Entanglement

Chapter nine

Carson found Major Lorne in the Daedalus' mess. The long compartment was mostly empty, with only a few off-duty crew members having coffee or early dinners. Carson took a seat across the table from Lorne, admitting, "I keep wanting to ask you if there's been any word, but that's not likely in hyperspace, is it?"

Lorne shook his head, and didn't have to check his watch. He had the air of a man who had been watching the clock for so long he had an intimate awareness of the passage of minutes and seconds. "Not for another half hour or so. That's still our projected arrival time."

Carson tasted his coffee and winced. It was terrible, but unfortunately, the tea was worse. He had been clock-watching himself, in between reading the reports about the previous Quantum Mirror incidents. He had a better understanding now of just what Rodney and the others might have gotten themselves into. He was still hoping that in the time the Daedalus had been underway, Sheppard's team would have found their way back through the Stargate on the base moon. Colonel Caldwell might not be happy about the wasted trip, but then Colonel Caldwell can lump it, he thought.

Some of the old guard tended to be a little resentful of Caldwell, wanting to close ranks against an outside authority, against someone who hadn't spent the last year isolated and under the constant threat of the Wraith. Carson didn't think it was a fair or logical attitude, but he didn't know Caldwell very well, and the man was hard to read. That might be part of the problem. We've all been living in a close-knit little community for so long, we're too used to each others' ways. An outsider, especially someone who was seen as a potential rival to Elizabeth's and Sheppard's authority, was bound to have a hard row to hoe.

And there was a rumor that Carson kept hearing, that Caldwell had suggested Sheppard had killed Colonel Sumner unnecessarily, that Sheppard could have rescued him if he bothered. If the rumor was true, it would explain a great deal of the tension. The man should review the report on poor Colonel Everett, Carson thought uncharitably. Or stop by the medlab the next time Carson and Biro were autopsying a Wraith victim. Carson shook off that unpleasant image. He told Lorne, "Perhaps when we come out of hyper there'll be a message from home, saying they arrived safely sometime after we left."

He saw Lorne smile wryly. He supposed he had been sounding a bit like a Pollyanna again. Carson sighed. "I know, I know, I'm something of an optimist. It helps balance out Rodney."

"I wish I was an optimist," Lorne admitted. "I should have-" He cut himself off with grimace, and put more sugar in his coffee.

Carson watched him a moment, then said firmly, "You didn't abandon your post, lad. You had to get the others out, and that needed both jumpers. What were you going to do, hide out there alone? That wouldn't have done anybody any good."

"I know, Doc, there wasn't a choice." Lorne still didn't say it like he believed it. He shook his head. "If we don't find them-"

Then Carson felt the low steady thrum of the ship's engines change in pitch. After all these long hours en route, he hadn't been aware of the engine noise at all, but the slight change made him sit up straight. The Daedalus was coming out of hyperspace. Startled, Lorne set his mug down with a thump and checked his watch, saying, "We're early."

"Thank God for that." By the time Carson shoved out of his chair, Lorne had already raced down the corridor. Carson caught up with him at the lift and they made it onto the bridge together. Heart pounding, Carson followed Lorne through the maze of consoles and suspended screens to the forward area. Colonel Caldwell was on his feet, watching one of the console screens over the operator's shoulder.

The view out the big port didn't tell Carson much. He could see the moon, presumably the correct moon, hanging red and full in the lower quarter of the port.

Caldwell glanced up at their arrival. "We've got a little problem, gentlemen."

"Colonel?" Lorne asked warily. Carson swallowed frustration, supposing that if the sensors had picked up puddlejumper wreckage and human bodies, the man wouldn't use quite those words to announce it.

Caldwell folded his arms, frowning at the screen. "We've found the Quantum Mirror, exactly as described. But there's no sign of the jumper."

Major Meyers at the right hand control board touched some buttons, studying her screen carefully. "Sir, I'm still not picking up any life signs, and there are no ships in the area.

"Not even Wraith?" Beckett asked, feeling his heart sink.

"We've identified some orbital debris that looks like it might be from darts, several of them." Caldwell saw Carson's expression. He added, "The Mirror is interfering with our sensors, Doctor, and we just got here. At the moment, all it means is that we've got a lot of searching to do."

Carson swallowed in a dry throat, and nodded. It didn't mean they had all been captured-taken-by Wraith. It just meant that they had had to go to ground somewhere, to hide in some other part of the system.

One of the airmen said, "Sir, we've got a sensor scan of the structure."

Caldwell stepped over to the man's station. "Let's see it.

The image that formed on the screen could have been a weather satellite's view of a massive hurricane. It seemed to cover half the moon's surface, the sensors rendering the detected energy into angry swirls of color, spiraling outward. It looked like the images the jumpers had collected of the killer storm that had nearly destroyed Atlantis, like a powerful malevolent entity. Baffled, Carson said, "What the bloody hell is that?"

Lorne shook his head a little, staring incredulously. "That's not the-"

Caldwell's expression was grim. "That's the Mirror."

"Colonel, answer me! Are you all right? Colonel!"

John pried his eyes open. Rodney was leaning over him, pale and wide-eyed with anxiety. "Yeah. What?" Groggy and finding it difficult to think, John couldn't figure out why his perspective was so skewed. He was lying on his side, on a painfully knobby surface, but he could see part of the cockpit's ceiling past Rodney's head, and he didn't think he had ever seen it from this angle before. It was like an Escher print or a Twilight Zone episode. And Rodney was clinging to the pilot's seat like he needed it to keep himself upright, and his breathing mask was down around his neck. John didn't seem to be wearing his anymore either, though he could feel the tank jammed into his back. He asked vaguely, "You okay?"

"No, no, I'm not, actually." Rodney laughed a little, with just a touch of hysteria. "But back to my original question-No, never mind. First things first. You need to get off the console."

"The what?" John's head hurt and his ears were ringing, but he could hear Teyla and Miko in the rear cabin. Miko sounded frightened and shaky, and there was a note of urgency in Teyla's voice that worried him a lot. He tried to sit up, and that was when he realized the thing his knee was jammed against was the jumper's DHD, and it suddenly dawned on him why everything looked so strange. He was on top of the control console, wedged between it and the port. And the jumper was sitting at an odd angle, tilted slightly forward. Oh crap, we crashed. No, something the Mirror? grabbed us off the roof. He looked over his shoulder, out the port. It was dark outside, but the cockpit's emergency lighting fell on a dart smashed up against the jumper's nose. A Wraith arm, unmoving, was sticking up out of the wreckage, the hand clenched as if grasping for something. John blinked. "Uh o.

"Yes, that's a brief but accurate summation." Rodney took John's arm, trying to pull him upright. "We're on the Mirror platform, and the deck has a couple of feet of incline, so I suspect there's another dart underneath us. The inertial dampeners must have held on until the last possible instant or we'd all be smashed to bloody pulp, you especially. Next time you tell us to strap in, you should actually do it too."

"Rodney, is he all right?" Teyla called from the rear cabin.

"Not really, no," Rodney called back.

"I'm fine." John shoved away from the port, then gasped as little knives stabbed his back, ribs, and right knee all at once. He gritted his teeth against the pain and said, "Anybody hurt?"

Still trying to pull John off the panel, Rodney winced. "Radek and Ronon didn't finish strapping in either. Radek's still unconscious but Ronon's coming around." Rodney braced a foot on the base of the DHD, grabbed John by the tac vest and hauled him up. "Oof, you're heavy when you're half-conscious," he gasped. "And trust me, this is not a good time for my back to go out. Did I mention there are Wraith everywhere? There are life signs and dart energy signatures all around us."

We could be seriously screwed here, John thought, grabbing the pilot's seat and dragging himself upright and off the console. The blood rushed from his head and he squeezed his eyes shut, holding onto Rodney, riding out the wave of dizziness. His side hurt in one particular spot when he took more than a shallow breath, and he knew he must have a couple of cracked ribs. "Do we have the cloak, weapons, radio?"

"No, we have nothing, we're down to emergency power." Rodney's voice was hard, edgy with fear. "The Mirror's field may have overloaded the crystals in the main bus. I have to check under the console. Please don't throw up on me."

"I'm not going to throw up." John got his eyes open. The emergency lighting was on, but all the other screens in the cockpit were dead. His heart was pounding, the adrenaline helping clear his head. They couldn't stay in the jumper without power for weapons or the cloak, the Wraith could cut their way in, jimmy the hatch controls from outside, or just blow them up. They had to get to a place they could defend. "If we can't fix the jumper, we need to make for the building." He pushed away from the pilot's seat and managed to stagger past Rodney, who immediately crouched down and started to rip open the panel under the console.

Teyla was just inside the rear cabin hatch, stuffing ammo into her vest pockets, two extra P-90s slung over one shoulder. She met John's eyes, her face tense and desperate. Yeah, John didn't know how they were going to get out of this one either. Past her he saw Zelenka lying on the deck unconscious, the front of his blue uniform shirt spattered with blood; Miko was just fixing a bandage to a gash on his forehead. Ronon sat on the bench, mostly upright but listing to one side and holding his head. Everybody looked bruised, scraped, battered. Teyla handed John a P-90 and said, "I can sense the Wraith. They are confused, angry. Hungry." She took a sharp breath and added, "If they have been away from their hive for some time, and have not run across any inhabited worlds to cull, the drones may not have been allowed to feed."

"Great." That was about all they needed. John got the P-90 clipped to his vest.

Rodney pushed out of the cockpit, and from his desperate expression, the news wasn't good. "The main power crystals are dead. If it's what I think-" He stepped across to the rack with the emergency supplies, pulled out a padded case, and tore it open. His mouth twisted in despair. "Yes, it's what I think. The field drained all of them, even these spares that weren't connected into the system. Unless we want to live out the rest of our very short lives in this jumper, we have to go."

John hadn't thought it would be anything else. The jumper just felt… dead. "Right. Everybody, check your breathing units. Miko, you're on the life signs detector. Rodney get a P-90. Ronon, can you carry Radek?" John hoped like hell Ronon could carry Radek, because he wasn't leaving anybody behind.

Ronon spat blood out onto the deck and shoved unsteadily to his feet. He was well on the way to developing two perfect black eyes. "Yeah. Let's go."

It took time they didn't have to scramble for extra ammo, and to get their breathing gear back on, and John made sure they were stocked up on grenades. They had smoke, flash-bangs, and fragmentation, and that might give them just enough of an extra edge. Miko grabbed the medical kit and Rodney stuffed the tablets and laptops into a couple of supply packs. John checked Miko's sidearm, making sure it was loaded and that she had extra clips in her vest. He knew she was checked out on it on the firing range, but he didn't think she had had to use it in earnest before.

Once Ronon had Zelenka slung over one shoulder and his energy gun in his free hand, John said, "Are we clear?"

"Closest life sign is one hundred yards," Miko reported, her eyes wide and bruised in the dim light. "But they are all around us."

Right, John thought. "Stay together," he reminded them, and nodded to Rodney.

"Oh here we go." Rodney, his face set in bleak misery, hit the emergency release for the ramp. "Nice working with you all."

As the ramp started to drop, John saw that the sky was dark, the gas giant eclipsing the sun again. The jumper's hatch was facing the Mirror's frame, the flat dull silver wall of it looming over them, but it was dimly lit by a muted white glow. The light was coming from above, from the Mirror, which was a little freaky. And he hadn't thought enough time had passed for another eclipse but whatever, it would help cover their retreat. "Keep your lights off," he said, and swung down to the pavement, wincing as his weight came down on his right leg.

Teyla jumped out behind him, P-90 ready. As the others climbed out, John looked cautiously around the side of the jumper. A cold wind moved over the vast stretch of the Mirror platform, stirring dust, cutting right through the material of his shirt. In the ghostly light from the Mirror, he could see a scatter of wrecked darts, some nearly intact and some crumpled smoking wrecks. The jumper was nosed into the dart he had seen through the port, and the long outline of a second dart was sticking out from under this side. Score two for us. There was no movement nearby, and he stepped out to get his bearings on the nearest entrance to the installation.

And he stopped, staring. "Uh."

Teyla moved up beside him, then halted in shock. "Colonel, what-How-"

John's eyes couldn't make sense of it. He stared, but it wasn't an optical illusion or a head injury. The installation was different.

There were towers evenly spaced along the flat roof, caught in the reflected light from the glowing Mirror. Tall narrow ones, with gracefully angular spires, like the ones on Atlantis.

John had a really bad feeling about this.

The others gathered behind him, and Miko said in astonishment, "Dr. McKay, I'm reading a breathable atmosphere now, twenty-one percent oxygen." She added, "Oh, I think we are-I think we must have-This is-

Rodney dragged his mask down, took a deep breath. He groaned. "Yes, this is…bad. Very, very bad."

John pulled his mask down too. The air was cold, full of ozone and the acrid scent of the charred darts, but there was plenty of it. As the others pulled their masks off, he asked, "Rodney, where the hell are we?" But he had the sinking feeling that he already knew.

"The Mirror." Rodney sounded sick. "Something must have activated it before I finished adjusting the pulse array. The accretion disk was still unstable and it created a gravity well and pulled us in. And the darts, everything in range.

Teyla shook her head uncertainly. "But then we are…in the other reality? Trishen's reality, where there are nothing but Wraith?"

There was a moment of horrified silence. John bit his lip, searching for a reaction that didn't involve a hysterical scream.

His voice flat, Ronon said, "You're joking."

"Yes, yes, I'm kidding, hah hah, it's a hilarious joke!" Rodney snarled. "Face it, we're in another reality. With the Wraith or Eidolon or whatever they call themselves."

John swallowed down panic and managed to say evenly, "Rodney, is the Mirror still connected to our reality? If we can getup over the frame, can we just jump into it? Or would it-"

Rodney blinked. "Dissolve us instantly in the crushing gravitational forces the unstable accretion surface may be generating?"

John eyed him worriedly. "Yeah, that."

"I have no idea," Rodney admitted, sounding bleak. "But I suspect this Mirror was specifically designed only to be used by spaceships or other vehicles with heavy energy shielding. An unprotected human body wouldn't survive the transition. And if it doesn't activate, that would be worse. I'll have to find a monitoring console."

Zelenka, slung over Ronon's shoulder, muttered, "My vsichni zemreme."

Rodney snapped automatically, "Will you stop with the profanity you think we can't understand? Tone and context make it perfectly obvious what you're-Wait, are you conscious?"

"I wish I was not." Zelenka sounded sorrowful.

Miko looked up from the life signs detector, saying anxiously, "Colonel, the Wraith are moving. I see signs-

Teyla jerked her chin. "Over there."

John turned and saw three male Wraith, about a hun dred and fifty yards away, standing near one of the crumpled darts. The Mirror's light reflected silver off their clothes and hair, and they seemed to be looking around in angry confusion. He didn't think that confusion would last long.

There were dark triangular shapes along the wall of the installation that looked like hatches or passages leading inside, and they had to get under cover. "Come on." As they started away, John pressed the button on the jumper remote, hoping there was just enough emergency power left. The ramp responded sluggishly, moving upward to close, and that was a relief. John wasn't sure why it mattered, why keeping the Wraith out of the empty jumper for a little while longer meant something, but it did. John looked back in time to see the ramp seal itself, and the emergency lights in the jumper's nose flicker and die.

Teyla dropped back to cover their six, with Ronon, still burdened with Zelenka, and Miko and Rodney close behind John. Rodney, holding his P-90 tightly and watching the nearest darts, said, "Yes, I understand being proactive and getting off the platform and away from these Wraith, but what about the Wraith that live here?"

"If you have any suggestions, Rodney, feel free," John hissed. He was trying to maintain a quick jog, but all he could manage was a quick limping hobble, and it wasn't improving his outlook on life at the moment.

"What, do I have to think of everything?" Rodney demanded. He threw a glance back and stopped abruptly. "Oh, you have got to be kidding me!" he said in outrage.

"Rodney, keep moving!" Then John looked back.

Across the giant length of the Mirror, a big dark shape was lifting off the platform. The shadowy outline was just rising high enough for the Mirror's light to bathe it, and John could see the rough brown hull, the flattened saucer shape that was still weirdly organic, like a giant fungus. "Son of a bitch," John said. This just keeps getting better. It was about half the size of the Daedalus, and there was no telling how many Wraith were aboard.

Teyla gasped. "That is the Wraith scout ship. How could-It was pulled through the Mirror as well?"

"Pulled out of orbit?" Miko said, horrified.

Rodney waved a hand wearily. "Apparently so. Trishen's ship was a completely different conformation and design. That's definitely from our reality. And its shields must have protected it from the power drain that destroyed the jumper's crystals." He rubbed his eyes. "How much worse can this get?"

Light flashed from the lower part of the ship, the distinctive blue-white ripple of the culling beam. John said, "And I think that answers your question." The ship had just beamed something onto the platform, probably drones. "Come on, keep moving." Because it was that or die out here in the next five minutes.

From Ronon's shoulder, Zelenka moaned, "Oh, God."

They were only about sixty yards from the installation when Teyla shouted, "They have seen us!" and opened fire.

John yelled, "Ronon, take point!" and dropped back to her side. Several Wraith were running toward them from the north side of the platform, a dozen or so others from the south, and stunner fire flashed in the dark. John pitched a couple of smoke grenades across the platform, then opened fire.

More Wraith converged on them, but the chemical haze confused their aim just enough, and Ronon turning to pick them off with single shots made them wary. John kept the group moving as fast as he could, and he really hoped the door they were heading toward would open. Rodney was beside him, firing, shouting, "I have the feeling they think we're responsible for this!"

"I don't think that's going to matter, Rodney!" John shouted back.

Then lights flashed in the sky and John looked up to see another ship. At first he thought it was Trishen's shuttle, but realized this conch-shell shape was different, more convoluted, and it was half again as large. It flashed a spotlight over the Mirror platform, picking out the wrecked darts and the moving Wraith. The Wraith stopped, snarling as the light crossed over them, firing up at the ship.

"Hold your fire," John said, and the others stopped shooting. The Wraith were distracted and he wanted that to last as long as possible. "Now run."

With one last sprint, they reached the wall of the installation and one of the big triangular hatchways, set deep into the stone. John said, "Rodney, get the door," as he, Teyla, and Ronon took up guard positions.

"No life signs inside," Miko reported tensely, "But the shielding may be interfering."

"Please open," Rodney was muttering as he pried off the console. "If things could just go well, just this once, I'd really appreciate-"

"Put me down, put me down," Zelenka said with a groan. "I can walk."

Taking the opportunity to reload, John gave Ronon a nod. Zelenka still sounded woozy, but they would be bet ter off if Ronon had both hands free.

Ronon bent down, setting him on his feet. Zelenka staggered but stayed upright and Ronon gave him a careful push, steering him over to Miko and Rodney.

More Wraith were firing up at the Eidolon ship. "Why won't they shoot back?" Ronon said, his voice a frustrated growl.

"Yeah, that would come in handy." John squinted up at the strange ship, gleaming pink and purple in the Mirror's light. "But they're probably talking on the comm." If the Eidolon made some kind of deal with the Wraith… John didn't think they could get more screwed than they already were, but that wouldn't help.

"Perhaps Trishen was not lying about their ships being unarmed," Teyla said, watching the scene uncertainly. "Perhaps-"

Then the Wraith scout ship drifted upward, the whine of its drive adding to the din of the Wraith's weapons and the rushing sound of the Eidolon ship. The scout ship rotated, light pulsed along its sides and John yelled, "Get down!"

He ducked with Teyla and Ronon, and Rodney grabbed Zelenka, pulling him down beside Miko in the slight shelter of the hatch. The blast impact rattled the ground, a flare of heat and light washing over the platform. John looked up to see debris raining down; the Eidolon ship had vanished in the blast.

"What the hell was that?" Rodney said, looking up in horror. "I thought you said they were probably talking!"

"Yeah, well, they didn't like what they heard." John's ears were ringing again, and the Wraith weren't distracted anymore. "Just get the door open!"

"Oh, yes, right, escaping from certain death, it slipped my mind!" Rodney yelled, turning back to the wall console.

John could see the Wraith moving around in the shadows, regrouping. Then Rodney said, "Got it!" and the hatch slid open.

They scrambled through into a big room, a couple of dim lights coming on inside as Ancient technology sensed their presence. Most of the chamber was lost in shadow, but there were low stone partitions and platforms at odd intervals, meant to hold equipment that wasn't there anymore. It looked a lot like an interior room in the installation in their reality, with dark blue stone walls with embossed abstract designs and the blue-green metal strips on the floor. Rodney hit the wall console to shut the hatch, pulling the panel open to rip the crystals out. His mouth twisted grimly, he said, "That's not going to hold them for long-I had to disconnect the security seal to get it to open."

"Crap." John started away from the door, flicking on the P-90's light to check the shadows, thinking, if this is a dead end, it's going to be a literal one. They needed to get further into the building, where they could pick the Wraith off in the endless maze of corridors.

Ronon, already ranging ahead and tall enough to see over the partitions, said, "Over here!"

John caught up with him, flashing the light over another door. It had the embossed panel in the center and no wall console; a security door like the one they had first found in the installation, locked to anyone without the Ancient gene. John reached for the panel.

"Wait!" Miko, holding tightly to Zelenka's arm to keep him standing, was studying the detector. "Life signs, eight of them, fifteen yards that direction." She jabbed the detector toward the door for emphasis.

From behind them, something slammed into the outer hatch with a muted thunk. Rodney flung up his arm helplessly. "Eight versus, what, sixty or seventy? I vote for eight."

John said, "Here we go," and hit the panel. He ducked under the door as it started to slide up, Teyla and Ronon right behind him.

It was another big room, softly lit. In the center there were eight people gathered around a console, watching a holographic display of the Mirror platform. They scattered back at the sudden intrusion, some of them crying out in alarm. No, John corrected himself, seeing the dead white skin, the long silver hair, not people. They were Wraith or Eidolon, whatever they called themselves. All males, but some were smaller, slight enough to be teenagers. Instead of the black and silver the Wraith always wore, their clothes had colors, shades of dark red, purple, blue. They were unarmed, and John made a split-second decision. He snapped, "Hold your fire."

Ronon growled. He didn't lower his weapon, but he didn't shoot. The hatch was sliding shut behind them and Rodney was already pulling the crystals. There was another door on the far side of the room, sealed.

Beside John, studying the Eidolon with narrowed eyes, Teyla said, "They are like Trishen, I can't sense them."

The Eidolon were staring in astonished horror, exactly like… exactly like a bunch of bloody desperate armedto-the-teeth aliens had just burst into the room. In utter astonishment, one of them said, "What are they?"

John raised his voice, saying harshly, "Just stay back, don't try to stop us, and nobody'll get hurt."

Behind him, Rodney said, "You sound like a bank robber."

John drew breath to tell him to hurry the hell up. Then a muted blast sent Rodney staggering back from the door.

John caught his arm as he reeled, hauling him away from the shattered hatch as Teyla turned to cover them. They didn't have time to run; they barely made it to the side wall, taking cover behind some metal crates. Ronon shoved Miko and Zelenka down behind him, just as armored drones swarmed into the room.

Some headed straight for them, others for the Eidolon. John opened fire, dropping three before one reached the first Eidolon. Too shocked to run away, the Eidolon just stared in horror as the drone grabbed him by the throat. The drone didn't hesitate at all, slamming a hand into the Eidolon's chest before a shot from Ronon's energy gun blasted it. Rodney recovered enough to lift his P-90, firing through the hatch with Teyla. Drone bodies were piling up out there, but more stunner fire struck the crates, the walls behind them.

John reached into his vest for a fragmentation grenade, but just then one of the older Eidolon rushed toward the hatch, slamming some device onto the wall beside it. A drone grabbed him, pinning him next to it and slamming a hand into his chest to feed. John fired a burst into its back, but the creature was oblivious to the bullets striking its body, to anything but its prey. The device lit up, then light rippled across the hatchway. The drones on the other side trying to push through the opening slammed into the light, staggering back as if they had hit a solid wall. Force shield, John thought, concentrating his fire on the drones still in the room. It was a portable force shield, like the one Trishen had used in her ship to hold them prisoner.

The remaining drones in the room finally fell, Ronon dropping the last one with a shot to the chest.

Teyla shook her head, sitting back with a gasp of relief. "I cannot believe we are still alive."

"When did you become a pessimist?" John stood, scanning the fallen drones cautiously.

"About five minutes ago," Teyla said grimly.

John didn't see any blinking self-destruct things on the drones' armor. Maybe they had been so distracted by the close proximity of dinner that they hadn't thought to activate them. Or they had been told not to, because the Wraith wanted at least a couple of humans alive to question.

Ronon stepped out from around the crates, looking over the fallen drones, shooting one that wasn't quite dead enough. John said, "Ronon, watch the other door." He gave Teyla a nod, and she shifted to cover the Eidolon now. Three of them were down, one stunned and two fed on, and the others were still huddled on the opposite side of the room.

John twisted around to check the rest of his team, gritting his teeth as his injured ribs protested the motion. Miko and Radek, crouched back against the wall, looked shell-shocked and sick. Rodney, more used to certain death, didn't look so good either. John asked, "Everybody okay?"

"Oh, we're fine," Rodney said, making a helpless gesture and rubbing his forehead. "Kusanagi, life signs? How surrounded are we?"

"Just us." Miko checked the detector, then jerked her chin toward the drones clustered outside the hatch. "And them. Nothing behind us, or to either side."

John thought, breathing room, that would be nice. He said, "Rodney, any chance the consoles in this room are what we need?"

"Oh, probably not." Not looking optimistic, Rodney turned to Zelenka. "Can you help or do you just want to sit there and nurse your concussion?"

Zelenka glared up at him from under his bloody bandage. "I'm fine, give me your hand, prdelaty bastard."

John circled around the crates, heading warily toward the force shield-sealed hatch, the P-90 ready. The drones on the other side stirred, straining against the field as John came near it, the faceless masks all turned toward him. He felt a chill walk down his spine; they were starving and he was a walking steak. But the field seemed to be holding.

He backed away, then twitched at nearby movement, jerking up the P-90. The Eidolon who had activated the force shield lay sprawled next to the dead drone that had fed on him; his eyes were still open, aware, and he was breathing in harsh gasps. It was harder to tell than with a human, but John could see the withered texture of the blue-tinged skin, the shrunken flesh around face and neck. It-He had sacrificed himself for the other Eidolon trapped in the room. Wraith just didn't do that.

"May I go to him?" a voice said.

John turned to see one of the Eidolon who had taken cover by the far wall, cautiously getting to his feet. He had spoken to Teyla and was pointing to the withered being at John's feet.

Teyla looked at John, brow lifted. He nodded, and she told the Eidolon, "You may."

John backed away, out of arm's reach, as the Eidolon moved past him. It was one of the young ones, smaller than a mature Wraith, with more human features. Its voice hadn't been as deep, either. It threw him a frightened look, then went to kneel by the dying Eidolon.

Yeah, that was pretty much our fault, John thought. He mentally pushed that aside to deal with later and crossed back to the control area, asking, "What's the word, Rodney?"

Rodney shook his head, looking distinctly unhappy as he scrolled through the holographic display. Zelenka was leaning heavily on one of the consoles, his expression suggesting he was about to be sick. Miko was balancing the life signs detector and a tablet, holding it so Rodney could see it. Rodney said, "This is only monitoring equipment for the platform, I can't get good readings for the accretion surface with this, just the minor discharges it's still throwing off."

"Okay." John bit his lip, looking at the consoles. "That wasn't what I wanted to hear."

Rodney glared at him. "Yes, well, imagine how I feel." He took a sharp breath, threw a glance at the Eidolon still backed against the wall, watching fearfully. He lowered his voice. "There was monitoring equipment for the accretion surface in the pulse control room up on the roof. If that still exists in this reality, I should be able to see if the connection is stable enough to transport us back. If so, then we can try to steal a ship and make it through before the Wraith blow us up. And I know I'm simplifying it, but that's our best bet. Actually, it may be our only bet, unless we want to make a break for the mountains, learn to grow crops, and hide out for the rest of our lives on this moon.

Zelenka muttered, "I don't want to learn to grow crops.

That's a hell of a long way through this building, John thought, but he wasn't keen on the crops option either. He said, "Let's go."

The inner doorway led to a corridor, lined with square pillars that were set with milky crystal lights. Many of the lights weren't on, as if this section was only partially powered. John had Rodney pull the crystals from the door behind them; the Eidolon inside could still call for help, but John didn't want them ducking out to see which way the alien intruders had gone.

Once they were moving down the corridor, Teyla said, "What about the Wraith? We cannot leave them here, with access to this Mirror."

His tone clipped, Rodney said, "If-When-If we get back to our own reality, we have to destroy the pulse array immediately. That scout ship could raid this installation for technology, bring Eidolon prisoners back to our reality to teach them how to build it, render the Ancient cloaks useless, including the one we used to hide Atlantis, and be free to feed on everyone we know." He looked up, lips thin with anxiety. "Everyone, basically."

"We got that, Rodney," John said. Nothing had changed. They had the same problem as before, just less chance of surviving the possible solutions.

Moving quickly, they found a stairwell that only went up one level, then they cut through a dusty unused section with no power. Past it, they found a big room with partial power, and one of the triangular doorways that in their reality had marked the lift platforms.

But it wouldn't open at John's touch and Rodney swore, tearing the console off the wall. "What the hell?" he said, startled. "The crystals are gone."

Teyla looked up sharply, alarmed. John thought, Crap. Their time had just run out. "Back the other way, now."

They were almost to the door when Miko waved the tablet urgently. "Colonel, energy signature!" She turned back across the room, pointing to an empty section of the blue stone wall. "It's a transporter! Life signs!"

John turned with Teyla, covering the wall. A seam was already forming down it, splitting into doors. Then he heard a startled yelp behind him. He risked a look back, just in time to see a curtain of energy ripple across the open doorway. Rodney stepped back, his face horrified. "Force shield. We're trapped." Ronon tried to push a hand through anyway, flinching back when the field zapped him.

"Get behind us," John said, because this was it. He aimed the P-90 at the transporter, setting his jaw. "Ronon, don't fire, wait for my order." Rodney grabbed Zelenka, pushing him back with Miko, and Ronon stepped up beside John, snarling under his breath.

The transporter doors slid open and a male Eidolon stepped out, then another, until eight of them moved out of the bay. The two in front were unarmed, but the others in the back were holding long rifle-sized objects, with a shape suggestively like the Wraith stunners. We can't get captured, John thought. Even if Trishen wasn't lying, these were aliens. They had no idea what the Eidolon might want, how interested they would be in Atlantis' existence even in another reality, what they might want from humans. Obviously thinking along the same lines, Rodney whispered harshly, "They've never seen humans before, they could want anything from us. It's like the XFiles in reverse."

John grimaced. He hadn't even thought about medical experiments. "Thanks, Rodney, you had to bring that up.

Then the first Eidolon lifted his hands and said, "We mean you no harm."

Beside John, Teyla shifted uneasily, throwing him a worried look. It would be nice to be able to believe that. John swallowed the dryness out of his throat, and made his voice hard. "We don't want to hurt anybody either. We're just trying to get out of here."

There was a flicker of light from the transporter behind them, and then another Eidolon pushed out through the group, a smaller female. The male tried to stop her, saying something too low to hear.

Teyla whispered, "Is that Trishen?"

"I don't know," John murmured back. He still had no idea how this was going to go; it felt like they were breathing on borrowed time. "I could never tell Wraith apart.

"It's her," Ronon told them quietly.

"Of course it is," Rodney snapped. "Oh, this is just fantastic."

Trishen shook her head, pushing past the male and stepping out to face them. She said, "It's me, Trishen. Please put down your weapons."

John heard Ronon snort. That pretty much summed up his feelings. He said, "If you want to talk, we can do that just as well while we're holding our weapons."

Rodney said acidly, "Trishen. Your ship was pulled into the Mirror, too. How lucky for you, since I was locked out of the system before I could make the last adjustments to the pulse array."

"What? She did this?" John asked, startled, then thought, oh come on, of course she did.

His voice rising with anger, Rodney told Trishen, "The early activation caused a gravity well to form above the accretion surface, drawing in everything in range, including your new Wraith friends who in the interest of interspecies camaraderie are going to try to blast their way in here so they can feed on everything that moves!"

There was a murmur from the other Eidolon, a gentle stir. They were all staring, and the weight of those watching eyes made John's skin creep. In a weird way, it was worse than being stared at by Wraith. Wraith looked at you with that frightening combination of hunger and lust, the lust without any seeming awareness that the thing they wanted was a living sentient being. But at least you knew what a Wraith wanted from you. John had no idea what the Eidolon really wanted, except that considering the way things were going, it was probably worse.

Trishen stared, then said in helpless exasperation, "No, I didn't do it! I was as surprised as you. I-"

She stopped at another flicker from the transporter, as someone else beamed in. The males parted this time with no argument, and another female stepped forward. Every hair on the back of John's neck stood up in individual alarm. Her features were more distorted than Trishen's; further from human, closer to Wraith. She was taller than Trishen, and her long hair was a dark red. She was wearing something black and flowing that looked liquid against her dead white skin.

"Careful," Ronon said in a low-voiced growl. "That's a hive queen. She can get inside your head, if you let her."

"Yeah, we know," John said quietly, thinking of the Wraith caretaker, when he had found Colonel Sumner being questioned by her, as she slowly drained out his life.

The Queen looked at them with flat opaque eyes, and said, "This was not my daughter's doing."

Daughter? John exchanged a look with Teyla. Teyla rolled her eyes, exasperated. She whispered, "We were not negotiating with a scientist as we thought, but with a Hive Queen."

The Queen said, "We had been attempting to activate the Mirror, to retrieve her. When you made the adjustments to the pulse generator, it must have allowed the connection. With unanticipated results. It was not our intention to bring you, or the others, here."

"Well, whatever your intention, you brought them here. Any idea what you're going to do about it?" John asked. He was pretty sure he wouldn't like the answer.

But she said, "The few ships we have left here are scientific research vessels, unarmed. We've called for help, but it won't arrive for several days, and from what we have seen, that ship has weapons far superior to anything we can bring to bear." The Queen's eyes flicked from Rodney to John to Teyla, coldly thoughtful. "Does your ship have weapons?"

Maybe it was a legitimate question under the circumstances, but John didn't like giving the answer. It might be the only bargaining point they had. Trying to stall, he said, "Our ship is damaged, or we'd be in it right now."

She tilted her head, obviously picking up on what he hadn't said. "But if it was repaired, could it destroy the Wraith ship?"

John countered, "That depends. Can you activate the Mirror and send us back?"

She inclined her head. "Yes. We were able to activate it successfully once, we should be able to do so again."

John felt the others stir behind him, and he lifted his brows, exchanging a startled look with Rodney. He hadn't been expecting that concession; he was torn between more suspicion and relief at the first glimpse of an actual way out of this.

Trishen spread her hands, saying, "We had an alliance. We can still cooperate."

John felt he had to point out, "You know, every time you want to cooperate, we almost get killed."

Trishen gestured in helpless exasperation. "Yes, but it's not my fault!"

"We don't have a choice," Rodney whispered harshly. "If they have the right Ancient crystals, the jumper is repairable."

Teyla nodded. "I dislike this as much as you, but we must take the chance."

"Yeah, I know." John didn't see any other option. He looked at the Eidolon Queen, still watching them impassively. "Our ship is armed, but those weapons are only powerful enough to destroy the darts, the small fighters that are wrecked all over the platform. The scout ship has shields to protect it that we can't get through."

The Queen accepted that without argument. "I appreciate your candor." She looked thoughtful. "But there is a way?"

Rodney said briskly, "Yes, there's a way. But we'll need unimpeded access to our ship, some materials to repair it, the Quantum Mirror, and your beaming technology." He hesitated. "The Wraith shields may be configured to prevent anything from being beamed aboard. We'll also need a way to get around that."

The Queen just nodded. "I think I can provide that."