Author:
chaletianFandom: SGA
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Sheppard/McKay
Spoilers: None
Summary: Rodney wakes up to find the power dead and people disappearing (on the one hand, including John, so that’s bad, bad, very bad, but on the other hand also including Kavanagh, so it’s not like it’s all sucky). Nothing works. Zelenka keeps swearing at him. Lorne has not managed to instantly fix the situation with some arcane military know-how. At least Ronon has come to appreciate that Rodney’s hypoglycaemia is REAL and DANGEROUS. Which totally isn’t the point because something’s messing with Atlantis and they’re probably all going to die. Inspired by my darling, darling
balooky.Rodney knows something’s wrong as soon as he wakes up. For a start, it’s dark. It’s never dark usually; it’s like Atlantis knows they’re awake, and so always gives them light. But that’s not the giveaway. The giveaway is that he’s alone in the narrow, standard-issue bed. He can’t remember the last time he woke up by himself.
He sits up, scrubs a hand over his face, then picks up the comm unit off the shelf by the bed, and taps it. “Sheppard,” he says, and he’s laidback, of course he’s laidback, he’s Rodney McKay, genius (squared, or possibly cubed), he’s not going to panic because there’s no light and no colonel in his bed (Sheppard’s a wanderer anyway, practically an insomniac, and fine, just because he’s always been back in bed by the time Rodney’s woken up, well, that doesn’t mean anything).
But there’s no response, no… nothing, not even static. The comms are dead. No, Rodney corrects himself. His comm is dead. He shouldn’t extrapolate too far; he’s always having to tell Zelenka that (he ignores the existence of too many conversations to count where Zelenka has said, “But, Rodney, there is no evidence to support that conclusion; you are merely taking two data points and building entire fantasy around them!” and he has said something extremely rude in return, and been right, always right).
But when he leaves their quarters, it’s clear that it’s not just Rodney and he’s not panicking, he’s still definitely not panicking, but Atlantis is dark except for dim, dim light peering through the stained glass that decorates the external walls, and nobody’s comms are working; nothing’s working. The consoles are dead. There’s no power, not even to separate tech like the LSDs.
People are rushing around, and there’s a routine, everyone knows where they’re supposed to go, except Rodney, who stands around gaping until he decides to go to the control room, which is when he remembers that that’s where he’s supposed to go, which is just more evidence that he’s NOT PANICKING and is in fact QUITE CALM and IN CONTROL.
The control slips slightly when he reaches the control room, to find everything still dark, though there’s more light because of the windows albeit still not enought to be of much use. Someone’s got out some power generators and flashlights, but obviously they were useless, because they’ve been pushed to the side of the room.
“What about those?” says Rodney, waving at them, just in case people have been monumentally stupid which tragically isn’t even that unlikely, but Major Lorne raises an eyebrow, and Rodney glares and shuts up.
“Where’s the Colonel?” asks Lorne, making controlled hand gestures at the Marines; a mute language Rodney has partly absorbed but mostly (like everything else that is beneath him) ignored.
“He’s not here?” Rodney looks around wildly, squinting his eyes at the various military personnel, even though he knows none of them is John, would recognise John anywhere, as if anyone wouldn’t with his hair and his ears and his attitude. “I thought he was here! He’s the military commander, I thought he was here! He’s supposed to be in charge!” He carries on in this vein for a little while, but Lorne has moved on and is addressing the assembled Marines, saying things like “unexplained power outage” and “fan out” and “get people to the mess” and “Colonel Sheppard is unaccounted for,” like John isn’t just being heroic somewhere.
Then Chuck and Zelenka are making noises at the controls, and Rodney’s suddenly completely focused on the issue at hand, and makes Lorne send Marines out to the rooms where they keep the ZPM and the naquadah generators, and that tricksy Ancient junction box that kept doing the Ancient equivalent of blowing a fuse every few hours the first month they were on Atlantis.
Everything takes longer, much longer, because the transporters aren’t working, nothing’s working, and it’s dark, and people are starting to freak out, especially when they realise more people are missing. Miko’s crying because she says Simpson was literally right next to her and she turned round and the other scientist was gone, just gone. Ronon’s vanished too, and Rodney is unspeakably relieved to arrive in the mess to see Teyla calming some of the civilians, nodding to him gravely across the room.
He heads back to the control room, to find some of the Marines returned.
“…some kind of Wraith attack?” Lorne is asking. He seems bewildered, which Rodney rather resents, because he’s feeling bewildered enough for everyone and Lorne’s a soldier and is supposed to be able to cope with things like this. Like all the power going and all the light going and all the people going.
All right. Fine. Not all the people. But the most important one, and to Rodney’s way of thinking, John is fairly useful (his freakish genetics, for example) and surprisingly adept at getting people out of trouble (useful, given how surprisingly adept he is at getting people into trouble), and thus worth about fifty of, say, Kavanagh. Who also seems to be missing, now he comes to think about it, but in a crisis situation that’s practically a bonus.
“Pretty weird attack,” says one of the soldiers. Stackhouse? Stackley? They all look alike to Rodney. “If they wanted to kill us or cull us or what-the-fuck-ever, coulda done it by now. We’re sitting ducks.” They all nod solemnly.
There’s a commotion in the gateroom below, and from one of the corridors Ronon appears, his stun gun in one hand.
“That any use?” asks Lorne, but Ronon shakes his head.
“Doesn’t work,” he says briefly, and tucks it in the back of his pants. Behind him, Kavanagh appears, bitching and whining and looking out of breath.
“Where the hell have you been?” demands Rodney, trotting down the stairs. Ronon shrugs.
“Just appeared in one of the empty labs with him,” and he jerks a thumb behind him. “What’s going on?”
“EXCUSE ME, MY ARM HAS BEEN BROKEN IF SOMEONE COULD KINDLY PAY SOME ATTENTION, EVEN THOUGH I KNOW YOU ALL HATE ME!” shouts Kavanagh, and glares poisonously at everyone when Ronon follows Rodney back up the steps and joins the conversation with Lorne. No-one notices as a medic ushers him away, still glaring poisonously, but now whimpering as well.
“So, what, people are just being moved around Atlantis?” asks Lorne, scratching his head. “What the hell’s going on here?”
“Someone’s playing with us,” says Ronon.
“Well, it’s got to be the Wraith,” says Rodney, “unless there’s a whole other species that WANTS TO KILL US that we haven’t even MET yet.”
“Could be the Genii, maybe?” offers Lorne, but Rodney’s already shaking his head.
“They don’t have the technology to do all this.”
“What’s wrong with our systems? Why’s the power down?” Rodney would like to rant and roar and shout that these are stupid questions and Lorne should be doing something more constructive, but unfortunately they’re fairly key questions that he doesn’t happen to be able to answer.
“I don’t happen to be able to answer that,” he says haughtily, an attitude that lasts about 0.6 seconds under the full beam of Ronon’s dead look. “I don’t know. We can’t work it out. Nothing’s wrong – nothing’s physically damaged, I mean. Not that we can see. It could be a computer virus, but it would have to be a damned good one to shut us down instantaneously without anyone seeing any signs beforehand, and even then things like the LSDs should—the jumpers! Someone should check the jumpers!” He makes a leap for the stairs, but Lorne catches his arm.
“Already checked. Dead like everything else.”
“We should stop saying stuff’s dead,” says Rodney grumpily. “It’s a bad image.” He sits down, leans against a console, and wraps his arms around his knees.
“You OK, McKay?” asks Ronon, but Rodney can’t even work up the energy to say something rude to him, because everything is dead and he can’t work out why, and he’s terribly, terribly afraid that he can’t fix it, and what’s even the point of being Rodney McKay, genius (squared, or even cubed), if he can’t fix this problem? He sighs dolefully, then looks up as Ronon shoves something into his hand. It’s a power bar. “Blood sugar,” says Ronon, seriously, as if he means it, as if it’s not at all the case that those words have NEVER EVER in the ENTIRE HISTORY of Atlantis left his mouth without a smirk attached due to whatever slanderous and possibly actionable LIES John had told him about Rodney’s hypoglycaemia.
The power bar (chocolate; and Rodney resolves to investigate at some point in the future – when the light and power and military commander are back – the stash that Ronon’s obviously got hidden somewhere) helps, and Rodney says cheerfully, “Well, at least it doesn’t look like people are actually been taken away, per se, just moved about. So we should send out search parties to look for missing people.”
“Already on it,” says Lorne. “We’ve made up a list of missing personnel.”
“How many?” asks Ronon, and Lorne glances at the list.
“About twenty,” he says, then readjusts, “no, wait, you and Kavanagh came back,” (they look at Rodney judgementally but he totally did not just sigh like it was a shame, he’s not a monster, for God’s sake, OK maybe a tiny sigh, but it’s not like there’s a law against exhaling), “and so did Percy and Jones.” He tots up the remaining names, accurately this time. “Fifteen left.”
Rodney flaps a hand. “Piece of cake,” he says airily, as if Atlantis isn’t huge and still largely unexplored and, oh yes, partly underwater in places.
“Yeah,” says Lorne drily, “won’t take more than a minute or two,” but Rodney’s stopped paying attention and has gone to badger Zelenka and some twink of a minion he seems to have acquired that Rodney can’t remember having seen before. They’re lying on their backs under a console, and Rodney joins them. Zelenka moves around some crystals (completely dark and unresponsive) and Rodney tells him that it’s completely pointless, then moves different crystals (also completely dark and unresponsive) while Zelenka swears at him in Czech. They’re not achieving anything, but at least it’s relaxing.
“Sheppard’s still missing,” says Rodney, after a few enjoyable minutes. “I should go and look for him.”
“You and which army?” says Zelenka, readjusting his glasses and sitting up. “One hint of danger and you are screaming like little girl, Rodney.” (Slander, slander, everywhere he went people slandered him.) The twink smirks and Rodney sneers at him until he disappears back under the console.
“I am extremely brave,” he says, and Zelenka shrugs and mutters something that is bound to, again, be actionable, and Rodney thinks longingly of the lifeless little recorder in his pants pocket that he uses for precisely this sort of thing in preparation for the day when he lands a giant massive law suit on Zelenka, evidence for which he has been gathering feverishly for quite some time. But thoughts were useless; action was needed.
Rodney jumps to his feet, and is about to demand that Lorne send him somewhere useful to look for his fallen lov--- fallen COMRADE (totally comrade, Rodney knows all about don’t ask, don’t tell, though he can’t imagine why anyone would look at John with his hair and his ears and his attitude and DEAR SWEET LORD HIS MOUTH and even need to ask, and they share quarters for God’s sake, and he still can’t quite work out how John’s come to the conclusion that EVERYONE on Atlantis is capable of such cognitive dissonance that they can simultaneously cling to the largely ludicrous belief that their military commander is straight whilst accepting the evidence that, oh yes, he is totally living with another man with whom he has had butt sex not once, not twice, but three times (admittedly the last time under some pretty unusual circumstances involving a plate of mashed potato, some offworld moonshine and an Ancient device that somehow mimics the sound of a lawnmower whilst vibrating at some not completely uninteresting frequencies), in the Gateroom, not that there’s any actual evidence for that being circulated amongst the general population. Hopefully), when the fallen comrade suddenly appears, as Ronon did, in the Gateroom. Of course he’s gushing blood and limping and looking quite like he’s about to die (as usual), so Rodney’s thoughts do not go to the mashed potato/moonshine/lawnmower sextoy memory, but instead run in panicky circles whilst he yells for a doctor, and dashes down the stairs just in time to catch John as he collapses.
John’s covered in blood (his own, it’s bound to be his own), and, as mentioned, looks like he’s about to die, but he grins up at Rodney.
“So, this is weird,” he says, and passes out.
“I hate everyone,” says Rodney, clutching his comrade, and knowing, with dire certainty that things are only going to get weirder, because that’s exactly how shitty his life is.
to be continued…