Mirror, Mirror

by Sabine C. Bauer

  Eventually, the trees ahead were beginning to thin out and the sullen light drifting through the canopy was getting a little brighter.

  "We're almost there," he said.

  If Teyla had heard him, she gave no indication. Or maybe she simply refused to buy into this show of assurance. Fact of the matter was, he had no idea what to do once they reached the ruins. According to McKay, the power supply to the dialing console had been interrupted somehow. Then again, when he discovered the ruins his memory hadn't been firing on all cylinders, so there always was the faint possibility that he simply didn't know what he was talking about.

  On that bracing thought, Ronon stumbled from under the shelter of the trees and out into the clearing around the ruins to be greeted by a gush of rain. By now he'd given up even on blinking it from his eyes. It just was. Next time he'd get himself stuck in a desert.

  In front of him the ruins rose silently, shrouded in moss and vines. Water cascaded down the steps toward the gate and pooled on the tiles, deep enough to hatch trout. Past the bushes and trees that crowded the gallery he caught glimpses of overgrown, decrepit consoles and, scattered around those, bleached bones. The place seemed undisturbed, and it didn't look as if anyone had been here since his and Teyla's arrival two days ago. He'd half expected a bunch of zealots camping out here to ambush any heretic daredevils who might come sightseeing, but apparently the zealots had headed into town along with everybody else.

  Ronon dropped to his knees and eased McKay off his shoul ders as carefully as he could. Teyla staggered to a halt behind him, head cocked, like a doe scenting the air. "It's safe," she said at last, allaying his lingering worry. "There's nobody else here."

  Good. Thank the elements for small favors!

  "We have to wake him up somehow," he said.

  "I know. Let me..."

  Without being able to explain why, he rose and stepped back. It wasn't really a privacy thing, because all Teyla did was cradle McKay's head in her hands, massaging it gently and uttering a litany of half inaudible murmurs. Ronon thought of the guard at the city gate and figured the guy-if he was still alive-would be hollering witchcraft again right about now.

  "It's nothing of the sort," Teyla replied softly. "I'm simply stimulating certain pressure points."

  He could do with some stimulation, too, Ronon admitted silently. There'd been plenty of occasions during his years as a runner when exhaustion and soreness had become a permanent state of affairs, but this was in a league of its own.

  Whatever Teyla was doing, it worked. McKay gave a protesting groan and opened his eyes, blinked, groaned again. Clothes plastered to his body, he looked painfully thin, and his face was pale enough to make his skin appear translucent, a sure sign that the bleeding hadn't stopped. If he didn't get medical help soon... Ronon swallowed a curse.

  "Don't move, Rodney!" ordered Teyla. "And stay with us."

  The response was a grunt, then McKay closed his eyes again. More massaging.

  "Rodney! Stay with us!"

  "Gah-hmpf," said McKay. Presumably it wasn't an endorsement of her idea. But at least his eyes were focused now, staring up at the cloud-laden sky, squinting away rain. "Where are we?" he croaked at last.

  "At the Stargate." Ronon crouched beside him. Fingers ftun- bling with cold, he pulled the dog tags from under Rodney's sodden shirt. "You need to tell me where you found these."

  "Huh?"

  "The dog tags? Which heap of bones did you take them from?"

  Another groan, and McKay turned his head, trying to catch a glimpse of the jumbled remains over by the consoles. "God... How should I know? The hogs got in there... Pick one."

  Teyla's eyebrows shot up. "Hogs?"

  Ronon squashed that line of conversation before it had a chance to get off the ground. "Not good enough, Rodney. We need to find Colonel Sheppard. That means you need to find the bones belonging to these dog tags."

  Evidently, McKay didn't enjoy the prospect. "No."

  "You have to. So get up and-"

  "No, I don't. You have to dig a little. I buried the skull over by that tree," he gasped, flapping his hand at a large conifer.

  In the grander scheme of things that qualified as excellent news. Ronon grinned. "McKay, you area genius."

  Tiredness temporarily forgotten, he climbed to his feet and scrambled to the tree Rodney had indicated. Sure enough, nestled between two gnarled roots was a patch of recently disturbed soil. He dug with his bare hands, and it was easy enough, what with the rain and the earth already having been loosened. Within minutes he returned to Teyla and McKay, holding the skull like atrophy.

  McKay stared at it drowsily. "I knew him well, Horatio. He was a fellow of infinite jest..."

  "What?"

  "Literature. You wouldn't know it."

  That urge to string the man upside down from a tree returned, but Ronon resisted it. Just. You had to look on the bright side. Supposedly this was an indicator that McKay was himself and reasonably functional. "You're sure that's the skull that went with the dog tags?" Ronon snarled.

  "Yes. I'm sure." McKay glared daggers at him. "Can you see any other buried skulls? No. Didn't think so."

  "Just checking."

  "Just wasting time," McKay retorted. "Help me up."

  "I don't think that's a good idea, Rodney," Teyla cautioned.

  "I know it's not a good idea. But the console doesn't work, and unless Chewbacca here is proposing to dial in manually, I need to..." Woozily, he pushed himself to a sit, frowned at the greenery, chattering to himself. "I know there is one... Question is, where did I see it?"

  "See what?" growled Ronon.

  "Help me up!"

  That was only half the job, as they found out soon enough. McKay's legs clearly had developed a will of their own, and he could barely stand, let alone walk on his own. Held upright by Ronon, he waddled through the mud, staggered through the undergrowth, dragged himself around the remnants of desks and equipment. Meanwhile the cascade down the stairs turned into a mucky waterfall, flooding the area around the gate. If they didn't hurry up, they'd have to swim into the wormhole, and Ronon never wanted to swim again for as long as he lived.

  Suddenly McKay stopped in his tracks and seemed to almost collapse with relief. "Thank God!" he wheezed. "There it is!"

  Half buried in the mud stuck a roughly cylindrical object, the free end looking like a metal ball. Dull and dead and caked with dirt as it was, Ronon might have overlooked it, but, given McKay's obsession with energy sources of any kind, he probably could smell the things at a distance.

  "Okay. I know where it goes. Stay put." Ronon eased McKay back to the ground, propping him against the nearest console.

  The naquada generator seemed to be cemented into the soil, and its weight didn't help. It took some hefty pulling and twisting, but at last the mud gave up its prize, and the generator slid free with a slurp. The hole it left behind instantly filled with water. Obeying a half-baked notion that these gadgets were supposed to be clean, Ronon wiped his sleeve over it, succeeding only in evenly distributing the dirt. If this thing still worked, he'd spend the rest of his life-however short -proclaiming the existence of miracles.

  He shot a brief, doubtful glance at McKay, saw that the scientist either had passed out again or was about to, and shrugged. Never mind. He'd now got his bearings around what was left of the control center and knew where to find the dialing console. Grunting and swearing, fingers slipping on wet, mud-slick metal, he dragged the generator alongside the console and sat back on his haunches, swiping rain from his face. The power, provided there was any, wouldn't just amble over into the console, so he'd better find some kind of wiring-or at least a conductor other than water.

  Rodney forced a bleary squint at the scene in front of him. Dex crouched by the naquada generator, a collection of metal objects in varying states of preservation spread out around him; everything from rusty thumbtacks to blackened strips of aluminum foil. It took Rodney a couple of seconds to make sens
e of it. The thinking behind this arrangement was surprisingly astute, which, of course, he couldn't admit, so a snide remark would be in order. Except, nothing sprang to mind. Nothing, apart from blood-red swirls of pain and nausea that started spinning every time he so much as contemplated moving. And, of course, he couldn't admit that either. If he did, Teyla would descend on him with the canteen and make him drink some more-increase hydration to counteract the fact that he was slowly but surely bleeding to death; he'd grasped the concept and also knew that eighty percent of it was wishful thinking. Besides, if he drank any more, he'd probably burst like a melon. Or pee his pants.

  The aluminum foil might work, even if it only had flexibility to recommend it. He'd have given anything for a couple of decent connectors. He'd have given anything for Dex and Teyla not expecting him to work yet another miracle.

  And he could wish till the cows came home. Nothing was going to happen until he made it happen. Business as usual, in other words. In the first instance he had to cover the astronomic distance between the erstwhile control desk he was leaning against and the dialing console. Should be fun...

  Fingers slipping in freezing mud, he tried to push himself off the ground and failed dismally. He couldn't even sit up straight.

  "Help me," he croaked, upsetting the sawdust that seemed to have taken up residence in his alveoli. It provoked a coughing fit, and the sawdust congealed to merrily whirling saw blades. Something warm-warm, now there was a change-trickled down his chin. He swiped at it, and the back of his hand came away smeared with a mixture of filth and blood, in what likely enough was an incipient violation of McKay's First Law of Self-Preservation: Do Not Die.

  The Satedan had deigned to make his way over, stared, and refrained from commenting for once. Instead he hauled Rodney to the dialing console and the paraphernalia gathered there. It was pitiful. The generator casing was badly corroded, contacts and switches dull and packed with dirt. There was no way of telling just how long the device had been rotting in this place, but its design was based on the prototype developed by Sam Carter and that had been a lot sturdier than it needed to be. So, despite the sorry state it was in, the generator should still work, as long as the core was intact... theoretically.

  From there his mind naturally segued back to Sam Carter, a shock of blond hair, that dazzling smile, and those amazing-

  Wow.! Ikaros produced the mental equivalent of a wolf whistle.

  Of all the precocious little... "Stay out of that comer of my head," Rodney hissed. "That's private!"

  Sony.

  Yeah. Right. Rodney could practically see the smirk.

  Gritting his teeth, he concentrated on the generator. Cold hands and fingers numb from blood loss didn't make for a great deal of precision, but he managed to pry off the lid of a maintenance access. It revealed a relatively dry, relatively pristine interior. On visual inspection-and visual inspection would have to be sufficient, God help them! -the vacuum container that held the naquada seemed to be tight, so there was no obvious reason why the core shouldn't be intact. One of the nice things about naquada was that it had no half-life, at least none that he had been able to measure.

  While all of that was surprisingly encouraging, the generator controls were a different story. He felt a little chill crawl down his neck... or maybe it had been a drop of rain...

  "Well?" asked Dex.

  "Not really." Of all the patently asinine questions...

  Rodney fumbled for the aluminum foil and needed three attempts to snatch a strip and four to get a hold on a second. His fingers just didn't work properly, and the blood-starved tingle was driving him mad. Muttering to himself, he twisted the thin bands of metal into two approximately foot-long threads and managed to fashion a crude point on one end. He really, really hated MacGyver physics. This would probably bum out inside a minute. Then again, with any kind of luck-ha! -a minute was all they needed. Still muttering, he scraped the crud of centuries from the generator's power outlet as best he could, shoved the pointed end of the aluminum strips in there, and packed some mud around it to hold it place, hopefully for longer than five seconds.

  That done, he awkwardly shifted to turn his attention to the dialing console. Catching any air at all was getting more difficult by the second. There no longer seemed to be any room inside his chest. The notion terrified him, and he focused on the console purely for the sake of not having to think about drowning in his own blood.

  When he popped the lid of the maintenance hatch, a small torrent of water shot toward him. As far as starts went, it wasn't exactly promising, but it wasn't an outright disaster either. Like all Ancient equipment, the technology of the dialing console was crystal-based and therefore largely immune to moisture. He'd only once come across a problem caused by condensation on the crystals, which wasn't relevant here. The real hitch was that he had to reroute the power supply. Power to the console would have been piped in from one of the ZPMs in Atlantis's generator rooms, with the wiring-in the manner of all wiring-running inside the walls and under the floors. He had to find the main power cable, strip it, attach some more aluminum foil to it, and all of that preferably without getting enough rainwater inside the console to short circuit the entire array.

  "I need a knife," he wheezed. "Have you got a knife?"

  Dex pressed something into his hand. "Will that do?"

  "To debone a mastodon? Possibly."

  It was roughly the size of a cutlass, but it would have to do, Rodney supposed. Besides, given the steady deterioration of his motor skills, it was doubtful that he could have kept hold of anything more delicate. As carefully as he could-not very, in other words-he reached inside the console, scraped the insulation off the power cable, and wrapped another aluminum pigtail around the blank wiring. Then he extracted himself from the hatch.

  Ikaros screeched into his awareness. You'll overload the console!

  "Tell me something I don't know! In the highly unlikely event that you've got a better idea, let's hear it."

  The kid remained conspicuously quiet.

  "I thought so."

  Eyes narrow with suspicion, the Satedan stared at him. "I take it your invisible friend has objections."

  "My invisible friend was a mathematical prodigy by the name of Charlotte Luisa. Sadly she disappeared just prior to my sixth birthday. We had some of the most stimulating conversations I-"

  "McKay!"

  Well, it had been worth a try. Rodney should have known that Dex wouldn't be sidetracked. "We have one chance at this... if that."

  "If that?"

  "Yes. If that. My bad. Next time people refuse to listen to me, remind me to pack all equipment necessary to fix the entire control center."

  He sucked in an exasperated breath, or tried to, and was rewarded by a scythe of pain slicing through his chest. If he talked any more, he wouldn't be around to watch the outcome of the experiment. And if he dragged his heels any longer, he wouldn't be around either. Rodney twisted the aluminum strips together to form a connection between the generator and the console. It'd bum out. Of course it'd bum out... not that he had an alternative.

  Gritting his teeth, he slid a glance over at Teyla, who crouched in the meager shelter of a tree, babysitting what supposedly was John Sheppard's skull, then looked up at Ronon. "We'll probably have to run. Fast."

  "Figures." One comer of Dex's mouth quirked upward into half a grin. "Need a hand?"

  Muttering something akin to a prayer, Rodney activated the naquada generator, then nodded and reached up. Dex pulled him to a shaky stand. At Rodney's feet the generator was beginning to hum, which was one bit of good news at least. Part of him had dreaded to hear nothing but silence and the hammering of rain on the metal casing. The hum quickly thickened to a whine, angry and off-pitch, the homey noise of a naquada generator building up an uncontrolled charge.

  "Is it supposed to sound like that?" asked Dex.

  "Under the circumstances, yes."

  For a split-second the generator was bath
ed in a liquid, turquoise glow, then the surge slammed through breakers and switches, melting circuitry and leaping along the makeshift aluminum connector into the dialing console. Ronon gave a startled shout and jumped back, but Rodney barely noticed. The next stage was essentially simple. In a moment they'd either have lift-off for the entire console or he'd be able to dial.

  The surface of the console lit up.

  Hands shaking, he began to tap in the dialing sequence for the first planet that shot through his mind, glyph after glyph, mentally yelling at himself to do it faster. With each touch the glassy surface felt hotter and then, between Triangulum and Canis Minor, blue energy discharges started to sizzle along the rivulets of water that ran around and across the glyphs. By the time he finished, the console was vibrating, which was vaguely interesting, but Rodney's attention remained glued to the Stargate.

  At least until Dex yanked him away from the dialing console. "Let's go! That thing looks like it's gonna blow any second!"

  A heartbeat later it did just that. Rodney was tossed back by the blast, arms flung across his face to ward off shrapnel, and the next thing he knew was being dragged down the stairs toward the gate, legs buckling under him, his chest feeling as if someone had poured liquid fire into it. His ears filled with the thrum of his own pulse and, above that, the outraged hiss of hot, twisted metal struck by the hammer of rain, Ronon's harsh gasps just above his ear, the lighter counterpoint of Teyla's panting breath somewhere on Ronon's other side, and feet that seemed to belong to someone else slapping the ankle-deep water at the bottom of the stairs.

  Ahead, inside the Stargate, the wormhole engaged, and the event horizon surged outward as if to greet them. Then it settled back into the ring.

  "What the...?" Dex had skidded to an abrupt halt, bringing them to a stop with him.