"What's happening down there?" Rodney demanded. "The life sign from the second pod just vanished."
How to describe this? "The stasis pod-there was a light. Doctor Beckett was hit." Radek hobbled towards the jumper.
"Oh, God." Dr. Weir breathed. "Like the Cohall pods."
"No. This light was not soft. It was blue and…" Not for the first time, Radek cursed the language barrier.
"Okay, Doc, just take it easy." Alderman spoke to Carson, circling behind him while Stackhouse leveled his stunner.
"It was like a physical form," Radek continued. "Something real, not projected."
"Doesn't sound much like our last life pod adventure," remarked Sheppard. "Beckett, you still with us? Alderman, Stackhouse, report. What's he doing?"
"He's pulling something off the lid of the stasis pod," Alderman replied, raising his stunner and pointing it at Carson, while he motioned to Radek to get inside the jumper.
Being underwater inside Jumper Three had not been nice, but Radek had adjusted to the situation. Sort of. Being underwater outside the jumper was very definitely not nice and he needed no encouragement to amend that situation, but his ankle was hindering him.
Then a sudden thought struck him. What if the density of the light indicated that the inhabitant of the pod had taken permanent control of Carson? If Carson's mind still existed, it could be fading away much as Lieutenant Cadman had described her experience with Rodney. Any physical trauma might hasten that process, in which case- "I…I'm not certain you should use the stunner," he cautioned the Marines. "In this state it could kill Dr. Beckett"
Carson yanked off his gloves when they proved to be an obstacle to his efforts. "Looks like he's messing with a cylinder of some sort," Stackhouse further informed the Colonel.
"First pod doesn't have any cylinders on the side," Sheppard told them. "Any idea what the thing is?"
"No, sir. Just looks like something about the diameter of a drain pipe. Hey, Doc?" The sergeant lowered his stunner as he addressed Carson. "How about you put that down, nice and gentle like?"
Apparently unaware or uncaring that he was shredding the skin on his hands, Carson-or more correctly the being that now inhabited Carson-finally succeeded in detaching the object. He moved with uncommon speed, deftly avoiding the blasts from Stackhouse and Alderman's belatedly raised weapons, and, knocking Radek and Mueller aside, lunged into Jumper Three.
Radek felt the realization like the grip of an icy hand. Alderman, Stackhouse and Mueller were right on Carson's heels, but they failed to reach him before the jumper's hatch closed and the drive pods retracted. The three men ran around to the front of the craft, banging on the hull and the windshield with their hands. It was evident that they, too, understood what was about to happen.
Comprehension must have struck rapidly up on Atlantis as well, because Rodney, Colonel Sheppard, and Dr. Weir all began shouting at nearly the same moment.
"Carson! Snap out of it, damn you." Rodney's cries overpowered the others. "As soon as you take off, the shield goes with you!"
It was Carson's voice that responded, and yet at the same time, it wasn't. Higher pitched and strangely free of any Scottish brogue, it resonated with anguish. "You fools! Incompetent, mindless humans. Do you see what you have done?"
Dr. Weir, thankfully, reacted first and became the diplomat. "We meant you no harm. You've been trapped for a long time, and we wanted to help you."
"You meant no harm? My beloved Atlas breathes no longer because of your clumsy actions. You have destroyed all our hope for the future!" His final words broke into something like a sob.
When Radek pulled himself to his feet, he came around to look through the windshield, now the only source of light in this submarine world. Carson's features were twisted into a grotesque mask. "Your friend's feeble mind tells me much," he snarled, anguish edged with rage. "My people have vanished from existence, and our grand city has fallen to your barbaric kind. You have no concept of how to be worthy of this place, and in your limitless arrogance you have brought the Wraith upon us once more. This time Atlantis will fall, and entire galaxies will suffer for your hubris."
Jumper Three slowly began to lift away from the seabed. The Marines and Mueller scrambled for handholds on the vessel's hull, but Radek knew with sick certainty that, with the pods retracted, they would find none.
"Please give us a chance to explain who we are, why we're here," Elizabeth called, desperation creeping into her voice.
"To scavenge!"
"No! To find a way to defeat a parasitic race that stole technology from you and used it to enslave our kind after you left our galaxy."
"Better that they had kept you enslaved than you came here," came the equally despairing cry. "We waited so long for our kind to return, but all that should have been destroyed remains, and now, all is lost."
It was the voice of one who was immersed in the madness of grief. At that moment Radek understood there would be no reasoning with whoever had taken possession of Carson Beckett. The Czech swallowed back the bile that had suddenly risen and, stepping away from the jumper, stared dismally upward to the water's surface hundreds of meters overhead. It might as well have been the moon.
"Don't you understand?" Dr. Weir's voice was impassioned now. "We are the descendants of Moros and the others. We came back for you!"
That declaration, inspired though it was, triggered a response that carried the weight of ten thousand years of existence. "Then we are indeed truly lost, and only one thing remains to be done."
The jumper rose, and the force field around the four of them shrank into nothingness. Freezing water rushed in, knocking Radek off his feet. Dimly he could hear Rodney and Sheppard yelling at him, but the cold swept over him, the pressure compacting his suit so that it tightened painfully against every inch of his body, seemingly forcing the air from his lungs. Basic physics assured him that he could not actually be crushed to death at this depth, but the surface was beyond reach, a tantalizing, hopeless distance away. It occurred to him in a brief moment of bizarre detachment that even if he had learned to swim, it would have been of no use.
Radek had heard that drowning was not an unpleasant way to die. Perhaps that was true, but there had been no mention of the terror one suffered in the final moments as one's lungs burned and the world went dark.
Chapter Three
"Zelenka, everybody, hang tight!" John wrenched Jumper One into the air and redlined its engines, gunning toward the ocean. "I'm inbound to you. Pull your hoods off, stay together and don't panic!" There was no reply, and he told himself firmly that their silence meant absolutely nothing. "Rodney, am I gonna make it?"
"You should-they've got a little time." That declaration would have been more convincing had Rodney's voice not cracked. "Carson, for the love of God, I know you're in there-"
"You're wasting your breath." John liked to think of himself as a relatively laid-back guy, but control was kind of an issue for him, and having his body commandeered and taken on a violent rampage not so long ago had knocked him for a psychological loop. When they got Beckett back, he and Elizabeth would have to share a drink with the good doctor. First, though, they had to get him back. "The Doc's not in the driver's seat."
"Right. I know." Rodney sounded abashed and frustrated all at once. "It's just…"
"Yeah." Jumper One hit the surface of the water at an angle chosen for speed, not comfort. The impact sent the stasis pod in the rear bay skidding against the bulkhead, but John's level of respect for his dead Ancient passenger had taken a nosedive the moment the guy's companion had hijacked Beckett.
Elizabeth's voice returned, strained but impressively composed as she addressed the distraught Ancient. "Please, what can we do to help you?"