Hell, Rising From a Thousand Thrones

by Mad_Maudlin

Summary:

That is not dead which can eternal lie.

Notes:

A/N: Endless thanks to marginaliana for beta-reading this ride. This is an AU that technically diverges after "Grace Under Pressure," though I'm also assuming that "Critical Mass" and some of the events of SG-1's "Heroes" did not happen, while other episodes are...different. The title is a quote from Edgar Alan Poe's "The City By the Sea;" there is also a quote from T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in here, woefully out of context. All the stuff that's hard to say comes courtesy of the R'lyehian word list at CthulhuWiki. All the other hard stuff came from Wikipedia. Finally, thanks to La Chatte Noir, whose Shadow over Atlantis series provided the initial inspiration for this fic, though as you'll see I've gone a very different direction with it.

It is a perennial weakness of humans not to think in three full dimensions. Even pilots are prone to those blind spots; even sailors are liable to take for granted the deck beneath their feet. It is a legacy of evolution that the children of apes rarely look higher than they can climb, except perhaps to gaze at the movable stars. And more rarely still does it occur to them to ever look down.

It was, in hindsight, foolish to look for lost Atlantis and then be surprised to find her underwater. Within their fragile shield they struggled to survive, but when the city rose they began to think in two dimensions again, to concern themselves with the gates and jumpers and attacks from above. They never thought twice about what else might've been on the ocean floor with them for those strange aeons. What else besides the water the shield was keeping out.

-\--\--\-

John dreamed of the ocean and woke up in the air. Hammocks were not kind to restless sleepers, and it took him more than a few moments to extract himself from his tangled blanket without just flopping out onto the gently sloping floor. The sky was barely lightened, and none of the other men in the barracks were awake yet; their own hammocks hung still and silent in the stuffy indoor air. Good. He slipped between the cocooned ranks and out of the room to put on his shoes, then carefully mounted the stairs to the tower's roof.

It was a good tower, one of the few really tall ones that was also particularly wide; it had a two-tiered top, kind of like the Sears Tower, only the lower tier was easily the size of a football field all by itself. John stretched and started jogging, building himself up to a run lap by lap as he thought with vague nostalgia of the wide corridors and endless galleries below. He kept his eyes on the ground ahead and ran until his legs ached and his lungs burned and he was drenched in good warm human sweat. He ran even though—and ran because—there wasn't really anywhere to go.

Fifteen feet below the sheer edge of the roof, the ocean rippled over balconies to lap at the ancient walls.

-\--\--\-

Perhaps the storm should have been their first warning, but neither Kate nor Carson had ever spoken of the rise in sleep disturbances and headaches in the days before and after, not until it was too late. There was doctor-patient confidentiality to consider. And anyway, all eyes were still skyward, concerned with Wraith and wind and waves.

When they did get to the outer piers to assess the structural damage, Rodney made a note to have an anthropologist examine the strange carvings and statuettes they found in pools of seawater—driftwood, coral, heavy yellow gold, a fortune in treasure for anyone who could bear to look at them for more than a few minutes. "Send all creepy stuff to soft science," was the actual text of the note, but by the time the nanovirus was neutralized, he had forgotten all about it, and the box ended up on a shelf in someone else's lab, perhaps forever.

-\--\--\-

After breakfast, John crossed the plank bridge to the medical unit. They'd put it in the highest tower after the central spire, as far above water as they could get, despite the resulting hours of schlepping food and water and laundry up and down the tilting stairs. Carson was taking his tea with one eye on the calm waters, now ashy gray under the clouds. "Morning, Doc."

"Colonel." Carson rubbed at his eyes and managed a weak smile. "No change, I'm afraid."

"Didn't expect one." He studied the dark rings until Carson's eyes. "Rough night?

"Is there any other?" Carson said, then winced. "Sorry. Yes. It was…yes."

"You don't have to apologize."

Carson gave John a piercing look in return. "And you? Is it getting any worse?"

He forced a weak smile. "Still here, right?"

"Aye." Carson looked back out on the water and the tops of Atlantean towers that broke its surface. "Still here."

John walked past the empty beds and one or two people getting over pneumonia to their improvised isolation room, a windowless space hung with uneven curtains that emphasized the angle of the floor. He'd kind of hoped that Elizabeth would be asleep, because those visits were always easier, but he'd had less and less luck recently. Maybe she no longer needed to sleep.

"Jooo-ooohn," she whispered even before he pushed the curtains aside. "Where were you, John?"

"Sorry," he said as he dropped onto the stool at her bedside. "I had to go pick up supplies on the mainland yesterday."

She laughed, harsh and dry, and moved under her damp sheets. "Last night, John," she said. "Where did you go? What deep houses did you visit?"

It was easier when she was asleep. It was easier when he could talk and create answers from the Elizabeth in his head, the one who still looked and acted like a normal human being. The old Elizabeth they'd plucked from the stasis chamber had been thoroughly crazy, but of course no one was supposed to stay in stasis for ten thousand years, so they hadn't paid attention when her ramblings went from time travel and ZPMs to eyes in the water. The stars are wrong, Old Elizabeth had told them. How much longer must he dream in the deeps? He waits and waits, but the stars have all gone wrong.

She'd been crazy, of course. But even at her fantastic age, she'd been human. Not this Elizabeth. Not anymore.

"The Athosians are doing okay," he said, determined to ignore how she squirmed against her restraints, how water from the sheets dripped onto the floor. "The tuttle is coming in, and the tava should be ready to harvest in a couple weeks. Zelenka fixed the generator thing, the one they asked about last week. Sounds like he and Lorne are both a little sweet on Marta, you know, the one with the—"

With a keening sound, Elizabeth jackknifed her whole body, rattling the bed frame and nearly tearing out her IV lines. "Please," she said, sounding almost normal for a moment. "Please, John, let me go. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

He very deliberately spread his hands and let them rest palm-down on his thighs. "Elizabeth, we talked about this. You gave me an order."

"Pleeeaaase," she asked. "I'm dying. I can feel it. Let me go before I die."

"You're not dying, Elizabeth."

Her eyes rolled and bulged. "Can't you hear it, John?" she whispered. "The singing, the calling…I know you can hear it. I know how deep you swim." She tossed her head and grinned angelically, horribly, as he fought the urge to curl his hands into fists. "He's calling us home, John. Why won't you let me go?"

"Colonel!"

He was off the stool with the call, maybe even before it. Carson and a nurse were leaning against the window with wide eyes, hands splayed against the glass. It was a few moments before John realized what they were watching for, but when he saw it he was briefly speechless, too.

An F-302 skimmed high against the bellies of the clouds.

-\--\--\-

Ford, at least, should have been adequate warning. They should have believed him. He'd been in the water, after all, and his eye—

They should have listened.

But with so much enzyme in his veins, he gave them excuses not to listen. Twitching, squirming, lashing out at shadows. "I heard it," he said, trying to warn them. "I still hear it. It's down there, in the dark, and it's waiting for us. If we don't do something soon, we won't have to worry about Wraith." And when they tried to tell him that there was nothing under Atlantis to fear, his eyes went narrow, and he looked on them like something less than human.

They should have listened.

Later, when he had captured John's team, he'd sworn that the enzyme was medicinal while he forced it into Rodney's veins, Teyla's, Ronon's. "I can smell it on you," Ford had said, one white eye rolling and bulging like an independent thing, flaring pearly like a cat's whenever the light hit the triangular pupil just right. "It's in the city now. But you don't have to worry, Major, 'cause I'm gonna fix it. I'm gonna burn it off of you with fire and air and then we'll take Atlantis back, and the first thing we do is drop a nuke straight down those bent black halls. Once we got enough enzyme, I'm gonna save you all."

Ford was crazy, of course. Ford was delusional. Ford died on a burning Hive ship so John didn't have to, and reminded him with his last words that the city had to be purged.

They should have listened.

-\--\--\-

The top of the central spire still gaped open to the air, but it was the only place the George Hammond could get a transporter lock. "Must be something in the water," John said, but nobody laughed.

Instead Cadman and Stackhouse helped them maneuver the rubber raft off the end of the balcony, and they held it steady while he and Carson climbed in. "You don't have to go alone, sir," Stackhouse said, passing the stubby plastic paddles over the railing.

"Or at all," Cadman added. "Sir."

John settled himself in the raft and tried not to flinch at the feeling of seawater seeping through his pants. "What are they gonna do, ferry people down in the 302s?" he asked. "Maybe they'll bring some kind of booster, let 'em get a lock on one of the other towers."

Cadman fidgeted with the frayed edge of her sleeve for a brief moment while Stackhouse passed over the tool kit. "Sir, if you don't come back…"

John used the oar to push off. "We're coming back, Lieutenant. Miller's in charge until then. Regular radio contact."

"Yes, sir," she said with a little frown, and gave a little wave that Carson did not return.

There was something filmy on the surface of the water, that was obvious; John wanted to ask if it was pollutants from inside the city, or maybe some kind of algae bloom encouraged by relative warmth of the water here, but Carson was kneeling with his eyes screwed shut like he might be sick if he actually tried to speak. So they rowed together, navigating around the other towers, the spires, the rooftops just beneath the surface that could've shredded their little raft if they ran aground. (Or would it be a-building?) The sky above was a uniform gray, matching the water below, and if there were lights below the surface John could tell himself they were chemical leaks, bioluminescent algae, exotic fish. Natural causes.

It took almost forty-five minutes to row around to a convenient balcony on the side of the spire. John clambered out, carefully, and helped Carson over the rail with the tool kit, and together they hauled the raft up out of the water and propped it against the wall, well away from the water's edge. Not that there were any tides or waves to snatch at it.

John was already opening the tool kit when Carson prodded the door controls, and surprisingly the doors slid open with only the slightest grinding noise. "Must be some residual power in the control crystals," John said.

"Aye," Carson said uneasily. "Residual power."

John pounded wedges into the place to jam the doors open, just in case, and then handed Carson the extra flashlight from the tool kit. The stairs began about fifty yards from the balcony doors, and seemed even more tilted than the ones John had grown used to climbing in the other towers. Going down, they vanished almost immediately into brackish water that smelled faintly of fish; dim red lights rippled up from some lower level to throw moving patterns on the walls.

"Residual power," John said again, then shouldered the tool kit as he and Carson headed up.

-\--\--\-

Old Elizabeth may have been stasis-crazy. Ford may have been addled by enzyme. But those weren't the only warnings they missed. They had watched the recording that explained why the Ancients had evacuated, but somehow never thought to ask why those Ancients chose to leave a city with a ten-thousand-year shield. A city with gardens and greenhouses enough to feed millions. A city that should have been safe in the sea.

They didn't ask why Carson's gene therapy worked so well, nearly 100% effective and so safe that almost everyone volunteered to take it.

They didn't ask why, when the siege was lifted, the people who spent two months in Colorado and one in deep space dreamed nightly of the ocean and inhuman voices raised in song.

They didn't ask why John wasn't affected by the retrovirus that turned Elia into a monster. Why his wounds healed so quickly and without scars.

Then Rodney's jumper crashed into the Lantean ocean. John and Radek spent hours searching in a modified jumper, wiring a naqadah generator into the back when the shield depleted their power cells too quickly on the first try. They combed the ocean floor with a magnetic grapple and a modified sensor and a vague idea of where he should've gone down, coupled with the knowledge of how little time Rodney had to survive at that depth, in the pressure and cold.

"No life signs," Radek said when they finally zeroed in on the jumper's location, over two thousand feet down, on a ledge overlooking the endless black of the abyssal plain.

"You sure it's not just the shield messing with us?" John asked dully.

"No, I mean no life signs at all," Radek said. "No fish, no cephalopods…the only things large enough to register near the jumper are some deep-water corals."

John tightened his fists on the jumper controls. "So maybe the sensors are screwed up. Failing to catch the larger life signs."

"Colonel," Radek said softly, "the jumper is without power. Both compartments are completely flooded."

John still insisted on recovering the bodies. They extended the shield and walked across the squelching mud to the other jumper's rear hatch, and John groped for some method of manual release while Radek tried to tap its computer from without. C'mon, McKay, he thought. Pull one more miracle out of your ass. Don't let us down now.

Something thumped against the hatch from the inside. Radek was so started he dropped his stylus into the mud. "Life signs?" John demanded.

"None," Radek said. "No power."

"Sheppard to McKay," John barked into his radio.

"Colonel, there is no power—"

John went back to their jumper for a cutting torch. He had just hooked up the fuel tank, and was standing directly beneath the hatch, when it suddenly fell open. Icy seawater cascaded over him, stinging his eyes, while a powerful smell like fish filled their little bubble of air. He staggered back, coughing and choking, while the hatch sank into the mud. The first sound to be audible over the rush of water was a gurgling laugh, and then Radek's whimper as he pointed a flashlight into the depths of the jumper. John looked, and stared, as his brain refused to recognize the pallid thing in the shadows—a laughing, moving thing that didn't give off a life sign as it climbed to its ungainly feet—a slimy thing that wore a familiar uniform and spoke his name in a phlegmy whine. "Sheppard. Sheppard. Look at me, Sheppard."

That was when they started asking questions.

-\--\--\-

There was a puddle on the floor of the gate room, two inches deep against the stairs and coated with scum, but the water wasn't salty and John decided they'd just have to deal with it. He and Carson cleared the weathered debris from the floor as best they could and hit the radio. "Hammond, this is Atlantis. Ready when you are."

"Beaming now, Atlantis.

Five shapes flared and blossomed on the dirty deck, surrounded by backpacks and boxes. They were all wearing hazardous environment suits with fully self-contained respiration units, but the faceplates were clear enough for John to see them all flinch at him and Carson standing by. He knew why, even if he didn't look in the mirror much these days; they might not be as far gone as Elizabeth, but all the same, they were getting what the Athosians politely called the Atlantis Look.

"Welcome to Atlantis," John said, and held out a hand, mostly to show that it wasn't yet webbed. "I'm Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard, this is Dr. Beckett. Sorry the place is a mess, we've just been so busy lately…."

"Thanks for letting us in," one of the figures said, shaking with him through her heavy gloves. "Honestly, we weren't expecting to find any survivors."

He smiled, thinly. "We're tougher than we look."

"I'm Colonel Samantha Carter, commander of the Hammond," she continued. "These are the members of SG-1; the SGC sent them here on an information-gathering mission. Lieutenant Colonel Mitchell, Major Dr. Frasier, Dr. Jackson—I'm sure you met before the expedition left—and Teal'c."

"Dr. Frasier, it's been a long time," Carson said warmly. "I wish the circumstances were different."

The smallest of the HEV suits took a step forward. "Believe me, so do I."

"Wanna take this up to the briefing room, Colonel?" John asked. "We can fill you in on what we've learned since the IOA tried to kill us all."

That caused another round of flinching even though John had kept his tone mild. "Colonel Caldwell wasn't acting on the IOA's orders, Colonel Sheppard." Carter said. "He was possessed by a Goa'uld and working with an organization called the Trust. The attack here was their work; he originally reported back to us that Atlantis had initiated hostilities."

Carson's eyebrows rose. "When did you figure out the truth?"

"Not soon enough, unfortunately," Mitchell said darkly.

"Is that why it took you three years to come see if we're still alive?" John asked.

There was an awkward silence, before Carter said, "I can never apologize for what happened here, Colonel, but you know as well as I do that we can only move as fast as the IOA allows. We've been a bit busy back in the Milky Way ourselves, and we were not optimistic about survivors. Now, you said something about a briefing room?"

John turned away, splashing his way to the stairs without waiting to see if they followed.

-\--\--\-

When they brought what was left of Rodney to the city they were all slapped into quarantine, and by the time John got out he expected some kind of answers. Instead he found Carson and Elizabeth observing the isolation room and the huge Plexiglass tank of water they'd assembled inside.

"So what is it?" John asked.

Carson sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Genetically speaking, Colonel, that is Rodney McKay—for the most part."

"You said a retrovirus did this?" Elizabeth asked.

"I said it was like a retrovirus." Carson brought up some beautiful and incomprehensible diagrams on a laptop. "Something has made wholesale changes in Rodney's DNA that affect nearly every bone, muscle and organ in his body—is continuing to make changes, from what we can tell. But there isn't any evidence of a retrovirus in his bloodwork—not now and not in the last samples we took before the accident. Nor any sign that the colonel or Radek were exposed to anything unusual."

"So he just happened to grow gills while he was trapped down there," John said.

Carson just shook his head. Elizabeth, scratching idly at one arm, stared at the figure idly backstroking through the tank. "Can you do anything to reverse this?" she asked. "Engineer a counter-virus, maybe?"

"Aye, because that worked so well with Elia," Carson said gloomily. "I'm sorry, Elizabeth, but without knowing more about the foreign elements being inserted into his DNA there's damn little I can do to remove them, and even then I can't make any guarantees."

"So we learn more," John said. "I'll take the shielded jumper back down and we'll get some samples. Search the area around the crash site. There's got to be something down there that explains this."

Elizabeth slowly nodded, but said, "Not you, John. I don't want to risk the entire senior staff being compromised by this…whatever it is. Send another pilot and a marine biology team and make certain they use the highest-level quarantine protocols." She scratched her arm more fiercely than before.

While John relayed the orders, Carson asked Elizabeth, "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"No, no," she said. "I've already talked to Dr. Cole about it. Just a rash."

"If you're sure…"

"Captain Johanson and Dr. Angell are taking the jumper down," John informed them. "I told them we'd brief them in fifteen. But I got one more question first."

"That being?" Elizabeth asked.

John looked down on the figure in the dim water. "Anybody tried asking McKay what happened?"

-\--\--\-

"The reaction, whatever it is, seems to be catalyzed or accelerated by exposure to salt water," Carson said once they'd settled in the briefing room and forced open the doors for light. "It's an inconsistent connection, but the closest thing to causation we've yet to find. The initial symptoms are vivid, recurring dreams, followed by certain changes in bone structure and fat distribution, particularly in the head and neck region. In some cases hair loss or a skin condition similar to plaque psoriasis appears in the first stage, but otherwise it's largely benign. Some of us have carried on in this stage for years without any further progression."

SG-1 passed around the few photographs they had, and the sketches made by a couple of the more talented medical staff. "In the last report you filed, you indicated the condition progressed fairly rapidly once the patient entered a delusional state," Frasier commented.

Carson nodded. "There's actually a sharp drop in core body temperature that comes before the…psychological symptoms, but it's true that the second stage takes weeks to days—in a few extreme cases, mere hours. There's no particular sequence to the subsequent changes that I've been able to determine, but after a certain point it becomes difficult to keep the patient hydrated—except for the ganoid scales on the back and arms, their skin is thin and quite permeable. We simply haven't got the means to detain a large number of combative amphibians, so when the time comes we typically allow them to…take to the water."

Carter straightened in her seat. "You mean you release them into the wild?"

"Would you rather we build a giant aquarium?" John asked. "They're strong as a Wraith and as smart as they ever were. We work hard enough just staying alive out here; I'm not gonna waste resources keeping prisoners."

Mitchell cleared his throat. "I hate to put it this way, Sheppard, but why don't you just eliminate the threat?"

John's hands bunched into fists, but Carson answered for him. "I haven't yet given up hope on determining a cause or a cure, Colonel Mitchell. These people were our friends, our neighbors, our co-workers, once, and if you'd read Dr. Heightmeyer's report you'd know that whatever their mental state, much of their old identity persists. Killing them means we're giving up hope of bringing them back."

"We've got a suicide rate of about one in six as it is," John added, "and Dr. Weir and I have given standing orders that we're not allowed to leave the surface, but otherwise there isn't much point. It's not like they're going real far, anyway."

"You know where they're going?" Jackson asked warily.

Carson laid out a hand-drawn map on the table. "Almost all of the ones who've taken to water still have their subcutaneous transmitters. We can't track them very well in the depths, obviously, but we've picked up intermittent readings from the abyssal plain structure that suggest some of them congregate there, at least part-time. A few others we've spotted on the shelf, near the barrier islands."

"And the rest?"

"Downstairs," John said, and when he met blank looks he clarified. "They're still in Atlantis."

-\--\--\-

They put on the cameras and the microphones and the sensors. John entered the isolation room and said, "Rodney."

The thing in the tank didn't move at first, and John found himself irrationally hoping that it couldn't hear him, wouldn't react. Or maybe it was dead, like the sensors seemed to think. But then the lidless eyes turned to look at him, and the mouth curled into a grin even while it gulped water through its gills. In a motion that made it seem weightless, it flipped its body and rose smoothly to the surface. "Sheppard," it said. "Been waiting for you to come back."

It still looked like Rodney. Kind of. John couldn't decide if he resented that or not. "Been a bit busy since we got back to the city," John said, and tried to sit on a stool without twisting his containment suit around. "How're you feeling?"

It giggled again, a thin, almost squealing sound, and flopped back on its back. "Feeling. Feeee-ling. That's not what you really want to ask, Sheppard."

"I want to know what happened in the jumper," he said.

It suddenly flipped again and pressed close to the side of the tank, making wet noises where its pale, flabby body slid against the glass. John didn't look away; John had evacuated battlefield casualties and never looked away. "You want to know what happened to me," it said. "You want to know if I'm still human, and if I'm still Rodney McKay, and if you can change me back." It punctuated each point with a dramatic slap of its paw. "And those are the wrong questions."

"So what are the right ones?" John asked it.

That grin again, so horribly wide. "Who else, and how soon?" it asked, and then sank beneath the water once again.

-\--\--\-

"We think this may have happened on Earth," Jackson said, and that changed everything.

"You mean it spread?" Carson asked incredulously. "But we followed quarantine procedures—"

Carter held up her hand. "What Daniel means is that we've found evidence of an isolated outbreak, a long time ago, very similar to this."

"Two outbreaks, actually," Jackson corrected.

"You think," Mitchell added.

"Let the man talk," John said, and Mitchell backed down.

Jackson took a deep breath that rattled the little microphone in his suit. "It turns out that in 1928 the Treasury Department raided a small town in eastern Massachusetts called Innsmouth. Officially they were breaking up a very profitable bootlegging ring, but they ended up arresting basically the entire population, and afterwards all the records were sealed. It turns out that the 'bootleggers' were members of a cult who claimed to worship an avatar of the Phoenician fish god Dagon, which is actually how the information came to us—someone suspected it might've been Goa'uld-related."

"Most of the adult cultists showed the same first-stage physical symptoms as members of the Atlantis expedition," Frasier said. "A few bodies were recovered that showed signs of ongoing second-stage transformations as well—autopsies conducted at Miskatonic Univeristy found the same changes in blood chemistry, the altered eye anatomy, the retracted genitalia and the fat pockets in the skull—we think that allows the jawbone to transmit low-frequency sound waves to the inner ear."

"We had the same conclusion," Carson said, still dull with surprise. "Dolphins have a similar adaptation."

What John wanted to know was, "How is that possible?"

"The cult members claimed," Jackson said slowly, "that they learned about Dagon from an amphibious humanoid species they called the 'Deep Ones.' These Deep Ones supposedly brought the town gold artifacts and particularly rich fishing in exchange for human sacrifices." He paused. "Cult members also claimed to have interbred with Deep Ones, which is how they explained their physical states."

Carson shook his head. "There's no indication that the altered patients would still be interfertile with normal humans."

"But it would sure be a great chance to pass along an infection," John pointed out, causing more than one person to make a face.

Jackson seemed to wave that mental image with one hand. "The point is," he said, "there were certain key words mentioned in the Innsmouth files that stuck out to me. The cult members claimed that the Deep Ones lived in an offshore colony—which was dynamited back to the Stone Age without any investigation, apparently—but that they originated in the South Pacific in an underwater city inhabited by some kind of sleeping god even more powerful than Dagon.

"Now, if you allow for a little variation in spelling," and here he gave a sidelong look at Mitchell that the other man missed, "the same city and the same powerful entity are also mentioned in a few Ancient inscriptions we've found around the Milky Way, and in the Asgard database—warnings about planets that should never be visited, technology that should never be used, a devastating war that took place even before the Ancients were on the scene. The names that recur in the Innsmouth files are...well, the Ancient names are 'Relex' and 'Ctalul,' but the Massachusetts investigators transcribed them as 'Rilyah' and 'Kuthluhluh.'"

The hair on the back of John's neck stood up. The words sounded wrong in Jackson's mouth, too open and flat, but still somehow horribly familiar. "Cthulhu," he corrected almost automatically.

Jackson blinked at him. "I'm sorry?"

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," John said slowly, and when he shut his eyes against a wave of vertigo he saw the ocean, the velvet black of the deeps, the silver halls of sunken Atlantis and some place much, much darker. He could hear those words echo back to him, not just from his dreams but from Carson's mouth—still not quite right, not the same, but closer than anyone above the water line was going to manage. Except maybe Elizabeth.

The words were met with silence, and when John dared open his eyes he found five shocked faces staring out from behind their faceplates. Even Teal'c's eyes had gone slightly wide. Mitchell coughed noisily and squirmed in his chair. "Okay," he said, "so Daniel is maybe onto something there."

-\--\--\-

The marine biology team went down in the shielded jumper, and Zelenka had the idea to string a radio repeater to that thousand-foot cable. "It won't increase the range greatly, but it certainly cannot hurt," he pointed out. "We can fix a, a sort of balloon to it, so it stays pointed to the surface. They'll still be out of range when they arrive at the crash site—"

"What if there's a second jumper?" John asked. "They could park it at nine hundred feet, and relay the signal to us until the shielded one hits…what, three thousand feet total?"

"Less that that," Zelenka admitted, but the wreckage was at two thousand five, so John gave the orders.

"We're approaching the wreck," they reported. "No abnormal energy readings. Biomass seems normal for this depth—just spotted one hell of a swordfish! I guess whatever scared the wildlife off earlier is, uh, well, for all we know it's back in Atlantis…sorry, not funny, I know. We're taking a water sample and moving on."

"Okay, we're over the continental rise," they said. "Four thousand feet of water below us, but the sensors are picking up a mass on the abyssal plain. Funny, it falls on a straight line between the wreck and Atlantis. Uhm…hard to tell from this depth, but I'd guess the mass isn't naturally-occurring…there's something about the shape that seems man-made. Could be wreckage from the first Wraith war, could be an Ancient facility…preparing to go deeper."

"Request permission to go deeper, Atlantis," they announced. "The structure on the sea floor is definitely…well, not natural. Legrasse here seems to think it's some kind of nautilus shell, but if it is it's the size of an aircraft carrier. Sensors aren't making any sense from up here, so we'd like to head down and take a closer look…as long as the shielding holds out, of course."

Two hours later, the support jumper picked up a deep-sea explosion and a databurst from the radio repeater. Not long after, it picked up the repeater, and four hundred feet of cable sheared off at one end. It took twenty-four hours more to extract anything usable from the burst, by which point, of course, it was already too late.

"Approaching the structure…power levels stable for now. Holy Hannah, that's…ugh…that's not possible. The sensor data doesn't make any sense. It's like looking into an M. C. Escher print. How is this possible? At least we're not in visual yet…water's awful cloudy. Maybe some kind of turbidity current—

"—thousand feet and holding. My god. You could sink Atlantis here and forget where you parked. What? Oh, yes…scanning…no energy readings, no life signs. You'd think something this big would have life signs, even this deep—"

"—shut up already, just looking at the place gives me a headache—"

"—these carvings, send 'em up to Anthro. Maybe we found the Furlings, heh? …nah, don't really think so either. Something about this place feels…different. That's all I'm saying, diff—"

"—that? No, seriously, what was that? Fuck the sensors, I know what I saw! Can't you turn up the headlamps on this thing--?"

"—oh god oh god oh god—"

"—dozens of them! Where the hell are the life signs? Why don't they have life signs?"

"—at's it, firing the drones—"

"—rist, what is that thing? What've we do—"

"—riffin?"

"—into a bomb, and we're gonna fly right up that thing's cloaca, and if anybody on Atlantis hears this I'm sorry, so goddamn sorry—"

"—oh, god, it's still alive—"

-\--\--\-

Carter returned to her ship, eventually, and Carson went with Frasier and Mitchell to start collecting their samples—air and water, skin and blood. That left John to lead Jackson and Teal'c back down the winding stairs to the hologram room. "I hadn't realized the city sank so low," Jackson commented as they negotiated a particularly tilted flight of stairs that ended in stagnant water.

"It didn't, at first," John explained with one eye on a scanner. "We fetched up on the edge of the continental shelf, and we've been sliding off by a couple inches a year ever since."

"That's…wow," Jackson said weakly. "How long before you end up in the ocean floor?"

He shrugged. "Geology and Oceanography have been fighting over that for a while now. Maybe next week, maybe another century or two."

"Can the city survive such an event?" Teal'c asked.

John just shrugged again. They'd calculated during the siege that multiple nukes wouldn't vaporize the city, but he didn't think they could tumble another mile or so into the ocean without a scratch, either. (Part of him feared it would destroy Atlantis. Another part feared that it wouldn't.)

-\--\--\-

There was something wrong with Chuck. John hadn't noticed it before, or maybe he'd noticed it and managed to blame it on the gateroom lighting or a different haircut or his own tired eyes. But while Elizabeth and Landry argued about quarantining the city, John kept his eyes on Chuck, who kept rubbing his pale face with pale hands, rubbing his eyes.

"How can you quarantine against something that doesn't actually exist?" Landry was asking.

"We have no way of knowing that Dr. McKay wasn't exposed inside the city before the crash," Elizabeth said. "We have no way of knowing who else might've been exposed in the same period or since his recovery. And we still don't know what, if anything, that mass on the sea floor has to do with all of this. Until we can answer those questions, we can't take the risk of exposing anyone else."

"The Daedalus is going to need to take on supplies when it arrives," Landry reminded them.

"And the Athosians need supplies now," Elizabeth said. "And we've got six off-world teams waiting at the Alpha Site indefinitely. I know what I'm doing, Hank."

"I hope so, for the sake of your job, Dr. Weir. I'll see if we can notify Colonel Caldwell before he leaves the galaxy."

"Thank you, General." Elizabeth barely glanced at Chuck as the video link fritzed out. "Shut it down."

Chuck remained still at his post, rubbing his eyes.

"Sergeant Campbell," John said more firmly. "Shut down the gate."

Chuck started. "Oh! Sorry, sir. Ma'am."

John watched him enter the commands. Was he paler than normal? Had he put on weight? "Everything okay, Sergeant?" he asked quietly.

"Yes, sir," Chuck said. "Just feeling a little...off, sir."

And when he looked up at John, his eyes caught the light, and there was a pearly glow from inside his right pupil, like a cat in the darkness. Just the right side. Just when he held his head the right way. John swallowed. "You're relieved of duty, Sergeant."

"Sir?" Chuck asked, frowning.

"Go get yourself checked out by Dr. Beckett," he said. "That's an order."

Elizabeth turned away from Zelenka to watch Chuck leave the control room. "Something the matter?" she asked John.

He found he couldn't look her in the eye. "Maybe."

-\--\--\-

The hologram room was flooded. Teal'c and Jackson were fine in their heavy suits, but John hesitated to step into the chilly water even when his scanner showed the level was clear. It was only when Jackson started to offer, "We could find our own way from here," that John jumped the last two steps and landed with splash. His pants were soaked to the knee and his boots immediately started to fill.

"I'm fine," he said. "Besides, I'm the one with the scanner."

"I was under the impression that the amphibians did not register as life signs," Teal'c said.

"They don't," John answered. "But they also tend to scare off the other sea life in a given area, so we retooled these to track fish instead."

"Because the flooded lower levels function like an artificial reef," Jackson said, head bobbing inside his hood. "That's clever of you."

John just shrugged. "We need to come down here sometimes for spare parts and supplies and we like to know who's down here with us."

"The amphibians are aggressive, then?" Teal'c asked.

John couldn't think of a good way to answer, so he didn't; a jammed set of containment doors gave him a nice excuse. By the time they were past those, he'd formulated another question. "We searched the Ancient database when we found McKay. What do you think we missed?"

"I'm not sure you necessarily missed anything," Jackson said, "just that you were looking in the wrong place. We've found references to a war on Earth thousands of years before the Ancients arrived that involved this city, Relex." R'lyeh, John wanted to correct, Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, but didn't. "The Asgard database refers to an expedition to Relex mounted even before the alliance of the Four Great Races, which puts it within a generation of the Ancients coming to Earth from their home galaxy."

"In other words," John said, "we should've been searching the history books instead of the science library."

"Maybe even their myths," Jackson said, "if Ancients had those. The Asgard reference is the most detailed and it sounds a little like the Curse of King Tut—the Ancient archaeologists opened up something they shouldn't have in the ruins of Relex and they all died or went insane because of it."

John paused at an intersection to sweep the scanner around. The water was up over his knees now. "And seeing as how our own mythology keeps coming back to bite us in the ass…you think that thing on the sea floor is the Ancient equivalent of a pyramid?"

Jackson shrugged. "For all we know it's their mothership. The Asgard reference to the Relex expedition says the victims 'took the aspect of the sea' as punishment for violating the sanctum of Ctalul."

John was about to ask how the gods of the Ancients had gotten to Pegasus when they came to the doors of the hologram room. They opened automatically, letting a raft of warmer, scummy water and tiny transparent fish out into the hall. A light burned at the base of the console, sending orangey-red ripples up the walls.

"Residual power," he told the others. "It…happens, sometimes."

"Of course it does," Jackson said, and he and Teal'c started setting up the portable generator that would bring the holograms to life.

-\--\--\-

"It's not a question of brain washing," Kate told them when the number of cases broke the double digits. "Rodney's brain and nervous system have been dramatically changed. Comparing his cognitive functions now to a normal human's is comparing apples to oranges."

"Does he remember who he is?" Elizabeth asked.

"Oh, certainly," Kate said. "He remembers everything very clearly, at least if you're only thinking about facts. His emotional responses are...well, again, I'm not sure they can be explained in human terms."

"He hasn't shown any signs of hostility..." Carson said aloud.

John snorted. "He is a sign of hostility. From that thing in the ocean. Something did this to him and it's doing it to our people and I want to know why."

"I'm not so certain it is hostility," Kate said. "I mean, from one point of view, the changes saved his life—he'd never have survived so long in the water otherwise."

"McKay has a DNR," he pointed out. "He knew there are things worse than death."

Kate took a deep breath. "Colonel, I'm certain we can have a fruitful debate on the nature of a post-human existence," she said. "But I was going to continue—in nearly ten years of the Stargate program we've encountered only a handful of truly alien intelligences, ones so fundamentally different from ourselves that communication is limited or impossible. The sea floor structure might represent one such intelligence, in which case it's rather pointless to discuss intentions, hostile or not. The Wraith may view humans as inferiors, but they still recognize us as having a comparable intelligence to theirs. The abyssal structure—or the beings inside it—may not even recognize that. That makes it very hard to assign any kind of motive to them, much less to conclude they have hostile intentions."

"What about Rodney?" Elizabeth asked. "Does he still recognize us, at least?"

"I think..." Kate bit her lip for a moment. "I suspect that we aren't quite real to him. Not anymore."

John looked away from her. "You mean, not yet."

-\--\--\-

The guts of the console were water-logged, and John pointed this out, but if they were going to do a full database search this was the easiest place to start. John helped Jackson wire in the generator and an Asgard-enhanced crystal drive to record whatever the database showed. "How much useful information do you expect to get?" he asked.

"Anything straight from the Ancients' mouth is more that we have now," Jackson answered philosophically, flicking switches. "Right now I'd settle for a definitive identification of Ctalul—"

The interface hologram suddenly flared to life, guttering and deformed by the interference of the water. "Ctalul," she said, and then burst into great gouts of text, in Ancient and in something else entirely, something John thought he could almost understand. "Cthulhu," the hologram said, snapping back. She looked afraid. "In his house in R'lyeh dead Cthulhu lies dreaming."

The standing hologram became an amphibian, its pale hands pawing at the empty air. "—forty-four individuals. The Deep Ones seem to retain full memories and identity; it is simply that they do not care—"

"—stuff and nonsense," and this was nonsense, like a badly-framed photo, two Ancient councilors standing off to one side at a shuddering angle while a voice spoke from the air. "Even if the legends of Relex were true—"

Another deluge of text and numbers, and a glimpse of the galaxy, of icons for hive ships converging on Lantea's sun. "In our overconfidence, we were unprepared and outnumbered."

The Deep One made a gurgling noise, and then a long, meaty tentacle the size of a human rotated in a scanner's column.

"—cast out our own people," the hologram said, eye wide and staring. "Our own children we sent beyond the shield—"

"—a terrible risk." The council again. Moros looked off into the air, at something beyond the recording's limit. "How can we be sure we won't subject this galaxy to a plague yet more terrible?"

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu--"

Alien text crawled through the air, and hieroglyphs of octopi and something long and blunt and dark that glided on membranous wings. "We ventured into the Elder City to uncover the secrets of their long war with the star-spawn of Relex—"

"—changes nothing! Return to Terra is out of the question! You may be ready to grasp at myth and superstition, but I—"

"—course of twenty to thirty days on average. The transformation follows no fixed pattern—"

The tentacle, a scaly, slimy thing, had been hacked off at one end, not cleanly. And it was still moving. An image of the human nervous system hung suspended in glorious color, parts of the brain burning hellish red.

The interface trembled in position. "It begins with the song—"

The councilors attended to a deep, smooth voice beyond the edge of the shot, a brown hand that fluttered in and out of sight. "—but a portion of its great form. Your gateships may make the journey easily in less than a day. I assure you, the Dread One will not wake if you make the cuts swiftly—"

Numbers sprayed through the air, drawing figures of mounting dead, the growing threat, the lush curves of space and time. "—until finally only Atlantis remained."

"--ll'Tlantis h'grah'nn 'ai-h'ulnn naf'lthagn—"

"In an effort to save the last of our kind, we submerged our great city into the ocean," the recording said, the one John knew, but she changed to the interface hologram, all wild-eyed. "Let the Wraith come. Let them blast the oceans dry. Maybe that will be enough. I pray that will be enough."

"—no identifiable vector and no cure." The Deep One threw back its head and howled. "Our only hope is to evacuate the unaffected—to Terra, perhaps, or even beyond, far from the terrible call—"

That severed tentacle oozed gray-green tar from its stump. The tar thickened, shivered, and became firm scaly flesh.

Moros was nodding. "You speak with wisdom as always, Nyarlathotep."

Text and numbers and hieroglyphs and runes stained the walls with illegible warnings, unreadable pleas.

The hologram stared, and John realized she wasn't afraid. She just had the Atlantis Look, with bulging eyes that could no longer close. "Dead and yet dreaming, Cthulhu waits at Atlantis to call to his lost children," she said. "Cthulhu fhtagn."

Then the console failed with a burnt-meat smell, and they were plunged into darkness.

-\--\--\-

"I want to know what happened to you in the jumper," John said.

Rodney rose to the edge of the tank and considered him, looking down the remains of his nose in an all-too-familiar way. "You want to stop it."

"I want to understand," John said, folding his arms. "Half of all personnel on base are infected--"

Rodney made a croaking, squelching sound. "Infection? That's what you think it is?"

"That's what we're calling it," John said.

"And yet you're not wearing a containment suit," Rodney said, with either a smirk or a snarl.

John stood his ground. "And you're not calling it an infection."

That horrible grin, like nothing familiar at all. "That's because I know something you don't know."

"So tell me," John. "Tell me what happened to you. Tell me how this happened."

Rodney couldn't really blink anymore, according to scans, but the nictitating membranes flickered over his eyes a few times, side to side. His gills flared once, and then he let himself sink to the level of the water, and John thought he was going to ignore the question or toss out another smug non sequitur. It was a surprise when that high voice spoke again, soft and almost human. "It was...cold," he said, like he had to work to remember the word. "It was wet. The jumper, when it hit the sea floor, that opened a microfissure in the hull and I couldn't...I couldn't..."

"So you were drowning," John said.

"No," Rodney said. "No, not at first." And he dunked under the water, turning his wide white back to John for a moment in a gesture so very human that John had to clench his fists against it.

When Rodney came back up, he was smiling slightly, a more alien expression. "I could hear the singing. I think I could always hear the singing, from the moment we came—calling us out, and down, and into the darkness. But I was afraid...I used to be so afraid of everything. Do you remember that, John? How afraid I was?"

Rodney made that wet croak again, something like a laugh, though it grated on John's ears. "So you heard singing, in the jumper," John said, tried to steer the conversation back on track. "Where was it coming from?"

"Mmm, I think you know that," Rodney said. "You know exactly where it came from. Cthulhu ll'Tlantis fhtagn...the city by the sea..."

The words made the hair on the back of John's neck stand up. "It destroyed one of our jumpers," John said. "It killed our people."

"No. Not killed." Rodney dunked down again to wet his gills. "Just changed."

"Like you?"

Rodney's nictitating membranes flickered again, and he made a low sound, almost like a rusty sort of purr. "I was so afraid," he said dreamily, bulging eyes looking at something in the middle distance. "I was afraid of drowning. I was afraid of freezing. I was scared to do anything and I was scared to do nothing. I thought I was seeing things...I'd hit my head and I thought it was all a dream..."

John took a step closer to the tank. "What did you see?"

"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn," Rodney said, raw squelching syllables that hurt to hear. "A new R'lyeh, but all the same--Ll'Tlantis h'ilyaa-h'nn nafl'gof'nn ch'ftaghu--and when the stars are right—I was so afraid of everything, of everyone, but then I listened to the singing and I understood—I understand it now, John—there's no reason. I didn't have to be afraid anymore." He suddenly reached over the lip of the tank, too-long arm stretching out so he could cup the side of John's face with a wet, rubbery paw. John went rigid, but didn't flinch at the feeling of short claws that carded at his hair a bit, almost tenderly. A bit of water dribbled down his neck. "Don't be afraid. Atlantis is protected. We all are."

There was a crash behind him, and John was a hair too late in spinning around. Dr. Ward from the chemistry department was standing in the doorway of the isolation room, patches of bald scalp showing through his hair, a rifle in his hands. "Shut up," he shouted. "Shut up!"

John took two steps, wondering where his Marines were and how fast Carson could get here with a sedative. "You want to calm down, Doc?" he asked, reaching slowly towards the weapon.

Ward pointed it at John instead, hands shaking. "Don't tell me you can't hear it, Sheppard," he snarled. "Don't tell me you don't know what that thing's doing. You brought that here, you brought it in here--"

"You're gonna hurt someone if you don't put that thing away, Ward," John pointed out.

His eyes bulged out. "No," he said, "no, because it's not really human, is it? It's not alive. There's nothing left to hurt."

John wanted to argue with that logic and couldn't. Instead he said, "Excuse me if I don't really trust your aim right now."

Ward snorted, and then giggled, high and thin. "No. No, don't you see? Don't you hear? It's too late, now, it's always been too late—the Dreamer is waking—and all of us, all of us are already dead--there's nothing left to kill--"

John saw movement before he registered the sound of splashing; something big and wet and pale fell between him and Ward, landing with a thump, and Ward screamed and started firing. Instinct had John throwing himself out of the way, but Ward wasn't aiming at him; he was shooting at Rodney, at the thing that Rodney had become, and John had just given himself the perfect vantage point to watch.

Some of the bullets went wide, smashing equipment, shattering the tank. Some of them were grazing shots, tearing long gouges in Rodney's white flesh. Some struck him square in the chest and stomach, with little gouts of tacky gray-green ichor, and some smashed bones, and some tore away parts of his paws and his neck and his face. The sheer force of all the impacts should've staggered him. The destruction should've killed him.

Instead, that tarry slime firmed up and became solid, became rubbery skin. And as soon as he had a jaw again, Rodney turned to John with a grin. "You see, John? There's nothing left to fear."

-\--\--\-

For a few hideous seconds no one moved, and there was no sound but the soft constant splashing of the water on the walls. John didn't even breathe, couldn't breathe, was rooted in the cool water that filled his boots and glued his clothes to his legs; he had the sudden and irrational thought that there was something in the darkness, like one of the holograms made real, and if he moved at all it was going to pounce.

Then Teal'c switched on his flashlight, and the paralysis passed, leaving him a little light-headed and adrenaline-shaky. John fumbled for the scanner to verify that they were alone in the hologram room, just them and the fishes. But before he could get a grip with his sweaty hands, Jackson and Teal'c both froze in place, their heads snapping up in eerily similar fashion. A second later John's own radio squealed to life with Cadman's voice. "Co…arts inbou…act."

"Say again, Lieutenant, I'm downstairs," John said, slogging through the water for the doors.

"Sounds like the Hammond just engaged a Wraith ship," Jackson said as he yanked his equipment from the ruined console. "There must be darts heading our way."

John swore and juggled the scanner, his own flashlight and his gun, to make certain it hadn't gotten wet during the slog. "We need to get upstairs, now."

"Can the Wraith beams penetrate the walls of the spire?" Teal'c asked.

"They don't have to, after all the holes Caldwell put in them."

Jackson tucked away the crystal drive but left the bulky generator behind; John was relieved to see he was armed and obviously competent with the weapon. If they had any advantage over the Wraith at the moment it was their familiarity with the city in its current state, and it wasn't much of one, all things considered. The stairs they'd taken down were too close to a gaping fissure in the outer walls, so John lead them away from it, towards some maintenance shafts. It'd be a tight climb, but they'd come up near a mostly intact internal stair and from there, potentially, they could get to one of the old railgun installations. Assuming the ammunition had stayed dry and the guns were still operational and the Hammond didn't get its ass kicked by whatever hive or cruiser was above them...

This forward planning process went off the rails when John heard something splashing in the water up ahead. Or maybe not heard, exactly, but close enough that he signaled the other two to slow down and they did. There was a radial corridor up ahead that he knew was partially buckled; a couple years ago it had been easily navigable if you danced around the potholes, but Atlantis had fallen and the water was now up to his thighs. Peering around the corner, he saw a Wraith drone creeping forward, testing its footing so carefully that it barely made a ripple. He signaled the target to Jackson and Teal'c. They'd have to eliminate it before they could cross the intersection.

On a count of three, they swung around the corner and opened fire; John dropped to his knees and felt the water splash up to his shoulders as Teal'c and Jackson lumbered around in their HEV suits. The drone was at least staggered by the barrage, but Teal'c was the only one with a rifle, and perhaps the thing was freshly fed because it managed to stay standing. While John reloaded, the drone took a step forward and raised its long stunner.

Then something under the water moved.

The drone made a sudden, inarticulate noise, and a moment later it was jerked off its feet. John caught a glimpse of pale, webbed hands and the pearly shine of their flashlights in a bulging eye, mostly screened by the churning water; and then the Wraith was just gone, vanished through one of the floor's uncertain pits.

Feeling suddenly cold, John leaped to his feet and opened the scanner. The three of them were the only life signs of any species for hundreds of meters around.

-\--\--\-

The attack came at midnight, and the first volley crippled their shields with the precision of a knife in the back. John found Elizabeth bellowing into the communications station. "Damn it, Stephen, talk to me! Why are you doing this?"

Caldwell's face flickered into view, and at the very least he looked sad. "Dr. Weir, I'm only following my orders."

"You've been ordered to attack us?" Elizabeth asked, incredulously. "I demand you stop firing and let me talk to Stargate Command!"

"The IOA has determined that the expedition is a threat," Caldwell said. "And that I am to consider everyone in Atlantis compromised. That includes you, Dr. Weir."

She reeled back like she'd been punched. John jumped to her side. "We're working on fixing this. We need more time to get things under control."

"How can you control these things, Sheppard?" Caldwell asked. "How can you control people who are losing their minds? You admitted you have no idea how the mutation is spreading or why and we can't sit idle while a base as important as Atlantis is overrun by monsters and madmen. I've been ordered to eliminate the threat and that's what I'm doing."

"And if we engage?" Elizabeth asked, raising her chin. "If we defend ourselves?"

"Then you only prove the IOA's evaluation right," Caldwell said. And, "I'm sorry, Elizabeth. It's been a privilege."

The screen blinked out. Elizabeth shut her eyes.

The tower was rocked again, and John punched the emergency channel. "This is Sheppard. All personnel, prepare to evacuate to the mainland."

"We can't, John," Elizabeth said. "We can't risk spreading this to the Athosians."

"We'll separate anybody infected," he said. "We'll send them somewhere else. Somewhere safe."

"If we can't tell who's infected until they show symptoms—"

The tower was rocked again, knocking them both from their feet. Alarms began to wail.

A technician John didn't know struggled to his feet. "We've got hull breaches in the lower levels, north and northeast pier," he said. "Forcefields are holding for now, but we've lost power to the control chair."

"All personnel, prepare to evacuate now," John snapped again, and seized Elizabeth by the wrist, intent to drag her to the jumper bay.

She broke his grip easily, a little too easily. "No," she said. "The infected have to stay. We have to keep this contained."

"Even if it kills us?"

Something about her bitter smile was a little too wide. "I think Rodney's already shown how difficult that's going to be."

-\--\--\-

"What's your location, sir?" Cadman bellowed in the radio. If she was this clear, she had to be in a boat, on the water.

"We're pinned down on level twenty-three," John reported. "Wraith are coming down all the stairwells, we got friends underwater, and Dr. Jackson and I are out of ammunition."

Mitchell's voice came over the radio—stupid of them not to synchronize channels sooner. "The cruiser is disabled for now, but the Hammond lost its beam weapons and took a bad hit to the shield generators. All the darts are circling the tower—something in there they want?"

"Probably the ZPM," John said. "If the Wraith were here for the whole city they'd send more than one cruiser."

"The control chair is underwater, isn't it?" Jackson asked.

"Deep underwater, with no power for launching," John confirmed. "If the Wraith realize they can't get to the ZPM room, they might just say 'fuck it' and cull us."

"Didn't realize Wraith said 'fuck,' sir," Cadman said.

"Time and a place, Lieutenant."

Carson responded to John's actual fear. "I've already been in contact with the mainland. The Athosians sensed the Wraith coming and started the evacuation."

"And the Hammond's F-302s are on their way," Mitchell added. "ETA under two minutes."

"Well, isn't that peachy," John muttered. He wished Ronon were still here; he wished he had a P90 and a few million extra rounds. He wished, in more concrete terms, that they had a more spacious hiding place; pinned between the wall of the inoperative transporter and Jackson's rubbery HEV suit, his wet clothes were making him itch. The scanner showed Wraith life signs in two directions, a hell of a lot closer than two minutes away, though they weren't closing in. Not yet, anyway.

Not yet.

He carefully switched off his radio and gestured for Teal'c and Jackson to silence their mics. "If you leave this room and head left, there's a potted plant on your right. The panel behind that should come off, and you'll find an access tunnel that goes to a lab four floors up. It's shielded, so you should be safe in there until the Wraith are gone."

"Why are you telling us this?" Jackson said.

John held up the scanner. "Because right now there's two drones standing between you and that tunnel. We've got this theory that Wraith have a thing against salt water, which is why they're sticking to the shallows, but they'll move deeper if we give them something worth chasing."

"You mean to create a diversion?" Teal'c asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No," Jackson said. "I'm sorry, Colonel Sheppard, that's not acceptable, we can't--"

"You can get the hell out of here with your skins still intact," John said. "You can figure out where that thing on the sea floor came from and how we kill it. You can go back to Earth. So give me a count of ten and go."

"And what about you?" Jackson asked.

"Look at me, Doctor," John said. "I don't have a hell of a lot else to look forward to, do I?"

Jackson lifted his chin, looking John in the eye. "What happened to the hope you were talking about earlier?"

"I was also talking about suicide, in case you don't remember," John pointed out.

-\--\--\-

"I'm not going down there," had been Ronon's last words, and John didn't stop him, but he couldn't pull the trigger for him, either. He'd followed the trail of fallen dreadlocks to a balcony, one that looked over open water, towards the place that none of them ever named aloud. "I can hear it," Ronon had said. "But I'm not going."

John didn't stop him, but he didn't watch him either, because he'd watched too many of the others and he'd had enough. He'd shut his eyes and listened for the whine of the gun, and when it was over he'd dragged the body to the roof, all by himself.

They normally gave the dead to the sea, but for Ronon John built a pyre, scrounging the whole city for wood and rags and oil. They burned him on top of a tower, and later John wasted a jumper trip to deposit the ashes in the high, cold mountains. I'm not going down there, Ronon had said, and it was the least John could do for him.

-\--\--\-

John left the scanner, for all the good it did anyone without the gene. He took a flashlight. He stood exposed in the corridor, thinking about the hundred ways that this could go wrong while he whistled the refrain to Ring of Fire as loud as he could.

And when the Wraith came lumbering from his left, he took off running, letting the flashlight dangle from his hand to mark his trail.

He only meant to go to the next junction and then turn down the next radial corridor, to keep the water below his knees, where it was already dragging him down, making him an easy mark if the Wraith would bother to raise their stunners. But that corridor was blocked off, the weapons of the Daedalus doing what ten thousand years of time couldn't, and John had to go deeper, into the salt and darkness.

He let the flashlight drop, since it wasn't doing anything but making an easy target. Easier, given how he slogged and sloshed through the water. The thought came to him that swimming would be easier, if he could just get a second to kick off his boots—except he couldn't swim, not in this ocean—but salt water was the only thing the Iratus feared, even if it had a funny way of showing it. He shuddered as it splashed up his thighs, up to his ass, soaking his clothes all over again and making his skin itch. He could swim and escape. Swim and never come up again.

Was there a noise, up ahead?

A blast from a stunner flew close enough to singe his hair and numb the entire right side of his face, and he turned away from it, going blindly down the next open corridor. It gaped open into an atrium, now a pool, and John knew they were too close, knew he was going to die as he stumbled to a halt: and for all his talk to Jackson, there was still a stubborn voice in his head as old as the first hairy little mammals that shouted Live! Live! Live! at him, that recoiled from the vast darkness and the embrace of the water below. He forced himself to feel his way forward, testing every step with his toes, because there should've been a staircase somewhere around here, and maybe if he could just duck below the water for a time (no, no, stay above water, get out of the water) and evade them, or maybe get behind them and escape (because he could swim, if he just got his boots off)--

Light threw his shadow out onto the water before him, and he spun around, backed away. One of the Wraith—who knew where the other had gone—drew closer, slowly, its stunner aimed. There was a lamp of some kind attached to its breastplate, faintly greenish, and all it had to do was pull a trigger and John was dead.

All John had to do was flip backwards into the water and he'd be safe. Or not safe at all, really.

"Hi, there," he said, heart pounding out of his chest as he kept shuffling backwards, one careful step at a time. "Looking for something?"

The Wraith made an inarticulate noise behind its mask. It took another confident step forward.

"If you'd wanted me dead, you would've shot me already," John continued, though he already knew it was futile to talk to the drones. For all he knew they didn't even have faces under those masks. "Unless, of course, you're scared of having to fish me out of the water after you did. I wouldn't really blame you if you were." Another step. "After all, here there be monsters and all that."

The Wraith took another step forward, and didn't see the shape that rose up behind it, a flabby white shape that almost glowed in the faint reflected lamp-light. A familiar shape that made John's heart stutter and brought a half-formed syllable into his mouth, though even he didn't know what he could possibly say, not now, not after everything else. He got as far as "McKay," and then stopped.

The Wraith spun around with its inhuman speed and plunged its feeding hand onto the Deep One's chest.

Then the Wraith started screaming.

The Deep One with the familiar face started laughing, that insane giggle, not making a move to remove that clawing, writhing hand from where its heart should be, and the Wraith kept screaming in tones no human could produce, and the small hairy urge to live in John's brain sent him staggering backwards, away from the sounds and the light and the monsters. He could hide in the darkness. He could escape in the darkness.

His foot came down where the stairs began, and he couldn't move fast enough to regain his balance, not mired in the water, not with his boots on. His arms flew outwards, swiping at the stagnant air, and then the ocean closed over his head, and he could hear the singing.

-\--\--\-

"There have been no new cases for some time," Teyla told him, once, while he was making the supply run. "Perhaps it will fade with the winter."

"I don't think we'll be that lucky," he said. "I don't think they have seasons underwater."

Teyla looked out over the beach, back towards the village, which had migrated further inland. "Some of the children refuse to eat fish now. Some are afraid even to wade in the river."

John wanted to reassure her. Instead he said, "Elizabeth is getting worse. She's asking me to assume command." Don't let me go down there, she'd also asked. Use any force necessary.

This isn't some kind of zombie movie, Elizabeth. If Carson can--

I can make this an order, John. I wouldn't ask you if you if I could it myself. You did it for Ronon; please do it for me.

"Perhaps that's wise," Teyla said in the present. "Has she complained any further of dreams?"

"They're not worth complaining about anymore," John said, and snorted.

Teyla shook her head. "Some of us—those of my people with the Gift of the Wraith—some of us also have the dreams. Sometimes I can hear the others singing to each other." She paused. "I do not think that they will sing to me."

"You're lucky," John said. "Or maybe not. I don't know."

At the very least, she was unafraid to press her forehead to his and squeeze his hands. "Be safe, John," she said. "We will send more food with the next jumper, if we can."

"We appreciate that," John said. "We'd send you fish, but..."

"I believe your people say it is the thought that counts." She smiled at him; for her sake, he didn't smile back.

-\--\--\-

He woke up suddenly, like from a nightmare, and tugged on the restraints before he realized that was what they were. He was in the isolation room of the medical unit. He was still above the water. A few phrases of song echoed in his head, h'ilyaa-h'nn nafl'gof'nn, but they were only a memory, and they didn't mean anything. He still felt mostly the same.

"Carson?" he tried calling, but raising his voice much above a whisper hurt. He'd been screaming. He remembered screaming. He remembered lots of things.

There was a bit of commotion beyond the curtains before Carson appeared, stopping short at the foot of the bed. "John?" he asked. "Are you with us, lad?"

John swallowed. "I think so."

"Oh, thank God," Carson sighed, though John didn't think God had anything to do with it. Not that one, anyway. "We thought we'd lost you there, with the screaming, but when you didn't deteriorate I started to hope—well." He pulled out a stethoscope and pressed it to John's chest. "No sign of pneumonia so far, but I'd like you to take a deep breath for me."

John did. He took a deep breath, and coughed, and lifted his chin so Carson could feel his lymph nodes, like that mattered. "Wraith?"

Carson started. "Oh, aye, them," he said. "You've missed quiet a bit, Colonel. They broke off and fled not long after the F-302s engaged the darts, though we've no idea why—Teyla seems to think that something spooked them. The Marines and SG-1 were able to clean up most of the drones left behind, or...well...they were heading downstairs, you know."

"I was downstairs," John reminded him.

"Aye." Carson sat on the edge of the bed. "D'you want to tell me what happened down there?"

John wished there was a window back here, so he could look to the sky; the overhead light hurt his eyes, but if he closed them he remembered the singing. "There was a Wraith," he said.

Carson nodded. "So Dr. Jackson said. He's the one who insisted on going back for you."

Which sort of explained how he'd got back up here. "There was a Wraith," John repeated. "It tried to feed on Rodney."

"Are you certain?" Carson asked quietly, going very still.

John nodded. "I think he killed it. I think that's why the Wraith ran off. I don't think they can feed on the Deep Ones."

"It would make sense," Carson said, looking at his hands. "If they feed off the same energy that produces a life sign on our sensors...I mean, the amphibians don't have that."

"Or they have too much," John mumbled.

Carson ignored this, and he didn't mention any names when he asked, "So what happened after the amphibian attacked the Wraith? Laura found you in a completely different section of the tower to where the others said you'd gone, and you were unconscious at the time..."

John shrugged. "I fell in the water. I don't...I can't really say what happened after that." There was too much, too many thoughts, too many impressions, from senses he couldn't put a name to, not in any language he could actually speak. There was the song.

Luckily Carson didn't press him. "Well, you've been out of it for nearly a week," he said. "The Hammond departed, but they left some supplies—tools, medicine, clothes, that sort of thing. Colonel Carter said she'd recommend another mission back to check up on us in a few months, but it's up to the IOA to make the final decision, and, well, you know how that's gone so far. There were no casualties from the Wraith attack, but, ah..."

John knew what Carson was about to say, because there was only one bed in the isolation room, and he was in it. "Elizabeth took to water," he said.

"Aye," Carson said miserably. "We were trying to move her somewhere safer from the Wraith and she slipped her restraints. I'm sorry, John."

He shook his head. "Don't. It's not your fault. There was no way we could keep her up here forever."

"She's still got her transmitter, though," Carson said. "If we find a cure, we can find her."

"If."

Carson reached for the leather strap around John's wrist. "I can have you out of these in a moment, and then--"

"No," John said, and Carson froze. "Just...leave them, okay?"

"Colonel?" he asked hesitantly.

John swallowed, and when he shut his eyes he could still hear the song. Just a memory, though. He hoped it was just a memory. "Just for now. Please."

"All right," Carson said, and let John be.