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“We need to get out of here!” Major Sheppard yelled, slamming his fist into the switch controlling the back hatch of the small ship they had discovered.
Elizabeth heard the hiss of the door closing behind her but she didn’t turn around. Couldn’t turn around. She stared, mesmerized, out the front windscreen as water poured into the wide hangar bay and crashed against the ship. Doctor Zelenka dropped to the ground instinctively, which was probably a smart move on his part, but Elizabeth found herself frozen, staring in horror at the water roaring in on them.
A wave of seawater splashed up against the window, rocking their vessel and knocking her backward. She caught herself on the rear chair and stood up again just as the major shouldered his way past her and slid into the pilot’s seat. Zelenka had also regained his balance, climbing back to his feet long enough to drop into the co-pilot’s chair, a tangle of wires and connector cables held in a white-knuckled grip.
“Did McKay get the hatch open?”
Major Sheppard sounded calm—unreasonably calm given the situation. The screams in Elizabeth’s radio earpiece had finally stopped, but she could still hear them in her mind. She replayed the moment over and over again of their voices suddenly cutting out, leaping from too loud to dead quiet.
“I do not know,” Zelenka answered. She could hear the panic in his voice, but he was suppressing it. He bent over to begin connecting the wires to the underside of the dashboard.
“Major! There’s six of us stuck in one of the ships! What do we do?”
The voice in her ear was hysterical. She almost recognized it, knowing she’d spoken to that same voice not too long ago. A day or two, maybe. She could hear screams in the background—the sound of the other five witnessing the sudden death of almost the entire expedition. The major twitched, raising one shoulder up to the ear that held his radio bug, but he didn’t respond. He stared down at the dashboard in front of him, his hands hovering over the myriad of buttons.
The entire expedition. Oh, my God.
Before Elizabeth could reply to the panicked scientists in the other ship, the dashboard suddenly lit up. Zelenka popped up in surprise and Sheppard lifted his hands off the glowing keys.
“What did you do?” the Czech scientist asked.
“I don’t know—I think I just turned it on.” Sheppard tapped his radio earpiece. “Stand by, Sergeant.”
Elizabeth stared out the window. The hangar bay was now filled with water. She felt her legs grow weak, and she eased herself back into the chair behind the pilot seat. Zelenka and Sheppard were also staring out the window, her own horror reflected in the scientist’s gaping expression and the major’s ramrod straight back.
“I’m not much for instruction manuals, but I could use one right about now.” The major reached a hand out, tentatively pushing one of the buttons in front of him.
A flash of white light forced Elizabeth to close her eyes; it was bright enough that she still winced behind closed lids. When she opened them again, she blinked at the afterimage blocking her vision, and kept blinking when the bay didn’t come back into focus. It took a second for her to realize the bay was gone and she was staring at the starry vista of space.
“Oh, my God.”
The planet was just visible beneath them, a rim of green and blue at the bottom edge of the windscreen. They were in space. Where had Atlantis gone? And the expedition—those who’d made it to safety like the sergeant and the five with him in the other ship. She stood, leaning closer to the windscreen to get a better view of their position.
“We’re in space!” the major cried out next to her. “What happened?”
“Now what did you do?” Zelenka asked.
“I don’t know. I just…” Sheppard leaned forward, reaching for the same button he’d pressed before.
The ship jolted as a burst of orange filled the windscreen, and Elizabeth grabbed onto the dashboard to keep her balance. She could feel minute vibrations in the console under her fingertips and she looked down in surprise, then out the window again. Movement caught her eye, a splash of gray and red against the blackness of space that zipped past the front window. Before she could register what she was seeing, another object flashed past them.
Another burst of orange enveloped them, rocking the ship. Sheppard grabbed at the controls in front of him as the gray-red objects veered around until they were heading back toward them.
“Who is shooting at us?” Zelenka asked, sounding more confused than afraid.
Bolts of white smashed into the ship, and the ship shuddered enough that Elizabeth fell back into her seat.
“A better question is how do we shoot back,” Sheppard answered. There was a hiss, then a clank as something in the ship engaged on either side of them, and then their own bolt of orange shot through space back at the gray ships, catching one of them and tearing it to pieces. “Did I do that?”
The second ship had spun away from their weapons fire, but then it turned, veering toward them on a collision course. Elizabeth leaned back instinctively as the two men in front of her tensed.
“Hang on!” the major screamed, and two more bolts appeared in the windscreen—one coming from their small ship and one heading toward them.
The blast was enough that the entire ship screeched and shuddered, throwing her forward out of her chair and then backward into the rear part of the ship. She thought she could hear the other two screaming, but their voices were muted under the groan of metal twisting and throbbing around her. She rolled, still on the ground, and looked up in time to see the planet looming large, its blue ocean hurtling toward them.
Elizabeth woke up to the soft hum of machinery, and she immediately thought of her laptop. She’d left it on again all night. She always meant to shut it down before she went to sleep, but somehow she would get caught up in other things, and by the time she remembered she hadn’t shut it down, it was time to roll out of bed and boot the computer up again anyway.
“You’re awake,” a man said, somewhere off to her side.
Simon? It was her first thought, but it took only seconds for her to remember that it couldn’t possibly be Simon. She’d said good-bye to Simon and stepped through the Stargate to the fabled lost city of Atlantis.
“What?” she mumbled. She felt groggy and lethargic, like she’d been sleeping for a very, very long time. She blinked at the ceiling above her and frowned when she didn’t recognize it.
She pushed up with a gasp, remembered the flooding hangar bay, the water and the screams of her people as they drowned around her. Three of them had made it to a ship, then ended up in space. And then…something had been shooting at them. She saw the slim gray ships zip through her mind again, spewing angry orange bolts at them, but she was stiff and sore, and wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep again.
“Your ship was shot down,” the man said. She turned to look at him, frowning when she didn’t recognize him or his clothing. He smiled slightly. “We retrieved it from the ocean floor.”
They’d been in space, but she remembered the ocean screaming up toward them, too fast. Thoughts connected slowly. One of the shots that had jolted their ship must have caused a crash. Their ship—she hadn’t been alone. She glanced around the room, looking for the others but seeing only empty beds.
“Major Sheppard? Doctor Zelenka?”
The man in front of her shook his head. “No one survived,” he said softly. “Except you, of course.”
“I don’t understand,” she mumbled. “Who are you?”
“I am Janus. The ship you were in—it contained a time-travel device. I estimate you arrived here from 10,000 years in the future,” the man—Janus—explained, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips. He was excited—could barely contain his excitement. Elizabeth knew that look. She’d seen it on dozens, if not hundreds, of other faces in the last few months.
On the faces of her scientists. Her expedition.
“I don’t understand,” she whispered. The ache was growing louder, and she brought a hand up to rub at the building pressure in her forehead.
“I am sorry,” Janus replied. “We are at war, and our city under siege. When your ship appeared in space above us, the Wraith attacked. Your pilot managed to control the ship’s descent despite its almost total lack of power; otherwise, you would have all died instantly.”
“John,” she mumbled.
“I beg your pardon?”
Elizabeth felt the room lurch around her and she moaned, closing her eyes at the sudden sensation of sitting in a small raft on the ocean in the middle of a hurricane. Hands grabbed onto her arm and shoulder, easing her back on to the bed.
“Easy,” Janus said. “You have been through much. It was a miracle you were not injured more seriously, but you are not yet recovered.”
She blinked, breathing heavily through her mouth. The ceiling and walls were tan with a darker brown design embedded in them. She saw a door out of the corner of her eye, and beyond it a greenish-blue hallway. She knew this place. Had she been here before, or had she only imagined it?
Atlantis. They’d been going to Atlantis—the lost city. The opportunity of a lifetime.
She felt something press and hiss against her arm, and her body relaxed. Her eyes grew heavy but she forced them open and stared up at the stranger leaning over her. Janus. He’d said his name was Janus. He was wearing a white coat that made her think of a doctor, but it was different. Off, slightly.
“The expedition?” she whispered again, but she couldn’t fight the pull of sleep and she felt herself drift into darkness.
She woke again, hours later, to another face. A woman with a kind smile. The woman’s mouth moved like she was speaking, but there was no sound, and Elizabeth drifted back to sleep again.
The next time she woke up, it was almost pitch black out, the only light that of a fountain built into the wall, bubbling and casting an eerie glow over the entire room.
Water, she thought. Atlantis—ocean, flooding, screams. Wait…
Sunlight streamed through a window on her right, which she sensed without opening her eyes. She shivered at the warmth the rays cast over that side of her body and squirmed against the soft mattress beneath her. She was curled on her side, her body utterly relaxed and her eyes glued shut. She felt nothing but the sun and a peaceful sensation that lulled her almost into a doze. She could lay here forever, for the rest of her life. She would never move again.
“She just woke up,” a soft voice whispered behind her.
“Has she said anything?” a man asked.
“No. She woke briefly last night but fell back to sleep almost immediately.”
“Thank you.”
Elizabeth squeezed her eyes tight, reaching for the quiet numbness she’d had just a moment before. The voices had chased it away, and the swish of clothes indicating someone was approaching pushed oblivion even farther away.
“Hello?” the man whispered.
She scrunched deeper under the thin blanket covering her, feeling a little like a recalcitrant child refusing to get up and go to school.
“Are you feeling alright today?”
She ignored him, but something tickled in the back of her mind. She knew that voice. She had talked to him before and he’d said something. Something important.
She heard the sound of something heavy scraping across the floor, and she imagined the man pulling a chair closer to her bed, huffing as he sat down. She saw an image of him in her mind—short brown hair, hazel eyes, thin face. A doctor? He’d been wearing a white coat, but not a doctor’s coat. There’d been a swath of brown, like leather, draped over his shoulder and running across his chest.
She dragged open her eyes and blinked at the bright light. It was the same man, wearing the same coat. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“What do you remember?”
Stargate. Atlantis. Water. Ocean. Crash.
Crash.
She jerked up then grabbed the sides of the bed when the room swam dizzily around her.
“Careful,” the man said, grabbing her arms and pushing her gently back onto the bed. A name floated through her mind. Janus.
“Crash,” she whispered.
“That’s right,” Janus answered. He smiled at her, but there was something heavy in his eyes and in the crease of his forehead.
“Sheppard? Zelenka?”
The crease deepened. She had asked about them already. He had answered. He had said…
“No,” she whispered.
“I am sorry,” he said.
“This…this isn’t happening,” she whispered back. “This isn’t real.”
Janus opened his mouth but frowned and snapped his jaw shut again. He grabbed her hand with both of his, and Elizabeth fought the urge to pull away from the warmth of his skin.
“Where are they?” She had to see them. She needed to see them. This wasn’t real anyway. How could it be?
He paused, but from the look in his eyes, she could tell he knew who she was talking about. He glanced at someone across the room, out of Elizabeth’s line of sight. The muscles around his eyes tightened, and after a moment, he gave a stiff nod. “You are still weak.”
“I’m not weak,” Elizabeth denied, but she was tired. Exhausted. She could feel it in every trembling muscle and shallow inhale of breath. “Please.”
“The other two with you, they did not survive,” Janus said, leaning forward. His voice was intense, earnest, and Elizabeth flinched at the words as if the man had slapped her across the cheek.
“I don’t believe you.” But there was a part of her that was starting to. A kernel of doubt. She was on Atlantis, alive.
Alone.
“Rest now, and I promise I will take you to see them later today.”
She wanted to go now, but exhaustion won out and she drifted back into the darkness.
“You lied,” she said.
She heard Janus sigh behind her, and the wheelchair—or what seemed to be the Ancient version of one—shifted as he leaned heavily on the back of it. He had taken her to Doctor Zelenka first—a cold, dark room that had screamed morgue despite the fact that she was in a different galaxy, ten thousand years in the past. His face had been clearly visible in the pod against the wall, a thousand tiny cuts in his skin that belied his otherwise peaceful expression.
“Not…exactly,” Janus said. “He is gone—I did not lie about that.”
She’d lasted less than five seconds in that cold room, unable to look at the scientist’s face any longer. He was dead, gone—along with every other scientist in her expedition. She’d bowed her head, stifling a sob, and Janus had wheeled her out of the room immediately. It was another several minutes before she realized she’d only seen one person in that room.
Major Sheppard was alive, technically. Janus had wheeled her to a small room not far from the room she’d woken up in and stopped in the door frame. At first, she hadn’t been sure who or what she was looking at. There’d been too many devices obscuring her vision. Then she’d seen the hair, and while she hadn’t known Major Sheppard for long, that hair was instantly familiar. Her eyes finally picked out the body beneath the devices. The medical equipment was completely unfamiliar, but she could pick out some of their different functions. A ventilator for breathing, a heart monitor, tubes and wires attached all around the still body.
She pushed herself up out of the chair and heard Janus suck in a breath, like he was expecting her to suddenly fall over. The dizziness stayed back, though, and she walked carefully to the side of the bed. Beneath the maze of equipment covering the man before her, she found a hand and wrapped her fingers around it.
“He’s cold,” she whispered. She picked out a dark bruise along the side of his head, cuts on his face and arms. Words and numbers flashed across the multitude of screens staring down at him in a script she’d only dreamed of seeing in real life. Ancient words. Ancient numbers.
“Your other friend—Doctor Zelenka?”
Elizabeth glanced over at Janus as he stepped cautiously into the room. For a second, she saw Zelenka again, his body frozen in the wall of the Ancient morgue, and she cringed. She turned her gaze back to Major Sheppard and concentrated on the slow rise and fall of his chest.
“He was dead by the time we reached the ship. He’d bled too much for us to do anything to save him.”
“And John?”
Janus sighed. “He was unconscious but alive, as were you, but by the time we’d returned to the city, he had ceased breathing on his own. We did all we could to revive him, but his injuries were extensive.”
“He’s breathing now,” Elizabeth mumbled.
“With the help of a machine. This screen here,” he said, pointing at a small box in the corner of one of the monitors that showed a series of straight lines, “measures the activity in his brain. We are able to keep his heart beating but the damage to his brain is irreversible.”
She tightened her grip on the cold, limp hand, shaking her head. He hadn’t even been part of the expedition—not originally. He’d just shown up with General O’Neill, accidently sat down in the Ancient chair, and changed the course of his life forever. It had been her begging and pushing and negotiating and bargaining that had finally convinced him to join the expedition.
She had promised to show him a new galaxy—the adventure of a lifetime. Instead, she had given him a handful of minutes, first in a flooding city and then in a spaceship crashing into the ocean.
“It’s my fault,” she whispered, sagging. She felt Janus’s hands grab her under her arms and lower her back to the chair. She leaned forward, digging her face into the side of the bed and refusing to let go of the major’s hand.
“His injuries were terrible, beyond even our abilities,” Janus was whispering. “Even if he had not suffered a fatal head injury, the bones in his back and legs were broken. He would have been paralyzed from the chest down—”
A sob erupted from Elizabeth, cutting Janus off. He was trying to help, she knew that, but he really was not doing a very good job of it at the moment. The room plunged into near silence, the whirl of machines and hiss of equipment the only sound left. Elizabeth bit her lip, stifling the expanding pain in her chest. She felt Janus’s hand on her back but she turned away from him. A minute passed, and then she heard him stand and step quietly out of the room. It was only once she was alone that she let the tears fall.
“How long will you keep him alive?” Elizabeth asked. A day had passed, and she was back in Major Sheppard’s room, standing near the head of his bed. There was a shimmery substance around his closed eyelids that gave him the appearance of being on the verge of tears. That, or his eyes were literally glued shut, and the latter seemed more likely.
Janus was leaning against the door frame, watching her, concern etched into his open features. “We have already kept him alive much longer than we would have,” he said.
Elizabeth cringed, her eyes riveted to the major’s moving chest, the soft computerized thump of his heart beat coming from one of the machines above her head. A thin, metal collar was glued to his neck; another piece was attached to his stomach, just visible in a gap between his white gown and the blanket pulled to his waist. The lower half of one of his legs was visible, a large piece of the smooth metal wrapped around the shin and calf. She stared at them, trying to fathom what they were doing to him.
“Then why…” she started, then stopped. Thoughts came slowly, not quite connecting. She had a thousand questions bubbling below the surface, waiting for the dam to burst open, and yet she was stuck, like she had one finger jammed in a small crack in that dam and all she could do was stare at it and hold on.
“We were unsure of your cultural background,” Janus said. “I didn’t want to take away your opportunity to say goodbye to your friend, and so asked the medical personnel here to sustain his life a little longer than is generally done among my own people.”
Elizabeth swallowed, the invisible wall of water bulging and threatening to consume her. She sucked in a ragged breath, gripping the sides of the bed.
“We cannot keep him alive indefinitely,” Janus spoke from behind her, and she jumped when his shadow fell across the wall in front of her. He’d moved closer, into the room, but he kept his distance, still giving her the space she needed. “Already his condition worsens.”
Elizabeth nodded. She’d known this moment would come sooner or later. “Just…just give me a minute…”
“Of course. I will be outside if you need anything.”
She heard Janus leave, glancing at the door only after she heard it hiss shut. She was alone again, and she looked back at Sheppard’s still body. Now that he had mentioned it, she noticed that the major did look worse—a little paler, the circles under his eyes darker.
She grabbed his hand, wrapping her fingers tightly around his. “Major,” she whispered. She stopped, looking up at the monitors then at the closed door, at a sudden loss for words. “I’m…I don’t really know what to say. I’ve never been very good at the whole bedside manner thing.”
She frowned, biting her lip. What the hell was wrong with her? He was unconscious, comatose. It didn’t matter what she said, did it?
Yes, it does.
The thought crossed her mind instantly, and she took another deep breath. What, though? What should she say? What could she say? Reaching out with her other hand, she brushed back his dark hair.
“I don’t really know you, Major. John. I don’t know you at all, actually—only that I asked you to come on this expedition and you did. You put your faith and your trust in me, and I’m sorry that I couldn’t do more to help you. I’m sorry that that decision cost you your life.”
She felt emotions welling up, hot and painful, and she swallowed them back. Tears were already pricking the corners of her eyes, but she blinked those back. Her hand was still resting against his forehead and she stared down at him, memorizing his features, trying to remember the color of his eyes, the way he had smiled, what his voice had sounded like.
Without warning, his face shifted. Not literally. It was still Major Sheppard beneath her hands, but she found herself staring at the image of Rodney McKay. Arrogance and ego aside, he was one of the most brilliant, most remarkable scientists she had ever met. She blinked, and Rodney turned into Carson Beckett. Carson became Peter Grodin, and Peter Grodin became Colonel Sumner. The images flickered through her mind—every scientist, every Marine. Every single member of her expedition.
“I am so sorry,” she whispered. “None of you have even been born yet, but I promise—I will not forget you. If I have to spend the next 10,000 searching for a way to save you, I will do it.”
She felt a sudden steadiness come over her. Ten thousand years. Surely there was something she could do to save her people in that amount of time. If she had to spend every waking breath to do it, she would save her people—she would live up to the faith and trust they had put into her, or would put into her, as their leader.
“Janus,” she called out. She hadn’t spoken loudly, but the door opened immediately. He stepped in, looking at her with a mixture of trepidation and compassion. “I’m ready.”
He nodded then turned to signal someone outside. A moment later, a woman entered the room. She smiled at her but moved immediately to the major’s other side, her gaze focused on the monitors.
“I can stay here, with him, while…” Elizabeth’s voice trailed off.
The woman smiled, nodding once. “Of course. It will happen quickly.”
Elizabeth turned back to the man lying in front of her, tightening her grip on his hand and forehead. She could sense Janus hovering behind her. The woman moved to another monitor and tapped the screen, then moved to a second one and tapped it.
There was a soft hiss of air, and then silence, and Elizabeth realized the ventilator had stopped. She stared down at Sheppard’s chest, saw it drop as his lungs deflated, and then nothing. He was motionless. The calm steadiness she’d felt a few moments before began to waver, but she bit her lip, holding onto her resolve.
This wouldn’t happen next time. She would not let this happen again.
She glanced up at the monitor tracking his heart function when she heard the beat slow down then stop. Jagged lines across all the monitors evened out, one by one. The woman studied each screen, then turned to Elizabeth. “He’s gone. Take as long as you need.”
Elizabeth nodded at the woman as she exited. She stared down at the last remaining expedition member, other than herself, for one last long moment, then turned to Janus.
“I said what I needed to,” she whispered, surprised at the huskiness in her voice.
Janus’s eyes softened. “Are you sure? If you want—”
“No.”
He tilted his head in understanding. “I am deeply sorry for your loss.”
Elizabeth straightened, releasing her grip on the major’s body and turned until she was facing Janus. “Ten thousand years from now, my people will come back through that gate. There has to be something we can do to prepare for their arrival.”
Janus stared at her, his gaze piercing, but Elizabeth had worked with the brightest scientists on Earth for months, and she recognized the expression on his face. She could almost see his mind spinning to tackle the problem she had placed before him.
“I admit,” he finally said. “I have been contemplating your situation since the moment you arrived. I have some ideas—perhaps a way for your expedition to avoid the dangers it will encounter when it arrives.”
The faces of the expedition members flickered through her mind again, hopeful and eager.
“The Atlantean Council would like to meet with you when you are feeling up to it, and we can discuss it with them at that—”
“I’m ready now,” she said. The pain in her chest was still there, the loss still raw and fresh, but she had a new purpose. Strength flowed into her, driving her resolve.
“Are you certain—”
“Let’s go talk to them.”
END