When I Sorrow Most - part 5
'When I Sorrow Most' part 1 is here.
'When I Sorrow Most' part 2 is here.
'When I Sorrow Most' part 3 is here.
'When I Sorrow Most' part 4 is here.
When I Sorrow Most
Part Five
Present Day
“Come on, come on, come on,” Rodney chants to himself as he runs yet another sensor sweep, this time concentrating the scan on the upper right quadrant of the pulsar’s corona. “You’re out there somewhere - I just know it!”
“Once you find this particle thing and we get Sheppard out, we can destroy it, right?” Ronon asks, sounding hopeful.
Rodney can sympathise with that hope; after almost five hours of constant searching, he’s about ready from some action too. Although, knowing Pegasus, he’s probably going to live to regret that sentiment when everything starts snowballing out of control. Still, it does have a nice ring to it - find the accelerator, save John and then blow the damn thing to kingdom come.
“Yes,” he replies with relish. “Once I’ve found it and we’ve done our super team leader saving stuff, you can blow it to smithereens.”
“Good,” Ronon says. Rodney can hear his grin and he feels an answering emotion resonate deeply inside himself.
It is somewhat out of character for Rodney to be quite so blood-thirsty - after all, a particle accelerator of the magnitude he’s envisaging would certainly be worthy of further study. However, this is by no means a usual situation, not that such things often occur in Pegasus, but still, this is even more unusual than… well… usual. Not only does Rodney suspect that the as yet un-found particle accelerator is where some soon-to-be dead bastards have hidden John away, but the itch in the very back of his brain, the one that started right back when he’d first seen the odd particle flux, is now making its way steadily further forward into his consciousness. What’s more, it’s bringing with it the dawning suspicion that things may well be far worse than the loss of a single man, even bearing in mind that the single man is John Sheppard. Because, over the course of the last few hours, the particle flux has continued to rise and now Rodney is even starting to detect the strange quarks themselves in the pulsar’s emissions. Basic particle physics would dictate that strange quarks be undetectable in nature because of their incredibly fast decay rate - only measurable in a carefully controlled laboratory setting. But here they are - apparently right outside their jumper and appearing in ever increasing numbers. It’s worrying to say the least.
“Oh!” The softly spoke exclamation from beside him captures Rodney’s attention at once; Teyla has been mostly silent during their painstaking search of the space around the star.
“Yes? What?” he demands of her, hope and desperation colouring his tone.
“I think…” Teyla leans even closer towards her console, a frown furrowing her brow. “Yes,” she says a moment later, straightening back up and turning to smile brightly at both Rodney and Ronon. “I have something.”
“Finally,” Ronon says at the same time that Rodney practically shouts, “Let me see.”
Teyla moves quickly out of the way, gracefully easing out of the co-pilot seat to allow Rodney to plunk down into it. His frown returns as he reviews her latest scans, but, yes, there it is, just on the edges of her last sensor sweep - the tell-tale sign of a photon rebound.
“Oh, very nicely done,” he can’t help but say as he refines the sensor sweep one final time and watches as it slowly reveals the location of what is undoubtedly an Ancient orbital facility. The whole structure is hidden by a beautifully executed shield-cum-cloaking device; it’s similar in many ways to the jumper’s own cloaks and shields, but of much of a much more intricate design. Rodney is certain that had they not had reason to believe that such a thing existed, they would never have discovered it. It makes him wonder idly how whoever is running it now - and his money is on the Catarans, Trin being the prime suspect - managed to discover it.
“It is there, then?” Teyla asks, sounding vindicated.
“Yes, yes; it’s there alright,” Rodney. “Just give me a few seconds….and, voila!” A few minor changes to the viewscreen protocols has the desired effect and the accelerator shimmers into view before them.
“It is like the Aurora, is it not,” Teyla says, leaning forward with a hand braced on the back of Rodney’s chair to study the accelerator more closely. “Lying undiscovered for centuries until someone stumbled upon it.”
“Yes, only this time it was the Catarans and not the Wraith,” Rodney agrees.
“So, is Sheppard on board?” Ronon asks, obviously keen to move on to the second part of the ‘plan’ now that they’ve located the accelerator.
“I don’t know,” Rodney replies as he studies hones the sensor sweeps directly on to the accelerator. “I’m trying to get a reading of the inside, but the shields so far seem impenetrable.”
“What is it for?” Teyla asks. “Can we board it somehow and search for John from inside?”
“Well, it’s a particle accelerator,” Rodney replies, gesturing towards the viewscreen. “Ancient, from the looks of it, and also presumably what has been causing the changes we’ve been observing in the pulsar.”
Realising that he’s still sitting in Teyla’s chair, Rodney gets to his feet and shuffles back to the pilot’s seat, motioning for Teyla to sit down beside him again. With the flight controls back under his hands, he cautiously steers the still-cloaked jumper closer to the accelerator itself, making sure to keep his hand close to the weapons console just in case. He doesn’t think whoever’s onboard will be able to detect them - even Atlantis can’t detect her own cloaked jumpers - but there’s no need to tempt fate.
As the jumper moves around the accelerator, Rodney takes stock. That it’s of Ancient design is immediately apparent by the planes and angles of its architecture, even though it is of a far more practical design than the towers and turrets of Atlantis. A long central core made up the bulk of the accelerator, one end tapering off into the targeting beam which was directed towards the pulsar. On the opposite end, there were several loops which Rodney presumed were where the particles themselves were first created and then brought up to speed before being directed down the central piece and hurled towards the star.
“You see,” Rodney begins, starting to answer Teyla’s question. “A particle accelerator does exactly what its name suggests - it collides elementary particles. Now, different accelerators are designed to collide different types of particles, and the whole point of the exercise is to generate, at least for a short amount of time, other particles that would otherwise have long since decayed.”
“Like the strange one,” Ronon says.
“Yes, like the strange quark,” Rodney agrees. “Although what you’d typically see is the new, unstable particles quickly decaying back into more stable particles.” Glancing over at Teyla and then up at Ronon, Rodney decides to take another stab at his explanation. “It’s like this,” he says, holding up his hands up and forming them into fists. “Imagine you’re colliding two particles, an electron,” he waves his right fist, “and a positron,” he waves his left and then hits them together hard, meshing his hands together as they meet. “With the energy from the collision, they can be converted temporarily into new particles, what’s called a virtual photon. However, this new particle,” he waves his now joined arms, “is not stable - it decays very quickly.” He starts to separate his hands, this time not returning them to fists. “However, and this is the really clever part, there's no reason for it to decay into the same two particles - an electron and a positron - again. Provided that the energy is sufficiently high, you can create anything you're energetically allowed to -- say, a strange quark and an anti-strange quark.” He waves each of his newly-separated hands in turn.
“And that is what this accelerator is doing?” Teyla ask, nodding first towards the accelerator in the viewscreen and then to Rodney’s hands, still upheld in demonstration. “Creating new particles?”
“What’s the point?” Ronon adds his query into the mix.
“Yes, that is what it’s doing and the point,” he says, turning to glare up at Ronon for a moment. “Is to gain a greater understanding of the physical universe. Although quite what the Catarans - if it is indeed them - think they’re doing with it is anyone’s guess.”
“It’s them alright,” Ronon states flatly, looking towards the viewscreen. “Look.”
Following the direction of Ronon’s gaze, Rodney turns back to spy the small spacecraft docked at one of the smaller rings adjacent to the main core of the accelerator. It looks somewhat like a Wraith dart, but is fashioned, not out of the eerie flesh-like material of traditional Wraith technology, but from what seems to be a more traditional metal alloy. It does, in fact, looks remarkably like one of the prototypes John and Rodney had viewed during Konar’s tour of the defence research facility.
“Perhaps they believe it is some sort of weapon?” Teyla suggests. “I must confess that I find it hard to believe that the Catarans were being completely disingenuous with us during our initial searches for John. I spent almost two weeks with Quoron, Konar and Kerania and did not see any indication that they were hiding anything from us - certainly not something as great as John’s abduction.”
“No, not them,” Rodney agrees. His eyes narrowing as he studies the craft; it is similar to the prototypes they’d viewed, but not identical. “I’m not sure any of them would have the understanding to actually operate something like this accelerator. But there was another scientist - Trin. He would have the knowledge, plus the means and connections, to pull off something like a fake Wraith attack…” Rodney trails off as he thinks back to the afternoon he’d spend in Trin’s company, trying to recall his impressions of the man. To be honest, Rodney hadn’t really noticed all that much about the man himself, too taken with questioning him on his research and eager for the chance to spend some quality time with the Wraith darts. He has vague memories of talking about power generation with him and how the Ancients… “Oh fuck!”
“Rodney?” Teyla asks, her eyes wide with concern.
“It’s Trin, it’s got to be,” he exclaims angrily. “And, damn it all to hell, I… I may have mentioned to him something about how the Ancients generate power - by extracting vacuum energy and…” he trails off again and stares down at the jumper floor, feeling a flush of shame and guilt wash over him as he realises that his words are what most likely led to John’s loss.
“And?” Ronon prompts.
Rodney winces, his gaze darting up to meet Ronon’s before returning to the floor. “And I may have also alluded to the genetic element involved in the activation of Ancient tech. This… god dammit… all of this is my fault.”
“McKay,” Ronon says, his voice brooking no argument. “This is not your fault, this is their fault,” he stabs a finger in the direction of the Cataran ship in the centre of the viewscreen. “And we’re going to make them pay.”
“Yes,” Teyla agrees softly, reaching out to touch Rodney’s arm. Her grip solid and strong and it helps to anchor him so he can pull himself out of the well of guilt in which he’s caught. “It would appear that John’s disappearance is the fault of the Catarans,” she continues just as firmly as Ronon. “But when we find him and bring him home, it will be because of you.”
Rodney raises his eyes to look at each of his team mates in turn. “No,” he counters. “It will because of all of us.”
“Right then,” Ronon says, his grin all eager anticipation. “Let’s go get him.”
~*~
Sometime Earlier
Raised voices roused him to consciousness once more. Noise echoed all around - angry shouts and loud bangs. Suddenly a pause. Silence descended again, but it was quickly to be followed by a bright flash of light and a rush of power which floods mercilessly though him. He arched, his muscles contracting even more violently than before, the pain so intense it felt like the very fibres of his body were being wrenched apart. There was a command in the power too - an order instructing him to do something. Soon there was nothing to him but the painful sensation of an excess of energy and the pounding imperative to ‘Activate’.
He hesitated for a moment, unsure and confused. Where was he? Who was he? His mind was blank, but there was an instinctive reaction coming from somewhere deep down inside telling him that this wasn’t right.
‘Activate’ the order screamed, the power pulsing through him increasing exponentially until he was screaming in agony.
‘Activate’ the order came again. Memory and reason had both deserted him long ago and the lone instinct to resist was not strong enough in the face of the ceaseless pain. He gives in.
“Activate.”
~*~
Present Day
Gunfire echoes through the corridors and Rodney is surprised to find that he’s almost grateful for it. At least this - running through the cool grey corridors of an Ancient base at risk to both life and limb in search of an impossible prize - is something with which he’s familiar.
“Faster, Rodney,” Teyla urges from behind him, the sound of her light footfalls spurring him on as they sprint down the seemingly endless hallway.
“I’m trying,” he manages to pant out through the tightness in his lungs and the burn of lactic acid in his legs. Behind them he can hear the blasts of Ronon’s energy pistol and the answering rounds of ammunition fire from the enemy - a group of uniformed guards they’d encountered within minutes of stepping aboard the accelerator. Finally the end of the corridor approaches and Rodney rounds the corner at full speed, only just managing to screech to a halt in front of a closed door. Teyla pulls up beside him, turning to face any potential attacks with her P-90 raised and at the ready.
“Can you open it?” she asks over her shoulder, her position firm and braced for combat as the staccato sound of automatic weapons fire still sounds behind them.
“Yes.” Rodney’s already scrambling with the panel covering the locking mechanism as he replies, tearing off the cover and reaching inside to pluck out a couple of the crystals and then cross-wire it such a way that the doors starts to reluctantly slide open. A quick glance at his life-signs detector tells him that the room is still empty and he’s ready to enter just as soon as the door opens far enough to allow it. “Come on,” he urges, reaching out to pull Teyla through the doorway with him.
Teyla follows him through, the barrel of her weapon sweeping over the room once before she positions herself to the left of the still-open doorway, bracing herself against the wall and aiming in preparation to fire. Rodney’s already at the controls on this side of the door, poised ready to close them as soon as Ronon catches up to them. The sound of fighting can still be heard down the hall, but it’s starting to diminish now as their enemies fall to Ronon’s wrath.
Teyla and Rodney exchange a glance as the gunfire finally falls silent and there’s the sound of pounding feet. Ronon appears around the bend moments later, his face covered in sweat, but with a triumphant smile on his face.
“Got them all,” he says as he walks into the middle of the small utility room in which they’ve found themselves, jumping up on the table positioned there and surveying them both with a victorious air.
“Good,” Rodney replies as he closes and secures the door. “Right, on to stage two of the plan.” He walks over to Ronon, shooing him off the table with the wave of his scanner, plunking it and his rucksack down on it in Ronon’s place.
Stage one had actually gone off surprisingly well. Rodney had been initially worried that they’d encounter serious problems getting through the accelerator's shield, but thankfully none had materialised. Instead, in another ingenious piece of engineering, the Ancients appeared to have programmed their accelerator’s cloak/shield to recognise and permit the passage of any craft of Ancient design. It’s actually something that makes a lot of sense to Rodney, especially considering the ongoing war with the Wraith and the necessity of ships landing and taking off during the heat of battle. The in-built safe guard that only ATA-carriers could pilot the jumpers minimised the risk and Rodney made a mental note to have a look to see if he could reconfigure Atlantis’ shields to do something similar upon their return. He’s certain John will only be too happy to volunteer as test-pilot during the testing phase.
So, they’d docked and had disembarked onto the accelerator managing to escape detection. Of course, their luck couldn’t be expected to continue to hold, so naturally they’d run into a group of armed men within minutes of leaving the jumper. But even that inconvenience had been rendered minor courtesy of Ronon’s sharp shooting and Rodney’s life-signs detector. Despite numerous attempts, Rodney had been unable to hack into the accelerator’s computer system from the jumper, nor had he been able to pick up any life-sign readings. As a result, they'd been left with no choice but to enter the accelerator blind.
Rodney starts unpacking the contents of his rucksack onto the table. They don't have much time, no doubt their encounter with the group of guards will have drawn the attention of everyone else onboard, but Rodney is reasonably certain that the door to this room will hold long enough for him to get access to the computer system and work out whether John is actually on board. With his laptop, scanner and life-signs detector all at hand, Rodney gets to work.
He starts by hooking up his detector to his laptop, hoping to be able to boost its scanning range and then use the more sensitive analysis program on his computer to review the results. His hands are shaking slightly as he makes the connection and implements the scan, making sure to pick up as many indicators as he can. This, after all, is quite possibly the most important part of the mission. He can’t allow himself to dwell on just how much is riding on the results.
While he waits for the scan and analysis to finish, he turns his attention to tapping into the accelerator's database. To this end, he unpacks his second laptop, a handful of cabling and a collection of control crystals, glancing around the room to identify a likely access point. Over in the far corner, he spots a data node which looks identical to the ones throughout Atlantis. Excellent, from there he should be able to get access to most systems.
Quickly crossing over to the node, Rodney sets out his equipment on the floor, hunches down beside it, and gets to work. He can feel Ronon pacing back and forth across the breadth of the room behind him, but he tries to block that out. This is delicate work and he can't allow himself to be distracted by anything, not even the sense of hope that is steadily rising. Teyla suddenly appears silently at his elbow, kneeling down beside him and calmly passing him his tools in response to his snapped instructions.
"How much longer?" Ronon asks, breaking the silence at last.
Rodney glances at his watch, surprised to find that it's been almost twenty minutes since they entered the room. Ronon is right; they need to get a move on.
"I've almost managed to get a link with the central computer," he replies, slotting in another crystal and then attaching a couple more cables to the node in an effort to bypass the secondary systems so he can tap directly into the central core itself. "There’s just one more barrier of code to crack.” He takes a deep breath in preparation for facing yet another firewall. “Make yourself useful and see if the scan's finished, will you?" he says to Ronon, gesturing towards the laptop on the table with the end of the fibre optic cable he holding. He frowns down at it for a moment, trying to work out how best to connect it, reinsert the crystal he’s got in his other hand and work on cracking the safety protocols all at the same time.
“Let me,” Teyla says, reaching out and plucking crystal and cable out of his hands with the flash of a smile.
“Thanks,” he replies. “Um, can you just hold this connection in place while I finish up.” As she does as he asks, Rodney very carefully focuses his attention back to his laptop, determined not to think about what Ronon’s checking.
"I think it's done," Ronon reports and, despite his focus, Rodney feels his stomach somersault in nervous anticipation.
"Good, good," Rodney responds, pleased to hear that his voice is steady, for the most part at any rate. He’s down to de-coding the final few protocols and can’t afford a lapse in concentration. Besides which, he’s really not up to considering the implications of the scan quite yet. "I'm just about... There, I'm done here too. Okay Teyla, you can let go now, I can see the connection." A few keystrokes has the data scrolling over his screen and he sets the laptop to one side as the connection establishes itself.
Hefting himself to his feet with a small groan, he crosses over to where Ronon is standing bent in front of the other laptop. Ronon looks up as Rodney approaches, moving to one side and gesturing towards the screen.
"Well?" he asks. “Is he here?” The slight tightness around his eyes is the only thing belaying his nervousness.
Rodney takes a deep breath, suddenly beset with nerves himself. This is it, he thinks, this is what will tell them, once and for all, whether there is a reason for them to be here or whether they are merely risking their lives on yet another fool’s errand guided by faint hope. He glances up at Ronon, who is standing shoulder-to-shoulder beside him, and then over to Teyla, who has come to stand with them. He sees his own apprehension reflected in their eyes, but their display of unity gives him the strength to continue. There’s nothing to fear, he tells himself, because John is here. Because he has to be.
Rodney tilts the laptop screen back slightly and starts scrolling through the results, his heart in his throat. There, in the midst of data relating to everything from the pulsar’s particle flux to the atmospheric conditions on the accelerator, is a tiny and seemingly insignificant row of numbers - if he hadn’t been looking specifically for it, he would never have even noticed it. As it is, however, he knows that it is without doubt the single most important discovery he’s ever made. His body sags in relief and he has to lock his knees to prevent himself collapsing in a heap on the floor as a heady rush of pure joy that shoots through him.
“It’s him,” he says, feeling his eyes prickle with emotion, but completely unable to tear his gaze away from the hard proof in front of him. “Oh my god, I’m picking up the signal from his subcutaneous transmitter. He’s actually here.”
As if from a distance, Rodney feels Teyla wrap her arms around his neck, pressing herself against his side as she hugs him in delight. On his other side, he’s vaguely aware of Ronon pounding him on the back in celebration, but Rodney can’t really pay attention to anything else except for the words pounding through his head.
John is here. John is alive.
~*~
Sometime Earlier
He woke once more to the agony he’d come to associate with consciousness, it flooded through him in a torrent, working its way into every part of his body, drowning out his memory and swamping his mind. The energy was building again, demanding even more from him this time, inundating his body and almost overwhelming his system. It left him with no option but to funnel it through himself and then out into… somewhere… He wasn’t sure where… or why… He wasn’t sure of anything any more. It was all he could do to keep a tight hold on his tenuous grasp on consciousness and fight with all that he is to prevent the pain from tearing his mind apart.
The imperative was still there. It was present in every breath he took and echoed through his aching body with every beat of his heart. He had no choice but to obey its demand - opening his mind to its orders and flooding… something… with the power that was being routed through his body. Every now and then he’d catch the odd flash of an image - a beam, a collision, a star. He was just about aware enough to understand that what he was doing was somehow operating something, but then another surge flooded his body with energy and pain and even this meagre understanding was lost.
~*~
Present Day
Several long corridors and another encounter with groups of armed guards - the former navigated thanks to Rodney's scanner and the latter dealt with effectively by Ronon's pistol and Teyla's P-90 - sees them at a locked door in the outermost arm of the accelerator. Rodney double-checks the scanner he's clutching like a life-line and then looks up to address his waiting team mates.
"Right," he says, gesturing towards the door with his scanner. "This is it."
"Can you open it?" Ronon asks, his fingers stroking along his holstered weapon almost lovingly.
Rodney's eyes flicker down to Ronon's holster and he has to admit to being momentarily tempted to let Ronon just blow the fucking door down... but, no, they don't know enough about what's inside and although he's picking up John's transponder loud and clear, his life signs are another matter entirely.
"I can open it," he replies, turning to the locking mechanism and proceeding to do just that.
The door slides open to reveal a large and seemingly empty dimly lit room. They enter one by one, Teyla crossing the threshold first with her P-90 held high. There is absolutely no sign of life and, for a moment, Rodney feels his heart sink, crushing his hope. Yet, he thinks as he continues to look around, perhaps all is not lost. In the centre of the room is a raised dais with a long oblong casket placed upon it. There's something about the room that is strangely familiar, but Rodney can't quite put his finger on why.
"It's like the Chair room on Atlantis," Teyla says softly as she lowers her P-90 and slowly approaches the dais.
"You're right," Rodney says, his eyes flickering from the casket to the readings from his scanner and back. He's reasonably sure he knows what they'll find inside it and part of him wants to rip the cover off at once just to get John the fuck out of that horrible coffin-like thing. The more reasonable, saner part of him is urging caution and Rodney does his best to listen to it.
"It's him in there, isn't it?" Ronon asks. "They've got him trapped in thing with this gene so they can power their accelerator." He grits the words out on a growl of disgust with which Rodney completely agrees. Whilst Rodney is all for pushing the boundaries of technology and does see certain advantages to linking developments to the human body, this is an appalling step too far.
"This is truly horrifying," Teyla says, her voice shaking with anger and disgust. She moves swiftly up the three steps to the casket and placing her hands flat on its surface, her head bowing almost reverently, as if trying to ease John's suffering through the thick material. "How do we get him out?" she, turning her bowed head to the side so she can look at Rodney.
Rodney swallows and consults his scanner again, tweaking the protocols slightly so he can get a clearer picture of what is inside the casket. He closes his eyes in gratitude when the readings he had been assuming were John’s life-signs grow stronger with the new measurements. He doesn’t allow himself much of a respite, however, because John's life-signs are weak and erratic - his brain patterns almost non-existent whilst his heart rate is lurching madly from a worrying low number of beats per minute to something disturbingly high.
"I'm not sure," he answers, thinking hard. "His condition is by no means stable and there's some kind of... well, electricity, for want of a better word, running through his body." He looks up at Teyla and Ronon, the terrifying prospect of failure looming and making him freeze up completely. "I... I don't know if I can get him out... At least not without killing him. He doesn't need me, he needs a doctor."
Rodney comes to stand beside Teyla and stares down at the nondescript lid of the casket, imagining the frozen body of the man trapped beneath. And it’s not just any man, it’s John trapped in there. John, who had somehow managed to slink his way past Rodney’s many defences. John, who Rodney had thought he’d lost forever. God, what if he really can’t do this? What if he fails and John is trapped here - lying as good as dead in an Ancient coffin until his body is finally wrung dry. Rodney closes his eyes as he feels himself start to shake. He doesn’t think he can bear it.
Suddenly he feels a hand land heavily on his shoulder, and turns to find Ronon looking at him consideringly. “He's hooked up to some Ancient machine with electricity going through his body,” Ronon says. “I wouldn't say he needs a doctor, I'd say he needs you.”
Rodney blinks, for a moment completely floored by Ronon's summation of the situation. His brain slowly cranks back into gear and he nods, accepting Ronon's compliment for the encouragement that it is, and thumps his hand a couple of times against the side of his scanner to get himself back on track.
"Okay, okay; I can do this," he says to himself and begins to study the casket in earnest.
~*~
Present Day
Suddenly everything changes - all at once the pain stops; it is simply gone. He lies in the darkness with his heart pounding, marvelling at the complete and utter absence of suffering. After so long of knowing nothing but pain and confusion, the lack of both is almost too much for him to bear. He is still in complete darkness and unable to move, but those facts no longer seem to matter as he luxuriates in the lack of agony.
He waits, unsure of what to expect now. Will the pain return? Will he lose consciousness again? Time passes, he’s unsure how much, but his situation remains unchanged. Gradually awareness and comprehension return and with them come his memories. For a moment he can feel nothing but relief and gratitude as he’s finally able to remember who he is. He’s Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, the military commander of Atlantis. However, dread swiftly follows on the heels of his positive emotions as it swiftly becomes obvious that he’s been captured and tortured.
His body jerks as he recalls from where he was abducted; he was on a mission with his team. He starts to struggle as worry and anger energises his tired body. Rodney, Ronon and Teyla - he has to get out of here and go find them. He strains with all his strength, his back arching and his arms and legs pulling at the bonds that restrain him, but it’s no good. He’s firmly bound and can’t get free no matter how hard he struggles. Nevertheless, he can’t prevent himself from trying again; growling out his frustration as he kicks out violently with his legs and attempts to wrench his arms free. It useless and he’s exhausted by the time he can fight no more, his body going limp and leaving him panting harshly into the darkness.
Just then the sound of voices penetrates through the chamber in which he’s trapped. He’s instantly alert, slowing his breathing automatically and attending hard to what’s happening outside, his body tensed for action in spite of his situation. The voices draw nearer and for a moment John can hardly believe it as he realises that he recognises the voices.
“Okay, I think I’ve managed to stop the power flow through his body to the accelerator and isolated the casket from the main systems. All that’s left to do now is just… There. Oh my god, John? Are you alright? Can you hear me?”
Thank goodness, John thinks to himself, the blinding light of happiness momentarily eclipsing everything else. He knows that voice. It’s Rodney.
~*~
Present Day
“Rodney?” John’s voice is weak and rough from disuse, but to Rodney it’s more welcome than anything he’s ever heard. “You okay?”
“Yes. Yes, John. I’m here and of course I’m okay - you’re the one who’s been in danger, you idiot,” Rodney snaps, his voice gruff with emotion. He reaches down into the casket to touch John, his hands drawn immediately to John’s face and cupping one of his far too pale cheeks gently.
John tilts his head into Rodney’s touch, his eyes flickering closed for a moment. “Rodney,” he breathes again.
“Shh, don’t try to talk. You’re safe now, we’ve got you,” Rodney says, his fingers stroking lightly across John’s face. Next to him, Teyla is reaching out as well, taking one of John’s hands in hers and holding it tightly.
Reluctantly pulling his hand away from John’s face, Rodney starts to ponder the intricacies involved with actually extricating John from the casket. Physically John doesn’t look half bad for someone who has spent over three months locked in a coffin, but the variety of tubes and wires buried into his skin all over his body are testament to how he’s been used - his body given nutrients and muscle stimulation sufficient to keep him in relatively good health while he was being used essentially as a giant genetic multi-plug. Rodney feels his anger start to build again at the relief at finding John alive slowly gives way to horror at how he’s been treated.
“Teyla, Ronon,” John’s eyes are mostly clear as he pulls his gaze from Rodney’s to look at Teyla and then down to Ronon, who has appeared at the foot of the casket.
“John,” Teyla says, and Rodney sees her clasp John’s hand even tighter between her own. “John, it is so very good to see you.”
“Sheppard,” Ronon says at last, circling around to the other side and then walking up towards John’s head so that he’s standing opposite Rodney. “Come on, let’s get you home.” He leans down and grasps John’s arm, looking for all the world as if he’s just going to haul John up and out of the casket.
“No!” Rodney shouts in horror. “For god’s sake, just wait a minute, will you? We’ve just found him and I’d very much like to get him home without him bleeding out all over the floor. Before we do anything, we’ve got to unhook him from all this stuff.”
John’s head turns back to Rodney at the sound of his rant, his eyebrow quirking a bit and a smile pulling at his lips. “That’s my Rodney,” he says hoarsely, pulling his arms loose of both Ronon’s and Teyla’s hold to start pulling on the wires connected to his skin himself.
“And you just stop it too,” Rodney snaps, batting John’s hands down. “I have no idea how all these things are connected to you, so we’re just going to snap off the wires and worry about the rest when we get to Atlantis.” He illustrates what he means by pinching a nearby wire off between his thumb and forefinger, rolling his eyes when Ronon immediately unsheathes a knife and starts slicing at the wires and tubes that run down the left side of John’s body.
“Atlantis,” John breathes, his eyes closing and his lashes fanning out in black crescents over his too pale skin.
“You’ve been missed, John,” Teyla says as she moves to assist Rodney in snapping off the remaining connections on John’s right side.
Between them, they get John free in a matter of minutes. Ronon reaches into the casket once more, intending to haul John out of it.
“I can manage,” John insists, waving away Ronon’s help and struggling to get a firm grip on the casket’s sides with which to haul himself to his feet.
Rodney resisted the urge to roll his eyes yet again. “Clearly you cannot be expected to be operating at your full mental capacity,” he told John. “But you’ve been captured, tortured, and put through god knows what else over the past three months, so you will let us help you.” Ronon grins at him in approval and Rodney gestures at him to continue to help John up and out of the casket.
“Three months?” John asks, his eyes wide and startled as the length of time sinks in, his hands holding on tightly to Ronon as Ronon helps heft him out of the casket. John’s legs hold him upright, but he’s shaky on his feet, so Ronon readjusts his hold on John so that he’s propping up John’s left side.
“Yeah,” Rodney replies, moving swiftly around the casket and taking up position on John’s right. “Three fucking long months,” he repeats bitterly, wrapping an arm about John’s waist above Ronon’s and hefting John’s right arm over his shoulder so he can help bear his weight.
“Sorry ‘bout that, buddy,” John replies, his arm tightening around Rodney’s shoulders briefly.
Just then a loud noise from outside has Teyla heading for the door at a run, her P-90 at the ready.
“Someone is coming,” she says, positioning herself to one side of the door, weapon at the ready. “We need to move now.”
Together, Ronon and Rodney manage to get John down the dais steps and towards the door, their different heights making the movements awkward at first, but becoming smoother as they gradually adjust. Ronon unholsters his energy pistol and Rodney scrambles for his scanner in an effort to see who exactly is waiting for them outside.
“Hey, guys, I’m okay really; just give me a weapon,” John says, but Rodney, Ronon and Teyla all ignore him.
“Huh,” Rodney says as he studies his scanner’s read-outs. “There are only two of them outside - we should be able to take them easily.”
“Right,” Teyla says. “I will deal with them - you two keep John out of range.”
Ronon nods and he and Rodney manoeuvre John to the far side of the door and into the corner, well out of the most probable line of fire. Teyla glances at them, waiting until they are in position, Rodney holding up John while Ronon stands in front of them, his pistol raised.
“Ready,” he says.
Teyla nods in reply, moving forward to swipe her hand over the door to open it before stepping to the side once more. Rodney braces himself, ready for the imminent fight, his arms tightening around John without his conscious volition - partly from the need to just hold John to him and partly to stop the self-sacrificing idiot from doing anything stupidly heroic like grabbing Rodney’s Berretta and wading into the fight. Yet nothing by silence greets them from the corridor.
Cautiously, Rodney peers around Ronon’s bulk to glance over to where Teyla is inching her way around the edge of the door, her P-90 raised.
“We know you are there,” she shouts out into the corridor. “We just want to take what is ours and be gone. If you attempt to stop us, we will kill you.”
“Now, now, there is no need for that,” a familiar voice replies.
Rodney jolts in surprise, although this is hardly unexpected, and feels John freeze beside him.
“Trin,” John hisses. “That bastard; I knew he was no good.”
“Quite,” Rodney replies, his mind whirring with what Trin could possibly offer them of sufficient value to ensure his survival.
“I am sure we can come to some equitable arrangement,” Trin continues. “We all have a vested interest in the destruction of the Wraith, do we not? And this facility offers a real opportunity for us to do just that.”
Rodney snorts at this. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he replies. “This is, at most, an experiment - one that was never even run.”
“Ah, Dr McKay,” Trin calls out in return. “It appears that you do not grasp the intricacies of this device, for the experiment, as you call it, is already underway.”
Something in Trin’s tone makes Rodney pause; he’s been so caught up in the sheer necessity of rescuing John that’s he completely forgotten about what the accelerator was actually using John to do. Now that Trin has reminded him of it, the creation of all those strange quarks starts to sound alarm bells in his mind. He quickly shoulders his way out of his rucksack, dumping it on the floor and then leaning down to pull out one of his laptops.
“Rodney?” John asks in concern, bracing himself up against the wall with one hand placed on Rodney’s back. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m not sure… Maybe…” Rodney replies as he stands back up, balancing his laptop in the palm of his left hand and using his right to reconnect remotely to the accelerator’s central processor. He quickly brings up the reports of the latest activity in the collision chamber and then switches to check on the output from the pulsar. “Damn,” he mutters to himself as he scrolls through the star’s particle flux. “This is not good. Teyla,” he calls out. “Can you bring him in here - we have a problem.”
“Problem,” Ronon asks, turning his head to look back at Rodney.
“Yeah,” Rodney replies, staring grimly at his laptop screen. “That kidnapping maniac out there has quite possibly doomed the whole damn galaxy.”
~*~
Present Day
John watches, still somewhat dazed, as Teyla and Ronon frog-march a rather shaky Trin and another man into the room. Both men are plainly dressed, unarmed and not in any discernible uniform and John gets the impression that they are the people who are responsible for what's happened to him. Judging from the violence with which Ronon and, somewhat more surprisingly, Teyla handle the men, John concludes that his team agrees. Even Rodney is more tense than usual, his hand hovering over the butt of his Beretta threateningly in a very un-Rodney like manner.
For his part, John is still coming to terms with what has happened to him. Every now and then he gets a flash of memory from his time in captivity - his mind clouding over and his muscles cramping in pain at the recollection. It had been an endless and bewildering time of confusion and painful sensation, mercifully ended when John came back to himself fully to find that he was listening to the familiar sound of Rodney’s voice. As his gaze moves over Rodney now, standing in a protective manner beside John, his sturdy body lending John his strength, John can’t help but be grateful that he acted when he did back on Atlantis, his actions then ensuring that Rodney was his. Having Rodney at his side now, when he’s muddled and hurt, helps enormously. That Rodney had obviously searched for him, found him and was now unwilling to leave his side is like a soothing balm on his broken body and mind. And it isn’t just Rodney, John thinks to himself proudly as he watches the rest of his team move protectively around him as they back away from the two Catarans, their weapons still drawn.
John had been moved out of the corner and into a chair by Rodney and Ronon and part of him wants to be on his feet with his team mates, facing the threat head on, but he knows that he should be sensible. His head is pounding, he’s nauseous and he feels like every last drop of energy has been wrung from his body. It’s better, he supposes, than being fed on by a Wraith, but surely only marginally so.
“Now,” Rodney says, drawing John’s attention back to their current situation. “Tell me what the hell you people - and I use the word loosely - have done.” Rodney's words are tight and angry, his body tense. John has to resist the urge to go over to him, wrap himself around him and try to get him to relax; it's hard to see Rodney so obviously hurting like this.
Trin’s gaze flicks briefly to John for a moment, but a growl from Ronon and a not so gentle prod with the barrel of his energy pistol has Trin wincing and turning his attention back to Rodney. “Why, nothing, Dr McKay,” he replies smoothly. “We have simply been completing the Ancient’s work by using the Colonel’s unique genetic structure to get this facility up and running.”
John notes that Rodney is visibly shaking now, his mouth moving soundlessly as if he is struggling to find the words to encompass the man’s immense stupidity. Giving in to the temptation, John struggles to his feet and reaches out so he can rest his hand lightly on Rodney’s shoulder, hoping to help him out just as Rodney’s mere presence is doing for him. Beneath John’s palm, he feels Rodney take a deep breath, before finally addressing Trin.
“Leaving aside the fact that you abducted and tortured one of our team, I cannot believe that you would be -- no, no, wait, demonstrably you are.” He pauses then to take another calming breath before continuing, gesturing towards the laptop he has propped up on the now closed lid of the casket in which John had been kept. “Look, no matter what you may think, this is not a weapon of any kind, it’s an experiment. The Ancients were scientists long before their war with the Wraith, this is what remains from one of their scientific endeavours.”
“Yes,” Trin agrees. “And, once completed, it has the ability to funnel the energy of the star - a source of power far greater than anything we have on Catara; greater even than your naquadah generators or your Zero Point Modules.”
“No!” Rodney shouts. “This experiment isn’t about power - it’s about knowledge. The results may produce a huge amount of power as a by-product, but not in any format that is containable. Look,” he says, grabbing the laptop and then thrusting it in front of Trin’s face. “See this? This is the particle flux from the star - you see here - those are strange quarks - highly unstable particles in themselves, but incredibly destructive when amassed together like this.”
Trin is quiet - studying the screen in front of him in confusion. John thinks that it’s time he intervened.
“Rodney?” he says. “Mind letting the rest of us in on what’s going on?”
Rodney snatches his computer out of Trin’s hands and turns away from him with a snort of disgust. “So, this is what I think is going on. What this is,” he says, gesturing around them as best he can with the laptop still in his hands, “is a particle accelerator - a collider which smashes together particles in an attempt to discover new particles which would otherwise decay far too rapidly to be measured.”
“Okay,” John says. “So, it’s like the one in Illinois?”
“Yes, the Tevatron, like that; only this accelerator is far more advanced. You see, the Tevatron is a synchrotron - it collides protons and anti-protons. This, however, is on a far greater scale - greater than even the LHC at CERN which collides protons. It’s amazing really…” Rodney trails off, momentarily lost in thought, before his gaze snaps back into focus again. “Anyway, the reason the Ancients built this collider here is because of the proximity to the pulsar - it was the intended target of their experiment.”
“And there is now a risk, Rodney?” Teyla asks.
“Yes,” Rodney replies. “See what the Ancients seem to have been trying to do is essentially change the composition of the pulsar itself - to create a strange star.”
“Strange?” Ronon queries. “Like those things you were detecting.”
“Exactly, like the strange quarks,” Rodney says. “This is all new physics in terms of where we are with understanding particle interactions. The basic idea comes from a possible model which hypothesises that nuclear matter - essentially the bulk of the mass of the visible universe - is not stable, but merely meta-stable. Imagine something sitting at the bottom of a valley - it’s stable because it's as low as it can go. But meta-stability is when there is actually another valley next to the first that is even lower. Classically speaking, there's a barrier - you have to climb over the next hill to reach the lower valley and for that you need energy. However, quantum mechanically, you can tunnel through the energetically forbidden region - through the barrier from one valley to the other. Of course, the bigger the hill between the valleys, the less likely it is that this tunnelling will happen and, as a result, meta-stability is really only unstable over very long timescales. However, if you wait long enough, sufficient energy will eventually come available for it to happen.”
Trin snorts at this, shaking his head. “This is ridiculous,” he says. “If the universe was really only, as you say, meta-stable we would not all be here.”
“But that’s not entirely true,” Rodney replies. “All we can conclude from the fact that we and the universe are still in existence is that if nuclear matter really is meta-stable, it has a very long half-life - many times the current age of the universe. Nevertheless, it might still be the case that it is meta-stable. And what you idiots have caused to happen here merely proves it.”
“So what is happening out there?” John asks, wanting nothing more than for this whole mess to be over and done with so they can all go home and he can curl up on his bed with Rodney wrapped around him. However, by now he knows Pegasus far too well to think that anything is ever that easy - even if abduction and torture has already taken place.
Rodney frowns, “Nothing good,” he says with another glare at Trin. “What these incompetent fools have done, at least at my best guess - which is a pretty damn good one - is manage to create a strangelet.”
“A strangelet?” John prompts as Rodney goes back to his glaring.
“Yes, a strangelet,” Rodney confirms as he turns to face John. He's looking more like himself now, a little frazzled perhaps, but captivatingly invigorated by his science. “Basically a stable lump of strange matter - strange matter being made up of an equal mass of up, down and strange quarks. This differs from nuclear matter - our matter - which is made up of mostly up and down quarks. There is a hypothesis that strange matter is the ultimately stable state, unlike the meta-stable state of nuclear matter. This sounds odd at first because normally, particles that contain strange quarks are very unstable - they decay extremely quickly, in other words. However, it is thought that if you had a sufficiently large amount of strange matter collected together - a strangelet - then it would actually be stable. The important point being that it would actually be more stable than nuclear matter - the lower valley.”
“Okay,” John says, trying to wrap his aching head around Rodney’s techno-babble to get to the vital point he knows it must contain. “And creating a strangelet is bad because…?”
“Because strangelets catalyse a change of state - meaning that if it were to interact with nuclear matter, it would convert it into strange matter.” Rodney says, looking very serious. “And that would be a very bad thing. Not only would it be essentially changing the very nature of everything it interacts with, but as it grows it would also be releasing huge amounts of energy as the conversion involves matter moving from a high energy state to a lower energy state.” He pauses to look at each of them in turn, his eyes wide and scared. “What I’m saying is that none of us would survive the resulting explosion, let alone the change of state of the matter.”
Even Trin is looking apprehensive at this, but he nevertheless attempts to rebut Rodney’s conclusions. “But the strangelet is, surely, positively charged,” he argues. “This will make it unlikely that it will interact with nuclei, because they'll simply repel each other.”
“Yes,” Rodney hisses, his anger returning with a vengeance, “which is precisely why the Ancients built this accelerator pointed directly at a neutron star. A neutron star is just made of neutrons - all the protons and electrons have been fused into neutrons by the enormous gravitational force of the star. So, there is no electric repulsion, meaning it will interact with it! That was, after all, the whole purpose of the experiment - to create a strange star.”
Trin falls silent at that, a look of indignation on his face, but no verbal response to Rodney's point.
“Okay,” John says, having heard enough. “We need a plan - Rodney, can we stop this?” He looks behind him at the casket with a grimace, trying to work up the courage to get back in it.
“No,” Rodney says, walking over to him quickly and grasping his arm. “No - you are not getting back into that thing!”
“Rodney,” John says, resisting the impulse to just let himself collapse into Rodney’s embrace, close his eyes and forget about this whole mess. He, instead, faces the reality of the situation, as he always has. “We might not have a choice.”
“Well, I do not accept that,” Rodney replies firmly, shaking his head and pulling John further away from the casket. “The Ancients built this thing - they must have been aware of the risks, even if these idiots weren’t. There has to be a safeguard - something to reverse the star's change of state.”
“It would not make any difference now anyway, even if Colonel Sheppard were to get back in the control chamber,” Trin says, sounding fairly subdued. “The process is already underway. There were a variety of initial steps we had to undertake to ready the accelerator, but the final one was completed a matter of days before you arrived. Now, it is simply too late.”
Rodney whirls around to look at Trin, his eyes narrowed in anger. “Look, I do not want to hear one more word out of you. Seriously, if I hear one more peep, I'm going to let Ronon here take you next door and do what I have no doubt he's been wanting to do ever since it became clear that you are the reason we lost our team leader.”
John is a little taken aback at the cold and emotionless anger in Rodney's voice, something with which he is intimately familiar, but not something he would ever have thought to associate with Rodney. John is not surprised, however, at the look of terror on Trin's face; one that deepens as Ronon moves to stand beside Rodney and both men glower down at him intimidatingly.
Having obviously put Trin in his place, Rodney turns away from him and starts to pace up and down the room, muttering to himself under his breath. “Right, now, where was I... Hmm, several stages, but of course,” he breathes, pausing in his pacing and tilting his head to one side consideringly. “There would have to have been many stages required to produce particles sufficiently nucleon rich to create a strangelet - that must be what the rings on the outer edges of the main accelerator are for - colliding heavy element nuclei together, starting with something like naquadah I suspect, until the stranglet itself could finally be formed...” he trails off, his eyes going vague.
John waits, recognising the signs of Rodney on the brink of a revelation. Perhaps he wouldn't have to get back in that torture chamber after all.
“That's it!” Rodney exclaims at last, snapping his fingers and turning to beam at John, thankfully looking more like himself at last. “The intermediary stages, I bet that they not only created the particles necessary for creating the strangelet, but also created the particles necessary to absorb the strangelets and change them back into nuclear matter.”
“Nuclear matter,” Ronon says as an aside to John, watching somewhat bemusedly as Rodney whirls around to find a surface onto which to plunk down his laptop and starts typing at breakneck speed, “that's the good stuff, right.”
John can't help but laugh at this, despite his headache and the increasing queasiness of his stomach. “Right,” he agrees, “looks like we're all going to be expert particle physicists after this one.”
“A-ha!” Rodney proclaims, standing up straight for a moment. “Just as I thought! According to the central computer, one of the auxiliary accelerators is an electron-positron collider. Which means that somewhere there's also got to be...” he trails off again and hunches over his laptop once more. After several more minutes of frantic typing, he stands back up again. “Yes - here's an array for generating the magnetic fields needed to trap the stranglets.” He turns back around to regard them all with a look of triumph so familiar it makes John's heart ache. “We can stop this.”
When I Sorrow Most pt. 6
'When I Sorrow Most' part 2 is here.
'When I Sorrow Most' part 3 is here.
'When I Sorrow Most' part 4 is here.
When I Sorrow Most
Part Five
Present Day
“Come on, come on, come on,” Rodney chants to himself as he runs yet another sensor sweep, this time concentrating the scan on the upper right quadrant of the pulsar’s corona. “You’re out there somewhere - I just know it!”
“Once you find this particle thing and we get Sheppard out, we can destroy it, right?” Ronon asks, sounding hopeful.
Rodney can sympathise with that hope; after almost five hours of constant searching, he’s about ready from some action too. Although, knowing Pegasus, he’s probably going to live to regret that sentiment when everything starts snowballing out of control. Still, it does have a nice ring to it - find the accelerator, save John and then blow the damn thing to kingdom come.
“Yes,” he replies with relish. “Once I’ve found it and we’ve done our super team leader saving stuff, you can blow it to smithereens.”
“Good,” Ronon says. Rodney can hear his grin and he feels an answering emotion resonate deeply inside himself.
It is somewhat out of character for Rodney to be quite so blood-thirsty - after all, a particle accelerator of the magnitude he’s envisaging would certainly be worthy of further study. However, this is by no means a usual situation, not that such things often occur in Pegasus, but still, this is even more unusual than… well… usual. Not only does Rodney suspect that the as yet un-found particle accelerator is where some soon-to-be dead bastards have hidden John away, but the itch in the very back of his brain, the one that started right back when he’d first seen the odd particle flux, is now making its way steadily further forward into his consciousness. What’s more, it’s bringing with it the dawning suspicion that things may well be far worse than the loss of a single man, even bearing in mind that the single man is John Sheppard. Because, over the course of the last few hours, the particle flux has continued to rise and now Rodney is even starting to detect the strange quarks themselves in the pulsar’s emissions. Basic particle physics would dictate that strange quarks be undetectable in nature because of their incredibly fast decay rate - only measurable in a carefully controlled laboratory setting. But here they are - apparently right outside their jumper and appearing in ever increasing numbers. It’s worrying to say the least.
“Oh!” The softly spoke exclamation from beside him captures Rodney’s attention at once; Teyla has been mostly silent during their painstaking search of the space around the star.
“Yes? What?” he demands of her, hope and desperation colouring his tone.
“I think…” Teyla leans even closer towards her console, a frown furrowing her brow. “Yes,” she says a moment later, straightening back up and turning to smile brightly at both Rodney and Ronon. “I have something.”
“Finally,” Ronon says at the same time that Rodney practically shouts, “Let me see.”
Teyla moves quickly out of the way, gracefully easing out of the co-pilot seat to allow Rodney to plunk down into it. His frown returns as he reviews her latest scans, but, yes, there it is, just on the edges of her last sensor sweep - the tell-tale sign of a photon rebound.
“Oh, very nicely done,” he can’t help but say as he refines the sensor sweep one final time and watches as it slowly reveals the location of what is undoubtedly an Ancient orbital facility. The whole structure is hidden by a beautifully executed shield-cum-cloaking device; it’s similar in many ways to the jumper’s own cloaks and shields, but of much of a much more intricate design. Rodney is certain that had they not had reason to believe that such a thing existed, they would never have discovered it. It makes him wonder idly how whoever is running it now - and his money is on the Catarans, Trin being the prime suspect - managed to discover it.
“It is there, then?” Teyla asks, sounding vindicated.
“Yes, yes; it’s there alright,” Rodney. “Just give me a few seconds….and, voila!” A few minor changes to the viewscreen protocols has the desired effect and the accelerator shimmers into view before them.
“It is like the Aurora, is it not,” Teyla says, leaning forward with a hand braced on the back of Rodney’s chair to study the accelerator more closely. “Lying undiscovered for centuries until someone stumbled upon it.”
“Yes, only this time it was the Catarans and not the Wraith,” Rodney agrees.
“So, is Sheppard on board?” Ronon asks, obviously keen to move on to the second part of the ‘plan’ now that they’ve located the accelerator.
“I don’t know,” Rodney replies as he studies hones the sensor sweeps directly on to the accelerator. “I’m trying to get a reading of the inside, but the shields so far seem impenetrable.”
“What is it for?” Teyla asks. “Can we board it somehow and search for John from inside?”
“Well, it’s a particle accelerator,” Rodney replies, gesturing towards the viewscreen. “Ancient, from the looks of it, and also presumably what has been causing the changes we’ve been observing in the pulsar.”
Realising that he’s still sitting in Teyla’s chair, Rodney gets to his feet and shuffles back to the pilot’s seat, motioning for Teyla to sit down beside him again. With the flight controls back under his hands, he cautiously steers the still-cloaked jumper closer to the accelerator itself, making sure to keep his hand close to the weapons console just in case. He doesn’t think whoever’s onboard will be able to detect them - even Atlantis can’t detect her own cloaked jumpers - but there’s no need to tempt fate.
As the jumper moves around the accelerator, Rodney takes stock. That it’s of Ancient design is immediately apparent by the planes and angles of its architecture, even though it is of a far more practical design than the towers and turrets of Atlantis. A long central core made up the bulk of the accelerator, one end tapering off into the targeting beam which was directed towards the pulsar. On the opposite end, there were several loops which Rodney presumed were where the particles themselves were first created and then brought up to speed before being directed down the central piece and hurled towards the star.
“You see,” Rodney begins, starting to answer Teyla’s question. “A particle accelerator does exactly what its name suggests - it collides elementary particles. Now, different accelerators are designed to collide different types of particles, and the whole point of the exercise is to generate, at least for a short amount of time, other particles that would otherwise have long since decayed.”
“Like the strange one,” Ronon says.
“Yes, like the strange quark,” Rodney agrees. “Although what you’d typically see is the new, unstable particles quickly decaying back into more stable particles.” Glancing over at Teyla and then up at Ronon, Rodney decides to take another stab at his explanation. “It’s like this,” he says, holding up his hands up and forming them into fists. “Imagine you’re colliding two particles, an electron,” he waves his right fist, “and a positron,” he waves his left and then hits them together hard, meshing his hands together as they meet. “With the energy from the collision, they can be converted temporarily into new particles, what’s called a virtual photon. However, this new particle,” he waves his now joined arms, “is not stable - it decays very quickly.” He starts to separate his hands, this time not returning them to fists. “However, and this is the really clever part, there's no reason for it to decay into the same two particles - an electron and a positron - again. Provided that the energy is sufficiently high, you can create anything you're energetically allowed to -- say, a strange quark and an anti-strange quark.” He waves each of his newly-separated hands in turn.
“And that is what this accelerator is doing?” Teyla ask, nodding first towards the accelerator in the viewscreen and then to Rodney’s hands, still upheld in demonstration. “Creating new particles?”
“What’s the point?” Ronon adds his query into the mix.
“Yes, that is what it’s doing and the point,” he says, turning to glare up at Ronon for a moment. “Is to gain a greater understanding of the physical universe. Although quite what the Catarans - if it is indeed them - think they’re doing with it is anyone’s guess.”
“It’s them alright,” Ronon states flatly, looking towards the viewscreen. “Look.”
Following the direction of Ronon’s gaze, Rodney turns back to spy the small spacecraft docked at one of the smaller rings adjacent to the main core of the accelerator. It looks somewhat like a Wraith dart, but is fashioned, not out of the eerie flesh-like material of traditional Wraith technology, but from what seems to be a more traditional metal alloy. It does, in fact, looks remarkably like one of the prototypes John and Rodney had viewed during Konar’s tour of the defence research facility.
“Perhaps they believe it is some sort of weapon?” Teyla suggests. “I must confess that I find it hard to believe that the Catarans were being completely disingenuous with us during our initial searches for John. I spent almost two weeks with Quoron, Konar and Kerania and did not see any indication that they were hiding anything from us - certainly not something as great as John’s abduction.”
“No, not them,” Rodney agrees. His eyes narrowing as he studies the craft; it is similar to the prototypes they’d viewed, but not identical. “I’m not sure any of them would have the understanding to actually operate something like this accelerator. But there was another scientist - Trin. He would have the knowledge, plus the means and connections, to pull off something like a fake Wraith attack…” Rodney trails off as he thinks back to the afternoon he’d spend in Trin’s company, trying to recall his impressions of the man. To be honest, Rodney hadn’t really noticed all that much about the man himself, too taken with questioning him on his research and eager for the chance to spend some quality time with the Wraith darts. He has vague memories of talking about power generation with him and how the Ancients… “Oh fuck!”
“Rodney?” Teyla asks, her eyes wide with concern.
“It’s Trin, it’s got to be,” he exclaims angrily. “And, damn it all to hell, I… I may have mentioned to him something about how the Ancients generate power - by extracting vacuum energy and…” he trails off again and stares down at the jumper floor, feeling a flush of shame and guilt wash over him as he realises that his words are what most likely led to John’s loss.
“And?” Ronon prompts.
Rodney winces, his gaze darting up to meet Ronon’s before returning to the floor. “And I may have also alluded to the genetic element involved in the activation of Ancient tech. This… god dammit… all of this is my fault.”
“McKay,” Ronon says, his voice brooking no argument. “This is not your fault, this is their fault,” he stabs a finger in the direction of the Cataran ship in the centre of the viewscreen. “And we’re going to make them pay.”
“Yes,” Teyla agrees softly, reaching out to touch Rodney’s arm. Her grip solid and strong and it helps to anchor him so he can pull himself out of the well of guilt in which he’s caught. “It would appear that John’s disappearance is the fault of the Catarans,” she continues just as firmly as Ronon. “But when we find him and bring him home, it will be because of you.”
Rodney raises his eyes to look at each of his team mates in turn. “No,” he counters. “It will because of all of us.”
“Right then,” Ronon says, his grin all eager anticipation. “Let’s go get him.”
~*~
Sometime Earlier
Raised voices roused him to consciousness once more. Noise echoed all around - angry shouts and loud bangs. Suddenly a pause. Silence descended again, but it was quickly to be followed by a bright flash of light and a rush of power which floods mercilessly though him. He arched, his muscles contracting even more violently than before, the pain so intense it felt like the very fibres of his body were being wrenched apart. There was a command in the power too - an order instructing him to do something. Soon there was nothing to him but the painful sensation of an excess of energy and the pounding imperative to ‘Activate’.
He hesitated for a moment, unsure and confused. Where was he? Who was he? His mind was blank, but there was an instinctive reaction coming from somewhere deep down inside telling him that this wasn’t right.
‘Activate’ the order screamed, the power pulsing through him increasing exponentially until he was screaming in agony.
‘Activate’ the order came again. Memory and reason had both deserted him long ago and the lone instinct to resist was not strong enough in the face of the ceaseless pain. He gives in.
“Activate.”
~*~
Present Day
Gunfire echoes through the corridors and Rodney is surprised to find that he’s almost grateful for it. At least this - running through the cool grey corridors of an Ancient base at risk to both life and limb in search of an impossible prize - is something with which he’s familiar.
“Faster, Rodney,” Teyla urges from behind him, the sound of her light footfalls spurring him on as they sprint down the seemingly endless hallway.
“I’m trying,” he manages to pant out through the tightness in his lungs and the burn of lactic acid in his legs. Behind them he can hear the blasts of Ronon’s energy pistol and the answering rounds of ammunition fire from the enemy - a group of uniformed guards they’d encountered within minutes of stepping aboard the accelerator. Finally the end of the corridor approaches and Rodney rounds the corner at full speed, only just managing to screech to a halt in front of a closed door. Teyla pulls up beside him, turning to face any potential attacks with her P-90 raised and at the ready.
“Can you open it?” she asks over her shoulder, her position firm and braced for combat as the staccato sound of automatic weapons fire still sounds behind them.
“Yes.” Rodney’s already scrambling with the panel covering the locking mechanism as he replies, tearing off the cover and reaching inside to pluck out a couple of the crystals and then cross-wire it such a way that the doors starts to reluctantly slide open. A quick glance at his life-signs detector tells him that the room is still empty and he’s ready to enter just as soon as the door opens far enough to allow it. “Come on,” he urges, reaching out to pull Teyla through the doorway with him.
Teyla follows him through, the barrel of her weapon sweeping over the room once before she positions herself to the left of the still-open doorway, bracing herself against the wall and aiming in preparation to fire. Rodney’s already at the controls on this side of the door, poised ready to close them as soon as Ronon catches up to them. The sound of fighting can still be heard down the hall, but it’s starting to diminish now as their enemies fall to Ronon’s wrath.
Teyla and Rodney exchange a glance as the gunfire finally falls silent and there’s the sound of pounding feet. Ronon appears around the bend moments later, his face covered in sweat, but with a triumphant smile on his face.
“Got them all,” he says as he walks into the middle of the small utility room in which they’ve found themselves, jumping up on the table positioned there and surveying them both with a victorious air.
“Good,” Rodney replies as he closes and secures the door. “Right, on to stage two of the plan.” He walks over to Ronon, shooing him off the table with the wave of his scanner, plunking it and his rucksack down on it in Ronon’s place.
Stage one had actually gone off surprisingly well. Rodney had been initially worried that they’d encounter serious problems getting through the accelerator's shield, but thankfully none had materialised. Instead, in another ingenious piece of engineering, the Ancients appeared to have programmed their accelerator’s cloak/shield to recognise and permit the passage of any craft of Ancient design. It’s actually something that makes a lot of sense to Rodney, especially considering the ongoing war with the Wraith and the necessity of ships landing and taking off during the heat of battle. The in-built safe guard that only ATA-carriers could pilot the jumpers minimised the risk and Rodney made a mental note to have a look to see if he could reconfigure Atlantis’ shields to do something similar upon their return. He’s certain John will only be too happy to volunteer as test-pilot during the testing phase.
So, they’d docked and had disembarked onto the accelerator managing to escape detection. Of course, their luck couldn’t be expected to continue to hold, so naturally they’d run into a group of armed men within minutes of leaving the jumper. But even that inconvenience had been rendered minor courtesy of Ronon’s sharp shooting and Rodney’s life-signs detector. Despite numerous attempts, Rodney had been unable to hack into the accelerator’s computer system from the jumper, nor had he been able to pick up any life-sign readings. As a result, they'd been left with no choice but to enter the accelerator blind.
Rodney starts unpacking the contents of his rucksack onto the table. They don't have much time, no doubt their encounter with the group of guards will have drawn the attention of everyone else onboard, but Rodney is reasonably certain that the door to this room will hold long enough for him to get access to the computer system and work out whether John is actually on board. With his laptop, scanner and life-signs detector all at hand, Rodney gets to work.
He starts by hooking up his detector to his laptop, hoping to be able to boost its scanning range and then use the more sensitive analysis program on his computer to review the results. His hands are shaking slightly as he makes the connection and implements the scan, making sure to pick up as many indicators as he can. This, after all, is quite possibly the most important part of the mission. He can’t allow himself to dwell on just how much is riding on the results.
While he waits for the scan and analysis to finish, he turns his attention to tapping into the accelerator's database. To this end, he unpacks his second laptop, a handful of cabling and a collection of control crystals, glancing around the room to identify a likely access point. Over in the far corner, he spots a data node which looks identical to the ones throughout Atlantis. Excellent, from there he should be able to get access to most systems.
Quickly crossing over to the node, Rodney sets out his equipment on the floor, hunches down beside it, and gets to work. He can feel Ronon pacing back and forth across the breadth of the room behind him, but he tries to block that out. This is delicate work and he can't allow himself to be distracted by anything, not even the sense of hope that is steadily rising. Teyla suddenly appears silently at his elbow, kneeling down beside him and calmly passing him his tools in response to his snapped instructions.
"How much longer?" Ronon asks, breaking the silence at last.
Rodney glances at his watch, surprised to find that it's been almost twenty minutes since they entered the room. Ronon is right; they need to get a move on.
"I've almost managed to get a link with the central computer," he replies, slotting in another crystal and then attaching a couple more cables to the node in an effort to bypass the secondary systems so he can tap directly into the central core itself. "There’s just one more barrier of code to crack.” He takes a deep breath in preparation for facing yet another firewall. “Make yourself useful and see if the scan's finished, will you?" he says to Ronon, gesturing towards the laptop on the table with the end of the fibre optic cable he holding. He frowns down at it for a moment, trying to work out how best to connect it, reinsert the crystal he’s got in his other hand and work on cracking the safety protocols all at the same time.
“Let me,” Teyla says, reaching out and plucking crystal and cable out of his hands with the flash of a smile.
“Thanks,” he replies. “Um, can you just hold this connection in place while I finish up.” As she does as he asks, Rodney very carefully focuses his attention back to his laptop, determined not to think about what Ronon’s checking.
"I think it's done," Ronon reports and, despite his focus, Rodney feels his stomach somersault in nervous anticipation.
"Good, good," Rodney responds, pleased to hear that his voice is steady, for the most part at any rate. He’s down to de-coding the final few protocols and can’t afford a lapse in concentration. Besides which, he’s really not up to considering the implications of the scan quite yet. "I'm just about... There, I'm done here too. Okay Teyla, you can let go now, I can see the connection." A few keystrokes has the data scrolling over his screen and he sets the laptop to one side as the connection establishes itself.
Hefting himself to his feet with a small groan, he crosses over to where Ronon is standing bent in front of the other laptop. Ronon looks up as Rodney approaches, moving to one side and gesturing towards the screen.
"Well?" he asks. “Is he here?” The slight tightness around his eyes is the only thing belaying his nervousness.
Rodney takes a deep breath, suddenly beset with nerves himself. This is it, he thinks, this is what will tell them, once and for all, whether there is a reason for them to be here or whether they are merely risking their lives on yet another fool’s errand guided by faint hope. He glances up at Ronon, who is standing shoulder-to-shoulder beside him, and then over to Teyla, who has come to stand with them. He sees his own apprehension reflected in their eyes, but their display of unity gives him the strength to continue. There’s nothing to fear, he tells himself, because John is here. Because he has to be.
Rodney tilts the laptop screen back slightly and starts scrolling through the results, his heart in his throat. There, in the midst of data relating to everything from the pulsar’s particle flux to the atmospheric conditions on the accelerator, is a tiny and seemingly insignificant row of numbers - if he hadn’t been looking specifically for it, he would never have even noticed it. As it is, however, he knows that it is without doubt the single most important discovery he’s ever made. His body sags in relief and he has to lock his knees to prevent himself collapsing in a heap on the floor as a heady rush of pure joy that shoots through him.
“It’s him,” he says, feeling his eyes prickle with emotion, but completely unable to tear his gaze away from the hard proof in front of him. “Oh my god, I’m picking up the signal from his subcutaneous transmitter. He’s actually here.”
As if from a distance, Rodney feels Teyla wrap her arms around his neck, pressing herself against his side as she hugs him in delight. On his other side, he’s vaguely aware of Ronon pounding him on the back in celebration, but Rodney can’t really pay attention to anything else except for the words pounding through his head.
John is here. John is alive.
~*~
Sometime Earlier
He woke once more to the agony he’d come to associate with consciousness, it flooded through him in a torrent, working its way into every part of his body, drowning out his memory and swamping his mind. The energy was building again, demanding even more from him this time, inundating his body and almost overwhelming his system. It left him with no option but to funnel it through himself and then out into… somewhere… He wasn’t sure where… or why… He wasn’t sure of anything any more. It was all he could do to keep a tight hold on his tenuous grasp on consciousness and fight with all that he is to prevent the pain from tearing his mind apart.
The imperative was still there. It was present in every breath he took and echoed through his aching body with every beat of his heart. He had no choice but to obey its demand - opening his mind to its orders and flooding… something… with the power that was being routed through his body. Every now and then he’d catch the odd flash of an image - a beam, a collision, a star. He was just about aware enough to understand that what he was doing was somehow operating something, but then another surge flooded his body with energy and pain and even this meagre understanding was lost.
~*~
Present Day
Several long corridors and another encounter with groups of armed guards - the former navigated thanks to Rodney's scanner and the latter dealt with effectively by Ronon's pistol and Teyla's P-90 - sees them at a locked door in the outermost arm of the accelerator. Rodney double-checks the scanner he's clutching like a life-line and then looks up to address his waiting team mates.
"Right," he says, gesturing towards the door with his scanner. "This is it."
"Can you open it?" Ronon asks, his fingers stroking along his holstered weapon almost lovingly.
Rodney's eyes flicker down to Ronon's holster and he has to admit to being momentarily tempted to let Ronon just blow the fucking door down... but, no, they don't know enough about what's inside and although he's picking up John's transponder loud and clear, his life signs are another matter entirely.
"I can open it," he replies, turning to the locking mechanism and proceeding to do just that.
The door slides open to reveal a large and seemingly empty dimly lit room. They enter one by one, Teyla crossing the threshold first with her P-90 held high. There is absolutely no sign of life and, for a moment, Rodney feels his heart sink, crushing his hope. Yet, he thinks as he continues to look around, perhaps all is not lost. In the centre of the room is a raised dais with a long oblong casket placed upon it. There's something about the room that is strangely familiar, but Rodney can't quite put his finger on why.
"It's like the Chair room on Atlantis," Teyla says softly as she lowers her P-90 and slowly approaches the dais.
"You're right," Rodney says, his eyes flickering from the casket to the readings from his scanner and back. He's reasonably sure he knows what they'll find inside it and part of him wants to rip the cover off at once just to get John the fuck out of that horrible coffin-like thing. The more reasonable, saner part of him is urging caution and Rodney does his best to listen to it.
"It's him in there, isn't it?" Ronon asks. "They've got him trapped in thing with this gene so they can power their accelerator." He grits the words out on a growl of disgust with which Rodney completely agrees. Whilst Rodney is all for pushing the boundaries of technology and does see certain advantages to linking developments to the human body, this is an appalling step too far.
"This is truly horrifying," Teyla says, her voice shaking with anger and disgust. She moves swiftly up the three steps to the casket and placing her hands flat on its surface, her head bowing almost reverently, as if trying to ease John's suffering through the thick material. "How do we get him out?" she, turning her bowed head to the side so she can look at Rodney.
Rodney swallows and consults his scanner again, tweaking the protocols slightly so he can get a clearer picture of what is inside the casket. He closes his eyes in gratitude when the readings he had been assuming were John’s life-signs grow stronger with the new measurements. He doesn’t allow himself much of a respite, however, because John's life-signs are weak and erratic - his brain patterns almost non-existent whilst his heart rate is lurching madly from a worrying low number of beats per minute to something disturbingly high.
"I'm not sure," he answers, thinking hard. "His condition is by no means stable and there's some kind of... well, electricity, for want of a better word, running through his body." He looks up at Teyla and Ronon, the terrifying prospect of failure looming and making him freeze up completely. "I... I don't know if I can get him out... At least not without killing him. He doesn't need me, he needs a doctor."
Rodney comes to stand beside Teyla and stares down at the nondescript lid of the casket, imagining the frozen body of the man trapped beneath. And it’s not just any man, it’s John trapped in there. John, who had somehow managed to slink his way past Rodney’s many defences. John, who Rodney had thought he’d lost forever. God, what if he really can’t do this? What if he fails and John is trapped here - lying as good as dead in an Ancient coffin until his body is finally wrung dry. Rodney closes his eyes as he feels himself start to shake. He doesn’t think he can bear it.
Suddenly he feels a hand land heavily on his shoulder, and turns to find Ronon looking at him consideringly. “He's hooked up to some Ancient machine with electricity going through his body,” Ronon says. “I wouldn't say he needs a doctor, I'd say he needs you.”
Rodney blinks, for a moment completely floored by Ronon's summation of the situation. His brain slowly cranks back into gear and he nods, accepting Ronon's compliment for the encouragement that it is, and thumps his hand a couple of times against the side of his scanner to get himself back on track.
"Okay, okay; I can do this," he says to himself and begins to study the casket in earnest.
~*~
Present Day
Suddenly everything changes - all at once the pain stops; it is simply gone. He lies in the darkness with his heart pounding, marvelling at the complete and utter absence of suffering. After so long of knowing nothing but pain and confusion, the lack of both is almost too much for him to bear. He is still in complete darkness and unable to move, but those facts no longer seem to matter as he luxuriates in the lack of agony.
He waits, unsure of what to expect now. Will the pain return? Will he lose consciousness again? Time passes, he’s unsure how much, but his situation remains unchanged. Gradually awareness and comprehension return and with them come his memories. For a moment he can feel nothing but relief and gratitude as he’s finally able to remember who he is. He’s Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard, the military commander of Atlantis. However, dread swiftly follows on the heels of his positive emotions as it swiftly becomes obvious that he’s been captured and tortured.
His body jerks as he recalls from where he was abducted; he was on a mission with his team. He starts to struggle as worry and anger energises his tired body. Rodney, Ronon and Teyla - he has to get out of here and go find them. He strains with all his strength, his back arching and his arms and legs pulling at the bonds that restrain him, but it’s no good. He’s firmly bound and can’t get free no matter how hard he struggles. Nevertheless, he can’t prevent himself from trying again; growling out his frustration as he kicks out violently with his legs and attempts to wrench his arms free. It useless and he’s exhausted by the time he can fight no more, his body going limp and leaving him panting harshly into the darkness.
Just then the sound of voices penetrates through the chamber in which he’s trapped. He’s instantly alert, slowing his breathing automatically and attending hard to what’s happening outside, his body tensed for action in spite of his situation. The voices draw nearer and for a moment John can hardly believe it as he realises that he recognises the voices.
“Okay, I think I’ve managed to stop the power flow through his body to the accelerator and isolated the casket from the main systems. All that’s left to do now is just… There. Oh my god, John? Are you alright? Can you hear me?”
Thank goodness, John thinks to himself, the blinding light of happiness momentarily eclipsing everything else. He knows that voice. It’s Rodney.
~*~
Present Day
“Rodney?” John’s voice is weak and rough from disuse, but to Rodney it’s more welcome than anything he’s ever heard. “You okay?”
“Yes. Yes, John. I’m here and of course I’m okay - you’re the one who’s been in danger, you idiot,” Rodney snaps, his voice gruff with emotion. He reaches down into the casket to touch John, his hands drawn immediately to John’s face and cupping one of his far too pale cheeks gently.
John tilts his head into Rodney’s touch, his eyes flickering closed for a moment. “Rodney,” he breathes again.
“Shh, don’t try to talk. You’re safe now, we’ve got you,” Rodney says, his fingers stroking lightly across John’s face. Next to him, Teyla is reaching out as well, taking one of John’s hands in hers and holding it tightly.
Reluctantly pulling his hand away from John’s face, Rodney starts to ponder the intricacies involved with actually extricating John from the casket. Physically John doesn’t look half bad for someone who has spent over three months locked in a coffin, but the variety of tubes and wires buried into his skin all over his body are testament to how he’s been used - his body given nutrients and muscle stimulation sufficient to keep him in relatively good health while he was being used essentially as a giant genetic multi-plug. Rodney feels his anger start to build again at the relief at finding John alive slowly gives way to horror at how he’s been treated.
“Teyla, Ronon,” John’s eyes are mostly clear as he pulls his gaze from Rodney’s to look at Teyla and then down to Ronon, who has appeared at the foot of the casket.
“John,” Teyla says, and Rodney sees her clasp John’s hand even tighter between her own. “John, it is so very good to see you.”
“Sheppard,” Ronon says at last, circling around to the other side and then walking up towards John’s head so that he’s standing opposite Rodney. “Come on, let’s get you home.” He leans down and grasps John’s arm, looking for all the world as if he’s just going to haul John up and out of the casket.
“No!” Rodney shouts in horror. “For god’s sake, just wait a minute, will you? We’ve just found him and I’d very much like to get him home without him bleeding out all over the floor. Before we do anything, we’ve got to unhook him from all this stuff.”
John’s head turns back to Rodney at the sound of his rant, his eyebrow quirking a bit and a smile pulling at his lips. “That’s my Rodney,” he says hoarsely, pulling his arms loose of both Ronon’s and Teyla’s hold to start pulling on the wires connected to his skin himself.
“And you just stop it too,” Rodney snaps, batting John’s hands down. “I have no idea how all these things are connected to you, so we’re just going to snap off the wires and worry about the rest when we get to Atlantis.” He illustrates what he means by pinching a nearby wire off between his thumb and forefinger, rolling his eyes when Ronon immediately unsheathes a knife and starts slicing at the wires and tubes that run down the left side of John’s body.
“Atlantis,” John breathes, his eyes closing and his lashes fanning out in black crescents over his too pale skin.
“You’ve been missed, John,” Teyla says as she moves to assist Rodney in snapping off the remaining connections on John’s right side.
Between them, they get John free in a matter of minutes. Ronon reaches into the casket once more, intending to haul John out of it.
“I can manage,” John insists, waving away Ronon’s help and struggling to get a firm grip on the casket’s sides with which to haul himself to his feet.
Rodney resisted the urge to roll his eyes yet again. “Clearly you cannot be expected to be operating at your full mental capacity,” he told John. “But you’ve been captured, tortured, and put through god knows what else over the past three months, so you will let us help you.” Ronon grins at him in approval and Rodney gestures at him to continue to help John up and out of the casket.
“Three months?” John asks, his eyes wide and startled as the length of time sinks in, his hands holding on tightly to Ronon as Ronon helps heft him out of the casket. John’s legs hold him upright, but he’s shaky on his feet, so Ronon readjusts his hold on John so that he’s propping up John’s left side.
“Yeah,” Rodney replies, moving swiftly around the casket and taking up position on John’s right. “Three fucking long months,” he repeats bitterly, wrapping an arm about John’s waist above Ronon’s and hefting John’s right arm over his shoulder so he can help bear his weight.
“Sorry ‘bout that, buddy,” John replies, his arm tightening around Rodney’s shoulders briefly.
Just then a loud noise from outside has Teyla heading for the door at a run, her P-90 at the ready.
“Someone is coming,” she says, positioning herself to one side of the door, weapon at the ready. “We need to move now.”
Together, Ronon and Rodney manage to get John down the dais steps and towards the door, their different heights making the movements awkward at first, but becoming smoother as they gradually adjust. Ronon unholsters his energy pistol and Rodney scrambles for his scanner in an effort to see who exactly is waiting for them outside.
“Hey, guys, I’m okay really; just give me a weapon,” John says, but Rodney, Ronon and Teyla all ignore him.
“Huh,” Rodney says as he studies his scanner’s read-outs. “There are only two of them outside - we should be able to take them easily.”
“Right,” Teyla says. “I will deal with them - you two keep John out of range.”
Ronon nods and he and Rodney manoeuvre John to the far side of the door and into the corner, well out of the most probable line of fire. Teyla glances at them, waiting until they are in position, Rodney holding up John while Ronon stands in front of them, his pistol raised.
“Ready,” he says.
Teyla nods in reply, moving forward to swipe her hand over the door to open it before stepping to the side once more. Rodney braces himself, ready for the imminent fight, his arms tightening around John without his conscious volition - partly from the need to just hold John to him and partly to stop the self-sacrificing idiot from doing anything stupidly heroic like grabbing Rodney’s Berretta and wading into the fight. Yet nothing by silence greets them from the corridor.
Cautiously, Rodney peers around Ronon’s bulk to glance over to where Teyla is inching her way around the edge of the door, her P-90 raised.
“We know you are there,” she shouts out into the corridor. “We just want to take what is ours and be gone. If you attempt to stop us, we will kill you.”
“Now, now, there is no need for that,” a familiar voice replies.
Rodney jolts in surprise, although this is hardly unexpected, and feels John freeze beside him.
“Trin,” John hisses. “That bastard; I knew he was no good.”
“Quite,” Rodney replies, his mind whirring with what Trin could possibly offer them of sufficient value to ensure his survival.
“I am sure we can come to some equitable arrangement,” Trin continues. “We all have a vested interest in the destruction of the Wraith, do we not? And this facility offers a real opportunity for us to do just that.”
Rodney snorts at this. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he replies. “This is, at most, an experiment - one that was never even run.”
“Ah, Dr McKay,” Trin calls out in return. “It appears that you do not grasp the intricacies of this device, for the experiment, as you call it, is already underway.”
Something in Trin’s tone makes Rodney pause; he’s been so caught up in the sheer necessity of rescuing John that’s he completely forgotten about what the accelerator was actually using John to do. Now that Trin has reminded him of it, the creation of all those strange quarks starts to sound alarm bells in his mind. He quickly shoulders his way out of his rucksack, dumping it on the floor and then leaning down to pull out one of his laptops.
“Rodney?” John asks in concern, bracing himself up against the wall with one hand placed on Rodney’s back. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m not sure… Maybe…” Rodney replies as he stands back up, balancing his laptop in the palm of his left hand and using his right to reconnect remotely to the accelerator’s central processor. He quickly brings up the reports of the latest activity in the collision chamber and then switches to check on the output from the pulsar. “Damn,” he mutters to himself as he scrolls through the star’s particle flux. “This is not good. Teyla,” he calls out. “Can you bring him in here - we have a problem.”
“Problem,” Ronon asks, turning his head to look back at Rodney.
“Yeah,” Rodney replies, staring grimly at his laptop screen. “That kidnapping maniac out there has quite possibly doomed the whole damn galaxy.”
~*~
Present Day
John watches, still somewhat dazed, as Teyla and Ronon frog-march a rather shaky Trin and another man into the room. Both men are plainly dressed, unarmed and not in any discernible uniform and John gets the impression that they are the people who are responsible for what's happened to him. Judging from the violence with which Ronon and, somewhat more surprisingly, Teyla handle the men, John concludes that his team agrees. Even Rodney is more tense than usual, his hand hovering over the butt of his Beretta threateningly in a very un-Rodney like manner.
For his part, John is still coming to terms with what has happened to him. Every now and then he gets a flash of memory from his time in captivity - his mind clouding over and his muscles cramping in pain at the recollection. It had been an endless and bewildering time of confusion and painful sensation, mercifully ended when John came back to himself fully to find that he was listening to the familiar sound of Rodney’s voice. As his gaze moves over Rodney now, standing in a protective manner beside John, his sturdy body lending John his strength, John can’t help but be grateful that he acted when he did back on Atlantis, his actions then ensuring that Rodney was his. Having Rodney at his side now, when he’s muddled and hurt, helps enormously. That Rodney had obviously searched for him, found him and was now unwilling to leave his side is like a soothing balm on his broken body and mind. And it isn’t just Rodney, John thinks to himself proudly as he watches the rest of his team move protectively around him as they back away from the two Catarans, their weapons still drawn.
John had been moved out of the corner and into a chair by Rodney and Ronon and part of him wants to be on his feet with his team mates, facing the threat head on, but he knows that he should be sensible. His head is pounding, he’s nauseous and he feels like every last drop of energy has been wrung from his body. It’s better, he supposes, than being fed on by a Wraith, but surely only marginally so.
“Now,” Rodney says, drawing John’s attention back to their current situation. “Tell me what the hell you people - and I use the word loosely - have done.” Rodney's words are tight and angry, his body tense. John has to resist the urge to go over to him, wrap himself around him and try to get him to relax; it's hard to see Rodney so obviously hurting like this.
Trin’s gaze flicks briefly to John for a moment, but a growl from Ronon and a not so gentle prod with the barrel of his energy pistol has Trin wincing and turning his attention back to Rodney. “Why, nothing, Dr McKay,” he replies smoothly. “We have simply been completing the Ancient’s work by using the Colonel’s unique genetic structure to get this facility up and running.”
John notes that Rodney is visibly shaking now, his mouth moving soundlessly as if he is struggling to find the words to encompass the man’s immense stupidity. Giving in to the temptation, John struggles to his feet and reaches out so he can rest his hand lightly on Rodney’s shoulder, hoping to help him out just as Rodney’s mere presence is doing for him. Beneath John’s palm, he feels Rodney take a deep breath, before finally addressing Trin.
“Leaving aside the fact that you abducted and tortured one of our team, I cannot believe that you would be -- no, no, wait, demonstrably you are.” He pauses then to take another calming breath before continuing, gesturing towards the laptop he has propped up on the now closed lid of the casket in which John had been kept. “Look, no matter what you may think, this is not a weapon of any kind, it’s an experiment. The Ancients were scientists long before their war with the Wraith, this is what remains from one of their scientific endeavours.”
“Yes,” Trin agrees. “And, once completed, it has the ability to funnel the energy of the star - a source of power far greater than anything we have on Catara; greater even than your naquadah generators or your Zero Point Modules.”
“No!” Rodney shouts. “This experiment isn’t about power - it’s about knowledge. The results may produce a huge amount of power as a by-product, but not in any format that is containable. Look,” he says, grabbing the laptop and then thrusting it in front of Trin’s face. “See this? This is the particle flux from the star - you see here - those are strange quarks - highly unstable particles in themselves, but incredibly destructive when amassed together like this.”
Trin is quiet - studying the screen in front of him in confusion. John thinks that it’s time he intervened.
“Rodney?” he says. “Mind letting the rest of us in on what’s going on?”
Rodney snatches his computer out of Trin’s hands and turns away from him with a snort of disgust. “So, this is what I think is going on. What this is,” he says, gesturing around them as best he can with the laptop still in his hands, “is a particle accelerator - a collider which smashes together particles in an attempt to discover new particles which would otherwise decay far too rapidly to be measured.”
“Okay,” John says. “So, it’s like the one in Illinois?”
“Yes, the Tevatron, like that; only this accelerator is far more advanced. You see, the Tevatron is a synchrotron - it collides protons and anti-protons. This, however, is on a far greater scale - greater than even the LHC at CERN which collides protons. It’s amazing really…” Rodney trails off, momentarily lost in thought, before his gaze snaps back into focus again. “Anyway, the reason the Ancients built this collider here is because of the proximity to the pulsar - it was the intended target of their experiment.”
“And there is now a risk, Rodney?” Teyla asks.
“Yes,” Rodney replies. “See what the Ancients seem to have been trying to do is essentially change the composition of the pulsar itself - to create a strange star.”
“Strange?” Ronon queries. “Like those things you were detecting.”
“Exactly, like the strange quarks,” Rodney says. “This is all new physics in terms of where we are with understanding particle interactions. The basic idea comes from a possible model which hypothesises that nuclear matter - essentially the bulk of the mass of the visible universe - is not stable, but merely meta-stable. Imagine something sitting at the bottom of a valley - it’s stable because it's as low as it can go. But meta-stability is when there is actually another valley next to the first that is even lower. Classically speaking, there's a barrier - you have to climb over the next hill to reach the lower valley and for that you need energy. However, quantum mechanically, you can tunnel through the energetically forbidden region - through the barrier from one valley to the other. Of course, the bigger the hill between the valleys, the less likely it is that this tunnelling will happen and, as a result, meta-stability is really only unstable over very long timescales. However, if you wait long enough, sufficient energy will eventually come available for it to happen.”
Trin snorts at this, shaking his head. “This is ridiculous,” he says. “If the universe was really only, as you say, meta-stable we would not all be here.”
“But that’s not entirely true,” Rodney replies. “All we can conclude from the fact that we and the universe are still in existence is that if nuclear matter really is meta-stable, it has a very long half-life - many times the current age of the universe. Nevertheless, it might still be the case that it is meta-stable. And what you idiots have caused to happen here merely proves it.”
“So what is happening out there?” John asks, wanting nothing more than for this whole mess to be over and done with so they can all go home and he can curl up on his bed with Rodney wrapped around him. However, by now he knows Pegasus far too well to think that anything is ever that easy - even if abduction and torture has already taken place.
Rodney frowns, “Nothing good,” he says with another glare at Trin. “What these incompetent fools have done, at least at my best guess - which is a pretty damn good one - is manage to create a strangelet.”
“A strangelet?” John prompts as Rodney goes back to his glaring.
“Yes, a strangelet,” Rodney confirms as he turns to face John. He's looking more like himself now, a little frazzled perhaps, but captivatingly invigorated by his science. “Basically a stable lump of strange matter - strange matter being made up of an equal mass of up, down and strange quarks. This differs from nuclear matter - our matter - which is made up of mostly up and down quarks. There is a hypothesis that strange matter is the ultimately stable state, unlike the meta-stable state of nuclear matter. This sounds odd at first because normally, particles that contain strange quarks are very unstable - they decay extremely quickly, in other words. However, it is thought that if you had a sufficiently large amount of strange matter collected together - a strangelet - then it would actually be stable. The important point being that it would actually be more stable than nuclear matter - the lower valley.”
“Okay,” John says, trying to wrap his aching head around Rodney’s techno-babble to get to the vital point he knows it must contain. “And creating a strangelet is bad because…?”
“Because strangelets catalyse a change of state - meaning that if it were to interact with nuclear matter, it would convert it into strange matter.” Rodney says, looking very serious. “And that would be a very bad thing. Not only would it be essentially changing the very nature of everything it interacts with, but as it grows it would also be releasing huge amounts of energy as the conversion involves matter moving from a high energy state to a lower energy state.” He pauses to look at each of them in turn, his eyes wide and scared. “What I’m saying is that none of us would survive the resulting explosion, let alone the change of state of the matter.”
Even Trin is looking apprehensive at this, but he nevertheless attempts to rebut Rodney’s conclusions. “But the strangelet is, surely, positively charged,” he argues. “This will make it unlikely that it will interact with nuclei, because they'll simply repel each other.”
“Yes,” Rodney hisses, his anger returning with a vengeance, “which is precisely why the Ancients built this accelerator pointed directly at a neutron star. A neutron star is just made of neutrons - all the protons and electrons have been fused into neutrons by the enormous gravitational force of the star. So, there is no electric repulsion, meaning it will interact with it! That was, after all, the whole purpose of the experiment - to create a strange star.”
Trin falls silent at that, a look of indignation on his face, but no verbal response to Rodney's point.
“Okay,” John says, having heard enough. “We need a plan - Rodney, can we stop this?” He looks behind him at the casket with a grimace, trying to work up the courage to get back in it.
“No,” Rodney says, walking over to him quickly and grasping his arm. “No - you are not getting back into that thing!”
“Rodney,” John says, resisting the impulse to just let himself collapse into Rodney’s embrace, close his eyes and forget about this whole mess. He, instead, faces the reality of the situation, as he always has. “We might not have a choice.”
“Well, I do not accept that,” Rodney replies firmly, shaking his head and pulling John further away from the casket. “The Ancients built this thing - they must have been aware of the risks, even if these idiots weren’t. There has to be a safeguard - something to reverse the star's change of state.”
“It would not make any difference now anyway, even if Colonel Sheppard were to get back in the control chamber,” Trin says, sounding fairly subdued. “The process is already underway. There were a variety of initial steps we had to undertake to ready the accelerator, but the final one was completed a matter of days before you arrived. Now, it is simply too late.”
Rodney whirls around to look at Trin, his eyes narrowed in anger. “Look, I do not want to hear one more word out of you. Seriously, if I hear one more peep, I'm going to let Ronon here take you next door and do what I have no doubt he's been wanting to do ever since it became clear that you are the reason we lost our team leader.”
John is a little taken aback at the cold and emotionless anger in Rodney's voice, something with which he is intimately familiar, but not something he would ever have thought to associate with Rodney. John is not surprised, however, at the look of terror on Trin's face; one that deepens as Ronon moves to stand beside Rodney and both men glower down at him intimidatingly.
Having obviously put Trin in his place, Rodney turns away from him and starts to pace up and down the room, muttering to himself under his breath. “Right, now, where was I... Hmm, several stages, but of course,” he breathes, pausing in his pacing and tilting his head to one side consideringly. “There would have to have been many stages required to produce particles sufficiently nucleon rich to create a strangelet - that must be what the rings on the outer edges of the main accelerator are for - colliding heavy element nuclei together, starting with something like naquadah I suspect, until the stranglet itself could finally be formed...” he trails off, his eyes going vague.
John waits, recognising the signs of Rodney on the brink of a revelation. Perhaps he wouldn't have to get back in that torture chamber after all.
“That's it!” Rodney exclaims at last, snapping his fingers and turning to beam at John, thankfully looking more like himself at last. “The intermediary stages, I bet that they not only created the particles necessary for creating the strangelet, but also created the particles necessary to absorb the strangelets and change them back into nuclear matter.”
“Nuclear matter,” Ronon says as an aside to John, watching somewhat bemusedly as Rodney whirls around to find a surface onto which to plunk down his laptop and starts typing at breakneck speed, “that's the good stuff, right.”
John can't help but laugh at this, despite his headache and the increasing queasiness of his stomach. “Right,” he agrees, “looks like we're all going to be expert particle physicists after this one.”
“A-ha!” Rodney proclaims, standing up straight for a moment. “Just as I thought! According to the central computer, one of the auxiliary accelerators is an electron-positron collider. Which means that somewhere there's also got to be...” he trails off again and hunches over his laptop once more. After several more minutes of frantic typing, he stands back up again. “Yes - here's an array for generating the magnetic fields needed to trap the stranglets.” He turns back around to regard them all with a look of triumph so familiar it makes John's heart ache. “We can stop this.”
When I Sorrow Most pt. 6