STARGATE SG-1: Transitions

by Sabine C. Bauer

  Panicked, she scrambled sideways, toward where she thought she’d seen a table or desk earlier, tore her knee on a shard of glass or twisted metal, and tripped over a second body, sprawling right on top of it. It didn’t stir, though it was warm, too, but wet for some reason. And she’d be damned if she allowed herself to speculate on the reason! She didn’t want to know.

  Cassie pushed herself up on all fours again, found her eyes had adjusted, found the table— it had fallen over— and scurried behind it. Her heart was pounding like crazy, and for a moment all she heard was the hoarse whoosh-whoosh of blood in her ears.

  Then a voice peeled from the pulsing. Female, very calm. “You’re not one of them,” it stated, quite categorically.

  So Sleeping Beauty had switched from blast-first-ask-questions-later mode to conversation. Cassie wasn’t entirely sure this was a good thing, but her options were limited. She could either play along, or she could curl up, like a kid afraid of the dark, behind this slab of cheap wood that didn’t offer any serious protection. The latter wasn’t really an option, was it?

  Hands clenching the edge of the table, Cassie rose, absently noting that the gentle amber light now illuminating the space came from tall panels inset into the rock walls. The cavern was a junk heap. Overturned and broken equipment, ripped-off wires snaking between shards, scraps of paper, puddles of coffee and soda, an improbably intact plate, piled on it a half dozen stuffed vine leaves and a part-eaten spanakopita. Whoever had bitten into it wouldn’t finish lunch. Ever.

  They were dead, all three of them; Creeps Number One and Two and the hacker.

  She tried to feel relieved or satisfied or something— after all they’d kidnapped her and might have been planning to kill her— but relief wouldn’t come. She just felt… numb. Right in front of her, the body she’d fallen onto, was Number Two. He lay on his back, a deep gash in his chest, his clothes soaked with blood. It wasn’t what had killed him, though. His neck was bent at an impossible angle.

  Wet for some reason… Cassie swallowed, struggling to suppress the nausea that wanted to slither up her throat, and wiped her fingers on her jeans without looking.

  “They were not supposed to be here,” the woman said, as though that explained it. She stood near the empty chamber, looking absurdly untouched, absurdly serene. Her eyes, an unsettling shade of pale gold, like those of an animal, studied Cassie for a long moment. Then her gaze dropped to her hands. She turned them, palms up and back, several times, and the scrutiny triggered a slight frown. “It took too long. Much too long. The Teacher never came,” she whispered.

  What teacher?

  Not deportment, that much was a certainty.

  Hilarious.

  Cassie couldn’t stop that giggle bubbling up inside of her. Better than nausea. And that was funny, too. No, it wasn’t. It was pure hysteria.

  She couldn’t stop.

  Not until the woman stared at her again.

  The giggle turned into a strangled hiccup, and Cassie wanted to turn and run, knowing full well she’d never even make it into the tunnel. “My name is Cassandra,” she offered, calling herself an idiot the second she’d said it. This whole personalizing the victim theory might work for deranged serial killers— allegedly— but the chances of it working for… for…

  God, she couldn’t even begin to categorize who or what this woman was! If indeed she was a woman. The only thing Cassie knew for a fact was that this wasn’t a Goa’uld or Jaffa. She sensed no symbiote, but that was nowhere near as comforting as it should have been.

  “I’m Amara,” said the woman. “What date is it?”

  “2005,” Cassie replied mechanically. And this was another idiotic idea. Western reckoning probably meant nothing to this Amara. The whole concept of Earth years might be alien to her.

  It definitely was alien. The woman frowned, confused. “I have no reference for this.”

  Telling her that the reference point was the year of birth of one Jesus of Nazareth, rebel rabbi from the Upper Galilee, wouldn’t help matters. Cassie briefly thought of trying to figure out corresponding dates in other calendars and discarded the notion. If Number One had been right and the woman had been asleep for ten thousand years, nothing Cassie could say would make sense to her.

  Amara seemed to have come to the same conclusion. Absently rubbing the bracelet she wore on her right wrist, a gold clasp with a bright green gem, she had turned her attention to the bodies. “You are not one of them,” she said at last, looking up again.

  “No. I was their prisoner,” Cassie blurted out, operating on the principle that the enemy of Amara’s enemy would be her friend. As long as that was clear, she might just stay alive for a while longer. “I’m not one of them.”

  “And yet you are saddened by their deaths.”

  “Death is always cause for sadness.” She was fumbling to say what she hoped Amara wanted to hear, but this was closer to the nerve than Cassie would have liked. Loss got easier over time, though the sadness never went away completely. She still missed her birthmother, and Janet’s death was a raw wound that had barely begun to scab over.

  “Wisdom in one so young.” Amara inclined her head, whether in approval or not was anyone’s guess. Who knew what social customs and codes her people had? “And in one so powerful. But you are injured.”

  She took a step forward, and Cassie needed every ounce of self-control she possessed not to flinch away. The woman was damn near unreadable, her voice almost without inflection, and this could be an offer of first aid as easily as an attempt to cull the weak animal from the herd.

  After ten thousand years she had to be ravenous.

  What did her kind feed on?

  Well, Cassie figured she’d find out… oh, right about now.

  Eyes closed, Amara reached out, touched Cassie’s shoulder. “Ah,” she whispered. “Not your blood.”

  Involuntarily, Cassie dropped her gaze, peered down her front. Her shirt and jeans were stained with Number Two’s blood, and the sight yanked that wad of nausea right back up her throat.

  “Shh,” said Amara. “This doesn’t matter. It cannot harm you.” Then, “There. Minor. Quite minor.”

  There what?

  Suddenly feeling drowsy, Cassie let her eyes slide shut, hoping she wouldn’t keel over. From her shoulder, where the woman’s hand still lay, a flow of heat— pleasantly fizzing— bubbled down her chest, her abdomen, her leg, and pooled around her knee. She felt the pain recede, as if blown away by a breeze, could feel her skin knit. Within seconds the laceration was barely a memory, and then even that faded.

  Amara’s hand lifted lightly, like a bird from a branch. “You are different,” she said.

  “What?” Cassie’s eyes snapped open.

  “You’re not one of them. Not anymore. You have been altered.”

  Altered. Yeah, you could say that again.

  “Strange.” Fascinated rather than disturbed, Amara cocked her head. “You have been given powers. That must mean we have won.” For the first time she smiled. “This is wonderful. But now we should leave.”

  Oh no. Much as Cassie hated the notion of staying put amid the carnage, leaving the cavern was an even worse prospect. There was no telling what would happen if they ran into the guard or anyone down at the camp.

  And who the hell were we, and what had we won?

  “Wait!” she yelped. “It isn’t safe. There are more of them out there. Many more. We… we should wait until dark.”

  Amara contemplated the proposal, then she nodded. “You are right. I am hungry. Is there food?”

  Chapter 18

  Give him a nice relaxing Wraith attack any day of the week, John Sheppard thought as he stared down at the life signs detector cupped in his hand. Thirty-six merrily blinking little dots, and they’d just regrouped after stopping by an armory two levels above the command center. Two dots out front, the ones leading the mob, and they were now turning into the corridor that led toward the staircase.

  Th
ough this wasn’t half as worrying as the five dots that had winked out only moments ago. Of course, it might have been down to a computer virus McKay had claimed didn’t exist.

  Phantom dots.

  Hope springs eternal.

  “Sheppard to McDonnell,” he whispered into his stalk mike. “Sit rep would be real good right about now.”

  Nothing.

  “Lieutenant McDonnell, come in, dammit!”

  A brief crackle, then, “Wasting your breath, Sheppard.” Ronon, turning laconic into an art form. “On my way.”

  In a corridor parallel to the mob’s location, the Ronon dot started to move. On the double.

  Odds were he’d get here ahead of the gang, too, but the jury was still out on whether that would make a blind bit of difference.

  Probably not.

  Between the five missing dots and Ronon’s chatty report, John could do the math quite easily, thank you. Thirty-six people, frightened out of their wits by the Ancient plague, had taken exception to the quarantine and neutralized an armed security detail. Marines, no less.

  And his and Teyla’s beautiful contingency plan was in the process of being blown to hell.

  Of course, they’d predicted that the measures would trigger a panic among some members of the expedition— in situations such as this, human nature was sadly predictable— and Elizabeth had agreed. But not imposing quarantine or even delaying it hadn’t been an option.

  First order had been to turn around the Daedalus, which had been due in on a supply run. This hadn’t been too graciously received, because Atlantis was experiencing a critical shortage of chocolate bars. McKay had pitched a fit. Next they’d isolated sections of the city one by one, most importantly living quarters, manually locking any doors that were no longer controlled by the city’s system. This had caused the expected grumbles from folks who resented getting grounded, and on rudimentary supplies at that, but nothing major. After that they’d contacted all teams currently off-world and diverted them to a safe planet— relatively speaking, given the neighborhood— with orders to stay put and keep their heads down until further notice.

  So far, so bad.

  And then Carson had got the lab results back, confirming not only the Ancient virus but a shiny new strain thereof. Aggressively virulent. The short version was that this news had gotten out. Whereupon the proverbial had hit the fan.

  To be fair, the overwhelming majority of people had flinched once or twice and then hunkered down to wait out the storm as directed. These were precisely the folks endangered now by the happy few who’d kissed sanity goodbye.

  John’s earpiece crackled, then Rodney’s voice blared, “McKay to Sheppard. McKay to Sheppard. Come in.”

  “This is Sheppard. Stop shouting at me! And the candy bar situation hasn’t changed in the last ten minutes.”

  “Ha-bloody-ha. Has it occurred to you that I could pass out from sugar deprivation?”

  “Has it occurred to you that you’re stuck here along with the rest of us?” John scanned the life signs detector for dots again and swore under his breath. They were on the level above, closing in fast, and right now he was the only line of defense between them and the command center. The Ronon dot was slightly ahead of them, though, which cheered him up a little. “Where are you with the mainframe?”

  “I’ve pinned down what’s happening, and it’s not good. The simple version is that the malware, if you can call it that— in actual fact it’s a photonic quantum code that—”

  “Rodney!”

  “It’s melting the lattice structure of the crystals.”

  “Melting it?”

  “You can melt diamonds if you manage to construct a blowtorch that reaches 6416.33oF.”

  “I’ll file that for future reference. How long till you’ve fixed the mainframe?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! Right now I can’t fix it. Apart from anything else I’d need new crystals. Best I can do at the moment is back up as much data as possible and attempt to quarantine this thing in a sector where it can’t do too much harm. Zelenka is rerouting essential systems, though at the speed he’s going we probably won’t be able to stay ahead of it.”

  As if to confirm that optimistic assessment, the lights in the corridor dimmed and flickered, apparently contemplating a complete leave of absence.

  “I’m losing the lights here, Rodney.”

  “That’s not all you’re losing,” McKay muttered grimly and after a brief delay. He would have been checking some computer readout or other. “Environmental systems are packing up. It’s not global yet, but your sector and a couple of neighboring areas are affected. Get out of there, John! We’re trying to reroute now, but—”

  “No! Don’t!” John had an idea. Admittedly it was a little on the suicidal side, and Elizabeth definitely wouldn’t approve, but his prime objective at this moment was stopping the lunatics from taking over the asylum.

  “What do you mean, don’t? This may come as a shock, but even you need air to breathe, Colonel!”

  “Shut up and listen, Rodney! Everything in this sector that wants to pack up, you let it. In fact, go and encourage it. You got a life signs detector there?”

  “Oh crap!” Evidently the answer was yes.

  “Yeah. These guys just killed a security detail and now they’re headed for my position. They’ll have to go through me and, hopefully, Ronon to get to the command center. Which, in case you’re wondering, is where we really don’t want them to be. I want you to focus on sealing the doors behind them as they pass through. I don’t care how you do it, but do it.”

  One good thing about McKay; he was quick to grasp the essential point, though maybe he tended to over-pitch his voice a little when disapproving— which was most of the time. “You want them locked in with you?”

  “This stretch of corridor has no outside ventilation, and I’m thinking that lack of oxygen is gonna calm them down real quick.”

  “They’re not the only ones who’ll run out of air.”

  “Yes, that has occurred to me. Just do it. Get Teyla and a security detail to stand by and start picking up our friends as soon as they stop making noise. And, uh, try not to tell Elizabeth unless you absolutely have to.”

  “Oh, that’s just great! Now I’ve got to—”

  “Gotta go, McKay.”

  It wasn’t even a lie. John could hear them now, thundering down the stairs. He ducked further into the shadows behind the pillar that covered him, cast another glance at the control panel for the door behind him. Yep, that looked as though it definitely wouldn’t work again, at least not today. Amazing what the butt of a handgun could do to sophisticated electronics. Of course, if they wanted to, they could force the door manually, by prying apart the sliding panels. John’s job was to convince them that they didn’t want to do that.

  He rated his chances roughly on a par with trying to convince a Wraith Queen of going vegan. Or maybe—

  The lights went out for good, dumping pitch blackness into the corridor. Going by the sudden quiet, the stampede in the staircase had come to a dead halt. But the rumble of footfalls resumed as soon as the emergency lighting kicked in, small orange glow panels, set low in the walls and casting a ghastly Halloween sheen. You had to hand it to the Ancients; they sure had a sense for the atmospheric. All that was missing was Freddy Krueger.

  Something very large dropped from the ceiling and just about landed on top of him, damn near giving John a heart attack. On second glance, Freddy had grown by a good eleven inches and sported dreadlocks.

  “Are you nuts?” hissed John.

  “Took a shortcut.” Ronon pointed to the ceiling, where the grid swayed gently beside the gaping hole of a maintenance duct.

  “Yeah. Next time try not to scare me to death in the process.”

  “Eyeballed them as long as I could,” Ronon offered by ways of an apology, voice muffled by a facemask that covered his nose and mouth and probably didn’t provide more protection against the vir
us than a peashooter would. “Two guys out front are slowing down. Could be they caught the bug.”

  Why the hell didn’t anyone have any good news for a change?

  John reflexively adjusted his own mask and winced. This put a different complexion on things. “Get out of here, Ronon. That’s an order.”

  “I’m still not real clear on this order thing,” the Satedan replied. “’Sides, it’s too late.”

  The stubborn so-and-so was right.

  Had John mentioned he wanted some good news for a change?

  Up the hall the door to the stairway gave under the onslaught of the people behind. Inch by inch the panels slid apart, forced open by crowbars and hands and brute determination. An arm appeared, a shoulder, and someone wedged his body into the gap, pushing the opening wider with his back and legs. Fingers, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, clamped around the edges of the panels, held on. People crawled under and over the legs of the guy stuck inside the door— like a colony of carpenter ants that had finally found its way into your house.

  Or zombies.

  What was it with the Halloween imagery?

  Oh yeah. The mood lighting.

  John shook his head, attempting to clear away the surplus thoughts and stole a glance at Ronon’s blast gun. He should have known that it wouldn’t go unnoticed.

  “Set to stun,” Ronon growled, sounding disappointed.

  “They’re our people, remember?” said John, fully aware that these guys had already decided to ignore that fine distinction. He had five dead Marines to prove it. But that still didn’t mean he had to go down the same route.

  Up at the door, the last couple of people scrambled through the gap, the guy in the middle tumbled out, releasing the panels. They snapped shut like a large greedy maw. John risked a quick check of the life signs detector. Thirty-six dots, all present and correct on this side of the door. Another eight were moving in on the other side. Those were the ones he’d hoped to see.

  The Dirty Three Dozen had started down the hallway. And Ronon definitely had been right. The two leaders— plus several other people in the throng, as far as John could make out— were walking unsteadily, sluggishly, as if they had trouble keeping their balance. High fever could do that to a guy…