Entanglement

Chapter eight

The sky was a deep purple when Ronon made it up to the roof, the big planet that filled the sky almost blocking all but the last light of the sun. He paused in the doorway of the little dome that sheltered the lift platform; it was too dark to see more than the outlines of the various lumps and projections on the roof, but he couldn't hear any movement.

"Ronon, they are still heading away from you," Zelenka whispered in his headset. "Five hundred yards, a little further. They are moving fairly slowly, crossing back and forth in a search pattern. I think they are looking for the puddlejumper."

He heard Kusanagi add, "Perhaps they think the others landed on the roof, that the ship is still there, cloaked. They must suspect we are from Atlantis."

"Suspecting is fine," Zelenka told her. "As long as they don't know for certain. And even the possibility of a jumper doesn't tell them the city is still there. It would be unreasonable for them to believe that none of us escaped through the Stargate before the destruction."

Using the low platforms as cover, Ronon headed for the roof's edge. There was still just enough light for him to see the darker shadow of the trench. He took out the little battery lightstick and crouched low, cupping his hand over it to shield the beam, and flashed it over the floor of the trench. He moved along the edge until the light found disturbed dust, the marks of tracks and scuffling. Then the light caught the glint of the metal shells cast off by the Atlantean weapons. It happened here, he thought

He jumped down into the trench, landing lightly, and paced down it. After a few moments' search, he frowned. This was the right place, but something important was missing. He touched his headset. "They aren't here."

"The Wraith?" Zelenka asked, a little startled. "The detector shows they are still searching-"

"No. The others." Ronon had thought he would find their bodies. The Wraith discarded human corpses like trash, leaving them where they fell; they would never have bothered to move the bodies after a feeding. Something else caught the light and he crouched, running his fingers through a scatter of plastic and metal debris. The remains of one of McKay's computers. He allowed himself a grim smile; the destruction was thorough, nothing left to give the Wraith any information, any hint that Atlantis still lived.

"Oh, you mean…no bodies?" Zelenka hesitated. "But then perhaps they are alive? If the Wraith beamed them up, their life signs would disappear from screen-"

"Maybe. That doesn't mean they're alive now." Ronon stood, moving to the metal housing that shielded the device they needed to destroy. He felt along it, looking for an access panel. If the others were alive… They would be aboard that Wraith scout ship.

The jumper couldn't take on a Wraith ship that size. Ronon would have to figure out a way to get onboard. And then get off again, if he found them alive. And he couldn't believe he was planning something this mad, but then the Atlanteans seemed to encourage this kind of thinking. Sheppard would do it, he thought. So would Emmagan.

He shook his head. This first, he told himself. Ronon's fingers found an indentation in the metal; an access panel. "I found-"

The sudden explosion sent him to the ground, crouching low. A moment later he realized it couldn't be the Mirror; the blast hadn't even made the building tremble. "Zelenka, what was that?"

Zelenka was cursing in his own language again. "We heard it, but whatever it was was too close to Mirror platform for our sensors to detect the source. Wraith scout ship is still in orbit, we're detecting no darts-"

The Wraith had no reason to blow things up near the Mirror. And explosions made Ronon think of Sheppard and McKay. He stood, feeling for purchase on the housing, and found a spot to plant his boot; he pushed himself up. Craning his neck, he could just see over the top.

It was too dark to see much, but near the far side of the Mirror's frame there was a large scatter of debris that was sparking with energy. It was right about where the strange Wraith ship had been. "It's been blown up," Ronon reported. "The Wraith female's ship."

Then his headset crackled with static and he heard, "This is Sheppard. Ronon, is that you?"

"Sheppard?" Ronon grinned, jumping down from the housing. That explained the explosion.

On the headset, Zelenka demanded incredulously, "What? Colonel? Colonel, you are all alive? Rodney and Teyla?"

Sheppard's voice answered, "We're all fine. Zelenka, what's your position?"

"The same one we had before," Zelenka said, sound ing deeply relieved. Ronon could hear Kusanagi laughing and clapping with joy in the background.

Sheppard said, "Good. Just stay there for now and wait for instructions."

Ronon broke in, "Sheppard, I'm on the roof, near the pulse generator."

"There are Wraith up there with him," Zelenka added hastily. "Well, not with him, but they have turned and are heading back in his direction. I think they are only heading back toward the explosion, but-"

Ronon heard McKay in the background this time, then Sheppard said, "Ronon, we're going to beam you off the roof, back outside the installation, near where the jumper is.

"Uh, okay." Ronon studied the dark sky uneasily. Beam? "Where are you?"

"That's a long story" From Sheppard's tone, Ronon didn't think he was going to like this story. "I'll tell you once we get you out of there."

Nobody had liked John's brief summation of their plan: John could practically hear Ronon's expression of deep cynicism over the radio, Radek had muttered in Czech, and even Miko had said doubtfully, "Dr. McKay thinks this is a good idea?"

"Yes, yes he does," Rodney had inserted into the conversation. "Now just shut up and do it."

The jumper rendezvoused with the shuttle, and with both ships cloaked, they headed toward the mountains. They were looking for a spot where they could land and regroup; they needed the breathing room, and Rodney needed the jumper's equipment to come up with a way to fix the Mirror.

The flight away from the installation would only take a few minutes, but John could tell it was going to be an awkward few minutes. He and Teyla were standing back in the main compartment area, watching Trishen in the cockpit while Rodney worked at pulling more data out of the terminals. Trishen was flying the shuttle using only the instruments and a couple of bubble displays; there wasn't anything like a viewport, and that was making John's nerves jump. He was used to flying by instrument, but no windows at all just felt all kinds of wrong. And Trishen didn't trust them, and they didn't trust her. Even Rodney, who had pushed the "let's work together" solution, was jumpy and uncomfortable in the confined space of the compartment and passages.

At least they had intel on the Wraith's movements. The shuttle was still receiving data from sensor buoys Trishen had placed around the Mirror when she had first arrived. She had set one of the holographic bubbles in the compartment to display the video feed, and they had a good view of the Mirror platform.

The eclipse was waning, the light getting steadily brighter. They could see the base ship's glowing debris field, and the Wraith climbing around the Mirror's frame. John asked Teyla, "You think they know what it's for yet?"

Teyla studied the little figures moving in the display, her brows drawn together. "It is hard to tell. As the shuttle was lifting off, I could sense their frustration, their anger at being thwarted, that was all. There was no feeling that they had made a great discovery." She shook her head. "But they must realize the Mirror is a portal to somewhere."

"They probably think it's just a giant Stargate, like we did at first," John said, then snorted at himself. Just a giant Stargate, like that's something to sneeze at. The Wraith might think it went to some hidden refuge of the Ancients, some nice new feeding ground for them. Well, it could, if we don't get the damn thing shut down. He stretched, rolling his shoulders, wincing as sore muscles and bruises protested the motion. From the cockpit, Trishen glanced up, saw he and Teyla watching her, and quickly looked down at her terminal again. John let his breath out. He really hated this. There was just too much about her they didn't know. He lowered his voice and said, "If she can do that mental communication thing… she could tell them where we are without even touching a radio."

Teyla didn't look happy either, but she said, "But she released us, destroyed her ship. She seems as if she truly wishes to escape them, and this reality."

John shrugged, resigned. "Yeah, I know. I'm just… paranoid. Every time we trust somebody new they turn around and stab us in the ass." And he couldn't help thinking that her description of the Eidolon or whatever they called themselves was too good to be true. "And if the Wraith in her reality don't feed on humans or any other kind of people-like alien, what do they feed on?"

"She does have water and some sort of rations in this ship." Teyla's lips twisted and her brows indicated skepticism. "Though I find it hard to believe that her kind are entirely human in that respect. Perhaps, unlike the Wraith here, they are able to feed on the life force of animals."

John nodded to himself "Well, we're never going to find out, and I'm okay with that."

They reached the foothills a short time later, and found a low plateau for a landing site. It was stony and bare of the tall red grass that would betray the presence of two cloaked ships, and sheltered by high bluffs and rocky overhangs.

The shuttle was bigger but John had made it clear that they were doing any joint research in the jumper. It was awkward, as they would need to keep the ramp down and everyone would have to wear SCBAs the whole time, but he didn't want any unpleasant surprises. Rodney agreed with an impatient grimace. "Yes, let's skip the possibility of an intruder control system that leaves us all helpless now that we've introduced her to the other members of our little group," he muttered, watching Trishen as she was absorbed in her instruments. She was carefully guiding the shuttle into a landing on the stone shelf. "I thought she'd at least try to keep one of us as a hostage, and that we'd waste an hour threatening each other and arguing about it."

"Yeah." John had thought so too, and he wasn't sure if the fact that she hadn't gone that route made him less suspicious or more so. "Maybe she realized just how badly that would go over." Who knew, it could be common sense. Controlling a hostage was harder than it looked, and Trishen had been working on the Mirror for a while now without success; she knew she needed their help, or specifically Rodney's help. And that she wasn't likely to get it if they thought she was a danger to them.

Once the shuttle was down, John got on the headset and talked Miko through landing the jumper. The jumper's sensors couldn't pick up the cloaked shuttle, though the cloaked jumper appeared as a ghostly outline on the shuttle's display. John figured the two ships crashing into each other at some point would be the perfect cap to this day, but the jumper set down safely on the stony ground about thirty yards away.

They got their SCBAs on, and went out to meet the others. Ronon came down the ramp first, eyeing Trishen warily. She was standing back near her shuttle's open hatch, holding the black sphere that was her portable terminal. She was wearing the helmet part of her environmental outfit, but hadn't bothered with the rest of the concealing suit. With the dead-white skin of her hands visible, it was a lot more obvious what she was. Ronon began, "How do you know-"

John cut him off, "We don't know anything. We just know that this is the deal we made, and so far she's keeping up her end of it."

"Seriously, we've gone over it all already," Rodney told him wearily. "Several times."

Zelenka stopped in the hatchway, peering around Ronon. "Proboha ' He looked at Rodney, his eyes wide above the SCBA mask. "She's a Wraith."

Rodney glared at him in irritation. "What, did you think it was a cruel joke?"

Zelenka gestured in annoyance. "Of course not! But you said she was not like the Wraith of our reality. I was hoping there wouldn't be so much.. with the hands, and everything."

John took Zelenka's arm, turning him so they weren't facing toward Trishen. "Listen, we've got a temporary deal with her, but don't let down your guard, don't let her get you alone." He gave Rodney a meaningful look, including him in the admonition. "Don't forget what she)J is.

Rodney just nodded tightly. With an aghast expression, Zelenka said, "I don't think that will be a problem."

Rodney rolled his eyes. "On that note, let's get to work." He waved imperatively to Trishen, calling her over.

Under Ronon's highly suspicious gaze, they got two laptops set up at the end of the rear cabin, and Trishen put her portable terminal on the ramp. It was a little reassuring that she still seemed just as nervous of them as they were of her.

Miko was using the station tied into the jumper's systems in the cockpit, so she could keep an eye on the HUD. John ended up in the jumper's cockpit with her, Rodney, and Teyla, not so much for a secret meeting out of Trishen's hearing, but because the cockpit was pressurized and they could take off the SCBAs long enough to eat and drink something.

As they stood around knocking back water and power bars, Miko looked up from her laptop to tell them, "We were so afraid! And you all look-"

Rodney interrupted her with, "Work now, sympathy later." He crumpled a wrapper. "I want this over with as soon as possible."

John could get behind that attitude.

Rodney and Teyla went back outside, but the HUD showed that the interference from the Mirror had calmed down enough to send another databurst back to base camp, so John stayed to record a brief report. He just hit the highlights: Wraith, more Wraith, what they were planning to do. Miko added compressed files with copies of Rodney's data on the Mirror, and sent it. It worried him that they hadn't gotten a reply back from the last transmission Zelenka had made. But if it had come during the Mirror's last big discharge, the jumper's comm might not have been able to receive it.

John went back outside, where Teyla and Ronon were standing out in the open space between the two ships. This spot was shadowed by the cliffs, which were striped with red and yellow mineral deposits. The sky was reassuringly empty of anything but the gas giant, growing brighter as the moon moved further out of the eclipse.

Trishen was working on her terminal while Rodney and Radek pointed at different laptop and tablet screens and argued. Ronon stood with one hand not-so-casually on his energy gun. "Everything okay?" John asked.

Ronon shrugged one shoulder. "So far."

Rodney and Radek had to go back and forth into the shuttle a few times, to take special readings or copy over something else from her stored data. John made sure they were never alone with Trishen, while Teyla and Ronon kept an eye on their perimeter. The active cloaks on the ships made things a little awkward, since neither the shuttle nor the jumper were visible unless you were standing in them, and people occasionally got lost moving from one ship to the other and had to be directed back on course.

Then Miko's voice came over their headsets, shouting, "There are Wraith! There are two darts! I mean, incoming!„

"Everybody inside." John turned, scanning the sky. There was nothing visible yet, but the HUD would have picked them up long before they were in visible range.

"Me too?" Trishen asked uncertainly, standing up and clutching her terminal. Zelenka had already shifted his equipment away from the hatch, further back into the rear cabin. Rodney was standing, his eyes on the handheld life signs detector.

They couldn't chance sending Trishen across the open area to the shuttle. "Yeah, you too," John said, trying not to sound too grudging about it.

Trishen edged up the ramp a little, still staying as far away from them as possible.

Miko came out of the cockpit, stepping up beside John, uneasily peering up at the sky. "They should be-Yes, right there."

She pointed and John made out the shape of the darts, nearly lost against the colors of the gas giant. Ronon stepped past Miko, stationing himself between her and the hatch opening; he was watching Trishen rather than the darts.

After an endless moment, John could tell the darts' course was taking them off to the west. He said, "Rodney?"

Rodney shook his head, his eyes on the life signs detector. "There's nothing on the ground." He looked up, squinting to follow the dart's progress. "They didn't beam down."

He and John exchanged a look of weary relief. Yeah, John had had more than enough Wraith for today, too. The darts zigzagged back and forth a few times, then finally turned, heading east. Considering it, John said, "Funny how with this whole moon to search, they're pay ing so much attention to these mountains."

Rodney's brow furrowed suspiciously as he glanced up at the retreating darts. "I'll check again for signal leakage, but if they knew where we were, they'd attack."

Trishen looked at them, at Zelenka clutching his laptop and nervously studying the sky, at Miko still squeezed in between John and Ronon, at Rodney intently watching the life signs detector. Trishen asked, "This is how you live?"

John just looked at her, having no idea what to say to that. They were so much safer, so much better off, than most of the other human inhabitants of Pegasus, that the question was impossible to answer. Ronon looked away, his face set in a sardonic grimace. Teyla said, coldly, "Yes. But we have weapons, and the Ancestors' cloaking devices. Others do not." Canting her head thoughtfully, she added, "They have come this way because they sense your presence, have they not?"

Trishen hesitated, and John swore under his breath. He had had the feeling there was another shoe about to drop, but he had hoped to put it off for a while longer. Trishen made a frustrated gesture, saying, "I didn't think they would be able to. Their minds are so… different. But they only have a vague awareness of my existence. Obviously they can't pinpoint my location."

"What?" Rodney stared at her. "Hello, were you not standing right there when I explained the plan to make it look like we were all dead, so the Wraith would stop looking for us?"

Ronon grunted in a way that clearly meant I told you so.

John ignored both of them, pointing out to Trishen, "You could have mentioned this earlier."

"I didn't know," she insisted. "I've kept myself closed off from their minds, I thought that would be enough." John's expression must have conveyed what he thought of that excuse. Sounding urgent, she added, "But you can use it to your advantage. I can distract them away from you.

Rodney clapped a hand over his eyes in exasperation. John just said, "I hope you're right about that."

The work was interrupted twice more by searching darts, but Trishen was right in that they didn't seem able to pinpoint her. And the base moon hadn't responded to John's transmission yet, giving him something else to worry about. He knew it was all too possible for the Wraith to have followed the signal traces the Mirror was sending to the monitoring station in the ruined city. Lorne would've gotten them out of there, he told himself. Lorne better have gotten them out of there.

Rodney finally said, "All right, we've got it." He motioned everyone to gather around the ramp, and turned the laptop, which was displaying a partial schematic of the top half of the installation. "As I suspected all along, the key is in the pulse generator that stabilizes the Mirror's accretion surface. Since it was first constructed, factors that affected the required degree of stabilization have changed. Now these factors could be anything from the decreasing levels of oxygen in the atmosphere, changes in the ozone layer caused by the Mirror itself, orbital drift, and so on. There was apparently no compensation mechanism for this because the Mirror was meant to be abandoned-" He glared at John, who was making "get on with it" gestures. "Fine. The instability has kept the Mirror active since Trishen's ship came through, and it's still connected to the correct destination; we just have to make that connection stable enough for transport by adjusting the pulse. We've done the calculations, but the corrections are going to have to be made directly to the consoles that control the array."

"Okay." John thought it sounded deceptively easy. "Do we have a clue where that is?"

"Yes, yes, I'm getting to it." Rodney hit a few keys to change the schematic, bringing up another section. "From the exploration that Trishen managed to do before we arrived, we suspect it's here, on the roof, above the section of the installation where the environmental and security system controls are located." He indicated a highlighted spot on the roof, not too far from the observation area they had found when they had first managed to get into the building.

"You suspect?" Teyla said, before John could. "What if you are wrong?"

Rodney gave them all a sour grimace. "I'm not wrong. According to everything we've discovered about this place so far, and the exploration Trishen did before we arrived, the controls we need have to be in this section."

Zelenka shifted forward. "The good news is, once the shuttle has passed through the Mirror-which should take only seconds-we can shut the entire pulse generator down from that location. It's much more effective method of destabilizing the Mirror than just destroying a section of the array itself, as we originally planned. Instead of dramatic discharge, the singularity is likely to just collapse inward and disappear." He shrugged. "And we will probably not be killed."

"And the Wraith can't find these controls and turn it back on?" John said, wanting to be absolutely certain.

Rodney signed in annoyance and folded his arms. "That would be a yes, since it's the entire point of this insane exercise.

"It would do no good to turn it back on." Zelenka made motions indicating something big getting suddenly very small, and then waved his hands rapidly. "Some of the physical structure of the Mirror may remain, but the quantum components will no longer exist in this reality."

"Thank you, Dr. Zelenka, that was the answer I was hoping for." John smiled engagingly at Rodney. "I assume you've got some way for us to land on the roof without triggering another discharge from the Mirror?"

Rodney appeared to take a lot of pleasure in saying, "For once, you assume correctly. Trishen's shuttle emits a field which keeps it from disrupting the pulse array, and we're going to temporarily adjust the jumper's cloak signatures to mimic that field. That should allow us to fly above the Mirror platform and land on the roof without triggering another discharge."

"Which would cause us to crash and die," Zelenka added helpfully.

Rodney checked his watch. "We'll have to time our arrival for the moment that the Wraith scout ship's orbit takes it out of scanning range. It'll be out of range for only forty-five minutes, so we'll need to move quickly. Not that the scout ship wasn't out of range the last time we tried the roof, but it gives us a slight advantage." With a wince, he added, "Very slight."

"This is where I can help," Trishen said, sitting forward. "I can draw the darts away from the area with my shuttle."

Rodney eyed her, as if reluctant to let her participate. Not too far away. Even once we enter the corrections, the Mirror won't be stable for long. We'll need you to be ready to go through as soon as we make the adjustments." He looked at John impatiently. "Well?"

John nodded. It sounded like a plan. It also sounded like their only option. "Let's do it."

"Looks pretty quiet," John said, studying the jumper's screens as he guided it in a smooth arc above the installation's roof. The adjustments Zelenka had made to the jumper's cloak must be working; the Mirror hadn't made so much as a grumble. "Good job, Radek."

"Thank you, Colonel," Zelenka said from the right hand jump seat. "It's nice not to crash." Rodney was in the co-pilot's seat, comparing a tablet to the energy signatures the jumper was displaying on the HUD. Teyla was sitting behind John, with Kusanagi and Ronon watching from the rear cabin. Trishen's shuttle should be paralleling their course, though it was invisible to both instruments and visual contact. Relying on Trishen not to crash into him wasn't exactly John's favorite part of this trip.

"I do not see any Wraith on the platform," Teyla said from behind him.

"Yeah, they're probably inside." The life signs screen wasn't showing any Wraith in the open at all; they were probably busy ransacking the building, looking for more intel on the Mirror. Most of the darts were out of the immediate area, searching the mountains and the surrounding area. "Rodney?"

"Will you slow down? Hold it-" Rodney sat forward, pointing out the viewport. "Here we go. Right there."

John slowed, bringing the jumper in a little lower. Rodney was pointing at a small dome on top of the roof, not far from the trench that bordered the curved housing of the pulse array. It was the same dark stone as the rest of the building, and from the air it looked like one of the round elevator-access kiosks. The HUD popped up a terrain sensor screen, comparing this dome to the other structures on the roof, and John could see it was somewhat larger. He hit the comm channel. "Jumper One to Trishen. We're about to set down. If you can proceed to the south side of the complex and circle around, we'd appreciate that."

"Yes, yes, I'll do that," she replied. She sounded a little nervous. It caused John to recalculate all the ways she might possibly be planning to screw them over; except he couldn't think of that many ways. If she really didn't want to feed on them, then the only thing they had that she wanted was her way home, and they were giving her that.

John put the jumper down gently near the dome as the others were adjusting their SCBAs, getting their masks on, and grabbing their equipment. They lowered the ramp and John went out first with Ronon and Teyla. The stirred dust settled slowly in the thin air, and he could see the dome had a triangular doorway, sheltered by a low porch roof extending out from the structure. "We're clear. Teyla, you're with Miko and the jumper. Ronon, find a good vantage point and keep an eye out for company."

Teyla nodded, telling them, "Good luck." Ronon jogged off toward one of the platforms that offered a good view of this section of the roof.

John went to the dome with Rodney and Zelenka. The door slid open to reveal a round chamber with a circular bank of consoles on stone pedestals in the center. It wasn't pressurized, though it had the round silver vents in the walls. But the lights that were set into the dark blue ceiling and along the top of the pillars glowed gently as they stepped inside. "Well, this makes sense," Rodney said, acidly thoughtful. "Recognize it?"

"No. Should I?" John circled warily around the room, P-90 aimed, making certain there weren't any lurking surprises.

"It's laid out like the inexplicable chamber of tantalizing energy signatures back in the ruin on the Stargate moon." Rodney frowned as he selected a console, hitting a couple of touchpads. A holographic display blinked into life above it.

"Oh, good," Zelenka said wearily, sitting down on the floor and opening his laptop. "Because we had such good luck with that room."

"Great," John said, and went out to watch the jumper, the life signs detector, and the sky.

Then things started to go wrong.

First the Mirror started to rumble again, a long low sustained groan, as if mammoth granite blocks were grinding against each other under the installation. Vibrations traveled through the roof, just strong enough for John to feel through the soles of his boots. He ducked into the control room to see Rodney frantically checking his tablet. "It's not building up for a discharge," Rodney said, before John could ask. "Signatures are still normal, pulse generator is erratic but working. We should be fine," he finished briskly, lifting his chin.

John pointed back over his shoulder. "Okay, because it sounds really-"

Rodney glared. "I know! Believe me, I know! But it's fine!"

John went out to the observation porch again. The pulse array at the roof's edge blocked the view from here. He keyed his radio and said, "Ronon, this is Sheppard. Can you see the Mirror from your position?"

Ronon's answer came a moment later. "Yes."

John thought, note to self.- teach Ronon to use proper radio protocol. "Is it doing anything?"

"Like what?"

John saw Teyla suddenly appear out of nowhere as she stepped out of the cloaked jumper, her expression caught between annoyance and amusement. John said, "Oh, glowing, turning colors, transporting an armada of alien spaceships into the galaxy-"

Ronon sounded thoughtful. "No, it looks the same."

"Thank you, Ronon. Sheppard out."

Teyla shook her head and turned back to the jumper, disappearing as she stepped onto the ramp.

John waited, and paced. The low rumble from the Mirror didn't seem to increase, as far as he could tell. Then Teyla reported via headset, "Colonel, Miko says the screens show that the darts are returning." Her voice was tight with tension. "They are all moving to the south, toward the shuttle."

John grimaced. "Trishen, you copy that?"

"Yes." Her voice in his headset sounded human, young, and very tense. "What should I do?"

Teyla stepped out of the jumper again, her eyes worried. John made his voice even, telling Trishen, "You want to widen your flight path and vary your pattern. They couldn't pinpoint you in the mountains, so they can't do it here. Just stay out of their way."

"Oh yes, I see." She sounded a little calmer.

"Okay. Just call if you have any problems." John exchanged a look with Teyla, who shook her head and winced. Trishen had suggested this part of the plan herself, and he had just assumed she could handle it. Yeah, there's one of those assumptions again. And they couldn't even see the damn shuttle on the jumper's sensors and follow her progress.

They had been here half an hour already for what Rodney had described as a five minute job, darts were circling the plain to the south and the Mirror was keeping up its steady grumbling threat. John stepped back into the doorway of the lab. "Rodney-"

"Busy!" Rodney snarled. He was standing at the center console, hitting touchpads and glaring at the results. Radek was still on the floor with the laptop and the tablet, apparently comparing one screen to the other while making little abortive gestures suggesting it was an effort not to tear his hair out.

"Rodney, this is going to be tight. I need an ETA," John persisted.

"I don't know," Rodney said through gritted teeth.

And everything's been going so well up to now, John thought. "What's wrong? I thought you had this all worked out."

"So did I." Rodney pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. He looked frustrated and desperate. "It should work, but it won't. The system isn't accepting our corrections."

"What does that mean?" John demanded.

"It means our corrections are so far from being right that the system is refusing to implement them because it would cause the entire installation to disappear in a massive naquadah explosion!" Rodney rubbed his face, then slammed his hands down on the console. "That's what it means.

"Figures cannot be right!" Zelenka shook his head furiously, hair flying. "There must be an error in our calculations, somewhere-"

Miko's voice in the headset said impatiently, "I've just run it again, Dr. Zelenka, it isn't-"

"We've run it over and over again, it's not an error, we don't have time for this!" Rodney snapped. He knotted his fists, as if it was an effort not to punch the console. "We're missing something."

"Right, right. We took account of orbital drift-" Zelenka began to tick the various points off on his fingers. "-of increased ionization in atmosphere, of degradation of singularity field-"

On the other channel, John could hear Miko muttering darkly to herself in Japanese. He stepped back out onto the porch and resisted the urge to beat his head against the wall. In his headset, Ronon's voice rumbled, "Sheppard. What's going on?"

John told him, "Something's wrong with their..something. What's your situation?"

"The same. This area's clear."

"Copy that." John was going to have to put a stop to this, they just didn't have the time to make the damn Mirror work. But he found himself reluctant to doom Trishen. She had held up her end of the bargain so far, and if they couldn't send her back to her own reality, he didn't know what the hell they were going to do with her. Even if she didn't need to feed on humans, they couldn't chance the Wraith finding her. It'll have to be Atlantis, he told himself reluctantly. And once she had seen it, they couldn't let her leave. Not unless the SGC had some sort of settlement program for displaced aliens in the Milky Way. And that was only if they could prove she was safe around people. "Ronon, Teyla-"

From inside the room, Zelenka was saying, "The field phase adjustment-"

Rodney snapped his fingers. "Wait."

John knew that tone. He stepped back into the control room.

Rodney fumbled at his headset, saying urgently. "You, Trishen! When did you say that data was recorded?"

John heard Trishen's voice on the radio channel. "As my ship was pulled into the Mirror. That's why I was so close to it, to collect the data from the buoys-"

"Yes, yes, on the other side of the Mirror!" Rodney crouched down, shouldering Zelenka aside to get to the laptop keyboard, typing frantically. "The phase is-"

"Inverted!" Zelenka clapped a hand to his forehead. "Ali, we are fools!"

"Yes, exactly!" Rodney nodded urgently, still typing. "Well, not me, but you, yes. We've never had a chance for data collection during an active Quantum Mirror activation. Obviously, as the accretion surface prepares for the transition, it inverts the phase. Kusanagi, are you getting this?"

Sounding relieved, Miko's voice replied, "Yes, Dr. McKay, I'm running my figures again now!"

John prompted, "Rodney, still need an ETA."

Rodney pushed to his feet, giving John a harried grimace as he turned to the console. "We've got it. Just let me-Radek, dammit-"

"Enter the numbers, here, here!" Radek stood up, holding the laptop so Rodney could see the screen.

"Colonel," Teyla said in John's headset. "The Wraith scout ship is within range again and the darts are coming back in this direction."

"Crap," John muttered. The Wraith had to be wondering why the Mirror was being so damn active, and they must suspect that someone was messing with it. The darts were coming back to sweep the open areas for any signs of activity. He said, "Copy that, Teyla. Ronon, fall back to the jumper. Zelenka, you too, get out of here."

Zelenka hesitated, and Rodney waved him off. "I've got it, go on!"

Zelenka nodded tensely, jammed the tablet under his arm and grabbed his laptop. He headed for the door and John followed him, watching until he reached Teyla at the jumper's ramp. They both disappeared as they stepped through the cloak and John went back to the control room. "Rodney, now would be good-"

Rodney shook his head, the reflected blue glow of the consoles' screens giving his face an unhealthy cast. "The system's accepting my commands now, I have to make these last adjustments." He touched his headset again, saying, "Trishen, your sensors should detect the change in the accretion surface when the Mirror becomes safe to activate. When that happens-"

Sounding more confident, Trishen's voice replied, "Yes, I lower the shuttle over the surface. I'm ready."

Rodney cut the channel. "Oh, that's good. I'm glad everyone's ready to go," he muttered, still hitting touchpads. "Unfortunately the giant Quantum Mirror decided not to follow our schedule-"

John debated just dragging him away from the console. "Rodney, there's no time now, we can come back when the scout ship's out of range-"

"We can't wait, the hiveship could get here any moment-"

"Then we forget this and blow up the pulse array!"

"That's not helping!" Rodney shouted. He gave John a look that combined impatience and desperation. "Two minutes, that's all, just two minutes! Look, just go, I'll pull the crystals out of the door, they're not going to know I'm here-"

"Rodney, I'm not leaving you here alone!" John yelled, then he realized the reason they were shouting at each other was that the dull roar from the Mirror had gradually grown louder. It was resonating through the stone now, like the building was one giant soundboard. "Are you doing that?" he asked.

"No!" Rodney stared at the console. The Ancient display was flashing symbols that John knew meant "danger." Data, graphs, and images were scrolling through it too rapidly to read. "That has to be a discharge but it's not registering-The system can't even recognize what's happening. It's as if something else is controlling it." Rodney backed away from the console, swallowing nervously. "I think we need to get out of here."

"Oh, you think?" John said incredulously, and they both turned to run.

As they reached the door, the roar of sound escalated suddenly into an ear-piercing blast and the stone underfoot rippled, sending them both staggering sideways. John caught himself on the wall, then caught Rodney, keeping them both upright. It felt like the entire giant structure of stone and metal had turned into jelly. Rodney knotted a fist in John's shirt and pointed. John looked up and saw a silvery haze filling the air above the Mirror platform, extending upward until it vanished from sight high in the upper atmosphere. He could see two darts caught in it, tumbling helplessly in slow motion, as if the air was solidifying around them. Crap, John thought, staring, I think we broke the giant Quantum Mirror He pushed away from the wall, hauling Rodney with him, and ran toward the invisible jumper.

The stone jolting underfoot made it hard to move in a straight line. Just as John was thinking that now would be a really bad time to overshoot the ramp, Ronon appeared so suddenly in front of them that John slammed into his chest.

Ronon grabbed them both and fell backward. John tumbled through the cloak, landing heavily on the ramp between Rodney and Ronon as the jumper snapped into visibility around them. Teyla and Zelenka stood over them, both looking horrified, and Teyla dodged forward to hit the control to raise the ramp. Everyone was trying to talk but the noise was still so intense John could barely hear anything over it. He scrambled up, staggering to his feet and lunging for the cockpit.

Miko pushed out of the pilot's chair, gesturing helplessly to the HUD. The screens were flashing random diagnostics, distorted readings, static. John dropped into the chair, checking the board. Comm was dead, sensors were going crazy. The building was shaking so hard he could feel the jumper starting to bounce. If Trishen's shuttle was still in the air, it was caught in that field, whatever it was. Oh yeah, this is not good.

John knew the instant the ramp shut because the shielding dropped the sound to a bearable level. Rodney stumbled up beside him, catching hold of the co-pilot's seat to steady himself. He stared out the port in horror. "Can we lift off?"

"Good question." John could feel the jumper's resistance through the control yoke. The only thing that did seem to work was the terrain sensors, and they were showing a pressure build-up on the outside of the hull; the shaking had to be climbing the Richter scale to an apocalyptic level. Stay on the ground and be crushed, lift off and break apart, John thought. Six of one, half dozen of the other If the building collapsed under them… He would rather be in the air. His radio was dead so he raised his voice to yell, "Don't take off your breathing units! Find a seat and strap in!"

"Oh God," Rodney said thickly, dropping into the copilot's seat and hastily buckling the straps. John looked back to see the others taking seats on the rear cabin benches, reaching for the safety straps.

The next instant the jumper lurched forward as if something had snatched it off the roof. John slammed back in the seat, the force a solid punch right to his chest. The Mirror platform filled the port as the jumper was sucked down toward it.

The next slam was forward into the port, and the world went silver, then black.