Mirror, Mirror

by Sabine C. Bauer

  It was time to find out, she decided.

  "What is the Behemoth?" It seemed to her as if a million years had passed since she'd last asked this question. This time, though, she would insist on an answer.

  The soft rasp of skin on leather followed by footfalls said that Ronon had risen from the pilot's chair and was headed for the rear of the cockpit. There was a hum, then an odd kind of creak and rustle, and then a symphony of smells that managed to blot out even the stench of blood and made her mouth water.

  By the Ancestors, she was famished!

  Attempting to figure out when she'd last eaten, Teyla's best estimate amounted to some time before she'd led Major Sheppard through the cave passage and down into the ruins of Atlantis. And that particular meal hadn't exactly been a feast. This on the other hand...

  "The command crews have access to food synthesizers," Ronon observed casually. "Luckily you don't need the ATA gene to use them, or we'd be screwed. He set a plate in Teyla's lap. "Eat! But be careful. It's hot."

  So it was. In both respects. Either Ronon or the food synthesizer appeared to have a distinct preference for strong spices, but as far as Teyla was concerned this had to be the single most delicious meal she'd ever eaten in her life. Though it wasn't delicious enough to make her miss the obvious. For the moment however she let it slide, too hungry to worry about prying answers from Ronon. Eventually, after having worked her way through a generous second helping, she set down the plate and got ready to ask the same question a third time.

  He must have been waiting for it. Or maybe it really had taken him this long to prepare himself for whatever his answer might stir up. In any case, he preempted her. "There were no Wraith in this timeline," he said, making her wonder how or if this was going to lead around to the Behemoth. "Which was the whole point of Charybdis. Except, it turns out the Wraith kept the Ancients in check, provided a counterbalance to all those smarts and technology."

  "An outside threat that occupied the Ancestors and prevented them from turning against planets and civilizations who wouldn't stand a chance against a race as advanced as they," Teyla guessed, frowning. "You may have a point there."

  "I do. In this timeline the Ancients have become the Wraith. It's the ultimate tyranny." He stood again, returned to the food processor.

  Teyla controlled an urge to follow and shake the story out of him, whatever it was. Clearly he had to set his own pace.

  "Didn't know any of that when I woke up here," he said, handing her a glass.

  Its contents had a pleasant pungency, and she took a careful sip. Some kind of wine, aged and thick and heavy. She heard him drain his own glass in one great gulp. Somebody on Atlantis had referred to this as `Dutch courage'. For the first time it occurred to her that the cause for his reticence might be shame.

  "The Ancients here are paranoid. So, when they found me, they took me straight to the city," he continued. "They debriefed me. Marcon debriefed me, to be precise."

  "The old friend who fell down the stairs?"

  "Yeah. Except, he didn't call it debriefing. And he didn't tell me he was working for their intelligence office. That might have made even me think twice," Ronon said bitterly. "Marcon pretended to be my friend. I wanted to belong somewhere, he offered the solution. I was a warrior after all. Why not join their army? Why not join the Behemoth?"

  Sipping some more wine, Teyla tried to find a reason why this revelation should have been so difficult to make and failed. "So the Behemoth is their army?"

  "That's what I thought too, until I joined." Ronon snorted, somewhere between derision and disgust. "The Ancestors control it and it's designed to stop the soldiers from rising against them, but ultimately the Behemoth is... an entity that's fueled by the basest instincts of every man in that army. It's hedonistic and violent, it's cruel, it's insatiable, and it feeds on pain and fear. It's everything that's worst in a mercenary, magnified a thousand times and given sentience. And it makes you do exactly what it wants you to do. It made me do stuff that-"

  "How?" Teyla cut in because she couldn't bear what she was hearing in his voice.

  He blew out a breath, and when he continued he sounded vaguely relieved at having been interrupted. "They tell you that you need to be inoculated against a bunch of diseases, but what those shots actually contain is a few zillion nano-robots that will float into your brain and start rewiring it. The process is... unpleasant.

  "It gets better," he said when she let slip a small gasp of dismay. "Don't ask me how it works-maybe Beckett could explain it, I can't-but the nano-robots hook you into this entity, the Behemoth. That's what joining means; your mind becomes part of this group consciousness. And from that moment on the Behemoth will determine what you do and how you do it and it'll monitor every thought and emotion, and if you step or think or feel out of line you get zapped, `cos obviously the nano-robots have access to the pain center in your brain. It's perfect."

  Abright crash somewhere at the back at of the cockpit made Teyla jump, then she realized that he must have hurled his glass against the wall. "Apparently not so perfect," she observed quietly. "You managed to break away. That's what happened back at the laboratory, wasn't it?"

  The movement was barely audible, and its very quietness painted the picture for her. Fast and smooth as a predator he crossed the cockpit, and then she sensed him right in front of her, trapping her. His hands clamped on the armrests of her seat, and she felt the warmth from his body, smelled the wine on his breath.

  "Who says I broke away?" he hissed. "Maybe I've been doing what the Behemoth wanted me to do all along. Marcon ordered me to be your Marcon. To squeeze every last bit of information out of you, especially all the details on how you got the Stargate to work. I've done that, haven't I? Now that I've got the information, I'm to `dispose' of you. I might do that any moment, whether I like it or not. You can't possibly know what I'll do. Nobody can. Even I can't."

  "What if you're wrong? What if I can?" Teyla threw it at him like a challenge. "What if I told you that there's nothing I can see that is not completely and exclusively Ronon Dex?"

  "How would you-" He cut himself off, drew back, some of the tension sloughing off him. "That gene of yours? Telepathy? I thought that only worked with Wraith."

  "As I pointed out to Major Sheppard, I've had plenty of time to practice." She wished she could see his eyes. It'd be easier to tell whether or not he believed her. "There is nothing there, Ronon, I swear. Nothing but you."

  That presence hovering above her lifted, and a second later she heard Ronon fling himself heavily into the pilot's seat. "When Marcon gave me that order, I knew I couldn't do it," he whispered. "I told myself that, this once, I'd win, even if it killed me. Only, I told myself the same thing more times than I can count. And I let myself fail every time. A few days ago, I beheaded a boy whose only crime was to defend his home... What does that make me, Teyla?"

  "It makes you a man who keeps trying against all odds until he succeeds," she replied just as softly. "I don't see anything wrong with that. On the contrary."

  "I could have saved that kid if I'd tried harder!"

  "No, you couldn't. Some other soldier would have killed him, and you know it." For a moment she struggled with the impulse to touch him, then curbed it-he wouldn't let her. Not now. "There's another consideration," she added, "even if it is a little selfish; if you had succeeded in breaking away sooner, we'd be dead. If what you're telling me about the Ancestors here is true, there is no way you would have been allowed to live. Somebody else would have been ordered to deal with me, and I very much doubt he would have resisted the Behemoth.

  .,you saved both our lives, Ronon. Personally, I prefer being alive. Besides, on the more altruistic side, the death of either one of us likely would have made Charybdis irreversible."

  "You're saying this was fate?" Ronon sounded huffy with disbelief-which was a vast improvement on despondency.

  "I am not saying anything." She shrugged. "Except perhaps that lately I've c
ome up against a great many unlikely coincidences."

  "No such thing as co-"

  A warning klaxon went off, sawing the air until Ronon found the control that switched it off. She heard soft tapping as his fingers danced over touch pads, and then the static buzz of data scrolling across a holographic screen. No point in even guessing at what he was doing. He'd tell her soon enough; she'd just have to be patient. Always patience. Teyla barely suppressed a snarl. Patience wasn't in her genes.

  Her answer came when the whine of the engines dropped in pitch and a barely perceptible shudder traveled through the vessel-they had dropped out of hyperspace.

  "This thing is faster than I expected it to be." Ronon was using that absurdly proud tone all men seemed compelled to adopt when speaking of ships. "That was a proximity warning. We're here."

  "And where is here?"

  "Abandoned mining planet. I used to push guard duty here, until the naquada ran out. About as exciting as watching grass grow. But it's deserted, and it's got a gate."

  Reentry fell somewhat short of routine, and Teyla nursed a sneaking suspicion that Ronon was making up flight path and procedure as he went along. On several occasions the anti-gray boosters broke into protesting howls while vicious bumps and jolts taxed the inertial dampeners to their limits and beyond. At last, and with a final insane lurch, the transporter bounced to a halt and its engines shut down one by one, until only the steady hum of the anti-gray drive remained audible.

  "Smooth," she remarked a little weakly, not sure if all relevant pieces were still attached to her body. "Who taught you to fly? Rodney McKay?"

  "Hey, I got us down!"

  "Yes."

  "And we're practically on top of the gate."

  "Good." She took practically to mean that the gate was still standing.

  Twenty minutes later they stepped off the ramp and into a patch of warm evening sunshine that eased the goose bumps off Teyla's skin. In the shadows beneath the transporter's belly the air had been chilly. A steady swish of tree tops in the breeze told her that they had to be in or near a forest. Pine needles rustled under her soles, sent up a cloud of scent at every step, and somewhere above chirped a bird. After the mayhem of the Ancestors' home planet, this struck her as incongruously serene.

  "It's beautiful."

  Ronon barked a laugh, caught himself and squeezed her hand. "Be glad you can't see it. They strip-mined. Smells a lot better than it looks, I suppose... DHD's right over there. Wait here while I dial. You said it doesn't matter which planet?"

  "It doesn't," she replied, wondering which address he'd dial. Sateda? More than likely. She'd dialed Athos.

  The serenity she'd felt was shattered by the familiar noises of engaging chevrons and the watery explosion of the event horizon as the wormhole established. It set her heart to pound and reminded her that they were leaving behind the relative safety of the transporter for an unknown destination. The only thing they could be certain of right now was that they wouldn't be able to return from there.

  Ronon's hand locked around hers again, and she shook off the thought. After all, she'd taken this journey once already, on her own and without the advantage of youth.

  "Ready?" he asked.

  "Ready."

  Ten level steps took them into the wormhole. There was the familiar cold disorientation of the trip and then that jolt forward as the gate spat them out into icy rain and wind.

  "Oh man," groaned Ronon.

  "What's wrong?"

  "The place, I guess. It's the Atlantis control center but... Whole city's in ruins, got a great big forest growing right through it. And there's no one here." - - - - - - -- - ----- - - - -

  While he was talking, he dragged her along behind him through puddles and mud. Teyla's mental map of Atlantis said that he was heading straight for the stairs up to the gallery-provided there were any stairs or gallery left. A few seconds later it became obvious that the stairs at least were still intact.

  A step or two from the top, she stopped dead in her tracks, sniffed the air, and grimaced. "What in the name of all the gods is that smell?"

  A deep inhalation, then Ronon sputtered and gave a quiet laugh. "That's pig shit."

  He pulled her up the rest of the way, until she stood ankle deep in the mud and wet soil that covered what must have been the gallery. Overhead, the canopy had to be closed, because she no longer felt the rain-apart from the occasional heavy drop splashing from a branch and landing in her face like a water bomb released by children hiding in the trees.

  "Uhuh. Definitely pigs. There's trotter prints. A lot of them," said Ronon. "And not just pigs. Human tracks, heading off into the bushes. Come on."

  Slapped by dripping branches, they wedged themselves through a narrow passage in the undergrowth that eventually brought them out in what she supposed to be a small clearing.

  "The control consoles," Ronon informed her. "Or what's left of them. Bones," he added, more subdued. "Lots of bones. Looks like the entire team died up here, and a long time ago. If McKay was here, he didn't-"

  Squishing noises and rustling as he moved away, and then a soft little whoop and "I don't believe it..."

  "What?"

  "Did you know that McKay's first name is Meredith?"

  "What?"

  "Somebody carved it into a console, and it's recent."

  CHAPTER 16

  Charybdis +4

  she raft-if you could call it that-slammed into the rock hard enough to split off a plank along one side of the panel. Not that John could see it; the gentle light from the crystal inclusions in the stone now seemed a thing of the distant past. Still, the crack and the creak and the fact that his right lower leg suddenly dangled in the drink were explanation enough-they'd hit a stretch of rapids. In a quick reflex he pulled up his knee and got his foot back on board. This wasn't over by a long shot, and he preferred coming through it without having his shins shredded. On the upside, the collision had startled him awake. He'd fallen asleep again, no telling how long for, despite his efforts to keep his eyelids jammed open. The headache-how was that for a euphemism?-seemed to have ratcheted up yet another notch, and every time he blinked he was seeing a firework of colored sparks.

  Elizabeth lay curled up next to him, snoring softly, which explained why he'd been asleep. She'd been watching him for hours, mercilessly prodding him back to wakefulness each time he threatened to nod off, making him talk, sing, recite poetry, whatever it took, but even her reserves had given out at last.

  Another impact rattled through the raft and spun it in the opposite direction. It bobbed indecisively for a second, then swung back and tilted into the main current with a lurch. He felt Elizabeth slide away from him, blindly snatched for her and pulled her back in. It woke her, and she shot up with a start.

  "Wha... what's going on?"

  "Rapids," he murmured, and even that much conversation shook loose a bass line that thrummed through his skull with malicious relish. Good job he couldn't even remember the last time he'd eaten, else things might get a little messy right about now. He was fresh out of bile, too.

  "Sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to fall asleep. Anything you want me to do?"

  "Hold tight."

  In the absence of paddles or any other means of steering the raft it was the best thing they could do. That, and pray that the fence panel was sturdier than it looked, though John didn't hold out much hope on that score.

  As if on cue, the raft hit another obstacle, skidded sideways up the rock and twisted back into the water with a splash that doused them both; an ice cold shower coming out of nowhere.

  "Christ!" gasped Elizabeth.

  John couldn't have put it better. His jaw hurt from clenching it in an attempt to stop the rattle of his teeth. "Hold tight!" he yelped again.

  It got submerged in the shock of another impact, another shower, and this time he also felt another plank come loose. He changed his grip, held on to a piece of planking that wasn't moving-yet-and wrapped his free arm
around Elizabeth. She was scrabbling and squirming next to him, making it difficult to maintain his grip.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Hang on!"

  He thought he heard a faint tearing noise, and a second one, and then she was cinching something around his waist. "Lifeline," she shouted in his ear, making him wince. "If we go into the water, we mustn't get separated."

  Presumably that tearing noise had been a bit of her skirt and the other end of that strip of cloth was tied around her waist. The tearing part raised the question of how long exactly the ashram weave would be able to withstand the rapids. About as long as their bodies, John figured. If they went into the water it didn't matter whether or not they got separated, because they'd be ground to hamburger.

  That happy thought got blasted into oblivion by the next crash.

  The impact was brutal enough to jolt him half off the raft, and for a couple of excruciating seconds he was hanging up to his waist in churning water. His ankle hit stone, and he bit back a howl, kicked against the rock instead and levered himself back onto the panel just before it snapped out of its momentary standstill and bounced back into the current. This collision had cost them the loosened plank, reducing the width of the raft to maybe three feet, if that.

  And then even that didn't matter anymore, because they were airborne.

  Spray clogged the air, was sucked into their lungs with every wheezing breath, and John thought he heard himself scream-when he wasn't coughing for his life. The flight couldn't have lasted much longer than a couple of seconds, but it felt like an eternity; wet, cold, bone-rattling endlessness, until they slammed back onto the surface of the river and the fence panel finally disintegrated beneath them.

  He was able to catch half a mouthful of air before he went under. That pokey lifeline around his waist pulled him sideways, which meant that Elizabeth was still there, though not for much longer unless he managed to grab hold of her. The current yanked him around a boulder, and another one-like hurtling down the waterslides- and finally pushed him out into calmer waters, allowing him to pull up for a quick snatch of breath.