Mirror, Mirror

by Sabine C. Bauer

  Outside it was still pouring, and the cold splashes of rain on his face helped him to regain some sense of reality. Maybe it had been the smoke inside the barn. Nothing fresh air couldn't fix, right?

  As the guards dragged him across the yard, it suddenly occurred to him that Rilla and all the other interfering fools hadn't found the site where he'd buried Colonel Sheppard's remains. The thought cheered him up to a surprising degree.

  CHAPTER 10

  Charybdis + 13

  she steady background hum of the transporter's engines abruptly changed in pitch, telling Ronon that the ship had dropped out of hyperspace. At last. The night had been endless. Ever since that kid a few bunks down had mentioned the possibility of someone activating the Stargate, he been unable to stop his thoughts from churning.

  Every child knew that the Stargate system no longer worked. Not reliably, anyway. At regular intervals some genius or other would dial up some gate address or other and vanish never to be seen again. Nobody had ever heard of anyone actually arriving through a gate.

  Which was precisely the point that had kept him awake.

  If someone had arrived, then who? And what did it mean`?

  Not that he was overestimating his own importance, but there had to be a reason why they wanted him there. He could think of one-could but didn't, so as not to alert the Behemoth that kept slinking along the fringes of his mind like a panther, ready to pounce on any morsel Ronon might accidentally toss its way. Naturally, trying not to think of that particular reason was like trying not to think of pink Wraith after someone had expressly forbidden you to do so. The notion recurred again and again, wearing a different face each time, but in the end it always came back to another Charybdis survivor trying to find him.

  And maybe this was just his longing for the only companionship he'd known since the Wraith had stuck a transmitter in his back and made him a runner, and he was giving himself away for nothing.

  He slapped down the image of salvation and evacuated every thought from his mind, until he was completely focused on his body, regulating his heartbeat and breathing and relaxing one muscle after the other. Beneath his consciousness hovered a sense of the noises around him-men yawning, grunting, stirring in anticipation of the ship's arrival at its destination, wherever that was-and of the Behemoth hissing in annoyance at Ronon's refusal to offer up any information.

  About an hour later and without warning, all sounds ceased. The transporter had come to a standstill, and the men momentarily stopped their rustling to listen to the silence. Then new noises erupted; soldiers throwing their gear or themselves off the bunks, slapping of shoulders, last-minute jostling for the latrine, excitement or frustration at having to move out again.

  Still keeping his mind a blank, Ronon sat up, swung his legs off the bunk, strapped his sword to his back, and leaped to the ground. The current of soldiers engulfed him, and he let it, figuring that it was safest not to think and simply allow himself to drift. For however long it would last... He had a feeling that his period of grace was expiring fast.

  The usual blockage at the top of the ramp, caused by men scrambling to line up for an orderly descent, seemed to be non-existent today. Within minutes he found himself squinting into harsh morning light barely tamped down by the shadows beneath the transporter's belly. When his eyes had adjusted, he saw that they were indeed back on Atlantis.

  He could smell it, too. Crime and filth and poverty, seasoned with the heady scent of war. The transporter was stationary above one of the countless military embarkation areas. The area was surrounded by squat, ugly buildings in all shades of gray imaginable; barracks. Windowless, because the soldiers were so feared and hated by the general population that you could always find an eager soul willing to take out a man or two with one of those antiquated firearms people hid in seemingly inexhaustible stashes. Behind the barracks rose the black and silver towers of this city of Atlantis, stranded on dry land and nothing like the Atlantis he remembered. The cold orgy in metal and glass struck him as even more sinister than the eerily organic, half-digested design the Wraith had favored. The buildings loomed over you as if to remind you that you were being watched. Constantly and by unfriendly eyes. It was the same everywhere on the planet.

  What set this landing site apart from all the others was the fact that it lay right at the edge of the government district of Atlantis. This was his first time back here since he'd been initiated to the Behemoth. He couldn't say he'd missed the place.

  Ahead of him, soldiers filed down the ramp and toward the barracks-past a detachment of armed-to-the-teeth government security troops that had arranged themselves snugly around the Commander. For once in his life he looked distinctly uncomfortable. Ronon bit back a smile, thinking that this almost made the return worth it. His smile died a swift death when he noticed the ST officer's stare on him. The man turned to the Commander, mumbled something. This wasn't good. Couldn't be. Ronon wanted to shrink into the flooring of the ramp.

  Instead he stepped onto the stained concrete of the parade ground, eyes front, trying to blend in. It didn't work, of course.

  "Hey! You!" barked the Commander.

  Never breaking his stride, Ronon turned his head. "Me, Excellency?"

  "Yes, you! And you damn well know it! Step over here!"

  Grimacing, Ronon fell out and crossed over to the ST unit and his commanding officer.

  "Is this the man?" the ST officer asked. "Former Specialist Ronon Dex?"

  The surprise just about tripped Ronon. In almost ten years, ever since he'd joined the Behemoth, he hadn't heard his name spoken aloud. Usually it was either Hey! You! or his serial number. But more than the simple acoustics of the thing, it proved that his suspicion had been correct. Somehow this was connected to his past, and he had to work hard to keep his elation at bay. So he stood quietly and let the fat, one-eyed bastard do the answering.

  "That's him," the Commander grunted. "I'd like him back, though."

  "I don't care what you'd like," announced the ST officer. "I've got my orders." He turned to Ronon. "Follow me."

  Wordlessly, Ronon did just that. The rest of the security detail fell in behind him, in case he got any fancy ideas. He was marched past his fellow troops-who ducked their heads, avoiding eye contact at all cost, their whole demeanor yelling Thank the Ancestors, it's not me!-and across the parade ground to an open surface glider. The ST officer motioned him to climb aboard, and he was happy to comply. If life had taught him one thing, it was that a wise man didn't question amenities but enjoyed them while they lasted.

  Which is precisely what you should have done last night, Dex!

  As it turned out, the amenities didn't last for long. The glider never even rose high enough to sneak a look over the barrier wall into the residential slums. After a short hop past the spires of the government administrative complex, it banked steeply, slowed to an almost complete halt with the anti-gray boosters running full-throttle, and settled outside the main entrance of the Defense Command Center.

  The STs jumped out and secured the sidewalk, still intent on stopping any escape attempt their charge might make. Overkill, considering that the Behemoth would stop him in his tracks if Ronon so much as thought of trying. That aside, he wanted to find out what the hell was going on before he entertained any notions of running even though, given a choice in the matter, he'd have done his level best to avoid revisiting the DCC.

  At the top of a broad set of stairs the entrance to the center loomed like a huge black maw, doors noiselessly sliding open and shut at irregular intervals to gobble up scurrying people who were dwarfed to antlike proportions by this monolith of a building. The primary cause of death among ants was getting stepped on...

  The doors opened, gobbled, shut, and he and his escort headed across a cold, marble-glistening lobby and toward a bank of transporters at the far end. The space was so enormous that the echo of their footsteps seemed to come at them from all sides, mingled with the hushed voices of unseen people.
Now and again a single word broke the surface of unintelligible murmur like a bubble, out of context and surreal.

  Daytime.

  Nosebleed.

  Gruel.

  The transporter lacked the kind of controls Ronon remembered. Instead of a touch schematic it had an opaque screen, flickering with a steady stream of numbers. Coordinates, no doubt, though he couldn't even begin to decipher them. The device was operated from a wristband the ST officer wore. Ronon filed it away for further use; if you wanted to get anywhere in this building-or, more to the point, if you wanted to get out of this building-you-needed-one of those wristbands.

  Then the floor seemed to fall out from under him while his stomach leaped for the ceiling, and he silently cursed the engineer who'd decided to skimp on the inertial dampeners. Maybe it had been deliberate, to unsettle the delinquents. In this place down wasn't a good direction. The memory made him clench his teeth, and he felt a thin sheen of sweat cooling on his forehead. The ST officer smiled a razor of a smile, and turned to the door. They'd be there soon, wherever there was.

  As suddenly as it had begun its descent, the transporter jerked to a stop, its door opening on another lobby, one that was uncomfortably familiar. Ronon pulled his features into a blank mask. Behind that steel door across from the transporter bank someone was screaming; high-pitched agonized yelps, one after another, triggered by each push of the Behemoth into a consciousness. Someone was being initiated. Hooray for them.

  "Feeling cold, soldier?" the ST officer asked, ogling the goose-bumps that raced up Ronon's arms.

  "No, Excellency. I don't feel anything, Excellency."

  The razor smile snapped open to release a throaty laugh, then the officer turned left, past the door that locked in the screams, and down an empty, dimly lit corridor. Ronon stuffed his relief into a small, tightly sealed pocket of his mind.

  The end of the corridor was closed off by yet another door, massive enough to protect a treasure vault. In front of it was a checkpoint manned by yet more STs.

  One of them scanned the officer's wristband for his orders, then nodded at Ronon. "Is he to enter?"

  "That would be the point of bringing him down here," the officer snapped.

  "He'll have to have a probe, then," the ST replied, unperturbed.

  "Fine. Just hurry up. They've been waiting long enough in there."

  "Hey! You! Place your head there." The ST indicated a metal chin rest.

  Ronon did as ordered. Everyone underwent probes on a monthly basis to ensure that their conditioning was fully functional and they hadn't, by some miracle, contrived to outwit the Behemoth.

  A mechanical arm swung up from under the chin rest, rose, and the probe telescoped out at him until it touched his left eyeball to look at whatever patterns were forming on his retina now He'd trained himself years ago not to flinch when it happened, and it wasn't painful, just unpleasant. The unbearable part was knowing that somehow the Behemoth in his mind would be tattling with the probe, telling on him and his behavior. If the computer derived any danger signals from the data transmitted by the probe, the consequences could be... ugly. Of course you never really knew what kind of thought or feeling counted as a danger signal.

  Then, quietly and unspectacularly, it was over, the probe retracted, and the ST gave a bored nod, as though he were disappointed that this subject hadn't been plotting a military coup in his spare time. "He can go."

  The officer looked mildly surprised but bit back any comment. In front of them the door swung open, a yard-thick boltbristling chunk of metal. Beyond lay a cavernous space, white and sterile, and at its center, like a displaced work of art or an object for laboratory study, sat a Stargate. More Security Troops lined the walls, positioned at short intervals, their unblinking focus on the dormant gate, and for a brief moment Ronon wondered what it must be like to pull that detail, standing there for days, weeks, months, knowing that you were pointlessly guarding against an invasion that couldn't happen because the gate system no longer worked.

  Then his attention was drawn to a group of three men in long white robes-Ancestors. Two of them, young and eager, were strangers, but Ronon instantly recognized the oldest of the three, even though he hadn't seen the man in ten years. Maybe the stoop was a little more pronounced, the face a little more lined, the hair a little grayer, but there was no mistaking him-Marcon, junior member of the Defense Council back when they'd first met, now its leader. Marcon had debriefed Ronon after they'd found him washed into the inner harbor of Atlantis, a sodden rag doll, more dead than alive. Marcon had pretended to be a friend. Marcon had told him all the beautiful lies.

  Hatred boiled through him like molten steel, white-hot and consuming. Ronon had killed a man for a similar betrayal, and in his memories that man's face became overlaid by Marcon's, making him want to sigh in satisfaction. Then the pain struck. The Behemoth ripped through his head in punishment for the forbidden fantasy, and he gasped, struggling to get his mind and feelings back under control.

  If Marcon had noticed, he gave no indication. Instead he dismissed the ST officer with a curt nod and smiled at Ronon. "Ronon Dex! It is good to see you're keeping well, my friend."

  As if you care, old man!

  The silent outburst brought another bolt of pain, less ferocious this time, and Ronon forced himself into uttering an approximation of a civilized reply. "Greetings, Marcon."

  "I'm glad you came," Marcon continued as though Ronon had been given a choice. "We need your expertise. Come."

  His arm described a graceful arc, inviting Ronon into an embrace as comrades would, hands clapped on shoulders, on their way to the inn to reminisce about the good times they'd had together. Ronon tasted bile, and something in his face or posture finally must have warned Marcon off. The arm dropped, and Marcon nodded a silent acknowledgement; no more lies, no more pretense. They were master and slave, it was as simple as that.

  "Come," he said again, a hint of something other than unctuousness in his tone... respect? Probably not. "I promise you will find this interesting."

  The two younger men-Marcon's aides-followed at a polite distance, apparently accepting without question that the Chairman of the Defense Council would take a common soldier into his confidence. Marcon led the way into a narrow corridor that branched off the room where the Stargate was kept and ended in a laboratory. In the middle of the lab sat a large examination chair, its backrest to the corridor, and around the fringes of the room ran an extensive array of computers and diagnostic equipment and synthesizers that would produce anything from drugs to man-made enzymes.

  A duo of technicians practically jumped when Marcon strode into the room. Smiling again, he raised a placating hand. "Please, don't let me interrupt your work." After which he proceeded to interrupt their work. "Do you have any further insights?"

  One of the technicians spoke up. "There was a broken wrist, which we mended. We also found evidence of recent, spontaneous cell rejuvenation on a massive scale. The only part of the body unaffected is an area of the posterior cortex, which shows an impairment that is resistant to treatment."

  Something at the back of someone's brain was broke and couldn't be fixed, Ronon translated silently. It was of vague interest, as he'd never heard of any disease or injury-barring old age and death itself-the Ancestors couldn't heal, but somehow he doubted they'd brought him here because they wanted him to give it a try.

  "Are there any similarities to him?" asked Marcon.

  To whom?

  Marcon's bony finger pointed at a transparent cubicle set into the wall. It was filled with a clear fluid and suspended inside swam a body. The skin was pale, doughy, looked as if it wanted to slough off in places, and parts of the corpse were badly decayed, but there was no mistaking it: McKay.

  Ronon drew in a sharp breath, sucking back the nausea that threatened to race up his throat. Inside his mind the Behemoth uncoiled, wakened by this jolt of emotion. Fists balled, he fought for control harder than he'd ever done. After all, wh
at was there to get upset about? It was a corpse, dead and pickled for years, and it no longer had anything to do with the person who'd inhabited it. Ronon's grief for the annoying loudmouth wouldn't change a thing, least of all the fact that his best hope of getting out of this had died with Rodney McKay.

  their genetic profiles are subtly diverse." The technician's lecture had rolled on as though nothing had happened. "I would assume they're not from the same planet, possibly not even from the same galaxy. The woman's profile closely corresponds to those of various remains we've discovered on a planet called Athos. Except, there is a strand of non-human DNA spliced-"

  "What woman?" Ronon started at the sound of his own voice and the sharpness in it; he hadn't meant to say it out loud, let alone invest it with such urgency.

  "Ah." Marcon turned to him, the smile back in place, broad enough for Ronon to want to slap it off the man's face. It had been a ploy to get a reaction. "Of course. The woman. Please show him," he added to the technician.

  The man activated a control, and the examination chair swiveled around, revealing its occupant. Oddly enough, the first thing that struck Ronon was that she hadn't changed at all, making him keenly aware of his own graying hair and the lines that thirteen years of killing had scored in his face. The clothes were different, not the utilitarian garb of the warrior he was used to seeing her wear, but a rough skirt and blouse, woven from plant fiber and well-worn. Her eyes were closed, and she didn't move.

  "What-?"

  "She is sedated," the technician answered before Ronon could ask. "The examination would have caused too much discomfort otherwise. She'll wake up in a little while."

  "You recognize her." It wasn't a question, and Marcon stared at him intently.

  The Behemoth blossomed in Ronon's mind like a poisonous flower, tendrils wrapping around neurons, sapping all resistance from them. "Her name is Teyla Emmagan," he ground out, hating himself.

  Finally something had deadened Marcon's smile. "You're lying."