Unascended

Chapter Eighteen

“Well, that was interesting,” Daniel said, collapsing into one of the jumper’s seats. He did not appear badly injured, although a bruise was rising on his cheek.

“I am just glad you are all right,” Teyla said as Rodney settled into the pilot’s seat and began checking the jumper’s readouts.

“I’m fine. That could have gone better, though. I’m sorry.”

“It could have gone much worse,” Teyla said. “You are good at talking to people in volatile situations.” She had to admit that Daniel had handled Sora well, keeping her talking and seizing the opportunity to get the upper hand as soon as it presented itself. And he had handled her without hurting her any more than was necessary, even though she was a stranger to him and he had no particular reason to be sympathetic to his kidnapper.

Daniel shrugged. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“I still think you are a terrible diplomat.”

“I’ve been told worse things,” he said. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I can be stubborn.”

“Really?” Teyla asked sweetly.

“It’s not my best quality.”

“Still, I admit that you do have some good qualities.”

“Well. Good. I think.”

“Can we please go find Elizabeth now?” Rodney asked.

Ronon dropped down to straddle one of the jumper seats. “What are we going to do about Sora?”

“Nothing for the moment,” Teyla said. “When we return to Atlantis, I expect we should have a talk with Ladon Radim.”

“He already doesn’t trust her.”

“But he may not know that she has allies among the scientists that he is working with. Or that she is close to solving the problem of how to activate the ATA gene.”

“Not that close,” Daniel said. “What do you think she would do if she figured it out?”

“That depends on how many successes she has,” Teyla said. “Even the recessive ATA gene is rare among the peoples of the Pegasus galaxy. Dr. Beckett tried the process on many Athosians, and none of them acquired the ATA gene as a result.”

“Me neither,” Ronon said. “But apparently some Satedans have it.”

“It’s not exactly common on Earth,” Daniel said. “SGC personnel who have the gene are more likely to get sent to Atlantis, so that skews the numbers. But, assuming that she could find a number of people who have the right genetic makeup, then what? It would be stupid for them to try to invade Atlantis at this point.”

“It would,” Teyla said. “But I expect Pride of the Genii is less heavily guarded. If I were Ladon Radim, I would remedy that.”

“That’s all we need,” Ronon said. “Sora Tyrus with her own warship.”

“That is a problem for another day,” Teyla said. “Rodney, can you get the jumper working again?”

“Probably,” Rodney said, sliding into the pilot’s seat. “It’s not like it’s exactly a good idea to crash-land these things, but the Ancients built them to be remarkably sturdy. It’s like they envisioned that future civilizations were going to come along and fly them very, very badly. They apparently practiced idiot-proofing for the ages.”

“Maybe the Ancients also had a lot of really bad pilots,” Daniel said. “We tend to assume these things are like fighter planes, but maybe they’re more the SUVs of Ancient civilization. Complete with airbags and cameras to help you back up.”

“Rodney?” Teyla prompted, in an attempt to head off an incipient discussion of whether Ancient transportation methods were more like one or another transportation method used on Earth. While she was willing to grant that he had handled Sora well, she still felt that Daniel Jackson had an uncanny talent for digressing from whatever the matter at hand might be.

“I can fix it,” Rodney said. “Just give me a few minutes to get everything powered back up and make sure we aren’t missing anything essential that would make this a very short trip.”

The silence as Rodney worked on the jumper was an uncomfortable one. “You really believe it is Elizabeth,” Teyla said finally.

Rodney didn’t lift his head from the jumper’s readouts. “Yes. It’s Elizabeth.”

“She was frozen in space, unable to think or experience anything,” Teyla said. “It is hard to see how she could have ascended while in that state.”

“Maybe she had some kind of help,” Daniel said. “The Ancient who helped me Ascend the first time, Oma Desala — she used to make a habit of helping members of less evolved species achieve Ascension. I was going to die, and she stepped in and helped me take that last step. Now, doing that didn’t work out so well for her in the end, but it’s not inconceivable that someone here in the Pegasus Galaxy could be doing the same thing.”

“We have never encountered such a being before,” Teyla said. “And many of us have died, or been on the point of death.” She felt a flicker of anger at the idea that someone who could have helped her friends who had died might have been watching them and judged them unworthy. The ways of the Ancestors were mysterious, and yet…

“I know,” Daniel said, his eyes on her face. “I know. Believe me, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what it means that I got to Ascend and other people I knew good people, people who deserved to live, some of them a lot more than I did died. It’s not that I deserved it more. It’s probably not even that Oma Desala liked me more, although I wouldn’t entirely rule out reasons that random. It’s that I’d already gone a long way down that path already. It’s like being able to pull someone into a boat if they can grab a rope that you throw them. It’s not that you don’t care about people who are unconscious in the water. But you can’t help them if they can’t grab that rope.”

“We know Elizabeth tried to Ascend,” Rodney said.

“And we know that she repeatedly failed,” Teyla said. “Is it not more likely that this is some new trickery of the Replicators?”

Ronon shook his head. “Why would you rather think that?”

“Because I had given up hope,” Teyla snapped. “And the last thing I want is to begin hoping that we will find my friend, when what is most likely is that she is dead and this is only some device of our enemies made in her shape.”

“I understand that,” Rodney said. “Believe me, I’ll be the first to say that pessimism is usually a good way to avoid being horribly disappointed.”

“And yet you believe.”

“She talked to me,” Rodney said. “And, before you say it, it was not a spiritual experience, if by ‘spiritual experience’ you mean ‘thing that isn’t really happening.’ She was there in my head, and she talked to me, and as someone who’s had hypoxia-induced hallucinations before, I think I’m in the best position to say that this wasn’t one.”

“I am not sure that is how I would define a spiritual experience,” Teyla said.

“If I had a spiritual experience, it was the spiritual experience of having Ascended Elizabeth talk to me,” Rodney said. “That is one hundred percent as spiritual as I get. And it certainly wasn’t a hallucination, unless we’re willing to accept that it’s entirely a coincidence that someone who thinks they’re Elizabeth is wandering around with amnesia right now.”

“I think you’re scared to find out if it’s true or not,” Ronon said to Teyla.

“Is that so hard for you to understand?”

Ronon shrugged. “No. I don’t want it to be some Replicator either. And if Sheppard were here, he’d be going crazy trying not to get his hopes up. But it’s better to find out the truth.”

Teyla took a deep breath and then let it out. “Sometimes you are very wise, my friend,” she said.

“Nice to know I’m not always wrong,” Ronon said.

“I did not mean it that way,” Teyla protested, but Ronon was smiling.

“All right,” Rodney said. “I think we’re back in business.”

“You think, or you’re sure?” Daniel said, looking skeptically at the jumper’s controls. “I’d rather not crash in this thing twice.”

“I’m never a hundred percent sure,” Rodney said. “We’re flying around in machines that are thousands of years old. They didn’t come with a warranty. But, yes, I am as sure as I ever am that there’s no particular reason that the jumper is going to crash again today.”

“Well, that’s comforting,” Daniel said after a moment.

“So can we go?” Rodney said, his hands poised over the jumper’s control panel.

“Take us to Sateda,” Teyla said.

The open square by the gate on Sateda was as usual full of people making their way between the buildings or sitting outside them to drink tea or talk. Every time they came there, Teyla saw more signs of repairs in progress; windows that had been boarded up a month before now boasted shutters that could be opened to let in light and air, and a few had been mended with scraps of colored glass leaded together so that their patchwork surfaces shone in the sun.

Another jumper was already parked in the square, with a small crowd gathered around it.

“Major Lorne is here with a team to trade,” Teyla said, remembering the fact only as she spoke.

“I knew that,” Ronon said.

She gave him a sideways look. “We could have radioed and asked them to find out if anyone has seen Elizabeth.”

“We were already on our way,” Ronon said. “Or are you saying you wouldn’t have come just because someone else was here?”

“No, I would have come anyway,” Teyla said. It was not the way of the military on Earth, with their belief that one team should be interchangeable with another. She understood their reasoning, and still did not always agree with it. Elizabeth was her friend, and she and Rodney and Ronon could not sit by letting someone else search for her if there was a chance she could be found.

The jumper’s subspace radio crackled to life. “Teyla, report,” John said. “Where are you?”

“We have just landed on Sateda,” Teyla said, as Rodney brought the jumper down to a landing in the square. “Pursuing a lead.”

“Lorne just radioed in,” John said. She could hear the tightness in his voice, and her own breath caught. “He says they’ve found Elizabeth.”

The jumper was barely on the ground before Ronon was heading out the door, followed at a brisk pace by the rest of the team. Teyla could see the people gathered near the other jumper as she jogged across the square, Major Lorne and Dr. Zelenka standing in the center of the crowd talking to a dark-haired woman who turned toward them in disbelief as they approached.

Teyla found herself face to face with Elizabeth Weir, looking just as Teyla remembered her, though wearing clothes she must have acquired on one of the planets she had visited. “Rodney. Teyla. Ronon?” She spoke their names tentatively, as if not sure whether her memory for them was to be trusted.

“Yes,” Teyla said, and felt her heart lift, even though she knew that they had not yet proven that this was truly Elizabeth. “You remember us.”

“I remember some things,” Elizabeth said. “It’s coming back slowly. For a while I had no idea where I was from. I couldn’t remember Earth, or the Atlantis expedition, or… ” Elizabeth’s expression grew abruptly troubled. “Where is Colonel Sheppard?”

“Back in Atlantis,” Teyla reassured her. Of course she must expect John to be in charge of the team, and guess that something terrible had befallen him if he were not. “He is currently in charge of the city.”

Elizabeth’s eyebrows went up. “Colonel Sheppard? Not that I’m complaining, but I’m surprised that the IOA went for that.” She shook her head. “That was the first thing that came to mind, and now I can’t remember what the IOA is.”

“It takes some time,” Daniel said. Elizabeth turned to look at him, noticing him for the first time, as Zelenka began herding away the curious Satedan onlookers to give them a little more privacy to talk.

“I know you,” she said. “But I can’t remember your name.”

“Daniel Jackson,” he said. “I’m with the SGC on Earth. I’m just here in Atlantis temporarily.”

“That’s what they all say,” Elizabeth said. It sounded like her, that dry sense of humor. Could a Replicator, or some other creature inhabiting Elizabeth’s shape, seem so much like her? And yet if her blood were filled with nanites, she might be a time bomb completely unawares. “I remember you, though. We dealt with… dangerous parasites?”

“That could be either the Goa’uld or Senator Kinsey,” Daniel said. “But, yes. You were briefly in charge of the SGC. It was an interesting experience.”

“You’d think it would be memorable,” Elizabeth said.

“You’re probably going to have partial amnesia for a while,” Daniel said. “I did, after I came back from being Ascended.”

Elizabeth looked a little skeptical. “Ascended? Is that what happened to me?”

Rodney shook his head at her. “You don’t remember?”

“No. I remember waking up in a field, but I don’t remember anything about how I got there or where I came from. And before that… ” She shook her head. “Something about an attack by the Asurans?”

“That is right,” Teyla said. “That was when you… ” She hesitated, unsure how best to complete the sentence.

“Died,” Rodney said bluntly. “At least, we thought you were dead.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “Apparently not.”

“I’ll go report to Colonel Sheppard,” Lorne said, and Teyla nodded as he stepped inside his jumper to do it. They would have to decide what to do about Elizabeth now, and that was not a conversation Lorne would want to have in front of Elizabeth herself.

Elizabeth was frowning at Rodney. “What happened to your hair?”

“There was this thing with the Wraith,” he said. At her stricken expression, he hurried on, “They didn’t suck years of my life out of me. It was actually a lot more disturbing than that. I’m fine, now, though. I mean, except for some traumatic… anyway, the hair is just one of those quirky things that happens in Pegasus, right?”

“Quirky,” Elizabeth said. “That’s one way of putting it.” She looked up at Ronon. “It’s good to see all of you.”

Ronon looked at her for a long moment, seeming to have run out of words abruptly, and then threw his arms around her and hugged her, lifting her entirely off the ground in the process. Elizabeth hung onto his hands when he finally released her, as if touching him made him seem more real.

It was as if a glass barrier between them had been broken. Teyla stretched out her hands, and Elizabeth took them, leaning in to touch her forehead to Teyla’s. Her hands were warm, and felt as they should in Teyla’s own. Her smell seemed wrong for a moment, and then Teyla decided that what was missing was the familiar scent of perfumed toiletries mingled with Air Force issue laundry detergent and the ever-required coffee.

Elizabeth hugged Rodney, who returned the embrace more awkwardly. “I like the hair,” she said.

“Really?” he asked, drawing himself up a little bit. “I’ve been wondering if I should dye it.”

“Leave it,” Elizabeth said.

Lorne emerged from the jumper. “Sheppard’s on his way,” he said.

Teyla shook her head. “And who is he leaving in charge in Atlantis?”

“Me, as soon as I can get back there,” Lorne said. He shrugged. “You didn’t really think he was going to sit this one out, did you?”

“I did not,” Teyla admitted.

“Dr. Zelenka, Dr. Lynn, you’re coming back to Atlantis with me,” Lorne said. “Colonel Sheppard is calling off the trade mission until we get this sorted out.”

Lorne dialed the gate and headed through with the two scientists. It was not long before there was the sound of the gate activating again, and then the boiling blue of the wormhole forming. “Colonel Sheppard, I presume,” Elizabeth said, and turned to watch as John strode through.

Lorne had barely set foot in the control room when Sgt. Anthony called in from the alpha site. “Sir, we’ve got problems,” Anthony said.

“What now?” Lorne asked, sliding into the seat beside Airman Salawi, who returned her attention to her computer screen. “We need that alpha site.”

“The new equipment we brought out is falling apart, too. The tents are just coming apart in pieces. The water cans look like somebody set them on a hot stove.”

Lorne waved a hand at Radek, who had been on his way out of the control room. Radek came back up the stairs reluctantly, probably wondering why he was being deprived of ten minutes to grab a cup of coffee before anyone piled new technical problems on his head.

“Just the person we need,” he said.

Radek turned and regarded him dubiously over the rim of his glasses. “It is never a good sign when people say that.”

“The team out at the alpha site is having equipment problems. Weird ones. What about the water trailer?” he asked over the radio.

“It’s fine so far.”

There was something about this that was nagging at Lorne. “Stand by, Sergeant,” he said. “You too, doc.” He called up a view of the pier on the security cameras. Several tents were set up there, anchored with some ingenuity to the available supports. All of them looked structurally sound despite the chill wind that was whipping across the pier.

“Lt. Winston?” he said over the radio.

“This is Winston.”

“Have you been having any problems with the tents you set up on the pier?”

“No problems, sir,” Winston said. “All of them check out fine. I really think that the damaged equipment must have been mishandled. You’d be amazed how much damage Marines can do to supplies, sir. They’re beasts.”

“Let’s not start an inter-service war over some tents falling apart,” Lorne said.

“No, sir,” Winston said, sounding at least a little chastened.

Lorne switched the feed over to Anthony at the alpha site. “Sergeant, is any of your personal gear also damaged?”

“Let me take a look at my pack,” Anthony said. “Son of a bitch.”

“I’m assuming that’s a yes.”

“The strap tore when I picked it up.”

“Sir, my watch band broke,” PFC Harper said over the radio.

“Just snapped?”

There was a momentary pause. “Actually, it looks kind of melted,” she said.

“Okay. Sit tight. I’m going to get one of the scientists out there to figure out what’s going on.”

“You think it’s some kind of freaky radiation or something?” Anthony asked. He sounded more than a little nervous. “We ran all the standard scans.”

“Run them again.”

He turned to Radek. “My team out at the alpha site has their gear mysteriously falling apart. Several tents, water cans, a watch band, and the straps on Wilson’s pack. No unusual radiation, weird glowing rocks, people aging a hundred years in a day, or anything else out of the ordinary.”

“The people appear unaffected?”

“They seem fine. The jumper itself seems to be working fine. So does a water trailer we sent out.”

“Let us see what the radiation scan shows. In the meantime—"

“Yes, get coffee, go.” He waited while Harper fired up the jumper and used its systems to scan for unusual radiation levels or any other change from the baseline readings. Radek was back, travel mug in hand, by the time Anthony came back on the line.

“Nada,” Anthony said. “Nothing. But something weird’s happening out here. We’re not going to start falling apart, are we?” His voice rose to a perceptibly higher pitch.

“Calm down, Sergeant,” Lorne said. “You’ve already been working out there for hours, and you’re fine, right?”

“So far!”

“Just sit tight, and we’ll figure this out,” he said.

There was the sound of discussion in the background, and then Anthony said, “Harper just took another look at the water trailer.”

“Let me guess,” Lorne said. “It sprung a leak.”

“No, sir. But all its tires are flat.”

Radek leaned in to speak into the microphone. “It sounds from what you are telling us that all the gear that is affected is plastic or synthetic materials.”

There was brief discussion on the other end of the line. “I think you’re right,” Anthony said.

“You want to go out there and take a look?” Lorne said.

Radek hesitated, and then switched off his radio.

After a moment, Lorne did the same. “What?”

“I will send someone. But whoever we send will need to stay on the planet until we find an answer. I would prefer to remain in a position to analyze whatever data they can transmit to us here in Atlantis.”

“If there’s some kind of weird effect, we should get our people out of there.”

“If it were some form of radiation, I would agree with you, but the jumper’s scans say no. I will send someone to confirm that, but we have no reason to believe the jumper itself is malfunctioning.”

“Not at the moment, no.”

“So, either this is some effect we do not understand at all — in which case we should quarantine the affected personnel just as a precaution — or there is the possibility that I like the least. That we are dealing with some kind of microorganism that specifically attacks plastic and other synthetic materials.”

“That would be bad,” Lorne said after a moment.

“Yes. We have hazmat gear, but—”

“But it’s made of plastic,” Lorne finished. He closed his eyes for a moment. “I’ve been out to the alpha site. And in the supply depot with the equipment they brought back.”

“Have you noticed any effect?”

Lorne examined the soles of his shoes, and pulled out a plastic-coated pen from his pocket. He tried bending it experimentally between his hands, but it didn’t give in response to gentle pressure. “Apparently not.”

“Maybe I am wrong, then. Or maybe it requires longer exposure.”

“All right,” he said. “Get somebody out there and let’s figure this out. And get the linguistics people to step up trying to translate the inscriptions they found on those rocks. If whoever was there before left us a message, it’s starting to sound important to figure out what that is.”

Teyla could see the moment John saw Elizabeth, the moment he stopped, swallowing hard, and stood as if frozen in place as Elizabeth began to cross the square toward him. He had lost too many people, Teyla knew, too many friends and teammates dead or gone, never to return except to haunt his dreams. He had the expression of a man unsure whether he was dreaming or waking, and unsure, if it was a dream, whether at any moment it might turn to nightmare.

“Colonel Sheppard,” Elizabeth said.

He nodded wary acknowledgment. “Elizabeth?” he asked cautiously.

“It’s me,” she said, and then embraced him before he could say any more, a long, hard hug. “At least, I think it is,” she said, releasing him.

“That would be the problem,” he said.

She turned up her hands. “I know. You don’t know where I came from or who — or what — I really am. I asked Dekaas — he’s one of the Travelers’ physicians —”

“We met him,” Teyla said, coming up to them with the rest of the team trailing behind her. “He was the one who sent us here.”

“He ran tests to try to find out if I was human, and as far as he could tell, I was. But I know our equipment back in Atlantis is a lot more sophisticated.”

John nodded. “We’ll get Carson to meet us at the alpha site so that he can start checking you out.”

Elizabeth’s whole body went tense at once, all the openness draining from her expression. “Carson Beckett is dead.”

“It is a long story,” Teyla said.

“I’m sure it is,” Elizabeth said, but she took a step back from them. “I’d like to hear it.”

“At the alpha site,” John said.

“Before I go anywhere with you.”

“We need to go ahead and get you to the alpha site so that you’re somewhere we can secure until we’re sure that you’re really Elizabeth Weir.”

“Believe me, I understand that,” Elizabeth said, but she had that stubborn set to her jaw that Teyla remembered well.

John’s headset radio sounded. “Colonel Sheppard?” Lorne said. “We’ve got some delays going on in setting up the alpha site.”

“What kind of delays?”

“Some thing’s breaking down all our plastic gear at the site. Dr. Zelenka is worried that it might be a microorganism of some kind. We’ve got the site under quarantine while we figure out what’s going on.”

“Keep it that way. Is Carson stuck there?”

“No, thankfully we hadn’t sent him through yet. We’re working on an alternative alpha site, but it’s going to take us a few minutes to get it checked out.”

“Work on it,” John said.

John turned back to face Elizabeth, he had to think of her as Elizabeth, and told himself that wasn’t committing to any answers to the question of who or what she really was. “All right. So, we’re having a few technical difficulties.”

“That sounds like the Pegasus Galaxy, all right,” Elizabeth said. “I know that you’re worried about what might happen if I’m really some kind of tool of the Replicators. I’m worried about that myself. But I’ve been here nearly twenty-four hours already. Another hour probably isn’t going to matter.”

“No. Because if you’re a Replicator, you could already have infected hundreds of people and machines here on Sateda.”

“She’s not a Replicator,” Rodney said.

John turned on him. “And exactly how do you know that?”

“If she were in an entirely artificial Replicator body, the most basic medical tests would have shown that,” Rodney said. “You could stick a needle in her and watch her not bleed.”

“There could still be nanites in her bloodstream.”

“Why would there be nanites in her bloodstream? The Ancients wouldn’t construct her a new body and then booby-trap it by filling it with nanites.”

“We are not going to make decisions based on speculation about what the Ancients might or might not do,” John said. “We’re going to take Elizabeth to the alpha site and let Carson decide whether he thinks she’s human.”

“Yes, about that,” Elizabeth said, steel in her tone.

John ran a hand through his hair. “Ronon, go talk to Cai and ask him if he’s got a spare room where we can sit down and talk.”

“There is the jumper,” Teyla said. John shook his head discouragingly. The last thing he wanted was to give Elizabeth access to the jumper and all its systems when he wasn’t sure if she’d been compromised. They could walk through the gate to the alpha site. Once Lorne had finished dealing with their current minor disaster.

“I wouldn’t let me in the jumper either,” Elizabeth said, looking a little amused.

“I’ll talk to Cai,” Ronon said.

“Dr. Lynn, please tell me someone’s translated the writing on those rocks at the alpha site,” Lorne said.

Lynn’s voice over the radio was tart with irritation. “You realize I was on Sateda all afternoon? And that I’m not actually a linguist? Why don’t you call Dr. Jackson?”

“He’s off-world. Tell me somebody down there with a PhD can tell me more than ‘somebody made some marks on the rocks.’”

“Let me see if anyone’s made any notes,” Lynn said, and there was the sound of typing. “All right. You’re in luck, someone’s actually started working on the translations. Letter frequencies suggest that this is a phonetic alphabet for writing Ancient. We don’t have anything with one hundred percent certainty—”

“At this moment, I will take whatever certainty you’ve got.”

“Two of the groups of letters are very likely the words for ‘warning’ and ‘danger.’ We see those on a lot of equipment in the city.”

“It would have been good to know that several days ago.”

“I’m sorry,” Lynn said, and sounded like it. “We have a backlog of translations waiting to be done. This wasn’t marked as a priority.”

Lorne silently counted to ten before he spoke. “Okay. It should have been, and that’s my mistake. Can you tell me anything else about the message? Does it say anything about plastic?”

“That’s a possible translation of one of the letter groupings,” Lynn said.

“Figure out what the message says. Consider it a priority. I’m guessing something like ‘warning, something on this planet breaks down plastic, and that’s really dangerous.’”

“Ah,” Lynn said. “I see that you might have wanted to know that before now.”

“You can say that again,” Lorne said.

John ended up finding space for the team to get off the street in the lunchroom of an office building that looked out over the gate square. Makeshift shutters had been nailed up over the windows and the floor swept clean, and there were chairs arranged at the long table. The walls were still hung with faded and tattered posters lettered in Satedan, one showing a stylized worker lying crushed under half of an enormous block of stone that had cracked in two.

“I have to ask,” John said with a nod toward the poster.

Ronon glanced at the picture, not even trying to make out the faded lettering. “It’s supposed to remind people not to make mistakes.”

“Maybe we need some motivational posters in Atlantis,” Elizabeth said as she sat down.

John shook his head. “Now you’re really scaring me.” He took his seat at the table along with the rest of his team, and Daniel stopped prowling around the room looking at the posters to come take a seat himself.

It felt like a thousand mornings around the conference table in the early years of the expedition. He reminded himself very firmly that it wasn’t.

“Tell me about Carson Beckett,” Elizabeth prompted.

“It’s not our original Carson Beckett,” Rodney said. “Do you remember Michael?”

“The Wraith we attempted to transform into a human,” Teyla said.

“That sounds familiar,” Elizabeth said, frowning. “An experiment.”

“That is right.”

“Michael used some of Carson’s DNA to create a clone with Carson’s memories,” Rodney went on. “And before you ask, no, we don’t know how he managed that. Our best guess is that he combined some version of the technology that the Wraith use to create drones who already have some degree of imprinted knowledge with his own really disturbing research. He was using that Carson, clone Carson, to help him with his experiments. Eventually we found him locked up in one of Michael’s labs and rescued him.”

“More or less by accident, since we didn’t have any idea he existed,” John added.

Elizabeth regarded him from the other side of the table. “You understand this doesn’t sound particularly likely.”

“You mean unlike the other things that happen to us in the Pegasus galaxy?”

“Even given those.”

“It’s true, though. Carson spent some time back on Earth dealing with some medical problems, turns out being a clone isn’t too great for your health and now he’s back filling in for Dr. Keller while she’s on an extended assignment with the Wraith.”

Elizabeth’s eyebrows went up. “Extended assignment with the Wraith?”

John looked at Teyla for rescue from the task of explaining that one.

“In the last year, one of the Wraith queens claimed authority over all Wraith,” Teyla said. “It was not a universally popular claim, and we were able to ally with another faction to defeat her. And there has been another development as well. A retrovirus that makes humans able to survive being fed upon, while still providing nourishment to the Wraith.”

Elizabeth nodded slowly. “That must be complicating things.”

“It is,” Teyla said. “But it offers the possibility of a meaningful peace.”

Elizabeth put her head to one side, regarding Teyla curiously. “And that idea is acceptable to you?”

“Yes,” Teyla said, at the same time Ronon said, “No.” Teyla shot Ronon a sharp look, and went on, “We have discovered that the Wraith are the result of a misguided experiment of the Ancestors. They are descended from our own kin, and they did not ask to be as they are. They have survived as best they can, and created much that is of value that we are only just beginning to understand. I would be glad to see them endure as people who no longer have to kill us to survive.”

“Ronon?” Elizabeth asked when it was clear Teyla was finished speaking.

“They’re still Wraith,” he said. “All this means is that they’re going to keep humans as slaves rather than killing them outright. I think we ought to keep fighting them. But it’s not up to me right now.”

“Right now?”

“Right now. If I come back to Sateda at some point… then we’ll see. Cai has this idea that I ought to stand for some kind of election here. I don’t know about that. Yet.”

Elizabeth nodded, and looked up at John. “And your take on all of this?”

“For the moment, the Wraith aren’t attacking Atlantis or killing my people,” John said. “I’ll take it.”

Elizabeth took a slow breath, and then let it out. “All right. I think you’re who you say you are.”

Rodney looked at her quizzically. “I’m glad to hear it, but what did we actually do to convince you?”

“You haven’t tried to persuade me that nothing’s changed,” she said. “That was what I was most worried about when you told me about Carson. If this were an illusion, something drawn from my own mind, then I would be seeing and hearing the people I remembered. And then after I asked about Colonel Sheppard, he appeared a few minutes later.”

“It was not a coincidence,” Teyla said. “He wished to accompany the team that was looking for you, and was only prevented from doing so by the knowledge that his place was in Atlantis.” She gave him a pointed sidelong look at the last words, and he shrugged.

“I expect someone might have reminded him of that,” Elizabeth said. “And I see that. It just made me wonder. But what you’re telling me… you sound like yourselves. I can understand why you might have come to these conclusions. But a lot of what you’re saying is not exactly what I would have expected you to say. You’ve changed. People do. And given that I’ve been gone… ” She frowned. “How long have I been gone?”

“Since you died, or since the last time we saw you when we, umm… had to freeze you in space in a Replicator body?” Rodney asked.

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow. “You’re saying that was after I died.”

“It’s complicated,” John said. “You’ve been gone for nearly three years. The last time we saw you, for some value of ‘saw’ and ‘you’ was about eighteen months ago.”

“Three years,” Elizabeth said. She took a deep breath, and then let it out again, pressing her hands to the tabletop as if to steady herself. “Okay. So what happens now?”

“I go find out why it’s taking Lorne so long to get the alpha site set up,” John said, and hoped the answer wasn’t going to be that their minor problem had turned into another unfolding catastrophe.

Lorne looked up as Radek came into the control room. “We have a problem,” Radek said shortly.

“It really is a plastic-eating bug.”

“Yes. Yes, it appears to be, according to the data that Dr. Xiao was just able to transmit.”

“Before his laptop fell apart?”

“It did do that, but he was able to relay information through the jumper. Thankfully, the materials used to construct the jumper are all metal, crystal, or silicone rather than petroleum-based plastics. Silicone plastics appear to be unaffected.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Most of the plastic used in our equipment is petroleum-based. The Ancient equipment is safe, but nearly everything made of plastic that we brought from Earth is vulnerable, as well as synthetic fabrics. Polyester is a petroleum product.”

“Wonderful.”

“Now, we are lucky that many harmful microorganisms do not pass through the Stargate. The gate’s own systems are designed to prevent some common forms of contamination from passing through.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming.”

“Some is not all. And as people have been moving back and forth from the alpha site all day long, and we know some of their personal items are affected… ”

“It’s worse than that,” Lorne said, his stomach sinking at a sudden memory. “Harper said she was going to bring the defective gear back to Atlantis. It’s probably sitting here somewhere. And if it’s infected… ”

Radek’s expression was grim. “Where did she put it?”

They found the defective tent and water cans piled in a corner of the supply depot. The tent crumbled in Lorne’s hand as he tried to pick it up, as if made of something dry and brittle. A plastic storage container was sitting next to them, and he nudged it with his foot. It caved in easily at the slightest pressure.

“Oh, not good,” Radek said.