"What is it?" he asked.
A second later Elizabeth looked up. "One of the historians. He thinks the material in the archives may have been sanitized. The medical records he dug up indicate that Ikaros suffered a… psychotic break after his parents and sisters were lost in a Wraith culling."
The kid was still smiling, seemingly oblivious to what Elizabeth was saying.
She continued. "It was Janus himself who stopped Charybdis, John. He felt Ikaros was rushing things because he wanted to avenge his parents and younger sisters. I want you to hold off testing Charybdis till further-"
Deceptively gentle, the lkaros-ghost cut her off. "My motivation for doing this is irrelevant, Dr. Weir, and it doesn't affect the functioning of Charybdis. You can't prevent the inevitable, but I assure you, nobody will be harmed-except the Wraith."
"John?" Her voice sounded shrill and muted at the same time, echoing madly and dragging like treacle.
"Pull the plug, Rodney!"
McKay executed a classy fish dive toward the generator, but even as he was watching him, John knew it was too late. The ephemeral shape of Ikaros brightened into a whirl of colors, blossoming above the core unit of Charybdis, stretching toward the ceiling, expanding to fill the interior of the dome and suffuse them all. Rodney hung suspended mid-flight, horizontally in the air, fingers splayed and reaching for the naquada generator. Too late, even if he had been moving, way too late.
"Don't worry!"
Supremely confident the assurance emanated from the center of the mayhem, Ikaros's voice or his own, John couldn't tell as sounds and shapes spiraled out of cohesion. His awareness screamed at the terror of being ripped apart, and he thought he looked at his hands, watched them multiply into a thousand pairs, some liver-spotted and gnarled, others no larger than a baby's tiny digits, every conceivable stage in between, and then those thousands of hands dissolved into a terrible burst of colors that cancelled each other into white light, searing his eyes and rising toward the dissolving apex of the dome and a dizzy vortex of stars, a massive maelstrom, sucking everything into.
Chapter seven
is breath came short and ragged, and Teyla berated herself.for not severing the link sooner. But he had been necessary for him to see. Absolutely necessary… She reached out again, patted down his arm until she found his hand, squeezed it. "Are you alright, Major Sheppard?"
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Just dandy." He gave a laugh, utterly devoid of humor. "Relatively speaking, that is. I'm not chopped up into God knows how many bits."
"None of us were. I think," she said.
"Oh yeah? Tell that to this… what's his name? Dreadlocks. Rowland?"
"Ronon. I believe the body we found is an alternate version. The alternates who died were not killed by Charybdis directly but by entropic events that occurred later in their respective timelines."
"Such as?"
"I cannot say. But Ikaros was telling the truth up to a point. Charybdis didn't kill us," she asserted again. "We simply became… many."
"No kidding." Then realization struck him. "You're saying that all the originals are still alive?"
"Barring unforeseen events, yes"
"Given the circumstances that's not much of a reassurance." He snorted softly, then whatever amusement he'd momentarily found dissipated. "So why did you show me this?"
She had expected the question; the only surprise was that he hadn't asked sooner. "Because you might be able to help."
"Some people might say it's none of my business."
"You're not some people. You're John Sheppard."
"Some people might argue with that," he groused, but he didn't sound as though he was seriously putting up a fight. There was a pause, then, "What do you need me to do? I'll help out in any way I can. We should be able to set up the villagers with some of the technology from down here, which should make it easier for them to-"
"Nothing like that," she cut him off quickly. "I need you to find Colonel Sheppard-the original."
"Come again?" The question rode on another dry laugh. "How the hell would I do that? It's a big universe out there, Teyla, and it hasn't exactly shrunk since the last time you stepped through the gate."
"Perhaps I've never stepped through the gate." It could even be the truth. Only the original Teyla Emmagan had ever traveled the stars.
"Do you have any idea what the odds are? Even if I'm… if he is still alive, and after all I've seen, I'm less sure than you are. It'd make much more sense if-"
"No! Whatever you could do for us here, it wouldn't matter. Not in the long run. Go!" She made a shooing motion with her hands, much like what she'd do to chase off curious village kids. "Go, find Colonel Sheppard."
"How?"
"The same way you found me."
"Oh? Crashing a jumper and damn near killing myself? There's gotta be an easier way."
"You know what I mean. You will find him. Because you have to. Because you're meant to" Teyla couldn't say from where she took that certainty, but it had been with her through all the years that she'd been waiting for him. Perhaps it was a nugget of knowledge embedded in her mind at the split-second Charybdis activated, or perhaps it was merely that minute shred of salvation left in Pandora's Box after all the ills and diseases had escaped; hope. Either way, it did not answer the one question she'd been asking herself again and again, namely whether hope was a good-or simply the most insidious evil of all. "You must find him," she said, surprising herself with the sharpness of her tone.
"You believe he somehow can fix this" A statement, not a question. He thought this was the fancy of an old woman whose brain had become addled by age, regret, solitude. Doubt rang through his voice clear as a bell. "How do you know?"
"I know how it sounds, and I cannot explain it. I cannot prove it. I just… know. And I hope." There was that word again. "Trust me. It's important that you trust me."
"I always have."
"But you don't now." She heard a soft intake of breath in preparation for his answer. Wishing she could see his eyes to tell if his doubts were as deep as she suspected or if she was beginning to convince him, she raised a hand. "No! Listen to me! Searching for the original will make the difference between giving this galaxy a chance-however remote-to heal and sitting back to watch it self-destruct. And perhaps the damage Charybdis caused was not confined to the Pegasus Galaxy. Perhaps-"
"— it affects the entire universe, including Earth." Major Sheppard finished for her. "Yes, that had occurred to me." There was a pause, then the rattle of crutches told her that he was shuffling away from her. "It's changed," he murmured and quickly added, "I don't mean the dead bodies. The city's changed. It feels different, smells different. Tired. More jaded. We didn't mean to wreck it all when we came here, you know? I didn't mean to wake the Wraith. Rodney didn't mean to blow up a solar system. And we sure as hell didn't mean to-"
— save the Athosians and give them a new home? Or care about everyone you ever encountered?" she shot back. "Children who find a new toy they don't quite understand may well end up accidentally breaking it. Regrettable as this may be, it's also the single most effective method of learning I've ever encountered. And don't forget, I was one of the children, too. Your people are not the only ones at fault."
It was impossible to say if he had listened. He remained quiet for a long time, and she imagined him taking in the sights around him. She'd wondered, often, what this subterranean version of Atlantis might look like, but eventually she'd begun to see it in her mind's eye as it had been-lofty and shining, jewel-like and without death littering every room and hallway. His words just now proved her right, no matter how cowardly such denial might seem. Retaining a clear memory of the beauty of Atlantis was important somehow, as if the very ideal of the city were a far-off beacon that would guide them all home to safety.