1. Atlantis 1.0

One day, John thought miserably, he was going to learn to trust the instinct that told him to “just say no,” as the saying went. Just another day on the job, he figured, hanging by his fingernails from a ledge two hundred stories above ground level. At least Ronon and Teyla had gotten to safety.

“John? John!” Rodney’s voice rang through John’s headset, which miraculously hadn’t fallen off yet.

“Yeah, Rodney.” John stretched out, trying again to reach up with his damaged arm, and failing, again.

“Teyla and Ronon are here. They made it. We’ve got the ZedPM machine running, we’re good to go! I’m headed for you now.”

“Sure thing.” John’s grasp slipped from palm to fingers, wondering how McKay thought he was going to get to where John was, so far away.

“I’ve got your location. Hang in there!”

“Sounds like a plan, buddy.” John felt his fingers starting to slip.

TWO DAYS EARLIER

“It’s…it’s like magic!” Rodney announced bitterly, waving his hand around as if holding a wand. John was fairly certain that the Cult of Harry Potter was a closely held secret in the science division, but he wasn’t sure how, given that the King Geek was outing himself in front of the whole command staff. Keller didn’t look amused by it, which John thought was a shame, although he felt that way about Keller in general through no fault of her own.

Sam just blinked at the outburst, while Zelenka nodded furiously in support.

“Is this supposed to make sense?” Lorne asked when he finally picked up on the fact that John was in no way, shape or form going to interfere with that afternoon’s entertainment. He gave John a small, dirty look but focused back on McKay with his professionalism in place.

“No. Not to us.” Rodney said, his excitement deflating out of him like a balloon. He took a deep breath. “In fact that whole section of the database is encrypted in a way we haven’t seen before. On top of being hidden in a sub-routine in the security section, it means this whole data set was not meant for prying eyes. All we’ve pulled out of it is the magical instructions for making a ZedPM, and a gate address.”

“Magical,” Zelenka repeated with a dazed expression, waving his own imaginary wand around. McKay slapped his hand down with a hiss, and John tried not to laugh. Keller rolled her eyes and Lorne kept blinking really hard.

“That data must be really obscure for you to consider it magical, Rodney,” Sam said pointedly, but kept talking before McKay got his umbrage up. “What I need to know is why you called an emergency staff meeting. If we can’t figure out how to make a ZPM from these instructions, what is so urgent?”

McKay grimaced. “The gate address. Dr. Sokoloff’s slowly breaking the encryption, so we’re not quite sure how it all relates together, but it is pretty clear that the magic happens at that address. Whether it’s a planet, or a city—”

“You mean another city like Atlantis?” John asked, leaning forward in his chair.

McKay shrugged, but Zelenka answered. “We do not know, but it seems possible. City, or manufacturing site? Mining operation? Horcrux? Impossible to say.”

“Which is why we need to go there, hence the emergency staff meeting, because hello: ZedPMs! If we can make them then we can stop gate crashing every bizarre religious ritual in Pegasus trying to steal duds.”

John bristled. “It was just the one time.”

“Gentlemen.” Sam raised her hand, apparently channeling Elizabeth, which effectively shut down the banter. When she got silence, she nodded. “I agree, this is important. Set up an exploratory dial-in with a MALP, and if that’s clear, we’ll send a team through.”

“A science team,” McKay slapped his hand on the table.

“I’m not making any promises until after we get the readings from the MALP.” Sam waved them out. The hairs on the back of John’s neck went up in warning, but there was nothing he could point to that would explain his unease. He agreed that manufacturing ZPMs would be the answer to about 5,000 of their problems, but in his experience, anything that was too good to be true in the Pegasus galaxy was usually worse in directly related inverse proportions.

McKay was already bullying Chuck about getting the MALP through the gate, which was going to have to wait until AR-7 came back from B67-498 because that planet’s natives had given Atlantis teams trouble in the past. Nothing serious enough to break off trading agreements, but both John and Lorne agreed to keep the gate clear whenever a team went there, just in case. McKay knew that, but was already leaning over Chuck, trying to bully him into dialing the mythical ZPM planet/city/horcrux place.

“McKay, Lt. Platt’s team is due in thirty. Go dust the MALP or something until they get back,” John said, muscling into McKay’s space to push him back from Chuck, who threw John a grateful look. It was not really a trial for John, who took perverse pleasure in torturing himself via proximity. For years John had played with fire by letting himself get too close, and it had turned into an exquisite form of self-flagellation. McKay, oblivious as ever, made room for John in his personal bubble. They were standing inches apart and McKay did not even notice. John played the usual tug-of-war with his inappropriate libido and did not lean in to smell McKay’s neck. Even if McKay didn’t run screaming (and John would lay money that McKay totally would) then there was the matter of everyone in the gate room seeing it. It was small things like that which had kept John in check for five years.

“Call them back early! This is important.” McKay stabbed John in the chest with a very sharp finger. John grabbed the finger and stepped forward, forcing McKay to walk backwards away from the control consoles.

“Thirty minutes, McKay.” John let go and set his hands on his hips, blocking McKay’s way back to the consoles, enjoying winding McKay up. He figured if he played it right, he could keep McKay distracted all the way up to the return of Platt’s team. Keeping McKay off course was a delicate act when something as shiny as the possibility of a ZPM on the line, but John enjoyed a challenge.

“Perhaps you don’t quite understand the--”

“Don’t make a nuisance of yourself, Rodney,” Keller said, smiling wanly as she walked up, clearly readying herself for an argument.

John didn’t expect one, though. John was too enlightened to actually call Rodney “pussy-whipped,” and he didn’t have to be because most of the Marines did it for him (behind his back, of course). And John knew full well that Keller was not on any kind of power trip, either. It had more to do with the way McKay constantly caved to her admonitions and folded up into himself like a naughty kid whenever she criticized him. John hated watching McKay turning himself inside out for a relationship that wasn’t even a good fit for him. Keller was smart and beautiful but mostly she was just a nice kid.

Which was the heart of the problem, for John: in his opinion, “nice” and “kid” did not make for a good match with Rodney McKay. No one knew McKay better than John did, so he felt somewhat justified with his conclusion but it was not as if anyone, much less McKay himself, was asking for his opinion.

John waited for McKay to play the game, but instead McKay turned on Keller with a furious glare. “This is important, and this is my job! If you aren’t here to help, then get the hell out of my way!” He shouted the last part, causing the entire gate room to go deadly quiet in the aftermath.

John expected tears or worse, but Keller was returning McKay’s fury with a stone cold glare that nearly made John back up just to be out of her line of sight.

“It that’s how you want it, Rodney. Fine. Fine!” She snarled, turned on her heel and marched out. She was small but the two Marines at the door moved fast to clear the way as she passed by.

“Fine!” McKay yelled at her retreating back.

Everyone kept staring at McKay as he turned back to John with a look that was both angry and somewhat confused. “Did we just break up?”

John didn’t trust his voice to answer in any appropriate way, so he was glad when Chuck spoke up.

“Yeah, Doctor McKay, I kind of think you did.” He held his hands up when McKay turned on him. “No offense.”

McKay’s expressions sped through surprise, grief, anger, disappointment and shame before he managed to pull his bravado back in place with a lot of blinking.

John felt compelled to help, despite his own feelings. “Maybe not. Fights happen. Let’s worry about checking out this planet and you can go make up with her later. Give her some chocolate or something.”

McKay looked at him as if John was crazy, which was not really unusual. “No, I don’t think so. This has been…we’ve been…it’s not been great lately.” He lowered his voice, focusing on powering up his tablet to have something to do. John made a sharp motion to the room in general and everyone took the hint, getting back to their jobs a bit more noisily than was strictly required.

John nudged him with his shoulder. McKay answered with a complicated shrug and headshake, and John slapped him affectionately on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit. A couple of ZPMs would help, right?”

McKay gave him a goofy grin. “I have to go dial in the MALP, I want to make sure we get the right data.”

“You do that, buddy. We have a date here in 30.” John pointed at the gate, trying not to cringe at his choice of words. He knew better than to try too hard, it always backfired on him. McKay gave him a funny double take before heading down the stairs.

John went back over to Chuck, who was conversing with Lorne about something to do with rock density. John knew he was a third wheel in that discussion but he had a creepy feeling crawling up his back about the whole mission, and if Pegasus had taught him anything, it was to trust his instincts when it came to bad news. It was almost as if McKay and Keller’s fight was some kind of omen, which John really tried hard not to think about.

“I don’t like it,” Sam said, not quite surprising him out of his reverie. He had seen her walk over but he had not expected her to stop and talk to him. He was glad for the distraction from his rambling thoughts about the mission and McKay’s love life.

“Too easy?”

Sam rolled her eyes, nodding. “Something like that. We barely understand what the Ancients were doing when they were being obvious about it; I’m not too comfortable chasing down something they purposely made difficult.”

“ZPMs.”

She gave him a long suffering look which John suspected came from her years on SG-1 more than the few months she had put in as the leader of the Pegasus Expedition. “I find that the best toys come with the highest price tag.”

The chills down his back turned into a full shudder that he played off as a shrug. He agreed with her but McKay was nothing if not a dog with a bone. There was no stopping him from going to what John had already tagged as “the ZPM address” and both he and Sam knew it. The best he could hope for, the best he ever hoped for when McKay was driving the mission, was to minimize whatever damage they were sure to take.

---

Teyla refrained from chasing after Keller. They were friends, but Teyla felt that the fight between McKay and Keller was both a long time coming, and none of her business. Mostly, she was glad they were at long last admitting to their problems. Teyla had not exactly disapproved of the match, but had either of them asked for her advice, she would have told them to leave off. They were discordant together; they each wanted different things, really, but could not see that.

So, she let Keller go and she did not try to comfort McKay. John had that handled, in his own fashion, which Teyla was grateful for. John’s love for McKay was a secret to absolutely no one except McKay. Teyla suspected that part of Keller’s unhappiness in the relationship was her knowledge that she would always come second, after John Sheppard, in McKay’s affections. It was a valid reason for unhappiness, and Teyla felt Keller deserved better anyway.

Teyla shadowed John as he moved restlessly around the command center after McKay left, talking to Lorne then to Carter. Everyone was a little discomfited by the upcoming mission; Teyla had learned over time that that when the scientists were unbalanced, either through confusion of facts or lack of understanding, something was bound to go wrong.

The MALP reported a habitable world, when they finally dialed the address. The images it sent back showed the horizon of civilized, advanced city, but it was a confusing picture and nothing helpful showed up on the energy readings. McKay and Zelenka argued about whether there was cloaking technology going on, but it was mostly for form. Everyone knew that a team would have to go through to determine what was really on the other side, and everyone knew that team was going to be AR-1 because McKay would not allow anyone else to get there ahead of him and John would not let McKay go anywhere unless he was there to protect him.

Sometimes Teyla grew weary of their games. It seemed the Earthlings (because she had to lump them together, there were simply too many tribes to even try to keep track of) had the most obscure and pointless courtship rituals ever conceived by mortals.

Whatever the case, though, Teyla knew that yet another mission hunting for ZPMs wasn’t going to change anything between John and Rodney. They would bicker like boys and no matter how the mission ended up, their complete lack of communication would continue for, Teyla guessed, another four years. At least.

Sighing, she went to gear up when John gave her the signal.

---

When they finally walked through the gate, it was to a place that was both familiar and utterly strange. Standing on an open-air platform at the very top of a skyscraper, the stargate they walked through actually looked old, which was a new one for John. The stargates in Pegasus sometimes were encrusted with grime or foliage, and they all had the patina of age, but they were fresh off the assembly line compared to the rust-bucket John was looking at. The Ancient runes were familiar, but the script was looser and curvier than any other version John had seen. It was an arch, not a circle, with woven support struts that curled delicately around the weathered metal “ring” which sat dead in the middle of the platform instead at one end. Where the Atlantis gate room and stargate were sharply designed following the “form follows function” idea, the platform was almost ostentatious in its over-engineering. It wasn’t ornate, particularly, but something about it reminded John of the 1920s deco era design: luscious and stark.

And dead.

Nothing buzzed in John’s mind. Atlantis was always “on” for him but it was something he usually only noticed when it was gone, such as when they went to a planet with no Ancient tech on it; otherwise it was a comforting white noise of information that John took for granted like all of his other. ATA interfaces existed in the same realms of background noise and peripheral vision. What threw John, standing high on top of a massive building so tall it could dwarf the spires of Atlantis, was that he had the inexplicable feeling that he should sense something, as if a presence was actively missing that shouldn’t be. An uninhabited planet was just empty, but where he was standing felt dead. He hated the place immediately.

McKay looked a little pained, but it was impossible to know if that was because he had the same feeling as John or if it was a reaction to the fantastic city that spread out around them.

It was massive in a way that was Atlantis was not, rounded and broad and chaotic. Atlantis was elegant, while this city was in some undefinable way heavy. It was nonetheless breathtakingly beautiful, like a refined monochrome version of the New York City skyline. The buildings around them, all as massive as the one they stood on top of, were of various shapes and heights but similar in style. John could not tell from their vantage if the city was bigger or smaller than Atlantis, it was hard to judge its footprint, but John suspected from the square footage of the skyscrapers around them, it was as least as big if not bigger.

“This is weird. It doesn’t really look Ancient,” Rodney said, walking around the edge of the platform. There were three tiers to the top of the building, each circular and a full story tall. They were effectively four stories above the roof, which reached out with the points of a five pointed star then dropped off into the abyss of the empty metropolis. There were no railings or any other safety features that John could see. He barely held himself back from grabbing at Mckay, to pull him to safety.

“It is not Asurian?” Teyla asked tentatively, standing right on the edge of the gate platform without fear, although her unwillingness to trust the city was obvious in her coiled posture. Her suspicions set Ronon off. He paced around John and Rodney protectively, as if ready to pick them up and hurl them back through the gate if necessary. Not that it would do much good until they dialed Atlantis back, but he looked willing to try.

McKay swung his LSD around in a strange pattern, reading the screen. “No. I’ve recalibrated these things to pick up on nanite activity, I mean it’s not a fine tooth comb but it would ding if they were here. Anyway I’d say this is older than the Asurians. It’s older than Atlantis, and we know she’s at least five million years old.” He tapped at the LSD then pocketed it in his BDUs, pulling his tablet off of his back.

At McKay’s assurances, Teyla had stepped off the platform onto what could only be called the staging area. It reminded John of helio pads on top of buildings, in that there was little else on the roof than the gate, the platform it was on, and a beautiful, mosaic tiled floor surrounding it. As John walked around on the platform he could feel it shift structurally under his feet, but it was the only real suggestion of age outside of the battered look the surfaces had.

“I’m finding it hard to believe a city that is older than Atlantis is still standing.” John waved a hand at the skyscrapers bundled tightly around them.

“Atlantis only lost a few potted plants after ten thousand years,” Rodney shrugged, staring at the LSD as he pointed it around. “Although I’m not getting any energy readings.”

“Nothing?” John walked over to look at the LSD himself, which showed no activity.

“Nothing. And by nothing, I mean not even our life signs,” Rodney snapped, waving the LSD in John’s face.

“We’re dead?” John smirked a little, glad that at least Rodney was behaving normally even in the middle of a creepy dead maybe-Ancient city.

“Yes, that’s the answer I’ve been reluctant to tell you, we are all wanderers of the spirit world.”

“It is best not to joke of such things, McKay,” Ronon growled, sounding a lot like Teyla. That was weird enough to get McKay to shut up.

“I have found the door!” Teyla called up to them from somewhere beneath the platform. John grabbed McKay’s vest and hauled him down a small set of stairs Ronon found to where Teyla stood. McKay squawked but his eyes never left the mystery of the LSD readings. Teyla stood by the door, which oddly enough had an actual levered handle on it. John was too used to Atlantis opening every door at his whim without ever having to touch them, and it struck him as oddly incongruent that anything Ancient needed something as simple as a handle.

“Huh.” Rodney stared at the handle with a perplexed look on his face.

“Seems odd,” John offered.

Rodney nodded. “I mean, this place can’t be anything but Ancient, but…it’s weird.” He tapped the LSD. “Starting with a complete obfuscation of energy readings, and ending with door handles.”

“We can leave.” John tilted his body away from the door, waving an arm back to the stairway up to the platform. He was hoping that McKay would agree, because John did not like the fact that whatever was here was cloaking them from themselves, which was just wrong. As wrong as the whole dead zone that made his skin crawl.

McKay looked at him as if he was insane, so John figured out the answer was no before McKay said a word.

“The energy needed to completely mask energy like this is powerful, like ZedPM powerful, and look around you! This city is falling apart but that’s after what, ten million years? Maybe more? Colonel, this city was here rotting while our ancestors were still trying to walk upright. Something is holding this city together.”

“Yeah, that’s what bothers me,” John grumbled, but nodded at Teyla to open the door.

She pushed the lever down with a firm grip. The grinding sound was loud and worrying, but John figured they were committed. It took Teyla’s shoulder and Ronon’s free hand to push the door in and open. John expected dust or stale air to come whooshing out, but once the hinges were in motion, the door simply swung open wide. Armed and ready, Teyla took point, followed by McKay, with John and Ronon bringing up the rear. The room they entered was low-ceiling and like the roof above, had a mosaic tile floor. John could feel a few of the tiles moving as he walked over them, but nothing more dangerous than bathrooms he had known on bases back on Earth. There did not seem to be any other doors, and John was one second from suggesting they get the hell out when it hit.

The city tapped him like a sledgehammer. There was nothing subtle about it, not the way Atlantis was gentle and self-effacing; this was a full body slam in the small space of his skull and it brought him to his knees. Sharp white light sparked behind his eyes, knives of pain that belonged to a migraine. There was nothing to shoot at and he could not make his voice work over the pain that slicing through his brain, so he kept falling forward until he was laid out on the ground. Someone was groaning in pain and John thought, distantly as if once removed from his body, that it was probably him.

---

Teyla woke up in a kitchen. She was fully armed and unharmed, other than feeling as if she had been in the path of a stampeding herd of deer. She moved slowly, checking for internal injuries, as she wobbled off what she assumed was a transporter platform. Everything worked but the experience left her a little unbalanced, with a sharp headache piercing her brain. Standing up against a counter for support, she looked around the room carefully, checking for exits, but as large as it looked it did not have any immediately apparent doors.

The kitchen looked a little like the “mess” on Atlantis, which Lorne told her had once been a “cafeteria” for students. He often made jokes about being back in “high school” (which wasn’t “high” at all, but merely mandatory secondary academic education) when they ate there, which he explained was due to the utilitarian design of the place. Nonetheless, Atlantis had a certain style to its purpose, and while Teyla could not interact with the city the way Evan or John could, she picked up on that much at least.

The room was vaguely similar in layout to the main Atlantis kitchen but like everything else she had seen thus far, run down. It also looked repurposed, as if perhaps once it had been a different kind of room completely before being turned into a large kitchen. Everything was bulky and slightly out of place and more than a little awkwardly positioned.

She tried her radio but got nothing, not even static. Looking up at the high ceiling above her, which was elegantly arched but water-stained, Teyla could almost feel the weight of the dead city crushing down on her. It was a fanciful notion, but lacking contact with her team and no obvious way out of the kitchen, which had no windows or even doors that she could see, it mirrored her mood.

Her assumption was that her team was alive and planning a rescue if she didn’t break out first, no matter what the mad city had planned for her.

---

John did not remember passing out but he recognized the feeling of coming to, his consciousness seeping back into him like syrup, which was pretty much how his whole body felt. Everything was loose and unresponsive, melted to the floor and oozing out of his clothes. After a few seconds he realized his imagination had gotten away with him and that he was, solidly, in one piece, but not in the same place he had fallen. He heard the sound of water, felt humidity on his skin, and most importantly, the City throbbing through this brain.

His body was achy and sore so John leveraged himself up slowly. He was still dressed, and even had his tac vest and P-90 on him, so it was not the worst time he had ever regained consciousness. He thought it was pretty sad that he had a rating system in place for that.

He was in an indoor garden, or what was left of one. The water fountain was trying to spray a dome of water out into a large decorative pool, but half the nozzles were broken. The ground was half grassy walkways and half dead patches. The tiers of planters around him were in no better shape, some completely overgrown and feral and others full of dry, crumbling dirt. In its day, the room had probably been magnificent. The tall ceiling was a series of connected arches, reminding John of a gothic cathedral. The colors painted into curlicues and abstract, flowery designs on all the surfaces were faded but still there, still suggesting their glory.

John was resting on a circular tiled area, not unlike the floor he remembered from the room they had entered. Looking around, he confirmed what he already suspected: he was there alone, and his teammates were missing. Instinctively he crawled off of the tile, suspecting it was part of the reason he was there. When we was clear, he stood up slowly, doing a systems check on himself. He was undamaged, even if he felt like he had been hit by a train. Out of habit, he tapped his earpiece.

“McKay? Teyla? Ronon? Check in guys. Where are you?”

It was almost predictable how silent his radio was after that. Sighing, John checked his weapons then started to scout around the place. It was an open-air porch garden, as far as he could tell, with a vista over the city that was breathtaking. He was lower down than the building that supported the stargate, which he saw clearly, close by. It seemed to dominate the city, and John guessed from what he could see that it was located right in the middle of it, just as the central spire of Atlantis held their stargate.

What bothered him was the buzzy, off-kilter feed of the city in his brain. It was staticy, as if the station wasn’t coming in clearly, and it made John want to bang his head against something to clear it out. He wasn’t even sure if the city was trying to send a message to him, or if it was just its normal dial tone.

“Sheppard?” His earpiece came alive with the sound of McKay’s voice.

“McKay! Where the hell are you?”

“I’m fine, thanks, a little bruised but nothing serious.” McKay’s snarky voice pinged a little breathlessly, but otherwise sounded fine. John grinned.

“Glad to hear it. Now where the hell are you?”

“Where am I? Where are you is the question!”

“Okay, how about, where are we?”

McKay hummed. “That’s a good question. I’m…in some kind of warehouse. Or laboratory. There are a lot of tables here. No windows, and the door is locked.”

“I’m in a balcony garden overlooking the city. Not the same building we started in, though. You hear from Teyla or Ronon?”

“I was hoping they were with you.”

John sighed. The fact that he and McKay were alive, unhurt and unmolested was a good sign, but until he heard from his missing team members things were going to be dicey.

“That tiled floor has to be some kind of proto-transporter. I bet it’s more like the ring technology of the Gua’uld. Hey, be sure to get off the tile.”

“I did. I figured something similar. Although if that was their version of a transporter, I’d hate to see what they consider torture.”

“Yeah, I feel like crap. It might be the age of the system, though. I can’t imagine anyone using that more than once it if tears you up that badly.” McKay sounded a little distracted, talking for talking’s sake. “Well, the LSD is picking up like gang busters now, and…holy shit.”

John’s whole body went on alert, even though he did not even know where McKay was in relation to him. “Mckay?”

There was a long moment before McKay spoke up again. “Okay, this could be a mother load. Seriously, John, this could be the end to all of our problems. The LSD is showing me that I’m right on top of a large energy bank, focused close by. The next room over, looks like. I need to get this door open.”

“How big an energy signature?”

“Bigger than a bread box.” McKay’s attention was elsewhere, John could tell by the tone of his voice.

“McKay, you sure it’s not just a massive energy sink?”

There was another pause, and this time when McKay spoke he sounded pissed. “You think I’ve forgotten? I check now. I know more than I used to about Ancient tech energy signatures, okay? This isn’t…this isn’t Doranda.”

“Shit, that wasn’t what I meant—”

“ZedPM big. Look, the database clearly indicated that this place had something to do with ZedPMs, and I’m thinking maybe it’s some kind of factory for them. I’m in a manufacturing facility, that’s pretty clear here. So shut up and let me figure out how to get out of this room, and then I’ll tell you exactly what we’re talking about.”

“Keep me posted on your progress, and let me know if you hear from Teyla or Ronon.” John shoved the whole matter of ZPMs to the back burner of his mind, because there wasn’t much he could do trapped in a dried up, malfunctioning luxury garden suite.

The first three doors were open, which bothered him because McKay was in a locked room. They checked in with each other every couple of minutes but otherwise worked on their separate problems. The rooms John passed through all reminded him of elegant European parlors, the likes of which he had not seen since he was a child and his family visited diplomats and nobility whenever they traveled to the Continent. They were decorated for the sake of being decorated, mostly with abstract sculpture and excessively Deco wall murals featuring truly alien landscapes. He didn’t pick up anything from the rooms, no signature of identity as he always got from Atlantis, to let him know the purpose of the room or who used it—unknown to everyone, John actually had a catalogue of people’s names that went with certain rooms on Atlantis, people who had been dead for 10,000 years. It was why he stayed in his small, inconveniently placed quarters, because it was one of the few apartments that had never been assigned to anyone so John did not feel like a squatter. (He never had the heart to tell McKay that his quarters announced itself as belonging to “Alphredus Ammenioii,” which translated roughly into “Fred the Sewage Master.”)

But there were no helpful telepathic labels in this city, just a strange, ominous feeling that something was wrong. McKay said things were so old they probably weren’t working. John was willing to give the almost-lethal transporters that much, but as for the rest of it, John suspected it was all design flaws.

“McKay.”

“What now?”

“You think this was the prototype? Like, Atlantis 1.0?” John was walking down a high-ceilinged hallway that, on Earth, would have been lined with family portraits. Instead, a long, majestic mural of a beautiful purple landscape twisted its way along the walls.

“If you want to simplify it beyond all reason, yes, that’s exactly what it is. I’ve pulled this door apart, and it’s powered by crystals but they are…well, ugly.”

“Ugly? I didn’t know crystals had to match your sense of aesthetics.”

“Oh, they don’t.” McKay spoke lightly, obviously still working on the problem while John distracted him. “But Atlantis, and most Ancient tech, has crystals that are fairly refined. Shaped and small, cut down specifically for the job they do. The crystal tech is what really set it apart for me, in the early days. But this is just a misshapen lump of crystal. I’ve seen New Age quartz jewelry with better style. It’s like they took this lump right out of the garden and slapped it into place. I’m embarrassed for them.”

John finally approached a door that was closed. The closer he got, the harder the city kept trying to push him away from it. It was less a warning than a feeling of regret, which was its own kind of weird.

“Got it! Okay, so now I’m in….” McKay’s voice trailed off. “John.” McKay’s voice was soft and amazed and that did entirely wrong things to John’s body. McKay never used his first name except in extreme situations, though, which did not help John’s imagination right then. He tamped down on the response and forced himself to pay attention.

“McKay, answer me.”

“What? I…oh, wow…I can’t even explain it. ZedPMs! Well, their casings. This place is littered with them. Maybe…I don’t know, hold on.”

“You’re where?”

“A…factory? A laboratory? It’s huge.”

“How huge?”

“I can’t see the other wall. It’s like someone dropped the Transformers into an Olympic stadium and put a roof on top. What is this crap?” Something clanged loudly in the back ground.

“Watch it, McKay, we don’t know what this city is capable of.” John stopped in front of the locked door. It was large, twice his height and as wide as the hallway and heavy looking, as if braced for weight. “I think it is trying to keep us in cages.”

“Okay. That’s obscure.” McKay was obviously walking around as he talked. “Why would it do that? Makes no sense. No, I think we’re just dealing with malfunctioning machinery. Very malfunctioning…and of course, it’s not like they labeled anything. Great.”

The door loomed over John like a life sentence, the city stuttering at him apologetically. “McKay, don’t touch anything.”

“Why not? Let me check something.”

“Damnit, McKay, are you dense? You have the gene, aren’t you picking up on anything?”

McKay stopped. “A little. It’s annoying, but nothing serious.”

“Annoying to you, or like the city is annoyed?”

“Would you stop anthropomorphizing everything? I meant annoying to me, obviously.”

John had to smile despite the situation, just for a moment. “Don’t change, McKay.”

“What? Why would I? …did you hit your head? Oh God, you’re delirious, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not. I’m standing in front of a big, locked door. And I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Thank you, Han Solo. That’s so specific.” McKay sighed.

“Something about the city isn’t just malfunctioning. It split us up for a reason.”

“And that reason is?”

“I don’t know, McKay, I’m working on that.”

McKay sighed again. “Let me know when you have it figured out. Oh hey, this might actually be a console.”

“Damnit, just give me a second!” John walked up to the door, his brain vibrating with the power of the city thrumming through him, trying to repel him. “The city really doesn’t want me near this door.”

“Security measure?”

“Doesn’t feel like it.”

“Nothing feels right here, Sheppard,” McKay said, which was pretty much an admission that McKay was picking up on something from the city that he did not like. “But I’m right in the middle of the energy sink, and nothing is burning or melting or blowing up. So I’m going to fire up this console, which looks like something out of Plan 9 from Outer Space, and see what I can find out. If the place is half as networked as Atlantis, I should be able to pinpoint you.”

“Jesus, McKay, where angels fear to tread,” John mumbled, stepping backwards from the door to test the city’s reaction. The pressure let up immediately on his brain and it was all he can do not to let out a huge sigh of relief. Although it was not really a relief, because it meant the city was steering him, or trying too, and John did not for an instant that was a good thing.

John looked around, tuning out McKay’s “I’m working right now” noises, which were mostly disconnected words and annoyed grunts. He backtracked to a smaller, open doorway he passed that did not seem important, but seems like his only alternative short of jumping out of a window. It led to a truly magnificent, if decrepit, suite of rooms that had to be some kind of receiving area/bedroom set up, if the furniture was any indication. The city put out pleased vibrations, but nothing sensible. Nothing like Atlantis, and John was beginning to realize for the first time just how self-aware or at least conscious Atlantis was comparatively.

“I got it. Okay, I’ve had to switch up, I found some kind of master control panel. You’re right, the city is pushing us around, but this looks helpful. So, hold on. Hold on.” McKay paused, and John held his breath. Nothing happened.
“McKay?”

“I…wow. Did anything happen on your end?” McKay shouted, because there was suddenly a lot of ambient noise drowning him out.

“No!”

“Apparently I started the process!”

“What process? McKay! McKay, damnit, answer me!”

“What? Oh, I don’t know. But I’ve got some kind of monitor showing the city, I mean it’s like a chalkboard compared to Atlantis, but it is showing the city powering up. Or, directing power. To three areas. Yeah! This is an older version of the tracking program we have on the LSDs, it’s archaic!” McKay sounded gleeful about that. “I think it’s showing me where you and Teyla and Ronon are.”

John grit his teeth. “That’s helpful.”

“Yes, it is!”

McKay somehow seemed oblivious to the fact that while he might know where John was, John knew no such thing, and relatively speaking they were still in the dark. “Anything else, McKay? Like directions on how to get out and back to the stargate?”

“No. That’s, ah…well, no. You know what, I think I’m in the same building, just on the bottom of it. This place is kind of laid out like Atlantis, just not as logical.”

“Atlantis 1.0.” John said, walking around the largest room, which really struck him more of a throne room than it did a parlor. Unfortunately, the stylized chair against the back wall was beautiful but not a command chair. It was just a chair. John sighed and got up.

“Actually, yes. Atlantis is urban planning to the 100th degree. This is more like…Dallas. Or Calcutta. It just grew up this way. Oh, hmmm.” McKay stopped. “What is it? How? What are you doing?”

“McKay?” John snarled, frustrated that he was trapped in an upscale holding cell and completely in the dark while McKay played with very dangerous toys.

“Lots of robotics kicking in. And that looks like a vacuum tube the size of a 747. I can’t believe these things, I’m surprised they are still…oh. Hold on.”

McKay made noise, but he refused to answer anything John asked. John paced the throne room, waiting patiently he thought, until finally McKay finished tinkering with whatever he was tinkering with. Then he let out a long, long breath. “John.”

John tapped his P-90 in irritation. “What now?”

“I was right. This is a factory. It is an honest to God factory. A ZedPM factory.”

John’s jaw dropped open and he simply could not say anything.

“That’s why the city brought me here! It knew I could fix the machinery! I’m amazed it still works, honestly, but the fixes I’ve done so far are fairly minor.”

“That does not ease my mind, McKay,” John drawled, trying to annoy McKay into giving him more information.

“It’s like it got grit in the gears or something. Everything is still primed and knows what to do, but the works were gummed up. I fixed a few things that were obviously broken and it kicked on.”

“What if it isn’t all fixed?”

“That might be bad.”

John closed his eyes and counted to ten in Farsi. “How bad?”

“Mmmmm…bad?”

John couldn’t tell if McKay was dissembling or distracted. In either case, it was pretty easy for John to imagine how bad it might be for a ZPM factory to go off the rails, so it wasn’t as if he needed a real answer. “McKay, do you have any idea what it’s doing?”

“Yes, I told you, it’s trying to make ZedPMs. What I don’t know is how, and I will never figure out how if you keep distracting me. Why don’t you go get Ronon and Teyla?”

“Well, about that, Roooodneyyyy…maybe I would if A) I could get out of this damn room and B) I knew where the hell they are!”

“Why do I have to do everything?” McKay snapped. Before John could muster a reply, a wall in the room retracted, revealing a large monitor that was sparking up slowly, like a florescent light bulb. A map was revealing itself, and it did look a lot like a very primitive LSD display writ large and clunky.

“Oh.”

John paused at McKay’s simple exclamation. “McKay?”

“Um. Hmmm. I think…wait, here…yes? Okay. So. Maybe it’s not quite making ZedPMs just yet.”

“Any particular reason why?” John studied the wall-sized monitor, using his tourist-level knowledge of Ancient to suss out who was where, including himself.

“I told you, it’s old and…rickety.”

“Rickety.”

“It keeps stopping.”

“You even sure it is making ZPMs? Or is this just wishful thinking? Because I don’t like you by yourself in the middle of Ancient factory that isn’t-quite-working, doing something we-don’t-know-what!”

“Look, it’s not labeled ‘Big Bessie’s ZedPM Shop of Horrors’ but I know what I’m looking at.”

“You do.”

“Mostly.”

“McKay—”

“Busy! Working!”

John let it go for the time being, focusing instead on the monitor that McKay had somehow got working for him. He approached it, still wary of the city’s tech after the gut-wrenching transporter experience, but the vibe from the monitor was pleased. Not quite like a happy puppy, as Atlantis sometimes got when trying to show off for John, but obscurely smug. He figured it was at least one thing going right for him.

Just thinking at it did nothing, so he put his hand on a brass-like bar that ran below the screen. It was uncommon for Ancient tech to need skin contact once it had been activated, but nothing was playing true to what they knew so John figured it was a worth a shot.

The city’s energy buzzed up his arm, connecting him to the network in a sloppy way. John poked around by asking it to call up images on the screen, the first being McKay’s location. He was given a picture of a huge room that reminded him of dockyards for shipbuilding, the tremendous scale of the “room” revealed by McKay’s tiny form walking around huge pieces of equipment. John finally figured out why McKay thought the place was a ZPM manufacturing facility: there were dozens, if not hundreds, of ZPMs scattered around. John figured they were all “empty” or broken, or McKay would have probably fainted already out of joy.

John had the city secure the image in one corner of the monitor, then asked for images of Ronon and Teyla.

The city refused.

John asked again, trying to state his request clearly so there was no misunderstanding. The city felt like it was bucking back, trying to redirect him. He pushed on and asked again, making it an order.

The images that came up were not comforting. Ronon was pounding on a door in a dirty, grimy corridor that looked like it smelled bad. Teyla was standing in the middle of a cleaner room, that kind of reminded John of restaurant kitchens: lots of stainless steel counters, bowls, utensils hanging from racks. Teyla was motionless, standing as if she was listening for something.

“Teyla?”

Her eyes flew up to look at the ceiling. “John?”

“It’s me. I’m watching you on some kind of security feed, I think. Long shot that you could hear me.”

“I’m glad your aim is true, then,” she said, smiling warmly even though she was looking up. “Have you found McKay and Ronon?”

“McKay’s in some kind of factory; we think the city put him there to fix it. Ronon…I don’t know. I’ve got a map that shows you both on the same level in the same building I’m in. I’m about twenty stories above you. McKay’s in the central building where we started, but we’re across town. I’d say were on the equivalent of the East Pier, if this was Atlantis.”

“It will be a long walk back.”

“Yeah. About that. Can you get out of that room?”

Teyla grimaced. “No. The city transported me directly here. The only exit I’ve found is a large door that is locked. I cannot move it.”

“The city doesn’t want me messing with things, but let me try to convince it to open up.” He directed a hard, precise thought to the city but it shoved back a refusal. “Okay, never mind. I’ll come bust you out.”

“Understood.” Teyla said grimly, looking around her, clearly intent on finding her own way out.

John managed to get the city to patch him through to Ronon, whose relief at hearing from John was visible on the video feed. They had a rehash of John’s conversation with Teyla, and then John tapped his radio to reach Rodney again.

“What now?”

John figured “cranky” was a good sign. “I talked to Teyla and Ronon; the city is still blocking radio contact to them but let me dial them up on video feed using the monitor here. They’re fine. I’m going to go get them out of the basement and we’ll start towards you.”

“Great! I’m here!”

John nodded. “Yeah, I know. I may need your help with directions.”

“Oh, quelle surprise.” McKay snorted.

“Hey, I don’t have an LSD and I don’t know how many of these monitors are around. I’m headed down for them now. I need you to stay—”

“I’m here, I’m here, just tell me when you get lost, fly boy. Don’t they teach you orienteering or anything in officer school?”

“Airman, not fly boy. At least you got the right branch this time.”

McKay snorted but proceeded to ignore him again. John gave a last check on Ronon and Teyla, then went back out to the ominous door he had seen earlier.

It was not particularly grim, in and of itself. It was made out of a shiny metal that had been worked in relief with sweeping abstract, geometric shapes. It was beautiful, and clearly some kind of gateway. The city did not want John near it.

They argued, as much as it was possible to argue with a barely sentient, malfunctioning AI that could not explain itself. It was clear that it did not want to harm John, that it wanted John to stay in “his” suite for his own good, but its reactions to John’s demands were sharp. He laid hands on the door, which did increase his connection to the city even though he felt like some kind of Ancient faith healer.

He felt the mental spark before the physical one slammed into him, throwing him backwards from the door. His fingers tingled from the electrical shock as he stood up, and his left arm felt like it was on fire, although it wasn’t. “Let me out!” He knew yelling at the door was not the solution, but it felt right. His muscles twitched in aftershock, and John took a second to check his heart rate.

The door, ironically, had been torqued by the electrical charge the city had sent through it, cracking it open at a middle seam, revealing that it slid apart rather than swung on hinges. John thought he might have luck pushing the door apart but he knew the city would zap him again if he tried, and the burn running up his left arm was already hurting enough.

“McKay.”

“Urnf?” McKay sounding like he had something in his mouth.

“You good?”

“Sorry, yes, I just don’t have five hands. Next time we find another intact Ancient city with trust issues, remind me to bring Dr. Garcia along. She’s got great hands.”

John figured it was pretty sad that he knew McKay meant that in a purely professional way, because the line was a perfect set up. He filed that away for later. “I need you to cut power to my location.”

“Bad idea. That will take everything out, including lights.”

“I know that. I need you to cut power to my location.” John rubbed his hands together, which were still tingling in pain.

“Fine, fine. Are you okay?”

“Yes. I just need you to—”

“Alright already!” McKay yelled in frustration. He harrumphed for a few moments as he moved around. “Okay, here we go.”

The lights went down quickly, the city letting out a surprised squawk of dismay in John’s head. John got out his flashlight and held it in his mouth as he pushed the doors apart. They did not slid easily, but John only needed enough space to get through.

The other side was a wide utilitarian hallway that ran on and on, undecorated and dirty. John knew without the city telling him that this was a service corridor; it was only missing the servants.

Suddenly, everything was starting to make sense.

“We don’t have servant’s hallways in Atlantis.”

“What? No, Atlantis doesn’t need them. Anything a maid could do is automated. Remember the Great Roomba Revolt of ’09?” McKay quipped back.

“I thought they were toys,” John said, feeling the need to defend himself.

“Which is why I’m the smart one, and you’re the brawn. You know I can’t have the city track you if the power’s out?”

“All I need is a stairwell and…oh, found one. Okay, you can give me some power back.”

“I’ll put it on emergency power levels. Just enough. I’m assuming you needed me to cut it because the city was defending itself?”

“No. The city thinks I’m an Ancient, and doesn’t want me in the servants’ quarters.”

There was a long pause. “That’s why Ronon and Teyla are shielded from radio, and locked in the basement? Because they don’t have the ATA gene and the city thinks they are servants?” His voice went squeaky.

“Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be mentioning that part either.”

McKay hummed in agreement. John left him to his work and started down the long flights of stairs. McKay took a moment to let him know he only had 174 left to go.

---

Teyla was not surprised that Ronon managed to get out first. If nothing else, he had brute strength on his side, which she figured was the only thing that would work against the door that trapped her in the kitchen. She had looked for duct work or even a large drain, but there was nothing she could fit through.

Ronon had simply been yelling for her when she heard him. She yelled back and banged on the door until he got to the right one.

“What is on the other side?”

“Hallway. I’ve passed a lot of strange rooms, look like work stations. Maybe a laundry.” Ronon grunted as he tried to force the door.

“I believe we were sent to the servants’ levels.”

“Yeah.” Another grunt. “Sheppard said he was in a garden.”

“It makes sense the city would view him as an Ancient.”

“He can get his own food.”

Teyla laughed. The situation did not feel dire and Ronon was right there, with John on the way. Ronon tried a little while longer to budge the door, but it did not move. “Sorry.”

“John should be able to tell the city to open it.”

“If not I know he’s got some C4 on him.”

“That too,” Teyla smiled. She sat down and rummaged through her pack for an energy bar. “So we wait.”

“You think Keller and McKay are really breaking up?”

Ronon sounded young sometimes, even younger than his actual age, for having lost so many years to being a Runner. His desire and admiration for Jennifer was something he was not ashamed of, but he had done a good job of hiding it away when McKay had won her attentions.

“Yes.”

“Not gonna be the rebound.”

“Perhaps you can simply be her friend, first?”

Ronon laughed. From the sound, he had sat down as well, on the other side of the door. “I can do that.”

“Hmmm.” She nibbled at the food.

“You think Sheppard’s going to make his move, now?” Ronon asked, his tone mocking. They both knew the answer.

“No.” Teyla sighed.

Around them, the lights flickered, flared, then returned to normal.

---

It was like fighting a headache: pointless, painful, and counterproductive. John knew the feeling was being pushed on him by the city, which did not want him to go to the levels down below where Teyla and Ronon were being kept. John knew that if either one of them was able to escape from where they were, they would, which did not make him feel any more hopeful about the resistance he was going to encounter the further along he got.

In his heart, somewhere deep in his soul, John felt sad for the city. It was only self-aware enough to know that it was broken, and nothing John did or tried to share with the interface explained the real problem. It believed John was an Ancient, and should stay where it put him, and not disrupt systems further by trying to go anywhere else. It kept trying to appease him with feelings of satisfaction when he walked past doors that would take him back up, but John kept going down the dark stairwells, further into the belly of the beast. Every so often he’d check in with McKay and get new directions, usually clipped and annoyed, but McKay was there every time. The fact that he wasn’t allowing himself to get too focused on the machinery he was trying to fix told John a lot about how unsettled McKay was by the situation. There wasn’t much John could say to ease those fears because he was not particularly any more optimistic.

He stopped at a landing and sat down to drink water from his canteen and eat half an energy bar. He had one MRE stashed in his pack, but he was saving that just in case Ronon or Teyla needed it, for whatever reason. His left arm was hurting like hell from the burn, and his knees were not happy about the endless flight of stairs. John was 40 and he worked out with Ronon like he was still 25, but his body didn’t lie. He wondered if he was going to be able to make it back up 175 stories if it came to that. He rubbed his left knee, which had always been tricky since that crash in Afghanistan.

“Sheppard.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re almost there, but you stopped.”

“Resting for a second. That’s a hell of a lot of stairs, Rodney.”

There was a long pause. “You never call me by my first name unless you’re annoyed with me.”

“That’s not…yeah, okay. Sorry?”

“No, it just reminds me of my mother.”

“Creepy. Thanks.”

“I mean, she called me by my first name. You could call me Rodney. She hated that.”

“If she hated it, why did you end up with it as a middle name?”

“Because my father hated the name Meredith. It was how they settled disagreements, finding the compromise that most pissed off the other one.”

“Touching.”

“Sometimes I think that’s why they had Jeanie.”

“To piss each other off?”

“What? No! To piss me off. I annoyed the hell out of them by the time I was a year old, so they decided to make another kid to annoy me.”

“I’m not sure if that means they were pathetic for doing that, or that you’re pathetically self-absorbed for believing it’s all about you.”

“Oh, it was all about me, they told me that. They just lied about how I needed a sibling to play with.” McKay snorted. “It all worked out in the end. Jeannie is nearly as smart as I am and we made their lives a living hell.” McKay chuckled.

“I think you missed your super villain calling.” John took a final swig of water and stood up again, testing his knees.

“I know, right?” McKay answered guilelessly, and John supposed that McKay really did consider it his backup plan.

“So, you and Keller?” John decided to distract himself from his various aches by keeping McKay talking.

“Done. It’s just…I mean it, John, things haven’t been good. And she keeps rumbling about going back to Earth, staying there. Giving up Atlantis. Yeah: no. Not happening.”

“You think she would?” John thought of Ronon. He had really expected Ronon to win Keller over before McKay—Rodney—muscled in. She had seemed pretty taken with the guy.

“Actually? No. She loves it here. I think she was just testing me. And you know what? That pisses me off. Ask me, or don’t. I hate games.”

“For the best, then?” John picked up his pace.

“Hey! Let go! Stupid robots, I can’t believe the Ancients actually built you, you’re more like a Stark Industries flunky. No! Over there! Go! There!”

John let the diatribe wash over him, becoming background noise to his descent.

---

Teyla heard Ronon rumble and stand up.

“Is it John?”

“Yeah. He’s here.”

They both listened as John approached.

“Is he limping?” Teyla asked, frowning.

“Yeah. Bet his bad knee is giving him trouble after all those stairs.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, big guy,” John said loudly. Teyla snickered. John was, more often than not, like a young boy determined he could stay up as late as his elders around the campfire.

“What’s wrong with you?” Ronon asked out of the blue. Teyla pressed up against the door to hear the answer.

“The city is, uh, kind of fighting me on liberating you two.”

“Migraine?” Ronon asked. Teyla heard some slapping of hands, and figured that Ronon had probably poked John in the head.

“I’m fine. Teyla?”

“I’m here, John. The door will not open.”

There was another pause. “Yeah, not for me either. We’re going to have to blow it.”

“Cool.”

Teyla rolled her eyes as she retreated from the door while the boys played with explosives.

When the smoke cleared along with the door, she saw what concerned Ronon. The skin on John’s face was pulled tight, and his jaw muscles were twitching, and his limp pronounced. She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “We can go, and bring back help.”

John grimaced, hunching into himself. “No, I don’t think so. We’ve just really pissed off the city.”

They stared at the remains of the door; Teyla realizing too late that for a city that feels and thinks, it might seem as if it had just been attacked. She turned to John. “We must run.”

John nodded, and pointed in the direction they were to go. Teyla took point and Ronon took up the rear, because they both knew it was only a matter of time before John fell down.

---

“What the hell did you do!?!” Rodney yelled in his ear. John knew he was not running, that he was barely jogging, but the city was screaming at him and it felt like the high-pitched screech of bad brakes.

“We had to blow the door to get Teyla out of the slave kitchen. The city—”

“Is freaking out, yes, thanks, I got the memo! I’m doing everything I can to convince it that you aren’t an invading force!”

That took a huge weight off of John’s shoulders. The city would still try to corralle them but it might not resort to murder, at least not yet. “Good. That’s good.”

“Go up and out. Up five stories, there is some kind of public walkway or rail system, I don’t fucking know, that goes from that building to here.” McKay shouted over the din of the factory.

“Got it.”

When they got to the door to the overpass, though, they stopped dead. There were huge chunks of it missing, and what was there looked fragile. John tapped his earpiece. “Not happening. The whole thing looks like it got hit by a truck. It’s in pieces.”

If it was viable, the central tower/building was maybe a mile away. Having to go down to ground level and pick their way through other buildings to get to it, though, was never going to work. It would take a couple of days and the city could put up way too many obstacles.

McKay sputtered in frustration, but Ronon pointsed up. “There’s another one.”

John groaned. “It’s at least 100 stories up from here.”

“Yes, but it looks wider, and to be in better condition.” Teyla pointed out.

They agreed to try for it but when they turned to go back into the building, the door is shut against them. John kicked it, and the city kicked back against his brain insolently. “Ow!”

“We climb.” Ronon started pulling rope and a grappling hook out of Teyla’s backpack, and John wondered when that became standard issue.

“Oh, hey, there’s another one. A few stories up from you guys,” McKay commented over the radio.

“Yeah, 100 stories up,” John grumbled.

“What? Oh…yeah. It is. 123 to be exact.” McKay sounded deflated. John knew how he felt as Ronon set up the rope-and-hook and threw it. McKay’s keeps talking, though. “Hey, I might have found something to help. Give me thirty minutes.”

“Can’t, McKay. I don’t trust this city. We keep moving.”

“Fine, fine.” McKay grumbled and signed off. John suspected that was not the last of it.

The outside of the building was creatively terraced, so going up was less dangerous than hanging off the outside of one of Atlantis’ spires, which was not something John ever hoped to repeat. He was glad he still lifts weighted with the Marines, because with his incipient migraine and his hateful knees, he knew he was going to need every ounce of upper body strength he had.

It turned out, that was not enough, because simply climbing the walls was hardly the last of their problems.

---

Their luck held steady, Teyla mused sourly, as Ronon hauled himself back over the terrace to get at John while Teyla shot at the bird-thing that was attacking them. It was obviously mechanical and far too decorative with its multicolored skin and curled “feathers” to be a genuine attack drone, but it had done the job by going for John. It had been a choice of defending himself and falling a story back down or letting the beast rip at his skin, so Teyla felt John had been wise to fall, but there was no guarantee that he hadn’t been seriously hurt anyway.

Ronon helped him up. Teyla tore her attention away to finally get a shot at the beast that took it out. She did not care how she had broken it, as long as it went down. They still had about twenty stories to go, and she did not need this kind of hassle.

“Go on!” John yelled up at her, and pushed Ronon away. One of his arms was injured, or possibly his shoulder. Ronon shook his head, but John pushed him again. “I can’t climb. I can’t. Go get McKay; he thinks he might know of a way to pick me up.”

“Such as a jumper?” Teyla yelled down. Ronon stood next to John, clearly unconvinced.

“I guess, I don’t know. But either way if I stay here, the city will calm down a little. Maybe give you guys a break.”

From what John had said earlier, Teyla knew it was mostly him that the city was upset about. She and Ronon were nothing to it, and she was comfortable with that if it got them out of the place that much faster. She nodded.

“Ronon, come up here. We can help each other and go faster.”

Ronon glared at both of them but followed orders. He pulled himself back up the rope, unhooked the grapple and swung it for the next terrace up while Teyla dropped her canteen and a packet of mild pain medicine down to John, who was unsteady on his feet but managed to grab both. He waved them on. She wasn’t happy about it, but John was a mess, and short of Ronon carrying him, he was physically unable to go forward.

---

The city had moved from disapproval to murderous intent. John knew that the city would keep after Ronon and Teyla, but he figured if they split up he might have a chance to convince it that he was the bad guy and leave them alone. John did not think it was a suicide run, although given the city’s mood it might end up that way. As long as his team got out.

“Rodney.”

“What’s going on?” Rodney shouted at him.

“I got injured. I’m hanging out poolside while the wonder twins come to you. Then you can find a way to get back here and pick me up.”

“Is that all? Sure. No problem.” Rodney’s voice was low and neutral, so John braced himself for the attack. “What the fuck do you mean, you’re injured?” Rodney shouted.

John smiled. “I fell. There was…a thing. But it’s taken care of, so no worries. I just can’t climb with a bad arm.”

“A thing? Define ‘a thing’.”

“A bird thing. Teyla shot it, we’re good. Focus, Rodney.”

“I hate you so much right now, I’m going to draw a mustache on your Cash poster as soon as we get home.”

“You know how to hurt a man, Rodney.”

There was an unexpected pause before Rodney answered. “So do you, John. Hang in there, we’re coming for you.”

John let the glow inside him bloom for a second at the concerned sound of Rodney’s voice. McKay switched off, promising to check back in ten minutes. He sounded busy and breathless, and John took that to mean he was close to a breakthrough with the ZedPM machine. And whatever other ten amazing things Rodney managed to do every day.

John let himself thunk his head against the wall he was propped up against, because that thought was about 1000x more sentimental than he had expected it to be. He figured it was due to the pain.

He was still out of it when the door to the apartment/office/store/whatever opened up and another bird-thing flew out, somewhat crookedly. John shot it handily with his .45, and it crashed at his feet. Something malevolent shook him, then, with hurt and anger and revenge pumping through his brain like a drug. He looked up and saw several other strange animal machines, which had once probably been beautiful and elegant personal pets or just animated house decorations, aiming straight for him, their intentions broadcasting loudly: the city was going to drag him inside and keep him there, somewhere, anywhere that the others would never find him.

John rolled to his feet, crawled up onto the ledge of the terrace, and took a running jump for a terrace that was cattycorner to him and not so far above him he couldn’t reach it with luck.

He almost made it.

---

Teyla was genuinely winded by the time they got to the large central building. Unlike their experiences earlier, this one seemed to anticipate them, and doors opened as they ran through. McKay’s voice came up over the building’s speakers, letting them know that it was his doing. Relief flooded Teyla, and she ran faster, not quite catching up to Ronon but at least keeping him in sight.

They ended up in a huge room that was, itself, more like an enclosed city. McKay looked spastic and his uniform was ripped in places but he was whole and unscathed. He threw a tool at Ronon and pointed at a box.

“If this—THIS!—arrow goes above THAT mark, use the key wrench to adjust the pressure! I’m not even sure what the hell compression has to do with making a ZedPM, but it does, so keep it steady.” McKay talked a fast while feeding what looked like dark, empty ZedPM casings into a hole in the side of a huge machine.

“Rodney, the city--” Teyla started, but McKay waved her off.

"I've managed to cut systems here at the main tower, reroute and recode enough to kill the city's AI within this building. I couldn't reprogram the whole city, we're out of time." McKay looked upset, as if ready for Teyla to be angry at him for failing.

"That is good, Rodney!" She smiled, her worry for John being all that held her back from hugging Rodney right there. He turned to where Ronon stood, trying not to appear confused about what was going on.

“Okay! Teyla and I are going for Sheppard. No, Ronon, I need you here because you’ve got the strength to turn that wrench which, trust me, isn’t easy.” McKay waved a dismissive hand at Ronon’s outburst. Then he turned to Teyla. “Follow me!”

And then he was gone. Teyla dropped her backpack but not her P-90 and took off after him, her lungs burning.

---

John was down to three fingers and no hope. He had wasted so much time, and maybe it was the pain and adrenaline and impending death talking, but he felt he needed to say something. If only to make things worse, because he was good at that. “Hey, Rodney.”

“Working!”

“Yeah, about that. Look, if something happens—“

“What? What does that mean?” Rodney sounded distracted.

“I’m in a bit of a tight place. I…damnit, Rodney.”

There was short pause. “John? John, what’s wrong?”

“I just don’t think I’ll be there for you. I, ow, fuck. Ow. Damnit, Rodney, if this is it—”

“John! What’s happening? JOHN!”

“I’m hanging from a balcony 200 stories over the ground with a bad arm. I’m sorry, buddy. I’m sorry.”

“What? Oh my God, John! Wait, just hold on, I’ll—”

His fingers were slipping and he was out of time. “No, Rodney. Keep going. Do your thing, save the others. Just let me say this, fuck, let me say this please? Rodney. I’ll miss you. I’ve always missed you. I love you. Never settle for less than that.”

Rodney started yelling in earnest but John rubbed his ear over his shoulder, dislodging his earpiece and sending it spiraling down before him, because it did not seem fair to force Rodney to listen to him die.

Desperately clutching out of instinctive fear, his fingers finally slipped free and John fell.

---

Rodney called it a bi-plane, although Teyla could tell it was more like a puddle jumper in regards to how it ran. It was small and had two seats, so Teyla was not sure how they were picking John up with it as they flew through the empty sky towards John’s location. Then Rodney started yelling.

Teyla looked out and saw John hanging from one arm over a ledge, while more mechanical beasts lunged at him from a side balcony. They could not reach him, but it was cold comfort, as John’s placement had him dangling over open air. It was a straight drop to the ground.

McKay pushed the flier hard as he kept yelling at John. Teyla launched herself out of the seat in the body of the flier and climbed up onto the top wing, refusing to look at the ground so far below as the wind whipped around her. John’s eyes were closed and he shifted, sending his earpiece falling down before him. Rodney slid up under him just as his fingers slipped, but he was still nearly twenty feet above Teyla when he dropped. She grabbed him and fell backwards with the force of it, the little flier rocking dangerously while they scrambled in order to not roll off the wing to their deaths. John gasped for breath, staring up at the sky.

McKay was completely silent as he flew them back towards the central building. John and Teyla held on to each other and to the flier, John actually whooping when he managed to look around and see what he was on.

“You saved me in a bi-plane!” He finally yelled as they approached the flier’s hanger. “I’m a wing walker!”

“Shut up! Just shut up!” McKay yelled back, and something about the tone of his voice made Teyla glance at John, who looked abashed. She raised an eye brow but he looked away as they came in for a landing.

Teyla helped John crawl down, ignoring his grimaces of pain. McKay got on his other side and they all limped back to the factory, where Ronon was bowed up over the console, his whole body working to twist the key and adjust the pressure. McKay let go of John, almost dropping him, and went up to a larger console. He hit a few buttons and the whole place came to an unnaturally quiet halt. She thought it was odd, how Rodney was ignoring John, but it had been a very close call and Rodney sometimes took those the hardest.

“You. Get those, pile them on that roller cart.” McKay pointed at Ronon, then at a long line of about twenty ZedPMs that sat looking glossy and fully charged as they rolled out of the machine. He turned to Teyla. “I fixed the transporters. Go on up to the top and dial Atlantis, let them know we are on the way.”

Teyla nodded, feeling giddy, as she went over to the tiled area that she knew was the transporter. As she turned around to ask for directions on how to use it, she caught Rodney grabbing John’s face and kissing him senseless. John leaned forward into it, collapsing again Rodney, his good arm coming up around Rodney’s shoulder.

Ronon grinned at her as he loaded up the ZedPMs, and she just smirked while she waited for John and Rodney to break out of their clutch.

---

John swung his good arm around Rodney's shoulder and hung on. The adrenaline and the pain kept him standing, but the shock of Rodney attacking his face -- there really was no other description for the messy, mouthy kiss Rodney was plastering on him -- almost did him in. He had expected yelling, and denial, or maybe (his best hope at the time) a complete "that never happened" in regards to what John had said right before he fell onto a bi-plane.

Not this.

Rodney finally pulled back, looking extremely pissed off for someone who had just spent a short eternity tongue fucking John's mouth. "Don't. Ever. Not again, not ever, don't you DARE!" He spoke quickly and starting kissing John again before he could rationalize out what Rodney even meant.

John finally pushed off enough to catch some air. "I promise?"

"Do better."

"I really, really promise cross my heart never to fall off a 200 story building ever again."

"Bastard."

"Parent's were married."

Rodney closed his eyes, leaning in until their forheads were touching. "I love you too, you know."

"We're not talking about this."

"Good. Now kiss me, for a change."

"Roger that." John moved forward again, pulling Rodney to him.

# END #