by Stargate
There were times, Carter thought ruefully, as she opened the doors to the balcony, that being in command was no fun at all. In principle, it was what every soldier strove for; promotion after promotion, the recognition of one’s superiors, the inexorable climb up the ladder of command.
But damn, things were a hell of a lot easier when she had someone to tell her what to do.
She walked out onto the balcony, letting the doors slide closed behind her. The air was cold, almost freezing, the sky above her clear and bright with stars. The planet’s two visible moons were up, neither full, but each casting a silvery light across the ocean. She could smell brine, and, if she listened hard past the soughing of the wind, could hear the far-off, rhythmic rushing of the sea.
There was a cold beauty to it, although at that precise moment Carter would rather have been in bed.
She looked down, out across the city. Little of its actual structure could be seen, given the altitude and the darkness, just silver-blue edges caught in moonlight and a constellation of golden lights. The sight was strange, surreal, made even more so by the missing part of it.
On the west pier, far to her left, was a very regular rectangle of pure darkness.
Palmer’s diagram had been informative enough, but the true enormity of the situation didn’t hit her until she saw that black space for herself. It was shocking as a missing limb.
She looked out at it for a long minute, until the bite of the night wind began to hurt her, then she spun on her heel and marched back inside. “All right, as of now the city is on full alert status.”
Palmer was at the communications terminal. Carter saw him punching buttons, and a few seconds later the lights in around her rose to their daylight levels. The same would be happening everywhere else, too; inside living quarters, corridors, public areas, labs… Within minutes, the city would be awake.
Whether or not the same could be said if the locked section, she couldn’t say. Effectively, that was now no longer part of the city. It was a sovereign state, answerable to no-one. What, if anything, was occurring in there was a mystery to which she would have to devote all her efforts.
Right now, nothing else mattered. Not Fallon, not the IOA, nothing. The dark space was her only concern.
“Palmer? I’ll need city-wide comms. And how long do you think the rest of the control staff will take to get here?”
“Fifteen minutes?”
“Call them individually, tell them they’ve got five.” She walked a couple of steps away from him, taking a deep breath, readying herself. Then she switched her headset on. “Pegasus expedition, this is Colonel Carter. As you are probably aware by now, the city of Atlantis is on full alert. All active personnel are required to go to their duty stations, all others please make yourselves ready and await further instructions.”
She let the echoes of her own voice die away, then said: “In addition, it’s possible there may be non-human intruders in the city. Please be as vigilant as you can.”
With that, she closed the connection. “I take it there’s been no response from Apollo?”
“Not a word, Colonel. I’ve been sending out hails every fifteen minutes…” He gave her a small, helpless shrug. “So far, nothing.”
Carter nodded briskly. She’d have been alerted if Ellis had reported in, that was certain, but she’d still had to ask. Just to make sure that things were as bad as she thought they were. “Keep trying. Palmer, are you going to be okay up here on your own until the rest arrive?”
“Sure. Are you not going to be here?”
“I’ll be back shortly. There’s some things I need to do first. Oh, and one more thing… Now that it’s all just hit the fan, Andrew Fallon is probably going to be looking for me. If he asks, tell him I’m in the ZPM room.”
“Is that where you’ll be?”
“No. But tell him anyway.”
The lights in the infirmary were up very high, higher than normal by some considerable degree. The brightness struck Carter as soon as she came in, and her made wince. She still didn’t feel truly awake. A mug of furiously strong coffee was helping slightly in that regard, but she couldn’t shake the strange feeling that she was lagging behind the rest of the world by about a quarter of a second.
Keller looked up as she heard Carter come in. “Colonel,” she said, very quietly.
“Morning, Doctor.” Carter kept her voice at the same level. She had been warned to do so before she’d arrived. “I think this just about counts as morning, doesn’t it?”
“Only just.” Keller got up. “If you’re looking for Teyla and Zelenka, I stashed them in the lab next door.”
“Were they okay?”
“I checked them out and they seem fine. Just a little shaken up.”
Carter gestured over to a screened-off area. “Is Cassidy in there?”
“Yeah. I gave her a sedative. She was in quite a state when they brought her in, poor kid.” Keller hugged herself nervously. “Some of the stuff she was saying… Jesus.”
“Can I talk to her?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.” Keller glanced back at the screened-off area. “Colonel, is what they were saying true? Teyla and Zelenka?”
“I have no idea. All I know is that we’ve lost an entire section of pier, and that Fallon’s going to have my hide.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’ll let you know when I’ve woken up. In the meantime, take care of Cassidy.”
“I will. She’s sleeping okay at the moment, as long as I leave the lights on full. If I try to lower them, well…” She sighed. “Let’s just say it doesn’t matter how much sedative I give her.”
Carter thanked her, then went into the adjacent lab. Teyla Emmagan was there, pacing in the small space. Zelenka was busying himself with a data terminal. He looked up as she came in. “Hello Colonel.”
“Hi Radek, Teyla. How are you both doing?”
“Physically, we are both well,” Teyla replied. She was practically bouncing with nervous energy. “Colonel, you need to post guards around the affected area.”
“I already have.” Carter had spent the journey down to the infirmary on her headset. “I’ve got a full marine squad on their way, and more standing by if needs be. Don’t worry, nothing’s going to get in or out of there until we give the word.”
Teyla looked unconvinced. “From what I saw, leaving is not their intention.”
“Blast doors,” said Zelenka helpfully. “I’d not seen them before, but they looked thick, heavily armored. They shut the corridor off just before the lights went out.”
“Okay…” Carter found a seat, a high lab stool, and perched on it. “Teyla, exactly what happened down there? You said you were attacked?”
“That is correct. Radek and I had both decided separately to observe Angelus, and we met in the gallery. While I was there, I noticed that the marines on guard were acting in a strange way.”
“They’d both left their post when I arrived,” Zelenka cut in. “Teyla saw them go and come back. But then that poor girl screamed…”
“Cassidy?”
“That is correct,” said Teyla. She had a haunted look to her now, remembering. “We found the guards trying to force her back into the lab. She was terrified of something there, and would not return. When we intervened, the marines turned on us. I shot Lieutenant DeSalle.”
Carter stared at her. “You shot him?”
“In the head. However, he did not seem unduly concerned.”
Zelenka stood up. “Colonel, I know that part sounds hard to believe. But it happened right next to me. DeSalle should have been dead before he hit the ground, but he was acting as if nothing had happened. That was when the blast doors closed and all the lights went out.”
Before Carter could answer, her headset crackled. “Colonel Carter, this is MacReady.”
Major MacReady was leading the marine squad she had sent down to observe the dark section. “Good to hear from you, Major. What can you tell
me?”
“I’ve had my people do a full sweep. Looks like every corridor in is blocked by armored doors — tried to run a bypass on a set of ’em, but got nothing. And the lights are out to a perimeter roughly ten meters outside the doors in all directions. Colonel, that section of pier is nailed shut like a cheap coffin.”
“Thanks, Major. We’ll need each set of blast doors guarded, two marines per. Stay in constant contact — if anyone tries to go in or come out, I want to know about it.” She caught a glimpse of Teyla’s expression. “Oh, and Major?”
“Yeah?”
“There’s a possibility that there could be non-humans inside that area, masquerading as our people. Be careful — normal weapons fire might not bring them down.”
“Understood. MacReady out.” The man’s tone of voice hadn’t changed, as though bullet-proof shapeshifters was something he dealt with on a daily basis. Carter couldn’t help but allow herself a wry smile at the thought of that.
“Looks like you were right about the blast doors,” she told Zelenka. “They’ve come down in all the access corridors to the lab. Could Angelus have activated some kind of security protocol?”
“It’s possible. He is an Ancient, after all. If anyone could, it would be him.”
“If you found what he’d done, could you undo it?”
“Again, it’s possible. I’d need to track down the exact protocol he’d used first. That might take some time.”
She took a sip of her coffee, but it was getting cold. “Get right on it. Oh, and before you get set up, can you find someone on your team to get down there with some cutting equipment? If the high-tech approach doesn’t work, we’ll need some brute force instead.”
“Absolutely. Norris knows how to use a oxy-acetylene torch. I’ll call him and Bennings up when I get to the ZPM lab.”
“Fine, I’ll see you there later…” Something behind him had caught Carter’s eye. She stepped aside as he went for the door, not taking her eyes off it. Suddenly, half the pieces in her mystery folder had just arranged themselves into new and terrible configurations.
“Teyla, can you go up to my office and meet me there? I need your help with something.”
“Very well.”
“Actually, can you wait ten minutes? I need to check on something first, but I don’t want Fallon to catch you up there without me around. He’s probably on the warpath right about now.”
Teyla raised an eyebrow. “I am not afraid of Mr Fallon.”
“Neither am I. But I’m afraid for him.” She gave the Athosian a brief smile. “I’ll see you up there.”
“Very well.” With a final, slightly puzzled look, Teyla followed Zelenka out of the door.
When she had gone, Carter walked slowly up to what she had seen; a row of empty sample tubes, racked for storage above one of the lab’s benches.
Blood, she thought.
She went to the door and poked her head out. Keller was still there, but now a few of her nursing staff were bustling around as well, readying the infirmary in case of injuries. And to Carter’s surprise, Alexa Cassidy was awake; the physicist was sitting up, the screen partially drawn back, sipping at a cup of something that steamed. There was a nurse with her, standing alongside the bed.
The lights were still very bright, and it was obvious that Cassidy could still not be left alone.
Carter waved at attract Keller’s attention, then beckoned her over. “Doctor, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“One of your nurses sent in a report a couple of days ago. There was a screw-up with some blood samples?”
“Er, yeah. That was Neblett — she’s over there with Cassidy.”
“So what happened?”
“You can ask her yourself. Hold on a second.” Keller went over to join Cassidy and the nurse. A few words were exchanged; Carter saw the nurse nod, then get up. Keller took her place.
When Cassidy looked over at Carter, she gave the physicist a wave and a reassuring smile. She hoped it would do some good.
“Colonel Carter?” Neblett was somewhat shorter than Carter, with dark hair tied back. “Is there a problem?”
“No, not at all.” Carter gently drew her away, out of Cassidy’s view. “I just wanted to follow up on that report you sent me. The blood samples?”
The woman’s expression changed, very slightly. As if she had been reminded of something she had been trying to forget. “Colonel, I don’t know what to say about that. I guess someone could have been playing some kind of a trick, or —”
“Really, it’s okay. I just need to know what happened.”
Neblett paused, gathering herself. “Well, like I said in the report, I’d put the samples in a TCL for storage —”
“Sorry, TCL?”
“Temperature-controlled locker. If the blood needs to be kept for long periods we’ll freeze it down to minus eighty, but we were planning to re-analyze it after forty-eight hours, so I just locked it up at four degrees C.”
That sounded like reasonably standard procedure to Carter. “Go on.”
“Well, when I went back to check it the next day, the blood was gone.”
“All of it?”
“Yeah, every drop.”
“But the sample tubes were intact.”
Neblett nodded. “Colonel, I swear the tubes hadn’t been tampered with. The locker was still shut tight, too.”
“Can you show me?”
“Sure. It’s right in here.” Neblett led her back into the lab. “This is the locker. I’ve not put anything in it since. It’s just how I left it.”
Carter peered at the thing: it was thoroughly unremarkable, a stainless steel cube with a pull-twist handle and a small temperature LCD above the door. She touched the surface of it, felt a slight warmth through the metal. All the heat taken out of the interior had to go somewhere, after all.
She twisted the handle and pulled the locker open.
Sure enough, a small rack of empty sample tubes stood on the top shelf, very much like those that had reminded her of the report. Carter lifted one of the tubes; it came up with a very slight resistance, as though it had part-frozen to the rack, but in all other respects it was exactly as she had expected it to be.
Including the label, which had the name ‘Angelus’ printed on it.
Carter put the tube back in the rack, and carefully closed the locker door. “Rhonda?”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to send someone to collect this locker. In the meantime, don’t touch it.”
“Is there something wrong?”
“Probably not. I’m just allowing myself a little paranoia right now.” She backed away from the locker, and turned to leave.
Then she paused. “In fact, come to think of it, it might be better if no-one comes in here at all until this is sorted out. Is there a lock on this door?”
Once Carter was out of the infirmary, she called a couple of marines in to seal the medical lab. Still wary of Cassidy’s fragile state of mind, she asked them to do so in civilian clothing.
As she had told Neblett, it was probably nothing. A mistake, or an act of theft. Maybe Angelus had spirited his own blood away somehow, unwilling to have it subjected to further tests; she had no real idea of the extent of his powers, if he had any at all.
But still, in these troubled times, she felt it best to take no chances.
She must have been a little early getting to the control room: Teyla was nowhere to be seen, but Andrew Fallon was already waiting for her. To her relief, though, he looked more concerned than angry.
“Colonel,” he said politely. “You can be hard to find, sometimes.”
“I’m sorry. As you might expected, these aren’t exactly normal circumstances.”
“Oh, I’m well aware of that.” He walked over to the sensor terminal, eyes fixed on the map and its pulsing circle. “I take it there’s been no change?”
“None at all. I’ve posted guards around the blast doors, just i
n case, but right now it’s completely locked down.”
“So basically we don’t know what happened in there, or what’s happening now.”
“Well, I’ve been told what happened —”
“Yes,” he muttered. “That news traveled quite fast, I can assure you.”
She shouldn’t really have been surprised at that. “You don’t believe it?”
“That Teyla Emmagan shot a man in the head and he didn’t die? I have to admit I have a difficult time with that element of it, yes. In all the zombie movies I’ve seen, a shot in the head normally does the trick.”
“This isn’t a movie.”
“More’s the pity. I’d probably know who the bad guys were if it was.” He went over to stand in front of the balcony doors. He didn’t open them, just stood there, looking out through the glass. “Colonel, how well do you know Teyla?”
“Not well at all,” she replied, after some hesitation. “But I like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character. I’ve seen nothing to make me think she’d cook something like this up.”
“There’s only three explanations,” he said. “She’s telling the truth, she’s lying, she’s mistaken. Until we find out which is which, all we’re doing is chasing our tails.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Well, if she’s telling the truth, I guess that’s your ball game. If she’s lying, it’s mine. Even if she’s just mistaken, it still leaves us with why she and Zelenka were down there in the first place, and why Alexa Cassidy is acting so spooked.” He glanced over at Carter. “Teyla and Zelenka aren’t a couple, are they?”
Carter eyebrows rose. “I’m pretty certain they’re not.”
He gave a slight shrug. “Just a thought.”
“Mr Fallon, Alexa Cassidy hasn’t shown any sign of mental weakness prior to this. If she had, she’d not be in Atlantis. She’s not just acting, believe me. Something frightened the hell out of her down there.”