jackson said. "I'm sorry, Colonel Sheppard, that's not acceptable, we can't--"
"You can get the hell out of here with your skins still intact," John said. "You can figure out where that thing on the sea floor came from and how we kill it. You can go back to Earth. So give me a count of ten and go."
"And what about you?" Jackson asked.
"Look at me, Doctor," John said. "I don't have a hell of a lot else to look forward to, do I?"
Jackson lifted his chin, looking John in the eye. "What happened to the hope you were talking about earlier?"
"I was also talking about suicide, in case you don't remember," John pointed out.
-\--\--\-
"I'm not going down there," had been Ronon's last words, and John didn't stop him, but he couldn't pull the trigger for him, either. He'd followed the trail of fallen dreadlocks to a balcony, one that looked over open water, towards the place that none of them ever named aloud. "I can hear it," Ronon had said. "But I'm not going."
John didn't stop him, but he didn't watch him either, because he'd watched too many of the others and he'd had enough. He'd shut his eyes and listened for the whine of the gun, and when it was over he'd dragged the body to the roof, all by himself.
They normally gave the dead to the sea, but for Ronon John built a pyre, scrounging the whole city for wood and rags and oil. They burned him on top of a tower, and later John wasted a jumper trip to deposit the ashes in the high, cold mountains. I'm not going down there, Ronon had said, and it was the least John could do for him.
-\--\--\-
John left the scanner, for all the good it did anyone without the gene. He took a flashlight. He stood exposed in the corridor, thinking about the hundred ways that this could go wrong while he whistled the refrain to Ring of Fire as loud as he could.
And when the Wraith came lumbering from his left, he took off running, letting the flashlight dangle from his hand to mark his trail.
He only meant to go to the next junction and then turn down the next radial corridor, to keep the water below his knees, where it was already dragging him down, making him an easy mark if the Wraith would bother to raise their stunners. But that corridor was blocked off, the weapons of the Daedalus doing what ten thousand years of time couldn't, and John had to go deeper, into the salt and darkness.
He let the flashlight drop, since it wasn't doing anything but making an easy target. Easier, given how he slogged and sloshed through the water. The thought came to him that swimming would be easier, if he could just get a second to kick off his boots-except he couldn't swim, not in this ocean-but salt water was the only thing the Iratus feared, even if it had a funny way of showing it. He shuddered as it splashed up his thighs, up to his ass, soaking his clothes all over again and making his skin itch. He could swim and escape. Swim and never come up again.
Was there a noise, up ahead?
A blast from a stunner flew close enough to singe his hair and numb the entire right side of his face, and he turned away from it, going blindly down the next open corridor. It gaped open into an atrium, now a pool, and John knew they were too close, knew he was going to die as he stumbled to a halt: and for all his talk to Jackson, there was still a stubborn voice in his head as old as the first hairy little mammals that shouted Live! Live! Live! at him, that recoiled from the vast darkness and the embrace of the water below. He forced himself to feel his way forward, testing every step with his toes, because there should've been a staircase somewhere around here, and maybe if he could just duck below the water for a time (no, no, stay above water, get out of the water) and evade them, or maybe get behind them and escape (because he could swim, if he just got his boots off)--
Light threw his shadow out onto the water before him, and he spun around, backed away. One of the Wraith-who knew where the other had gone-drew closer, slowly, its stunner aimed. There was a lamp of some kind attached to its breastplate, faintly greenish, and all it had to do was pull a trigger and John was dead.
All John had to do was flip backwards into the water and he'd be safe. Or not safe at all, really.
"Hi, there," he said, heart pounding out of his chest as he kept shuffling backwards, one careful step at a time. "Looking for something?"
The Wraith made an inarticulate noise behind its mask. It took another confident step forward.
"If you'd wanted me dead, you would've shot me already," John continued, though he already knew it was futile to talk to the drones. For all he knew they didn't even have faces under those masks. "Unless, of course, you're scared of having to fish me out of the water after you did. I wouldn't really blame you if you were." Another step. "After all, here there be monsters and all that."
The Wraith took another step forward, and didn't see the shape that rose up behind it, a flabby white shape that almost glowed in the faint reflected lamp-light. A familiar shape that made John's heart stutter and brought a half-formed syllable into his mouth, though even he didn't know what he could possibly say, not now, not after everything else. He got as far as "McKay," and then stopped.
The Wraith spun around with its inhuman speed and plunged its feeding hand onto the Deep One's chest.
Then the Wraith started screaming.
The Deep One with the familiar face started laughing, that insane giggle, not making a move to remove that clawing, writhing hand from where its heart should be, and the Wraith kept screaming in tones no human could produce, and the small hairy urge to live in John's brain sent him staggering backwards, away from the sounds and the light and the monsters. He could hide in the darkness. He could escape in the darkness.
His foot came down where the stairs began, and he couldn't move fast enough to regain his balance, not mired in the water, not with his boots on. His arms flew outwards, swiping at the stagnant air, and then the ocean closed over his head, and he could hear the singing.
-\--\--\-
"There have been no new cases for some time," Teyla told him, once, while he was making the supply run. "Perhaps it will fade with the winter."
"I don't think we'll be that lucky," he said. "I don't think they have seasons underwater."
Teyla looked out over the beach, back towards the village, which had migrated further inland. "Some of the children refuse to eat fish now. Some are afraid even to wade in the river."
John wanted to reassure her. Instead he said, "Elizabeth is getting worse. She's asking me to assume command." Don't let me go down there, she'd also asked. Use any force necessary.
This isn't some kind of zombie movie, Elizabeth. If Carson can--
I can make this an order, John. I wouldn't ask you if you if I could it myself. You did it for Ronon; please do it for me.
"Perhaps that's wise," Teyla said in the present. "Has she complained any further of dreams?"
"They're not worth complaining about anymore," John said, and snorted.
Teyla shook her head. "Some of us-those of my people with the Gift of the Wraith-some of us also have the dreams. Sometimes I can hear the others singing to each other." She paused. "I do not think that they will sing to me."
"You're lucky," John said. "Or maybe not. I don't know."
At the very least, she was unafraid to press her forehead to his and squeeze his hands. "Be safe, John," she said. "We will send more food with the next jumper, if we can."
"We appreciate that," John said. "We'd send you fish, but..."
"I believe your people say it is the thought that counts." She smiled at him; for her sake, he didn't smile back.
-\--\--\-
He woke up suddenly, like from a nightmare, and tugged on the restraints before he realized that was what they were. He was in the isolation room of the medical unit. He was still above the water. A few phrases of song echoed in his head, h'ilyaa-h'nn nafl'gof'nn, but they were only a memory, and they didn't mean anything. He still felt mostly the same.
"Carson?" he tried calling, but raising his voice much above a whisper hurt. He'd been screaming. He remembered screaming. He remembered lots of things.
There was a bit of commotion beyond the curtains before Carson appeared, stopping short at the foot of the bed. "John?" he asked. "Are you with us, lad?"
John swallowed. "I think so."
"Oh, thank God," Carson sighed, though John didn't think God had anything to do with it. Not that one, anyway. "We thought we'd lost you there, with the screaming, but when you didn't deteriorate I started to hope-well." He pulled out a stethoscope and pressed it to John's chest. "No sign of pneumonia so far, but I'd like you to take a deep breath for me."
John did. He took a deep breath, and coughed, and lifted his chin so Carson could feel his lymph nodes, like that mattered. "Wraith?"
Carson started. "Oh, aye, them," he said. "You've missed quiet a bit, Colonel. They broke off and fled not long after the F-302s engaged the darts, though we've no idea why-Teyla seems to think that something spooked them. The Marines and SG-1 were able to clean up most of the drones left behind, or...well...they were heading downstairs, you know."
"I was downstairs," John reminded him.
"Aye." Carson sat on the edge of the bed. "D'you want to tell me what happened down there?"
John wished there was a window back here, so he could look to the sky; the overhead light hurt his eyes, but if he closed them he remembered the singing. "There was a Wraith," he said.
Carson nodded. "So Dr. Jackson said. He's the one who insisted on going back for you."
Which sort of explained how he'd got back up here. "There was a Wraith," John repeated. "It tried to feed on Rodney."
"Are you certain?" Carson asked quietly, going very still.
John nodded. "I think he killed it. I think that's why the Wraith ran off. I don't think they can feed on the Deep Ones."
"It would make sense," Carson said, looking at his hands. "If they feed off the same energy that produces a life sign on our sensors...I mean, the amphibians don't have that."
"Or they have too much," John mumbled.
Carson ignored this, and he didn't mention any names when he asked, "So what happened after the amphibian attacked the Wraith? Laura found you in a completely different section of the tower to where the others said you'd gone, and you were unconscious at the time..."
John shrugged. "I fell in the water. I don't...I can't really say what happened after that." There was too much, too many thoughts, too many impressions, from senses he couldn't put a name to, not in any language he could actually speak. There was the song.
Luckily Carson didn't press him. "Well, you've been out of it for nearly a week," he said. "The Hammond departed, but they left some supplies-tools, medicine, clothes, that sort of thing. Colonel Carter said she'd recommend another mission back to check up on us in a few months, but it's up to the IOA to make the final decision, and, well, you know how that's gone so far. There were no casualties from the Wraith attack, but, ah..."
John knew what Carson was about to say, because there was only one bed in the isolation room, and he was in it. "Elizabeth took to water," he said.
"Aye," Carson said miserably. "We were trying to move her somewhere safer from the Wraith and she slipped her restraints. I'm sorry, John."
He shook his head. "Don't. It's not your fault. There was no way we could keep her up here forever."
"She's still got her transmitter, though," Carson said. "If we find a cure, we can find her."
"If."
Carson reached for the leather strap around John's wrist. "I can have you out of these in a moment, and then--"
"No," John said, and Carson froze. "Just...leave them, okay?"
"Colonel?" he asked hesitantly.
John swallowed, and when he shut his eyes he could still hear the song. Just a memory, though. He hoped it was just a memory. "Just for now. Please."
"All right," Carson said, and let John be.
Author: mad_maudlin
Fandom: SGA/SG1/Cthulhu Mythos mashup (thus very AU)
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Through "Grace Under Pressure" with a small one for "Enemy at the Gates."
Warnings: Disturbing imagery. See "fandom" above.
Summary: That is not dead which can eternal lie.
A/N: in Part One
The hologram room was flooded. Teal'c and Jackson were fine in their heavy suits, but John hesitated to step into the chilly water even when his scanner showed the level was clear. It was only when Jackson started to offer, "We could find our own way from here," that John jumped the last two steps and landed with splash. His pants were soaked to the knee and his boots immediately started to fill.
"I'm fine," he said. "Besides, I'm the one with the scanner."
"I was under the impression that the amphibians did not register as life signs," Teal'c said.
"They don't," John answered. "But they also tend to scare off the other sea life in a given area, so we retooled these to track fish instead."
"Because the flooded lower levels function like an artificial reef," Jackson said, head bobbing inside his hood. "That's clever of you."
John just shrugged. "We need to come down here sometimes for spare parts and supplies and we like to know who's down here with us."
"The amphibians are aggressive, then?" Teal'c asked.
John couldn't think of a good way to answer, so he didn't; a jammed set of containment doors gave him a nice excuse. By the time they were past those, he'd formulated another question. "We searched the Ancient database when we found McKay. What do you think we missed?"
"I'm not sure you necessarily missed anything," Jackson said, "just that you were looking in the wrong place. We've found references to a war on Earth thousands of years before the Ancients arrived that involved this city, Relex." R'lyeh, John wanted to correct, Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, but didn't. "The Asgard database refers to an expedition to Relex mounted even before the alliance of the Four Great Races, which puts it within a generation of the Ancients coming to Earth from their home galaxy."
"In other words," John said, "we should've been searching the history books instead of the science library."
"Maybe even their myths," Jackson said, "if Ancients had those. The Asgard reference is the most detailed and it sounds a little like the Curse of King Tut-the Ancient archaeologists opened up something they shouldn't have in the ruins of Relex and they all died or went insane because of it."
John paused at an intersection to sweep the scanner around. The water was up over his knees now. "And seeing as how our own mythology keeps coming back to bite us in the ass…you think that thing on the sea floor is the Ancient equivalent of a pyramid?"
Jackson shrugged. "For all we know it's their mothership. The Asgard reference to the Relex expedition says the victims 'took the aspect of the sea' as punishment for violating the sanctum of Ctalul."
John was about to ask how the gods of the Ancients had gotten to Pegasus when they came to the doors of the hologram room. They opened automatically, letting a raft of warmer, scummy water and tiny transparent fish out into the hall. A light burned at the base of the console, sending orangey-red ripples up the walls.
"Residual power," he told the others. "It…happens, sometimes."
"Of course it does," Jackson said, and he and Teal'c started setting up the portable generator that would bring the holograms to life.
-\--\--\-
"It's not a question of brain washing," Kate told them when the number of cases broke the double digits. "Rodney's brain and nervous system have been dramatically changed. Comparing his cognitive functions now to a normal human's is comparing apples to oranges."
"Does he remember who he is?" Elizabeth asked.
"Oh, certainly," Kate said. "He remembers everything very clearly, at least if you're only thinking about facts. His emotional responses are...well, again, I'm not sure they can be explained in human terms."
"He hasn't shown any signs of hostility..." Carson said aloud.
John snorted. "He is a sign of hostility. From that thing in the ocean. Something did this to him and it's doing it to our people and I want to know why."
"I'm not so certain it is hostility," Kate said. "I mean, from one point of view, the changes saved his life-he'd never have survived so long in the water otherwise."
"McKay has a DNR," he pointed out. "He knew there are things worse than death."
Kate took a deep breath. "Colonel, I'm certain we can have a fruitful debate on the nature of a post-human existence," she said. "But I was going to continue-in nearly ten years of the Stargate program we've encountered only a handful of truly alien intelligences, ones so fundamentally different from ourselves that communication is limited or impossible. The sea floor structure might represent one such intelligence, in which case it's rather pointless to discuss intentions, hostile or not. The Wraith may view humans as inferiors, but they still recognize us as having a comparable intelligence to theirs. The abyssal structure-or the beings inside it-may not even recognize that. That makes it very hard to assign any kind of motive to them, much less to conclude they have hostile intentions."
"What about Rodney?" Elizabeth asked. "Does he still recognize us, at least?"
"I think..." Kate bit her lip for a moment. "I suspect that we aren't quite real to him. Not anymore."
John looked away from her. "You mean, not yet."
-\--\--\-
The guts of the console were water-logged, and John pointed this out, but if they were going to do a full database search this was the easiest place to start. John helped Jackson wire in the generator and an Asgard-enhanced crystal drive to record whatever the database showed. "How much useful information do you expect to get?" he asked.
"Anything straight from the Ancients' mouth is more that we have now," Jackson answered philosophically, flicking switches. "Right now I'd settle for a definitive identification of Ctalul-"
The interface hologram suddenly flared to life, guttering and deformed by the interference of the water. "Ctalul," she said, and then burst into great gouts of text, in Ancient and in something else entirely, something John thought he could almost understand. "Cthulhu," the hologram said, snapping back. She looked afraid. "In his house in R'lyeh dead Cthulhu lies dreaming."
The standing hologram became an amphibian, its pale hands pawing at the empty air. "-forty-four individuals. The Deep Ones seem to retain full memories and identity; it is simply that they do not care-"
"-stuff and nonsense," and this was nonsense, like a badly-framed photo, two Ancient councilors standing off to one side at a shuddering angle while a voice spoke from the air. "Even if the legends of Relex were true-"
Another deluge of text and numbers, and a glimpse of the galaxy, of icons for hive ships converging on Lantea's sun. "In our overconfidence, we were unprepared and outnumbered."
The Deep One made a gurgling noise, and then a long, meaty tentacle the size of a human rotated in a scanner's column.
"-cast out our own people," the hologram said, eye wide and staring. "Our own children we sent beyond the shield-"
"-a terrible risk." The council again. Moros looked off into the air, at something beyond the recording's limit. "How can we be sure we won't subject this galaxy to a plague yet more terrible?"
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu--"
Alien text crawled through the air, and hieroglyphs of octopi and something long and blunt and dark that glided on membranous wings. "We ventured into the Elder City to uncover the secrets of their long war with the star-spawn of Relex-"
"-changes nothing! Return to Terra is out of the question! You may be ready to grasp at myth and superstition, but I-"
"-course of twenty to thirty days on average. The transformation follows no fixed pattern-"
The tentacle, a scaly, slimy thing, had been hacked off at one end, not cleanly. And it was still moving. An image of the human nervous system hung suspended in glorious color, parts of the brain burning hellish red.
The interface trembled in position. "It begins with the song-"
The councilors attended to a deep, smooth voice beyond the edge of the shot, a brown hand that fluttered in and out of sight. "-but a portion of its great form. Your gateships may make the journey easily in less than a day. I assure you, the Dread One will not wake if you make the cuts swiftly-"
Numbers sprayed through the air, drawing figures of mounting dead, the growing threat, the lush curves of space and time. "-until finally only Atlantis remained."
"--ll'Tlantis h'grah'nn 'ai-h'ulnn naf'lthagn-"
"In an effort to save the last of our kind, we submerged our great city into the ocean," the recording said, the one John knew, but she changed to the interface hologram, all wild-eyed. "Let the Wraith come. Let them blast the oceans dry. Maybe that will be enough. I pray that will be enough."
"-no identifiable vector and no cure." The Deep One threw back its head and howled. "Our only hope is to evacuate the unaffected-to Terra, perhaps, or even beyond, far from the terrible call-"
That severed tentacle oozed gray-green tar from its stump. The tar thickened, shivered, and became firm scaly flesh.
Moros was nodding. "You speak with wisdom as always, Nyarlathotep."
Text and numbers and hieroglyphs and runes stained the walls with illegible warnings, unreadable pleas.
The hologram stared, and John realized she wasn't afraid. She just had the Atlantis Look, with bulging eyes that could no longer close. "Dead and yet dreaming, Cthulhu waits at Atlantis to call to his lost children," she said. "Cthulhu fhtagn."
Then the console failed with a burnt-meat smell, and they were plunged into darkness.
-\--\--\-
"I want to know what happened to you in the jumper," John said.
Rodney rose to the edge of the tank and considered him, looking down the remains of his nose in an all-too-familiar way. "You want to stop it."
"I want to understand," John said, folding his arms. "Half of all personnel on base are infected--"
Rodney made a croaking, squelching sound. "Infection? That's what you think it is?"
"That's what we're calling it," John said.
"And yet you're not wearing a containment suit," Rodney said, with either a smirk or a snarl.
John stood his ground. "And you're not calling it an infection."
That horrible grin, like nothing familiar at all. "That's because I know something you don't know."
"So tell me," John. "Tell me what happened to you. Tell me how this happened."
Rodney couldn't really blink anymore, according to scans, but the nictitating membranes flickered over his eyes a few times, side to side. His gills flared once, and then he let himself sink to the level of the water, and John thought he was going to ignore the question or toss out another smug non sequitur. It was a surprise when that high voice spoke again, soft and almost human. "It was...cold," he said, like he had to work to remember the word. "It was wet. The jumper, when it hit the sea floor, that opened a microfissure in the hull and I couldn't...I couldn't..."
"So you were drowning," John said.
"No," Rodney said. "No, not at first." And he dunked under the water, turning his wide white back to John for a moment in a gesture so very human that John had to clench his fists against it.
When Rodney came back up, he was smiling slightly, a more alien expression. "I could hear the singing. I think I could always hear the singing, from the moment we came-calling us out, and down, and into the darkness. But I was afraid...I used to be so afraid of everything. Do you remember that, John? How afraid I was?"
Rodney made that wet croak again, something like a laugh, though it grated on John's ears. "So you heard singing, in the jumper," John said, tried to steer the conversation back on track. "Where was it coming from?"
"Mmm, I think you know that," Rodney said. "You know exactly where it came from. Cthulhu ll'Tlantis fhtagn...the city by the sea..."
The words made the hair on the back of John's neck stand up. "It destroyed one of our jumpers," John said. "It killed our people."
"No. Not killed." Rodney dunked down again to wet his gills. "Just changed."
"Like you?"
Rodney's nictitating membranes flickered again, and he made a low sound, almost like a rusty sort of purr. "I was so afraid," he said dreamily, bulging eyes looking at something in the middle distance. "I was afraid of drowning. I was afraid of freezing. I was scared to do anything and I was scared to do nothing. I thought I was seeing things...I'd hit my head and I thought it was all a dream..."
John took a step closer to the tank. "What did you see?"
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," Rodney said, raw squelching syllables that hurt to hear. "A new R'lyeh, but all the same--Ll'Tlantis h'ilyaa-h'nn nafl'gof'nn ch'ftaghu--and when the stars are right-I was so afraid of everything, of everyone, but then I listened to the singing and I understood-I understand it now, John-there's no reason. I didn't have to be afraid anymore." He suddenly reached over the lip of the tank, too-long arm stretching out so he could cup the side of John's face with a wet, rubbery paw. John went rigid, but didn't flinch at the feeling of short claws that carded at his hair a bit, almost tenderly. A bit of water dribbled down his neck. "Don't be afraid. Atlantis is protected. We all are."
There was a crash behind him, and John was a hair too late in spinning around. Dr. Ward from the chemistry department was standing in the doorway of the isolation room, patches of bald scalp showing through his hair, a rifle in his hands. "Shut up," he shouted. "Shut up!"
John took two steps, wondering where his Marines were and how fast Carson could get here with a sedative. "You want to calm down, Doc?" he asked, reaching slowly towards the weapon.
Ward pointed it at John instead, hands shaking. "Don't tell me you can't hear it, Sheppard," he snarled. "Don't tell me you don't know what that thing's doing. You brought that here, you brought it in here--"
"You're gonna hurt someone if you don't put that thing away, Ward," John pointed out.
His eyes bulged out. "No," he said, "no, because it's not really human, is it? It's not alive. There's nothing left to hurt."
John wanted to argue with that logic and couldn't. Instead he said, "Excuse me if I don't really trust your aim right now."
Ward snorted, and then giggled, high and thin. "No. No, don't you see? Don't you hear? It's too late, now, it's always been too late-the Dreamer is waking-and all of us, all of us are already dead--there's nothing left to kill--"
John saw movement before he registered the sound of splashing; something big and wet and pale fell between him and Ward, landing with a thump, and Ward screamed and started firing. Instinct had John throwing himself out of the way, but Ward wasn't aiming at him; he was shooting at Rodney, at the thing that Rodney had become, and John had just given himself the perfect vantage point to watch.
Some of the bullets went wide, smashing equipment, shattering the tank. Some of them were grazing shots, tearing long gouges in Rodney's white flesh. Some struck him square in the chest and stomach, with little gouts of tacky gray-green ichor, and some smashed bones, and some tore away parts of his paws and his neck and his face. The sheer force of all the impacts should've staggered him. The destruction should've killed him.
Instead, that tarry slime firmed up and became solid, became rubbery skin. And as soon as he had a jaw again, Rodney turned to John with a grin. "You see, John? There's nothing left to fear."
-\--\--\-
For a few hideous seconds no one moved, and there was no sound but the soft constant splashing of the water on the walls. John didn't even breathe, couldn't breathe, was rooted in the cool water that filled his boots and glued his clothes to his legs; he had the sudden and irrational thought that there was something in the darkness, like one of the holograms made real, and if he moved at all it was going to pounce.
Then Teal'c switched on his flashlight, and the paralysis passed, leaving him a little light-headed and adrenaline-shaky. John fumbled for the scanner to verify that they were alone in the hologram room, just them and the fishes. But before he could get a grip with his sweaty hands, Jackson and Teal'c both froze in place, their heads snapping up in eerily similar fashion. A second later John's own radio squealed to life with Cadman's voice. "Co…arts inbou…act."
"Say again, Lieutenant, I'm downstairs," John said, slogging through the water for the doors.
"Sounds like the Hammond just engaged a Wraith ship," Jackson said as he yanked his equipment from the ruined console. "There must be darts heading our way."
John swore and juggled the scanner, his own flashlight and his gun, to make certain it hadn't gotten wet during the slog. "We need to get upstairs, now."
"Can the Wraith beams penetrate the walls of the spire?" Teal'c asked.
"They don't have to, after all the holes Caldwell put in them."
Jackson tucked away the crystal drive but left the bulky generator behind; John was relieved to see he was armed and obviously competent with the weapon. If they had any advantage over the Wraith at the moment it was their familiarity with the city in its current state, and it wasn't much of one, all things considered. The stairs they'd taken down were too close to a gaping fissure in the outer walls, so John lead them away from it, towards some maintenance shafts. It'd be a tight climb, but they'd come up near a mostly intact internal stair and from there, potentially, they could get to one of the old railgun installations. Assuming the ammunition had stayed dry and the guns were still operational and the Hammond didn't get its ass kicked by whatever hive or cruiser was above them...
This forward planning process went off the rails when John heard something splashing in the water up ahead. Or maybe not heard, exactly, but close enough that he signaled the other two to slow down and they did. There was a radial corridor up ahead that he knew was partially buckled; a couple years ago it had been easily navigable if you danced around the potholes, but Atlantis had fallen and the water was now up to his thighs. Peering around the corner, he saw a Wraith drone creeping forward, testing its footing so carefully that it barely made a ripple. He signaled the target to Jackson and Teal'c. They'd have to eliminate it before they could cross the intersection.
On a count of three, they swung around the corner and opened fire; John dropped to his knees and felt the water splash up to his shoulders as Teal'c and Jackson lumbered around in their HEV suits. The drone was at least staggered by the barrage, but Teal'c was the only one with a rifle, and perhaps the thing was freshly fed because it managed to stay standing. While John reloaded, the drone took a step forward and raised its long stunner.
Then something under the water moved.
The drone made a sudden, inarticulate noise, and a moment later it was jerked off its feet. John caught a glimpse of pale, webbed hands and the pearly shine of their flashlights in a bulging eye, mostly screened by the churning water; and then the Wraith was just gone, vanished through one of the floor's uncertain pits.
Feeling suddenly cold, John leaped to his feet and opened the scanner. The three of them were the only life signs of any species for hundreds of meters around.
-\--\--\-
The attack came at midnight, and the first volley crippled their shields with the precision of a knife in the back. John found Elizabeth bellowing into the communications station. "Damn it, Stephen, talk to me! Why are you doing this?"
Caldwell's face flickered into view, and at the very least he looked sad. "Dr. Weir, I'm only following my orders."
"You've been ordered to attack us?" Elizabeth asked, incredulously. "I demand you stop firing and let me talk to Stargate Command!"
"The IOA has determined that the expedition is a threat," Caldwell said. "And that I am to consider everyone in Atlantis compromised. That includes you, Dr. Weir."
She reeled back like she'd been punched. John jumped to her side. "We're working on fixing this. We need more time to get things under control."
"How can you control these things, Sheppard?" Caldwell asked. "How can you control people who are losing their minds? You admitted you have no idea how the mutation is spreading or why and we can't sit idle while a base as important as Atlantis is overrun by monsters and madmen. I've been ordered to eliminate the threat and that's what I'm doing."
"And if we engage?" Elizabeth asked, raising her chin. "If we defend ourselves?"
"Then you only prove the IOA's evaluation right," Caldwell said. And, "I'm sorry, Elizabeth. It's been a privilege."
The screen blinked out. Elizabeth shut her eyes.
The tower was rocked again, and John punched the emergency channel. "This is Sheppard. All personnel, prepare to evacuate to the mainland."
"We can't, John," Elizabeth said. "We can't risk spreading this to the Athosians."
"We'll separate anybody infected," he said. "We'll send them somewhere else. Somewhere safe."
"If we can't tell who's infected until they show symptoms-"
The tower was rocked again, knocking them both from their feet. Alarms began to wail.
A technician John didn't know struggled to his feet. "We've got hull breaches in the lower levels, north and northeast pier," he said. "Forcefields are holding for now, but we've lost power to the control chair."
"All personnel, prepare to evacuate now," John snapped again, and seized Elizabeth by the wrist, intent to drag her to the jumper bay.
She broke his grip easily, a little too easily. "No," she said. "The infected have to stay. We have to keep this contained."
"Even if it kills us?"
Something about her bitter smile was a little too wide. "I think Rodney's already shown how difficult that's going to be."
-\--\--\-
"What's your location, sir?" Cadman bellowed in the radio. If she was this clear, she had to be in a boat, on the water.
"We're pinned down on level twenty-three," John reported. "Wraith are coming down all the stairwells, we got friends underwater, and Dr. Jackson and I are out of ammunition."
Mitchell's voice came over the radio-stupid of them not to synchronize channels sooner. "The cruiser is disabled for now, but the Hammond lost its beam weapons and took a bad hit to the shield generators. All the darts are circling the tower-something in there they want?"
"Probably the ZPM," John said. "If the Wraith were here for the whole city they'd send more than one cruiser."
"The control chair is underwater, isn't it?" Jackson asked.
"Deep underwater, with no power for launching," John confirmed. "If the Wraith realize they can't get to the ZPM room, they might just say 'fuck it' and cull us."
"Didn't realize Wraith said 'fuck,' sir," Cadman said.
"Time and a place, Lieutenant."
Carson responded to John's actual fear. "I've already been in contact with the mainland. The Athosians sensed the Wraith coming and started the evacuation."
"And the Hammond's F-302s are on their way," Mitchell added. "ETA under two minutes."
"Well, isn't that peachy," John muttered. He wished Ronon were still here; he wished he had a P90 and a few million extra rounds. He wished, in more concrete terms, that they had a more spacious hiding place; pinned between the wall of the inoperative transporter and Jackson's rubbery HEV suit, his wet clothes were making him itch. The scanner showed Wraith life signs in two directions, a hell of a lot closer than two minutes away, though they weren't closing in. Not yet, anyway.
Not yet.
He carefully switched off his radio and gestured for Teal'c and Jackson to silence their mics. "If you leave this room and head left, there's a potted plant on your right. The panel behind that should come off, and you'll find an access tunnel that goes to a lab four floors up. It's shielded, so you should be safe in there until the Wraith are gone."
"Why are you telling us this?" Jackson said.
John held up the scanner. "Because right now there's two drones standing between you and that tunnel. We've got this theory that Wraith have a thing against salt water, which is why they're sticking to the shallows, but they'll move deeper if we give them something worth chasing."
"You mean to create a diversion?" Teal'c asked, raising an eyebrow.
"No," Jackson said. "I'm sorry, Colonel Sheppard, that's not acceptable, we can't--"
"You can get the hell out of here with your skins still intact," John said. "You can figure out where that thing on the sea floor came from and how we kill it. You can go back to Earth. So give me a count of ten and go."
"And what about you?" Jackson asked.
"Look at me, Doctor," John said. "I don't have a hell of a lot else to look forward to, do I?"
Jackson lifted his chin, looking John in the eye. "What happened to the hope you were talking about earlier?"
"I was also talking about suicide, in case you don't remember," John pointed out.
-\--\--\-
"I'm not going down there," had been Ronon's last words, and John didn't stop him, but he couldn't pull the trigger for him, either. He'd followed the trail of fallen dreadlocks to a balcony, one that looked over open water, towards the place that none of them ever named aloud. "I can hear it," Ronon had said. "But I'm not going."
John didn't stop him, but he didn't watch him either, because he'd watched too many of the others and he'd had enough. He'd shut his eyes and listened for the whine of the gun, and when it was over he'd dragged the body to the roof, all by himself.
They normally gave the dead to the sea, but for Ronon John built a pyre, scrounging the whole city for wood and rags and oil. They burned him on top of a tower, and later John wasted a jumper trip to deposit the ashes in the high, cold mountains. I'm not going down there, Ronon had said, and it was the least John could do for him.
-\--\--\-
John left the scanner, for all the good it did anyone without the gene. He took a flashlight. He stood exposed in the corridor, thinking about the hundred ways that this could go wrong while he whistled the refrain to Ring of Fire as loud as he could.
And when the Wraith came lumbering from his left, he took off running, letting the flashlight dangle from his hand to mark his trail.
He only meant to go to the next junction and then turn down the next radial corridor, to keep the water below his knees, where it was already dragging him down, making him an easy mark if the Wraith would bother to raise their stunners. But that corridor was blocked off, the weapons of the Daedalus doing what ten thousand years of time couldn't, and John had to go deeper, into the salt and darkness.
He let the flashlight drop, since it wasn't doing anything but making an easy target. Easier, given how he slogged and sloshed through the water. The thought came to him that swimming would be easier, if he could just get a second to kick off his boots-except he couldn't swim, not in this ocean-but salt water was the only thing the Iratus feared, even if it had a funny way of showing it. He shuddered as it splashed up his thighs, up to his ass, soaking his clothes all over again and making his skin itch. He could swim and escape. Swim and never come up again.
Was there a noise, up ahead?
A blast from a stunner flew close enough to singe his hair and numb the entire right side of his face, and he turned away from it, going blindly down the next open corridor. It gaped open into an atrium, now a pool, and John knew they were too close, knew he was going to die as he stumbled to a halt: and for all his talk to Jackson, there was still a stubborn voice in his head as old as the first hairy little mammals that shouted Live! Live! Live! at him, that recoiled from the vast darkness and the embrace of the water below. He forced himself to feel his way forward, testing every step with his toes, because there should've been a staircase somewhere around here, and maybe if he could just duck below the water for a time (no, no, stay above water, get out of the water) and evade them, or maybe get behind them and escape (because he could swim, if he just got his boots off)--
Light threw his shadow out onto the water before him, and he spun around, backed away. One of the Wraith-who knew where the other had gone-drew closer, slowly, its stunner aimed. There was a lamp of some kind attached to its breastplate, faintly greenish, and all it had to do was pull a trigger and John was dead.
All John had to do was flip backwards into the water and he'd be safe. Or not safe at all, really.
"Hi, there," he said, heart pounding out of his chest as he kept shuffling backwards, one careful step at a time. "Looking for something?"
The Wraith made an inarticulate noise behind its mask. It took another confident step forward.
"If you'd wanted me dead, you would've shot me already," John continued, though he already knew it was futile to talk to the drones. For all he knew they didn't even have faces under those masks. "Unless, of course, you're scared of having to fish me out of the water after you did. I wouldn't really blame you if you were." Another step. "After all, here there be monsters and all that."
The Wraith took another step forward, and didn't see the shape that rose up behind it, a flabby white shape that almost glowed in the faint reflected lamp-light. A familiar shape that made John's heart stutter and brought a half-formed syllable into his mouth, though even he didn't know what he could possibly say, not now, not after everything else. He got as far as "McKay," and then stopped.
The Wraith spun around with its inhuman speed and plunged its feeding hand onto the Deep One's chest.
Then the Wraith started screaming.
The Deep One with the familiar face started laughing, that insane giggle, not making a move to remove that clawing, writhing hand from where its heart should be, and the Wraith kept screaming in tones no human could produce, and the small hairy urge to live in John's brain sent him staggering backwards, away from the sounds and the light and the monsters. He could hide in the darkness. He could escape in the darkness.
His foot came down where the stairs began, and he couldn't move fast enough to regain his balance, not mired in the water, not with his boots on. His arms flew outwards, swiping at the stagnant air, and then the ocean closed over his head, and he could hear the singing.
-\--\--\-
"There have been no new cases for some time," Teyla told him, once, while he was making the supply run. "Perhaps it will fade with the winter."
"I don't think we'll be that lucky," he said. "I don't think they have seasons underwater."
Teyla looked out over the beach, back towards the village, which had migrated further inland. "Some of the children refuse to eat fish now. Some are afraid even to wade in the river."
John wanted to reassure her. Instead he said, "Elizabeth is getting worse. She's asking me to assume command." Don't let me go down there, she'd also asked. Use any force necessary.
This isn't some kind of zombie movie, Elizabeth. If Carson can--
I can make this an order, John. I wouldn't ask you if you if I could it myself. You did it for Ronon; please do it for me.
"Perhaps that's wise," Teyla said in the present. "Has she complained any further of dreams?"
"They're not worth complaining about anymore," John said, and snorted.
Teyla shook her head. "Some of us-those of my people with the Gift of the Wraith-some of us also have the dreams. Sometimes I can hear the others singing to each other." She paused. "I do not think that they will sing to me."
"You're lucky," John said. "Or maybe not. I don't know."
At the very least, she was unafraid to press her forehead to his and squeeze his hands. "Be safe, John," she said. "We will send more food with the next jumper, if we can."
"We appreciate that," John said. "We'd send you fish, but..."
"I believe your people say it is the thought that counts." She smiled at him; for her sake, he didn't smile back.
-\--\--\-
He woke up suddenly, like from a nightmare, and tugged on the restraints before he realized that was what they were. He was in the isolation room of the medical unit. He was still above the water. A few phrases of song echoed in his head, h'ilyaa-h'nn nafl'gof'nn, but they were only a memory, and they didn't mean anything. He still felt mostly the same.
"Carson?" he tried calling, but raising his voice much above a whisper hurt. He'd been screaming. He remembered screaming. He remembered lots of things.
There was a bit of commotion beyond the curtains before Carson appeared, stopping short at the foot of the bed. "John?" he asked. "Are you with us, lad?"
John swallowed. "I think so."
"Oh, thank God," Carson sighed, though John didn't think God had anything to do with it. Not that one, anyway. "We thought we'd lost you there, with the screaming, but when you didn't deteriorate I started to hope-well." He pulled out a stethoscope and pressed it to John's chest. "No sign of pneumonia so far, but I'd like you to take a deep breath for me."
John did. He took a deep breath, and coughed, and lifted his chin so Carson could feel his lymph nodes, like that mattered. "Wraith?"
Carson started. "Oh, aye, them," he said. "You've missed quiet a bit, Colonel. They broke off and fled not long after the F-302s engaged the darts, though we've no idea why-Teyla seems to think that something spooked them. The Marines and SG-1 were able to clean up most of the drones left behind, or...well...they were heading downstairs, you know."
"I was downstairs," John reminded him.
"Aye." Carson sat on the edge of the bed. "D'you want to tell me what happened down there?"
John wished there was a window back here, so he could look to the sky; the overhead light hurt his eyes, but if he closed them he remembered the singing. "There was a Wraith," he said.
Carson nodded. "So Dr. Jackson said. He's the one who insisted on going back for you."
Which sort of explained how he'd got back up here. "There was a Wraith," John repeated. "It tried to feed on Rodney."
"Are you certain?" Carson asked quietly, going very still.
John nodded. "I think he killed it. I think that's why the Wraith ran off. I don't think they can feed on the Deep Ones."
"It would make sense," Carson said, looking at his hands. "If they feed off the same energy that produces a life sign on our sensors...I mean, the amphibians don't have that."
"Or they have too much," John mumbled.
Carson ignored this, and he didn't mention any names when he asked, "So what happened after the amphibian attacked the Wraith? Laura found you in a completely different section of the tower to where the others said you'd gone, and you were unconscious at the time..."
John shrugged. "I fell in the water. I don't...I can't really say what happened after that." There was too much, too many thoughts, too many impressions, from senses he couldn't put a name to, not in any language he could actually speak. There was the song.
Luckily Carson didn't press him. "Well, you've been out of it for nearly a week," he said. "The Hammond departed, but they left some supplies-tools, medicine, clothes, that sort of thing. Colonel Carter said she'd recommend another mission back to check up on us in a few months, but it's up to the IOA to make the final decision, and, well, you know how that's gone so far. There were no casualties from the Wraith attack, but, ah..."
John knew what Carson was about to say, because there was only one bed in the isolation room, and he was in it. "Elizabeth took to water," he said.
"Aye," Carson said miserably. "We were trying to move her somewhere safer from the Wraith and she slipped her restraints. I'm sorry, John."
He shook his head. "Don't. It's not your fault. There was no way we could keep her up here forever."
"She's still got her transmitter, though," Carson said. "If we find a cure, we can find her."
"If."
Carson reached for the leather strap around John's wrist. "I can have you out of these in a moment, and then--"
"No," John said, and Carson froze. "Just...leave them, okay?"
"Colonel?" he asked hesitantly.
John swallowed, and when he shut his eyes he could still hear the song. Just a memory, though. He hoped it was just a memory. "Just for now. Please."
"All right," Carson said, and let John be.