Entanglement

Chapter two

They needed a place to land so they could run a systems check and they needed to make a transmission to base camp, so John took the jumper back to the spaceport dome. It was far enough away to shield them from any discharges the Mirror might make, and he felt a pressing need to find a bolt-hole at the moment, even if it was just a powerless Ancient port with a broken roof.

Teyla and Ronon hadn't had the benefit of reading the SGC reports about the more portable-sized Quantum Mirror discovered in the Milky Way, so Rodney launched into an explanation. The Mirror could access a huge number of other realities, all alternate versions of this one. They could run into Atlantises that had been destroyed by the Wraith, or that had collapsed from explosive decompression on the bottom of the ocean, and those were just the good options. There was also the strong possibility they would run into realities where the Wraith had taken the city and forced the expedition to reveal the location of Earth, or where Atlantis and then Pegasus had been colonized by the slave population of a Goa'uld-controlled Milky Way. Rodney went on and on, coming up with one horrific scenario after another, until Miko looked sick, Zelenka pale, Teyla was wide-eyed with dismay, and Ronon just looked like he thought they were all insane. As the domes of the deserted spaceport appeared in the jumper's port, John finally shouted, "Rodney, stop, we get it! Going through the Mirror is asking to be screwed! We'll all be evil and you'll have a beard! Now calm down!"

"I just want to make certain everyone completely understands the unimaginable danger!" Rodney shouted back, red-faced and upset.

Teyla leaned across the cockpit to squeeze his arm soothingly. "It is all right, we understand."

"Yes, Dr. McKay, we do," Miko told him gently. "Do you need an aspirin?"

"Dammit, no, I don't need an-All right, give me the damn things," Rodney grumbled, grudgingly accepting the tablets and a water bottle.

"You are preaching to choir, Rodney," Zelenka added. "No one can imagine the unimaginable danger like we can.

Leaning in the cabin hatchway, Ronon said, "I don't understand."

John gritted his teeth. He really wasn't in the mood right now for Ronon's caveman act. "Ronon."

"I understand what it is," Ronon clarified. "I don't understand why we're still here with it."

Rodney sighed and pressed the water bottle to his forehead. "Because we have to find out if there's the slightest chance that it could lead us to living Ancients. If it can't, we have to try to shut it down before the Wraith find it."

Zelenka buried his face in his hands. "Oh, God."

You can say that again, John thought grimly. As they reached the spaceport, he slowed the jumper, directing it into a hover above the broken dome. The HUD popped up, telling him the immediate area was still negative for life signs and energy signatures, and that the terrain sensors detected no instability in the floor below or the struc ture itself. He eased the jumper down, past the curved surface of the dome.

The jumper's outer lights came on, revealing bluegreen metal walls and multiple levels of empty landing racks. Below, the stone floor was covered with windblown sand, and a half-open hatch led deeper into the structure. The others were quiet, watching as the spotlights illuminated the giant space, so much larger than Atlantis' jumper bay.

John let the ship settle to a gentle landing and switched all the systems over to standby. He leaned back and stretched, but his spine refused to unknot; he suspected that wasn't going to change for the next few days. He eyed Rodney, who sat slumped glumly in the jump seat, his expression set and grim. Worried about him, John asked, "You okay?"

"Oh, sure, yes, I'm fine." Rodney rubbed a hand over his face. "We need to call Elizabeth."

John raised Lorne on the jumper's comm system quickly enough, though there was a few seconds of transmission lag. John briefly outlined the situation. Lorne, who had been in the SGC, obviously didn't need Rodney to tell him about Quantum Mirrors. He said, "Colonel, that's… Damn."

"Yeah, that's what we said," John agreed. "Dial Atlantis and patch me through to the gateroom."

That took a few minutes. By the time the connection was made, Miko had connected a laptop to the outputs in the rear cabin, running through a full system diagnostic, while Zelenka was opening panels to do the manual checks. The others were sitting on the bench in the back, passing around the selection of packaged snack food from the jumper's supplies. Tied to the comm system, John waved at them, trying to get them to bring him something. He was saying, "Dammit, there is a vanilla one left, I can see it in the box," when Elizabeth's voice came over the comm: "This is Weir. What's going on up there, John?"

"Well, the good news is, we're not dead," he told her, swinging the chair back around again.

"Always nice to hear," Elizabeth responded, a wry note in her voice. "The bad news?"

Rodney came forward hastily, dropped a package of cupcakes into John's lap, and sat down in the shotgun seat. He said, "We found the source of the power signatures. It's a gigantic Quantum Mirror."

There was silence on the other end that had nothing to do with the brief transmission lag. "How gigantic?" she said finally.

John ate the cupcakes, while Rodney outlined their little adventure so far. Zelenka came forward to listen, leaning on the back of Rodney's chair.

Rodney said finally, "It comes down to this. The Ancients could have built this thing as an alternate method of evacuating Pegasus at the end of the Wraith war. If they were able to find another reality where Pegasus was uninhabited, where it had never been colonized by the Ancients, where the Wraith never existed, it would have been a viable option. The Mirror's circumference isn't nearly large enough to accommodate a city-sized craft like Atlantis, but you could move an enormous amount of people and supplies through with smaller cargo ships. It would be much more efficient than dialing the Atlantis `gate back to Earth multiple times. But we have no idea if they were successful, whatever they were trying to do with it."

Sounding thoughtful, Elizabeth said, "We've certainly never seen any indication in the Atlantean database that the Ancients had an evacuation route other than Earth. And do we know if this thing has been active all this time, or if these power fluctuations you're seeing are recent?"

"Well, yes, that's the problem." Rodney waved a hand in agitation. "One of the problems. We have no way to tell without exploring the installation to look for monitoring equipment. But I find it hard to believe this thing has been sitting here for ten thousand years releasing massive bursts of energy and activating the monitor on the base moon, without the Wraith ever noticing. I think it was dormant most of that time, that this activation is recent." He drew a sharp breath. "I think we've been lucky."

John had to agree. Except for the lucky part.

Elizabeth asked, "How do we know the Wraith haven't already found it?"

"I think it's safe to say that if they had, they'd be here right now, exploring through it for new feeding grounds." Rodney flattened his hands on the jumper's console, frustrated. "The Quantum Mirror at Area 51 was unimaginably dangerous. Two seconds after Dr. Jackson discovered the thing it dragged him into another dimension where the Goa'uld were in the process of invading Earth. This Mirror has the bonus feature of being big enough to allow an invasion fleet to fly through it, as well as being unstable. But if it was used for evacuation and it's still set for the same destination, there may be living Ancients on the other side we could apply to for information or help."

"I don't think that is strong possibility." Zelenka took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "If a group did use it to escape, their first act once they were safely through would be to shut down the Mirror on their side, changing the setting, so no Wraith could follow them. It would not prevent another Mirror in yet another reality from finding them-the Mirror in Area 51 was kept shut down, but that certainly didn't prevent other Mirrors from accessing it.

"Yes, yes," Rodney agreed impatiently. "That's why Hammond ordered it destroyed. But there is a small chance that this Mirror is still set to the reality the Ancients fled to. If it isn't, I agree that our chances of stumbling on it among the countless numbers of other realities is infinitesimal. And attempting to look would be unimaginably dangerous." Rodney's mouth twisted sourly. "Judging by the SGC's experiences, any reality we access is likely to be far worse off than we are. Far worse off."

"You keep saying `unimaginable,"' Zelenka grumbled. "I told you, we can all imagine it perfectly."

"Hold it." John eyed Rodney. It had always been obvious that the Stargate networks, here and in the Milky Way, would have been built by interstellar spaceships. John felt like he was missing something as far as building the Mirrors was concerned. "So they had to go through first and build a Mirror just like this one in the other reality? How does that work? How do you get there in the first place?"

"No one knows," Rodney told him impatiently. "Quantum Mirrors exist in all realities simultaneously. Building one is a logical impossibility, but yet they exist."

John looked at Zelenka, who nodded and shrugged. John said, "Okay," and decided to go back to imagining the unimaginable danger.

"Let me sum this up," Elizabeth said, obviously trying to bring them back to the point. "You want to take a closer look at this installation, see if there's any indication that we could use it to contact the Ancients, and if not, shut the Mirror down."

Rodney leaned forward. "Exactly. We'll need to enter the structure around the Mirror. The jumper's sensors couldn't get accurate readings with all the interference from the Mirror itself; the installation could hold anything from a new Ancient database to a working ZPM." He added reluctantly, "I wouldn't count on the ZPM. Quantum Mirrors don't need external power sources; they are power sources, drawing the energy they need directly from subspace. I'd be surprised if the Ancients didn't have a way to tap into that, to use it to power the auxiliary systems in the building."

"What about the discharges?" Elizabeth asked pointedly. "Didn't the one you just experienced nearly damage the jumper?"

"I was kind of curious about that part myself," John admitted.

"Well, obviously, we'll have to land outside the installation." Rodney huffed in exasperation. "And I don't see that we have a choice. It's either leave the Mirror and chance the Wraith detecting it, or find out we've left open a portal to an invasion fleet from another reality, or-"

"I understand that, Rodney," Elizabeth reminded him. "Dr. Zelenka, what do you think?"

Zelenka folded his arms, looking uncomfortable. Sounding reluctant, he said, "This is too dangerous to ignore, Dr. Weir. If nothing else, we must try to shut it down."

L C John?"

John shrugged. He didn't see they had a choice either. "They're right."

The SCBAs, or self-contained breathing apparatus sets, each had an hour tank and a couple of spares, which could be refilled from the jumper's environmental system with a setup Zelenka had jury-rigged last year. Ronon had never used one of the breathing sets before, and John wanted to make certain Zelenka and Miko remembered their training with them, so he had everybody put a set on and they did a brief twenty minute sweep outside.

Also, everybody really wanted a look at the spaceport.

They could have spent a couple of days here, and John just hoped they would have a chance to come back. The place had been built to hold hundreds of jumpers and larger craft, the shape only teasingly hinted at by the landing slots high in the walls. They found passageways leading to two other domes, and even if all were empty, it would still be worth it to send a team back to look for tools and equipment in the repair bays.

Standing with the others at the edge of the hatch that opened into the broken dome's lower levels, John shined his P-90's light into the depths. He could see it was mostly filled with the reddish sand, with a few straggly plants growing in it. "That's kind of depressing," he commented, his voice muffled by the breathing mask. It fit over the mouth and nose, and the tank attached to a stan dard pack.

Teyla nodded, frowning. "So much work went into this place. I hope it was not in vain." She looked up, directing her light over the empty racks. "I hope some of them escaped."

"I don't know." Rodney sounded grim. He turned around, looking up at the cracked roof far overhead. "The fact that this dome was wedged open isn't a good sign. Whoever was here last had to leave in a hurry, and lost power in the process."

"There is no sign of blast scars," Zelenka pointed out, obviously trying to sound optimistic.

"If the dome was stuck open the Wraith could have used the culling beam,"John pointed out. Miko made a little choked noise and Zelenka stared upward nervously. Yeah, probably shouldn't have brought that up, John thought with a wince.

"Thank you, Colonel," Rodney said, witheringly. "On that note-"

"Right." John nodded. The Mirror wasn't getting any less dangerous. "Let's go."

John brought the jumper in low this time, barely skimming over the ground. The HUD stayed active without him having to think about it, the sensors scanning for stray energy that might mean another discharge, as if the jumper was as nervous as they were. As they neared the building, Rodney leaned down to point over John's shoulder. "There. There's a door."

"Saw it." It was triangular, and set into the base of the structure above a short flight of steps. John put the jumper down about fifty feet from it, stirring up a small cloud of dust.

When John got the board locked down and stepped into the back, everyone was gathering their packs and fumbling with the breathing sets. He clipped his P-90 to his vest and asked, "Now what's rule one?"

"Ah, I know this one," Zelenka said, looking up with his brow furrowed earnestly. "That would be to not scream, unless something is eating us, and we need your attention immediately."

John slung the pack with the air tank across his back. "Okay, that's a rule, but it's not rule one."

"Oh, ah…everybody stay together?" Zelenka tried again.

"The rule is `don't be stupid! "' Rodney said with an irritable grimace, checking his tablet one last time. "That's the only one that matters."

Teyla interposed, "The rule is to stay with us at all times, do not rush ahead no matter what the temptation, and always let us examine an area first before you enter."

"I don't think you have to worry about that with us." Zelenka consulted Miko with a look. She nodded earnestly.

"Yeah, that's one of the reasons I agreed to bring you guys," John told him.

When everybody had their breathing sets on and their packs ready, John opened the ramp. The air released from the cabin caused another dust cloud, billowing out and away from the jumper. John went down the ramp first, Teyla with him. The ground felt weird under his boots, the fine powdery dirt shifting over the more solid rock, and he paused to take a long look at their surroundings. There was nothing they hadn't spotted from the air; the dusty pink plain, patchy with dry grasses and a few scrubby bushes, stretched away for empty miles, toward the foothills and then the mountains that rose in the north. The gas giant hung low in the sky, the red-brown bands a familiar sight now. John signaled the others to come out.

Rodney strode down the ramp first, his eyes on the life signs detector except for one wary glance around. Zelenka and Kusanagi followed him, with Ronon on their six. John used the jumper remote to close the ramp and set the cloak. Each team member had their own remote to get back in, and if something happened to John, both Rodney and Kusanagi could fly the jumper, though Rodney had a lot more experience at it than she did.

They moved toward the door, Ronon facing away from it to keep watch as John examined it thoughtfully. It was made of blue-green metal set into a stone frame, with square patterns embossed into the surface. Studying the detector, Rodney said, "Huh. I'm getting readings suggesting that the power is on inside." He sounded intrigued rather than worried. "This isn't a ZPM signature. I was right, it must be drawing power from the Mirror."

It meant they might not have to manually pry the door up. "Can you get it open?" John asked him.

Rodney eyed it, then stepped to the side, touching a small square set deep into the stone wall. The door started to slide upward, moving a little sluggishly. Rodney looked at John, chin lifted. "Of course."

Teyla stepped to John's side to cover the growing opening, but their lights showed the chamber inside was empty. John moved to the doorway, and soft white recessed lights came on in the ceiling, revealing a space that would have been just big enough to slide the jumper into, if the door had been large enough. The walls were tinted the same blue-green as the outer door, and the floor embossed with strips of dull silver metal. There was another sealed triangular door just opposite, and a steady breeze.

Rodney held out a hand to feel the air flow, frowning. "It's pressurized." He looked at his tablet. "I'm reading close to twenty-two percent oxygen."

"Well, we knew the power was on." John stepped cautiously into the room, signaling the others to stay back. This was the part where he made sure the inner door was going to open and the outer wasn't going to shut and trap them inside. He crossed the room, pausing to hold a hand up in front of a silver disk set into the wall. Close up it still looked solid, but it was emitting a strong flow of air. "This is a vent."

"But the power should have been on standby," Rodney objected from the doorway behind him. "That's how Ancient systems work. And there hasn't been time to pressurize this entire structure."

Zelenka added, "Perhaps the system detected the jumper's landing, and restored atmosphere to this section only."

"But why should it?" Rodney waved a hand, still frowning. "This isn't a landing pad, it's a foot entrance. If there's a jumper bay, it should be accessed through the roof."

"Atlantis was pressurized when we arrived," Miko pointed out hesitantly.

"Well, yes, I know that," Rodney said acidly, "But-"

John tuned out the debate, touching the wall console next to the inner door. It slid open to reveal a corridor, gently curved to follow the shape of the building. The lights came smoothly up, giving the dark blue stone a soft glow. John stepped in, feeling the strong flow of air as the open door behind him created a breeze, the lower pressure sucking out the air inside. The rounded ceiling was about twelve feet high. "Looks good so far."

The others followed him in, Rodney pausing to shut the outside door. John eyed him. "That a good idea?"

Rodney shook the tablet at him. "I have no idea why, but this building appears to be pressurized. We can save the air in our tanks for emergencies and exploring outside."

"Okay." John drew the word out, making Rodney glare at him, but John had to admit he had a point. An hour wasn't a long time to explore a building this size, and for all they knew it could take them that long just to find a lab or monitoring equipment.

John shut off his breathing set, pulling his mask down as the others followed suit. The air didn't smell dusty or musty or of anything except empty stone hallways. "So where to now?" he asked.

"Good question." Rodney glanced up from his detector with a thoughtful frown. "Let's try this way."

John put Ronon on their six again, and took the lead with Teyla, following the curve of the corridor. After a few minutes walk, John could see a section ahead where the cool white light took on an unhealthy red tint. "Rodney, do you see that?" he asked warily.

Rodney peered down the corridor. "The quality of the light? Yes, it's probably not a good sign."

"A good sign of what?" Zelenka asked a little ner vously.

"How the hell should I know?" Rodney said in frustration.

They reached the edge of the red shadows and John stopped, shining the P-90's light over the floor. Nothing seemed different. Ronon, who was tall enough that his head was almost even with the bottom of the nearest light fixture, stepped close to the wall, frowning. He said, "It's a plant. It's grown over the light."

He lifted a hand and John said sharply, "Don't touch it!" He realized a moment later the entire group had shouted the same words practically in unison. He shook his head. It was a good thing they hadn't been trying to sneak up on something.

Ronon stopped, looking back at them with a lifted brow. "It's just a plant."

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Yes, well, when your skin falls off, let us know."

"Alien plants can be very dangerous, and not just ifyou ingest them," Zelenka added more reasonably. "There were the flowers on PX5-237, that gave Sergeant Bates those nasty bites."

Miko nodded. "Yes, the mold on PX3-58, that tried to chase Sergeant Stackhouse through the Stargate."

Teyla winced. "I remember that well."

Ronon frowned at the fuzzy growth and stepped back carefully.

John moved forward, his light revealing more patches of the stuff. "It's like that algae we keep getting in the city, in the rooms below the waterline." The lowest levels of Atlantis had been flooded in the early stages of the catastrophic storm that had hit the city in their first year there. Even with all the repairs they had been able to make and the restored power from the new ZPM, those sections were still uncomfortably damp and subject to occasional weird growths.

Teyla nodded. "Very like. And it seems to be all over these walls. Should we take a sample for the botanists?"

"Screw the botanists," Rodney said impatiently. "The gigantic Quantum Mirror that could kill us where we stand is our top priority at the moment."

"Rodney, just calm down, we're getting there," John said pointedly.

After about fifty more yards, Rodney said suddenly, "Stop." His voice was tight with tension. John halted in step with Teyla, scanning the corridor ahead. Rodney continued, "I'm getting a life sign flicker. Something small." He turned the detector, then pointed, his eyes still on the screen. "On that wall."

In another instant their lights found it. It was a dull red lumpy knobby thing, about the size of a dinner plate, flattened against the wall. P-90 raised, John took a cautious step toward it, squinting, trying to get a better look. He could tell it had short stubby tentacles that it was using to cling to the wall; it looked a little like an octopus that had suffered multiple amputations. He said, "That's… ugly."

"Shouldn't you be shooting it?" Rodney wanted to know.

Watching it carefully, Teyla pointed out, "It is not attacking us. I do not even think it knows we are here."

"Yes, but it might attack," Rodney said in exasperation. "Granted, it doesn't seem to have any legs, or arms, but-"

"What if we kill this one and that antagonizes the whole herd or whatever, and they attack us?" John said, taking another cautious step closer.

Rodney huffed in annoyance. "Oh, fine. I see your point."

The wall here was thickly covered with the algae-like reddish growth, and the octopus had attached itself right in the middle of it. John didn't want to kill the thing if it was harmless, but he needed to find out if it was safe to just ignore it.

He stepped close enough to the wall to get a better view of its head, staying well out of the short tentacle range. It looked like its mouth was a big pad, which it was using to suck the red growth off the wall. As John watched, one big purple eye opened and rolled to study him. Its stubby tentacles tightened protectively on its stretch of wall and it edged away from him a little. "It's sucking up the algae," he reported, stepping back. "I think we'd be a little much for it."

Teyla frowned, playing her light over the walls. "But if this building has been sealed since the Ancients departed, how did it get in?"

"There could be a door open somewhere," Ronon answered, still watching the corridor behind them.

"But this section must be sealed, or it couldn't stay pressurized," Zelenka told him. He looked a little jumpy, and was clutching his tablet protectively to his chest, but other than that he seemed to be doing okay so far. "Even if the air system was somehow activated by the jumper's arrival."

"No, this building was open at some point." Rodney squinted uneasily at the creature. "Maybe the Mirror's energy discharges triggered some sort of reactivation of the installation's systems, and it sealed and pressurized itself."

"Let's just leave the wall-octopus alone," John concluded, and they kept moving.

A little past that section, John almost walked by the tall triangle embossed into the inner wall, thinking it was just decorative. Rodney stopped abruptly. "Wait, wait. Does this look like another door?"

"Not really." John came back to contemplate it. It had a narrow blue-green metal frame, and there was a smaller triangle set in the center panel.

"I wasn't talking to you. Well?" he demanded.

Zelenka was already examining the edge of the embossed area, shining his flashlight into the minute cracks. "These are seams, so this whole piece may lift up, but why no wall console?"

His face intent, Rodney laid a hand flat on the center triangle. There was a faint pop of displaced air as the door started to slide upward. Rodney flinched back, then caught Zelenka by his jacket and pulled him out of the way. John jerked up his weapon to cover the opening, Teyla and Ronon stepping up behind him. But the space inside was empty, a stairwell with a wide set of steps spiraling upward. "This is interesting," Rodney said, preoccupied.

Still covering the corridor, Ronon asked, "Why?"

It was Miko who said, "There is no wall console, so only someone with the Ancient gene could open the door."

"It's probably security feature," Zelenka added, a little uneasily. "They didn't want just anyone to access the Mirror controls, perhaps."

John stepped into the stairwell, looking up. The lights had come on, but he couldn't see anything but stairs. Teyla stepped in to look, pointing out, "It would also keep out the Wraith."

"Good point." John glanced at Rodney. "Up? Or keep going around?"

Rodney had taken the tablet away from Zelenka and now waved it and the life signs detector in frustration. "I have no idea. In this one instance, your guess is as good as mine.

John lifted a brow, exchanged a look with Teyla, then said, "Right. Let's try up."

On the first landing there was a doorway that opened into what seemed to be an empty shaft. It had tiny blue lights set in narrow silver bands running down the sides, and seemed to lead straight down to the floor below. "The elevator's broken?" John suggested, leaning out to look down. Teyla stretched around the other side, shining her light down the shaft.

"Ali, better not to put your heads in there," Zelenka said, studying the tablet. "I'm getting a low-level energy signature."

As John eased away from the opening and Teyla stepped back, Rodney snatched the tablet again. "Wait, wait, wait. This looks like…" Brow furrowed thoughtfully, Rodney pulled a pen out of his tac vest and tossed it through the opening. It hung in midair for a moment, then vanished.

Rodney and Zelenka had their eyes on the tablet's screen, watching it analyze the readings, with Miko craning her neck to see over Zelenka's shoulder. John and Teyla stared at the spot where the dematerialized pen had been. "Hope you didn't need that," Ronon commented dryly.

"Why would this be on the stairwell where anyone might stumble in?" Teyla asked, sounding mildly horrified.

"It's not a walk-in disintegrator, if that's what you're thinking," Rodney said, still thoughtful. "Hold it, let's try this." He took out a small pocket flashlight, clicked it on, and tossed it into the shaft. It vanished. Rodney leaned cautiously out to look down. "The energy signature is almost identical to the transporters on Atlantis, and this is the right location for a safety shaft. See, there it is."

John looked. Down at the bottom, right about the level of the first floor, was the gleam of the flashlight. "Cool. So it's a transporter-safety exit." And the fact that the Ancients had seen a need for it.. probably didn't mean anything good.

Going up, they found three more levels, though the topmost wasn't nearly high enough to be at the top of the structure. There were obviously more levels that this stairwell didn't access, that there had to be another way to get to.

Looking at the interior rooms, John could see the walls were unusually thick, much thicker than they had to be to support the weight of the building. "They built this place to last," he commented to Rodney, as Zelenka and Kusanagi scanned a room they had found off one of the landings. Every piece of equipment seemed to have been removed, like the ruined city on the base moon.

"Yes, I suspect they anticipated frequent quakes from the discharges," Rodney said, mouth twisted as he studied the readings on his tablet.

John's brows quirked. "So…the Mirror was probably unstable even back when they built this place?" They had heard another couple of low rumbles, but nothing close to the size of the first discharge.

"Yes. Doesn't bode well, does it," Rodney said with a grimace.

Zelenka rejoined them, tucking his equipment back into his pack. "They certainly didn't leave in a hurry," he said tiredly, wiping sweat off his brow. "Everything was removed, very carefully."

"Except the Mirror," Teyla put in. Ronon was watching the corridor and she was standing on the landing, keeping a cautious eye on the stairs.

"And either the instability caused it to activate," Rodney said, his eyes on his tablet screen. "Or another reality accessed it."

"So something could come through that thing anytime," Ronon asked, flicking an uneasy look at Teyla.

"Yes. Anything, at anytime," Rodney said, snapping his tablet shut. "Did I not make that abundantly clear before?"

"You did," John told him. "But standing next to it and knowing that adds a little extra drama."

As they continued, they found more empty rooms that could have been labs or control areas, and a section of transparent wall filled with bundles of crystal conduit. John saw the seams in the floor by accident, his light catching one when the others had stopped to take readings again. It was just to one side of a broad blue-green band that he had thought was just more floor decoration. The bands lay about every ten yards along the corridor. Signaling the others to halt, John went back to look at the last two bands, checking for seams. As he returned, Rodney came over, asking, "What the hell are you doing?"

John knelt beside a band, shining his light on the seam. "What does that look like?"

"That's just a decorative-Oh, wait." Rodney dropped to a crouch, frowning as he ran his fingers along the little gap. "This is a door, a blast door. It must come up from the floor-"

Teyla stepped closer, eyeing the floor uneasily, as John said tightly, "They're all along this corridor, and from the size of the bands, the doors are a good foot thick. We don't have any tools that could cut through this. And yeah, we have C-4, but the space we'd be trapped in is too small; we couldn't blow the wall without killing ourselves. If they close for some reason, like another explosion, we'd be screwed."

"Of course we'd be screwed, we're always screwed," Rodney said, annoyed. "What do you want me to do about it?"

"I don't know," John snapped. "You tell me."

Rodney said rapidly, "Look, there's been minor discharges since we discovered this structure and the doors are still open. Either it takes a bigger energy burst to activate them, or after the danger is past, they open automatically." His mouth twisted as he thought that through. "If the power failed temporarily, we would… probably have enough air to survive."

"Right." John considered going back. But if they did that, they might as well pretend the damn Mirror didn't exist at all and just leave. It wasn't going to get any safer to do this. He said reluctantly, "We'll keep going."

"Good," Rodney said, though his expression showed he knew exactly how wrong this could go. John looked up to see Zelenka and Kusanagi looking down with anxious faces. He suppressed the impulse to tell them it was going to be okay. He had said that too many times when the outcome had been anything but okay. He just said, "We need to move faster."

Zelenka said, "Of course, yes." Kusanagi just nodded sharply, though she looked terrified.

After that they stopped checking the empty labs, just glancing in and scanning briefly to make certain nothing useful had been left behind. They had passed two more open stairwells and John estimated that they had traveled three quarters of the way around the structure's circumference when they came to a sealed doorway in the inner wall. "I have a good feeling," Zelenka said, scanning it thoughtfully. "All the other empty labs were left open."

"Try it," John said, hoping this was it. "We're due a little luck here."

"Hold that thought," Rodney muttered darkly. He took one last look at the life signs detector, waved Zelenka out of the way, and touched the triangle in the center of the door.

It started to slide up and he stepped quickly aside so John and Teyla could cover the opening.

Bingo, John thought, as the door revealed a stretch of wall with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at the Quantum Mirror. He stepped inside cautiously, Teyla following. It was a long room, curved to follow the inner wall, and there were three banks of consoles set in the center of the floor, all of them blue-green metal with the familiar crystal touchpads and controls. "Yeah, this could be it."

"Finally," Rodney growled, striding in. As the others followed, John stepped to the window. It was curved outward into a bubble, the outside streaked with red dust. He didn't have much perspective on how big the structure was from this vantage point. The dark curve of the building was like a stadium, the Quantum Mirror the playing field.

The black surface of the Mirror itself wasn't visible, which was kind of a relief. The dull silver-gray wall of the naquadah frame was high enough to block any view of it. John could see the frame was jointed, as if it had been laid down in sections, each about the length of a train's boxcar. Surrounding it was a large open plaza of dark blue pavement. Rodney stepped up beside him. "Yes. Yes, yes, yes. This could be the control center." He turned back toward the banks of consoles.

"No, no, this is for monitoring," Zelenka was saying, pacing back and forth between the consoles and the port, as if torn between which he wanted to examine first.

John noticed that the roof of the structure had some kind of narrow projection sticking out over the inner area. He put a hand on the top edge of the port and leaned out into the bubble, trying to get a better view. It looked as if it was just an extension of the roof. He thought he could see silver ribbing embedded in it and wondered if it was recording data of some kind from the Mirror, or if it was somehow part of the energy shielding. He made a mental note to direct Rodney's attention to it once Rodney was done exclaiming hysterically over the consoles.

Then Ronon said, "What's that?"

John pulled himself out of the bubble. "What?"

"Right there." Ronon leaned over to point, so John could sight along his arm.

It was a structure, standing on the plaza about midway around the Mirror, a couple of hundred yards from the frame. It was dark-colored like the stone, making it hard to spot. It had curving sides, the walls shaded from black to blue to near purple at the round base; John judged it was about the size of a two story house. It looked like a giant inverted tulip. He shook his head. "I don't know. Some kind of observatory?"

Miko stepped up beside him, adjusting her glasses to peer at it. "It could be, but it doesn't resemble the main structure. The shape is very.. and…" She trailed off, leaning forward to stare intently at the little building. "Dr. McKay, Dr. Zelenka, please, look at this."

John's brow furrowed. "What?"

Zelenka stepped up beside Miko, peering uncertainly. "That…is a spaceship."

"What?" Rodney's annoyance fled as he stepped up to the port. "Right, those are drive pods. It's just hard to tell because they're vertical and-" He stared, his jaw dropping. "Wait, wait, what?"

"But it doesn't look anything like the jumpers," John said. He was beginning to get that feeling, that feeling that things were about to take a very bad turn. "How do you go from square box to giant tulip?"

"There could be variations, among different Ancient cultures, as there is between Atlantis and some of the other sites we have found," Zelenka said uncertainly. "Corrigan or one of the other archeologists might be able to say."

"Or it could be alien," John said. Yeah, he had a bad feeling about this. Rodney was still staring at the ship, his face rapt.

Teyla was trying to listen while keeping an eye on the corridor. "But it has been here since this place was abandoned." No one answered her and she added with some concern, "Has it not?"

Rodney, Zelenka, and Miko didn't answer, and Ronon was watching John, a wary line between his brows. Then something flashed along the Mirror's frame, and the port suddenly grayed out into an opaque metal shield. John stepped back, startled. "What-"

"That was a discharge from the Mirror," Rodney said, looking toward the consoles. "The port must be responding to it. But it doesn't seem to be-"

John looked up at a muted rumble, like thunder; he felt it roll through the structure, shaking the stone and metal underfoot, vibrating through his bones. Ronon twitched uneasily.

Nervously, Rodney finished, "-serious. On the other hand-"

"Okay, that's it," John began, "We're-"

An alarm klaxon blared and John jerked up his P-90 in pure startled reflex as everyone else flinched. "-leaving," he finished. "What the hell?"

"It's a security system," Rodney bellowed over the noise, looking around the room in frustration. "Did one of you touch something?"

Teyla shook her head, wincing at the noise, and Zelenka and Miko held up empty hands. Ronon was staring back down the corridor. John had been facing away from the port, and he knew none of the others had moved. He said, "Nobody touched anything. We need to get out of here, move, now!"

Teyla headed for the corridor as John swept out an arm to herd Zelenka and Kusanagi after her. But Ronon stepped into their path to stop them, his face urgent. "Do you hear that? That crashing?"

Teyla's face went still with concentration, her head tilted as she listened. Rodney was looking at the detector, saying, "Still no life signs. The system must have been on some kind of delay. Opening the outer door should have triggered-"

"Shut up for a second!" John told him. In another moment he heard it too: in between each deep blare of the alarm, there was a heavy metallic thud. "Oh crap," he breathed.

Rodney was looking at him, eyes wide in alarm. "Blast doors. The blast doors are closing!"

John ducked out into the corridor. The nearest blast doors hadn't shut, but the metallic thuds were closer, the echo carrying all through the building. "Ronon, which way is it coming from?" he shouted. If the doors were closing sequentially in one direction, they had a chance.

Ronon went still and cocked his head. "That way," he said a moment later, pointing to the right, the direction they had come from. The direction of the nearest stairwell. That really wasn't what John wanted to hear.

He yelled, "Run the other way, go, go," and gave Ronon a shove to tell him to take the lead.

Ronon bolted and John waved the others after him. He took their six, wanting to make sure Miko didn't fall behind. But she took off like an Olympic sprinter, keeping up with Teyla and Rodney easily, and it was only Zelenka that John had to worry about.

Another discharge shook the floor underfoot, slowing them down. They made it about fifty yards down the corridor when John heard the metallic thuds become exponentially louder. He threw a glance over his shoulder in time to see a green metal blast door slide up to hit the ceiling, just at the curve of the corridor. He swore, turning back, and Zelenka panted, "What?"

"Just run," John said, but he didn't hear the next thud until ten seconds later, and that was just after Ronon shouted, "Stairs!"

We can make it, John thought, and grabbed Zelenka's arm, urging him along.

Then a green wall slammed upward just in front of Ronon, so abruptly he bounced off it before he could stop. The others slid to an abrupt halt, and John whirled around in time to see the blast door just behind them thumping into place. Rodney was shouting, "They closed out of sequence! Dammit-"

"Rodney!" John said through gritted teeth. "Think of something."

Breathing hard, Zelenka stepped to the blast door, pulling out his tablet again, studying it intently. "Door is solid mass. This is not good."

John looked back. Miko was frantically running her hands over the other door. She said, "There are no controls here-" Ronon growled and slammed his hand against the stone.

"Wait, wait, wait!" Rodney bellowed. In the immediate silence, he pressed a hand to his forehead and said thickly, "This is a safety feature."

"Yes, but we did not know what to do, where to go, when the alarm went off," Teyla said, turning to study the walls uneasily.

Exasperated, John began, "It trapped us here-"

"It stopped us here," Rodney snapped. "We were nearly to the stairs and it stopped us-" He halted abruptly, his eyes narrowing.

Getting it an instant later, John said, "Because there's a closer exit in this section."

Zelenka and Miko were already converging on Rodney, Zelenka saying rapidly, "It should have opened automatically-"

"The mechanism could be damaged-" Miko added.

"Look for seams in the outer wall," Rodney finished.

John scrambled with the others, running his hands over the stone, down the metal bands. It felt like forever but it must have been only a few moments before Teyla said, "Here!"

Rodney practically flung her out of the way, running his hand down the band. "It's not responding. Colonel-"

John stepped forward, pressing his hand to the band, but he didn't think this was a natural Ancient gene thing. The doors below had responded easily to Rodney's artificial gene, and there was no reason these should be different. The band didn't budge. "No, nothing," he said tightly.

"The crystals must be damaged," Rodney snarled, elbowing John out of the way.

Miko dropped to the floor, unslinging her pack and pulling out tools to hand Rodney and Zelenka as they pried at the band.

John felt another low rumble travel through the build ing. He saw Rodney throw a worried look at the ceiling. It would be just our luck that this place picks now to collapse, John thought sourly. Then a section of the band popped open, revealing the Ancient control crystals set into the deceptively simple matrix. Zelenka pointed, agitated. "There, there!" Rodney said, "I know, I know!" and rapidly switched around three of the crystals.

A section of the inner wall next to the band slid sideways, releasing a puff of stale displaced air. Inside was a circular shaft like the one they had found in the stairwell. The blue and silver light strips flickered on.

"The readings say the transporter effect should be working," Miko reported tensely, studying the tablet's readout.

Rodney fumbled in the pockets of his tac vest. "Hold on, I'll test it."

Ronon said, "I'll do it," and stepped into the shaft. Rodney gasped in alarm and John and Teyla both lunged for Ronon, but he had already vanished. "Ronon!" John yelled.

"It works!" Ronon's voice echoed up from below. "There's a door down here."

John swore, Teyla rolled her eyes incredulously, and Zelenka and Miko exchanged an appalled look. Rodney clapped a hand to his forehead and said, "That was not what I had in mind."

"Just go, come on, one at a time," John said. Miko went first, gripping her pack tightly, then Rodney shoved Zelenka in and jumped after him. John gave Teyla a nod, telling her to go next. He had one hand on the edge of the doorway, ready to step in, when a gleam of light caught his eye.

There was a small silver disk high up on the wall, standing out and angled so it was pointing at him. He froze for an instant, because he was damn sure it hadn't been there a few minutes ago when they had been frantically searching for the way out.

He took a half-step toward it. Then from the transporter shaft, Rodney shouted, "Colonel!"

John shook himself, recalling that he didn't have time for checking out mysterious objects, and stepped into the shaft.