SGA Fic: Cold around the Edges (Part 1/2)
Dec. 19th, 2005 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
out_thereTitle: Cold around the Edges
Fandom: SGA
Pairing: McKay/Zelenka
Rating: R (more adult themes -- death -- than actual smut)
Summary: "We're the ones who do the impossible. We're the ones that find the solution when there is none. We're the ones that fix this."
Disclaimer: The boys, Wraith and technology don't belong to me. Really.
Notes: An AU set at the beginning of The Seige trilogy. Originally meant to be written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ekaterinn (for the SV & SGA Flashfic Challenge) who requested "Zelenka and McKay discover time travel" (before I had to drop out due to real life and bad timing). This probably isn't what she meant. Thanks to monkeypumpkin for betaing and seperis for advice.
Cold around the Edges
The explosion is blinding white, and it sears stars on the back of his eyelids. Blinking rapidly, Radek wills his vision to return, and thinks slowly, "We're alive."
When he can see, McKay's standing at the railing, watching the smoke rise. It reveals a hazy scene of destruction. There's debris across the gateroom floor -- small chunks of metal with melted edges, a large flat piece that must have fallen from the ceiling -- and a jagged hole above it. In the middle, the Stargate still stands, perilously leaning backwards. At the top, just left of centre, is an inch-wide crack splitting the smooth circle.
"I can't fix that," McKay mutters, repeating under his breath, "I can't fix that."
Radek shakes his head. "Not enough time." He turns away from the scorched walls and rocky floor, but as he does, he spots the dark grey of an Atlantis uniform. Rushing forward, taking the steps two at a time, he gets halfway down and has to stop. He can see an arm, grey sleeve and a pale, narrow hand, but it stops at the elbow. It isn't someone crushed, trapped, needing help. The arm just *stops*, it ceases to be; there's a straight line of where it is, and then where it isn't. Someone had come through to get them; someone had been caught in the blast.
They all knew the theories of gate travel, the dangers and precautions. It wasn't something he'd ever wanted to see.
When he turns around, McKay's clutching his laptop, his fingers white. "I don't think we can fix this."
"We don't need to." Radek forces himself to walk back to the control room -- forces himself not to think about explosions and disembodied arms and the amplification effects of an open gate -- and points to the screen behind McKay, to the large red symbols counting down.
"Oh. Yeah," McKay says, his eyes widening for a moment, "I forgot the part that involved our certain death. You know, if they'd warned us about that, I wouldn't have left Earth."
"Of course not. You would have chosen a nice, safe, boring profession, yes?" Radek almost smiles. It's gallows humor, this urge to laugh hysterically because there's nothing else to do, but it helps. "You would not be tempted by the advanced alien technology at all."
"You're right. Barely compares to the certain death thing." Behind them, the clock counts down to fifteen seconds. "But I still wish it was someone else's certain death."
Radek snorts, because McKay's bluster is loud and attention-seeking, but never genuine. "Anyone in particular?"
"My high school gym teacher." McKay smirks and steps closer, rolling his shoulders like he's really thinking about this. "Cathy Sheinbaum from freshman year. The guy who gave me a ticket when I clearly wasn't speeding on my way to the prom."
When McKay stops, he's standing so close that Radek almost expects one of those spontaneous team-building hugs that McKay never indulges in. McKay settles his hands on Radek's shoulders -- and Radek's sure he's right, up until the moment that McKay's lips land on his. There's three seconds to go, and McKay's mouth is pushy and demanding, but his hands are soft, sliding down Radek's arms. Of all the times Radek imagined McKay kissing him, it was nothing like this: desperate and beguilingly sweet.
Radek closes his eyes, trying to block out the smoke and destruction around them. He ignores the acrid smell of oxygen and burnt metal, and concentrates on the stale coffee flavor of McKay.
The hands on his arms tighten, shoving him away. "This is wrong."
Radek blinks, straightening his glasses as McKay scrambles to one of the control panels. Ancient symbols are flashing on the screen behind McKay, repeating themselves in red and blue. "What is it?"
With McKay, it is never the obvious answer.
"Proof that the Ancient safeguards were ridiculous!" McKay's fingers are flying over the consoles, pressing here and there, trying to work through subroutines that weren't designed for humans. "It's an error message. They're experiencing technical difficulties. Maybe we should try blowing up their city at another time."
The laptop is open and connected quickly in Radek's sure hands. "What is--"
"I don't know!"
"Where--"
"The error?"
"No, your missing sense of propriety," Radek replies as the laptop screen fills with code. "Where--"
"Quarantine. No. Life signs--" McKay stops talking.
Radek sees the meaning of the error and understands why. "Ancient life signs detected. It's your gene."
"It's artificial," McKay yells back, his voice getting high and tight with panic. "What sort of stupid system can't--"
"Look at the life signs." On the screen in front of him, Radek can see two pale blue dots -- one is a slightly lighter blue, showing McKay and his gene -- standing in the centre. The outer spokes of Atlantis are filled with orange: Wraith. Far too many of them. McKay is still ranting, stabbing an angry finger at the consoles, and the orange dots are getting closer. "Look at the readings."
"What-- I--" McKay sees them, his mouth drops open and then he swallows. "Certain death. That's a recurring theme here. Have I mentioned how I'm sick of certain death?"
The laptop is turned off, unplugged and bundled under Radek's left arm. With his right hand, he grabs McKay's wrist and sprints towards the northern corridor. For a moment, McKay's stunned enough to follow without complaint.
That only lasts a moment, though. "Do you even know where you're going?"
"We are hiding. There are lots of Wraith. We have no time to disarm the safety protocols."
"But--"
"There are less this way," Radek says, feet thumping heavily on the metal floor. Behind him, McKay is breathing heavily, but he's running. "Wraith will come to command centre. They *know*. They know where to attack. So we hide."
McKay jolts to a stop, yanking on his arm. Then a hand is clamped over Radek's mouth and he hears it. The ricochet of hurried footsteps, the din of other people -- other creatures -- running.
"They move fast," McKay says, under his breath, and that is a problem.
He'd been aiming for the armory, to see if any of the weaponry had been left behind, but that's two corridors away. Those footsteps were too near. He starts to ask, "Where--" but McKay has started to run again.
They run for a few more yards, then McKay stops and a door opens beside them. "Get in," McKay calls back as he scrambles inside. Radek follows and the door seals behind him.
Inside, the light is pale blue and the room is small enough that if he stood in the center, he could stretch out his arms and touch the walls. "Where are we?"
"Really small bedroom? Stationery cupboard? Bomb shelter?" McKay blusters, pulling the cover off the door's circuits and removing the circuitry crystals. Without those crystals, the only way to open it is manual force. "I don't know."
"Then why--"
"It's out of sight. And, hopefully, without a gene, they won't be able to find us." McKay takes a few deep breaths and then sinks to the ground. "So we wait and hide, and come up with a plan. A plan that doesn't involve certain death."
Radek gives in to the adrenaline flooding his body, his pounding heart and unstable knees, and lets himself crumple to the ground.
McKay's head flicks around, his eyes wide but his jaw set. "Are you--?"
"Frightened," Radek reassures with a loose wave of his hand. "Very, very frightened."
Frightened doesn't begin to explain this feeling, this absolute terror. It isn't fear of the unknown: it's the terror of knowing precisely how doomed they are. Of knowing how many soldiers it took to capture the one Wraith that was spying on their Atlantis. Of knowing how many Wraith are in their city, and how few humans are left.
It's an equation in the back of his head, trying to calculate the possibility of them surviving this. The odds are too high against them. The numbers rattle up higher and higher as he pats down his pockets, finds two powerbars, and hands one to McKay.
McKay takes it and has half of the bar shoved into his mouth before Radek gets his own opened. "So what do we do now?" McKay demands, his mouth full of food.
Radek leans his head back against the wall, stares up at the shadowed ceiling. "I don't know."
"Oh, that's very helpful."
"Here," Radek shoves the laptop at McKay. They are stranded, they are alone, but they still have one tool. They should use it. "Shut down access to the control room terminals."
He chews on the bland tastelessness of the powerbar as McKay powers up the laptop and starts typing.
Then McKay's fingers stop. "Won't the virus--"
"Was set to be released with self-destruct."
"So no virus," McKay says, and the tippety-tat of his fingers on the keyboard resumes.
The Wraith have had ten thousand years to master the abandoned Ancient technology. They've had scientists experimenting with human DNA, inserting Wraith strands into humans. They both know there's a chance that Wraith experiments may have focused on the ATA gene, too, but they have to hope against it.
Otherwise, there's nothing left to hope *for*.
"Okay, control is temporarily re-routed here," McKay says, flourishing a final tap on the enter key. "Why didn't we release the virus? Because for all of our concerns -- and I do remember them being many and varied -- I don't think taking control for a brief moment will protect the database."
"Not if they really want to access it."
McKay frowns, mouth and eyebrows pulling down as his tone slides higher. "I have been in a lot of bad situations and I am familiar with panic. You could even say that panic and I have a very close, intimate relationship. But panic doesn't help, so if you're panicking and this is a purely emotional reaction, I want to know now."
"Do I sound panicked?" Radek bites back, and yes, he can hear the fear and panic. He pulls his glasses off and they drop to the floor with a tiny clatter.
"You don't sound as panicked as you should be, and that's never a good sign. You should be. People who don't panic are the ones that just *snap* at the end." Radek rubs at his eyes, but McKay keeps talking, his words getting faster and louder. "This is disaster. This is doom with a capital D. It was bad enough that we had to evacuate and destroy Atlantis, destroy the database, destroy everything, to keep Earth safe."
Radek almost laughs. "Earth is still safe."
"Because the Stargate is broken. It's *broken*. That's not supposed to happen. But they can still find the co-ordinates from the database, they can still fly there the good, old-fashioned way." McKay stops, mouth hanging slack. One hand clenches the powerbar wrapper, then it drops. Radek watches the metallic paper fall, almost glide, to the floor. When it lands, it makes a tiny rustle that he strains to hear. "They can still find the co-ordinates."
"Hence, re-routing control to us. We can stop them from accessing it."
"But the virus--"
"Would leave us unable to access the system at all. It would stop them, but it would trap us here." Radek rubs his eyes again, wishing he could erase the image of that arm, wishing his understanding wasn't wide enough to know what must have happened to the evacuees. "No food. No water. Not even space enough to walk more than a footstep. This is not how I want to die."
"You don't think it would be better?" McKay asks in a small voice, staring at the far corner of the room. His arms are crossed over his knees, and Radek understands. There is nothing cowardly about being frightened of what you know.
"I think we need sleep. I've slept five hours in the last two days."
"Three." McKay's voice is back to normal: smug and showing there are many ways to play one-upmanship.
"So we sleep. Then we work out what we're doing."
He lies down, and despite the fear and the adrenaline, the knowledge and the numbers ticking higher in the back of his brain, he sleeps, too exhausted to dream. It's a small mercy.
***
The floors in Atlantis are as hard as anywhere else, so Radek wakes up with sore shoulders and an aching neck. Stretching to the side, his neck cracks and alleviates the threatening headache. McKay is curled on his side, back against the wall, snoring. It's hard to believe that he's almost as loud asleep as he is awake, but it's true.
He finds himself thinking that Elizabeth had been organized. There were lists and schedules for military and civilian personnel alike. Everyone had groups and team leaders, enough time to pack their belongings, to clear their rooms, to move everything to the tents that had been set up as a temporary measure on M1K-439 (Planet Waterfall, as Ford referred to it). McKay had radioed them from the satellite, explained that the Wraith hadn't appeared, that they were returning empty-handed, and Elizabeth had used the time well. Fifteen hours later, when McKay returned, the base camp had already been set up, conveniently close -- lethally close, Radek's mind amends -- to the Stargate.
People had been moved, living spaces had been divvied up, and the Stargate control crystal had been removed and replaced, leaving the only reference to Earth in the Ancient database. A few hours after McKay returned, the barest of skeleton crews walked back through the gate and set the self-destruct sequence, then returned to the green fields, blue skies and distant purple hills of the Alpha site, their new home.
Radek remembers standing under the bright sunshine, staring at the liquid cobalt of the open gate; remembers the tight lines around Elizabeth's eyes as she swallowed and bid her own silent farewell to their shining city, and told them to close it. It had whooshed shut, leaving an empty circle of horizon and no one said a word.
Then McKay dashed forward, yelling at poor Downes to open the gate again -- now! -- and whining about his laptop. Radek had blinked, had needed a moment to process the loud words and waving hands into meaning, but in that time Downes had reacted, had opened the gate and McKay had scurried through. Turning to Elizabeth, walking backwards to the gate, Radek had explained, "His laptop. We used it to set the virus, it's been left at the control room. It has research, calculations. It's important."
A pair of tiny creases appeared between Elizabeth's brows, and she had sucked in a quick breath. "The self-destruct sequence has already been set."
"We have time. I'll get him. Help him disconnect. We'll return," Radek called over his shoulder a moment before he stepped through the gateroom. It had taken a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimmed room -- to the lack of harsh sunlight -- as he walked up the steps.
McKay was typing with his right hand, tapping his left against the bench as he waited for the laptop to transfer the virus program. "Do you realize how stupid it is for both of us to be here? There's no need for two of us to risk our lives."
"Two hands," Radek replied, taking one of the Ancient consoles and making sure the virus was primed correctly, "twice as quick." It took a minute to transfer the program under the rippling light of the open gate. It took another thirty seconds to disconnect and close the laptop, and then the world exploded into fire and light.
There is a small part of Radek that wants to blame McKay for this entire event. A small part of him that says that McKay should have completed the transfer earlier but he knows McKay was sleep-deprived and overseeing too much to be expected to remember every detail. A sharp, spiteful part of him thinks McKay should have left his laptop to be destroyed, or that he should have left McKay, should have told Elizabeth to close down the gate and let McKay die with his precious laptop and his beloved city. And there is part of him -- the part that feels twisted and hardened like warped glass -- that whispers that the self-destruct would have worked, if McKay had been dead. He doesn't want to think it, but it's impossible to ignore what you know.
Radek stands up, stretches, and then kneels on the floor and opens the laptop. The biometrics scanner is still online, hooked up to the main life signs detector. The movement of orange dots around the city blueprint is fascinating, mesmerizing. There are clusters gathered in the biggest rooms -- the cafeteria, the gate room, the meeting room, the recreation areas -- and those clusters keep growing larger, denser. Radek theorizes that they are beaming more Wraith in, since the clusters keep growing without any dots walking through the doors.
There are also groups of two or three roaming Atlantis's corridors, circling through the city in a patterned web. Radek spends an hour watching them follow the same route at the same time interval. He opens a spreadsheet and starts to note it. It could be because he needs something to do, something to focus on, but it feels important.
When McKay wakes, he groans, flails an arm, hits his wrist against the wall and swears. Then he opens his eyes and sits up. "We need to fix this."
"Your wrist?" Radek feels his eyebrows rise, and he tilts his head down so he can see McKay over the rim of his glasses. "This is not the time for you to imagine illnesses you do not have."
"I am actually hypoglycemic, thank you very much. I could get Carson to--" McKay stops, his jaw clacking shut. Radek doesn't say anything because there's nothing to say. They both know what they won't say out loud: that the others -- all of them -- couldn't have possibly survived the blast. That an open gate would have absorbed the explosion, and the wormhole would have magnified it, would have given it the power of a nuclear reaction. That they are -- in every sense of the word -- alone in this situation.
McKay blinks, and as quickly as that, he's on to the next thought. "Anyway, I wasn't talking about my wrist. I was talking about this, this whole disastrous thing that's happened. We need to fix it."
He wants to ask how, but instead, he says, "Why?"
"Because that's what we do." McKay's shoulders are set, and he's waving his hands, strong fingers stretched wide. His voice is firm and confident, and Radek's almost ready to believe in anything at this moment. "We're scientists. We came here to learn and fix things. The military's here to shoot, and when force can't solve a problem, we fix it. We're the ones who do the impossible. We're the ones that find the solution when there is none. We're the ones that fix this."
"Rodney." Radek sighs, and it isn't a defeat, but it feels like it. "How--"
"We'll divide the problem into pieces. Solve one bit at a time." McKay stands up, paces three steps to one wall, and then turns around and paces back in short, energized steps. "First problem is keeping us alive."
"Food," Radek suggests.
"And water."
"But the cafeteria is impossible. It is filled with Wraith, and more are beaming in every ten minutes."
"Doesn't matter," McKay says, still pacing like a rat in a tiny, tiny cage. "All supplies were cleared out and taken with the evacuees." Then McKay snaps his fingers and stops pacing. "My quarters."
"What?"
McKay's face splits into a wide grin. "I almost forgot. I have a stash of MREs there. For emergencies."
"We were abandoning the city permanently," Radek says slowly, pushing his glasses up, "and setting it to self-destruct, and you left behind food supplies, in case of emergency?"
"And look what happened! I think my foresight is proving to be pretty invaluable right now."
McKay is starting to puff up like a balloon, so Radek interrupts before the self-congratulations begin. "How much food?"
"A week's worth. Enough so I wouldn't be hungry."
"So, for two people eating regular rations, that would last, what? A month?" McKay glares at him, but Radek feels no guilt. It's well-known that McKay's eyes are much larger than his stomach.
"Two weeks, maybe. If we ration."
"And clean water," Radek points out.
"And hot showers."
Radek stretches his arms above his head, and pulls his shoulder painfully. "And a bed to sleep in."
"And enough floor to pace on."
Which leaves the problem of getting to McKay's room. Radek pulls up the life signs detector and the spreadsheet. He knew it was important. "They are patrolling. Through our corridor," he points to the two blue dots, huddled together a small distance away from the control room, "and past, to the cafeteria, and then up to the jumper bay."
"But not past my quarters, so once we get to that corridor--"
"We should be safe as long as--"
"We make it quick."
"The next patrol is in ten minutes." Radek swallows. His palms are sweating; it's a natural reaction to considering sneaking past creatures that are both faster and stronger than you, and able to eat you with a single touch. He suddenly realizes that they don't know how the Wraith hunt, if they have higher senses of smell or hearing. He swallows again. "After that, we have twenty-five minutes before they come."
McKay nods. Then he sits down, pulls off a shoe, tugs his sock around, and puts his shoe back on.
"What are you doing?"
McKay's grin is a little wild around the edges. "I'm not going to stop to tie up my shoelaces."
***
Radek thinks it's amazing that ten minutes in a small room can feel like an eternity. He spends most of the time looking at his watch, watching seconds count down. The worst thing is the way that Atlantis was built to muffle noise, the way that they can't hear footsteps passing by. Instead, they have to rely on watches and Radek's calculations, because the laptop's already packed up. Once the patrol has passed them, they can't afford to waste time disconnecting cords.
They count down until the patrol should be there, should be passing them, and then they give it a minute before McKay inserts the crystal circuitry and opens the door.
Then they walk, carefully, quietly, down the corridor. They don't know how sensitive Wraith hearing is -- and it's frustrating not to know that, not to be able to calculate the risks -- and neither of them are known for grace under pressure, so they're walking. Less chance of spraining an ankle, less chance of falling over and damaging the laptop, less chance of alerting the enemy to their presence.
But it's hard to walk when every self-preserving instinct is screaming to run. Hard to swallow down the panic, to reject the urge to babble, to keep this quiet and orderly.
Radek finds himself staring at his feet, watching his beat-up, grayed sneakers step over familiar floors. The first time he walked this corridor, they were under threat. They were waiting for an ocean of water to descend upon the sunken city, to crush it and destroy everything the Ancients had left behind. It feels like such a long time ago.
So much -- and so little -- has changed.
He's still terrified of dying, terrified of being the one that killed Atlantis, but he knows these corridors now. He knows that the door on his left leads to a small set of stairs that open beneath Elizabeth's office. He knows that he could take the next turn right, and then left, and then right again, and find himself in the recreation areas; that, normally, he could go there and find groups of people, civilians and armed services, sitting around and enjoying their time off. Normally there would be music playing, or an old film or TV series showing on one of the screens. That he could sit there and not have to talk, not have to translate thoughts from Czech into English into words, and watch the people around him.
He could watch them laugh and tease each other. He could watch the ones with quiet, homesick eyes, the ones that were missing an anniversary or a birthday back on Earth. It occurs to him that he never learnt their names.
They turn a corridor and it is darker here. The only illumination comes from small lights along the floor. He shoots a questioning glance at McKay but McKay shakes his head, meaning that it isn't him, that it isn't his gene doing this. Walking in the half-dark makes this even worse.
Atlantis is a city of light, a city made to sparkle and shine. Instead, her corridors are dark and her walls have been breached. And unless he and McKay can stop it, her deepest secrets will be ransacked and revealed. It's not a good thought, but if he concentrates on it, he can resist the urge to look behind them, to see if there's anything following them in the dark.
He hears McKay's footsteps begin to quicken, and that's easier. Easier to reach out and grasp McKay's shoulder, easier to be the calm one for someone else.
McKay drags a deep breath through his nose, nostrils flaring like they're trying to compensate for the way McKay's hands can't wave while holding the laptop so tightly, and nods. His footsteps slow down again, and Radek is listening, listening to the two sets of feet, listening for any other sounds. The only other thing he can hear is his heartbeat.
The trek continues, walking through a corridor that he normally avoids -- not because he dislikes the area, but because it's quicker to use the teleportation system -- and around another corner. They're close now, only a corridor away, and Radek's watch is saying they've been walking for fifteen minutes. They can make this.
The last corridor lasts for hours, like it's in a universe that has a different flow of time. With every step, Radek keeps waiting to hear Wraith running behind them. They don't, so it remains eerily quiet: the sound of their footsteps, their anxious breaths, swallowed by the darkness.
When they stop at McKay's door, McKay isn't the only one with shaking hands.
Between them, they pull off the cover and hotwire the door, forcing it to let them in. They replace the cover, but not the crystals, and walk inside. When the door closes behind them, Radek is overwhelmingly relieved, and might need to throw up.
"I never, ever want to do that again," McKay manages as he puts the laptop down beside the bed.
Radek opens his mouth to reply, but the nausea forces him to run to the bathroom, to clumsily fall to his knees and empty his stomach. After he's thrown up everything he's eaten for the last week, he washes his face and rinses his mouth. His reflection frowns back at him with wild, unkempt hair and dark circles under his eyes. He looks away quickly.
In the bedroom, McKay is levering up a section of the wall and pulling out a backpack, which he empties onto the bed. There are MREs and powerbars in several different flavors -- although there's an uncommonly high number of the not-quite-chocolate flavor -- and McKay was right. Starvation won't be a problem for weeks. "Food really is a source of security for you, isn't it?"
McKay raises one lip in a sneer. "For that, I get all the chocolate powerbars."
"Take them," Radek replies with a shrug. "They don't taste like chocolate."
"That must be the shock talking."
Radek rolls his eyes and then picks up a peanut butter powerbar. He doesn't feel like eating but it's practical, necessary. "It's not the shock. Your taste buds are warped, McKay."
McKay wolfs down half of a pretending-to-be-chocolate powerbar in a matter of seconds. The scientists who work under McKay's command have called him a lot of inappropriate insults, but 'The Human Garbage Disposal' is both a popular and accurate nickname.
As Radek dutifully chews, he sorts through McKay's squirreled supplies. Food, a handful of pens, a few small notebooks, medical supplies -- one epipen, a packet of painkillers and a few rolls of bandages -- and inside a small pocket, an unopened twin packet of toothbrushes and three tubes of Colgate toothpaste.
"You packed toothbrushes for an emergency, but didn't think to pack something more useful? For instance, a spare laptop battery?"
"Firstly," McKay says, with a dismissive glare, "the spare batteries are kept in the storerooms. If one had gone missing, it would have been noticed. Secondly, those batteries are heavy and if I didn't have my laptop, it would have been a complete waste. Whereas I always have my teeth, and I'm pretty sure that it's easier to find food and water in the wild than a tube of toothpaste. Do you know the number of germs that live in the human mouth? The devastating effects of cavities and infections? Gingivitis is no laughing matter."
Radek swallows, then pushes the empty wrappers back inside the bag. "Now we have basic supplies, so what do we do?"
"We fix this."
"How?"
"By working out precisely what went wrong," McKay says, like anything can be fixed, "and correcting it."
"What went wrong?" Radek repeats slowly. "We came to an alien galaxy, we woke up vast numbers of life-sucking aliens and then were attacked with overwhelming force. What part of that can we fix?"
"What about the part that involved us destroying the Ancient database? Maybe we can save some it, send it back to Earth."
"Through the Stargate that is broken? Or using the depleted ZPM that we calculated would only open the connection to Earth for 1.3 seconds? Or using the compression code that you yourself could not finish?"
McKay scowls and stretches out along the bed. "That's not helping. There's only supposed to be one sarcastic cynic here, and that's me."
"You're being optimistic." Just like he is every time they're asked for a timeframe or estimation. McKay whines and insults others, but he always believes himself capable of forcing the universe to suit his needs. "There was an opening for a new cynic."
"It's still not helping." McKay kicks one shoe off, and then the other, and wiggles across until the pillow is under his head. "The other problem was with Teyla's timeline. Obviously the Wraith got here faster than expected."
Radek sighs. Standing up, he pulls off his own shoes and drags his socks off. "We calculated it with the best knowledge we had at the time."
"But it explains why we didn't intercept them with the weapons satellite. They were traveling faster than we realized."
"They'd already passed it." Radek remembered the look on McKay's face, the expression when they'd come back without even sighting the Wraith. He'd spent thirty hours in a puddlejumper, another two re-wiring the satellite, and another one waiting around for the Wraith to show, and it had all been for nothing. "So we know more about how Wraith travel. It doesn't help."
McKay bristles, his hands waving and gesturing at the ceiling. "If we have to escape in a jumper, we'll know if we can outrun them."
"Oh, yes, of course," Radek replies, sitting on the bed, "I forgot. We have secret jumper bay, one that's not above the Stargate. One that wasn't destroyed by the explosion. How foolish of me."
"There's no need to be--"
Radek continues, enjoying the chance to vent his frustration at this entire mess and McKay's cavalier attitude to it. It is too much, far too much, to deal with in one day. "It probably has magic puddlejumpers, too. The ones with really huge weapon systems, and engines that need no energy source, and limitless supplies of food. And you can take one back through time, and fix this whole mess!"
He stops. McKay sits upright. They both realize what he's said.
"Go back in time--"
"The jumper that Elizabeth used--"
"No scientist worth the title would destroy--"
"The prototype must be left here--"
"Or at least the notes, the theory behind it," McKay finishes, grinning and almost laughing in exhilaration. His eyes are bright, and he's clicking the fingers of one hand, sounding out the rhythm of his thoughts. "You're a genius. All we need to do is to search the database--"
"Make a program to search the database," Radek corrects, getting the laptop and connecting it to the Atlantis mainframe, because searching manually would be impossible in a database of that magnitude. "Search for the Ancient word for time and travel--"
"And traverse and any mention of Elizabeth--"
"--and have it search the untranslated data."
***
The first hour they program together: Radek typing line after line of code; McKay perched beside him on the bed, editorializing and suggesting additions as they go. By the start of the second hour, Radek is sick of McKay's interruptions and his grabby hands trying to pull the laptop closer. So he says, "If you want to do it so badly, then do it," and pushes the laptop at McKay.
"What are you doing?" McKay asks, but he's already pulling the laptop closer, hunching over it possessively.
"I'm going to take a shower," Radek calls over his shoulder, but McKay's already typing with one hand, and opening another powerbar with the other.
He stands under the hot water for an indecent length of time. The water won't go cold -- not like it did in Antarctica, cutting out after a few short minutes, barely long enough to melt the ice that settled bone-deep into tired arms and shoulders -- so he stands there as his fingers shrivel and prune, as his skin flushes lobster red under the heat.
It's not enough to melt away the last twenty-four hours.
But it washes away the stench of nervous sweat and the singed, burning smell that haunts his senses. He doesn't feel washed clean but wrung out, exhausted. When he gets out of the shower, he doesn't bother looking for a towel. Instead, he pulls on underwear, pants and T-shirt, and pads back to the bedroom. McKay has moved to the desk and doesn't look away from the dark screen.
Lying stomach-down on the bed, he pulls the pillow under his head. He doesn't bother hiding how securely he's clutching it.
He falls asleep to the sound of typing, to the annoyed huffs McKay makes when something doesn't work as well as it should, but this time he dreams. He dreams of Elizabeth's pale hands and the curve of her neck, he dreams of Major Sheppard's confident grin and dark aviator glasses. He dreams of Simpson's short, blonde hair, boldly colored by the sunlight slipping through stained glass. He dreams of Grodin's wry gaze and amused smirk. But most of all, he dreams of Elizabeth's pale hands.
When he wakes up, McKay's sitting cross-legged on the end of the bed, staring at the closed curtains hiding the window. Radek yawns, and reaches for his glasses, and McKay says, "I hated those curtains, you know. I was glad to leave them behind."
The curtains are cream, not much lighter than the grey walls of Atlantis. They're made from heavy cotton and everyone has a pair identical to them. "I liked the curtains."
McKay waves away his comment, a quick gesture that would be better suited to swatting a fly. "I never thought to pack curtains. I didn't think we'd have windows." There's a soft, far-away look in his eyes and his mouth is set in a short, pinched frown.
"No one knew what to bring," Radek says softly, because he's not quite sure what McKay's talking about. It's not curtains, that much is obvious. "We brought what we could."
"Yeah." McKay sighs, and his tight frown stretches into a wider scowl, an expression that pops up every time one of McKay's underlings can't meet a deadline. "The program's searching the database now. It'll take another two hours, at least."
Two hours according to McKay is about four hours by anyone else's watch. "We have nothing to do in the meantime?"
"We can't even play Solitaire on the laptop," McKay sighs and drops his head to his hands, rubbing at his eyes.
"It would slow the processor."
"Ah, yes," McKay says, giving an impatient nod of his head, "thank you. State the obvious. I knew I forgot to do something."
Radek pinches the bridge of his nose. He's barely woken up and he can already feel a headache coming on. "Rodney, please, get some sleep."
"I can't."
"Because it's impossible for you to apply reason to your own health?" Radek's lost track of time; he must have left his watch in the bathroom. It was ten a.m. when they evacuated, it was twenty-five past one when they walked through the halls (and that is still the most terrifying thing he's ever done), and the light hasn't faded yet. He might have had five hours sleep all in all -- maybe more, maybe less -- but McKay's certainly slept less than that.
"Because there's too much to do." McKay points at the laptop, then his hand lowers a fraction and he deflates. "And, okay, I can't actually do any of it until that's finished compiling results, but I'm currently more than a little scared -- I'd even go as far as to say petrified with fear at this stage -- and adrenaline's flooding through my system, so I'm not going to be sleeping any time soon."
It takes a lot of reasoned debate -- some of it yelled in Czech and using words his mother would never admit knowing -- to get McKay to see sense and sleep. Glaring, his blue eyes bleary and bloodshot, McKay makes Radek swear to wake him the moment the program catalogues its results. Radek nods and promises, and has no intention of keeping his word.
It's the logical decision, so he suffers no guilt over it. He's better at translating Ancient. McKay needs the sleep. There is something too frightening -- too disheartening -- about a McKay too tired to panic. Also, having two of them work on one laptop is unworkable, impractical.
It leaves him with time on his hands as McKay snores and the laptop whirrs through data.
For a moment, he's tempted to get out pen and paper, and write to his family: to his parents, to his three brothers, to his nephews and nieces. He wants to tell them about this beautiful place, about the majesty and wonder in every corridor. He wants to tell them about the city rising out of the waters, like a phoenix, like a miracle, like the granting of their most desperate wish. How water poured from spirals and towers, revealing color and light, beauty and hope. How their terror turned to awe.
He wants to tell them that he doesn't regret coming here. That it's been horrifying and scary, that he's always been half-sure that he'll die galaxies away from anywhere he's called home, but it's also been amazing, fulfilling on a soul-deep level. It's made him thankful for his life -- for his opportunities, for this place, for his potential -- in a way that safe laboratories on Earth never could.
He wants to say all this and more, but he doesn't. Partly because he doesn't have the words -- not in any language -- to be able to objectively write and accurately describe this marvel, and partly because they have a limited supply of paper and pens. A personal message is not the best use of scarce resources. Especially when they have no way to send it.
Everything is a scarce resource now: paper, pens, food. Even breathable air may become a concern in the near future. In a city the size of Manhattan, they are trapped like lab mice -- confined to one bedroom and one bathroom -- and even this room is bare and deprived. The walls are empty, the desktop clear, the bed stripped of its blanket, because blankets and warmth were important if they were to survive on an alien planet, and so they were packed and moved with everyone else. He doubts that any of the blankets survived the explosion.
To stop those thoughts, Radek gets a toothbrush out of McKay's backpack and goes to brush his teeth. The toothbrush clatters into the sink the first time he realizes that this is something Simpson and Grodin will never do again. He washes off the smear of white toothpaste and ignores the way his hands shake.
***
Concluded in Part Two.
Fandom: SGA
Pairing: McKay/Zelenka
Rating: R (more adult themes -- death -- than actual smut)
Summary: "We're the ones who do the impossible. We're the ones that find the solution when there is none. We're the ones that fix this."
Disclaimer: The boys, Wraith and technology don't belong to me. Really.
Notes: An AU set at the beginning of The Seige trilogy. Originally meant to be written for
ekaterinn (for the SV & SGA Flashfic Challenge) who requested "Zelenka and McKay discover time travel" (before I had to drop out due to real life and bad timing). This probably isn't what she meant. Thanks to monkeypumpkin for betaing and seperis for advice.Cold around the Edges
The explosion is blinding white, and it sears stars on the back of his eyelids. Blinking rapidly, Radek wills his vision to return, and thinks slowly, "We're alive."
When he can see, McKay's standing at the railing, watching the smoke rise. It reveals a hazy scene of destruction. There's debris across the gateroom floor -- small chunks of metal with melted edges, a large flat piece that must have fallen from the ceiling -- and a jagged hole above it. In the middle, the Stargate still stands, perilously leaning backwards. At the top, just left of centre, is an inch-wide crack splitting the smooth circle.
"I can't fix that," McKay mutters, repeating under his breath, "I can't fix that."
Radek shakes his head. "Not enough time." He turns away from the scorched walls and rocky floor, but as he does, he spots the dark grey of an Atlantis uniform. Rushing forward, taking the steps two at a time, he gets halfway down and has to stop. He can see an arm, grey sleeve and a pale, narrow hand, but it stops at the elbow. It isn't someone crushed, trapped, needing help. The arm just *stops*, it ceases to be; there's a straight line of where it is, and then where it isn't. Someone had come through to get them; someone had been caught in the blast.
They all knew the theories of gate travel, the dangers and precautions. It wasn't something he'd ever wanted to see.
When he turns around, McKay's clutching his laptop, his fingers white. "I don't think we can fix this."
"We don't need to." Radek forces himself to walk back to the control room -- forces himself not to think about explosions and disembodied arms and the amplification effects of an open gate -- and points to the screen behind McKay, to the large red symbols counting down.
"Oh. Yeah," McKay says, his eyes widening for a moment, "I forgot the part that involved our certain death. You know, if they'd warned us about that, I wouldn't have left Earth."
"Of course not. You would have chosen a nice, safe, boring profession, yes?" Radek almost smiles. It's gallows humor, this urge to laugh hysterically because there's nothing else to do, but it helps. "You would not be tempted by the advanced alien technology at all."
"You're right. Barely compares to the certain death thing." Behind them, the clock counts down to fifteen seconds. "But I still wish it was someone else's certain death."
Radek snorts, because McKay's bluster is loud and attention-seeking, but never genuine. "Anyone in particular?"
"My high school gym teacher." McKay smirks and steps closer, rolling his shoulders like he's really thinking about this. "Cathy Sheinbaum from freshman year. The guy who gave me a ticket when I clearly wasn't speeding on my way to the prom."
When McKay stops, he's standing so close that Radek almost expects one of those spontaneous team-building hugs that McKay never indulges in. McKay settles his hands on Radek's shoulders -- and Radek's sure he's right, up until the moment that McKay's lips land on his. There's three seconds to go, and McKay's mouth is pushy and demanding, but his hands are soft, sliding down Radek's arms. Of all the times Radek imagined McKay kissing him, it was nothing like this: desperate and beguilingly sweet.
Radek closes his eyes, trying to block out the smoke and destruction around them. He ignores the acrid smell of oxygen and burnt metal, and concentrates on the stale coffee flavor of McKay.
The hands on his arms tighten, shoving him away. "This is wrong."
Radek blinks, straightening his glasses as McKay scrambles to one of the control panels. Ancient symbols are flashing on the screen behind McKay, repeating themselves in red and blue. "What is it?"
With McKay, it is never the obvious answer.
"Proof that the Ancient safeguards were ridiculous!" McKay's fingers are flying over the consoles, pressing here and there, trying to work through subroutines that weren't designed for humans. "It's an error message. They're experiencing technical difficulties. Maybe we should try blowing up their city at another time."
The laptop is open and connected quickly in Radek's sure hands. "What is--"
"I don't know!"
"Where--"
"The error?"
"No, your missing sense of propriety," Radek replies as the laptop screen fills with code. "Where--"
"Quarantine. No. Life signs--" McKay stops talking.
Radek sees the meaning of the error and understands why. "Ancient life signs detected. It's your gene."
"It's artificial," McKay yells back, his voice getting high and tight with panic. "What sort of stupid system can't--"
"Look at the life signs." On the screen in front of him, Radek can see two pale blue dots -- one is a slightly lighter blue, showing McKay and his gene -- standing in the centre. The outer spokes of Atlantis are filled with orange: Wraith. Far too many of them. McKay is still ranting, stabbing an angry finger at the consoles, and the orange dots are getting closer. "Look at the readings."
"What-- I--" McKay sees them, his mouth drops open and then he swallows. "Certain death. That's a recurring theme here. Have I mentioned how I'm sick of certain death?"
The laptop is turned off, unplugged and bundled under Radek's left arm. With his right hand, he grabs McKay's wrist and sprints towards the northern corridor. For a moment, McKay's stunned enough to follow without complaint.
That only lasts a moment, though. "Do you even know where you're going?"
"We are hiding. There are lots of Wraith. We have no time to disarm the safety protocols."
"But--"
"There are less this way," Radek says, feet thumping heavily on the metal floor. Behind him, McKay is breathing heavily, but he's running. "Wraith will come to command centre. They *know*. They know where to attack. So we hide."
McKay jolts to a stop, yanking on his arm. Then a hand is clamped over Radek's mouth and he hears it. The ricochet of hurried footsteps, the din of other people -- other creatures -- running.
"They move fast," McKay says, under his breath, and that is a problem.
He'd been aiming for the armory, to see if any of the weaponry had been left behind, but that's two corridors away. Those footsteps were too near. He starts to ask, "Where--" but McKay has started to run again.
They run for a few more yards, then McKay stops and a door opens beside them. "Get in," McKay calls back as he scrambles inside. Radek follows and the door seals behind him.
Inside, the light is pale blue and the room is small enough that if he stood in the center, he could stretch out his arms and touch the walls. "Where are we?"
"Really small bedroom? Stationery cupboard? Bomb shelter?" McKay blusters, pulling the cover off the door's circuits and removing the circuitry crystals. Without those crystals, the only way to open it is manual force. "I don't know."
"Then why--"
"It's out of sight. And, hopefully, without a gene, they won't be able to find us." McKay takes a few deep breaths and then sinks to the ground. "So we wait and hide, and come up with a plan. A plan that doesn't involve certain death."
Radek gives in to the adrenaline flooding his body, his pounding heart and unstable knees, and lets himself crumple to the ground.
McKay's head flicks around, his eyes wide but his jaw set. "Are you--?"
"Frightened," Radek reassures with a loose wave of his hand. "Very, very frightened."
Frightened doesn't begin to explain this feeling, this absolute terror. It isn't fear of the unknown: it's the terror of knowing precisely how doomed they are. Of knowing how many soldiers it took to capture the one Wraith that was spying on their Atlantis. Of knowing how many Wraith are in their city, and how few humans are left.
It's an equation in the back of his head, trying to calculate the possibility of them surviving this. The odds are too high against them. The numbers rattle up higher and higher as he pats down his pockets, finds two powerbars, and hands one to McKay.
McKay takes it and has half of the bar shoved into his mouth before Radek gets his own opened. "So what do we do now?" McKay demands, his mouth full of food.
Radek leans his head back against the wall, stares up at the shadowed ceiling. "I don't know."
"Oh, that's very helpful."
"Here," Radek shoves the laptop at McKay. They are stranded, they are alone, but they still have one tool. They should use it. "Shut down access to the control room terminals."
He chews on the bland tastelessness of the powerbar as McKay powers up the laptop and starts typing.
Then McKay's fingers stop. "Won't the virus--"
"Was set to be released with self-destruct."
"So no virus," McKay says, and the tippety-tat of his fingers on the keyboard resumes.
The Wraith have had ten thousand years to master the abandoned Ancient technology. They've had scientists experimenting with human DNA, inserting Wraith strands into humans. They both know there's a chance that Wraith experiments may have focused on the ATA gene, too, but they have to hope against it.
Otherwise, there's nothing left to hope *for*.
"Okay, control is temporarily re-routed here," McKay says, flourishing a final tap on the enter key. "Why didn't we release the virus? Because for all of our concerns -- and I do remember them being many and varied -- I don't think taking control for a brief moment will protect the database."
"Not if they really want to access it."
McKay frowns, mouth and eyebrows pulling down as his tone slides higher. "I have been in a lot of bad situations and I am familiar with panic. You could even say that panic and I have a very close, intimate relationship. But panic doesn't help, so if you're panicking and this is a purely emotional reaction, I want to know now."
"Do I sound panicked?" Radek bites back, and yes, he can hear the fear and panic. He pulls his glasses off and they drop to the floor with a tiny clatter.
"You don't sound as panicked as you should be, and that's never a good sign. You should be. People who don't panic are the ones that just *snap* at the end." Radek rubs at his eyes, but McKay keeps talking, his words getting faster and louder. "This is disaster. This is doom with a capital D. It was bad enough that we had to evacuate and destroy Atlantis, destroy the database, destroy everything, to keep Earth safe."
Radek almost laughs. "Earth is still safe."
"Because the Stargate is broken. It's *broken*. That's not supposed to happen. But they can still find the co-ordinates from the database, they can still fly there the good, old-fashioned way." McKay stops, mouth hanging slack. One hand clenches the powerbar wrapper, then it drops. Radek watches the metallic paper fall, almost glide, to the floor. When it lands, it makes a tiny rustle that he strains to hear. "They can still find the co-ordinates."
"Hence, re-routing control to us. We can stop them from accessing it."
"But the virus--"
"Would leave us unable to access the system at all. It would stop them, but it would trap us here." Radek rubs his eyes again, wishing he could erase the image of that arm, wishing his understanding wasn't wide enough to know what must have happened to the evacuees. "No food. No water. Not even space enough to walk more than a footstep. This is not how I want to die."
"You don't think it would be better?" McKay asks in a small voice, staring at the far corner of the room. His arms are crossed over his knees, and Radek understands. There is nothing cowardly about being frightened of what you know.
"I think we need sleep. I've slept five hours in the last two days."
"Three." McKay's voice is back to normal: smug and showing there are many ways to play one-upmanship.
"So we sleep. Then we work out what we're doing."
He lies down, and despite the fear and the adrenaline, the knowledge and the numbers ticking higher in the back of his brain, he sleeps, too exhausted to dream. It's a small mercy.
***
The floors in Atlantis are as hard as anywhere else, so Radek wakes up with sore shoulders and an aching neck. Stretching to the side, his neck cracks and alleviates the threatening headache. McKay is curled on his side, back against the wall, snoring. It's hard to believe that he's almost as loud asleep as he is awake, but it's true.
He finds himself thinking that Elizabeth had been organized. There were lists and schedules for military and civilian personnel alike. Everyone had groups and team leaders, enough time to pack their belongings, to clear their rooms, to move everything to the tents that had been set up as a temporary measure on M1K-439 (Planet Waterfall, as Ford referred to it). McKay had radioed them from the satellite, explained that the Wraith hadn't appeared, that they were returning empty-handed, and Elizabeth had used the time well. Fifteen hours later, when McKay returned, the base camp had already been set up, conveniently close -- lethally close, Radek's mind amends -- to the Stargate.
People had been moved, living spaces had been divvied up, and the Stargate control crystal had been removed and replaced, leaving the only reference to Earth in the Ancient database. A few hours after McKay returned, the barest of skeleton crews walked back through the gate and set the self-destruct sequence, then returned to the green fields, blue skies and distant purple hills of the Alpha site, their new home.
Radek remembers standing under the bright sunshine, staring at the liquid cobalt of the open gate; remembers the tight lines around Elizabeth's eyes as she swallowed and bid her own silent farewell to their shining city, and told them to close it. It had whooshed shut, leaving an empty circle of horizon and no one said a word.
Then McKay dashed forward, yelling at poor Downes to open the gate again -- now! -- and whining about his laptop. Radek had blinked, had needed a moment to process the loud words and waving hands into meaning, but in that time Downes had reacted, had opened the gate and McKay had scurried through. Turning to Elizabeth, walking backwards to the gate, Radek had explained, "His laptop. We used it to set the virus, it's been left at the control room. It has research, calculations. It's important."
A pair of tiny creases appeared between Elizabeth's brows, and she had sucked in a quick breath. "The self-destruct sequence has already been set."
"We have time. I'll get him. Help him disconnect. We'll return," Radek called over his shoulder a moment before he stepped through the gateroom. It had taken a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dimmed room -- to the lack of harsh sunlight -- as he walked up the steps.
McKay was typing with his right hand, tapping his left against the bench as he waited for the laptop to transfer the virus program. "Do you realize how stupid it is for both of us to be here? There's no need for two of us to risk our lives."
"Two hands," Radek replied, taking one of the Ancient consoles and making sure the virus was primed correctly, "twice as quick." It took a minute to transfer the program under the rippling light of the open gate. It took another thirty seconds to disconnect and close the laptop, and then the world exploded into fire and light.
There is a small part of Radek that wants to blame McKay for this entire event. A small part of him that says that McKay should have completed the transfer earlier but he knows McKay was sleep-deprived and overseeing too much to be expected to remember every detail. A sharp, spiteful part of him thinks McKay should have left his laptop to be destroyed, or that he should have left McKay, should have told Elizabeth to close down the gate and let McKay die with his precious laptop and his beloved city. And there is part of him -- the part that feels twisted and hardened like warped glass -- that whispers that the self-destruct would have worked, if McKay had been dead. He doesn't want to think it, but it's impossible to ignore what you know.
Radek stands up, stretches, and then kneels on the floor and opens the laptop. The biometrics scanner is still online, hooked up to the main life signs detector. The movement of orange dots around the city blueprint is fascinating, mesmerizing. There are clusters gathered in the biggest rooms -- the cafeteria, the gate room, the meeting room, the recreation areas -- and those clusters keep growing larger, denser. Radek theorizes that they are beaming more Wraith in, since the clusters keep growing without any dots walking through the doors.
There are also groups of two or three roaming Atlantis's corridors, circling through the city in a patterned web. Radek spends an hour watching them follow the same route at the same time interval. He opens a spreadsheet and starts to note it. It could be because he needs something to do, something to focus on, but it feels important.
When McKay wakes, he groans, flails an arm, hits his wrist against the wall and swears. Then he opens his eyes and sits up. "We need to fix this."
"Your wrist?" Radek feels his eyebrows rise, and he tilts his head down so he can see McKay over the rim of his glasses. "This is not the time for you to imagine illnesses you do not have."
"I am actually hypoglycemic, thank you very much. I could get Carson to--" McKay stops, his jaw clacking shut. Radek doesn't say anything because there's nothing to say. They both know what they won't say out loud: that the others -- all of them -- couldn't have possibly survived the blast. That an open gate would have absorbed the explosion, and the wormhole would have magnified it, would have given it the power of a nuclear reaction. That they are -- in every sense of the word -- alone in this situation.
McKay blinks, and as quickly as that, he's on to the next thought. "Anyway, I wasn't talking about my wrist. I was talking about this, this whole disastrous thing that's happened. We need to fix it."
He wants to ask how, but instead, he says, "Why?"
"Because that's what we do." McKay's shoulders are set, and he's waving his hands, strong fingers stretched wide. His voice is firm and confident, and Radek's almost ready to believe in anything at this moment. "We're scientists. We came here to learn and fix things. The military's here to shoot, and when force can't solve a problem, we fix it. We're the ones who do the impossible. We're the ones that find the solution when there is none. We're the ones that fix this."
"Rodney." Radek sighs, and it isn't a defeat, but it feels like it. "How--"
"We'll divide the problem into pieces. Solve one bit at a time." McKay stands up, paces three steps to one wall, and then turns around and paces back in short, energized steps. "First problem is keeping us alive."
"Food," Radek suggests.
"And water."
"But the cafeteria is impossible. It is filled with Wraith, and more are beaming in every ten minutes."
"Doesn't matter," McKay says, still pacing like a rat in a tiny, tiny cage. "All supplies were cleared out and taken with the evacuees." Then McKay snaps his fingers and stops pacing. "My quarters."
"What?"
McKay's face splits into a wide grin. "I almost forgot. I have a stash of MREs there. For emergencies."
"We were abandoning the city permanently," Radek says slowly, pushing his glasses up, "and setting it to self-destruct, and you left behind food supplies, in case of emergency?"
"And look what happened! I think my foresight is proving to be pretty invaluable right now."
McKay is starting to puff up like a balloon, so Radek interrupts before the self-congratulations begin. "How much food?"
"A week's worth. Enough so I wouldn't be hungry."
"So, for two people eating regular rations, that would last, what? A month?" McKay glares at him, but Radek feels no guilt. It's well-known that McKay's eyes are much larger than his stomach.
"Two weeks, maybe. If we ration."
"And clean water," Radek points out.
"And hot showers."
Radek stretches his arms above his head, and pulls his shoulder painfully. "And a bed to sleep in."
"And enough floor to pace on."
Which leaves the problem of getting to McKay's room. Radek pulls up the life signs detector and the spreadsheet. He knew it was important. "They are patrolling. Through our corridor," he points to the two blue dots, huddled together a small distance away from the control room, "and past, to the cafeteria, and then up to the jumper bay."
"But not past my quarters, so once we get to that corridor--"
"We should be safe as long as--"
"We make it quick."
"The next patrol is in ten minutes." Radek swallows. His palms are sweating; it's a natural reaction to considering sneaking past creatures that are both faster and stronger than you, and able to eat you with a single touch. He suddenly realizes that they don't know how the Wraith hunt, if they have higher senses of smell or hearing. He swallows again. "After that, we have twenty-five minutes before they come."
McKay nods. Then he sits down, pulls off a shoe, tugs his sock around, and puts his shoe back on.
"What are you doing?"
McKay's grin is a little wild around the edges. "I'm not going to stop to tie up my shoelaces."
***
Radek thinks it's amazing that ten minutes in a small room can feel like an eternity. He spends most of the time looking at his watch, watching seconds count down. The worst thing is the way that Atlantis was built to muffle noise, the way that they can't hear footsteps passing by. Instead, they have to rely on watches and Radek's calculations, because the laptop's already packed up. Once the patrol has passed them, they can't afford to waste time disconnecting cords.
They count down until the patrol should be there, should be passing them, and then they give it a minute before McKay inserts the crystal circuitry and opens the door.
Then they walk, carefully, quietly, down the corridor. They don't know how sensitive Wraith hearing is -- and it's frustrating not to know that, not to be able to calculate the risks -- and neither of them are known for grace under pressure, so they're walking. Less chance of spraining an ankle, less chance of falling over and damaging the laptop, less chance of alerting the enemy to their presence.
But it's hard to walk when every self-preserving instinct is screaming to run. Hard to swallow down the panic, to reject the urge to babble, to keep this quiet and orderly.
Radek finds himself staring at his feet, watching his beat-up, grayed sneakers step over familiar floors. The first time he walked this corridor, they were under threat. They were waiting for an ocean of water to descend upon the sunken city, to crush it and destroy everything the Ancients had left behind. It feels like such a long time ago.
So much -- and so little -- has changed.
He's still terrified of dying, terrified of being the one that killed Atlantis, but he knows these corridors now. He knows that the door on his left leads to a small set of stairs that open beneath Elizabeth's office. He knows that he could take the next turn right, and then left, and then right again, and find himself in the recreation areas; that, normally, he could go there and find groups of people, civilians and armed services, sitting around and enjoying their time off. Normally there would be music playing, or an old film or TV series showing on one of the screens. That he could sit there and not have to talk, not have to translate thoughts from Czech into English into words, and watch the people around him.
He could watch them laugh and tease each other. He could watch the ones with quiet, homesick eyes, the ones that were missing an anniversary or a birthday back on Earth. It occurs to him that he never learnt their names.
They turn a corridor and it is darker here. The only illumination comes from small lights along the floor. He shoots a questioning glance at McKay but McKay shakes his head, meaning that it isn't him, that it isn't his gene doing this. Walking in the half-dark makes this even worse.
Atlantis is a city of light, a city made to sparkle and shine. Instead, her corridors are dark and her walls have been breached. And unless he and McKay can stop it, her deepest secrets will be ransacked and revealed. It's not a good thought, but if he concentrates on it, he can resist the urge to look behind them, to see if there's anything following them in the dark.
He hears McKay's footsteps begin to quicken, and that's easier. Easier to reach out and grasp McKay's shoulder, easier to be the calm one for someone else.
McKay drags a deep breath through his nose, nostrils flaring like they're trying to compensate for the way McKay's hands can't wave while holding the laptop so tightly, and nods. His footsteps slow down again, and Radek is listening, listening to the two sets of feet, listening for any other sounds. The only other thing he can hear is his heartbeat.
The trek continues, walking through a corridor that he normally avoids -- not because he dislikes the area, but because it's quicker to use the teleportation system -- and around another corner. They're close now, only a corridor away, and Radek's watch is saying they've been walking for fifteen minutes. They can make this.
The last corridor lasts for hours, like it's in a universe that has a different flow of time. With every step, Radek keeps waiting to hear Wraith running behind them. They don't, so it remains eerily quiet: the sound of their footsteps, their anxious breaths, swallowed by the darkness.
When they stop at McKay's door, McKay isn't the only one with shaking hands.
Between them, they pull off the cover and hotwire the door, forcing it to let them in. They replace the cover, but not the crystals, and walk inside. When the door closes behind them, Radek is overwhelmingly relieved, and might need to throw up.
"I never, ever want to do that again," McKay manages as he puts the laptop down beside the bed.
Radek opens his mouth to reply, but the nausea forces him to run to the bathroom, to clumsily fall to his knees and empty his stomach. After he's thrown up everything he's eaten for the last week, he washes his face and rinses his mouth. His reflection frowns back at him with wild, unkempt hair and dark circles under his eyes. He looks away quickly.
In the bedroom, McKay is levering up a section of the wall and pulling out a backpack, which he empties onto the bed. There are MREs and powerbars in several different flavors -- although there's an uncommonly high number of the not-quite-chocolate flavor -- and McKay was right. Starvation won't be a problem for weeks. "Food really is a source of security for you, isn't it?"
McKay raises one lip in a sneer. "For that, I get all the chocolate powerbars."
"Take them," Radek replies with a shrug. "They don't taste like chocolate."
"That must be the shock talking."
Radek rolls his eyes and then picks up a peanut butter powerbar. He doesn't feel like eating but it's practical, necessary. "It's not the shock. Your taste buds are warped, McKay."
McKay wolfs down half of a pretending-to-be-chocolate powerbar in a matter of seconds. The scientists who work under McKay's command have called him a lot of inappropriate insults, but 'The Human Garbage Disposal' is both a popular and accurate nickname.
As Radek dutifully chews, he sorts through McKay's squirreled supplies. Food, a handful of pens, a few small notebooks, medical supplies -- one epipen, a packet of painkillers and a few rolls of bandages -- and inside a small pocket, an unopened twin packet of toothbrushes and three tubes of Colgate toothpaste.
"You packed toothbrushes for an emergency, but didn't think to pack something more useful? For instance, a spare laptop battery?"
"Firstly," McKay says, with a dismissive glare, "the spare batteries are kept in the storerooms. If one had gone missing, it would have been noticed. Secondly, those batteries are heavy and if I didn't have my laptop, it would have been a complete waste. Whereas I always have my teeth, and I'm pretty sure that it's easier to find food and water in the wild than a tube of toothpaste. Do you know the number of germs that live in the human mouth? The devastating effects of cavities and infections? Gingivitis is no laughing matter."
Radek swallows, then pushes the empty wrappers back inside the bag. "Now we have basic supplies, so what do we do?"
"We fix this."
"How?"
"By working out precisely what went wrong," McKay says, like anything can be fixed, "and correcting it."
"What went wrong?" Radek repeats slowly. "We came to an alien galaxy, we woke up vast numbers of life-sucking aliens and then were attacked with overwhelming force. What part of that can we fix?"
"What about the part that involved us destroying the Ancient database? Maybe we can save some it, send it back to Earth."
"Through the Stargate that is broken? Or using the depleted ZPM that we calculated would only open the connection to Earth for 1.3 seconds? Or using the compression code that you yourself could not finish?"
McKay scowls and stretches out along the bed. "That's not helping. There's only supposed to be one sarcastic cynic here, and that's me."
"You're being optimistic." Just like he is every time they're asked for a timeframe or estimation. McKay whines and insults others, but he always believes himself capable of forcing the universe to suit his needs. "There was an opening for a new cynic."
"It's still not helping." McKay kicks one shoe off, and then the other, and wiggles across until the pillow is under his head. "The other problem was with Teyla's timeline. Obviously the Wraith got here faster than expected."
Radek sighs. Standing up, he pulls off his own shoes and drags his socks off. "We calculated it with the best knowledge we had at the time."
"But it explains why we didn't intercept them with the weapons satellite. They were traveling faster than we realized."
"They'd already passed it." Radek remembered the look on McKay's face, the expression when they'd come back without even sighting the Wraith. He'd spent thirty hours in a puddlejumper, another two re-wiring the satellite, and another one waiting around for the Wraith to show, and it had all been for nothing. "So we know more about how Wraith travel. It doesn't help."
McKay bristles, his hands waving and gesturing at the ceiling. "If we have to escape in a jumper, we'll know if we can outrun them."
"Oh, yes, of course," Radek replies, sitting on the bed, "I forgot. We have secret jumper bay, one that's not above the Stargate. One that wasn't destroyed by the explosion. How foolish of me."
"There's no need to be--"
Radek continues, enjoying the chance to vent his frustration at this entire mess and McKay's cavalier attitude to it. It is too much, far too much, to deal with in one day. "It probably has magic puddlejumpers, too. The ones with really huge weapon systems, and engines that need no energy source, and limitless supplies of food. And you can take one back through time, and fix this whole mess!"
He stops. McKay sits upright. They both realize what he's said.
"Go back in time--"
"The jumper that Elizabeth used--"
"No scientist worth the title would destroy--"
"The prototype must be left here--"
"Or at least the notes, the theory behind it," McKay finishes, grinning and almost laughing in exhilaration. His eyes are bright, and he's clicking the fingers of one hand, sounding out the rhythm of his thoughts. "You're a genius. All we need to do is to search the database--"
"Make a program to search the database," Radek corrects, getting the laptop and connecting it to the Atlantis mainframe, because searching manually would be impossible in a database of that magnitude. "Search for the Ancient word for time and travel--"
"And traverse and any mention of Elizabeth--"
"--and have it search the untranslated data."
***
The first hour they program together: Radek typing line after line of code; McKay perched beside him on the bed, editorializing and suggesting additions as they go. By the start of the second hour, Radek is sick of McKay's interruptions and his grabby hands trying to pull the laptop closer. So he says, "If you want to do it so badly, then do it," and pushes the laptop at McKay.
"What are you doing?" McKay asks, but he's already pulling the laptop closer, hunching over it possessively.
"I'm going to take a shower," Radek calls over his shoulder, but McKay's already typing with one hand, and opening another powerbar with the other.
He stands under the hot water for an indecent length of time. The water won't go cold -- not like it did in Antarctica, cutting out after a few short minutes, barely long enough to melt the ice that settled bone-deep into tired arms and shoulders -- so he stands there as his fingers shrivel and prune, as his skin flushes lobster red under the heat.
It's not enough to melt away the last twenty-four hours.
But it washes away the stench of nervous sweat and the singed, burning smell that haunts his senses. He doesn't feel washed clean but wrung out, exhausted. When he gets out of the shower, he doesn't bother looking for a towel. Instead, he pulls on underwear, pants and T-shirt, and pads back to the bedroom. McKay has moved to the desk and doesn't look away from the dark screen.
Lying stomach-down on the bed, he pulls the pillow under his head. He doesn't bother hiding how securely he's clutching it.
He falls asleep to the sound of typing, to the annoyed huffs McKay makes when something doesn't work as well as it should, but this time he dreams. He dreams of Elizabeth's pale hands and the curve of her neck, he dreams of Major Sheppard's confident grin and dark aviator glasses. He dreams of Simpson's short, blonde hair, boldly colored by the sunlight slipping through stained glass. He dreams of Grodin's wry gaze and amused smirk. But most of all, he dreams of Elizabeth's pale hands.
When he wakes up, McKay's sitting cross-legged on the end of the bed, staring at the closed curtains hiding the window. Radek yawns, and reaches for his glasses, and McKay says, "I hated those curtains, you know. I was glad to leave them behind."
The curtains are cream, not much lighter than the grey walls of Atlantis. They're made from heavy cotton and everyone has a pair identical to them. "I liked the curtains."
McKay waves away his comment, a quick gesture that would be better suited to swatting a fly. "I never thought to pack curtains. I didn't think we'd have windows." There's a soft, far-away look in his eyes and his mouth is set in a short, pinched frown.
"No one knew what to bring," Radek says softly, because he's not quite sure what McKay's talking about. It's not curtains, that much is obvious. "We brought what we could."
"Yeah." McKay sighs, and his tight frown stretches into a wider scowl, an expression that pops up every time one of McKay's underlings can't meet a deadline. "The program's searching the database now. It'll take another two hours, at least."
Two hours according to McKay is about four hours by anyone else's watch. "We have nothing to do in the meantime?"
"We can't even play Solitaire on the laptop," McKay sighs and drops his head to his hands, rubbing at his eyes.
"It would slow the processor."
"Ah, yes," McKay says, giving an impatient nod of his head, "thank you. State the obvious. I knew I forgot to do something."
Radek pinches the bridge of his nose. He's barely woken up and he can already feel a headache coming on. "Rodney, please, get some sleep."
"I can't."
"Because it's impossible for you to apply reason to your own health?" Radek's lost track of time; he must have left his watch in the bathroom. It was ten a.m. when they evacuated, it was twenty-five past one when they walked through the halls (and that is still the most terrifying thing he's ever done), and the light hasn't faded yet. He might have had five hours sleep all in all -- maybe more, maybe less -- but McKay's certainly slept less than that.
"Because there's too much to do." McKay points at the laptop, then his hand lowers a fraction and he deflates. "And, okay, I can't actually do any of it until that's finished compiling results, but I'm currently more than a little scared -- I'd even go as far as to say petrified with fear at this stage -- and adrenaline's flooding through my system, so I'm not going to be sleeping any time soon."
It takes a lot of reasoned debate -- some of it yelled in Czech and using words his mother would never admit knowing -- to get McKay to see sense and sleep. Glaring, his blue eyes bleary and bloodshot, McKay makes Radek swear to wake him the moment the program catalogues its results. Radek nods and promises, and has no intention of keeping his word.
It's the logical decision, so he suffers no guilt over it. He's better at translating Ancient. McKay needs the sleep. There is something too frightening -- too disheartening -- about a McKay too tired to panic. Also, having two of them work on one laptop is unworkable, impractical.
It leaves him with time on his hands as McKay snores and the laptop whirrs through data.
For a moment, he's tempted to get out pen and paper, and write to his family: to his parents, to his three brothers, to his nephews and nieces. He wants to tell them about this beautiful place, about the majesty and wonder in every corridor. He wants to tell them about the city rising out of the waters, like a phoenix, like a miracle, like the granting of their most desperate wish. How water poured from spirals and towers, revealing color and light, beauty and hope. How their terror turned to awe.
He wants to tell them that he doesn't regret coming here. That it's been horrifying and scary, that he's always been half-sure that he'll die galaxies away from anywhere he's called home, but it's also been amazing, fulfilling on a soul-deep level. It's made him thankful for his life -- for his opportunities, for this place, for his potential -- in a way that safe laboratories on Earth never could.
He wants to say all this and more, but he doesn't. Partly because he doesn't have the words -- not in any language -- to be able to objectively write and accurately describe this marvel, and partly because they have a limited supply of paper and pens. A personal message is not the best use of scarce resources. Especially when they have no way to send it.
Everything is a scarce resource now: paper, pens, food. Even breathable air may become a concern in the near future. In a city the size of Manhattan, they are trapped like lab mice -- confined to one bedroom and one bathroom -- and even this room is bare and deprived. The walls are empty, the desktop clear, the bed stripped of its blanket, because blankets and warmth were important if they were to survive on an alien planet, and so they were packed and moved with everyone else. He doubts that any of the blankets survived the explosion.
To stop those thoughts, Radek gets a toothbrush out of McKay's backpack and goes to brush his teeth. The toothbrush clatters into the sink the first time he realizes that this is something Simpson and Grodin will never do again. He washes off the smear of white toothpaste and ignores the way his hands shake.
***
Concluded in Part Two.
