Darkness Is the Only Sound

by michelel72

Chapter 2: Integration

The creepy guy laughed for a long, long time. And that entire time, Rodney just sat there, arms folded across knees and head buried in arms, silent. Which wasn't like him at all.

Or it wasn't like the man they all thought they'd known, anyway. Maybe it was perfectly in keeping for whoever he had really been.

The guy eventually got tired of laughing with no reaction and promised Rodney a lot more fun to come. He pushed one of their energy bars into the team's cell and wandered off.

Teyla immediately started checking each wall, especially the one separating the two cells.

Ronon started some kind of experiment that involved sliding the canteen across the floor, and it took John a minute to realize that Ronon was trying to find a way to get water over to McKay. The stone-like flooring was too rough for the canteen to slide well, though.

Ronon didn't give up immediately. The canteen still had its strap, so he stretched his arm out the gap and tried a slingshot maneuver, but the dividing wall apparently extended partway out into the hall. Ronon could do no better than getting the canteen to hook around the tip of that wall, still well out of Rodney's potential reach.

John, meanwhile, occupied himself trying to get Rodney to talk. Granted, "What the hell, McKay?" might not have been the most sensitive topic, but … seriously, what the hell?

After a few rounds of that, John gave up and took inventory. That didn't take long, since they had been stripped of just about anything more complex than a pencil, though he was pretty sure Ronon still had at least one knife somewhere, and the pack of chewing gum Teyla turned out to have promised hours of entertainment.

None of them still had a watch, though, so judging the passage of time was difficult. John had no idea how long they had been unconscious, and the bright unchanging light did nothing to help.

John eventually couldn't hold back any longer. "Where the hell is Stackhouse?"

"Perception filter." The words were quiet and dull. Rodney had tipped his head back against the wall, his eyes open but unseeing.

"Okay," John said slowly. "And that means what?"

"It means even if we're still on the same planet, they can't find us. Think of a cloak, but one that works directly on the brain rather than by altering visible light. With enough power — which this place probably has — they could walk right past us, LSDs and jumper sensors lighting up like a pachinko parlor, and they wouldn't notice a thing." The technical lecture fit the Rodney they had known, but the complete lack of energy didn't.

"Right. So how come we've never heard of that kind of cloak before?"

Rodney lifted one shoulder in a faint shrug, still not bothering to look at John. "Not much of a defensive tactic. It's not going to reach near orbit, so all the Wraith would have to do is target from there and then fly blind. Their culling beams wouldn't be affected, and given the speed of the darts, the filter wouldn't have time to convince them to alter course. As for Atlantis, they might figure it out by reviewing the logs when they get back to the city, but they can't do anything about it without beaming technology, even if they do realize the effect is limited."

"And since the Daedalus is at least a week away …."

"Right." Rodney closed his eyes.

"Okay," John allowed. "I get why we haven't seen this tech before, but you obviously already knew about it. So why didn't you warn us? Why weren't you watching for it?"

Rodney's mouth tightened for a second. "That would have required me to remember it existed, which I didn't."

"Just like you forgot to tell us you weren't actually human?"

"Yes," Rodney said tensely. "Exactly like that."

"Funny, that doesn't work for me." Rodney's scramble to move away from the creepy guy had put him in the corner nearest the team's cell, closer than he had been willing to approach before that, whether accidentally or from some unconscious desire to retreat to the team for safety. The wall made him as impossible to reach as before, but John braced his hands against the wall, looming over Rodney. "Why the hell didn't you tell us?"

"Because I didn't know!" Rodney shouted, losing the strict control he'd kept over his voice. He glared up at John, tightening his strange hands into fists. "I honestly thought I was human, because I made myself forget. Because — you have no idea how suffocating it was, being isolated like that. Mute and deaf and deformed and alone. I couldn't —" He drew a shuddering breath. "I couldn't. So I made myself forget. I used a perception filter on myself and spent the next twenty-five years thinking I was a perfectly normal human."

"'Normal'?" Ronon muttered, amused.

This was not the time. "And you just happened to remember now that it matters."

"No, I was made to remember by the deactivation. It doesn't just reverse form modification; it's effectively a control-zed for all of the biological technology. It started unraveling every change I'd made, including to my memory. Before that, I honestly didn't know, I swear."

John eyed him narrowly. "What would you even swear by?"

"On — seriously? On, on zero point energy. On the Nobel Prize in Physics. It doesn't matter. You know me, Sheppard. You know I would have told you if I knew. I'm not saying I would have told the entire universe, but …." He dropped his gaze to study the fabric of his pants, where it stretched across his left knee. "The three of you, I would have told you," he said softly. "I would."

And John believed him. He believed him in part because Rodney had started doing that sort of thing over the past few weeks, ever since his near ascension. The experience hadn't seemed to change him massively, but he dropped randomly into awkward earnestness every now and then, expressing sentiments he'd always left unsaid before.

Wait a second.

"Wait a second. You almost ascended. How did you not remember then?"

"Actually, I did ascend, for about a microsecond. Or at least I stood at the threshold. And right then, I did remember. I don't remember everything about that now, but it's clearer than it was, and the blurriness before makes sense now. But the entire point was to survive, and that meant not just turning back. It also meant going back to forgetting. I wasn't joking when I said I couldn't survive if I knew."

"What about the entire process before that point?" Teyla asked. "You spent much of that time meditating and learning yourself, did you not?"

Rodney huffed. "You might have noticed I never did particularly well at that. That process was meant for Ancients and the occasional human anyway, and that device was flawed at best. I also had a hell of a lot on my mind. If the process had been slower, maybe the filter would have broken down, or maybe I would have slowed down enough to look inward, but it obviously wasn't. There wasn't even time —" He cut himself off with sudden alarm.

John knew how that ended. There wasn't even time to tell Jeannie. The timeframe had been so short that trying to tell Jeannie just seemed cruel, when she couldn't possibly get there before the situation resolved one way or the other, even if the SGC had agreed to send her.

"Weren't you telling us how Jeannie has known you all her life, and how that proved you were human?" he asked.

"Yes, well, she was only about three years old when I showed up, so obviously she wouldn't know the difference."

Oh, yes, this was the Rodney John knew. Because John knew without a question that Rodney was lying now. Rodney had always been a terrible liar, and that fit. It really didn't make sense that Rodney would have known he was an alien and been able to lie perfectly about that one thing. Unless all the obviously bad attempts at lying were cover, but John didn't buy that McKay could ever have been that successfully manipulative.

He almost pushed. It was possible a kid that age could notice and remember suddenly getting a brother, and if anyone could it would be Jeannie. But Rodney was looking at him now, silently pleading, and John hesitated.

It was weird that Jeannie wouldn't know. Maybe she didn't, maybe she did — hell, maybe she was an alien too — but the creepy guy had said he wanted to find others. There was no telling if they were still being monitored, but it was safer to assume they were and stick to topics they had good reason to think weren't news to him. John really didn't like the possibility of him going after Jeannie. And she had a little girl, so … just no.

"That's pretty cold, McKay," he said instead. "Horning in on a kid's family like that."

"Desperate times," Rodney said dismissively, but he looked so damn grateful, John couldn't regret going along.

"You should've said you were looking for the Greatsingers," Ronon said, assisting the diversion by changing the subject completely. Apparently conversational segues were for the weak.

Rodney squinted at Ronon dubiously. "You're saying you've heard of … well, of this?" he asked, gesturing down at himself. When Ronon nodded, he added sourly, "'And you couldn't say something?"

Ronon rolled his eyes. "It's not like the art from that period was representational. And you kept using that dumb other name."

"… Art," John repeated.

"Yeah, Haktori, Mellin, that group. Didn't see it before, but I get it now."

"Wait," Rodney said. "Wait. There's art of — of the People? Here? In Pegasus?" His expression was a mixture of hope and fear.

"Sure. 'Cause they're in Gifts of the Dreaming. Figure that must be them, anyway."

"I am … unfamiliar with this work," Teyla said slowly.

Ronon made a long-suffering face. "One of the fifth-year required texts. 'In the time of Creation / in the dreaming before / the First Ones, the Designers / sought perfection in their work. / They sought to inspire / they sought to sustain / they called far and wide / to provide for their children / their children to be.' There's a bunch of stuff about color and dance and then, 'They wished for songs / to lift the spirit / to balm the soul / to partner the dance / so called they then to the Greatsingers. / And the Singers rejoiced / to serve such a cause / and lifted their voices, their voices majestic. / And to their songs the halls rang / and sang, and rang / and carried forth the Music / for the people to come.'" He narrowed his eyes at John. "What?"

"Nothing," John said. "Absolutely nothing." He wasn't sure he'd heard Ronon say that many words at once in an entire month before, and now he was reciting — "Does that rhyme in Satedan?"

"Septisyllabic weave, yeah. Why?"

Poetry. Ronon and poetry. John's brain considered breaking.

"That doesn't scan for crap in English," Rodney informed Ronon. Because he was such a poetry buff. What the hell had just happened to John's team? "But … I hear the Satedan, too — just sound, not meaning — and the flow is … really interesting."

"That work is primarily about the Ancestors?" Teyla asked Ronon. She and Rodney were quite possibly saving John from the imminent prospect of broken bones, because he couldn't stop staring at Ronon.

"Yeah. It's probably about a state dinner before Atlantis left Earth or something like that, though." He looked over at Rodney and added, "Sorry."

"That's for the best," Rodney said with a glance at the darkness beyond the lights, but he was obviously disappointed.

"So what's the real story with that guy?" John asked him.

"You think there's a good explanation for genocidal maniacs?" Rodney asked in return, irritable. "If there is, I don't have it. They're called — well, they probably have some grandiose name for themselves, but we knew them as the Discord. And I never did know what their problem was. All the tallkind — hm, adults — ever told us was to stay the hell away from them. The same way Madison's supposed to run away if a skeevy guy in a van offers her candy."

"How old were you?" Teyla asked gently.

"That's … unclear," Rodney said. "When I first changed into human form —" his expression twisted at that, as if the memory wasn't a good one — "I ended up about twelve, in Earth years, but that was based on size. Before that … specific number of years didn't really matter the same way, but I think I was probably about seventeen of those years. The conversion, though …." He shrugged.

"What, you can't work it out?" John asked.

"Based on what, exactly?"

"Oh, I don't know. Days? Hours?"

"An hour is specifically relative to an Earth day, if you hadn't noticed. The local year was 402.3 local days. Does that tell you anything?"

"Depends. How long was a day?"

Rodney gave him a disgusted look. "Sixteen tkka. You're not getting it. I never had a way to compare them. Minutes are based on hours, and seconds are based on minutes. There's no conversion formula, no table in the Pocket Ref. Earth days seemed interminable at first, but I have no idea if they really were longer."

"Seconds aren't based on Earth days anymore, though, are they? Isn't there a more scientific definition now?"

Rodney glared. "Yes. Yes, there is, because eventually people noticed that planetary days aren't a particularly precise measurement system. Forgive me for never bothering to measure just how many hundreds of trillions of vibrations of a cesium atom fit within one day on —" His voice broke there, and he finished in a mumble, "on my home planet."

Great, now Teyla looked like she wanted to kill John. Maybe, if he was really lucky for a change, she and Ronon would fight over who got to kill him first and take each other out. "Okay, okay. Never mind. You're getting better with your voice." Rodney sounded almost entirely like himself now. And when had John's life started needing sentences like that?

Rodney nodded. "I'm getting used to it again, the control. The practice helps. Except I really need some water."

John winced. "Yeah, sorry about that, buddy."

"What — what is your world called?" Teyla asked.

Rodney was quiet for a second and then made a soft sound, mostly a hum. It came across as simply meaning home, but John would have gotten that just from the way the sound itself made him feel. It was like getting back to the house with time for hot chocolate after a long ride with his mother, or — huh — like getting back to Atlantis after a lengthy mission.

"I'm not even going to try to come up with a human term for that," Rodney added.

"Home," Ronon rumbled, looking a little misty. Teyla just nodded agreement, her small smile warm but watery. So at least John wasn't the only one affected.

"I'm sure no one could ever mistake that for any other planet," Rodney started, the attempt at sarcasm transparent, but a rattling hiss wrenched his alarmed attention over towards the darkness. With a lightning-brief glance at the team, he swallowed heavily and then reluctantly pushed himself up to stand, his back never losing contact with the wall.

"No need to dither between is and was," the voice purred as the creepy guy oozed into view. "I can assure you that wretched planet is long dead."

Rodney's face had always been expressive, and that was no different now. He was terrified, and he was wearing his traditional laughably bad attempt at a brave face, and even so his raw hurt at the words showed clearly through all the other elements.

"Why don't you go to hell?" John snapped at the creepy guy.

He honestly didn't expect to get attention where neither Ronon nor Teyla had been able to, but the complete lack of reaction still burned. The guy just studied Rodney for a few seconds and then made an odd shimmying move.

And Rodney went strangely still. He was still trembling, still blinking his fear-widened eyes, still breathing so rapidly he was probably halfway to hyperventilation, but he didn't move anything else as the guy suddenly pulled the middle section of the front wall open and entered his cell.

Ronon slapped a hand against the dividing wall. "You stay away from him."

The guy advanced on Rodney, though it was hard to see exactly how he moved. His lower portion sort of undulated, but the dark and writhing … skin? … made it nearly impossible to make out details. The guy oozed forward, in no particular hurry.

Rodney's eyes tracked him, but he didn't move away, though he looked as though he desperately wanted to.

"Finding your filthy voice at last? Time for the next step, then." The figure reached out a — well, John was just going to think of it as an arm — and lifted Rodney's chin slightly, not even twitching when Ronon slammed both hands against the wall. Rodney flinched slightly at the contact but didn't pull away, even though he looked ready to throw up.

Getting this close a look at the writhing, churning skin wasn't doing John's stomach any greater favors.

The other call-it-an-arm reached over and fastened some sort of collar around Rodney's neck. Rodney's breathing changed right away, turning strained and half-choked. "There. Now, see if you can get that off."

The figure turned slightly away from Rodney, and Rodney immediately reached up — only to snatch his strange hand away even faster, shaking it as if he'd just gotten shocked. He froze again as the dark figure turned back to him.

"No," the guy said, grabbing Rodney's hand. "I said try to get it off." He pressed Rodney's hand firmly against the collar, and Rodney began choking in earnest.

John and Ronon did their damndest to break them up, whether by voice or by knocking the wall down. Teyla left them briefly to test the front wall of their cell but quickly rejoined them. The complete pointlessness of their efforts just pissed John off more. And all the while Rodney's face grew steadily more red and then purple as he gagged — but though he kept clenching his left hand, he never once raised that hand, even to try to push the guy away.

It wasn't until Rodney's eyes started to roll up that the guy let Rodney's hand drop. Rodney coughed and gasped, glaring death , but other than that, he still didn't try to move.

"That's more like it," the guy cooed. "Do you feel it? Do you feel your songs catching, building up, choking you? I'm told one of yours died just that way, all those songs of grief and loss and desperation just building up and building up to strangle and suffocate. So poetic, don't you think? Perhaps this is how I will kill you at last. But then, that has been done, and I do hate to waste this opportunity I've awaited so very long in imitation. We shall see.

"But first, I want to hear how pathetic your cries for the rest of your kind will be."

Something like determination entered Rodney's expression.

That just made the guy chuckle. "You think you won't? Some do think that. But you will. You won't be able to stop yourself. It's written on your bones. And if you cry prettily enough, I may even allow you a drink of water, so be sure to keep that in mind." He chuckled more as he backed his way out of the cell, closed the open section of wall, and moved back out of sight.

The moment he blended into the darkness beyond the lights, Rodney slumped back down to the floor, cradling his right hand in his left and coughing wretchedly.

"Dammit, McKay!" Ronon exploded.

Rodney squinted up at him with a now what? expression.

"You run," Ronon told him, frustration making him sound angry. "The door was open. Why didn't you run?"

But Rodney was already shaking his head. "Couldn't," he rasped. After a few more shallow coughs, he forced out, "When it … looks at me … can't move." He glared at Ronon and added, "Tried." His voice was thin and reedy, barely more than a whisper.

"You okay?" John asked, fighting not to sound pissed off himself. It wasn't Rodney's fault they were all useless. "Relatively speaking," he amended quickly.

"Cutting off most … of my voice," Rodney managed, gesturing briefly at the collar with his left hand, though he carefully stopped well short of touching it. He summoned a sour smile as he went back to massaging his right hand gingerly. "Don't have to … worry about … too big now." The smile fell apart and he ducked his head to avoid their eyes.

---

On the upside, the creepy guy left them all alone for a long time after that.

On the downside, there was absolutely nothing for any of them to do but stare at each other, listen to Rodney's constant shallow coughing, and contemplate their complete lack of options.

After a long while, Rodney carefully stood again and made his slow, unsteady way over to the front wall, keeping one hand on the side wall for balance. The front wall didn't budge, and after a few halfhearted pushes, Rodney made his halting way back, sparing Ronon a spiteful glance.

"What's wrong?" John asked. When Rodney answered with a glare, he expanded, "I mean, why are you walking funny?"

"Haven't walked … these feet … hips … mass distri … bution … decades," he said as he clumsily lowered himself back down in the corner. Even half-choked by his own words, McKay was long-winded.

"And you're shaking."

"Just starving … to death."

"It hasn't been that long," John said, trying to ignore his own growing hunger.

"For you. My body … just changed … still changing. Takes energy. And different … metabolism." He closed his eyes wearily, but his sporadic coughs made it clear he wasn't actually sleeping.

John had no idea how much of that was accurate and how much was Rodney's usual complaints of hypoglycemia, but he couldn't do anything about it either way, and he obviously wasn't much good at cheering the guy up at the moment. He went back to evening out his bootlaces.

They spent what felt like the next couple of hours taking turns pacing and brooding, but then they gave in and split the energy bar. John carefully broke it into quarters, on the theory that they would find a way to get a piece to McKay somehow, eventually. They each took a mouthful of water as well. They didn't want to waste their sparse supplies, especially in full view of a guy who didn't even have that much, but they did need to keep their strength up just in case they got any kind of chance.

John had hoped that McKay was at least dozing, but just as he was swallowing his meager portion, he glanced over to see Rodney watching them. He looked so pathetically desperate that John didn't know if he should explain the situation or just go easy and apologize, but Rodney simply nodded slightly and closed his eyes again.

---

Ronon decided to nap after that, which at least killed some time for him. John half-listened to a long-winded story about some Athosian festival or another, partly for something to do and partly because Teyla's voice drowned out Rodney's coughing a little. In the near-absence of any other stimulation, that sporadic but frequent sound was turning into a morbid version of the more classic dripping-water torment.

Paying at least partial attention to Teyla helped John keep his mouth shut. No matter how annoying the sound was, it wasn't like he could exactly say, "Hey, McKay, I know you're slowly strangling over there, but keep it down, would you?"

The temptation was awfully strong anyway, though. John would feel even worse, but Teyla was starting to twitch slightly at each cough, too. Which was probably why she was going on and on about what sounded like the most boring festival ever. And John had been to more than one Pegasus harvest festival.

She sighed as she finally finished her story. "John, let me see your wrist."

John only realized then that he was scratching his wrist and that it still itched annoyingly despite the thorough scratching. He held it out. A reddish splotch wrapped around the wrist and angled across the back of that hand, though John wasn't sure how much of that was just irritation from the scratching itself.

"Do you know how long it's been bothering you?" Teyla asked, looking closely but not touching.

"Not really."

"I've only noticed you scratching it since we've been in here," Teyla noted. She checked his other wrist, which wasn't nearly as bad, just a little pinkness around the edges of his wristband. "Perhaps it is a contact rash from the dark man's touch, when he brought us here."

John could sort of see that. If he had been grabbed by the arms and dragged, the crawling skin could easily have been against his own. Which wasn't really a pleasant thought. "What about you?"

"I am unaffected. Perhaps you are simply more sensitive."

John glared at her for that. He wasn't the team member who constantly bitched about allergies. Not that this was the right time to give Rodney a hard time over that sort of thing, even second-hand.

And he didn't see any rashes on what he could see of Ronon's arms, so it probably was a more individual reaction. Wonderful. And now that he knew his wrists itched, he couldn't stop noticing. He started examining every inch of the walls again, just for something to do.

After what felt like several hours but probably couldn't have been more than one or two, Ronon got up again. He walked around the cramped cell a couple of times to stretch his muscles out and then bumped John's shoulder. "Take a nap."

"Excuse me?"

"Take a nap. We'll get a chance. Need to be ready when it comes. We should take turns."

"So Teyla can go next. I'm not sleepy."

"I can meditate," Teyla countered. "You … would get less benefit from trying."

John felt a childish desire to protest further, but they were right. Teyla could get some amount of relaxation while remaining relatively alert, and while he wasn't sleepy, he had learned the benefits of sleeping when he could over the course of his career.

Besides, it couldn't be all that much more boring.

He stretched out along the back wall, one arm over his eyes to block some of the ever-present light. After a while, he did manage to drop off.

The negotiations were ultimately pointless. Teyla did nap next, and Ronon, and John again. The guy came back once to push a couple more energy bars into their cell, taunting Rodney as a matter of course, but they were otherwise left alone for long enough that John ended up napping another three times.

---

John woke to Ronon kicking his foot some immeasurable time later. "He's coming back."

John got up, slightly muzzy with poor sleep but edgy with anticipation. He wanted something to happen, but he didn't want something to happen to Rodney while they all stood helplessly by.

Rodney looked like hell. John wanted to believe the grayish pallor was just a matter of a slowly developing species coloration, but he was pretty sure it wasn't that easy. Rodney was still sitting in the near corner, sprawled now without the energy to sit upright or huddle himself small. Rodney's eyes were open but dull, watching the darkness beyond the lights fixedly but almost lifelessly.

John couldn't tell whether Rodney or Ronon had first detected the creepy guy approaching, but they weren't wrong. He slipped into view, his attention once more intently on Rodney. "Oh, yes, very nice," he purred. His voice climbed in pitch, mockingly shrill. "'Help me, help me, I'm lost and hurt and all alone, won't someone please help me?' Yes, that works very nicely."

John didn't care if he needed calamine-lotion gloves for a week. The second he got a chance, he was slugging the guy.

That was for later, though. Right now, the guy made that little shimmying motion again and then opened the front wall. He moved right towards Rodney, who watched his approach with clear dread but again didn't try to move away. He had something long and pale and slightly shiny in what served as his hand, but John couldn't make out exactly what it was.

"I might even be moved to prolong your wretched life briefly, if you beg. Are you thirsty, filthy singer?"

"Please," Rodney whispered hoarsely. "Please."

"I could end your life this moment. I could toy with you for years. The choice is entirely mine. Whatever amuses me, you will do because I tell you to. Because your only goal is to please me enough that I choose to keep you alive. Your life, your death, mine."

"Yes. Please." John had never imagined Rodney could ever sound that defeated.

The guy stood silently over Rodney. "That will do," he decided finally. "For now." He was holding the pale object by the bottom end, and he bent forward to rest the top end against Rodney's mouth before upending it. Rodney gulped desperately at the object, which was apparently a tube of water.

No. Not a tube. A bone.

A bone, probably arm or leg to guess from the size and shape, hollowed and polished and possibly coated to make it water-tight. A bone, John was willing to bet, from a long-dead Furling.

Rodney kept gulping and sucking long after any water had to have been used up.

"So pathetic," the guy murmured fondly as he pulled the bone away and straightened. "And that will be the last you taste for a long while. You'd better hope one of your miserable kind responds to your calls." He retreated from the cell then, once more closing the front wall and moving out of sight.

John wanted to think he had misunderstood something here, but he was pretty sure he hadn't. "You're helping him?" he demanded, disbelieving. "You're trying to call others here?"

Rodney just turned his head away slightly and closed his eyes.

---

Anger didn't get through to Rodney. Neither did a request for any kind of explanation, and neither did reassurance that they would escape so there was no need for drastic measures.

John stalled, trying to figure another tactic, but Teyla spoke his name very firmly.

She had decided this was the perfect time to meditate, and she had chosen to sit as close to Rodney as possible while doing so, facing him through the clear wall. She turned her head to glare at John. "You are not helping. Be elsewhere."

There wasn't exactly an elsewhere to be, but John backed off, moving to the other side of the cell. He spent a few minutes not scratching his wrists. Then Ronon bullied him into demonstrating the running stretches he usually mocked every single morning.

It had probably been twenty or thirty minutes when Teyla spoke again, her eyes still closed. "Rodney. You must not call."

Rodney roused enough to glare at her, but after a few seconds he relaxed, realizing there was only sympathy in her tone. "It's not … a choice," he said, alarmingly weak. "Automatic. Distress signal. Attempt to … connect. We're not … wired to be … alone."

Teyla opened her eyes then. "You are not alone."

Rodney just shook his head slightly. "Not the same." His hand twitched with what would probably have been an expansive gesture under other circumstances. "Mentally … alone."

"You are calling to others in a manner that we cannot hear but that the dark man can," Teyla said. "You can make sounds we cannot hear, but you have done so with your mouth, and you have not been using your mouth for this calling that I could see. I, meanwhile, can touch the minds of Wraith across larger distances than I can speak without machines. You have observed that you do not have a scientific model to explain this type of communication, and you have indicated that this lack of explanation is unusual. Can your method of farspeaking be so very different? Do we now have two incompatible and unexplained forms of silent communication?"

Oh, she was good. Rodney obviously wanted to tell her she was wrong, and he opened his mouth to do just that, but he hesitated. He might be annoyed at or critical of her reasoning, but he hated setting himself up to be proven wrong, and she knew just which buttons to press.

"Didn't say … incompatible," he muttered finally. "I could … pick up … impressions. Concepts. But that's not … connection."

"Have you actually tried to connect with — with a human?" Teyla pressed. "Did you explain so that he or she could try as well?" As uncertainty flickered across his face, Teyla continued, "Please, just try to hear me. Or try to send something for me to hear."

Rodney gave in and they both closed their eyes.

For a few long minutes they both just sat there. Then Rodney inhaled sharply, fighting not to cough, and Teyla's expression crumpled for just a moment before she made it carefully neutral again.

"Not enough," Rodney whispered, looking near tears.

"I know," Teyla murmured. "But focus on what there is. Perhaps practice will help."

They both fell silent again. After another minute or two, Rodney pressed a hand against the wall, as if he was trying to reach Teyla through it. John wasn't sure whether the gesture was a conscious one.

Ronon shrugged and started yet another round of what he called "ring primacy" and John called "Satedan rock-paper-scissors". It was tricky, and John had a tendency to screw up the constellation symbol finger-shapes, but it passed the time and could be played silently.

---

Teyla and Rodney had been silently communing for about another half hour, as far as John could figure, when the creepy guy came back. Rodney flinched badly and just watched the guy hopelessly, but he kept his hand pressed to the wall.

"No stamina at all," the guy said, apparently disgusted. He did the little shimmy motion once more and entered Rodney's cell. "No matter. Your cries carried poorly anyway. We will try something new. I will wire you into the communications array and we will move into orbit. Then you can call across this entire quadrant of this galaxy." He reached down and hauled Rodney to his feet easily, even though he wasn't that much taller or bulkier than Rodney.

Ronon started threatening the guy again as Rodney, once more, didn't resist. His legs did eventually take his own weight, apparently automatically, but John didn't like how unsteady Rodney obviously was.

John expected the guy to haul Rodney off with no further ado, but the guy paused briefly, turning Rodney to face the rest of the team. Rodney kept his gaze lowered, not meeting their eyes. "If you are very, very good and bring me another of your kind, I will even let you sing. Perhaps a forgetting, so we can release these monkeys you're so fond of. Or perhaps I will simply have you sing a death for the noisy one, hmm? But first things first." He kept one sort-of-hand wrapped firmly around Rodney's arm and dragged him away.

Ronon slammed his hands against the wall one more time and turned back. "Hey." He crossed the cell swiftly and knelt beside Teyla. "You okay?"

She had her face in her hands and took several long, unsteady breaths before speaking. "Yes. I am … I am fine."

Ronon just reached over and pulled her into a hug. John shuffled his feet, wishing he had thought to go to Teyla and glad Ronon had gotten there first.

Teyla hid her face against Ronon's shoulder for a minute before drawing back. "I am fine," she said again, but this time it sounded more likely. "It was just very … intense."

"So you were able to talk to him?" John asked. "You know, telepathically or whatever?"

"Not exactly, but I was able to sense him faintly, and he me. I was able to sense some of his stronger emotions. That was …." She took another long breath. "He has much to adjust to. And he is quite sure he is to die."

And while John was determined not to let that happen, they weren't exactly in a position to do anything about it. "And then, what, that guy heard you?"

"No," she said slowly. "No, I do not believe so. I think I was able to distract Rodney from calling so strongly, and the dark man noticed that change but did not realize my involvement." She looked out into the darkness. "I did not mean —"

"Not your fault," John said firmly.

Ronon rubbed Teyla's back a few times but then looked up sharply, rising to his feet as he studied the darkness. John started to ask what was up, but Ronon cut him off with a swift gesture before he could even get a word out.

Then John heard it too, a soft repeated sound that seemed to be drawing closer quickly.

It wasn't until Rodney fell against the front wall of their cell that he realized what it was. "Hurry," Rodney rasped as he pulled at an all-but-invisible handle on the outside of their wall, opening the panel. "Hurry. Hurry."

John was out first only by virtue of being closest to the front, Ronon and Teyla hard on his heels. John blinked as he finally stepped past the damned lights and into a more evenly lighted space facing the cells. The opposite wall was made of the same gray stone as the installation they'd first examined, rather than the sand-yellow stone of the cells, and it had row upon row of mysterious controls, some with blinking lights.

Their gear sat in a heap against that wall.

Ronon snatched up his blaster with one hand and kept an eye off to the left as he took up one of the canteens. He went over to Rodney, who had staggered back to the control-panel wall and had just started sliding down it. He held the canteen out to Rodney and let him get a few mouthfuls but then pulled it away, easily breaking Rodney's hold. "Keep that down first," he instructed gruffly, still watching down the hallway.

Teyla had her P-90 and was watching the other direction as she carefully collected her gear with her free hand. John geared up as fast as he could so he could relieve one of them. "Grab your stuff, McKay."

"Need food," Rodney gasped, still looking fearfully in the same direction Ronon was guarding.

John dug out one of the quarter-bars they'd saved and passed it over. Rodney broke his vigil just long enough to give him a disgusted look, so John said, "Like Ronon said. Keep that down first." Rodney rolled his eyes but ate the fragment quickly.

John finished gathering his gear and swapped places with Teyla, but she went to Rodney first. She reached to his neck, but he jerked away.

"It did not hurt you when he touched it," Teyla told him, "only when he made you do so. That may have closed a circuit. I will try not to hurt you."

After a second Rodney nodded and let her touch the collar carefully. When that didn't start choking him, she tried to find how to unhook it.

"Here ." Ronon stepped in, still aiming his blaster down the corridor, and with his other hand slipped a single-bladed knife up under the collar at the back of Rodney's neck. He twisted sharply and the collar fell away.

Rodney coughed deeply for a few seconds. "Are you insane?" he demanded. "You could have —"

"Didn't hurt you. It's off. Now gear up."

Rodney scowled down at the collar, but before he could kick at it, Teyla snatched it up and shoved it in a pocket. "If we have it, he does not," she said shortly, gathering the last of her equipment. But rather than swapping with Ronon, she first helped Rodney with his stuff.

He didn't take up his sidearm or P-90, though. "One of you guys should take mine," he said as Teyla finally swapped with Ronon. "I can't fire with these hands. Not unless you want me to keep my finger on the trigger."

"Yeah, no," John said. "But carry them yourself. If one of us runs out of ammo or loses ours, we'll take yours then."

Rodney opened his mouth to protest, but then he closed it again, taking up the two weapons with an indecipherable look on his face.

"How'd you get out?" Ronon asked as he grabbed the last of his equipment.

"I waited for it to turn away," Rodney said. "Then I hit it with a chair."

Ronon clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to make him stagger. "What, he didn't think you'd fight back?"

"No, actually. Our brains don't … work that way."

"But yours did?" John asked, because that was a pretty big limitation they needed to know about.

"I've been human," Rodney said tersely, rather than proclaiming his natural brilliance as John had half-expected. "I still am, a little. That … changes things."

"You can explain that more later," John said. For now, he would just count Rodney out when it came to any fighting. "Let's get out of here. You leaving your boots?"

"They won't fit now," Rodney said, irritated. "It just figures. Do you have any idea how long it took me to break these in?"

Rodney had been bitching about his boots not one day ago, but John was pretty sure that wasn't what he really wanted to complain about now.

"You want mine?" Ronon asked. "I can go barefoot. Might help you walk better."

Rodney made a face. "I don't think they're long enough. And I'd probably just trip over them. It's hard enough walking like this as it is."

John's training left him reluctant to abandon useful equipment when traveling light wasn't a necessity, and Rodney would want the boots back when he found a way to change back to human. John went over and used the bootlaces to tie Rodney's boots through the bottom of one of the straps. "There. Now you can kick yourself in the ass while we're too busy to take care of it. Come on."

Poking Rodney was always entertaining, and this time it had the bonus advantage of diverting him from brooding. "What? What the hell did I do?" Rodney demanded, moving unsteadily with Teyla's assistance as they headed away from the direction Ronon had guarded. A door at the end swung open with John's cautious push to reveal hallways in three directions.

"We'll think of something," John said. "Which way?"

"How would I know?" Rodney demanded. "Just not —"

John glanced back to see why Rodney had stopped speaking and saw he was almost frozen, looking back along the cell-block corridor. Teyla was pulling at his arm, to no effect.

"Move, McKay!" Ronon demanded, firing his blaster back along that corridor. When that got no reaction, he body-checked Rodney through the doorway.

As soon as he crossed the threshold, Rodney was moving again, stumbling as he tried to keep his balance. Teyla just managed to keep him on his feet as Ronon crowded through behind them. "Move. He's coming." As John randomly led them into the corridor straight ahead, he heard Ronon saying sharply, "You can't freeze up like that."

"It's not just me being a coward," Rodney snapped. "I couldn't move. It's physiological, not psychological."

John took the next turn, a right, just to get them out of line of sight before the guy got to the doorway. "Look, if you've got any suggestions at all for a direction, now's the time."

"No idea," Rodney said. "I think this is a ship, and I think we're still on the ground near the installation. That's all I have."

There was a door on the left, so John waved the others to wait and quickly checked it out. A small room stood on the other side. The far wall was lined with drawers, and about twenty feet further on, a second door led back to the hallway. Not great, but out of the way and defensible while they took a few minutes to get their bearings, so John waved the others in.

Rodney had taken advantage of the slight delay to dig a chocolate bar out of his tac vest and was wolfing it down. "Dammit, McKay," John said, "we don't have time for you to throw that back up."

"Right now, I'd be more worried about me passing out from low blood sugar," Rodney said around a mouthful.

He looked a little too serious about that for John to feel quite right teasing him about fainting from manly hunger. "If anyone has suggestions for finding a way out of here, speak up," he said instead.

"Keep turning one way," Ronon suggested.

"Common maze algorithm," Rodney agreed. "Or …." He crossed to the halfway point of the hall-side wall, where another mysterious panel was set into the wall. "Maybe …." He studied the panel for several seconds and then started poking at it experimentally.

One of the pokes made it start hissing and squealing like an old-school modem. Rodney hastily poked a few more times until the noise dropped sharply, though it kept burbling away.

John glanced at Ronon and Teyla to make sure they had the doors covered and went up to Rodney. "Do you really want to bring that guy running, McKay? We don't have time for you to play around anyway."

"I think you'll find we do have time for a map," Rodney said, the sharpness of his tone muted by distraction.

"What map? Where?"

Rodney waved at him. "Quiet. It's been decades since I've used this system." He was frowning in concentration, his eyes half-closed as he listened to the soft cacophony from the panel.

John would have asked what that meant, but Rodney was clearly trying to process other information and either wouldn't hear him or, more likely, would just ignore him. He had to wait impatiently until Rodney reached over to press at one of five outlined squares on the wall. "What system? What is that?"

Rodney stopped short of pressing the square. "It's a console. I know you've seen a computer before."

"You mean the things with keyboards, or keypads? And displays?"

"That's your method, yes. You happen to use light patterns to convey information. This is a different implementation, using sound, but the same basic concept."

"So we just happened to find technology of your people on their enemy's ship?"

"What? No. This isn't — this is a bastardized version. Our computers were more — they were better than this. But I can make this work. Now be quiet for a minute." He turned back to the panel, pressed the square, and made similar machine noises at the panel for several seconds before releasing the square.

The panel blatted, a couple of the lights flicking an amber dismissal.

Rodney glanced over at John, cleared his throat, and tried again. It took him another two tries before he managed to get the panel to respond in a more useful fashion.

He sighed deeply after listening closely to the output. "Well. The good news is, we are on the ground and there are two doors to get out of this ship. The bad news is, one of those doors is a cargo door, locked, with the lock controlled from the, well, control room. The other door is an airlock, and guess where that is."

John made a face. "The control room."

"Exactly. Which explains why that —" the noise Rodney made sounded like a cross between a belch and an unfortunate intestinal event and just had to be an expletive "— hasn't followed us here. It can just wait us out."

"Remind me to start packing C4 on these innocent scientific missions. Okay. I'm happy to take the battle to him, but we've got a couple of problems. The first is how he got the drop on us in the first place. What do we do about that?"

"Too quick to be a gas," Ronon said. "Some kind of stunner?"

"Maybe," John said. "It took us all out at the same time, right? Was anyone else up long enough to see others go down?" At the chorus of head-shakes, he continued, "So was it something built into that room, or is it something we have to worry about running into again?"

"Probably both," Rodney muttered sourly.

"But at least it doesn't seem to be something he can use on us here," John pointed out. "We'll still have to find a way to deal with it, though. And the other problem is you, McKay."

"Excuse me?"

"He can make you freeze up. That's a problem."

"I told you, that's —"

"Physiological, yeah, you said. It's not just any time he looks at you, though. It's only when he does that shimmying thing and faces you, right?" Rodney looked surprised at that news, which didn't bode well, but John pressed on anyway. "You know what the mechanism is for that? Some sort of psychic —"

A sudden cacophony cut him off, the air filling with a riot of noises that somehow held threads of melody. Suddenly John was in Afghanistan, Holland dead at his side. And Mitch and Dex. And Sumner and Ford and his mom.

"This is how they died," the sinister voice purred through the chaos.

It wasn't just people. It was his career between Afghanistan and O'Neill. It was everything that vanished when Nancy's I'm late became I guess I was just a few days late this month. It was the day the divorce became final. It was his last chance for his father's respect. It was Atlantis as Helia ushered the expedition through the gate back to Earth.

"The death of a planet," the voice continued from hidden speakers, only barely louder than the dissonant chorus of laments. John shook himself, fighting back tears. The overwhelming feeling — loss, grief, devastation — didn't diminish, but he could see the room again — Ronon braced against the wall, head down; Rodney crumpled to the floor, sobbing; Teyla standing with arms wrapped tightly around herself as tears fell. "All that begging and pleading and grief. Isn't it beautiful?"

Ronon straightened suddenly and marched over to Rodney, dropping down to kneel in front of the stricken man. "McKay." He took Rodney by the shoulders and shook him sharply. "McKay. Fight now. Mourn later."

Rodney finally managed to raise his head. Ronon nodded once to him, encouragingly, heedless of the tears on his own face. Rodney drew a shaking breath and nodded back, his mouth firming in determination.

Ronon helped him stand. Leaning against the wall for support, Rodney glanced around the room for a few seconds and then spoke, raising his still-hitching voice over the din. "Cover your ears. I mean completely." Once they had done so, he covered his own ears and opened his mouth. His face contorted oddly for a few seconds, and John felt an strange vibration that rattled his bones and made his eardrums ache despite the protection of his hands.

The chaotic noise abruptly seemed to cease, but John waited for Rodney to drop his hands before dropping his own. "What was that?" he asked, clearing his throat softly to try to clear some of the roughness.

"Burst the speaker," Rodney said, summoning a small smirk. "Kid's trick, really," he added with a mixture of embarrassment and pride. He still looked pretty brittle, but he swiped a sleeve across his face and squared his shoulders, ready for action.

"Handy," John noted. Even if he suspected kid's trick meant something closer to screw-up I got in trouble for. It was good to know they had other weapons. "Anyway, you were going to tell me how that freezing-you-up trick works."

Rodney's smirk fell away. "I don't know. Not exactly. It's just — when I see that …." He trailed off and then made a strange motion with his hand, but it wasn't until he gave his hand a disgusted look that John realized Rodney had meant to snap his fingers but hadn't accounted for their changed shape. Rodney shook his head and looked back up at John. "Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal."

John needed a second to place the reference. "What, seriously?"

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Not literally, of course, but Ronon has offered persuasive evidence that line-of-sight is relevant. And I think you're right, I have to see whatever that motion is for the process to work. It can't hurt. Come on, a towel, a necktie, something."

"Sorry, left all my neckties in my other galaxy," John said as he dug out a bandage roll from his first aid supplies. Rodney put his hand out to take it, but John ignored that and dug into his pack again for a spare sock. Quick work with his knife cut away the closed end, and John threaded the gauze through the sock before moving around behind Rodney. "Just hold still."

He placed the sock across Rodney's eyes and then looped the gauze around Rodney's head a few times, carefully not flinching at contact with the altered ears or hair. He made sure the makeshift blindfold was tight enough to stay in place but loose enough to be adjusted as needed.

The moment he finished, Rodney pushed the sock up so he could see again. "Ingenious," he said drily. "Where did you get this, 101 Ways to Avoid Doing Laundry? Oh, don't worry, I'll put it back when we head out."

"Kind of defeat the point if you don't," John said, putting his knife away. "You sure about this, though? If you can't even see where you're going —"

"I'd rather be temporarily blind than involuntarily helpless," Rodney said firmly. "Besides … I think I'm starting to remember how to navigate at least partly by sound anyway."

"Speaking of sound," Teyla said slowly, "the dark man said you could sing a … a forgetting?"

Rodney looked uneasy. "Well. Yes. There are … sonic manipulations that can … interfere with biological processes. Short-term memory would be one of those. Long-term … possibly."

"And he said you could sing death?" Teyla continued, very carefully.

Okay, that would definitely be an asset — but Rodney just made a face. "Probably not. Look, that's not the sort of thing anyone would teach children!" he added defensively when he saw both John's and Ronon's reactions.

"So you can't fight, can't bring any new kind of weapon to the table, can't shoot, and can't even watch where you're going," John said.

Rodney scowled. "If I had been forced, could I have sung four pat'ta and caused one of you to close your eyes and never wake up? No. But if I had been made to try, I might have wound up causing an slow aneurism. Or a perpetual nerve misfire. Or leukemia. I was years from being taught how to cause major biological effects properly, but I know just enough to know it's really dangerous to experiment. That said, if it's absolutely necessary, of course I'll try, but news flash — I'm not supposed to be the fighter here. I'm supposed to handle the tech, remember? Like, say, getting you a map." He snatched John's canteen, clumsily worked off the cap, and drank deeply.

"Yeah, you are," John said. "And usually you can at least try to defend yourself in a pinch. If you can't, we need to know that so we can adjust and make sure you're covered."

Rodney wiped his mouth and thrust the canteen back at John. "Fine. Now you know."

"And about that map — apparently we need the control room. Did you get where that actually is?"

"Oh. Not — not specifically, but I know how to get there. I'm pretty sure that's where it took me before."

John dug out his mapping book and pen and handed them over. Rodney, usually so sure-fingered, fumbled them, but he twisted away when John reached to take them back.

"I can do it," he muttered. His first lines were shaky as a child's, but they did get a little steadier as he filled out the map. "Wrote like this for twelve Earth years, I can figure it out again." He sounded more annoyed at himself than anyone else.

While Rodney was doing that, John checked the life-signs detector, but it only showed the four of them. Of course it couldn't be that easy.

The map Rodney produced was basic, with no real surprises. They didn't have to go back to the room with the cells, unless they felt like going out of their way; if they made a right leaving the room they were in and just headed straight, they would be following the central corridor straight into what Rodney thought was the control room.

"Anyone have any better plans?" When no one spoke up, John continued, "What about ideas for making sure we don't get knocked out again?"

After a few seconds, Rodney spoke up. "Little as I like the idea of splitting up —"

"No," John said immediately. "At least, not really. But we'll send two into the control room and keep two just outside the door. That'll give at least half the team some protection." He knew that was the general concept Rodney meant anyway.

"I'll go in," Ronon said immediately, to no one's surprise.

"Fine," John said. "McKay, you stay back." That would've been standard anyway, but it was mandatory given Rodney's current limitations. The problem was whether he or Teyla would stay back with McKay. He looked over at Teyla, but she just raised an eyebrow back.

Being in charge sucked sometimes. "You want to go in?" he suggested to Teyla. Minding McKay might require hauling him around, and John was both taller and heavier than Teyla, which would give him the advantage in that task.

"I would be happy to," Teyla said, sounding a little more surprised than John thought was really fair. He wasn't that greedy with the more interesting assignments.

They headed out, Ronon and Teyla leading and John taking the six. The corridor ended at a door about a hundred feet ahead, while another door about twenty feet behind them led to what had to be the cargo hold. They crossed the corridor they'd taken from the cell room, checking both ways carefully before proceeding as John made sure no one tried to sneak up on them from behind.

After that corridor, double doors led to rooms on either side. Teyla quickly checked the one on the right, and then Ronon checked the one on the left. He edged one of the doors open very slightly, just as Teyla had done, but he paused with a puzzled frown and then jerked his head for everyone to follow him in.

Rodney sucked in a sharp breath as he entered the room. John followed and found the room looked a little like one of the duller labs in Atlantis, with a hunk of rock about as tall as Teyla taking up the middle of the floor.

"Escape pod," Rodney said softly, reaching out to skim the surface with just the tips of his fingers. John took a closer look, but the thing still looked like a big rock. Then Rodney crooned a soft sequence at it, and a section suddenly loosened jerkily. "Half-broken," Rodney muttered, pulling the section until it swiveled to the side and out of the way.

A few lights and buttons lined the interior, but the thing basically amounted to a hollowed-out rock. Any of them probably could have fit inside if they curled up, but the thickness of the shell would have made it a tight and uncomfortable fit.

"You were in one of these?" John asked. When Rodney nodded, he added, "For how long?" John was proud of his ability to fly just about anything, but he wasn't sure this counted.

"Several thousand years, apparently," Rodney said.

"When we found the first Elizabeth —" Teyla started, but Rodney waved her off.

"Better stasis," he said. "We didn't have city-sized spaceships, but we had better stasis technology. Most of the interior is a stasis chamber, actually."

"And next to no propulsion?" John guessed.

"Correct. They're only meant to be lifeboats, really. Not space-yachts." He looked around at the few scattered objects littering the room. His voice turned hollow. "And this is what's left."

"You can check it out later," John said hastily, to ward off any sort of maudlin contemplation. There would be plenty of time for them all to freak the fuck out later. "We need to keep moving." He nodded significantly to Ronon, who caught on and checked briefly out the door before leading them back into the corridor.

They cautiously crossed another intersecting corridor and passed another pair of rooms. Teyla made a disturbed face at whatever was in the room on her side, but she just waved them on. The room on Ronon's side was apparently boring.

After that was a T-junction, with one last crossing corridor and a door straight ahead.

Ronon took the hinge side and Teyla the other while Rodney pressed against the wall on Teyla's side and John on Ronon's. Ronon inched the door very slightly open — and eventually, between getting out of this and freaking out, John was going to ask Rodney whose idea swinging doors on a spaceship was — and tensed, nodding to Teyla.

Rodney paled, sliding the makeshift blindfold down over his eyes without prompting.

Teyla provided a silent countdown, and at her mark Ronon charged through, leveling his weapon as Teyla covered him. "Don't move."

"Must we do this?" The guy sounded bored. "I have told you, I have no quarrel with your kind."

"McKay's our kind now," Ronon growled.

"Oh, really?" The voice dropped chillingly. "So be it."

John didn't hear anything else right away, but Rodney frowned in concentration for a second before alarm animated his expression. "Close your eyes!" he exclaimed.

Rodney might predict doom practically as a hobby, but when he hit that particular note of urgency, John had long since learned to obey immediately and ask questions later. He slammed his eyes closed just before a blindingly bright flash through the propped-open door turned the blackness behind his eyelids pink. A wave of dizziness left him shaking his head sharply.

He heard Ronon's weapon discharge. He heard Teyla moving from her cover into the room. He heard an odd shrill sound from Rodney's direction, ending when a sharp pop came from the control room.

He heard nothing for several seconds.

"Sh-Sheppard?" Rodney whispered. "Are … are you —"

"I'm fine," John said, shaking his head once more and opening his eyes. He saw bright spots everywhere, but that would fade. He hoped. He edged the door open slightly. "Teyla? Ronon?"

"We are fine," Teyla said, her voice sharp. "You both may enter."

John grabbed Rodney's arm and tugged, leading him stumbling into the control room. The creepy guy was sprawled on the floor, twitching, a metallic box the size of a pack of cigarettes in one … well, limb. Ronon had his stunner firmly aimed at the guy, even though he was still trying to shake the spots from his own vision. Teyla had her P-90 trained on the guy as well.

"What was the flash?" John asked.

"A medical device," Rodney said, indignant. "Like … a vision-triggered anesthesia. But I turned it off. I think."

John eyed the smoke wisping up from the metallic box. "Yeah, I'd say it's off."

The box suddenly moved as the guy shifted. Ronon firmed his grip and started to pull the trigger.

"Ronon, don't!" Rodney said urgently.

Ronon hesitated. "He's a monster," he told Rodney. "You heard what he said."

"I know," Rodney said, his mouth twisting with revulsion. "But … I can't. Please."

The guy started to sit up. "Um, Ronon —" John started.

"Just the stunner, please," Rodney said. Which meant, what, he could hear the different settings now?

Ronon sighed with irritation but switched his weapon over and fired. The guy fell back, limp this time.

"You really want this guy out there?" Ronon asked Rodney, skeptical. "You want to have to keep watching your back?"

"N-no, obviously not. But, it's just … I mean, even as a human, I'm Canadian, we don't …."

"We can always kill him later," Teyla said firmly. "But if we kill him now, we cannot undo that if we find we need him alive."

"Yes, that," Rodney said, far too relieved for John's liking.

The Furlings — or whatever their real name was — had started up some pacifistic Utopia. Rodney hadn't wanted to pick up his sidearm or P-90. He had said their brains didn't "work that way" about even fighting back. "Is this going to be a problem?" John asked. "You going to start hesitating when we're up against the Wraith?"

"What? No," Rodney said automatically. "Well. I don't — I don't think so. Most of my work is defensive anyway. Or — or remote. Abstract. I'll — we'll work something out. I just can't — not like this."

"Fine," John said, tabling the discussion. Rodney had always been crap at close combat, and they had a hell of a lot of other matters to settle. It could all wait.

"We can put it back in stasis," Rodney offered. "They stole our technology, built bastardized versions. It even said it had stasis. And we can add locks to make sure it can't break out." He fingered his blindfold. "So … can I take this off now?"

---

With the threat neutralized, standing amidst mysterious technology, Rodney flipped from serious liability to major asset. In five seconds, he identified a stasis chamber in a back corner of the control room, and within a minute he had mastered the controls.

Ronon was still blinking the spots from his vision, but even so, he was the best choice to cover, so Teyla and John grabbed the Discord guy to stuff him into the chamber. The crawling sensation against his palms made John have to fight down nausea, but he remembered far too late that he was apparently allergic as well. Once they had the door closed, Teyla took John back to the corridor to rinse his hands with water from her canteen as Ronon worked on a way to block the chamber closed.

The water didn't really help all that much, and John had to keep reminding himself not to rub his hands against his pants to scratch them. Looking around to distract himself, he noticed a station with numerous trailing wires in the other back corner, along with a strangely comfortable-looking toppled chair that seemed to be missing a leg. Several of the wires ended in what looked like needles. John wondered suddenly just how literal the guy had been when he talked about wiring Rodney into the communications array, and he decided he really didn't want to know right now.

The missing chair leg had been appropriated by Ronon, who was using it and a length of climbing line from Rodney's pack to make sure the stasis chamber wasn't going to be opened from the inside.

"What's with the loose chairs?" John asked idly, trying not to scratch. "And the swinging doors?"

"Artificial gravity," Rodney said absently, his attention on the stasis controls. "And electromagnets in the doorframes and door edges during flight, and the feet of the chairs as backup — keeps them in place mostly, doesn't require much effort to move, though disastrous for data storage systems vulnerable to magnetism. You didn't notice?"

John almost had to remind himself that Rodney was alien. It was surprisingly easy to forget when not looking directly at him — and even sometimes despite a clear view. He ignored the question. "You going to be able to get us out of here?"

"In a minute, in a minute. I can only do so many things at once. This is … there, done. I still need to disable the perception filter, and I've got my tablet synching with the computer system."

"I can help," Teyla suggested.

"Actually, you can't. I mean, normally you could, but this is almost completely sound-based. It would take weeks for you to learn the system." He ducked his head, embarrassed, when Teyla frowned, and offered a rare, "Sorry," as well.

"You can't get us out of here first?" John asked.

"Not unless you want to walk back to the gate. We need to be able to radio out and have someone in a jumper find us, remember?"

"Fine," John sighed. He was perfectly happy to walk clear of the field, but it would help to be able to find the site later. "Get on with it."

Rodney started to object but then, oddly, ducked his head again and started working without another word.

He worked quickly, at least. "The filter's disabled," he reported within a couple of minutes. "And … we have radio back."

John tested, but he didn't raise anyone over the radio. "So no one's around right now." They had protocols for sudden disappearances, but he didn't know what timeframe they were operating on. "How long have we been missing, anyway?"

Rodney checked his tablet. "About … seventy hours since we left Atlantis."

John ran the numbers in his head. "So since they don't have anyone on site right now, we should catch a check-in within three or four hours." Rodney didn't respond, still staring down at his tablet, so after a few more seconds John prompted, "McKay?"

"It's my fault," Rodney mumbled.

"What is?"

Rodney took a deep breath. "I wanted to know what brought it here. I noticed a graph — basically, a detector for my —" he waved a hand near his head "— communication. Activity since we've been here, but flat earlier. And when I search back, adjusting for our time scale …." He swallowed and handed the tablet over.

The display had a line graph with a sharp, solitary peak. Below that was a timeline. John squinted down at the date. "That's when you almost ascended."

"Did ascend," Rodney corrected, but his voice was hollow. "I bet it'll be exact down to the second if I calibrate it. And somehow I managed to send out a call so strong, this system picked it up. I led it here. At least this arm of this galaxy. And … and it set a trap, probably planted those artifacts, and it waited —"

"Better here than Earth," John pointed out.

Rodney jerked. "Oh, god. Jeannie. What do I tell her? Do I tell her? She wouldn't believe me, not at first, but — if the filter doesn't hold up, it'll kill her when she realizes what form she's trapped in. Or maybe I could change her back, too — but no, she has a kid, a family. She wouldn't —"

"One thing at a time," John said, raising his voice to override Rodney's panic. "How about you get us out of here first?"

Rodney closed his mouth, glancing away. He studied his hands for several seconds.

"I'll get you out," he said, strangely serious. "But then can you give me a head start?"

"For … what?"

"Before you tell anyone what I — about me. Look, this is just a cargo ship. No weapons. No kind of tactical threat. And no loss to you, since you wouldn't be able to work out how to operate it. But if you can give me even a few hours —"

Ronon scowled. "Like hell, McKay."

John put up his hands — which, crap, reminded him that they itched. "Hang on a second here. Somebody skipped a step. What the hell do you need a head start for?"

"I'm not going to be somebody's guinea pig," Rodney said, his tone a mixture of defiance over what sounded like genuine fear. "The only known example of my kind — I know what that means."

John needed a second to find his voice. "That's not going to happen."

Rodney crossed his arms. "You think I haven't worked for the SGC? Haven't seen what goes on there? A word in the right ear, and I'll just be an experiment tucked away in some cell in Area 51, or chained up in some secret Trust facility —"

"No," John growled, "you won't. You think Elizabeth would ever let that happen? Or Beckett? Or us?"

"You are always welcome to seek asylum among the Athosians, Dr. McKay," Teyla said. "We are not a major presence ourselves, but we would protect you, or hide you with trusted allies if necessary. And we are the linchpin of most of Atlantis's alliances — they would not risk that relationship. Nor, by extension, would Earth."

"Have to get past us anyway," Ronon agreed. "Not happening."

Rodney gave them all a sour smile. "Charming, I'm sure, but do you really think any of you have a chance if Earth decides it really wants something? And you," he added, narrowing his eyes at John, "wouldn't even have a choice."

"Just because I'm military doesn't mean I'm going to blindly obey a stupid order," John snapped. "Especially one that means hurting someone on my team!" He thought pretty much everyone in two galaxies knew that by now.

Rodney still looked unconvinced, and he opened his mouth to continue arguing, but he stuttered to a stop when Teyla put her hand on his arm. "We will keep you safe," she promised.

Rodney took a shaky breath and nodded. He fiddled with his tablet for a few seconds, and a door at the side of the control room hissed open.

They all made sure they had all their gear and then headed out. Rodney hesitated just before the door, but he did step into the airlock with them. Once the inner door was closed, a simple manual control released the outer door, and they emerged into the same room in the "ruins" that had started the whole thing.

Except more than half the room was missing. The panel with the mosaic — still creepy and disturbing — was there, and the console, and several columns with plaques of mysterious text, but the walls and ceiling connecting everything just weren't there. The mosaic had been affixed near the nose of what looked plainly like a spacecraft, though the surface was still that dark stone-like material they had always been able to see. If John squinted, he could almost see what changes the perception filter had made to disguise the ship.

John eyed the sky. "We've got, what, maybe another hour of daylight, looks like. We'll give Atlantis until morning to contact us."

"And then what, walk?" Rodney interrupted, irritation muffled as he used one of the columns to ease his way down to sit on the ground. He'd had a rough couple of days, and without the urgency of escape propelling him, he looked like he was fading fast.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," John said, digging an energy bar out of his vest and tossing it over. He remembered just how far and how fast they'd flown, and no, he didn't want to walk that whole way back either.

Rodney had to fight the wrapper. Once he finally had the bar open, he paused, studying his hands again.

"I hated human hands so much at first," he said. "They were just so wrong. And now — do you have any idea how annoying Atlantis is going to be? Everything's designed for ten short fingers — Ancient and Earth equipment. And typing — I'll have to completely relearn how to type."

John assigned first watch to Teyla with a glance and picked his own patch of floor to sit on. "You'll figure it out." This stone was cool to the touch, and that felt great against his palms for about ten seconds. Then he caught himself starting to use the rough surface to scratch his hands against. He might have to sit on them at this rate.

"So what do the signs say?" Ronon asked.

"Beats me," Rodney mumbled around a mouthful.

"If you still don't trust us —" John started.

"No, seriously, I have no idea. It's … nobody really uses script." Teyla raised her eyebrows at the tense but made no comment. Rodney continued, oblivious, "It's like — how many people speak Klingon? In real life, I mean. Or Esperanto. It's a novelty. A few people are experts at it, but most people wouldn't know where to start."

John suddenly had an image of some unknown race, thousands or millions of years in the future, trying to reconstruct human society from some geeky college kid's scribblings in a made-up language. No wonder no one had been able to figure out much of anything about these Furlings.

Rodney finished his energy bar in — comparative — silence, but John needed something to distract himself from the itching. "So is Jeannie actually like you?"

After a wary glance over at the airlock door, Rodney said, "Yes."

"So how does she have a kid?"

Rodney shrugged. "She's human. Completely, I mean. So was I. The modifier encodes the reversion data in some otherwise useless structure — probably a stretch of redundant genetic code, for human cells — but the change is otherwise complete, down to the genetic level. Or equivalent."

"Was she your sister before?" Teyla asked.

"No. Not the way you're thinking, I mean. The genetics don't work the same way. We just happened to be near the same stash of escape pods when the evacuation call went out." Rodney looked like he was going to fall into a thoughtful silence, but then he huffed with amusement. "Our human forms actually are siblings, though. Or were. I used samples from a brother-sister pair, and the modifier extrapolated that relationship for us."

"You gonna turn back?" Ronon asked.

"No," Rodney said immediately.

"Why not?" John asked. He had assumed Rodney would want to, and if the guy was so worried about being experimented on ….

Rodney shuddered. "I don't even know if I could. And get the same form, I mean. It's possible. There might be enough parts for a working modifier in there —" he gestured at the ship "— and if I used one of Beckett's samples, the way we did with the ascension machine, it might work. But …."

He closed his eyes, his expression revolted as he searched for words, and then looked directly at John.

"Imagine you suddenly had wings or — I don't know, legs that could run a hundred miles an hour or something. Only they weren't tacked on, they were yours, and you'd lost them for years, and you finally had them back. Would you cut them off just to go back to being crippled and — and deformed?"

John opened his mouth but then closed it again. He had nothing.

Rodney closed his eyes again and curled his hands into fists. "I was deaf. I was almost completely deaf and almost completely mute and I hated it. And my hands and feet were wrong and I had bizarre new appendages and no one had any idea anything was wrong and I —" he drew a shaky breath "— I hated it so much. I had to wipe Jeannie's memory to keep her from disintegrating and I had to take the chance I could wipe my own memory, which shouldn't even have been possible, just to keep from clawing my ears and throat out with alien hands and —"

Rodney clamped his mouth shut and drew a long, careful breath. He opened his hands, slowly and deliberately, and opened his eyes again, though this time he didn't look at John. "We had to hide, but we didn't know what it would mean, and it nearly killed both of us. I can't do that again. It's bad enough that I'm alone — we haven't developed to be alone, biologically, but at least I'm not — not mutated anymore." With a short, humorless laugh, he added, "I'm not saying my body feels right, exactly. It feels very, very strange and still kind of alien. But I'll be able to adjust to this a hell of a lot better than I was ever able to cope with being forced into a human body."

That was pretty much a conversation-killer.

---

After a short while, Rodney curled up on his side, that one deliberate action the only thing separating his immediate falling asleep from straight-up passing out from exhaustion. Ronon stretched out too, while Teyla started going through all the packs. She turned up a tube of antihistamine cream, which felt wonderful on John's hands and wrists. It was going to get on everything, and he didn't care.

He dozed for a couple of hours, a strange jumble of mealworms and cheetahs filling his dreams, and then took second watch. Whatever moon or moons this planet had were out of sight behind the steep slope and forest, and the makeshift campsite was very dark.

John didn't really want to think about Rodney's question too hard. Wings or super-fast legs were more than a little ridiculous, but John knew for a fact that he would have real trouble adjusting if this was all the vision he had, ever. It was hard enough convincing himself not to turn on a light, just as proof he didn't actually need that his normal vision was still his.

He was all too happy to be startled by the check-in from Atlantis halfway through his shift. "Sheppard here," he answered. "Any chance we could get a lift? Our ride ditched us."

After only a brief pause, Elizabeth spoke. "Colonel. It's good to hear your voice. What happened out there?"

"We got trapped inside a cloaked field," John said. The details could wait. "Took a while to disable it and break out. We just need a ride back. And have Beckett on standby — there was a … minor incident involving an alien device."

"Is anyone hurt?" Elizabeth asked, worry clear.

"Nothing major. If you can meet us in the jumper bay or the infirmary, I'll fill you in then." He really didn't want to get into the details over the radio, and she would need to know the truth about McKay before the rumor mill really got going.

"Will do," Elizabeth said after just enough of a pause to convey she knew something was up. "We'll have a jumper out to the original site in … twenty minutes."

John thanked her and signed off. Then he turned on a flashlight, not minding the excuse at all, and woke everyone up. Ronon woke quickly, but Teyla was a little short-tempered after sleeping for only a couple of hours, and Rodney was his usual grumpy-bear self.

Rodney soon fell quiet, though, looking hollow and fragile, his head cocked slightly as if he was trying to hear something that just wasn't there. John steered him into muttering about the lack of coffee, because a cranky McKay was a hell of a lot easier to deal with than one dealing with some kind of existential crisis.

"So why change?" Ronon asked as they collected what little gear they'd scattered.

Once Rodney realized Ronon was randomly continuing their earlier conversation, he said, "We had to hide. And we wound up on Earth, which wasn't exactly one of the known worlds. We couldn't rely on heavy clothes and a rapidly depleting perception filter forever. We probably would have been shot if anyone had really gotten a good look at the two of us in, what, about 1980. Even today, people would …." He went still, regarding his hands again for several seconds. "I can't go back. I can't ever go back."

"Sure you can," John said. "We'll get you a Spock headband. Or a Jayne hat." John would actually pay good money to see that. Or maybe even sell tickets himself.

"That would hardly make my hands less problematic, Sheppard."

"No, guess not. But we could, well, say they're prosthetics, maybe. Experimental."

Rodney started to say something scornful but then closed his mouth again.

"Maybe paint them with some of that metallic paint," John added. "Make them look more fake. It could work."

"Maybe," Rodney said quietly.

"That wasn't what I meant, though," Ronon said. "Why have a machine that changes you, if it's that bad?"

Rodney made a soft sound that might have been amusement. "Social sciences. Anthropology, or — or xenosociology or something. Studying other cultures from the inside. But that would be professionals, or students who were much taller than me, let alone Jeannie. And besides, they would have been using it for a short period, and they would have known they could change back. They weren't trapped."

"Why would height matter?" Teyla asked.

"Oh, that — it has to do with maturity. The same way we — humans, I mean — use age. Not that that's a particularly consistent measurement of maturity." He made a face. "Ugh, trying to fit two profoundly different worldviews in my head at once is giving me a headache."

"So you were too short?" John asked, feigning more confusion than he really felt. Because messing with McKay was, strangely enough, still just as much fun as it always had been.

Rodney rolled his eyes. "In your terms, I was an early adolescent. Jeannie was probably at about grade three or four. She had it even worse than I did — the modifier turned out not to be very good at translating our maturity levels to the human system, and she was the size of a preschooler, so she wound up with a preschooler's body — including the brain. It couldn't support her actual level of development. At least I was able to keep my mind. And they still thought —" He scowled briefly. "Never mind. The experience was damaging and traumatic because we were far too 'young' and we had to modify ourselves permanently. When used as intended, I'm sure the modifier was much less damaging."

John thought it actually sounded like a hell of an espionage tool. The genocidal nutjob had said the thing didn't work on humans, but John wondered if there was any way to change that. McKay was scarily good at adapting technology.

Then again, the prospect of being turned into, say, a Wraith wasn't really all that appealing. Even temporarily.

"Huh," Rodney said. "I did learn things, in a way. Like human music — you only have a tiny little band of sound you work in, but the variety — I never would have heard that, like this. I never would have known just how much you can do with so little. Or wordplay — we don't have puns, for example. Well, a couple, actually, but in general, if you can just assign a new sound combination for any concept you can come up with, you don't really get the conditions that allow most puns to develop."

"Wait a second," John said. "You're admitting the value of a social science? What have you done with the real Rodney McKay?"

"Very funny," Rodney sniffed. "I never said the entire field was completely worthless."

That was a lie, of course. John smirked at him.

Rodney fingered the straps of his pack nervously. "We have to climb back up that slope, don't we? In the pitch-dark, no less. And, in my case, barefoot."

"Nope," John said, heading off at least that rant. "I have an idea." He declined to share, which at least changed the subject of Rodney's complaints.

"Here," Ronon said suddenly, holding his coat out to Rodney.

"Why?" Rodney responded, suspicious. He made no move to take the coat.

"So people don't stare," Ronon said.

John grinned. "Your turn to play Sith Lord."

"Oh." Rodney stared a few seconds longer, clearly surprised, before taking the coat. "Well. Thank you." He then grumbled about the combination of coat and field pack, but John left them to sort that out because the jumper was finally approaching. Its spotlights wandered briefly before picking out the columns of the fake installation.

John directed Miller to override the inertial dampeners and bring the jumper right down to the base of the slope. With most of the exterior walls missing, there was actually just barely room to set the jumper down right at the bottom of the slope. The jumper only fit sideways, at about a thirty degree angle, with one upper corner just inches from a stone column. Loose as the surface of the slope looked, it held for the time being. John wouldn't have parked a jumper this way for any length of time at all, but for the couple of minutes it would take them to board, it would be fine.

Once Miller had the jumper in position, he lowered the back hatch. The team carefully climbed aboard, John and Ronon both giving Rodney a hand.

Miller closed up the jumper again, got them into the air, and slowly rolled the jumper back to zero bank before restoring the inertial dampeners. He kept them hovering there as Sgt. Katombe came back to check on them. "Everything all right, sir?" He frowned at Rodney, who was huddled deep in Ronon's coat and had his head down. He added slowly, "I heard there might be pie in the mess today."

John bit back a sigh. The man was only doing his job. "Maybe they'll have peach this time," he replied, confirming that they weren't smuggling some impostor into Atlantis under duress.

Rodney snorted. "When was the last time you saw an actual peach in this galaxy?"

Katombe shook his head, amused, and returned to his seat. They were soon moving.

"Zelenka will be insufferable," Rodney muttered. "But at least I can make him do all my paperwork while I'm relearning how to type."

"Dare to dream," John said drily. "But look — that guy said something about you missing the Music or the Song. We've got to have about ten thousand songs — Earth songs, I mean — on the server. Can you just rig up an iPod or something?"

Rodney snorted bitterly. "Not even close. It would be like trying to recreate a symphony by tapping a pencil on the table."

"What about playing an instrument, then? I've got a guitar, and if you used to play piano, I'm sure someone's got a keyboard somewhere. Or we could have one shipped in."

"I —" Rodney looked startled and then bewildered. "Huh. I don't think I ever actually did play piano. I just … I knew I didn't have music anymore, and I knew my hands were wrong, and I knew those things were related. And thanks to the influence of the perception filter, my brain must just have filled in an explanation that fit." He considered that for a short while longer and then shook himself. "It doesn't matter. The sort of music you're thinking of really isn't relevant."

Teyla nodded slightly to John and then addressed Rodney. "Since you have said your kind did not develop to be alone, we want to be sure that you are not. So you and I will practice connecting to determine if we can provide a similar type of communication."

"Oh, joy, more meditation," Rodney muttered, his obvious gratitude making the sarcasm less than effective.

"And then, if we are successful, John and Ronon can try as well," Teyla added, because she was evil. She and Rodney both smirked at John's and Ronon's groans.

Then they were passing through the gate, trading the dark of midnight for the golden glow of a late Atlantis afternoon.

For a few seconds, John was profoundly relieved to be home, but as the rear hatch opened and he spotted both Elizabeth and Carson, he realized that they still had hours of explanations and discussion ahead of them. He stifled a sigh.

John signaled Miller and Katombe to exit first. They obeyed, lingering just outside the jumper as guards, as Elizabeth paused at the foot of the jumper's ramp and Carson bustled aboard.

His eyes went to Rodney immediately. "Why am I not surprised it's you? What have you gotten yourself into now, lad?"

"It's not my fault," Rodney said automatically. He was watching Carson nervously, but even though the doctor looked exasperated and maybe a little worried, he showed no signs of disgust or alarm.

"For certain values of fault," John said, just to make Rodney roll his eyes. "He probably just needs a couple of meals and a good night's sleep, Doc, but we need you to make sure that's all. We have to get back once McKay's clear and after we've debriefed — we've got some salvage to take care of." Including a spaceship — just a cargo ship, and probably Rodney's by right, but still. A spaceship. How cool was that?

And it would be good for the team to work together without the pressure of someone trying to kill them. McKay was going to have to figure out how to manage Atlantis in his new form, but the team was going to need a little work, too. McKay had long since earned his place, but if he planned to keep this new body, they all needed an adjustment period.

Rodney suddenly sat up straight. "Is … is that …?"

John glanced at the others, but they looked equally confused. "Is what?"

Rodney waved him quiet with a short gesture, closing his eyes. "Listen." But not even five seconds later, he continued, "Ronon, that thing you were saying, the Greatsingers and the halls —"

"Yeah?"

"It's just — it's there." He was starting to smile, the weight he'd carried ever since he woke up — hell, ever since he'd realized what he really was — falling away. "It's not the Song, but it's … singing."

John had always felt a little different when he was in Atlantis, as if there was something extra just beyond the limits of his perception. Almost a humming. Was that what Rodney was hearing? Was it more than that?

And if Teyla could connect with Rodney, if Ronon and John could learn how … would they hear it, too?

Rodney's smile grew, his entire face brightening with joy and utter relief. "She sings. Atlantis sings."

Notes:

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