Reliquary

Chapter Three

After the Genii, John regarded all bunkers with suspicion on principle, but the detector still wasn’t finding any life signs, just the low and intermittent power readings. With that evidence, it wasn’t likely anybody had survived down there; or if they had, they had long since departed the area, and maybe the planet.

John sent Ford back to the jumper for some climbing rope and carabiners, then the others stood or crouched around the opening as he, John, and Teyla rigged a safety line. They had lost enough expedition members to dangers that couldn’t be avoided; John would be damned before he lost somebody because of a stupid fall.

“That’s a waste of time,” Kavanagh said, arms folded, his face tight with impatience.

Saving John the trouble, Rodney said, “There’s no way you’re getting me or anybody else — which includes you, whether you like it or not — on that insanely narrow ladder without something to grab on to when it inevitably gives way.”

“There could be a ZPM down there. A half a dozen ZPMs,” Kavanagh snarled. “We need to get down there and find them.”

His expression deeply sardonic, McKay drew breath to answer, but Kolesnikova cut him off by pointing out mildly, “There might be a hundred ZPMs, but they aren’t going anywhere in the next fifteen minutes.”

John checked the line where it was secured to a heavy pillar supporting the gallery. He still didn’t like splitting the team, but in this case there wasn’t much choice. Besides, he could tell Kolesnikova was nervous of the whole idea, and while John was willing to drag Rodney protesting and predicting their imminent deaths into these kinds of situations, he wasn’t willing to do it to the other civilians. At the moment, when they didn’t even know if there was anything useful down there, this was for volunteers only. “Ford, you’ll stay up here with Kolesnikova. Keep up the regular updates with Boerne’s group.”

A flicker of disappointment crossed Ford’s face. The kid was the poster boy for gung-ho; he actually wanted to go down into the dark hole to see what was there and hopefully kick its ass. But he said sharply, “Yes, sir.”

Kolesnikova just nodded, relieved. John could tell she had been willing to go if ordered to, but was more than glad to stay up here. “You will call us if there is anything of interest?”

Rodney leaned over to look down the shaft, his mouth set with distaste. “Call, scream, whichever seems more appropriate at the moment.”

Climbing down one by one with the safety line clipped to a harness was slow but uneventful. John went first and checked out the bottom of the shaft with the P-90’s light while he waited for the others. There was a big space at the bottom, with eight corridors leading off it. The walls were dark gray, metal bonded to rough stone, with the little blue globe lights set high in the ceiling. It was warm, but the air wasn’t as stale as it should have been; some kind of recycling system must still be minimally functional. The odor of rot came and went, drifting on some barely existent breeze. As McKay reached the bottom and extracted himself from his harness, John said, “Searching this place may take a little longer than we thought.”

“Always look on the bright side, Major.” McKay came over to join him at the entrance to the nearest corridor, getting the detector out of a vest pocket. He checked it again, then rolled his eyes. “Except there is no bright side. Power signatures are still present but intermittent. If there is a ZPM here, it’s turned off, drained, running on minimal capacity, or actively trying to play hide and seek with us. We’re going to have to find it the hard way.”

“Color me surprised.” John tapped his headset. “Ford, can you hear me?” No answer. “Crap.” He moved back into the shaft, into the fall of light from above. Kavanagh was nearly down, and Teyla was starting her climb, moving lightly and easily down the awkward ladder. “Ford?” he tried again.

The radio responded immediately, “Here, Major.”

“It looks like the shielding up there is interfering with our communications. We’ll come back here and check in on the hour.”

“Yes, sir. Be careful down there.”

McKay picked a corridor before Kavanagh could dispute the selection. John led the way, putting Teyla at their six. “The construction is more primitive down here than on the upper levels,” Kavanagh pointed out, as John moved his light over the walls and ceiling.

“More support for my theory.” McKay said this in a little singsong, calculated to drive Kavanagh insane.

It worked. “Your theory is crap,” Kavanagh snapped, his eyes on his own detector. “It could have been built later, when their resources started to fail.”

“Kids, don’t make me separate you,” John said, keeping his attention on the corridor ahead. “Or beat you unconscious.” Privately, he thought Rodney was right. The blue light gave everything a spooky glow, but their flashlights showed that the metallic material in the walls was rougher, with rivets and seams. There were gray-green patches that might be some kind of mold, creeping in wherever the metal met stone.

“It is very odd,” Teyla said from behind them. “There is just something that is not…”

Something that’s not right, John finished. Yeah, that too. He found himself straining to listen, but all he could hear were their own movements and the whisper of air in ancient vents.

About twenty paces down the corridor the walls widened into a large circular chamber, with the walkway forming a bridge across a lower level. The platform held a couple of big work stations, the screens shattered and the metal melted from a blast by an energy weapon. Warily, John flashed the P-90’s light across the level below, but all he could see were closed metal doors, three on each side.

Kavanagh immediately went to the first console, wrenching the top off and asking Teyla to hold a light for him. “Don’t touch anything without gloves,” he told them.

“No, really?” McKay said, playing his flashlight over the rubble. “I’ll try to resist the urge to lick the debris.”

John looked down into the well, at the nearest door. Something about this setup gave him a bad feeling. Maybe it was for storage. Volatile materials, something else that needed to be monitored. He looked at Kavanagh, intent on the damaged equipment, Teyla holding the light but still surveying the room warily, and Rodney, who was balancing his flashlight with the detector. The blue light washed out color and bleached skin, making them all look like they had drowned in cold water. John said, “Let’s check this out.”

Rodney just nodded grimly.

The metal steps creaked as they climbed down. John picked a door at random, standing back ready to fire, waiting for McKay to open it. But the circular handle was too stiff for McKay to wrench open on his own. John still felt uneasy about taking both hands off his weapon to help, even with no life signs on McKay’s detector. He was glad Teyla was up on the gallery above them, keeping watch.

John had to put his shoulder to the handle, with McKay hauling from the other side before it squeaked hesitantly into motion. “I saw this in a movie once,” Rodney said through gritted teeth. “Everybody died.”

“I saw this in fifty movies, and it’s never a great idea,” John told him, his voice grating as he struggled with the wheel. He felt the click as it finally gave way and the heavy door shifted a little.

McKay backed away as John swung the P-90 up and pulled the door open. He flashed the light on a little cell, maybe ten by ten, bare stone walls streaked with mold.

The air was dead and stale inside, but it had been so many years the odor of rot was just a ghost, barely enough to make John wince. He was pretty sure he knew what the crumpled little bundle in the corner was.

He stepped inside reluctantly, pausing to note there was no mechanism to open the door, no handle, button, or lever, from the inside. Moving closer he saw the skull and the rib bones, lying in a pile of residue that was all that was left of the rest of the body, flesh and clothing rotted together. “Don’t touch it, or get too close,” Rodney cautioned him from the door, low-voiced. “Sometimes there’s still bacteria, even after years of being sealed in like this. You could get a fungus.”

John had seen enough, anyway. It was human, or close enough to make no difference. He stepped back out and pulled the door shut again. The blue emergency lights showed him Rodney’s expression, his mouth twisted down, his eyes grim. Rodney said, “This was not a hospital.”

Kavanagh was leaning over the gallery rail above, demanding, “What did you find?”

They found corridors, and rooms with more broken equipment and blasted consoles, floors littered with glass and broken ceramics, giant pipes emerging from the ceilings and disappearing into the floors, sealed chambers filled with empty racks for little containers, other rooms that might have been frozen storage. There were also what looked like living quarters, or at least rooms with the stark remnants of metal furniture and no locks on the doors. And there were lots of little cells with monitoring equipment outside; after the first few, they stopped checking for bodies. As Rodney pointed out, it wasn’t like they were going to find anybody alive and waiting to be rescued. The ones they saw that were empty, the doors standing open, were a relief. Imagining what was behind the closed doors was in some ways worse than actually seeing it. “We should be finding bones out in these corridors, too,” Kavanagh had said at one point, “But there’s nothing. That’s anomalous.”

“Everybody who wasn’t in a cell could have escaped,” John had suggested. “Or the people who were locked up were already dead when the attack started. Like the World War II concentration camps, where they’d start trying to gas the prisoners faster when the Allies—”

“Yes, I’m aware of that practice, Major, and thanks so much for the image.” McKay had glared at him. “Why don’t you just hold the flashlight up under your chin and make spooky noises while you’re at it?”

And Kavanagh had said sharply that they didn’t know these were cells, they could have been quarantine rooms for plague victims, and Teyla had said “World War two!” in an appalled and incredulous voice, and the discussion had veered off into unproductive areas.

They had also found stairwells leading down to even lower levels, telling John that the place was far more complex than they had hoped. The first hour stretched into four, then six, then eight, and John returned to the shaft periodically to check in and let the others know they were still alive. He could tell from Ford’s voice that the younger man no longer regretted being left behind.

That intermittent odor of rot and decay was starting to get on John’s nerves, especially since, in the few cells they had opened, the remains had been too desiccated to have much of an odor at all. It made him wonder just what the hell they hadn’t found yet. John had firmly banished all thoughts of zombie movies, and McKay didn’t bring the subject up either. Kavanagh was too intent on the search, and just didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would have been into cheap horror flicks. Teyla was culturally immune. Though she admitted that she would rather be doing just about anything else, including helping Hailing and the other Athosians build latrines in their new village on Atlantica’s mainland.

Now she and Kavanagh were checking out the lower part of a large room full of equipment that looked like it was for synthesizing something. John and McKay, having finished their section, waited on the gallery above.

Groaning under his breath, McKay sat down on the metal floor to consult his PDA. He was making a map as they went along, trying to deduce where the main power generator, whatever it was, might be. McKay and Kavanagh had told each other at least ten times that nothing except a big naquadah generator array or a ZPM could have kept these emergency lights powered for so many years. They had been trying to identify main power conduits, testing them to see which were still hot, and trying to figure out where the cables were coming from. It allowed them to mostly skip the areas where the emergency lights weren’t working, except when one of their flashlights caught something Kavanagh or McKay found fascinating and they just had to go explore.

John sat on his heels beside McKay, rolling his head to ease the tension in his neck. The air still wasn’t stale, but the smell was getting steadily worse. It made him wonder how many people had been down here when the surface bombing started, if the shielding had protected them or just delayed the inevitable. From the peculiar taint in the air, he figured it was the latter. Of course, considering what they could have been doing to the people in those locked cells, that might have been no loss.

And your imagination is out of control, John told himself grimly, trying to shake off his mood. He was beginning to think it was time to call it a night. According to his watch, it should be getting dark up on the surface. The MALP’s telemetry data had told them that it was summer in this hemisphere and that the night should only last about seven hours. Besides, his stomach was starting to grumble, and McKay, who had hypoglycemia, had bummed the last power bar a half-hour ago.

McKay put the PDA away in his pack and sat back with a sigh, looking at the others below. “Kavanagh might just get a gold star for working and playing well with others today after all.”

John eyed Kavanagh. Once they had gotten down here, the man had settled down and concentrated on the task. At the moment he was examining something deep inside the remains of a dead work station, addressing an occasional remark to Teyla, who was holding the light for him. They seemed to be getting on well enough, probably because Teyla didn’t fall into any of the normal categories of military, civilian scientist, or technical support personnel that Kavanagh was used to dealing with. He treated her like a respected professional in another field. “He gives Elizabeth enough trouble.”

“Yes, that, of course, but he’s usually very cautious when it comes to risking lives,” Rodney said. “His own, true, but also everyone else’s. Especially stupid unnecessary risks, like climbing down that ladder without a safety rope. And triggering that power surge that opened the shaft. He had no idea what that was. Never mind the possibility of electrocution, he didn’t know what it was going to do. It could have been an intruder destruction sequence. Elizabeth could be sending somebody with a bag to collect what was left of us right now.”

John pretended to consider it. “I don’t think they’d use a bag. I think they’d be more respectful than that.”

Rodney gave him a withering look. John relented and added seriously, “Maybe he’s overcompensating. From what Grodin said, Elizabeth did practically hand him his ass.” John and Rodney hadn’t been there to see it. That had been during the infamous bug-neck incident, when their puddlejumper had been stuck halfway through a Stargate and they had only had the thirty-eight minute duration of the active wormhole to figure out a solution. Kavanagh had thought the jumper would explode, and the force would be transferred through the wormhole and take out the ’gate room. Somehow, in all the tension of the moment, this had led to a public dressing down from Weir.

Whatever Kavanagh had been on about, John didn’t think Elizabeth should have lowered the boom in public. John had had more than his share of public dressing downs, and it wasn’t a command style he preferred. It was only going to cause more problems, but when it had happened Elizabeth must have been feeling the time pressure intensely. Apparently she had been stiff with Hailing about something too, and he was easy-going to a fault.

But whatever had happened, John wasn’t sure he felt comfortable pointing fingers about it. He wasn’t exactly the sterling example of good chain-of-command relationships at the best of times, and he had made more than his share of mistakes. Big mistakes. “You know Kavanagh’s still chafing. He’s just going to have to get over it.”

Rodney was frowning thoughtfully. “Yes. But the man did a stint in the SGC, I can’t believe he never had his ass handed to him before. That place is practically the ass-handing capital of the world.”

“I got that impression.” Ford and many of the others had been part of the SGC, but John had first found out about the Stargate program in Antarctica, about fifteen minutes after nearly crashing a helicopter with General O’Neill as a passenger while being chased by a stray energy drone accidentally launched from the Earth Atlantis outpost. His military career had been fraught enough that he really hadn’t been all that surprised by it. He also thought the SGC needed a sign outside that said You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps. Of course, as someone who was for the moment permanently stationed in Atlantis, he wasn’t in any position to criticize.

Below, Kavanagh finally extracted himself from the tangle of wrecked equipment. John pushed to his feet to call down, “Hey, we need to pack it in for tonight. It’s getting dark up top.”

Kavanagh stared up at him for a moment, squinting in the dim blue light, his expression blank. Then he said, “Oh, yes, of course.”

They made camp outside the repository, in a half-ruined structure facing the plaza where the cloaked puddlejumper rested. It was made out of cut stone blocks, its roof one big still-stable slab. There was a little crumbling around where the door had originally been, but otherwise it was mostly intact.

Corrigan was saying, “I found some indications that part of the city might have been in place before construction started on the repository, but most of it is about the same age. We’re not looking at an intrusion into a long-term occupation site.” He had found writing carved into some of the buildings, some in Ancient and some that was completely unfamiliar. Teyla hadn’t recognized it, either. There had also been some decorative carving, mostly worn down to nothing by the weather, just a few ghostly traces of leaves and vines. Corrigan continued, “I think the Ancients were building this place with the help of another group. Whether they were humans or not, whether they were native to this planet or not, I have no idea.”

They were sitting around a battery lamp, the bedrolls and other supplies for the night stacked against the wall, the life sign detector out to make sure nothing crept up on them in the dark. John would have preferred a campfire, but it was really too warm for one, and the lamp was an adequate if less comforting substitute. They could hear the sea from here, the distant roar of the waves rolling up the rocky beach; after months of living in Atlantis, it was a deceptively homey sound.

Listening to Corrigan, Kolesnikova had been drawing patterns in the dirt with a finger. “I think we are all hoping, after what our friends found down in the bunker, that the people who did that were not the Ancients.” She looked up, regarding them all seriously. “Are we not?”

“Yeah. We are. At least I am.” John looked at Teyla, who just nodded soberly.

Kavanagh’s mouth was set in a grim line. “I still believe what we found was part of a hospital. And considering that, there may have been a pressing need for it, which explains why it was built inside the repository.”

John had settled across the battery lamp from Rodney, so he had a good view of the elaborate eye roll, the rubbing the hands over the face, and the exasperated gesture to whatever deity might be listening to grant something, possibly patience or strength, to deal with Kavanagh’s boneheaded stupidity. At least, that was John’s interpretation of what Rodney was doing over there.

“But with the Stargate, this place is only moments away from Atlantis,” Teyla said pointedly. “If these people needed medical help, why not take them back there?”

“Whether it was built by the Ancients or not, the underground was not a hospital, or not just a hospital,” Kolesnikova told her. “There are devices similar to the quarantine system in Atlantis, rooms that must have been laboratories, also the remains of defensive capabilities, of weapons manufacture.”

With a snort, McKay picked up the pack of MREs, digging through it and holding the bags up to read the labels by the lamplight. “A hospital, quarantine laboratories, and weapons development. What does that sound like to everybody, dead people in little cells aside?”

“Biological warfare,” John said, setting a water bottle aside. He saw Ford exchange a troubled expression with Teyla, and Kinjo gazed out the empty doorway toward the repository. The others just looked grim.

Kavanagh frowned. “Not necessarily.”

“Oh, please.” Still flipping through the MREs, McKay threw him a sour look. “You’ve been theorizing in advance of your data since we got here.”

“Atlantis has literally miles of laboratory space,” Kavanagh said, his voice acidic. “Why would they need to put a biological weapons development laboratory out here, in a structure meant to house a meeting place for other races or other human civilizations?”

“They didn’t,” McKay told him. He had finally selected an MRE and proceeded to rip the package open. “True, the working laboratory space on Atlantis is phenomenal. If they were pursuing a bioagent to use against the Wraith, we’ll find it there. This just supports my point that the lower levels were not built by the Ancients, or at least not the Atlantean Ancients.”

It was Kavanagh’s turn to roll his eyes. Kolesnikova rescued the supply pack from Rodney and briskly started to pass out the bagged meals, putting an end to the conversation with, “Let’s speak of something else while we eat, shall we?”

John thought that was the best idea he had heard all evening, and cut off Kavanagh’s attempt at a rebuttal by turning to Teyla and explaining loudly what chicken tetrazzini was and why she probably wouldn’t like it.

Earlier, John had taken the puddlejumper up to dial the Stargate back to Atlantis and transmit his report, updating Elizabeth on what they had found, their inconclusive conclusions so far, and what Rodney and Kavanagh had said about the possibility of finding a ZPM. He had practically heard her reserving judgment over the suggestion of an Ancient facility that might have experimented on humans. And she must have read more in John’s voice than he had intended, because she had asked, “How much more time do you think we should devote to this?”

John had let his breath out. “At least another couple of days. Seriously, from what McKay and the others are turning up, there’s every chance there is a ZPM down there somewhere. What state it’s in is another story. But if we can’t find it in the next couple of days, I’d recommend bringing in another team for a longer stay. We just can’t pass up this opportunity.”

“Yes, I agree. We’ll reevaluate in twenty-four hours, if anything happens to change your opinion.” There was a pause. “You sound resigned, rather than enthusiastic.”

John hesitated, considering asking her if she had ever seen Dawn of the Dead, or read The Stand. No, probably not. “Well, you haven’t seen the working conditions. I’m going to complain to my union rep.”

“I see.” She had sounded amused, which was good.

Now people were digging into their food with the usual range of reactions from disgust to dogged tolerance. McKay actually claimed to like MREs and never complained about them; it was one of the things about him that made him an unexpectedly low-maintenance companion on field missions.

Kolesnikova was asking Corrigan about Earth’s Atlantis myths. “How did the stories of Atlantis come to center on the Greek islands, when the actual city landed in the Antarctic region? Or was the word carried to Plato somehow, and he set his version of the story in the land he was familiar with?”

“That’s always been my theory,” Corrigan told her, warming to the subject. “Now, the island of Thera was always associated with Atlantis, usually because of a volcanic eruption that destroyed the Greek settlement there. Part of the island still exists today, with a giant hole in the center where the eruption occurred.” He looked absent for a moment. “There’s a huge number of myths about Greek vampires — Vrykolakas — associated with the modern island, which is called Santorini. I hadn’t really given that any thought until we came here and encountered the Wraith, but the association with Atlantis, and vampires, is a little…indicative, if you think about it.”

Kolesnikova sighed. “Perhaps the Atlanteans visited Thera, and left some warning about the Wraith there, that was perhaps destroyed by the eruption. Cretan civilization was also thought to be very advanced, was it not?”

McKay was listening skeptically. “It’s probably a coincidence.” He turned to John abruptly, asking, “Do you still find this place incredibly disturbing? Again, dead bodies in little cells aside.”

John lifted his brows, surprised at the abrupt turn. “Yes. It’s creepier during the day than Atlantis ever has been at night, including during the time the Darkness creature was drifting around eating power sources and attacking people.”

McKay nodded. “Right. I’ve got a theory about that.”

“A theory?” John stared at him, brows drawing together. “Earlier today you said I was insane.”

“That’s beside the point.” McKay shifted forward, explaining intently, “We know the Ancient technology responds to humans who have the Ancient gene, either naturally or artificially with the ATA therapy. We know the receptors must emit some kind of field that allows them to interact with the human nervous system, even though we can’t isolate it yet. And though it often seems to work best when the operator is in physical contact with the device, it’s not always necessary. So that field must be broadcast continually all over Atlantis, from the lights to the stations in the operations tower. You’ve gotten used to the presence of that field, even though you’re not consciously aware of it. The lack of it is affecting you here because parts of this place are built with the same type of materials that were used to build Atlantis, even if the construction is inferior. Those materials may be affecting your perceptions, making you expect to experience the field when it isn’t there, causing a cognitive dissonance. Or—” McKay interrupted himself, staring distractedly into the distance. “Maybe these people tried to duplicate the field for their own purposes, and it’s broadcasting in a different range, causing us — you — to—”

“Hold it.” John put that Freudian slip of “us” together with the way McKay had shut down the conversation about Corrigan’s vampire theory, which, if you had to pick one or the other, went a lot better with dinner than the hospital versus biological warfare development lab argument. He said accusingly, “Dammit, Rodney, you feel it too. Why didn’t you say something about it when I asked you earlier?”

“It was Dr. McKay who first mentioned the cannibalistic mutants with psychic powers,” Teyla contributed helpfully.

McKay frowned at her in a wounded et tu, Brute way.

The others looked confused. “Cannibalistic mutants what?” Ford demanded.

Kavanagh was still stolidly eating his MRE. He shook his head in disgust. “I wonder about you people sometimes.”

Corrigan was pretending to be engrossed in his field notes, and John caught Kinjo mouthing the word ‘sometimes?’ at Boerne.

Kolesnikova held up her hands placatingly. “All that aside, I have had the gene therapy, and I too feel something is not right about this place. I haven’t had as much experience with exploration as you all, so I had put it down to that. I thought it was normal to be afraid all the time.”

“It is, but I don’t think it’s just that,” John told her.

“Which is what I just said,” Rodney insisted.

“Maybe it’s something else that’s making you guys jumpy,” Ford said. “Maybe something in the air down there.” He threw a cautious look at Kavanagh, apparently not wanting to be caught in the middle of the earlier argument. “If they were experimenting with chemical or biological warfare…”

“There may be dangers down there our equipment can’t detect,” Kolesnikova added.

Rodney said, not helpfully, “If there was anything airborne, it was too late the moment that shaft opened.”

Kavanagh shook his head. “The air down there isn’t stale,” he said, obviously giving it serious consideration. “It’s being recycled, and must be drawn in from outside. There were probably scrubbers in the system, though it’s unlikely they would last this long. But the air movement has been constant; anything released in the destruction would have been flushed away long ago. We should, however, avoid opening any more of those sealed cells. If there’s a contagion, it’s in there.”

Teyla nodded, her face sober. “Yes, there must be a constant source of fresh air. There is no odor of mold or rot.”

“It does stink down there,” John countered, surprised she hadn’t noticed, and that Kavanagh hadn’t mentioned it. “Kind of musty, and rotten. Really rotten. You could smell it when the shaft opened, and it got worse the longer we stayed down there. Just like you’d expect from…” Everybody was staring at him quizzically. “What?”

Kavanagh was frowning slightly at him, the way you did when you thought someone was making an inappropriate joke. “There’s no odor, Major.”

If it hadn’t been Kavanagh, who didn’t have a sense of humor at the best of times, John would have suspected they were screwing with him. He still suspected it. “Oh, come on.”

“It is true, Major Sheppard,” Teyla assured him carefully. “There is no odor of death. Salt from the sea, rock, metal, dust, but nothing foul.”

Ford nodded agreement, and none of the others objected. John looked at Rodney for help, always a mistake. Rodney was squinting at him with deep suspicion. “Are you seeing things? Or hearing things? You know olfactory and auditory hallucinations are a sign of—”

“Stop. It.” John glared at him, then grabbed his pack, firmly stuffing his water bottle back in. “We need to get some rest, people. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

Teyla stood out on the plaza under the stars, breathing the sea air. She was on the third watch, after Major Sheppard and Lieutenant Ford, and was rather enjoying the peace and quiet. Like Atlantica, this planet had two small moons, one nearly full, the other just a rising sickle shape, and they lit the plaza and the old ruins with a gentle pearly glow. She thought Sheppard was right; there was something in the air about the repository, something wrong in the building’s very walls. Something that didn’t seem inherent to the ruined city, or the sea and the plain beyond it. Even this small distance away from the structure, her spirits had lifted a little. Enough that she was able to enjoy the night air and the sky, to feel comforted by the small sounds her friends made as they slept in safety.

A footstep on the pavement made her turn and she saw a figure step out of the doorway of their shelter. She moved toward it, recognizing him by his height and the way he stood. “Dr. Kavanagh? Were you unable to sleep?”

His head turned toward her, and he said a little uncertainly, “Yes, I just needed some fresh air. It’s all right.”

Teyla’s brow knit in concern, and she stepped closer, trying to get a better look at him in the dim light. “You do not sound well. If you are ill, you should tell Major Sheppard and return to Atlantis immediately. If there is some contagion in the lower levels—”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that. I’m not physically ill,” he assured her so readily that Teyla believed him. “It’s just…” He gestured helplessly. “I’m not sure what it is. Just restlessness, I suppose.”

Teyla could understand that. She felt restless herself. “Do you truly think… I cannot believe that the Ancestors would use this place to experiment on humans, even if they meant to find a way to destroy the Wraith.”

Kavanagh didn’t hesitate. “They wouldn’t. McKay’s an ass, but he’s right about that. Frankly, they wouldn’t need to. Their science was so advanced, they could run their experiments as simulations on artificially created genetic material. They wouldn’t have needed human test subjects at all, much less unwilling ones.”

Teyla nodded, feeling a flash of relief. It was just one other learned man’s opinion, but from what she knew of him, Kavanagh was a very unsentimental person. She thought that he didn’t romanticize the Ancestors the way her people and many of the expedition members did.

He took a deep breath, putting his hands in his pants pockets. “There’s some other factor here. Something we aren’t quite understanding, or interpreting correctly. You know, I thought I had it earlier today, but now I’m not so sure.” He shook his head, started to turn away back toward their shelter.

Teyla heard stone click and slide, and reached out to steady him as his boot slipped. He caught her arm, leaning heavily on it for a moment, then found his footing. “Sorry,” he said. He lifted a hand to his head, saying a little vaguely, “Maybe I’m more tired than I thought.”

“You should go back and rest,” Teyla urged him. Like McKay, like all the scientists, Kavanagh would work himself to exhaustion if allowed to. “We have another long day tomorrow.”

“I will,” he said, still sounding distracted. “Good night, Teyla.”

“Good night, Dr. Kavanagh.” Absently scratching her arm, she watched him make his way back toward their shelter, just a dark shape in the shadows. He had spoken of “another factor” and she thought he was right. There was something here they just didn’t understand yet.