Reliquary

Chapter Four

“This is odd.” Rodney crouched near the lip of the shaft, frowning at the life sign detector.

John, checking the safety rope for today’s descent, looked up sharply. “What?”

Rodney gave him that look. “Again, I point out that if I had seen indications of a ravening horde of something, I would have said, ‘My God, Major, run!’ rather than, ‘This is odd.’”

John rolled his eyes and deliberately turned his attention back to the safety rope. “Fine, then. Golly gee whiz, Dr. McKay, what’s so odd on this lovely morning?”

So he was still jumpy. Last night hadn’t helped. John was used to Marines and airmen, who slept when it was time to sleep. Scientists who got up every five minutes and wandered around, he would never get used to. McKay’s ability to function on little or no sleep for long periods of time was great when lives were in danger, irritating when he was standing on the edge of your sleeping bag chewing loudly on a power bar and contemplating the meaning of life and time or whatever the hell he was doing in the middle of the fricking night. What made it intolerable this time was that Kavanagh and Kolesnikova shared this bizarre behavior. John had stopped asking people where the hell they were going when Kolesnikova had replied with some annoyance, “I’m going to pee, Major, and I didn’t think you all would like it if I did it in here.”

And it also didn’t help that it was a lousy morning. The sky was dark and overcast and the white-capped sea like dull pewter. The forest on the other side of the Stargate’s platform was a brighter green against the purple-gray clouds, and the wind blew sand through the ruins and across the plaza. John had taken the jumper up into the atmosphere to look around and check the long range sensors, making sure this coast wasn’t about to be hit by a hurricane or a tropical storm. All he had found were ordinary rain clouds, and he had landed again feeling inexplicable disappointment.

Kolesnikova had told him earlier that she had seen all there was to see in the repository’s command center and wanted to tackle the lower levels with them. He hadn’t argued with her, having the feeling that she thought she had let them down by not going yesterday. Corrigan was actually gleaning far more information in the city’s ruins, and wanted another day out there. John was leaving Boerne and Kinjo up top again, to keep watch and back up Corrigan. Ford had been chafing at the inactivity yesterday and he wasn’t needed on the surface, so John was adding him to the belowground group. Hopefully more searchers meant faster progress. And maybe with Kolesnikova’s engineering background, she would see something that McKay and Kavanagh had missed.

“I’m getting more pronounced energy readings,” McKay said, finally answering the question.

That got Kavanagh’s attention. He nearly dropped the pack he had been sorting through and strode to the shaft, pulling out his own detector. McKay lifted his brows and sat back on the floor, making a production out of waiting for Kavanagh’s assessment.

Fortunately for team harmony and John’s already depleted supply of patience, Kavanagh didn’t notice. “You’re right,” he said, also failing to notice when McKay took an ironic half-bow. “This is markedly different from the readings we took yesterday.”

“Thus the choice of the word ‘odd’ in my original statement,” McKay added. He pushed to his feet. “Something changed down there.”

“Maybe you guys tripped something without knowing it,” Ford said, leaning out to peer down into the shaft. “Set off something that increased the emergency power, or activated some other stuff.”

“But there appeared to be no changes.” Teyla shook her head. “We took readings throughout our search, and before we left, and there was no increase in power at that time.”

“What she said,” McKay added.

Ford shook his head, gesturing helplessly. “Maybe it took a while to get going.”

For some reason, everybody then looked at John. He shrugged, pretending this new development didn’t make him uneasy. “We’re not going to figure it out up here.”

Once they had gotten down to the bottom of the shaft, the readings were stronger. “This way.” His eyes glued to the detector, McKay pointed them toward a corridor John knew they had tried yesterday. They hadn’t found any cells along it, just debris from laboratories smashed so thoroughly that McKay and Kavanagh had only been able to make guesses as to what their original purpose had been.

The blue emergency lighting glittered off the wreckage of twisted metal and the unidentifiable stains on the stone walls on either side of the broad walkway. John had a bad feeling about this; he remembered what else they had found down this corridor and he had a strong suspicion of where the detector was going to lead them.

McKay dug out the PDA with the map he had made yesterday and wordlessly shoved it at Kavanagh. Bringing up the map, Kavanagh scanned the screen hurriedly. “Damn,” he muttered, obviously coming to the same conclusion John had just drawn. “I wouldn’t have expected that. Our suppositions about the layout of the active power conduits must have been—”

“Wrong.” McKay’s voice was grim. He stopped next to a round opening in the walkway, where metal stairs curved down into a dark well. They hadn’t bothered to search down there or in any of the other dark areas yesterday, believing the power source would be where the active power grid lay. McKay let out his breath, looking up and shaking his head in exasperation. “Well, this is just fantastic. It’s pitch dark down there.”

John stepped to the lip of the well, shining the P-90’s light into the depths. Teyla moved up next to him, leaning over to peer downward. He estimated the stairs descended about forty feet; the light reflected off a metallic floor. If he had a choice of where to lead their little group, a dark hole in a ruined bunker was about the last place he would pick.

Grimly resigned, he took a moment to get the infrared night-vision goggles out of his pack, Ford doing the same. They would rely on the flashlights since the scientists’ field packs didn’t include the goggles, but John wanted to be ready in case something attacked them and they needed to kill the lights. Everybody else used the time to check their handlight batteries. When everyone was ready, John looked them over. He knew McKay had too much awareness of his own mortality to wander off in the dark, and Kolesnikova, uneasy but game, would stay as close to Ford or Teyla as she could without actually holding hands with one of them. “Now everybody stick together. Do not go off on your own, under any circumstances. Do not stop to examine anything without letting me know. And yes, I’m mainly talking to you, Dr. Kavanagh.”

John went first, testing the stairs cautiously with each step, the P-90’s light revealing a passage larger than the one above, high-ceilinged, with a jumble of the large opaque pipes branching down. The pipes joined up with another set and ran off along the far wall. The sinuous shapes were almost organic, their material gleaming faintly in his light; John was uncomfortably reminded of movies where aliens exploded out of people’s chests. The smell, which he had been trying to ignore, was distinctly worse. “What the hell are those pipes, did we ever figure that out?” he asked, exasperated. “It’s like the damn Nostromo down here.”

Kavanagh, just stepping off the stairs and pausing to give Kolesnikova a hand, said, “It’s part of the air system, Major.” His tone was laconic but still managed to have an element of

are you stupid? in it.

The others made their way down, and John leaned over to look as McKay consulted the detector again.

“It’s stronger now. This way,” McKay said, jerking his chin toward the other end of the large passage. “Back toward the center portion of the building.”

“That makes sense,” John said. McKay threw a look at him that he couldn’t quite read in the reflected glow of the detector. “What? The power source would be under the main part of the complex.”

“It makes as much sense as anything does,” Kolesnikova answered for him. “This signal is strong, you should have picked it up yesterday.”

Kavanagh shook his head, watching his own detector. “We must have activated something. Like the lights and the other systems that came online when we first arrived in Atlantis. It just took some time to power up.”

“That’s what I thought,” Ford pointed out.

John had to admit it was reasonable, but it didn’t make him feel any less uneasy. Still studying his detector, McKay grimaced suddenly and said, “I think the floor above us is shielded. And there seems to be some electromagnetic field activity — Check your radios.”

John tried his headset and got nothing but static. From what he could hear from the others, he wasn’t the only one. He swore. “Oh, that’s all we need.” The detectors were Ancient technology and wouldn’t be affected, but their communications equipment was all good old-fashioned Earth-manufacture.

He took the lead with McKay to guide them with the detector, and put both Ford and Teyla to watch their six. Ford was leaving route markers with a reflective spray paint to keep them from mistaking the way. Their lights seemed to make the shadows even darker, and the detector led them into one branching corridor, then another. The giant pipes veered up the walls and over the ceiling, and they caught sight of more piles of wreckage.

The uselessness of the radios was making John’s nerves jump. As they moved through the large dark space he had to suppress the impulse to make everybody choose a buddy and hold hands. If they lost somebody down here, if someone fell in a hole, got lost, wandered off… And the more ground they covered, the worse that odor got.

Finally, after they had been threading their way through this giant maze for about twenty minutes, he couldn’t ignore it anymore. He said, plaintively, to McKay, “Look, seriously, are you sure you don’t smell that?”

“No.” McKay threw another opaque look at him. “I have a theory about that.”

“Oh, right, that theory. I’m really beginning to resent the implication that I have schizophrenia. I—”

“I did not say you had schizophrenia. I said—” McKay stopped abruptly, staring at the detector. “Hold that thought, I think we’re here.”

“Where?” Kolesnikova asked anxiously.

“There.” McKay flashed his light on a section of wall and John made out the shape of a large blast door. The pipes that ran along the walls swooped in from across the passage and above to end in the wall around the door.

“A bunker within a bunker,” John said. “That’s…vaguely disquieting.” He steadied his light on the door as McKay’s flash flicked around wildly for a moment, then settled on a panel to one side.

“Vaguely?” Kolesnikova questioned softly.

“It makes perfect sense,” Kavanagh said, his voice tense with suppressed excitement. “Extra shielding for their power source. We should have expected that.”

McKay had already pried the panel open, holding his pocket flashlight in his mouth so he could see. John didn’t see any control crystals, just a mass of dark wiring and circuits. McKay threw Kavanagh a hard look, taking the light out of his mouth so he could talk. “This panel is the only intact piece of equipment we’ve found so far.”

“Hold it.” John stepped closer so he could see Rodney’s expression. “Are you saying we shouldn’t open this?”

John ignored Kavanagh’s “Of course we should! Are you out of your mind?” Rodney took a breath, his mouth twisted. He looked distinctly uncomfortable. “There aren’t any life signs, just the energy signatures, and Teyla’s not sensing any Wraith. Of course, that means there could be anything in there from evil cybernetic guards to people-eating nanites. But the chances that there’s a ZPM inside — We have to open it.”

Sounding more frustrated than anything else, Kavanagh said, “I don’t understand why you two think there’s something wrong here. It’s an abandoned wreck of an Ancient facility. That’s all.”

John didn’t understand either, which was what worried him. But Rodney was right, they didn’t have a choice. And maybe it was just something to do with the electromagnetic fields or damaged technology trying to broadcast to the Ancient gene that was making his skin creep. Fooling his brain into thinking he could smell rotting corpses when there was nothing left of the dead but dry bones. He had a sudden image of trying to explain this to Elizabeth and Bates and Grodin and the others, that he had had a weird feeling and so they had left a possible ZPM cache behind after wasting a day and a half searching for it. He took a breath to tell Rodney to open the door, when Rodney glanced at the detector again, did a double-take and said, “Oh, no.”

John recognized that tone. “What?” He grabbed Rodney’s wrist, angling the device so he could see the display. It was reading life signs, a bunch of them. John did a quick mental calculation to translate the distance reading and realized the blips were only about a hundred yards behind them, somewhere in the maze of dark corridors they had just passed through. The blips were all in a tight clump, and there were too many of them; it certainly wasn’t Boerne, Kinjo, and Corrigan following them down here for some reason. And they were moving steadily closer.

Rodney said urgently, “Major, there’s a ravening horde of something approaching.”

“Thank you, Rodney, I got that already.” John was already shining the P-90’s light down the corridor, Ford and Teyla moving to flank him.

All their lights revealed was the slick blackness of the walls and conduits, but Teyla said softly, “Listen. Can you hear them?”

John stilled his breathing and listened. After a moment he heard movement far up the corridor. It was a weird soft sound, like a large group of people walking barefoot. Or shambling, John thought, suddenly struck by a half-buried memory of reading H.P. Lovecraft in college. That’s definitely shambling. He looked at Ford. Brow furrowed, listening hard, Ford shook his head. Keeping his voice to a low whisper, he said, “That’s not people, sir. Not human people. Animals?”

“Could be. It’s not Wraith, at least.” John glanced at Teyla for confirmation. “Is it?”

“No, it is not the Wraith,” she said, shaking her head, baffled and worried. “Something that lives underground, in these tunnels?”

“I vote we open the door,” Kolesnikova said uneasily.

John had to admit that the enigmatic door had started to look a lot more friendly in the past minute. If they tried to go further up the corridor, they might find themselves trapped in a dead end. A literal dead end. “Yeah. McKay?”

“I’m doing it,” Rodney snapped from somewhere behind him. John heard a muted thump and a low power hum.

“Do you need help?” Kavanagh demanded.

“Of course not! If I can’t hotwire one stupid blast door — That’s probably been sealed for ten thousand years — With intermittent power—”

“McKay, be nice and let Kavanagh help,” Kolesnikova told him, sounding anxious.

“Rodney, what she said,” John ordered tensely. He could hear a soft murmur echoing down the corridor now, even over their voices. There was something about it that made his skin crawl and his back teeth itch. He caught movement in their lights, something with gray and silver mottled skin that flicked hastily out of sight.

The low power hum from the door intensified. “Wait, wait!” McKay yelped. “I’ve got it.”

John swung around to cover the door, gesturing sharply for Kolesnikova and Kavanagh to move to the side. Teyla and Ford stayed in position, still watching the corridor.

The blast door clunked again and a dark seam formed down the center, splitting it into two sections. With a deep bass groan, it began to cycle open, each section lifting up to reveal a large empty chamber lit by several white globes suspended from the high ceiling. There were big round pillars, either conduits for something or supports for the weight of stone and metal overhead. It was quiet and nothing moved.

John eased forward, wary, checking the nearest shadows with the P-90’s light. McKay moved up beside him, his eyes moving from the detector to the room around them. “Power readings all over the place,” he said, keeping his voice low. “But no life signs. From in here, that is,” he added urgently. “The ones outside are holding steady.”

“Right, everybody inside.” John didn’t have to say it twice. From down the corridor came a low hooting that was almost ape-like and a growl that made John’s scalp prickle. Kolesnikova hurried in and Kavanagh followed, throwing an eager look around the big room. Ford and Teyla took up positions on either side of the door, and McKay was already prying open the control panel on this side.

McKay handed the detector off to Kavanagh so he could use both hands on the cables and circuits inside the wall, saying, “Twenty-five yards and closing, and in my opinion, that’s way too close.”

John agreed wholeheartedly with that. “You can get this door shut again, right? You didn’t break it, did you?”

“Of course I didn’t break it!” McKay snapped, then muttered something under his breath that John didn’t quite catch.

Before John could demand further information on the door front, Teyla asked, “But why did the detector not show them before this?”

“There could have been some kind of shielding that blocked the detector.” Rodney grimaced, digging a tool out of his vest pocket to tinker with the panel’s insides. “Or they were too far away. But it’s always worked before.”

“Fifteen yards and closing,” Kavanagh reported grimly, his eyes on the detector. “Some have broken off from the main group and are moving faster.”

Ford told McKay, “You were distracted. Maybe you didn’t notice them.”

John didn’t buy that. “He looks at that thing every two seconds, that’s why we let him carry it. These guys, things, whatever, just appeared about a hundred yards away down one of these tunnels, however they did it.” He threw a look around the shadowy chamber, hoping for inspiration. “When we close this door, they’ll have us trapped in here,” he added, thinking aloud.

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Ford said, keeping his eyes and his P-90 on the corridor.

“Not so much,” John agreed. There was nothing in here to make a barrier across the door, no cover.

“We should see what they are first,” Teyla added, stepping close to the opening, narrowing her eyes. “We cannot fight them if they are just noises in the dark.”

With a gasp of relief McKay shut the panel and tapped at the controls. Ford and Teyla stepped back, and the big doors began to slide down and together. John breathed out in relief. “Right. We need to—”

Something struck the door, scrabbling at the rapidly shrinking opening at the center. McKay skipped back with a yelp, and John jerked up his weapon.

The light flashed off iridescent scales and white claws, just as the door slid shut.

John took a deep breath, feeling his heart pound. “Okay. That wasn’t good.” McKay backed away another few paces, and Ford shifted uneasily. Kolesnikova was breathing hard and fanning herself. Only Kavanagh seemed unaffected. A muted thumping sounded from the door, as first one something, then a lot of somethings, pounded on it. After a few moments, the pounding died away.

“It was unpleasantly close,” Teyla commented, throwing John a worried glance.

McKay recaptured his detector from Kavanagh. “Fifteen yards? Thanks for the warning!”

“I read exactly what the screen said.” Kavanagh looked around impatiently. “We should spread out and search for the power source.”

“Not yet,” John told him sharply. “After we check this place out. We don’t know what’s down here.”

“Yes,” Kolesnikova put in grimly. “As you may have just noticed, we have good reason to be wary.”

“Whoa, whoa, we’ve got an abrupt increase in energy readings,” McKay said suddenly, scanning the room with a worried grimace.

“Where, what? Nobody touched anything!” Kolesnikova stepped toward him, alarmed.

“The door opening must have activated something. It’s this way.” McKay started forward, face intent.

“Like activated as in turning all the lights on, or activated as in getting ready to blow up?” Ford asked as John took long steps to catch up with McKay.

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m trying to find it!” McKay snapped back.

McKay led the way past the pillars, through a triangular arch, and out onto a broad gallery opening into a darker space. A single overhead light emphasized the crannies and shadows in the rocky walls. The gallery was empty, but a broad metal stairway led down to an area with several open doorways that were more like the entrances to caves. McKay hesitated, grimacing at the detector, then started down.

John stopped halfway down the stairs, startled. He had just realized the odor of rot had faded, as if they had left it behind in the corridor. That’s weird. Either good weird or bad weird.

Sounding concerned, Teyla asked, “Major, what is it?”

“Huh? Nothing.” John hurried to catch up to Rodney at the bottom of the stairs. He saw lights flickering on in the room ahead, heard the low-power hum of a large installation coming online.

They both stopped in the arched doorway. The walls of the room were lined with panels and readouts and controls, but in the center there was a coffin-sized transparent case, set on a platform with more humming equipment. The inside was obscured by a white mist, but as John stared in consternation it cleared, revealing the body of a human man. It was hard to see much detail, except that he was dressed in a loose brown robe.

“What the hell?” John said, throwing a baffled look at Rodney.

“It’s a stasis container.” Rodney moved forward, staring as if uneasily fascinated, studying the readouts as the others gathered around.

“I can see that. What — Who—” Realizing he sounded like an idiot, John shut up. He just hadn’t been expecting this. He had no idea what he had been expecting, but it wasn’t this.

“I have never seen anything like this before either, Major,” Teyla said, regarding the stasis container warily. “Could he be a survivor of the attack? Why did he not leave through the Stargate?”

Kavanagh moved forward impatiently, standing next to McKay to look at the readouts. McKay flung a hand in the air, saying, “In another minute, you can ask him personally. This chamber is cycling through an opening sequence.”

“Now we’ll get some answers,” Kavanagh muttered, staring intently at the chamber.

“Ah, is that a good idea?” Kolesnikova looked worriedly from John to Rodney. “We think this place is a hospital, at least partly.”

“Yeah,” Ford added. “What if he’s in there because there’s something wrong with him, and opening it kills him?”

“I have no idea. What if he’s in there because there’s something wrong with him and opening it kills us?” Rodney ducked around the side of the platform to check the various panels.

“Can you stop it?” John demanded.

The platform clunked as bolts were released deep inside. Rodney hurried back to John’s side. “I could, if I had half an hour and we weren’t concerned about killing him.”

John swore under his breath. That wasn’t going to happen. “Everybody get away from it,” he ordered, backing away.

Kolesnikova retreated hastily, Ford motioning for her to get behind him as he and Teyla retreated back through the doorway. Kavanagh stayed where he was, and John said sharply, “You too, Doctor.”

Kavanagh shook his head, as if barely listening. “He’s human, there’s no danger. He could be an Ancient.” He gestured, his voice incredulous. “Do you have any idea what that could mean? We could have all the answers to all the questions we’ve ever had.”

“Yes, I understand that. But that man could be ill,” Rodney said urgently. “He could be—”

White mist flushed through the clear part of the chamber and locks clicked; the low-frequency hum got louder.

“Well, it’s little late now,” Rodney muttered.

John caught Kavanagh by the collar and swung him bodily away from the stasis container, back toward Teyla. Kavanagh staggered, catching his balance against the archway.

A whoosh from the stasis container made everyone flinch, then the glass split smoothly in two, both sides rotating back and down into the platform. The occupant lay exposed on the opalescent material of the bed, still as death. John had a moment to think the point was moot and that the man was actually dead; his face was drawn and colorless in the wan light. Then he twitched and took a hard gasping breath. His eyes opened and he shook his head, gasped again, and suddenly sat up. He buried his face in his hands, as if sick or dizzy.

Beside John, McKay hovered uncertainly. “Well?” he asked, keeping his voice low. “If there was an airborne pathogen in that container with him, it could already be too late. If not… What do we do?”

“I have no idea,” John admitted. The only thing he could think to do was ask. He cleared his throat. “Uh, hello?”

The man’s head jerked up and he twisted to face them. He had a high intelligent forehead, short gray hair matted flat, and his eyes were blue. His gaze went to John, and he stared for a frozen moment. He said in amazement, “You’re human.”

“That’s what we were about to say to you.” John eyed him uncertainly. “You are human, right? Uh, who are you?”

The man lifted a shaky hand to his head. “I am called Dorane.” He was turning paler by the moment. “I–It has been so long…”

John was starting to feel that using three P-90s to cover one frail unarmed man in a bathrobe was overkill. “Are you all right?”

McKay interposed worriedly, “We thought you might have been in stasis because you had a communicable illness, like, oh, some kind of plague, for example. You don’t, do you?”

“What?” Dorane rubbed his eyes, as if he were having trouble focusing. “Oh, no. I placed myself in stasis, when the athenaeum — I was hoping my people would—” He tried to push himself off the platform and faltered, his legs refusing to support him.

John and McKay both started forward, but John let McKay catch the man’s arm and hold him up, just on the off chance that it had been a ploy to get near his weapon. Kavanagh lunged over to help, shouldering the man’s other arm and saying, “We have so many questions—”

“Let us wait on that for a moment,” Kolesnikova interrupted quickly. “Give him some time to recover.”

“There is a room, just down the next passage,” Dorane said, his voice strained. “Please take me there.”

While the others helped Dorane, John sent Ford back to the gallery, to stand guard where he could keep an eye on the outer blast door. They found the other room a short distance down the cave-like passage that led off the doorway next to the stasis chamber. It was a little smaller, with a low couch built into the wall, padded with some slick blue-gray material. McKay and Kavanagh helped Dorane sit down.

John stood back in the doorway; he couldn’t figure this. Everything they had seen in this area was intact, though he couldn’t see why whoever had destroyed the rest of the place had left it behind. Surely that one blast door hadn’t been enough to keep them out.

Teyla had paused beside him, and he asked, low-voiced, “Any thoughts?”

Kolesnikova sat next to Dorane, handing him her water bottle, and McKay retreated to join John and Teyla. “If that man is an Ancestor,” Teyla said, watching Dorane uncertainly, “this could be far better than finding any number of ZPMs.”

After taking a long drink, Dorane handed the bottle back and looked up at them all. His face already seemed less pale and strained. He smiled a little in confusion and asked, “Who are you, how did you come here?”

“We’re peaceful explorers,” John said. Who are also looking for ZPMs and anything else we can haul back home to protect us from the Wraith, he thought, but he wasn’t going to say that aloud. Not just yet. “From a place called Atlantis. I’m guessing you’ve heard of it.”

Dorane’s brows drew together and he said uncertainly, “Atlantis? But I thought…the city was abandoned.”

Great, now he’s suspicious of us. John looked pointedly at McKay, passing the diplomatic duties over to him. McKay gave John a mild glare, but faced Dorane squarely. “Ah, yes. Atlantis was abandoned. We come from a planet now called Earth, which is where the Ancients returned to when they left Atlantis. As you may know.” Teyla cleared her throat, and he added, “Teyla there is Athosian, we met her people after we got here. We came to this galaxy through the Stargate to search for Atlantis. And we found it.”

John added, “The Ancients were driven out by the Wraith.”

“Hey, I’m doing this,” McKay objected, frowning at him impatiently.

“You’re doing it slowly.” Then it belatedly occurred to John that maybe he should have broken that a little more gently. He said to Dorane, “You know about the Wraith, right? Because I’m starting to feel like we may be dumping a lot of bad news on you all at once.”

Dorane made an absent gesture. “Yes, yes, it was the Wraith who attacked this place.” He shifted on the couch, wincing. “It must have been a long time. I have few supplies left here, so I must remain in stasis almost continually. I set the container to open periodically, and I check the emergency communications systems to see if my people have tried to contact me, if anyone has returned. But I haven’t been good at keeping track of the passage of years, the last few times I woke.”

“Communications system?” That was the best news John had heard all day. Their radios might not be able to punch through the shielding and electromagnetic interference, but John bet an Ancient communications setup would. “Look, we were attacked on the way in here by some kind of aliens, creatures, something. Three of our people are still up on the surface, and we can’t reach them with our radios to warn them.”

“The Koan,” Dorane said with a grimace of distaste. “I had hoped they were dead, after all this time. Yes, the communications system is there.” He didn’t look or gesture or anything else, but a metal section of the wall slid aside, and a light flickered on, revealing a cubby with a circular console. It looked a little battered, not as pristine as the Ancient equipment in Atlantis, but John could see lights and readouts blinking on as the system powered up. “We are safe enough in here. All entrances to this lab area are sealed blast doors.”

“So you really are an Ancient?” Kavanagh said, getting to his feet and stepping up to the console. “You lived in Atlantis?”

“I don’t think of myself as ancient,” Dorane said, a little bemused as Kavanagh beat McKay to the console and took a seat there. “I did live in Atlantis, very long ago.”

“Do the Koan go up on the surface?” Teyla asked, watching Dorane carefully. “We had seen no sign of them before this.”

Dorane gestured helplessly, shaking his head. “They were nocturnal creatures and didn’t go to the surface during the day, but that was when they first came here.” He looked bleakly at John. “I thought their species would have died off by now.”

John nodded, relieved. It wasn’t midday yet, and Corrigan and the others would be outside, searching through the ruins; that gave them a little time. He said, “Kavanagh, if you can’t get them on their headsets, try to call the jumper.”

Dorane looked up, lifting his brows. “The what?”

“The ships that can dial the ’gate.” McKay made gestures indicating something vaguely square.

Dorane lifted his brows. “Ah, you have a gateship from Atlantis.”

McKay threw John a dark look. “I told you we should have called them gateships.”

. “Nobody cares,” John told him firmly. He answered Dorane, “That was the only way to use your Stargate. The dialing console isn’t there anymore.”

Dorane shook his head, smiling in bitter amusement. “I wondered why I had no visitors. I had begun to fear that the Wraith had eliminated all human life in this galaxy.” He hesitated. “As I said, I have lost track of the time. How long has it been?”

“It’s been ten thousand years,” McKay told him. “We have no idea what happened to the Ancients after they went to Earth. We have theories that they either died out or ascended at some point after that time, but there’s no proof.” Dorane looked up, startled, and McKay winced in sympathy. Low-voiced, he added to John, “This is a little awkward. I can see now why Elizabeth usually wants to handle anything more complicated than ‘We come in peace and would like to trade with you for food and/or ZPMs.’”

Dorane was staring at nothing, shaken. He looked weary and old. “I see,” he said finally. He shook his head and looked up, obviously making himself smile. “Then you are…our descendants. The children of my people.”

“In a way. Some of us more than others.” McKay asked Dorane, “Did the Ancients — your people — build this place? We thought it resembled an Ancient meeting place and repository in our own galaxy.”

“Yes, we were building it with the help of the Thesians. They had agreed to be the caretakers of it, and they came from their own world to build a colony here and to aid us in constructing our athenaeum,” Dorane explained. He looked away, his jaw set. “Then the Wraith came.”

Teyla nodded in resignation, and John exchanged a grim look with McKay. The Wraith always came.

“But why did you stay here?” Kolesnikova asked in the sudden silence. “After the attack, I mean. You didn’t know the dialing device was gone, so you never tried to leave? Were all the puddlejumpers — gateships — destroyed?”

“They were destroyed. But it didn’t matter. I had nowhere to go,” Dorane said simply. “The last message I received from Atlantis was that they were also under attack and could not come to our aid. I knew they meant to abandon the city if the Wraith’s advance continued. After the attack, when they never came here or tried to communicate, I knew they were gone.” He shrugged, glancing at Kolesnikova with a smile. “I know it sounds odd, and perhaps I am odd, after this long time of sleep and waiting. But if I didn’t go to Atlantis, I couldn’t find them dead. I could think of them as safe, somewhere.”

Kolesnikova nodded slowly. John thought he understood what Dorane meant, it just wasn’t a course of action that would ever have appealed to him, under any circumstances. Kolesnikova asked suddenly, “Why didn’t you ascend?” Dorane stared at her, startled, and she actually blushed a little. “I’m sorry, but we know many of the Ancients ascended, either before or after leaving this galaxy.”

Dorane hesitated, and John squashed the urge to intervene. It was probably a very personal question to ask on short acquaintance, but he thought they needed to know the answer. Then Dorane smiled, a little bemused. “I preferred to live and hope.” He shrugged. “Hope that my people would return with a way to destroy the Wraith, that I could reclaim this world, all our work here.” He added ruefully, “And I was given to understand that Ascension can be rather…dull. Not that my life here has been terribly exciting.”

“Major, I’m not getting any response from the jumper,” Kavanagh said, brow furrowed as he glanced up at John. “Or from their radios.”

“Are you on the right frequency?” McKay demanded, stepping up behind Kavanagh to get a look at the board.

“No, I thought I’d just try a random frequency.” Kavanagh glared. “Of course I’m on the right one.”

“Crap,” John muttered. He told Kavanagh, “Keep trying,” then asked Dorane, “Is there another way out that doesn’t involve going through that blast door into the tunnels? I need to get back up to the surface and warn our people.”

“Yes, yes. This way.” Dorane pushed himself up, accepting a helping hand from Kolesnikova, and started out of the room.

John headed after him with Teyla, Kolesnikova, and McKay following while Kavanagh stayed on the com system. John was going to take Teyla with him, and let the others stay behind to work on Dorane. Though the man seemed glad enough to see them, John thought Dorane was still a little confused, and probably suspicious of their motives. John didn’t want to screw this up; if they wanted Dorane’s help, they needed to make it clear they were intending to rescue him, not drag him off against his will.

John stopped to briefly update Ford on the situation, and when he caught up with the others again McKay was asking, “Just what are these Koan? Do they live down here in the tunnels? They showed up rather abruptly.”

“They are an alien species, barely sentient, but clever, and they can be vicious,” Dorane said, as he led them down a passage behind the stasis chamber, under more of the giant pipes, to where a metal wall met rough rock. He stumbled, and took the arm Teyla offered him with a grateful glance. “They were brought here from their world by the Wraith, to infiltrate our defenses from underground.” He shook his head in exasperation. “I thought they would have died out by now. The last few times I went out to explore, there was no sign of them. I used this passage, so it should be safe. The access shaft is straight down it, at the very end.”

Dorane stopped at a metal door, set deep in the stone. Mold and damp had crept in around the edges. As Dorane touched the control and the door slowly started to slide upward, John asked, “Do you have any idea how they managed to appear out of nowhere?”

Dorane shook his head. “They did the same to us, when they first attacked. I think the Wraith must have given them something to jam our scanning equipment, but surely the device cannot still exist.”

McKay, in the act of handing the life sign detector to John, paused and they exchanged a weary look. “Oh, that’s just great,” McKay said, “Take it anyway — if the others are away from the jumper—”

“Yeah.” John stuffed the detector into a vest pocket. There was no point in further speculation until they got to the surface. He gave Rodney a narrow-eyed look. They needed to talk Dorane into coming back to Atlantis with them, and bringing all his stuff, including any stray ZPMs he might have around. Rodney would know he should be taking care of that while John was gone, and hopefully he knew enough to let Kolesnikova and Kavanagh mostly handle it, and just kick them back into play if they got distracted by any other interesting Ancient technology. He just said, “Ford’s in charge.”

Rodney rolled his eyes. “Oh, no kidding. I’ll try not to stage a coup while you’re gone.”

“Just play nice, Rodney.”

Teyla was waiting beside the open door, and John stepped inside, flashing the P-90’s light to give him a view of a long narrow corridor, dark and dank.

McKay watched them from the doorway, his face etched with worry. “Be careful.”