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Chapter Text

John didn't quite know what to make of their 'visitors'.

No one was sure what to do with four high school students who'd fallen out of the sky when McKay had touched what appeared to be an Ancient refrigerator, but in hindsight was probably one of the predecessors of the Quantum Mirror.

Sure, the kids seemed to have stepped out of a Californian high school. The clothes were right, and the accents (though the tall kid in red kept slipping into a distinctly Australian drawl when he was worked up) and their utter bewilderment at finding themselves in the wrong galaxy. If they talked about cities that didn't exist – Reefside, Angel Grove, San Angeles – then it was only to be expected since they'd come from the universe next door. But there was something about them that made John itch, something that wouldn't let him relax.

There was no reason for it on the surface. The tall kid in red – Conner McKnight, he called himself, future David Beckham and let no one forget it – had the attention span of a gnat and no filter between his brain and mouth. He'd called Teyla a 'hot chick' within minutes of arriving and only John standing in the way had stopped him from getting thumped by Ronan.

Ethan James, the kid in blue, had a love for computers and snark that dreamed of one day rivalling McKay's. He'd cast such longing looks at the science lab, John had almost felt bad banning him and his friends from going in there. But McKay managed to do enough damage the way he was. John got a cold sweat thinking of McKay-lite wandering around the labs, touching alien devices and switching things on. With their luck, the kid would have the Ancient gene and accidentally blow them all up.

The only girl of the group had big eyes and a repertoire of snippy commentary to keep the others in line. Whereas her friends threw themselves into Atlantis enthusiastically, Kira Ford hung back. Elizabeth's continued reassurances that they'd get them home only served to make her more wary. John knew he should feel protective of her – he had a soft spot for little, spunky women – but something about her made him almost as uneasy as the others did.

The final member of the group was Trent Fernandez. He was affable and easy-going, and got along with everyone. He was polite and engaging with Elizabeth, admiring with the marines, and listened when the scientists gabbled on in their jargon. He made the hair rise on the back of John's neck, and his fingers cramp with the urge to reach for a sidearm.

John would have felt easier if the four of them were confined to quarters, but Elizabeth had balked at locking up teenagers for no other crime than being unwillingly sucked into another universe. She'd felt an armed escort was plenty until they figured out how to send them back to their own universe. Even Lorne – after bonding with Trent over water colours, the traitor – had agreed. John had looked disgustedly at his second in command and said: "Aren't you supposed to be head of security?" It was at times like this he missed Bates.

McKay, when John tried to broach his suspicions, had given him a look like he was crazy.

"Oh please. I'm not saying teenagers in general aren't evil – and just between you and me, that kid in blue has a real mouth on him –"

"His name's Ethan."

"Like I care. As I was saying, they're annoying and are on a constant sugar high, and we'll all breathe a little easier when they're out of our hair. But if you honestly think four teenagers have the brain capacity to engineer some sort of takeover, let alone carry it out in an organized fashion –"

"Alright, I get it. I'm backing off. This is me, backing off."

Ronan found John later, leaning against a doorway to one of the outside areas, arms folded as he watched the kids kick a ball around with some marines. John was fairly certain the Marines were letting them win. The kids had scored three goals to the marines' one, and he didn't think any of them except Conner were really trying.

"Weir said you were sulking out here."

"I'm not sulking." John unfolded his arms, tucked his hands in his pockets. "I'm just watching the game."

"Huh." Ronan gave him the look that said 'I'm not buying it'. He leaned against the wall next to John, stretching out his long legs. "You don't trust them either, huh?"

John squinted at Ronan, gauging a potential ally.

"'Trust' is a strong word," he said slowly.

"The white one's a killer." Ronan said matter of factly. John looked back at the game.

"Which white one?" Conner was checking out his hair in his reflection in a window, while Kira was smiling reluctantly at something one of the Marines had said.

"Him. Trent."

"Trent's not – oh." Ronan was referring to the clothes. "Yeah, he bugs me too."

Nothing more needed to be said. Ronan was good like that.

He and John stood in the shade of Atlantis' tower, watching the game.

Chapter Text

For most people, being woken up in the middle of the night by Rodney McKay hammering on their door would be a rude interruption. But after three years on Atlantis, it was almost routine.

"Alright, you're not crazy," Rodney said as the door slid open. John blinked blearily and seriously considered just closing the door again, except that when Rodney wanted to tell you something, no door in Atlantis could keep him out.

"…thanks?"

"Oh, don't act so superior. I'm saying there might be a tiny, tiny shred of evidence for your delusions. You should be grateful I'm telling you this at all."

"Which delusion are we talking about exactly?"

"The one where the kids were secret alien spies."

"I didn't say they were secret alien spies exactly–"

"Yes, yes, whatever. Shut up and look at this." Rodney thrust his touch-screen into John's hands. It was a layout of Atlantis. Specifically, the living areas, with little white dots marking out people. "I was going over our energy scans this last week – yet another needlessly complicated and boring job that should really be handled by someone below my pay grade – and I noticed this anomaly."

"What am I supposed to be looking at exactly?"

"Just wait for it."

John waited, until one of the little dots flickered.

"There!" Rodney said. "See!"

"What was that?"

"That, Sheppard, was the smart-mouthed kid in blue, and that was Atlantis' sensors picking up an energy signature in the immediate area."

"What kind of energy signature?"

"Hard to say. It was very faint, lasting for only one point seven seven seconds. But look." Rodney hit a few buttons, and another screen came up. "This is the girl, the jock, and the smarmy one. The same thing happens around them as well every few minutes, regular as clockwork."

"Why the hell didn't this show up on regular scans?" John's sleepiness was sloughing away.

"Because it's so faint the standard equipment doesn't register it as a threat, so it ignores it. It's only the fact that it's recurring so regularly that's unusual, and you can only see that when you go over the backlog, which most people who aren't geniuses don't do."

"Are you sure it's coming from them?"

"No, that's impossible." Rodney rolled his eyes. "Clearly. The human body isn't made for energy surges, even ones as faint as these. It's something near them, or on them."

"Some sort of device?"

"Probably," Rodney shrugged. "There's no way to be sure without–"

"Come on." John started off down the hall, Rodney running behind him.

"Where are we going?"

"To wake Elizabeth up, so you can show her what you just showed me."

Chapter Text

"What's going on?" Conner says.

He doesn't mind being woken up in the middle of the night. He hasn't needed more than four hours of sleep a night since he became a power ranger. But this room he and the others had been escorted to makes him uneasy. There's a table and chairs (none bolted down, but too heavy to be effective weapons) and a platform where people can watch from above. The door isn't closed yet, and they haven't been separated, but Conner has the feeling that could change at any moment.

"Why don't you tell me."

When the portal first dumped the team here, Conner had thought Colonel Sheppard's sarcastic drawl was kind of cool. Of course, he'd thought everything here was awesome, because he'd been sure the portal was a Mesagog plot, and pretty much anywhere was better than Mesagog's lair. Sure this place made him a little sea-sick because it was floating in the middle of the ocean (he didn't care what McKay said, he could feel it bobbing up and down) and he wasn't allowed near the armoury, or the kitchens since that unavoidable accident with the toaster, but it wasn't a creepy super-villain lair with torture devices and gross minions, and that was the important thing. He was perfectly happy to chill out here until these scientist guys pulled a Hayley and found a way to send them home. Sheppard, with his Johnny Cash poster and licensed guns and great hair (had Conner mentioned the hair?) had seemed like the epitome of cool.

Now he's seeing another side of Sheppard, one that he doesn't like very much. Sheppard's standing, while Conner's team are sitting at the table, side by side. McKay is standing behind Sheppard, looking somewhere between nervous and self-righteous. Two Marines are standing on the upper gallery, another two at the door, but Ronan Dex, slouched against the back wall, is probably intended to be the real show of strength. All of this, meant to overawe and frighten Conner's team into blurting out their secrets.

If they'd been ordinary teenagers, it might have worked.

"Have we done something wrong?" Trent says. He is seated on Conner's left, and doing a good impression of being puzzled and mildly concerned.

"Because if we have," Ethan adds. "I think we should know about it." He folds his arms and scowls at Sheppard.

"Oh, I think you know."

"And I think you're blowing smoke out your ear," Kira snaps from the other side of Trent. Anger is Kira's way of dealing with fear, just as false calm is Trent's, and arguing is Ethan's. "So tell us what you think we've done, and we'll tell you that you're imagining things."

"Our sensors picked up energy signatures."

"So?"

"Coming from you."

Conner can't verbally swear thanks to the inbuilt censor on his morpher, but he can think about it. They'd wondered when they first arrived if Atlantis' sensors could pick up their Dino Gems. But no one had said anything, so they'd figured they wouldn't worry about it until it became an issue. Except now it's an issue, and Conner's beginning to regret not worrying about it.

"Us?" Trent says, sounding so startled and worried that even Conner is taken in for a second. "Are you sure?"

"We have the readings."

"But that can't be right. Are you sure it isn't because we're from another universe? A different kind of energy thing?"

Trent sounds completely baffled. He's good at this, at bluffing in the face of overwhelming evidence. It's a skill that Conner would like to believe is innate, but suspects came from Mesagog and his sick little head games. Even Sheppard looks uncertain for a second.

"Oh, for god's sake," McKay says, coming out of his corner. Conner finds it surprising that he'd managed to stay there that long. The scientist has an ego worse than Ethan's. "The energy ghosts are consistent, and they keep showing up around you, particularly when you're together like this, and especially around you." His finger jabs at Conner, and Conner tries to look clueless.

"What exactly are you accusing us of?" Ethan says. "Cos if you don't know, then I don't think you should be keeping us here."

"We can keep you here as long as we like," Sheppard says. "Secret military project, remember?"

Ethan blinks, taken aback by the blatant threat, and Conner barks out:

"That's enough."

It's a ranger instinct – uncoiling sudden and violent in his gut, reacting to a threat to his teammate – and he knows it's a mistake when Sheppard's attention switches to him. He knows by the shift in Ronan's shoulders that he has his hand on his energy weapon. He's in for a surprise if he uses it. Energy weapons generally don't work on rangers: something about their bodies already being channels for massive amounts of power. The real threat, ironically, is the marines and their P-90's. With no morphing grid in this dimension, unable to morph, his team is as vulnerable to projectile weapons as the next person. Conner will have to take the marines out first with his superspeed. Then the others can take care of Sheppard and McKay without any trouble. Ronan will be more of a challenge, but they can take him. Then they can escape down the corridor and…

…what? They still need help to get home.

Trent is relaxed in that boneless way that precedes sudden violence from him. Kira lays a hand on his knee.

"You've made your point," she says to Sheppard. "Now tell us what you want."

"I want you to stop lying. Who are you?"

"High school students," Conner said. "We're high school students. We live in California for god's sake."

He flinches when Sheppard's hands hit the table with a 'bang', the man leaning forward, using the advantage of his height to intimidate.

"Stop lying!"

"We're not!"

Conner wants to tell Sheppard to stop yelling. This is a touchy situation, way more than Sheppard realises. Rangers are hardwired to respond to physical threats, and those can be hard instincts to overcome. It's why Ethan had accepted Derek's challenge, and why Dr O had been furious when he found out afterwards. He'd explained that sparring is fine, or rough sports – the ranger mind classifies it as 'play', and the ranger body is pretty resistant to damage – but a ranger's instinctive reaction to a serious attack is violence. And rangers are very, very good at violence. Derek had been lucky that Ethan decided to resolve matters another way. Ethan might not have set out intending to do damage, but once the first punch was thrown, it would have happened. If not from him, then one of his teammates stepping in. Hospital would have been a best-case scenario for Derek.

Here, with Sheppard trying to rattle them, matters are infinitely worse. Conner trusts Ethan and Kira to control their instincts, but Trent – even not-crazy-Trent – is still a wild card. On the one hand, he's a calm, calculating strategist that would never do anything to jeopardise their chance of getting home. On the other hand, Mesagog and his band of idiots completely fucked him up. So it could go either way.

Only one thing is certain. Once the violence starts, it will escalate. The rangers would do a lot of damage, but they'd go down in the end. Without the ability to morph, a bullet will kill them just as quickly as anyone else.

"I don't know what you want to hear," Conner says. "We just want to go home."

It comes out more plaintive than he intends, and he can see by McKay's stricken expression that he's made an impression. Sheppard opens his mouth to say something, then someone signals him on his radio. He frowns and walks a few steps away. There's a chatter over the radio that even Conner's ranger-hearing can't pick up, but he can see the sudden frission of tension in the man's shoulders, the way he switches from annoyance to survival mode. It's an easy switch to see, if you've gone through it yourself.

"Ronan, get McKay to the gathering point. It's a code eight."

This means something, because every face in the room drains of colour. Ronan doesn't stop to question, just grabs McKay's arm and drags him out the door.

"What about us?" Conner says. He rises to his feet, the others doing the same, and he only recognises it as a mistake when the marines tense. But he can also see that the focus has shifted, that Sheppard's mind is no longer on them.

"You stay here," he says. "They probably won't get this far into the city."

"Probably?" Ethan's voice raises a few octaves. "And who's 'they'?"

Sheppard doesn't answer, already on his radio, barking orders as he walks out the door. The Marines follow. The door closes behind them.

Chapter Text

"This is Alien," Ethan says, sounding surprisingly calm. "This is the fourth movie, and we're Ripley stuck in her cell while the aliens crawl through the ship."

"Not helping," Conner snaps, assessing what weapons they have. The chairs will be good for one big swing maybe, but not much else. Themselves, of course. Cut off from the Grid, they can't morph, but they're a long way from helpless and their civilian powers still work.

Trent casually lays a hand on Conner's shoulder, angling them away from the security camera's line of sight.

"I have this." He pushes back his sleeve just enough to show the handle of the steak knife tucked up there. It looks like it may have been 'liberated' from the kitchens.

"Dude," Conner's both impressed and a little pissed off. "How were you going to explain that if they searched us?"

Trent shrugged.

"If they were searching us, they'd have been arresting us anyway. Besides, I never go into an interrogation unarmed."

Conner wants to ask what he was planning on doing if they were arrested. A weapon might be reassuring, but Conner can't see how four inches of sharp steel lodged in a marine's neck would have done anything except get everyone killed. Of course, this is Trent they're talking about. He practically has a degree in paranoia, sabotage and psychological warfare. This is one of those things that Dr O usually talks to Trent about, but since Dr O isn't here, is probably Conner's responsibility.

"Never carry a weapon I don't know about," he says, and knows right away it was the wrong way to start. Trent's expression shifts, assuming that assured, polished demeanour that reminds Conner way too much of Anton Mercer.

"Anything you say." There's a definite bite to his pleasant tone. "I'll drop everything in the middle of a fight to give you an inventory."

"Don't be such a drama queen," Conner snaps. God, Trent pisses him off sometimes. At least if Kira and Ethan are angry, they'll tell him so. Trent's default reaction is to smile at your face while taking a knife to your hamstring. "If you start a fight, you won't be the only one in trouble. We'll have to deal with it, and I'll have to explain to Dr O why we killed a bunch of people we didn't have to."

That shuts Trent up. The faint smirk disappears and it's just Trent again, looking just a little bit shaken.

"Sorry. I keep forgetting…"

He trails off, but Conner knows where he was going with it."I keep forgetting I'm not alone". Since rejoining the world of the sane, Trent's biggest problem – aside from the screaming nightmares, phobia of needles and pathological inability to trust anyone – is that he can't figure out how to work with a team. And not like Dr O, who's a natural solo fighter but always keeps track of who's doing what. Trent keeps forgetting he now has a team to guard his back. Worse, he forgets he's supposed to be guarding theirs, that what he does affects them too. It's not that he's not trying to fit in – and trying desperately – just that too many times his first instinct is to protect himself.

Conner's pretty sure that this, like Trent's ability to lie seamlessly, is another survival tactic adopted to cope with Mesagog and never quite dropped. Which pisses Conner off for a whole other reason, but doesn't make it any less of a liability.

"Don't forget," is all he says before turning to Kira. "Can you get us out?"

She considers the door thoughtfully.

"One good scream should do it. Want me to try?"

It's tempting. Conner really doesn't want them stuck here if there's some kind of attack. On the other hand, the timing is pretty convenient and if Sheppard's just trying to rattle their cage, Conner would rather not show him what they can do.

"Wait a little longer," he decides reluctantly. "I'd rather not blow our cover unless we really have to."

There's a sudden, shrill scream and gunfire from somewhere on the upper level. They all flinch, and the knife is suddenly in Trent's hand, his body planted between the others and the door (in the back of his mind, Conner notes absently that as often as Trent's instincts are off, sometimes they're dead on).

Fuck it, he decides. That scream had not been faked.

"Kira, blast it down. Trent, get out of the way."

He's barely got his hands over his ears when Kira's mouth opens. Not that it would do him any good if the sonic wave were directed at him. Kira's power at full blast is like jumping off a hundred foot bridge onto concrete. The body might look intact, but inside it's mush. Even at this relatively low level and standing safely behind her, Conner can feel his teeth shuddering in their sockets. The door shivers, hinges buckling and crumpling under the pressure, and for a second Conner thinks Kira's miscalculated and she's going to need a second breath. Then it rips right off the hinges, crashing backwards into the hallway.

The scream fades and Kira gasps for breath, her face flushed. Conner would stop to make certain she's okay, but the other screaming (the human kind) has started again somewhere on the upper levels, and Ethan and Trent are both shouting at him to go.

He activates his speed and blurs out the door, up two flights of stairs and around the corner.

He stops when he finds a white-haired monster bent over a Marine.

This is not an unusual sight in Reefside, except it's usually a civilian instead of a marine, and the white hair is new. The monster bit, though, that's pretty standard, and Conner's subconscious takes over, filtering and prioritising information in a split-second. There's no hard and fast rule for how to kill a monster, but you can make some pretty good guesses just by looking at the anatomy.

This one's smaller than the ones he's used to; no bigger than a good-sized tyrannodrone. Skinnier too, more streamlined, less like a personal fuck-you to Mother Nature and more like evolution had had some time to smooth out the kinks. No natural armour either, just corpse-like skin and a bone mask. Its weapon – some kind of organic looking blaster shaped vaguely like a long rifle – is lying forgotten on the floor. Conner's subconscious analyses these factors, generates several possible solutions, and selects the most effective.

While the monster is still straightening, turning to face him, he smashes a kick through its knee cap. There's a wet snap and it topples, way easier than he expected, flopping on the ground as it tries to get its bearings. He kicks the weapon down the hall and grabs the Marine's arm, intending to haul him to his feet. The withered face and white hair stop him.

Huh. Aging attack. Interesting.

And totally irrelevant. On the long list of ways Conner's seen people die this past year, instant aging is nasty, but not the worst. Anyway the guy clearly can't move, so Conner graps both arms and hauls the guy along on his back until they come to a room that looks like some kind of rec area. He drags him behind the battered old couch and throws a blanket over him. Not the greatest hiding place in the world, but better than nothing.

"Stay down," he tells him pointlessly. "You'll be safe here."

It's not totally a lie. Once Conner kills that monster, the world's going to be a much safer place anyway. He turns the Marine's head to the side and leaves a fold of the blanket open so he can breathe. Helpless bystander taken care of, he heads back out to where he left the monster.

He walks out the door right into a stun blast.

At least that's what he thinks it is. It's definitely an energy attack. He can feel his body absorbing and re-directing the energy. It's always a weird feeling, like standing too close to a fire, just hot enough to be uncomfortable, but not close enough to burn. This time is barely a flicker of heat, which tells him it's not meant to kill, or even hurt. Could be meant to stun or paralyse. They'd run across a few of those in the early days before Mesagog wised up to the fact the things just didn't work on rangers.

Conner's almost more annoyed at himself – Dr O always says to watch your surroundings – than he is with the monster, which is on its feet and aiming its retrieved weapon. Almost.

"I could have sworn I broke your knee," he remarks.

It shoots him again. He rolls his shoulders to dispel the fading tingle of energy and wonders idly how the monster manages to aim without eyes. Ethan would probably know.

"Look," he says. "I don't know anything about the monsters here. Usually I'd be ripping your head off right about now, but I figure since I could stand here all day and let you shoot me and only feel a slight tickle, we've got some time. If you're a person – like a regular, innocent person – who's been kidnapped and brainwashed and transformed, or anything like that, you need to make some kind of signal. Wave your hand or nod, or something. Because otherwise things are about to get very ugly."

The monster shoots him again. Twice. In the face. Then, when nothing happens, it flings the weapon aside and stalks toward him. Still limping, but moving way faster than it should be able to with a broken leg.

"I'll take that as a no."

Conner ducks under its reaching hand and punches it in the throat. There's a nice juicy crunch, but he's not about to underestimate it again, and he's right. It doesn't slow down in the slightest, swiping at him with a vicious backhand so close to connecting he can feel the air brushing his cheek as he rolls under it. He comes up next to the weapon.

Score.

He doesn't have a clue how to fire it, but he doesn't need it to. There's this lovely loud crack as he slams the butt into the monster's mask. The monster staggers, and he hits its side until he feels the ribs snap, and follows it up with another smashing blow to the face. The mask splits down the middle and blue-green blood spills out. The monster staggers a few steps and falls. It's head twists, frantically trying to locate him. Blind. Good.

"Seriously, dude," he says, letting his voice go light and easy. The 'dumb jock' voice Ethan calls it, that never fails to make Mesagog dismiss him, even as it drives Elsa and Zeltrax insane with rage and frustration. Oneday Conner's going to use that dumb jock voice as he takes Mesagog apart piece by piece. "Persistence is all good and all, but you've got to know when to fold 'em."

He smashes the weapon into the monster's right hand, shattering the bones.

"When to walk away."

He breaks the monster's other hand.

"And when to run."

Two vicious blows break the left knee. Conner circles around until he gets to its head.

"I mean, you're not going to be walking or running anytime soon," he says. "But you get the idea."

He slams the weapon onto the monster's skull until it stops trying to crawl away. By then he's pretty sure it's dead. There's blue-green blood spattered all up the wall and over his hands. He lets the weapon drop and takes a deep, cleansing breath. Fuck, this is going to be a nightmare on his clothes. He's used to the morph taking care of things. He's only got a limited number of red shirts, mostly borrowed from the scientists and marines, and with his luck this stuff stains.

"Nice." Ethan is standing at the corner, eyeing the dead monster with both approval and envy. He looks at Conner. "Civilian?"

"Marine, actually. Third room on the right, under the blanket."

"Dead?"

"Not yet. You mind?"

Ethan goes to check on the marine and Conner wipes a sticky hand on his jeans. Back home, killing the monster sometimes reverses the effects of their attacks on their victims. But not every single time, and not always perfectly. And even if your body is fine, you still have to carry around the memory of what was done to you, which can fuck you up like you wouldn't believe. Just look at Trent.

Right then, Trent and Kira come running round the corner. They stop, evaluating the scene with professional interest, and Kira raises her eyebrows at Conner.

"You good?" It's asked casually enough, but they both relax visibly when he nods.

"That monster was weak. Not much better than a tyrannodrone."

"Good." Trent circles the body warily. "That'll help when we kill the rest."

"The rest?"

"Sheppard said 'they', remember. As in plural."

"Ah." Conner had forgotten that. He's used to dealing with one monster at a time, sometimes with a helping of cyborg and psychopath, and a few tyrannodrones on the side. He nudges the weapon with his foot. "This was a stun weapon, maybe. Didn't do much, unless you count giving me something to bash its brains in with."

"What did it feel like?" Kira asks. "On a scale of one to ten?"

"Um…Point five?"

Kira and Trent look at each other and smile. It would be kind of creepy, that pleased predatory look like Cassidy Cornwell at a closing down sale, if Conner couldn't feel his mouth curling into the same wolfish expression. He can see what they're thinking, is thinking it himself. This is going to be fun.

Ethan sticks his head out the door. He's not smiling.

"Uh, Conner? This guy is not looking good. We need to get him to the infirmiry."

Just like that, everyone is all business. Conner mentally pits the others' powers against the monster he just fought, and starts distributing his resources.

"Ethan, you and I will carry him. Kira, do you remember the way to the infirmiry?"

"Maybe." Kira frowns as she thinks. "Yes. Yes, I do."

"Good, you lead the way. You see any of these things, scream their heads off. Trent, you're the guy with the knife. You watch our backs. No running off. I mean it."

"I'm not going to run away," Trent says coldly, looking insulted. Conner rolls his eyes.

"I didn't mean like that, jeez. I meant the usual sixth ranger splitting off to do your own thing isn't going to cut it. We can't morph here. We need to stick together or we'll get ourselves killed."

Trent looks somewhat mollified.

"Don't worry," he says in a more normal tone, drawing the knife with a casual flourish. "I know how to fight unmorphed."

"Whatever. You die, I'm telling Hayley."

They get the Marine. He's so out of it, he can't even walk. Actually carrying him would put too much strain on even Power-augmented bodies, so Conner slings one arm over his shoulders, and Ethan gets the other arm over his, and they sort of haul him along between them, feet dragging on the ground. The guy's wheezing, really struggling to breathe, to the point that Conner wonders if he's even going to make it to the infirmiry.

Kira picks up the weapon Conner dropped and hefts it, testing its weight before resting it easily over one shoulder. She hesitates over the marine's gun, looking at Conner and he shakes his head. Projectile weapons weren't included in the information download when they first morphed, and they can't rely on a weapon they can't even find the safety on. The monster's weapon is okay; if it goes off accidentally, the worst it can do is stun someone. The gun can kill.

Trent pauses beside the monster, which has started to twitch. He stamps down hard, snapping its neck. Conner gives him a sharp nod of approval, and they move on.

Chapter Text

In the corridors of Atlantis, the lights flicker and die.

“Oh great,” McKay says, waiting for his eyes to adjust and hoping he doesn’t run into anything. “Not only are there wraith in Atlantis – and how the hell that happened, I want to know – but they’ve sabotaged the lights. I always wanted to be hunted by life sucking aliens in the dark.”

He can’t help the startled yelp when something grabs his arm, forcing him to a halt.

“Quiet.” Ronan’s voice rumbles. 

“What are you trying to do, give me a heart attack–” Ronan’s hand over his mouth muffles the rest.

“Listen.”

Ronan sounds serious, so McKay shuts up and listens. Atlantis’ halls carry sound a long way, particularly at night. ‘Natural ambience’ one of the archaeologists had gushed over it until McKay tuned her out. Here, in the deeper regions, he can’t hear the sea, but he can hear the distant groan of walls adjusting to the ocean’s pressure. Terrifying when they first arrived and he was convinced every groan was Atlantis springing a leak, but now reassuringly normal.

Ronan has removed his hand, and Mckay whispers:

“What are we listening for?” 

“You didn’t hear that?”

“No. Hear what?”

“Like a…” McKay senses more than sees Ronan’s gesture. “A roar.”

“A roar?” McKay doesn’t add that he thinks Ronan is imagining things, but his tone suggests it.

“Or a scream,” Ronan stubbornly. “I didn’t just hear it, I felt it. Through the floor.” 

McKay thinks about pointing out the effects of prolonged terror on the human brain, but decides they probably don’t apply to Ronan, who channels all his feelings into killing wraith or hitting things.

“It could have been Atlantis moving. We’re in the middle of an ocean.”

“You told Conner that’s impossible.”

“I was trying to shut him up. And what I meant was, usually the size of Atlantis protects us from weather patterns. I didn’t mean always, all the time. And can we please go now?”

Ronan makes that sound in his throat that could mean ‘I respectfully disagree’ or possibly ‘you’re a moron’. There’s a delicate distinction between the two that’s not always clear. He touches his comm. and says:

“Sheppard, come in.” He waits a few second and says: “I’m not getting through.”

McKay tries his own comm. and gets only static. They try Teyla, then Lorne and Elizabeth, with no response from any of them. That could mean radio silence, except no order had come through. More likely it means that the lights are not the only system that got sabotaged.

“I’m going back,” Ronan says.

“What?” McKay’s voice rises in pitch.

“Something’s happening. I’m going back.”

“Sheppard told us to go to the fall-back point.”

“He can yell at me for it when I save his life.”

“He’s probably not even there anymore.” McKay trails after Ronan, nearly tripping some steps that loom up in the dark. “He was already leaving for the control tower when we left, and if there’s something happening, I don’t think we should be going toward it…”

“Don’t worry.” Ronan slaps his shoulder in a way that’s halfway between mocking and reassuring. “I’ll protect you.”

“Oh, joy.”

It takes longer to get back, probably because they have to go slower to avoid running into things. Ronan, of course, has some sort of freaky sixth sense about where the walls are, while McKay walks into nearly every one, and comes very close to falling down a flight of stairs.

When they get close to the holding room, Ronan stops and draws his gun. Well McKay can’t see it, but he knows that’s what he’s doing. Ronan is always drawing his gun for one reason or another. He says:

“Something’s wrong.”

“Oh, well, if you’re spider sense is tingling… wait a second, would you?” McKay hurries after Ronan as he disappears down the hall. This is a really bad idea. A lets-leave-Sheppard-alone-with-the-alien-princess idea. First of all, there are wraith in Atlantis. Second of all, there are wraith in Atlantis. A strange sound in the dark is probably fifty of them waiting for the stupid humans to come and investigate.

He catches up to Ronan standing at the door to the holding room. The light’s a bit better here and he can just make out Ronan, a dim outline of muscle and dreadlocks, and a gloomy patch where the door is. No, wait. That’s not a door. That’s a gaping hole in the wall where the door used to be. McKay trips over something and discovers the door, somehow forcibly detached from its usual place and lying on the ground.

“What the hell…” He runs his hand over the Ancient metal and finds it crumpled like someone took a sledgehammer to it. Something else occurs to him, and he hurriedly stands up, stumbling to Ronan’s side. “Are they–”

Please not dead. Please not dead. They lied and their energy signatures are weird and they might be secret alien spies, but McKay doesn’t want four teenagers dead because he brought an odd report to Sheppard and got them locked up where the wraith could get them.

“It’s empty,” Ronan says. “They’re not here.’

McKay breathes a heartfelt sigh of relief. Then the obvious question occurs to him:

“Where are they then?”

The wraith wouldn’t bother taking prisoners, not unless they want to question someone, and they have an uncanny instinct for picking out the high ranking. If they were here they’d have fed and left the bodies where they fell, or stunned them and kept going. Either way, the kids should be here.

The longer McKay stands here, the more he gets the feeling that something’s really wrong here, something beyond the normal “oh my god, we’re all going to die” sense that comes with a wraith invasion. It’s deeply unsettling and he desperately wishes the lights would come on, or that he’d thought to carry a flashlight–

“God, I’m an idiot,” he says out loud.

“What?”

“There’s a rec room somewhere round here. They keep flashlights in the cupboard. I know because we had to find one when the lights in Katie’s room wouldn’t come on.” He realises a second too late that’s probably too much information about his and Katie’s relationship, but all Ronan says is:

“I think it’s upstairs. This way.”

They climb three flights of stairs, fumble around on the third level for about a minute before working out the rec room’s on the level below. McKay makes a mental note to more fully memorise Atlantis’ layout when he gets a chance. He knows the labs and control room, but perhaps he should have made more of an effort with the less important areas.

There’s an odd smell in the air here. Bitter and familiar, like the smell of insects after you crushed them. McKay’s smelt it somewhere before. Somewhere like –

McKay’s throat closes up in terror as he recognises the scent, and it takes him two tries to get the words out:

“Is that… can you smell…”

“Yes.” Ronan’s voice is grim.

McKay backs up against the wall, wanting to give Ronan room if something lunges out of the dark. The floor is slippery, like someone recently went through with a mop and his foot hits something hard in the dark. He kneels down to pick it up, and recognises the hard corners right away, sticky with some wet substance. The bitter smell is overpowering.

“Ronan,” he says, and is pleased at how calm and collected he sounds.

“What?”

“I just found a P-90.” He takes a breath and adds helpfully: “And I think there’s more wraith blood over here.”

“Don’t move.” The seconds tick past. Nearly half a minute goes by before Ronan says: “It’s okay. It’s dead.”

“How dead?” It’s a reasonable question. Wraith are always doing annoying things like coming back to life when your back is turned.

“Dead as in someone beat it’s skull in and broke its neck.”

“Oh, good.” McKay stands on shaky legs. He feels a little sick with relief. He checks the P-90 in the dark, finds the chamber still half full, and puts the safety on. The last thing he wants to do is shoot someone else by mistake. That’s probably what the wraith intended, for the humans to panic and start shooting each other in the dark.

He notes with distant interest how the terror has made his thoughts clearer. He should talk to Beckett about the effects of adrenaline on–

“I can’t find the other body,” Ronan says, interrupting his train of thought.

“Which other body?”

“The one that owned the P-90.”

“Oh, that one.”

Just like the holding room. Signs of a struggle, but no body. Points in a pattern. McKay’s a genius. He can work this out.

In the meantime, he feels along the wall until he finds the rec room, nearly tripping over a blanket some idiot’s left on the floor. The flashlights are in the cupboard, just like he remembers, and he tucks the P-90 under one arm as he switches one on. The beam is pale and weak – they’re not good quality flashlights – but it’s a thousand times better than the dark. He takes a second one out to Ronan.

Out of interest – and because he likes knowing where all wraith are, dead or alive – he shines the torchlight across the corpse. Ronan hadn’t been exaggerating about the beaten to death thing. If anything, he’d been understating matters.

“Looks like it really suffered,” Ronan remarks in the same tone one would comment on the weather. McKay absorbs the blue-green blood sprayed across the wall, the sickeningly wrong angle of the joints, the white bits of bone protruding from the skin. He says levelly:

“Good.”

This wraith individually is probably responsible for hundreds – if not thousands – of horrifically painful deaths. If someone paid a little back before killing it, McKay’s certainly not going to point fingers.

Ronan circles around the body.

“Look at this.”

McKay follows, shining the torch.

There are footprints leading away from the body, like someone had stepped in the blood as they left. More than one someone. McKay hazards a guess:

“The people who left the P-90?”

“No. The marines don’t wear shoes like this.”

“Scientists then.” McKay’s not the only member of the science division who knows how to use a weapon, and would be issued one in an emergency.

“Maybe.” Ronan sounds doubtful.

“Look,” McKay says. “Whatever you’re thinking, just say it. It can’t possibly be as bad as the scenarios running through my head right now.”

Ronan looks at him, and his expression in the shadows cast by the torch says quite clearly ‘yes it can’.

“There are two reason you don’t beat a wraith to death. One, they’re faster and they’re stronger than you. Always.”

“You’ve done it before.”

“When I didn’t have a choice. And I’d cripple them or trap them first.” It’s difficult to read the set of Ronan’s eyebrows when he looks at the dead wraith, but it’s almost… worried. “Second reason is their weapon. Why didn’t the wraith just stun whatever attacked it?”

“Because he lost it. Because his stunner was broken. Because he had stupid ego moment about killing them with his bare hands. Lots of reasons.”

“Then how did they get out of the holding room?”

“How did they…” And McKay finally sees where Ronan is going with this. “You think Sheppard’s alien spies did this?”

“Four sets of footprints. Three men, one woman. What do you think?”

McKay’s first instinct is the same as when Sheppard approached him with his suspicions – a forceful no. It was impossible. It didn’t make sense. It wasn’t even worth considering. But beneath it his logical mind is connecting the dots, seeing the pattern. The proximity is impossible to ignore, as are the weird energy readings, and that one moment when Conner had looked at Sheppard and it was like he didn’t even see him any more. It only lasted a second and later McKay was able to convince himself he’d imagined it. But part of him, the animal instinct that couldn’t be rationalised away, had known better.

“They’ve been lying from the start,” Ronan says. “Sheppard’s been saying so all along. Why didn’t you listen?”

“Because they were just stupid teenagers, and he was being paranoid and… I don’t know, alright.” Part of McKay still resists it, tries to come up with some reason for their innocence. “And even if they did – and I’m not saying I agree with you – it’s just a wraith. Tell me you don’t want to give them a pat on the back.”

Ronan’s quiet a moment. Then he says:

“There are things worse than wraith.”

Beneath their feet, the floor shudders in time to a distant scream.

Chapter Text

The last thing McKay wants to do is track down the people that beat a wraith to death.

Not that he has any problem with beating wraith to death, per se. Generally that’s the kind of behaviour that gets both thumbs up from him. God knows he’s seen Ronan do it enough times in person.

The problem – which he explains to Ronan very clearly and concisely and not hysterically, whatever anyone says – is that these people had been lying through their teeth. Human they might be, but high school students they definitely aren’t. And the very fact they lied opens up all sorts of worrying questions about why they lied in the first place and what they would do to keep said lies from being exposed.

McKay hasn’t survived three years in Pegasus just to get murdered by four skinny teenagers with smart mouths and secret ninja skills.

“I’ll protect you,” Ronan had said, with that particular lack of inflection that suggests he’s humouring McKay’s quirks. Which, fine, occasionally – very occasionally – might be called for, but not in this instance.

Unfortunately, McKay’s only other option is wandering off into the dark and hoping not to run into more wraith. So he stumbles along behind Ronan as the big hulk follows the thinning trail of wraith blood – and seriously, who beats anything to death so badly they leave bloody footprints?! – and tries to distract himself by coming up with theories about what their guests really are.

“Military. Definitely military. Maybe their world’s version of special ops? The thing that bothers me is how they did it. I mean, I understand you. You’re built like a brick shit-house. Uh, that’s not entirely an insult,” he adds hastily when Ronan raises an eyebrow at him. “And Kira aside, none of them are exactly small. But they’re not that big. How the hell do they get the kind of leverage to –”

Ronan signals for silence and McKay shuts up. He thinks that Ronan’s heard something again until he points the flashlight down at a thick blue-green puddle.

It’s oozing outward from a wraith, which is sprawled on the ground, throat rather messily cut. Exsanguination will kill a wraith almost as quickly as a human, but whoever had done had taken no chances. The feeding hand has been almost completely severed, hanging by a few threads.

“Hamstrung,” Ronan says, quickly examining it. “Back of the thighs, throat, feeding hand. Whoever trained them knew what they were doing.” There’s a reluctant respect to his voice. McKay moves in for a closer look and his flashlight beam moves across something further down the corridor. He stops. Shines a little further to be absolutely sure of what he’s seeing. 

“Ronan,” he says, and his voice sounds a little strangled.

“What?”

McKay wordlessly points at the corridor of bodies. Wraith bodies, thank god. He counts at least ten sprawled in various attitudes of death, each of them ghoulishly imaginative. There’s one that looks like it suffocated after it’s mask was ripped off, another with it’s head twisted so that the mask faces it’s spine, another that looks kind of… pulped.

Ronan stands up.

“We’re going.”

McKay doesn’t argue, just lets Ronan drag him back the way they came. One wraith is doable, if you’re the size of Ronan, but ten is pushing credibility. Whatever those…kids…. are, they’re beyond what even Ronan or Sheppard suspected.

They turn the corner, and the beam of McKay’s flashlight illuminates corpse-pale skin and bright inhuman eyes.

McKay barely has time to shout ‘wraith!’ before Ronan’s shoving him down and energy weapons are whining around him. The flashlight goes spinning, and he can’t see anything except indistinct struggling shadows. He fumbles for the P-90, but doesn’t manage to get the safety off before it’s wrenched out of his hands.

The flashlight has come to rest against the wall, a narrow beam of light streaming down the corridor, stretching the shadows. McKay doesn’t have to wait for his eyes to adjust to see the male wraith towering over him, angry breath hissing between its teeth like an enraged cat. Behind him, two drones lay twitching, smoking with the marks of Ronan’s gunfire. Five more drones are wrestling Ronan to the ground.

“How did you do this?” The male wraith hisses in McKay’s face.

“Do what?” McKay says thoughtlessly, and gets a backhand for it. His head bounces against the wall, and it hurts, but he knows it will hurt more later, once his body has settled enough to register the pain. If he gets a later.

“This!” The wraith gestures furiously at the corridor of dead wraith.

Then Mckay gets it. The laugh that forces its way out his throat is tinged with hysteria. 

“You think that was us?”

There’s something awfully funny about being killed for something he didn’t do. Sure he’s killed wraith – if you count in the number that have been killed thanks to technologies he invented or reverse engineered, the number goes astronomical – but the one time he wasn’t involved, even by proxy, is the time he gets killed for it.

“None of these bodies were killed by your usual weapons.” The wraith snarls. “I will ask one last time; how did you do this?”

“We didn’t! That wasn’t us! Granted, we would have done it if we could, but we can’t, and we didn’t!”

Perhaps it can hear the honesty in his voice. It studies him with those strange flat eyes, and he feels the faint nudge inside his brain as it telepathically pushes for truth.

“Then what did?” It asks in a calmer voice.

McKay opens his mouth to tell it all about Conner and his merry band of liars and… doesn’t.

“I don’t know,” he says. The wraith bares its teeth and that nudge becomes a dangerous pressure. Sweat breaks out on McKay’s face. It’s impossible to resist a wraith coercing your mind, but it is possible to sidestep it, distract it from the real issue. You can never lie, but you can redirect. “What, you think I want something like this on our base?” He babbles. “If they can do this to you, they can probably do worse to us, and I’m not naïve to believe their motives are altruistic.”

The wraith tilts its head.

“They?”

McKay curses his own cleverness and says nothing. The pressure in his mind intensifies.

“Talk,” the wraith says. “What are ‘they’?”

It asked ‘what’ not ‘who’. McKay answers with complete honesty:

“I don’t know.” He has no idea what Conner and his friends really are, whether they’re human or something else altogether. The wraith’s expression twists in frustration.

“Then I have no further use for you.” Its fingers twist in his collar, holding him still while its feeding hand draws back and –

McKay’s not quite sure what happens next.

Later, thinking on it, he can’t be entirely sure whether he imagined the red blur or not. One minute the space beside the wraith is empty, and the next Conner is standing there. He’s not joking or smirking like usual. His expression is blank with purpose, his movements practised and efficient as he grabs the wraith’s wrist and wrenches its feeding arm backwards, turning his whole body into the movement. There’s a ‘pop’ and the wraith is screaming, arm dangling uselessly. Pulled out of the socket, McKay thinks distantly. But Conner hasn’t finished yet. His fist flies up, landing a punch once, twice, three times into the wraith’s throat. The last time, his fingers are curled and stiff like claws and he digs them in like he’s searching for something. His knuckles flex as he gets a grip and then he yanks, quick and brutal, and there’s something dark and wet in his hands and blue-green blood spraying and the wraith is falling to the ground, making these awful bubbling choking sounds.

McKay can’t move. He just stares up at the teenager who’d just torn out a wraith’s throat. It had happened all so quickly, over in just a few seconds. Effortless.

Conner glances at McKay, a perfunctory sort of look to assess the situation. Apparently dismissing him as irrelevant he darts off to kneecap one of the wraith holding Ronan. He’s not alone either. Kira has leapt on the back of another drone, her slim arms wrapping spider-like around its neck as she strangles it. Ethan is smashing his fist again and again into another one’s mask. There’s something wrong with his hands, something blue and scaly that definitely wasn’t there before. The air ripples and Trent appears for a split second to stab a wraith in the neck before disappearing again.

It’s insane. It should be a slaughter, and it is – just not the side it should be. When it’s over, it’s the four teenagers who are left standing and the man-eating aliens who are sprawled dying on the ground.

Conner finishes his last one – kneeling on its shoulder and yanking its chin round until there’s a wet crack – and stands up. He wipes his hands on his jeans, making a face and says:

“I’m totally ahead, you know.” It’s so much like the kid he pretends to be, McKay doesn’t quite process what he said at first.

“No way.” Ethan kicks aside a dead wraith, ignoring the floppy sprawl of its limbs. “That was number seven. We’re even.”

“Na-ah! Remember that one with the scar?”

“That doesn’t count,” Kira says, wiping wraith blood off her face. “I broke its leg first.”

“Seven and a half,” Conner counters. “I’m still in the lead. Trent, dude, back me up.”

“Leave me out of it.” Trent is cleaning what looks like a butcher’s knife on a wraith’s clothes. “Besides, Kira’s in the lead.”

“Lies. Total lies.”

The playfulness of their banter is deceptive enough that it’s shocking when Ethan turns his head very slightly and says in a friendly-but-warning tone:

“Ronan. Bad idea.”

Ronan, who had been quietly edging toward the discarded P-90, stops. All four teenagers are watching him now. Not antagonistic, exactly, just watchful. Trent has no expression at all as he fingers the butcher’s knife. Kira steps over to Ronan’s discarded energy weapon and kicks it across to him.

“Here, you can have this,” she says. “Leave that.”

None of the others seem dismayed or even surprise. So they don’t want Ronan to have the P-90, but don’t mind the more advanced weapon? How does that make sense?

Ronan picks up his gun slowly, not looking away from their four guests as he adjusts the settings and flicks the safety off. Like Mckay he seems to be waiting for the catch.

“I can shoot you with this one too,” he says, not quite pointing it at anyone, but making it pretty clear he’s thinking about it. The kids don’t react at all. Trent even smiles a little, as if at some private joke that’s not very funny.

“Come on, play nice,” Ethan says to Ronan. “I gave you a warning. Trent was just going to stab you.”

“No, I wasn’t,” Trent says. Kira gives him a look, and he concedes: “Not fatally.”

Ethan sighs and Conner looks at the ceiling as if asking for help.

“Dude, do we have to talk about ‘no stabbing people we just saved’? Because I really thought we didn’t have to, that it was like, implicit.” 

“Fine.” Trent smiles pleasantly. “I’ll let the next paranoid moron with a gun shoot you. Happy?” He walks off into the dark.

“You really have no room to talk about paranoid!” Conner calls after him. He sounds resigned more than angry.

Ronan gives McKay a look as if to say ‘any idea what the hell is going on?’. McKay shrugs and glares, trying to indicate ‘I may be a genius but I’m not omniscient’. He’s tentatively hopeful that their guests are not immediately going to kill them. If they wanted them dead, they could have just let the wraith do that.

Of course, they do need Atlantis’ help to get home – McKay’s in particular.

Relief floods him as the realization hits. Of course they need him alive. They might be liars and killers and god knows what else, but they’re smart enough to know they need McKay to get them home. This bizarre bickering teenager routine is geared toward making him relax and cooperate. It’s creepy but it makes a nice change from the usual threats of torture and drawn-out execution. And this is one instance where their interests and his nicely coincide. If it gets them off Atlantis, he’s happy to send them anywhere they please.

With more confidence he asks “Where’s he going?” indicating the direction Trent went. Kira answers:

“He’s gone to get the marine.” At McKay’s puzzled look she elaborates. “We found a Marine after one of those monsters got to him. We hid him in a supply cupboard when we heard you guys being attacked.”

“Oh.” McKay watches her check a wraith for signs of life. “What are you?” He asks. He gets a puzzled, slightly concerned look, like she was worried he’d gotten hit in the head.

“Human, remember? Dr Beckett did all those tests when we first got here.”

“No, really.” McKay averts his eyes as she sets one small foot on the wraith’s neck and bears down. There’s a wet snap and the wraith spasms one last time before going still. “What are you?”

“Human,” she repeats, slowly as if to imply he’s a little deranged.

“Then how did you…” He waves his hands at the hallway of wraith corpses. “…this? This is not normal. This is not human. Not unless evolution took a very different path in your world, and I think you would have mentioned it by now.”

If he’d hoped logic would get an answer, he’s disappointed. She shakes her head, bemused.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Dr McKay. We’re all human here.”

He doesn’t miss, however, the quick look she gives Conner, or the way Ethan touches his wrist, as if to reassure himself of something. She might be telling the truth about the human bit – they fooled the tests somehow – but McKay would bet his not unsubstantial government pay-check that’s not all there is to the story.

“They almost killed us,” Ronan says. “Those wraith would have killed us because of you.”

Kira bites her lip and looks at Conner. Conner seems to be thinking very intently about something. McKay half expects him to point out that the wraith would have killed them anyway – it’s what McKay would have said to avoid answering. But what Conner says is:

“When we lied, we weren’t singling you out because we disliked you or meant you harm.” The careful way he speaks suggests this is a huge concession on his part. “We lie to everyone. It’s part of the rules.”

“What rules?” Ronan asks. But Conner has apparently given them all he’s going to.

“Trent will be back soon. We’ll drop you off at the infirmiry with the marine: you should be safe there.”

He holds out his hand and McKay takes it without thinking.

Oh crap, he thinks as Conner’s fingers close around his. It would take a lot less strength to rip a human arm out of its socket than it would a wraith. But all Conner does is haul him to his feet and give him a friendly smack on the shoulder, the same way Sheppard or Ronan would. Ethan even finds the flashlight and hands it to him.

 “So, Ronan,” Conner says conversationally. “How good are you with that gun?”

Chapter Text

“Have you thought this through?”

Conner’s a little surprised that it’s Ethan quietly asking him this, and not Trent. Then again, Ethan is just as much a strategist as Trent is – arguably better, since he judges a situation by what it actually is rather than consistently finding the worst possible interpretation. 

“Not really,” Conner admits. He glances back at Trent and McKay, who are carrying the drained, grey-haired marine up the stairs behind them, accompanied by a lot of swearing and irritation from McKay. Trent’s given Kira his knife, and she and Ronan are bringing up the rear, watching the dark and pretending like they’re not also thinking of a dozen ways to kill each other. “I’m still freaking out over how badly I’ve f– how badly I’ve messed up.”

“Nah.” Ethan bumps a friendly shoulder against Conner’s, making the flashlight wobble. “What’s Dr O gonna say? Yes, you should have left the innocent civilians to their horrific deaths in order to protect our secret identities?”

Conner gives a harsh bark of laughter. It really shouldn’t be as funny as it is.

“Besides it wasn’t just you,” Ethan continues firmly. “Any of us could have stopped you. You’ve met Kira, right? She could lay you unconscious in three seconds flat, and Trent and me aren’t exactly helpless, so we’re all in it together.”

“Yeah, but I’m the –”

“So help me, if you finish that sentence with some moronic statement about red rangers being responsible for everything everywhere, I am going to thump you in the head.”

He means it too. Conner stops and changes what he was going to say.

“I guess it’s not too bad. It’s not like they saw us morph. And it’s another dimension; I’ll bet that doesn’t even count.” He’s warming to his theme. “And Sheppard can’t be mad once he hears we saved some of his people.”

Ethan’s quiet for a second too long.

“What?” Conner demands.

“It’s just… I’m not saying we shouldn’t have saved them. I agree with that one hundred percent, and so do the others. But this world doesn’t have power rangers.”

“Yeah, but once we explain– ”

“Read my lips, Conner. They don’t have rangers. Think about what we look like to them.”

Conner doesn’t know what Ethan’s getting at. It’s not like they can even morph at the moment. Compared to what a ranger is normally capable of, they’re soft fluffy kittens.

Okay, so fluffy kittens that know martial arts. And have super powers. And who lie about what they are and can kill with their bare hands…

“…oh,” he says.

“Yeah, oh,” Ethan says. “See what I mean?”

“Yeah.” Conner bites his lip. He really, really wishes Dr O were here. This situation needs delicacy and tact, and a bunch of other stuff Conner is really bad at. Not that Dr O is much better, according to Hayley, but he has about five years of experience in the uniform and more working behind the scenes, which should count for something. At the very least, it would give Conner a good reason to dump the decision-making on someone else.

Back home, this wouldn’t have been a problem. Teams have been revealed before, like the Galaxy Rangers and Time Force, and who hasn’t heard of the Astro rangers? Conner had an Andros action figure for way longer than it was cool to have one.

But back home rangers have been defending earth for ten years. People trust them. How would a ranger-less world react?

“Are we interrupting something?” That’s McKay’s bad-tempered tone from behind them, where he and Trent have stopped halfway up the stairs. “Because we could use a little help, if that’s not too much trouble.”

Conner and Ethan go back and carry the marine the rest of the way up. Not that Trent needs the break; it’s McKay who’s looking about five minutes from a heart attack.  Conner wonders if him helping carry the Marine was a good idea. They’d move faster if someone else took over, but it would also mean one less fighter if they run into another patrol.

“Oh god, my back is killing me,” McKay pants, leaning against a wall.

“Two minutes’ break,” Conner says. “Then we need to get going.”

“What if another wraith patrol comes?”

“And what if we walk straight into another one if we keep going? They’re pretty randomly dispersed, so it’s an equal risk either way. At least you’ll be able to go faster if you catch your breath.”

Conner tries to be matter of fact; there’s no point in being a jerk about it. McKay’s not a fighter. Conner would be just as outclassed if he sat in on one of Mckay’s experiments. Probably even more outclassed; Hayley’s the only person Conner knows who might be as smart as McKay, and he’s not even sure of that.

While McKay sits down, Trent moves to take watch down one end of the corridor, while Ronan takes the other. He watches the rangers as much as he watches the corridor, which is nothing new; Ronan had never made any secret of the fact he thought the rangers were shifty. While Sheppard and some of the marines had sometimes seemed vaguely uneasy, as if they couldn’t quite work out what bothered them about four seemingly average teenagers, Ronan had looked right at them and recognised them for what they were. Dangerous. Conner wishes he knew what had given them away. Do they move different? Talk different? Unfortunately Ronan’s not much for small talk, so he can’t really work up to it in conversation.

Conner sits down on the top step next to McKay.

“Dr McKay, can I ask you something?”

“So long as it’s not about sex or reality television or whatever anorexic child is supposed to be top of the pops at the moment.”

“Nah, it’s not that. I wanted to know; do we scare you?”

“Subtle dude,” Ethan mutters. “Real subtle.” Kira gives Conner an exasperated look she had to have ripped off from Hayley. But McKay looks startled and a little worried, as if Conner’s question had caught him flat-footed.

“No?” He says in a voice that’s in no way convincing.

“Because we’re not bad guys,” Conner says. “We kill monsters, not people.”

“Sure…” McKay’s gaze darts between them. “Look, you really want an honest answer?” Conner nods and McKay says: “Why should I believe anything you say? You’ve been lying from the moment you got here.”

“I told you, that’s what we do.”

“So you’re saying you’d never hurt a human? Ever? That you’re completely one hundred percent safe?”

Derek flashes through Conner’s mind.

“Not a hundred percent,” he admits. “But you’re not either. All you’d have to do is pull a trigger and you could hurt someone. You might not even have to mean it.”

McKay studies him.

“Do you always mean it?”

“I’ve only ever killed monsters. I’ve never laid a hand on a person.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Conner doesn’t dare look at Trent, afraid of what he might give away. One thing he’s sure of is that bringing up Trent’s past isn’t going to help anyone not be afraid of them.

“At least we kill monsters, not create them.” Kira’s statement could be completely casual– and it would be except for the way the flat, evaluative gaze she directs toward McKay. Ronan shifts his weight, hand moving casually to his gun.

“What are you talking about?”

“We’re not stupid,” Kira says. “Those monsters are part human. You only have to look at them to see that.”

“Someone created them,” Trent agrees, lounging against the wall and eyeing Ronan like he’s trying to decide whether the knife would look better in his eye or in his chest.

“That’s not –” McKay flushes. “That wasn’t us.” He’s oddly flustered for someone completely innocent and Conner drawls:

“Sure, we believe you.”

That, apparently, is a step too far, and McKay rallies himself impressively.

“For someone throwing around accusations of genetic manipulation, you four are pretty suspect. The only way you could recognise human DNA in something like a wraith is if you have a measure of comparison, and after seeing what you can do, I’m guessing you have a lot more in common with monsters than you do us.”

His rant is greeted by dead silence.

There’s a ringing in Conner’s ears and a hot tight feeling in his chest. He really wants to hit something, and the funny thing is it’s his own impulse, not ranger instinct. Just rage and hurt and frustration.

“You think we’re monsters?” McKay flinches as Conner stands, and Conner gives him a scornful look. “We saved your lives, we’ve told you things we haven’t told our own families, and you think we’re monsters. F–” The word changes shape in his mouth, almost choking him. He can’t even fucking swear when it’s called for. He has to wait until the strangling effect of the censor fades. 

Kira is white with anger, Ethan struggling – and failing – to hide a look of deep betrayal. Even though he’s the one who’d pointed out that Atlanteans’ reaction might not be entirely positive, he probably hadn’t expected it to be this bad. Trent’s expression is sardonic, with a distinct hint of ‘I told you so’.

“Oh calm down,” McKay snaps. “I didn’t say you were monsters, I said you were like monsters. Don’t be so literal.”

“You don’t joke about things like that,” Kira snaps.

McKay’s brow furrows.

“Okay, clearly there’s a language barrier here. What do you mean when you say ‘monster’?”

Kira hesitates, taken off-guard. 

“It’s complicated.”

“Fine, if you’d rather hold a grudge than communicate –”

“It’s not that.” Kira folds her arms. “It’s just…there’s a lot of different places monsters come from. It depends.”

“So how do you know it’s a monster? What makes it a monster to you?”

It’s a question Conner has never really had to think about on a conscious level. What makes a monster a monster? Not appearance, definitely. There are aliens and mutants out there who make buckets of crap look attractive, but who would never lay a finger on anyone. It’s not even a question of species; Zeltrax used to be human and Conner wouldn’t hesitate to classify him a monster.

“Back home…” Ethan looks at Conner for the go-ahead. Conner nods and Ethan continues. “Back home, there are these groups of…well, I wouldn’t call them people exactly. Each group has a different agenda; sometimes they want to take power, sometimes they want to just loot and destroy, sometimes they’re trying to prove a point and think violence is the right way to do it. They’ll use monsters as weapons by sending them out to attack cities.”

“Terrorists,” McKay says, making it sound like a filthy word. Ethan shrugs.

“Sure, I guess. Some groups make their own, some bring them in from outer sp… I mean, other places. The ones we usually with are genetic recombinations. Like shark, bear, lion; anything dangerous. Though I never figured out the chilli peppers.”

“Jesus. What do you do?”

“Kill them,” Kira shrugs. “Only thing you can do with a monster.”

“And the people who made them?”

“We kill them too if we can catch them. The only thing worse than a monster is the thing that made it.”

Trent shifts uneasily as if he’d say something, and Conner hopes he’s not about to bring up his stint as crazy-Trent, but luckily he seems to decide that discretion is the better part of valour and stays quiet.

“So when I compared you to monsters,” McKay says to Conner. “You thought I meant you were rapid animals that needed to be put down?”

“That’s pretty much it, yeah.” Conner tries not to show how much that pisses him off, but has a feeling he’s not doing a very good job.

“Well that’s not what I was getting at. I was trying to say that I wouldn’t be surprised if you were genetically engineered. Not that I’m looking for a confirmation or denial, though I wouldn’t say no…” McKay looks around hopefully and scowls. “Okay, fine. Keep your secrets. My point is it’s not a bad thing necessarily, just different.”

“Oh.” That was… nowhere near as bad as Conner had thought. Not even on the same wavelength of bad. He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Sorry. I guess we kind of jumped the gun there.” And now that he’s calmed down enough to think clearly, it seems pretty frigging obvious; why should McKay mean the same thing they do when he says ‘monster’? A world without rangers means a world without monsters.

Well, almost.

“So did you create these ‘wraith’?” Trent asks, echoing Conner’s thoughts. It’s deliberately casual; all his attention apparently on the empty corridor, but Conner knows he’s listening intently for McKay’s answer.

“No.” McKay grimaces, and Conner isn’t surprised when he adds: “We woke them up. It was a stupid accident, but we did it and now Pegasus is paying for it.”

Trent nods thoughtfully, as if that makes sense to him.

“Accidents happen,” he says. “My dad says you make mistakes, and then you clean up after yourself; that’s what being an adult is about.”

“Your dad, huh?” McKay makes a try at being casual. “So is he like you?” The attempt at being covert is so transparent, Conner laughs. Trent is smiling as he says;

“I’m adopted.”

Ronan snorts with laughter. And just like that, the tension is broken. Conner says to McKay;

“Do you think Sheppard will be mad?”

McKay frowns at Conner, as if he’s trying to work something out. It’s Ronan who says:

“You planning on killing anyone?”

“No.”

“Giving away our location to the wraith?”

“No.”

“Stealing weapons we need to defend ourselves?”

“No.”

“Then you’re good.” Ronan shrugs matter of factly. “Worst he’ll do is make you stay in your quarters until you go home.”

“That’s all?”

“And yell at you. He yells sometimes when you shoot the wrong person, or at the wrong time.” From Ronan’s meditative air, Conner has a sudden insight that Ronan is to Sheppard is what Trent is to Conner; the unpredictable sixth ranger to his red.

“Then we’ll try not to shoot the wrong person.” He realizes what he said a second later. “I mean we won’t shoot the wrong person. We won’t shoot the wrong person. Or do anything else to them. Promise.”

“The fact you feel you have to promise that is worrying,” McKay says, but he’s smirking as he says it, like he finds Conner hilarious.

Conner dares to hope that things will be okay, as they make their way through the corridors of Atlantis – killing wraith as they go, and he was right; Ronan’s gun is pretty damn useful – until they reach the infirmary. Major Lorne is so relieved to see McKay and Ronan alive he doesn’t question how the rest of them got out.

“We have a problem,” he says, speaking to McKay and Ronan, and ignoring the rangers. “Colonel Sheppard’s been captured.”

Chapter Text

This isn’t the first time John’s been held captive by wraith.

It is, arguably, the most confusing.

On the surface, the wraith seem to have everything going their way. Their device – this bulbous purple plant-thing that’s sprawled across the gateroom control panels like a toxic weed – is giving them access to Atlantis’ systems. And while the wraith don’t have full control, they apparently have more than enough to fuck up everyone’s day.

Most of their drones are spread through Atlantis, spreading chaos and bloodshed, but they’ve got about thirty here that are well-fed and disciplined enough that they don’t go twitchy around the human prisoners the moment the male wraith have turned their backs. Which in the short term is a good thing, but less so in the long run. If John had to choose, he’d much rather be drained by a hungry wraith than a well-fed one. A hungry wraith will drain a human in seconds. A well-fed one can – and will – drag it out.

The seven gateroom staff, thirteen marines and John have been disarmed and are now kneeling in front of the Stargate with their hands bound behind their back. All doors in and out of the gateroom have been closed or blocked off. To look at the situation, the wraith are completely in control.

And yet, that’s not the way the wraith are behaving.

“What is it?” A male demands of John, hauling him out of line. “Tell us what you’re unleashed and we’ll drain you last.”

John lets his body relax into its grip.

“You really gotta work on those negotiation skills,” he drawls.

“Tell me what it is!” The wraith screams in his face. The full force of its telepathy slams into John’s mind demanding truth, except that John has no truth to give. He has absolutely no idea what it wants.

The wraith either senses his confusion, or reads it from his expression, because it hisses like an annoyed cat and dumps him back among the hostages.

“Useless,” it snarls, stalking away.

John pushes himself back up onto his knees. It’s difficult with his hands tied behind his back. One of the marines – Douglas, a former SAS soldier they’d poached from Australia – helps by giving John his shoulder to brace against.  

“Any clue, sir?” He murmurs.

“None,” John says honestly. It’s rare to see wraith so undone by anything. Being hundreds of years old and indestructible for most of that time means wraith have a very underdeveloped sense of mortality. He’s seen wraith fling themselves into the path of bullets because they can’t quite comprehend the idea of something hurting them. The only wraith he’s seen show a remotely rational sense of self-preservation were Michael and Fred, and neither was remotely normal for wraith.

The three male wraith are gathered around the device, arguing, and John can just about catch one word in three.

“…kill them now…pointless…”

“…looked inside…nothing…want…”

“…again…three more…fast…”

Finally they come to some sort of decision and two of them return to the hostages. John’s stomach clenches, but they don’t have that gloating lustful look that wraith get when they’re about to drain someone, like a human looking a three course banquet by a master chef. They looked various shades of frightened and angry, which is a real treat to see on a wraith’s face.

“You.” The same one drags John up again. He’d make some sort of joke about it really liking his neck, except that he can’t breathe with it squeezing so hard. Then its grip loosens slightly. “I am going to show you something,” it says slowly, like it’s talking to someone deaf or slow. “You are going to tell me what you know about it.”

“Why don’t you just ask me?” John rasps, but the stalling tactic doesn’t work, because the wraith’s eyes are intent on his, and he can feel that familiar push inside his head.

He’s used to being pushed for information – inasmuch as you can get used to a violating mental probe – but this is different. Less like something’s being pushed out, and more like something’s being pushed in.

Suddenly he’s somewhere else. It takes him a moment to recognise that he’s seeing an Atlantis corridor, because the colours are dull and strange, and anything further than a foot away starts getting fuzzy. There’s pale hair falling across his vision and a hand – pale green with the wrong number of fingers – rises to push it back.

And holy fuck, that’s a wraith hand. He’s looking through a wraith’s eyes. 

He barely has time to process that when something moves at the corner of his – the wraith’s – vision. There’s a flash of silver and a sudden rush of heat at his throat. He touches his neck and his fingers come away slick with dark blood. His mouth opens to suck in air, but liquid floods his lungs.

As he falls, he looks up, trying to find his killer. A human is standing in a space that had been empty only seconds ago. Whoever they are, they’re not wearing a marine or science team uniform; John’s lousy eyesight can vaguely make out a white shirt streaked in green.

“Shhh.” The human kneels down beside him. “It’s okay. Just relax.”

The voice sounds strange and warped, filtered through the wraith’s hearing, but is definitely male and the cadence is familiar. John knows this person.

As he scrambles through his memories, trying to match the voice with a face, the person lays something on the floor next to John’s head; a bloody butcher’s knife. And even though John knows that this isn’t his body – isn’t even a human body – he can’t stop the rising panic. The person leans in closer, close enough for their face to be clear in John’s fuzzy vision (no, not John’s vision, because this isn’t happening to John).

It’s Trent. Trent fucking Fernandez, who should be sitting tight in a holding cell, but is apparently wandering Atlantis wearing a shirt spattered in wraith blood and touching surprisingly gentle fingers to a wraith’s face.

“It’s not your fault,” Trent says – and snaps his neck.

John chokes and sucks in air. It takes him a moment to realise that he’s not in a side corridor being murdered by a teenager; he’s in the gateroom, surrounded by wraith and hostages. The wraith who pushed that shit into his mind is still holding him by the throat, which is kind of a good thing, because if he let go, John would fall.  

“What the fuck was that?” John gasps, still trying to reconcile his intact body with the memory of suffocating on his own blood.

“The memory of our hive-brother’s last moments,” the wraith says.

Well fuck, John thinks. Wraith just never stopped coming up with new and horrible ways to surprise him. He supposes in a twisted way it makes sense – wraith have no issues getting into human minds, it’s only humans who can’t reciprocate, unless they carry wraith DNA like Teyla – but he could have lived forever without knowing what it felt like to be a wraith.

“He was not the only one,” the wraith continues, oblivious to John’s revulsion. “Five full units of our best drones have been killed by these creatures.”

Creatures. As in more than one. Well, that makes sense. Trent hadn’t come here alone, and he wasn’t the only one of his little group to creep John out – he was just the one that did it the most.

“Why don’t you just stun them?” John asks.

“We tried.” The wraith switches its grip so that it’s holding on John’s hair, which makes it a little easier to breathe, but also more painful.  “Our weapons don’t work on them. What are they? Why are they here?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re lying. They were already here. They’re something to do with you.”

“You showed up about five days after they did. I’m thinking they’re something to do with you.”

They glare at each other as the wraith’s telepathic touch nudges at John’s mind until it’s satisfied he’s telling the truth. It pushes him to the ground – second time today, Jesus – and says:

“He knows nothing. Kill him and try the others.”

John tries to scramble backwards as the other male leans over him. He kicks out, but it just slams his head into the ground, knocking the fight out of him. The material at his throat rips, and fuck he had enough of this last time when Fred did it–

“Hey guys.”

The voice is calm, clear and human.

Everyone – hostages and wraith alike – stops what they’re doing and looks up at the control gallery. The third wraith male is sprawled on the ground, eyes glazed, head at a hideously wrong angle to its neck.

Conner McKnight is standing over it, tossing the purple plant-thing from hand to hand, vines trailing where it was ripped out of the control panel.  He says:

“This wasn’t, like, important, was it?” 

Chapter Text

Under any other circumstances, John would find the wraiths' reaction hilarious.

The male about to feed on him jumps like a startled cat and spins to face the stairs. The other male snatches a stunner from a drone and fires it at Conner. The beam… does absolutely nothing. Conner stretches a little and continues tossing the bulb lazily from one hand to the other.

"So no?" He says. "It's not important then?" When no one answers him, he shrugs and says: "Well that's a relief, because I was just about to do this –" He stops juggling and starts to twist the bulb like he's about to pulp it.

"No!" Both the male wraith yell, lunging forward half a step before realising the futility of trying to cross the floor in time. Conner smiles.

"Ah, so it is important. Good to know."

John isn't certain if he imagines Conner winking at him or not.

To be completely honest, John isn't certain any of this is real, that it's not some dying hallucination, or maybe the wraith fucking with his brain again. It's all so out of place. He can buy the idea of Conner and his friends as soldiers. It's what he'd half suspected anyway, and the memory of Trent slitting a wraith's throat is still fresh in his mind.

But Conner is utterly relaxed, despite the thirty-two wraith in the room, no weapons, no back up, and twenty-one hostages. His tall frame is loose, his body language open and animated. There's no sign that he understands what the wraith are or what they intend. No hint of the rage or fear or hatred that soldiers use to pump themselves up for a fight. He might as well have been making conversation at a bus stop.

It's enough to make John doubt his own conclusions. Had the wraith been fucking with him? He has no way to tell if that memory they showed him was real. They could have just been playing on half-realised anxieties and suspicions…

Then the drones start up the stairs, apparently deciding to show Conner what happens to human boys who fuck around with their stuff. The change is instantaneous. Conner's stance shifts, weight centering, body coiled like a spring. He's grinning, wide and eager, and even Ronan never looked so bizarrely happy before a fight, like the prospect of wraith is kittens and ice-cream and Disneyland all rolled into one.

"Stop!" One of the male wraith hisses. The drones stop, confused, and slowly return to the bottom of the stairs, milling around like they can't decide what to do.

Conner relaxes into a more neutral stance. He looks disappointed.

"What, you don't want to play?"

"Give us back the device," the male says.

"Finders keepers, dude. Losers suck it."

"Give it back now!" The second male snarls, losing whatever little patience or wariness it had.

"Yeah?" Conner looks him over, sounding genuinely interested. "Or what?"

The wraith lunges to where the hostages are kneeling and hauls John forward by his hair. It might have hurt less if he'd been allowed to stand up first.

"Or we kill this human," it snarls. If it's hoping for a reaction, it's disappointed. Conner just rolls his eyes.

"You were going to kill him anyway. I'm not stupid."

"Conner," John says tightly.

"Don't worry, Colonel. I got this."

"I'm pretty sure you don't."

"You think I'm joking?" The wraith snarls, giving John a shake. "I will drain him drop by screaming drop until his–"

There's a thunk and warmth sprays across John's face. The grip on his hair relaxes as the wraith thumps lifelessly to the ground. The handle of a butcher's knife is sticking out of its eye-socket.

"Oh yeah," Conner says, slapping his forehead. "I totally forgot to say. My bad. Any monster makes a move toward the hostages, Trent will take you down. Say hi, Trent."

There's a ripple in the air among the hostages. One of the scientists gives a muffled squeak as Trent shimmers into view next to her. He's even more relaxed than Conner, smiling that bullshit smile as if his white shirt isn't spattered with green-blue blood.

"Hi," he says blandly. "Excuse me, please."

He steps between the hostages to retrieve his knife. The drones back off, giving him a wide berth. As he leans down to yank the knife out of the corpse, his eye catches John's and his smile widens fractionally.

Sweat breaks out in the small of John's back. It's the same kind of smile he's used to getting from wraith; that look that only saw the sum of your parts, as if they didn't recognise you as a person at all. Like being eyed up by a shark. He should be used to it by now; it shouldn't still affect him. But coming from a not-yet eighteen year old kid takes it to a whole new level of horrifying.

"And just so you know," Conner continues, levelling a finger at the lone male wraith. "When I say he'll kill you, I mean you specifically. Just in case you're thinking about getting one of your uglier, stupider friends to do it."

The drones shift uneasily, looking to the male for direction, but the male is staring between Trent and Conner with a combination of hatred and fear. Oddly enough, there's none of the usual hunger John's used to seeing on wraith. Even when using humans for something other than food, wraith are not quite capable of disguising the fact they'd really like to eat you. The expression on the wraith when it looks at Conner and Trent can only be described as revulsion.

"Now I know what you're thinking," Conner says. "You're thinking – hey, it's just two. I have a chance with two. Maybe I'll die, but maybe I won't. The odds are pretty good, right?"

"Wrong." That's Ethan's voice. He and Kira stroll into sight on the control gallery a second later, Ethan carrying something under his arm. "But then he's been wrong about a lot of stuff lately."

He tosses the something down the stairs. It bounces, making squish-thump sounds until it rolls to a rest at the bottom. It's a wraith head.

"Don't get mad at your sentries," Ethan says. "They were very dedicated…"

"Gave it their all," Kira agrees.

"…just not quite up to scratch."

After a long moment the male wraith lifts his gaze from the head to look at Conner.

"Name your terms."

"Sorry?" Conner says, not seeming to pay attention as he bounces the bulb on his foot like a soccer ball.

"You have demonstrated your dominance," the wraith hisses impatiently. "Now name your terms."

Conner catches the device, stopping its motion in mid-bounce. He gives the wraith a long look. All four of them are looking at the wraith now, all wearing the same flat expression that carries no hint of the children they pretend to be.

Then Conner smiles.

"Trent said you guys would be the smart ones. Didn't you say so, Trent?"

Trent just smiles like he has a secret.

"See the thing we can't work out," Conner continues. "Is how you got here. There's no ship in orbit, no orbital stargate, no craft to fly you in. And McKay says you guys haven't quite mastered teleportation yet. So how did you get here?"

The wraith frowns.

"You want a way out?" He gestures vaguely at John. "That one said you are foreign to this place. Is that what you want? A way out?"

"I didn't phrase it like that," John says, just to be clear.

"Meh." Kira shrugs philosophically. "If you want to be technical, we're all aliens here."

"Give us the device," the wraith continues, not distracted by the byplay. "Allow us to take Atlantis, and we will take you from this place."

"And eat us," Trent says, sounding bored. "Different tune, same old song."

"None of my brethren would feed on you," the wraith says, lip curling. "I know of none who would be so perverse as to attempt to it."

Ethan's brow furrows and he opens his mouth to ask something. Conner talks over the top of him.

"So tell us how you did it."

"After." The wraith's voice is stronger now, more confident that it has something they want. "First give us the device. After we take Atlantis, you will know all you need to."

The three standing on the control gallery glance at each other. Trent just watches the male, one hand spinning the knife absently.

"Kira and Trent get to guard the hostages," Conner says finally. "Just in case you get any fun ideas."

"What does it matter?" The wraith says. "They will be food for our hive."

Conner pauses a beat.

"They, uh– "

"They're our leverage if you lose," Trent speaks up, still sounding like he couldn't give a shit. "We're not helping you take over the city. That's your job. We're just… letting things play out. Flipping a coin as it were."

"You killed our drones!" The wraith snarls.

"Life's not fair and then you die. If this little gamble doesn't pay off, we'd like some human shields against the Atlanteans." He shoots a look at Conner. "This had better pay off. I didn't come all this way to die because of your messed up plan."

Conner looks surprised for a split second, then quickly covers it up with a scowl.

"Yeah, yeah. My plans are awesome and you know it. Kira, you mind?"

"Not at all."

Kira strolls down the steps like it's a walk in the park. She doesn't seem even slightly phased by the wraith that stand aside to let her pass. John watches her carefully. The wraith miss a lot of subtleties of human expression, but John hadn't missed Conner's hesitation or the way Trent had covered for him.

There's something else going on here, though John's damned if he can tell what it is. Conner and his friends are definitely way smarter than they pretend, so John doubts they're really going to side with the life-sucking aliens, whatever their issues with Atlantis. And who knows, maybe they really can kill thirty armed wraith unaided – the wraith certainly seem to believe it.

The real question is how they're going to do it without getting any hostages killed.

Two people can't stop every single wraith getting at the hostages. Maybe in a cramped hallway or single entrance area where they hold the high ground, but not in a wide open space like the gateroom. Even the male wraith knows that; it's why he'd let Conner post them there.

Kira reaches John and gives him this cocky smile.

"Hey, Colonel," she whispers as she leans down to help him up. "Having fun yet?"

"Tonnes."

"Yeah, this party's getting lame. Almost time to break out the DJ."

This close, he can see she's quivering with this nervous energy. No, not nervous. She doesn't look scared. Her pupils are blown and she looks ready to burst with excitement and anticipation like a kid on a roller coaster.

He glances at the wraith, which don't seem to paying attention, and asks quietly:

"Can we expect any more guests?"

"Who knows. We just gatecrashed. But don't worry – there's a song coming you're going to love."

She leads him back to the rest of the hostages and helps him sit down. She's surprisingly strong for her size. He'd assumed she'd be soft, but there's a core of firm muscle in that tiny body, and her grip is rock steady. Rather like Teyla and the female marines. It feels like something he should have noticed, but then, he doesn't go around hugging minors in his care – and he only knows about the marines because of the amount of times he's had to be carried or half-dragged out of danger.

Once he's settled, Kira pats his shoulder like she's the adult and he the child, then goes to stand next to Trent.

At the top of the stairs, Conner is holding up the bulb.

"So how do you want this?" He says. "Are you going to come up here, or am I going to come down to you? You'll need to come up here anyway, to attach this back to the computers."

His tone is all artless innocence, but John can't really blame the male wraith for its long moment of hesitation.

"Move back," it says finally. "I will come to you." With a bit more gusto it adds: "If you kill me, my drones will kill the hostages."

Conner shrugs, leaning back against a console and crossing his arms as if to say 'look, I'm not doing anything'. He and Ethan wait as the wraith climbs the steps to the control gallery. It stops a few metres from them, and says:

"I am here. Now give me the device."

"What, like, just throw it to you? It seems kind of breakable…"

"Throw it!"

"Fine, whatever." Conner lobs the bulb. It's a light, easy throw. Even McKay could have caught it and he's all thumbs. The wraith catches it easily and cradles it like a newborn.

"Now move away from the console," it says.

Ethan and Conner glance at each other. Ethan's smirking.

"Nah," he says. "We're good."

The male snarls:

"My drones will slaughter the humans!"

"Well, yeah," Conner says, scratching his cheek. "That's why I put Kira down there."

And he smiles.

It only takes a second for John to tear his gaze away from the gallery to the gateroom floor where Kira is standing between the wraith and the hostages. Trent is already crouched behind her, hands over his ears, face scrunched up like he's bracing himself for something unpleasant. Her shoulders rise as she takes a slow breath through her nose, like she has all the time in the world. John starts to demand what the hell she's planning to do, fight them all?

Then her mouth opens.

And the sound starts.

It starts off on a piercingly note, a jarringly wrong sound that's somewhere between the screech of tearing metal and the shriek of a bird of prey. Then it somehow gets worse anddeepens until John can feel the floor shuddering. It hurts to hear and he desperately wants to get his hands over his ears, but they're tied behind his back and all he can do is cringe and hope he's not permanently deafened.

The air in front of Kira is warping with a pulsing golden light, kind of like the heat wave simmering above a tarmac if heat had a colour. The first wave of drones are thrown off their feet, slamming into the ones behind them. It's pandemonium, the ones at the back pushing forward to get at the hostages, the others pushing back to get away. The ones that take the brunt of it go down and don't get back up. A few smarter ones try to rush Kira from the side, only to encounter Trent's knife.

The noise is awful, going on and on and on, and John's head feels like it's about to burst, and he wouldn't be surprised if his ears are bleeding.

Then it stops.

The golden light fades and Kira sinks to her knees, shoulders shuddering as she sucks in air. All John can hear is the ringing in his ears, and it lends a surreal buffer as he looks across the gateroom floor. At least half the wraith are dead or broken. Some of them look like they were hit by a bus. Others aren't even recognisable as wraith anymore; just shattered bones and pulped flesh.

They're wraith, John reminds himself. It doesn't matter. It stopped mattering somewhere between the fifth and seventh corpse of a friend he's seen since he came to Pegasus.

Except that it was Kira who did this. Kira who was small and sardonic and whip-smart and the only one of the kids he'd really liked. She'd killed fifteen wraith in seconds in the most brutal, gory way imaginable, and right now she's lifting her head to survey her handiwork…

…and grinning.

"What do you know," she says. John can only just hear her over the ringing in his ears. "This really ain't a love song."

Chapter Text

It's probably a good thing John has spent three years in Atlantis, and therefore is pretty good at mentally rolling with the punches. Instead of sinking into gibbering denial like most people would, he pushes the emotions and the oh-my-god-what-the-fuck to the side and focuses on the facts.

The four teenagers they'd taken in are apparently good at killing things.

Very good.

Horrifically, insanely good.

They all come with their specific gifts. Kira, obviously, has the voice. Conner is very fast, literally blurring between targets. John can't really see what he's doing, and that kind of lets him mentally disconnect the teenager from the trail of crippled drones–

– right up until Conner materializes right in front of him, this manic grin on his face as he slams a knife under a wraith's chin and rips it out, blue liquid spraying everywhere. Conner spins round – Christ, is he laughing? – and guts another wraith without breaking stride.

"I've had a gutful," he says as intestines spill across the floor.

There's a crash as Ethan body-slams a wraith into the floor. There's something wrong with his hands, something alien and blue and scaled that sets John's teeth on edge just to look at it.

"Seriously?" Ethan says, punching the wraith in the face so hard its mask crunches. "Kira brings the Bon Jovi and that's your quip? A pun?"

"Puns are old school!"

"No puns are dead, as in buried. As in no longer with us." Ethan casually locks up the arm of a wraith trying to grab him, and sweeps its leg out from under it. There's a pop as its arm comes out of the socket.

"Lets see you do better," Conner says, grabbing the wraith's head and wrenching it until the neck snaps.

"Diddums." Ethan pushes himself to his feet and turns to face the charge of a massive wraith running at him. "You're breaking my heart."

A split second before the wraith hits him, he punches it in the chest.

If John had done this, or anyone else, their knuckles would have rebounded on the ribcage. But Ethan's scaled fingers are apparently made of stronger stuff. His fist crunches right through bone, burying wrist deep in the wraith's chest. He yanks it free, and there's a fat green muscle clenched in his fingers, shaped kind of like a…

John's stomach clenches.

Ethan tosses the heart aside as the wraith collapses and gives Conner a smug look. Conner wavers between irritated and impressed, and finally settles on impressed.

"That was pretty hardcore."

"Totally."

"Still a pun though."

"Bite me."

Trent is meticulous about not letting any harm come to the humans. With more than half the wraith down, and the rest of his team providing cover, he's almost leisurely as he throws a seemingly endless collection of slim silvery blades. John has to wonder where he got them all and Kira gives him an answer, when she picks one up to stab a drone.

"Wait, is this a scalpel?" She demands, holding up the bloody blade. "Did you steal these from the infirmiry?"

John looks at a nearby wraith choking to death on its own blood, and yep, Kira's right. That's definitely a scalpel lodged in its throat.

"Acquired," Trent corrects. "I acquired them from the infirmiry. Just like Conner acquired his knife from Ronan."

"No, Conner asked, and Ronan loaned it to him. Dr Beckett might need these!"

"We needed them more." Trent slices a wraith from ear to ear, and turns to see Kira's expression. "Don't tell me – this is one of those things Conner will want to talk to me about."

His tone is subtly patronising. Most women would freeze up or explode at that tone. Kira's eyes narrow and she says:

"Really? You're really going to try the ice-princess routine on me?"

"Ah– "

"Oh forget it. I'm not the leader, I don't have to put up with you when you're like this." She launches herself at a wraith, scrambling up its back and stabbing it repeatedly in the neck. With more enthusiasm than was probably strictly necessary.

"Kira, wait–" A wraith grabs for his neck, and Trent's drops to his knees, producing yet another scalpel that he slams up into its guts. "For god's sake, not now!"

It's the most genuine show of emotion John's seen from Trent, and the fact that he's worried about pissing Kira off, not the wraith, says a lot about him – and possibly Kira as well.

But as interesting as their fucked up situational responses are, their exchange has given John an idea. He nudges Douglas and jerks his chin toward the dead wraith. Douglas nods to show he's understood and they side-squirm across the floor.

The wraith John picked stinks – that bitter sharp odour like crushed insects only magnified a thousand times. Its mask has been half ripped off and he averts his eyes from the almost-human features underneath. The scalpel is sticking out of the ruined throat and he has to turn his back so he can grip it between slippery fingers and painstakingly pull it free to cut his ropes. The other marines have caught onto the idea and are finding scalpels of their own. There are plenty to go round.

John's ropes snap and he rubs his wrists, trying to bring back the circulation. To his right, Douglas is working on his own.

"I've almost –"

Then Trent is suddenly there. He's smiling as he slams Douglas face down, pinning him with a knee in the middle of the back. John lunges at Trent – knowing it's a stupid, futile move and not giving a fuck, because these are his men – and stops short when he finds a scalpel pointed at his throat.

"Careful," Trent says mildly. "You shouldn't rush at people when they're holding sharp objects. Accidents could happen."

There's a scalpel in his other hand as well, resting oh-so-casually against Douglas's throat. Douglas wisely isn't struggling. Behind Trent, two other marines – Jenkins and Paelo – have managed to get loose and are crawling slowly and silently toward the scene. John shakes his head minutely and they stop, staying where they are.

"Smart," Trent murmurs, thoughtful gaze never wavering from John. "Maybe you will survive us after all."

John says levelly:

"There's no point in hurting him. Let him go."

"In a minute, Colonel. I'm making a point."

Somewhere across the room, Conner shouts:

"Trent, stop messing around!"

Trent's expression tightens in a very teenage look of annoyance.

"I'm short on time," he says. "So I won't beat around the bush. Shame really. I had a speech ready and everything, with all these insinuations about betrayal and consequences. Dad would be proud; I even referenced Shakespeare."

There's an odd, hollow tone when he mentions his father, but it's gone before John can figure out what it means.

"I'll boil it down to the basics for you anyway," Trent continues. The scalpel tip moves from touching John's throat to tickling the hollow of his eye as Trent says in a friendly tone: "Don't mess with us."

John's palms are sweating and it takes all his effort not to flinch away from the cold metal.

"Wasn't planning too," he says.

"Come on, you can lie better than that," Trent chides. He adds: "It's okay. I can't make your decisions for you. But I can warn you – you won't see me coming."

Now the mask has slipped and there's that blank look like John's not really there. Here's the killer John had sensed lurking beneath the surface, even when he didn't know what it was. He fixes it in his mind, for when Kira's spunk and Conner's hero-worship and Ethan's snark make him want to forget again. This is what they really are inside.

"I'll keep that in mind," he says aloud, and Trent smiles as if he can hear the double meaning.

"Trent!" Conner shouts, louder this time. He sounds pissed.

"Your friends are waiting," John says.

"Then I'd better go, shouldn't I." The sharp point disappears from John's skin and Trent stands gracefully, scalpel disappearing up his sleeve as if it never existed. "By the way, don't give up on War and Peace. Page four hundred and eighty-five – you're almost to the good part."

John freezes. Conner's been in his room, once, for about two minutes before John managed to kick him out. But he never made the mistake of letting Trent into his room, let alone his bookshelf. He knows it's a psychological tactic – Trent's way of demonstrating how easily he has intruded into where John feels safest – but it still works.

"Trent!" Conner snarls, appearing to grab Trent roughly by the arm. "What the heck are you doing? Are you out of your freaking mind–?!"

He hauls him away, and John grabs a scalpel, not caring that he slices his finger as he saws at Douglas' ropes. It's easier than watching Kira and Ethan pin the last drone, which is desperately struggling for freedom like a trapped spider.

"Done," he says as the rope snaps, and Douglas sits up, rubbing his wrists.

"Thank you, sir."

There's an echoing crunch, and across the room Kira and Ethan drop the drone's limp body, losing interest in a way that reminds John of nothing so much as cats with a mouse once it's dead and therefore no longer fun.

The marines are staring, and John puts steel into his voice.

"Go free the others."

That tone gets through to them and there's a chorus of "yes, sir"s as they jump into action. That will give them something to do rather than think about the dead wraith scattered across the gateroom floor. Christ, John would like to think about something else. Everywhere he looks there are body parts. On the control gallery stairs, the last male wraith is sprawled upside down, spine twisted at a horribly wrong angle as its eyes stare blankly at the ceiling. The bulb it had died for is still clutched in one hand.

"Sorry about that, Colonel," Conner says, making John jump with his sudden return. Either he doesn't notice – or ignores – the marines' twitching for sidearms that aren't there. John struggles to control his own reaction and the fact what he really wants to do right now is step back out of reach. There's green blood on Conner's clothes. In his hair, under his nails, and on his shoes. He'll be literally washing bits of wraith off him for weeks.

Conner babbles on, oblivious.

"Trent's just… Trent. Ignore him. How are you? Is anyone hurt?"

Looking at Conner's anxious, eager-to-please expression, John resolves to step very, very carefully.

Chapter Text

The meeting room is silent as the security footage plays on the laptop screen, as violent and surreal as a late night TV movie.

Weir manages to keep her calm through Conner gutting a wraith and Kira wrenching another's head round to face its spine. She even manages to get through Ethan ripping a wraith's heart out of its chest without gagging. Then they get to the part where a cruelly smiling Trent holds a scalpel to Colonel Sheppard's eye and she has to hit pause.

Of the various heads of department that could be assembled at short notice, only Rodney and Sheppard don't seem shocked by the footage. Weir supposes it must seem pretty tame after witnessing it up close and personal.

"Where are they now?" She says, and barely recognises the flat sound of her own voice.

"In the west of the city," Sheppard answers. "They wanted to kill more wraith, so I sent them off with Ronan and Teyla."

"Was that wise?"

"I've no issues with them killing wraith." His tone suggests his issues are with other things. He's looking at the laptop screen, absently rubbing a small scratch on his cheekbone.

"What are they?" Zelenka says, adjusting his glasses and leaning forward to peer at the screen. He sounds as fascinated as he does horrified.

"According to them, human," McKay says, crossing his arms and scowling. "Getting information out of them is like pulling toenails. But they have to be amplified somehow – their muscle size to strength ratio just doesn't make any sense. And don't even get me started on those extra abilities of theirs."

"They could be genetically enhanced," Zelenka muses. "Or partially ascended. We've seen what Ascendants can do."

"Oh please. If they were Ascending, there'd be a lot more swirly lights, and the most advanced genetic enhancements result in some variation of telekinesis or telepathy, not super-speed or sonic screams. No, it's technology, something that's very good at fooling our sensors."

"You're thinking something like those gauntlets several years back?" Weir says. "The ones SG-1 tried out for the Tokra."

"I thought those were supposed to be fatal," Lorne interjects, frowning.

"They almost were. Maybe someone in the our visitors' home dimension has similar technology, just without the flaws."

"The top brass would love that."

"I know."

They could do so much with technology like that. How quickly could they destroy the Wraith, if every marine had preternatural abilities? They could free Pegasus inside a year. Force back the Ori. Destroy what remained of the Gould…

Weir stops her train of thought before it can go any further. She's spent her life arguing and negotiating with people whose first thought is how new discoveries can be used to destroy their enemies. As the war with the Wraith has dragged on, she's come to understand how someone can become like that. It's an easy pattern of thought to fall into, and dangerous for how easily it can create tunnel vision.

"What else do we know about them?" She says.

"Nothing they haven't told us themselves," Sheppard says. His expression is grim. "And aside from the stuff that's blatant lies, they haven't told us much of anything."

"They haven't told you anything," McKay points out, not even trying to hide how smug he was about that fact. "Ethan told me they have a terrorism problem over there. People genetically engineering monsters and setting them on the general populace."

"Jesus." Weir tries to imagine the kind of mindset that would come up with that, and can't. That kind of deliberate malice is unsettling, particularly considering how much trouble would go into creating a monster compared to sourcing say, a gun or explosive. That's like forgoing shooting an enemy while you build a shark tank to throw them into. "That's insane."

"Tell me about it." McKay's lip curls in distaste. "Ethan implied – though never outright stated – that their little group exists to take care of those situations. Going by who was making all the decisions, I'd say Conner's the leader, though they wouldn't tell me that either."

"They didn't give you any answer at all?"

"Oh they answered alright - they gave me four different ones! Conner says no, he's the 2ic - the real leader's back in their home dimension. Ethan says yes, Conner's the leader; the other guy is a mentor, whatever that means. Kira says Conner's in training to be leader, and Trent says none of it is relevant to him anyway, since he's a sixth and doesn't have to take orders." Unexpectedly McKay smirks. "Conner didn't agree with that."

Sixth what? Sixth member? Is there another person on their team, aside from the mysterious mentor/leader they mentioned? Weir makes a mental note to ask later.

"So they're government?" She says, and McKay shrugs, making a 'who knows' gesture.

"They were careful to never actually say anything they couldn't deny later. They could give Ronan lessons on being cryptic."

"Anything else I should know?"

"Just that they hate being called monsters. It's a serious insult over there - like calling someone a wraith worshipper here."

Which made sense, coming from a society constantly terrorized by the products of genetic engineering. If there weren't more serious priorities, Weir would love to talk to their visitors more on the subject, maybe even study all the ways their cultural development had been shaped by it.

"I'd love a straight answer on who they work for," she says instead. "If we can get them home, maybe their superiors would be willing to trade for that technology."

"Or we could study the technology here," McKay points out. "It's right on hand, if the kids will show it to us."

"Right," Sheppard drawls. "Because they've been so sharing up to this point."

That level of sarcasm is unusual even from Sheppard, and everyone turns to look at him. His face is expressionless, but his eyes are hard.

"Look, we're acting like they're traders were ran into on a random world. They're not. They've been in Atlantis for days, and they lied about who they were and what they were capable of. They only came clean when they themselves were in danger."

"They weren't exactly willing to come," Weir points out. "It was our fault they got pulled across."

"I'm not denying that. I'm saying that acting like they're going to tamely hand over information is like expecting mercy from a wraith. They're going to lie, and if we push too hard, they're going to start pushing back. Trent made that very clear."

"You think we shouldn't ask about the technology?" Weir said.

"I think we should be careful. What they did to the wraith could be just as easily done to us."

Weir's gaze is drawn to the little scratch of Sheppard's cheekbone. The only sign of how close Trent had gotten.

"When they get tired of killing wraith," she says. "Send them up to my office."

Sheppard's expression tightens.

"That's not a good idea."

"Whether they let us study their technology or not, we need to set boundaries so we all know where we stand. Trent said not to mess with them - I'd like to know what he defines as messing with them, before anyone else gets hurt."

"I'll do it."

"No offense, Colonel, but you've already tried to get answers out of them once and it didn't work. Lets try a different approach."

He's not happy; she can tell by the set of his jaw. Lorne is neutral in that way that means he disapproves, but is too well-trained to show it. Weir leans back in her chair.

"Moving on to more pressing issues - do we know how the wraith got into Atlantis? McKay? Zelenka?"

McKay scowls.

"No idea."

Zelenka shrugs.

"Sorry."

"You must have some theories," Weir says and McKay shakes his head.

"Conner summed it up pretty well, for him. The Stargate wasn't used, there's no ships in orbit or anywhere close by. There was an energy surge right before the attack, but we still have no idea what it means. I've got what scientists aren't fixing the gateroom going over our sensor logs."

"Make it your first priority."

"The gateroom–"

"Zelenka can handle it. I want you working on finding out where those wraith came from and how they got in." She glances down at the casualty lists, and her fingers tighten on her pen. "The Daedalus has agreed to step up their timetable so they'll be here in three days, but until then we're on our own. Lets not waste any time."

The rest of the meeting is mostly going over patrols and extra security measures. McKay and Zelenka leave early to start work, and Lorne to coordinate the marines. Weir asks Sheppard to stay back a moment. She waits until they're alone and the doors of the meeting room closed before speaking.

"How are you, John?"

"Fine." The light tone is deceptive as he rubs his cheekbone again. "Nearly had my eye gouged out by a teenager, no big deal."

She touches his jaw, turning his face so she can inspect the scratch. It's not serious; a superficial graze more than anything. Trent's hand could easily have slipped by accident, just enough to leave a mark. Somehow she doubts it was an accident.

"How far do you trust our visitors?" She says.

"You already know the answer to that."

"Do you think they can be trusted to work with the marines?"

He goes still, and she withdraws her hand.

"You're going to ask them for help," he says. It's not a question. Weir raises an eyebrow.

"We apparently have a gaping hole in our defenses, and our visitors are very good at killing wraith. Until the Daedalus arrives, we need all the help we can get."

He thinks about it. It's one of the things she likes about John; he's a pragmatist. He might not like or trust their visitors, but he'll use them to keep Atlantis safe.

"Getting them to take orders is going to be a pain," he says finally. It's not a 'no' and Weir smiles.

"I'll bring up the idea when I talk to them."

"And after the Daedalus arrives? What then?"

"I guess it will depend on the next few days." She glances at the laptop, still open with the frozen image of Trent's calm smile. A double-edged blade could cut them just as easily as the wraith. "I suppose we know one thing for sure."

"What's that?"

"They're definitely not high school students."

Chapter Text

The blip on-screen has gone out.

The Queen waits for several minutes. When the sub-space beacon shows no signs of coming back online, she snarls and flings the display against her chamber wall. The drones in her honour guard don’t react, but the sole male present – her least favourite male as fate would have it – flinches.

“Perhaps it malfunctioned,” he says.

This display of idiocy from one of her own is too much – insult on top of injury – and she lunges to seize both throat and mind.

“That beacon was our most advanced technology!” She snarls. Her nails dig into his flesh, but the true discipline is the lash of her mind through his. “It was programmed by my best tech – renowned among the hives for his skill! – and we have used it a hundred times before without failure. If it has stopped working, it is not because it malfunctioned!”

He shivers and whines apologies, mind cringing in her grip. She could crush him with a single thought, but only holds him a moment longer before thrusting him from her. He falls to the floor, whimpering.

“Bring our guest to me.” She re-ascends her throne. “I would have words.”

The male creeps from her chambers, but she barely notices, thoughts already turned inward. If the beacon has been destroyed, then the males she sent with it have failed and are almost certainly dead.

This is very bad for her.

It is a Queen’s prerogative to dispose of her hive as she will. In fact in these desperate times, it is considered prudent to cull the stupid or useless from the gene pool.

But those she had sent had been neither; the mission had required nothing less than her most intelligent and resourceful. It is a devastating blow to her power structure. More; the remaining males will have seen her failure, and they will measure that against the chances of their ongoing survival.

Will they turn on her? She considers the idea agitatedly. Once the overthrowing of a Queen would have been an obscene idea, but since the Awakening it is becoming commonplace. It’s the reason she’d made sure there were no mature females in this hive who could replace her; there’s only one female offspring in the crèche, not even old enough to feel the Hunger yet. The males would never support her over an existing, mature Queen. Though that doesn’t mean they couldn’t find a Queen from another hive…

While the Queen tries to predict which direction treachery will come from, there are footsteps and a distinctly non-wraith figure enters her chamber.

“You called, your highness?”

The designation is mocking; the Queen doesn’t need to sense the mental echoes of amusement to recognise contempt.

The human female is dressed in black leather and moves with an unsettling self-confident swagger. When the Queen first saw it, she’d thought it was attempting to emulate the wraith as some worshipers did – as if any wraith would find that pleasing! But there’s no subjection in the human’s eyes when it looks at the Queen, only a calculated detachment as if assessing her according to some unknown set of values. The Queen tolerated it because she'd found that humans cooperated better when they believed there was some chance they might survive carrying out her will. But rage is quickly overcoming the boundaries of her self-control. 

“You lied to me,” she hisses. 

“Did I?” The human strolls forward. “I apologise – that was very rude of me. What did I lie about again?”

The Queen slams a fist against her throne.

“Do not play games with me!”

The human stops cautiously. As always, its face shows no sign of fear, while its mind roils in a mixture of rage, panic, and detached calculation. The Queen is unwillingly fascinated by how easily it can disconnect itself from pain and fear, as if they are sensations that are not to be fought, but accepted as normal. (She suspects it’s a little bit mad.)

More calmly, she says:

“When my males found you on that dried up speck of a planet, they begged to be permitted to drain you. The only reason I did not allow this was because you said your new technology would find us a new feeding ground.”

“And my Invisi-Portals did that.”

“A feeding ground that resists!” She reaches out mentally, puts a bit of pressure on the human; just enough to make it stagger and start sweating. “What point is a feeding ground that can’t be fed on?”

“You’re monsters.” The human manages to stay upright, showing an almost wraith-like fortitude in the blankness of its face. “I assumed you could squash a little bit of resistance.”

It has a point, and she considers that while she presses further in on its mind, trying to decide whether or not to crush it.

“Look,” it says. It’s holding out a flat display screen, of the kind she’d smashed earlier. “The images the beacon sent back. Just look.”

The Queen flips a hand at one of the drones, who takes the screen and passes it to her.

The images are blurred and bad quality, but she can still make out arcing corridors and delicate glass windows. Obviously Ancient design, but that is not unusual. Many humans make their home in the ruins of their ancestors, mimicking past glories.

“Pointless rubbish–” She pauses on one of the images. It’s of a group of humans on their knees surrounded by drones. She can’t tell one human from another, but she recognises the uniform. Any wraith would.

Her guest dares to speak;

“The beacon’s signal isn’t very precise, but I believe that if you check its last position against your records, it will be in the general location of… now what was it your minions called it…?”

“Atlantis.” The Queen breathes the name. “But that was destroyed. The humans destroyed themselves rather than be taken.” She still remembers the bitter taste of failure, of the empty seas where there should have been a feast for the hives, a gateway to plenty. 

“Apparently not.” Her guest smiles, broad human teeth gleaming white and unsettling. “It seems I’ve delivered even more than I promised.”

The Queen ignores it, continuing to flip through the images. 

She concedes it is remotely possible Atlantis survived by some trickery of Ancient technology. Far more likely is that a group of Atlanteans may have escaped the onslaught and settled on a planet close by that happens to have similar ruins. Either way, it is a trail worth tracking and well worth the loss of a few paltry males. With this knowledge, she can bargain with the other Queens and negotiate an alliance to crush resistance.

Except her hive is too small to approach another as anything but a petitioner. She will only get a small cut of the spoils, if the other Queen does not just kill her to eliminate the competition. 

She fretfully weighs risk against return. Risk death if the prey is too much for her hive. Or risk betrayal by bringing another Queen in.

No other hives, she decides finally. The chances of this actually being an intact Atlantis are so remote as to be implausible. She will take the survivors, question them for knowledge of Earth’s location, and store them for feeding on the long trip between galaxies. Her males will worship her for this.

She looks at her guest, which is waiting patiently for her reaction.

“You will take me to this place,” she says.

“You personally?” It answers snidely. At her hiss of displeasure, it adds: “I suppose I could send another beacon right away – something small this time to avoid detection – and some more drones.”

“You demand more of my hive?” The Queen rises to her feet, ready to crush this insolent creature, regardless of what technology it brings.

The human doesn’t back down or show any sign of fear, though its mental processes spike in agitation.

“Invisi-Portals have a power signature,” it says calmly. “Even if their sensors are half as sensitive as yours, Atlantis will be able to detect it. If there’s a power signature but no drones, they’ll start wondering what we did send through.”

The Queen cannot see the flaw in its logic, loathe as she is to sacrifice more of her forces. She sinks back onto her throne, scowling.

“One patrol,” she says grudgingly. “But no males.”

“Two patrols,” it says immediately.

“Two patrols,” she concedes, then adds with deadly intent: “Fail me and I will make your suffering long and terrible.”

The threat causes a razor sharp flash of amusement and apprehension, so tightly entwined as to be impossible to separate. The human’s mouth curls upward as it ducks its head.

“As you wish, your highness.”

Insane creature. But the entertainment of the human’s mental processes does not outweigh the pleasure the Queen is going to take in being rid of it. Once she has taken the Atlanteans, she is going to make this thing scream. 

The thought makes her smile genuine as she flicks her fingers, dismissing the human. As it retreats, she sinks into daydreams of Earth, already planning the harvest. 

Chapter Text

The monsters are learning. Now when they see the rangers they don’t crowd forward in anticipation of an easy fight. They turn and run. Ethan won’t lie; it’s kind of awesome even if it’s a pain in the ass tracking them all down. 

Luckily they have help. 

Teyla turns slowly, P-90 cradled in the crook of her arm, head tilted slightly as if she listens for something. Finally she stops, facing one of the darkened passageways. 

“That way. Straight ahead.” 

“How many?” Ethan whispers. 

“More than ten, and close. Very close.” 

“Awesome.” Ethan’s witnessed the same grin on Conner during a soccor match when it was ten seconds on the clock and the other team just left him a massive opening. He looks like he’d be cackling and rubbing his hands together if no one was watching. “Come on, guys.”  

Teyla steps aside to let the rangers pass. The six marines of their escort watch unhappily, not liking being left behind. 

So far, Teyla’s ability to track monsters is just outweighing the bother of being saddled with marines. Just. If Ethan has to hear one more argument about why it’s better to shoot the monsters than fight them, he’s going to drop a virus into someone’s laptop. Even Conner had been getting pretty ticked off by the end: 

“Look, if you want to go shoot some monsters, go shoot some monsters,” he’d said. “We’ll meet up with you later. But my team can’t have bullets flying around while we’re working.” 

That had cut down on the arguing, but the marines are still pretty resentful that they’re stuck on what is more or less clean-up duty, finishing off the monsters that are down but not dead. Ethan also suspects that the marines really don’t like taking direction from bunch of kids, no matter how good they are at killing monsters. Which he can’t really blame them for, seeing as the last teenage team that came public had the same problem.  

“Can you see anything?” Ronan asks, voice a quiet rumble. As the only person armed with an energy weapon, he was the only one the rangers allowed to accompany them. Well, not allowed per se. He just followed them and ignored all their suggestions he stay behind. 

“You can’t see?” Ethan says, genuinely surprised.  The entrance where they left Teyla and the marines is about fifteen metres behind them now, and the curve of the corridor has cut off the emergency lighting from the main passageway, but already the darkness is resolving into solid shapes for Ethan's eyes. It's not perfect, but he can see well enough to make out the alcoves and pillars of Atlantis' architecture. 

Ronan shakes his head. 

“It’s pitch black in here.” 

“Reminds me of the labs,” Trent mutters, which sends a shiver down Ethan’s spine. It’s enough for him to start imagining Mesagog lunging out of the shadowy alcoves.   

“Maybe we should get some light,” Kira says quickly, probably thinking along the same lines as Ethan. 

Ronan removes something from his belt. There’s a crunch and two light-sticks flare to life in his hands. He tosses them down the hallway and they cast a steady red glow across the corridor. It hurts Ethan’s eyes, blinding him for a few seconds. 

As his vision comes back, he sees the shape looming behind Ronan. 

“Behind you!” He shouts. Ronan spins and shoots, just as more monsters spill out of nearby doorways.  

The useful thing about having a non-ranger along – which Ethan is never, ever going to tell Ronan, because he’d feel even more justified in ignoring them – is that the monsters get terminally distracted by the food-source. They’ll try to shove past the rangers, completely forgetting that the rangers are capable of literally ripping their arms off and beating them to death with them. 

“You know this is really kind of hurtful,” Ethan remarks, clothes-lining a monster as it barrels towards Ronan. “We don’t even get a look-in? Not even a ‘I couldn’t, I’m on a diet’?” 

He doesn’t get an answer, but then, he’s not expecting one. Even the smart ones don’t have any appreciation for banter. Though, to be fair, Elsa is the only villain back home who is any good for exchanging quips. Mesagog rarely shows his ugly mug in battle (possibly because every time he does the rangers go beserk trying to rip it off) and driving Zeltrax into a tizzy stopped being fun after they found out who he used to be.  

“You could make an effort,” Ethan says, taking the stunner and slamming the monster’s face against floor when it doesn’t let go immediately. “You could at least pretend to want to eat us instead of going straight for the Atlanteans. I’m starting to feel like the wallflower at a dance.” 

He backs up, planting himself between Ronan and the monsters closing in. From the corner of his eye he can see that Kira doing the same on Ronan’s other side, happily breaking a monster’s arm when it tries to push her aside. 

“Still, a good dance though,” she calls gleefully. “There’s Blood on the Dance Floor!” 

Ethan winces and Conner shouts from somewhere to their left: 

“Not your best effort, Kira!” 

“Oh…just Shut Up and Dance!” 

"Ooh, nice come back,” Ethan says. “But the judges may not allow it. Not really seeing how it’s relevant…” 

Kira bares her teeth. 

“You aim –” She rips the stunner from a wraith’s hand. “ –you shoot–” She stuns two monsters and clubs a third. “ –you run!” 

“I stand corrected.” Ethan belts another monster as it takes aim at Ronan. He follows it up with a smashing blow that sends it spinning into a wall. He’s raising the stunner to finish the job when the next monster tackles him. 

He hits the ground with a wheeze and the monster’s weight pressing down on him. It slaps the stunner away and tries to throttle him, which would have worked a lot better if it was using both hands to choke him instead of only its left. Ethan yanks at the inside of its elbow, bridges with his hips and reverses their positions with a quick flip.   

“Seriously,” he says as he settles into the mount. “What–” He sprouts knuckle-scales and punches the monster’s mask. “–is–” Another punch “ –the deal?” Another punch. 

He could understand if the monsters thought the rangers too much of an effort for a meal, but the monsters are going to ridiculous lengths not to even touch them with their feeding hands. It just doesn’t make any sense. 

Then two monsters break off from a losing battle with Conner to make a beeline for Ronan, and Ethan doesn’t have time to focus on anything beyond bone breaking and flesh squishing beneath his knuckles. 

When it’s over, he finishes off the last monster and looks up to see Ronan watching him. 

The big man is crouching on his heels, studying him with an inscrutable expression. Ethan feels that little shift in perspective that’s his ranger hindbrain looking for a threat; noting the position of Ronan’s hands, the weapon in his hand, his size, weight and probable training. 

“Your people did good work,” Ronan remarks. It sounds like a compliment.   

“Thank you,” Ethan says warily. 

“If Sateda had had soldiers like you. We would never have fallen.” 

“Maybe. Or maybe we still would have lost. Rangers don’t always win.” 

Ronan grin has a feral edge. 

“We would have made it harder for those bastards anyway.” 

Hard to argue with that one. From what Ethan’s heard about Ronan’s homeworld, they could have done with one or more ranger teams looking out for them. Even if it was just buying a little bit more time for refugees to escape, like the red and silver Astro rangers had done for K0-35. 

“Are there more like you?” Ronan asks. 

Ethan hesitates, but the rangers had agreed; the Atlanteans are entitled to the same amount of information as the average citizen back home. It wouldn’t be fair otherwise.   

“Some,” he says. “I couldn’t tell you exact numbers. We don’t talk to each other much, and we all cover different areas.” 

“But there would be someone to replace you?” Ronan persists. 

“Why?” 

“If we can’t get you home, your people would be still be protected?” 

“Oh. Yes. Dr O’s still back there; he’s pretty bada– I mean, he’s pretty powerful. And teams step in to help each other out when it’s needed.” 

The real question is whether Mesagog will be content to play by the rules once he realises four out of the five rangers are missing. Only two facts have kept lizard-breath in line this long; that he needs the active Dino Gems to enact his plan, and that the gems are only active when connected to a host. 

“He wants us alive if he can,” Trent had shrugged. “Serving him preferably, but in a coma or restrained or crippled somehow will do. Zeltrax has some pretty gruesome ideas on how to go about it, but seeing as we’re not likely to survive any of them I wouldn’t worry… why are you guys looking at? Do I have something on my face?” 

What really worries Ethan (aside from just how long he’s going to drag out Mesagog’s inevitable ugly demise) is that once Mesagog realises four gems are gone, he’s going to take it out on Reefside, and the war between him and Dr O will spiral into mutually assured destruction. Ethan doesn’t want to come back and find Reefside a smoking ruin, and Dr O’s name on a memorial somewhere. And that’s not even considering what Mesagog might do to Hayley, if he figures out her involvement. 

Ethan doesn’t realise he’s frowning until Ronan says matter of factly: 

“If this doctor is anything like you four, you have nothing to worry about.” 

Despite the words, Ethan’s not sure it’s meant as a compliment and almost says so, but over to the left, the air shimmers as Trent appears, panting and dishevelled, with his right sleeve all ripped and bloodied up. Ronan rises to his feet and Ethan says: 

“What happened?” 

“Nothing,” Trent says between gritted teeth, holding his arm. 

“Lets see,” Ronan says, taking a step toward him – and stopping when both Ethan and Trent yell: 

“No!” 

“Trent doesn’t like to be touched when he’s hurt,” Ethan explains in a more natural voice. “Trent, you mind if I take a look?” 

“Yes.” 

“Please?” 

Trent shakes his head stubbornly. 

“Please.” Ethan gives him the same beseeching look he uses on Conner and Kira whenever they’re passing a video games store. It works just as well on Trent.  He lets out an exasperated breath. 

“Fine. But don’t touch.” 

“I won’t,” Ethan promises and eases closer, making no sudden moves as he examines Trent’s arm. To his relief it looks worse than it is; mostly claw marks that look painful but don’t impede Trent’s range of motion.  

While he's doing this, he valiantly tries to ignore Ronan, who’s watching with the same intense scrutiny he’d given Ethan earlier.  

“What’s wrong?” Kira says behind them.  

“Just a few scrapes.” Ethan looks up to see Kira is dragging a monster along by its hair. Somewhere along the line, she’s taken a hit and the red blood drying on her face makes her look like a serial murderer. The monster she’s dragging is one of the smarter variety; skinnier than the others with no bone mask. This one’s had both arms broken and is looking in a pretty sorry state. 

“Why haven’t you killed it?” Ronan says, sounding annoyed and Ethan hears the faint whine of his gun charging. 

“It wants to talk.” Kira forces the monster to its knees. “Sit. Stay.” 

From the corner of his eye, Ethan catches the red flash of Conner arriving. 

“Gosh darn it to heck, why do they keep running? I was chasing these things all freaking over – what’s wrong with Trent? And why’s that monster still alive?” 

“I’m fine,” Trent snarls at the same time Ethan says: 

“Just a little knocked around” and Kira adds: 

“It wants to talk,” while twisting the monster’s hair as it tries to crawl away.   

Conner frowns, digesting all three answers and apparently decides to focus on the last point. 

“It wants to talk? Seriously?” 

Some of the doubt in his tone must get across the species divide because the monster stops trying to sidle away and says quickly: 

“You want to know how we came here. I will tell you in exchange for my life.” 

Behind it, Kira rolls her eyes. It’s an effort not to do the same. Though there are monsters who can stop being monsters, they’re few and far between. And generally don’t come with a physical dependency on destroying human life. 

“Sure,” Conner lies glibly. “We’ll let you go.” 

The monster’s eyes narrow. 

“My brothers learned how much your word is worth,” it hisses. “I want his word.” It nods at Ronan, who’s studying it inscrutably. 

“Ronan?” Conner says. 

“We’ll let you live,” Ronan tells the monster in a tone that could mean anything. Kira nudges the monster. 

“So come on. Talk.” 

The monster doesn’t seem convinced, but apparently decides its chances of surviving talking are better than those by being silent. 

“Our hive has a new technology. It allows us to travel without a ship.” 

“Teleportation,” Ethan says. “I knew it. Kira, you owe me five bucks.” 

“Quiet,” Ronan says. His focus is completely on the monster now. “Where did you get it? Wraith don't invent. You're a race of thieves and scavengers.” 

The monster doesn't like that at all, and actually opens its mouth to argue. Kira twists his fingers almost gently in its hair and it stops. Resentfully it says:  

“Our Queen's new pet brought it.” 

Ronan stills.  

“A human? Where from?” 

“I don't concern myself with the origins of food.” 

“Which is half - no, all - of our problem with you,” Kira points out. She strokes its hair absently, like she would the silky fur of a dog, ignoring how it flinches. “C’mon. You look smart. You must have some idea.” 

The monster gives up the fight to avoid her grasp and submits unhappily to her petting. 

“We found it on a barren world. No Gate of the Ancestors. No ship. It carried no signs of any worlds within our stars.” 

“Huh.” Ethan touches his tongue to a cut on his lip, thinking. It makes sort of sense. If this mysterious human had teleportation technology, it made sense they'd use it and had been found by the monsters on one of those journeys. 

“A name,” Ronan says. “It had one of those, right?” 

The monster opens its mouth to say something scathing, and pauses.  

“Yes,” it says, sounding surprised that it had remembered something so trivial. “It called itself Elsa.” 

Chapter Text

Beckett knocks on the open door to Weir’s office. 

“Here are the medical files you asked for.” 

“Carson, thank you.” Weir closes her laptop as he lays the thick manilla folder on her desk. “You didn’t have to walk all the way up here yourself – you could have just emailed them to me.” 

“The infirmary’s calmed down, and I wanted to talk to you about this anyway.” 

Carson pulls up a chair, looking exhausted. Weir wonders how long it’s been since he rested. The attack took place in the middle of the night and Atlantis has been in high alert ever since, trying to track down the scattered wraith and get their systems back online. 

“Coffee?” She gestures to the pot some thoughtful kitchen staff member had brought up. 

“God, yes. Thank you.” 

She gets the spare cup out of her drawer and lets Carson pour his own while she flicks through the folder of medical jargon and printed scans. There are four reports in total, different from the concise summaries Carson normally submits regarding visitors to Atlantis. Those are just a bare bones confirmation that the person in question is human and carrying no conditions that might be harmful or contagious. 

These reports are the ones Carson keeps locked in his office, the records containing the more detailed information that might be relevant to medical care but doesn’t need to be known by the world at large. Normally Weir wouldn’t dream of asking for them, but she’s about to enter into negotiations with an unknown quantity and she’ll be damned if she’s walking in completely blind. 

But, flipping through the neatly typed pages, she’s not finding a smoking gun. Or even anything remotely useful. According to the four exams performed on arrival in Atlantis a week ago, Conner McKnight, Ethan James, Kira Ford and Trent Fernandez are utterly and completely normal. 

“Within human parameters?” She reads aloud. “No significant abnormalities?” 

“Bearing in mind my staff had a lot of other work at the time,” Carson says, sipping at his coffee. “And everyone was mostly interested in ensuring the kids weren’t robots or Gould. Which they aren’t.” 

“They’re not children. And I don’t understand – how could they appear normal. You’ve seen the footage; you know what they can do.” 

She’s both baffled and intrigued by how they’d slipped past Atlantis’ security net. They’d make one hell of a Trojan horse. Slip them in among prisoners being taken by wraith or gould, and you had the perfect assassin in place. One that set off no alarms and needed no weapons aside from itself. 

“‘Normal’ is hard to define,” Carson points out. “Individuals can vary a great deal physically and genetically while still falling within the same species. Now that I’ve had a look myself, there are a few things I wish we’d pursued, but no red flags. Nothing that would have justified more extreme measures.” 

“What kind of things?”

"More a general lack than anything else.” He sets his cup down. “Understand everyone has medical issues. It’s a fact of life. Lactose intolerance, bad knees, poor eyesight, slight asthma… Name anyone on this base, and I can name a few minor medical problems. These kids have none.”

The way he says it sends chills down Weir’s spine.

“I suppose it makes sense,” she says slowly. “For this kind of role, healthy people would be chosen.”

“Not this healthy,” Carson says firmly. “To be this inherently healthy is medically impossible.”

And isn’t that interesting. Perhaps Weir is focusing on entirely the wrong angle here. If the technology – because McKay’s right, it has to be a technology – boosts physical abilities, perhaps it has a medical application as well. In which case, her negotiations might be more productive focusing on that aspect. In her experience, people are a lot faster to share medical advancements than those to do with weapons, and it might do just as much good in the long run.

She’s so fascinated by this new idea, she almost misses what Carson is saying.

“…raised any eyebrows were their x-rays, but that was my call and I take full responsibility for it–”

“What was wrong with their x-rays?” Weir says, attention snapping back on the present.

“Dr Brandon expressed some initial concern over their number of old breaks.” Carson’s voice is neutral and professional, his expression a mixture of unhappy and disapproving. “Our belief then, based on their apparent age, was that we were looking at cases of domestic violence. We brought Heightmeier in to talk to them, but the kids categorically denied it so we had to let it go.”

“You didn’t say anything.”

Weir doesn’t quite manage to keep the dismay from her voice. That’s exactly the type of situation she’d thought Carson would trust her with. She knows that two or three years ago, she would have been his first port of call, if only as a sounding board or source of advice.

Then she sees the wry look Carson is giving her, and acknowledges silently that things have changed in the past two years. Or maybe it’s just her that’s changed, that the lines Carson still holds to firmly she has crossed multiple times.

“There wasn’t anything you could have done,” Carson points out kindly. “Entropic cascade failure was more of a concern. And even after we were sure they were stable, what would have been crueler? Sending them back to a situation they’d likely escape from in a year or two anyway? Or keep them here, cut off from everyone they ever knew? It would have been different if they were little children, but none of us had the right to make that choice for teenagers. Or what we thought were teenagers anyway.”

It’s tempting beyond words to cede the point, and in doing so giving tacit permission for Carson to continue keeping these kinds of impossible problems from her already over-full lap. Carson would never judge her. All Weir would need to do is nod or change the subject, and it would become one of those silent understandings between them.

She meets his eyes and says quietly:

“I still should have known.”  

Perhaps this particular situation – if it really had been abuse and not inter-dimensional monster fights – was unsalvageable but she has to wonder how many other ‘situations’ Carson has kept from her lately, in order to spare her an impossible choice. Though kindly meant, it hamstrings her as a leader. She has to know what choices she’s making when she makes them, otherwise she’s making no real decisions at all, just fumbling in the dark.

Carson meets her gaze, seems to see something there that has him nodding in acquiescence.  

“I’ll keep you in the loop from now on,” he promises.

“Thank you.” She turns back to the reports. “How long ago did the breaks occur? Perhaps they could tell us how long our visitors have been in this line of work.” That at least could give her some idea if she’s dealing with talented rookies or experienced veterans.

Carson leans back in his chair, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully.

“Based on the stage of healing, I’d say they occurred between one and five years ago. There’s not quite enough hard callus build-up to be any older than that.”

“You can’t be more specific?”

“Five years is an outside mark. One is conservative. If I were a betting man, I’d say three years is your most likely estimate.”

“Three years.” Weir taps her pen. “So, allowing time for basic training, our guests would be what… twenty two? Twenty three maybe.”  God that’s even younger than Ford was when he ran off.

“I’d say so.” Carson hesitates, cupping his half-empty cup in his hands. “Elizabeth, about these x-rays, there’s one thing I should probably–”

Weir’s radio bleeps.

“Excuse me.” She taps her headset. “Weir here.”

“Doctor Weir, this is Teyla. You should know that you have Conner headed up to your office right now.”

“What?”

“There have been developments he wished to discuss with you in person.” There’s a hint of annoyance in Teyla’s voice that doesn’t bode well for Conner’s future. “Moving at his speed, he should be there in a minute or two.”

“You couldn’t give him an escort?”

“Conner and his friends are not amenable to taking orders.” And yes, that’s definitely annoyance and Conner’s future is definitely not looking bright. “The others are with Ronan and I, but Conner decided he couldn’t wait.”

“Right.” Weir rubs her forehead where a tension headache is starting to throb. “No, it’s fine. I can work with this.” She’d been planning on talking to Conner alone anyway. Without his teammates to deflect or redirect attention, perhaps she could get past that childish façade. “What did he want to discuss with me?”

“The wraith claim to be using teleportation technology taken from a human. The human’s name is causing our visitors some agitation, as it matches that of an enemy from their home dimension.”

 Weir frowns.

“That could be a coincidence.”

“That is what I said. Ethan wants to know however – were there any strange malfunctions around surveillance devices? Sections that shut down, preventing us from getting any footage of the wraiths’ actual arrival?”

“I – yes.” Weir presses her fingers to the bridge of her nose. “The cameras were on a separate system from the lights, but they went out as well in random areas.”

“Apparently that’s a classic sign of something called an ‘invisiportal’.”  There’s a pause and muffled talking, and Teyla comes back on. “Kira asks, did anyone report green electricity? Possibly odd displacements of air?”

All the eye-witnesses had talked about green electricity. Weir closes her eyes for a minute and breathes out, trying to clear her mind. The forming headache isn’t going away.

“You should take a break,” she tells Teyla after a few seconds. “You’ve all been going for six hours. Take a breather, and if our visitors complain, tell them it’s a legal requirement.”

“I’ll try and coax them into the mess hall,” Teyla says, somewhere between amused and resigned as she signs off.

Weir takes off her headset and opens up the desk drawer where she keeps her aspirin. At least they know how the wraith are getting in. And there’s a decent chance that it’s a single hive, wraith of late being notoriously quick to undercut others in competition for resources. There has to be a silver lining here somewhere, damn it.

“Problems?” Carson says as she dry-swallows two aspirin.

“Nothing we can’t handle.” Weir puts the medical reports into the drawer, out of sight. “I’ve got Conner coming up in a few minutes. Hopefully his urgency means he’s finally ready to share information.”

And if he isn’t, she’ll pry it out of him with a fork.

“Then I probably should head back to the infirmiry.” Carson sets his cup down and stands up. “I’ve got patients waiting.”

“Thank you again. And what I said to Teyla – it goes the same for you. Get some rest. You look exhausted.”

She’s walking him to the door when a marine opens it.

"Dr Weir, one of the…” Yamato pauses, clearly not certain how to refer to their visitors now that ‘kids’ is ridiculously erroneous, and finally settles on a surname. “…McKnight is here. He’s demanding to talk to you.”

And from the marine’s tight-lipped look, he’d be perfectly happy to fling Conner from the balcony if she requested it. It’s tempting, but Weir says:

“It’s fine. I was expecting him. Send him–”

There’s a red blur, and suddenly a tall green-smeared figure is at Yamato’s shoulder. It bumps him out the way, nearly knocking him over, and moves toward Carson and Weir. She’s frozen in the middle of her office, mouth half open, thinking stupid thoughts of the gun in her bottom desk drawer or the emergency zat Sheppard had insisted on hiding at the back of her filing cabinet. Both too far away, she’ll never make it in time –

Then she registers that the figure is talking. Babbling really, words spilling out like pausing for breath is optional.

“Dr Weir, totally sorry for barging in like this – don’t tell Dr O, he’d revoke my Cyberspace privileges – but the marines were being all weird, and I seriously gotta talk to you– ”

It’s Conner, Weir realises. Conner, covered head to foot in blue-green wraith blood that’s drying his hair into clumps. He couldn’t have been more filthy if he’d rolled around in a pile of wraith body parts (which is, when Weir thinks about it, probably pretty close to the mark). What bare skin is visible under the gore is covered in bruises and lacerations like he’d been dragged behind a car. He has a black eye and a split lip, and the left side of his face is scratched like something tried to claw his face off.

None of that, however, has interfered with his energy. He’s practically vibrating with excitement, yammering away while he gestures animatedly, eyes wide like a kid on a sugar high.

“Freeze!” Yamato shouts, and marines are crowding into the room with P-90s aimed. Conner finally pauses, brow furrowing in bafflement as he takes them in as if he can’t quite work out what they’re doing. Then – and this is the part Weir recognises from the surveillance footage– his expression smooths out. His gaze darts between them, quickly sizing them up, and she knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that he could kill everyone in this room and is currently deciding how.

“Stop!” She shouts. “Everyone put down your weapons!”

“Ma’am –” Yamato starts to protest.

“Do it!” This is no time for anyone to hesitate between obeying the civilian and military chain of command in Atlantis. “Now.”

The marines reluctantly lower their weapons. Conner relaxes as they do so, closing his eyes and giving his head a little shake.

“You guys are totally insane, you know that, right?” He says flatly. “Who the heck points a gun at a ranger?” There’s something not quite right about his voice, but he isn’t giving them that coldly penetrating look anymore.

“You startled us,” Weir says, voice calm despite the too-fast thump of her heart. “Anyone who came barging in here without an invitation would get the same treatment.”

He opens his eyes, looks at her, and she could swear he blushes underneath that crust of drying blood.

“Right. Sorry. Hayley says the raptors have better manners than I do.” He’s back to the laconic, teenage tone again and Weir relaxes further, taking that as a sign that violence is not immediately imminent.

She glances round the office and momentarily stalls to decide how to proceed. Usually she offers people a seat or refreshments, but right now that seems like suggesting high tea to a Jaffa rebel fighter staggering off a gould mothership.

“Lieutenant, we’ll be fine here,” she says. “If we could clear the room, and perhaps get some water brought up?”

“Fu– fudge, yes,” Conner says. “Water would be all kinds of awesome.”

“Ma’am,” Yamato starts. “Colonel Sheppard said–” Weir gives him a look, and he stops mid-word then adds: “Perhaps two of us staying would be appropriate.”

No, it’s not appropriate but Weir can’t afford to force the issue now, not with Conner watching and picking up god-knows what he can use against them.  

“That sounds acceptable to me,” she says, adding lightly: “Remind me to talk to you later about something.”

It’s somewhat gratifying that Yamato winces, clearly not looking forward to the talk he’s in for, before nodding to the other marines to clear the room.

One of them returns almost immediately to sourly toss a sealed water bottle at Conner’s head. Conner catches it deftly, just about rips the cap off and chugs the whole thing in about five seconds. Weir notes that his knuckles and fingers are scraped and bloody like he punched a brick wall. Several times.

“More water, please,” she tells the marine. “And a first aid kit as well if you don’t mind.”

The marine nods and departs. Meanwhile, Carson has recovered from his shock and his professionalism is taking over.

“Conner, lad, have you hit your head?”

“Why?” Conner touches the back of his head, and frowns at the fresh red on his fingers. “Oh, that. Yeah, a few times. This one monster, it was pretty quick on the draw. One of those smart monsters – I freaking hate smart monsters. It made like it was going to shoot me with the stunner then whacked me with it. Pow!”

He smacks his hands together for emphasis, making everyone tense. Conner looks rounds, surprised.

“It’s okay,” he says. “Ethan got it. Crushed its skull. You wouldn’t think it, but he’s actually really strong and he got his hands around its head and–”

"Perhaps you’d better sit down,” Carson interrupts. Apparently he can’t tolerate the sight of all those wounds going untreated, even on an inter-dimensional possibly-human soldier. “Over here. Get off your feet and let me see the damage.”

“Nah, don’t worry about it. I’m good.”

This while everyone can see the fresh blood dripping quietly on the floor at his feet.

“Why don’t you let me be the judge of that,” Carson says in that quiet, reasonable tone even Sheppard listens to. It has the same effect on Conner, because he sighs and says “okay” like he’s doing Carson the biggest favour in the world. He sits down and Weir mentally winces, resigning herself to requesting a new office chair on the next supplies list. Nothing’s going to get those stains out.

The marine, a massive Australian man whose name Weir can never remember, returns with two more water bottles and a first aid kit that he hands Carson. He watches Conner warily as he takes up position beside the door and Conner says plaintively:

“What’s with the evil eye? Do I smell?”

Weir opens her mouth to issue a tactful lie, but the marine gets in first:

“You’re covered in wraith crap. What do you think?”

Yamato snaps “Douglas!” but the damage is done. Conner looks down at himself, seems to notice all the scummy green drying on him, the bits of entrail clinging valiantly, and laughs out loud. 

“Holy freaking wow. I do, don’t I!” He tugs at his shirt. “Man, I hope Lorne doesn’t expect to get this shirt back.”

It’s incredibly disarming, and Weir can feel it working despite herself. She wonders if Conner and his people are trained to be this charismatic, or it’s a quality they’re chosen for. Probably a combination of both.

Conner tilts his head as he studies the marine, still smiling.

“You’re the guy that Trent sat on,” he says in a friendly way. “Aren’t you?”

The marine clearly wants to argue the point but, after a glance at Yamato, says nothing. Nevertheless, Weir can see that Conner’s right. It’s the same man who’d had a scalpel at his throat six hours ago, to make a point to Sheppard. She hadn’t recognised him from the video footage.

“We’re sorry about that,” Conner continues. “Trent shouldn’t have done that. We’ve spoken to him already.”

“I notice that you aren’t promising it won’t happen again,” Weir interjects, and Conner’s attention shifts to her. He scratches a drying scratch on his face, looking uneasy.

“Trent’s on a hair-trigger. We’d like him not to be, but he is, so the best thing to do is just not trigger him. Anyway,” he waves the issue away before she can ask exactly how they can avoid triggering Trent. “I’m not here to talk to you about my White. We found out one of our enemies is working with your monsters.”

“With the wraith, yes. Teyla told me.” Weir returns to her seat behind the desk.

“Then you guys also need to know that Elsa is a complete freaking psychopath. She–” Conner flinches as Carson dabbs at the lacerations on his arm. “Ow! Dr Beckett, I’m fine.”

“Hush up and let me work.”

“This Elsa character?” Weir pushes, trying to keep the conversation on track.

“She’s a zealot.” Anger and disgust flicker across Conner’s normally good-natured face as he settles obediently back into his seat. “Completely nuts but crazy like a fox. You know what I’m saying?”

Weir thinks of Kolya, who managed to evade seemingly inevitable death too many times before finally taking a bullet in the chest. And she only trusted that had killed him because Beckett confirmed it.

“Yes, I know what you mean. You say she’s a zealot. What exactly is she zealous about?”

Conner hesitates.

“It’s complicated,” he says carefully. “But I guess you could boil it down to…what’s that word… genetics and survival of the fittest and making sure the strong survive…?”

“Eugenics,” Weir says around a dry throat.

“Yeah, that. Except she and Mesagog want to kill anyone who doesn’t meet their standards, which is basically everyone. It’s their whole mission plan really.” Conner sounds like he couldn’t care less. “Kill everyone who doesn’t measure up, create things that do. Big whoop if they’re all monsters.”

“You sound very…cavalier about it.”

“I stopped giving a c– I stopped caring about why Mesagog’s doing this a month ago. He wants to kill and torture people, that’s all that matters. Our job is to kill that sick son of a– that freak.”

His tone gets very heated, face flushed with colour beneath the flaking green crust. There’s history there, one as potentially vindictive as between Sheppard and Kolya. However it had started, whatever mandate Conner really holds, it’s now a personal grudge for him. Weir wonders if their other visitors feel similarly.

“Elsa’s Mesagog’s right hand chick,” Conner continues more calmly. “We don’t know whether he made her or found her somewhere, but she’s smart enough to keep up with lizard-face and tough enough to throw down with us.” Conner directs this part at the marines. “She’s had enhancements done, so if she shows up don’t try and take her on. She’d take your guns off you and make you eat them.”

He says it matter-of-factly, giving the order without any doubt that it would be obeyed. So he’s accustomed to command, or at least being listened to. More evidence for Ethan’s claim that Conner was the real leader.

“Why is Elsa here?” Weir says. “Could she be responsible for bringing you here, not McKay’s device?”

“No idea. Maybe. Although–” Conner touches his tongue to his split lip, looking thoughtful. “She was standing right beside us when the portal opened. I forgot about that. She could have been sucked in after us.”

“And just happened to end up somewhere else while you four landed here?”

 "Yeah, you’d have to ask Ethan about that. I suppose our ge– I mean, what we are could have kept us together.” Conner thinks about that and shrugs. “Like I said, not my area. I’m the pretty one.”

Weir gives him a deeply skeptical look. Conner, as well as he’d fooled them before, is a great deal more than a pretty face or even just the muscle. Teyla’s reports back to Weir had indicated that all four visitors displayed an incredible talent for tactical engagement, needing little communication to seek out the strongest ground in a fight or to push towards the weakest point in an enemy line. When communication was needed, Conner was usually the one to give it, directing an opening to be shored up or pointing a teammate in the direction of a particular target.

Challenging him on this, however, will just invite more obfuscation, so Weir asks instead:

“And this alliance with the wraith, what will Elsa be getting out of it?”

“Hard to say. She might want to take us down while we’re vulnerable, or she might just be looking for a way home and figures we’ve got it.”

“So she wouldn’t be interested in Atlantis itself.”

“Only so far as it gets her back to Mesagog. She’s crazy loyal to him. She won’t care about this dimension or anyone in it, so long as she can get back to him.”

“Then she can be negotiated with. If all she wants is to go home, I’m sure we can help her with that, the same as you four.”

“Yeah…but this is Elsa we’re talking about.” Conner rolls his eyes. “Look, if it was Zeltrax I’d say go for it. The guy’s built like a tank but he’s not exactly a complex thinker. Elsa’s twisty. She usually has three or four different goals running at once, and at least one of them you won’t see coming. This whole… sending the monsters down scenario… that’s stock standard, and Elsa’s smarter than that.”

“How so?”

“For example?” Conner’s face twists in thought. “Okay, I got one. So about three months ago, she sends this monster down into the zoo. While we’re fighting it, she goes round and opens up all these cages. Releases some really dangerous animals so even after we kill the monster, we still have to spend three hours helping the handlers round them up. Then we find out that’s just a distraction to keep us from noticing right away that some animals are missing because she stole them back to the labs for more genetic splicing.” He rolls his eyes. “Sidenote? That was a lousy month. And then , a week later, Elsa demands a ransom because one of the animals she took was a very rare white tiger. The city wouldn’t pay but some animal lover association did, so she not only got to cause property damage, bloody mayhem, and DNA to do it all again, she also got paid for it.”

Weir will admit, that’s not someone she’d want to face over a negotiating table, for a number of reasons. Though she’d be interested in hearing Elsa’s side of the story, it wouldn’t be without a lot of armed guards, some shackles and ideally from the other end of a video feed.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” she says regretfully. “Seeing as we’ve no way of contacting her.”

“Yeah, sucks don’t it.” Conner gives her a sympathetic look. “The only thing you can do is send us away.”

“Yes,” she agrees absently, thoughts still on the feasibility of containing a super-strong homicidal maniac, let alone convincing her that it’s in her best interests to work with them. It’s pretty blatantly clear in hindsight that Atlantis’ four visitors had only been contained because they allowed themselves to be contained.

Then her mind catches up on what Conner just said.

“Wait, what?”

Chapter Text

“Is something wrong?”

 The question penetrates Ethan’s daze and he realizes that Teyla is giving him a querying look across the mess hall table.

 “What? No, we're fine. Nothing wrong with us.”

 It’s not very convincing and Teyla’s look turns dubious and faintly suspicious. Ethan ducks his head, looking down at his half-eaten plate. He really doesn’t want to explain how the rangers’ morphing signatures might be leading Elsa to Atlantis. That’s a job for Conner up in Weir’s office and Ethan’s more than happy to dump it on the guy.

 “I just…” He makes a vague gesture. “With Elsa here? In this dimension? Not cool.”

 “Tell me about it,” Kira mutters. Like Ethan, she’s picking at her food, having only managed to get through two plates. Trent at least is eating with grim resolution, now putting away his fourth. The escort Marines, crammed onto the table alongside, are shooting him looks somewhere between horror and fascination.

 Teyla doesn’t seem to quite buy Ethan’s excuse. Like Kira she has a discerning ear for bullshit.

 “You all appear somewhat… agitated,” she says, eyeing where Ethan is absently tapping his fingers on the tabletop. “As if you are in a hurry to be somewhere.”

 This is normally Trent’s cue to smoothly intervene with an ingenious misdirection. This time however, Trent is off in his own little world, eating mechanically, gaze fixed past Ronan’s shoulder. It’s left to Ethan to come up with something to say other than the truth – which is that they’re all on edge waiting for Conner to convince Weir to open up that stargate thingy, so that the rangers can lead the monsters away. 

 “We just want to go back to killing monsters,” he says. “That’s all.”

 “Of course.” Teyla still isn’t convinced. Fortunately she seems to be thinking along completely the wrong line. “Is Elsa truly so terrible?”

 “In a word? Yes.” Ethan pokes at the soggy broccoli on his plate, pretending it’s Elsa’s face.

 “You fear her.”

 It’s not really a question, and she’s not wrong, but Ethan feels obligated to argue anyway.

“Not the way I do Mesagog. I’d like to break her face, that’s all.”

“You talk about all women like that?” One of the Marines mutters. Kira makes an indelicate sound.

“Elsa’s not a woman. She’s a monster, a vile piece of sadistic filth that dares to look like a human being.” She stabs at a piece of carrot. “Ethan can break her face, I’ll break both her knees and stuff her in a woodchipper.”

Even Ethan blinks at that threat. Kira has wonderfully creative ways of getting around the censor.

Sitting opposite, Ronan is picking at his teeth with a toothpick, as unconcerned as if Kira had said she wanted a tea party with pink ribbons and teddy bears. Teyla gives them this thoughtful look that makes Ethan feel horribly transparent and asks:

“What did she do to you?”

Ethan pauses in mutilating his broccoli. He very carefully keeps his eyes on Teyla, not betraying anyone with so much as a glance.

“She does stuff to everyone,” he says. “We’re nothing special; we just happen to get in the way more.”

“In my experience, some types of loathing cannot be taught, only felt. I hated the wraith as a child, but they were a fact of existence to be accepted. Like old age or death. I did not truly loathe them until they took my father.”

Trent looks up.

“A monster took your father?” He says. He looks vulnerable, as if Teyla had hit a nerve with her statement.

“Some years ago,” Teyla answers. “In the last great culling. I was considered lucky that even one member of my immediate family survived.” In her voice, Ethan can hear the faint echo of a very old bitterness. “Is that what Elsa did? Did she hurt your father?”

“No.” Trent look away, flustered by the question. “Something else.”

He doesn’t sound entirely truthful, and for the first time Ethan wonders – had some sort of threat been leveled against Anton, in order to get Trent’s compliance? Trent back before joining the team had been pretty ignorant of the rules regarding ranger-villain interactions, and even crazy-Trent had been pretty fond of Anton. If he’d had no idea that parents were off-limits, it would have yet one more tool to ensure his cooperation. 

Ethan goes cold, wondering how bad it must have gotten that Trent was willing to risk so much to escape.

“That’s none of your business,” Kira says firmly, drawing attention away from Trent. “None of you will see Elsa. She’s like Mesagog; she does her fighting from a distance with monsters. If she does come, you run away and let us handle her. That’s our job.”

“This is our home,” Ronan points out. “We don’t run away.”

“Yes you do,” Ethan says grimly. “Because Elsa’s not like your monsters. She’s built to take on a fully morphed ranger . She’d squash you like a bug and care less.”

“We don’t squash easy,” Ronan says, smirking like someone who’s never seen Elsa rip a car door off its hinges.

“We’re serious.” Ethan really wishes for a couple of extra years and maybe some beard scruff to make Ronan take him seriously. “We’re not even sure that we can stop her. Maybe all four of us together, but I wouldn’t put any money on it.”

“And leave you to die?” Teyla says, like he’d made some distasteful joke. Ethan rolls his eyes.

“Don’t be stupid. Elsa doesn’t want us – ow!” Someone just kicked him under the table, and by the way Trent’s glaring at him, Ethan knows who. “Trent, that hurt !”

“Elsa doesn’t want you dead,” Teyla says thoughtfully. “That is what you were going to say, Ethan?”

Ethan glares at Trent and tucks his legs out of reach before answering.

“Mesagog wants us alive. Elsa will do her best to give him that.”

“Why does he want you alive?” One of the older Marines – Atwood, Ethan thinks he’s called – is watching the rangers suspiciously.

Ethan momentarily stumps, realising too late why Trent had wanted him to shut up. It’s impossible to explain why Mesagog wants the rangers alive without explaining the gems and the symbiotic bond that keeps them active.

“It’s complicated,” he hedges but no one’s buying what he’s selling. He can tell by the way the adults are all looking at him, like Hayley when she knows he’s been using the Lair computer to play video games but can't prove it. One of the younger Marines breaks the silence.

“Yeah, right. If I went up against something like you, I’d kill it with fire and bury it at the cross-roads.”

“That so?” Kira says, amused.

 “Yeah. Fuck fighting you guys. I’d call in a fucking air-strike.”

Ethan won’t lie; he’s totally flattered. This guy hasn’t even seen them morphed and he still thinks they’re that badass. Kira preens a little as well, unable to quite hide how much she likes his opinion.

“What Harris is trying to say,” Atwood says. “Is that taking you alive is high risk. Why bother?”

The smile fades from Ethan’s face. Kira laces her hands together, squeezing so tight her knuckles turn white.

“He wants us to serve him,” she says shortly. “He thinks if he can take us alive, he can convince us.”

“Is he right about that?”

Trent gives a huff of laughter that’s totally fake.

“What can we say? He’s a convincing guy.” His voice is slightly higher-pitched than normal, the only sign of a hysteria that so far has been kept well under wraps. Ethan shifts on his chair, wondering if he should make some excuse for them to leave. If Trent’s going to crack up, the last place he’ll want to do it is a public area like this. Kira’s hand twitches as if she’d reach for Trent’s but knows it would be rebuffed.

Before any of the rangers can say or do anything, Ronan speaks.

"So you’re not really risking anything.” He’s still slouched in his seat, eyeing Trent with impersonal interest. “By helping us.”

Ethan’s rage surges like an electric shock. It’s lucky that the ranger programming is so strict about restraint in non-combat situations because what Ethan really wants to do is punch Ronan in the face. Kira’s gripping her spork and glaring like she wants to stab him in the eye.

“You have no idea what we’re risking,” she snarls.

“I’m listening.” Ronan makes a broad gesture that’s vaguely mocking, as if he’s already dismissed their fears as childish and irrelevant. Ethan thinks that for a guy who’d recognised and respected them for what they were from the beginning, Ronan’s making a lot of missteps right at the moment. “What would this Mesagog do?”

“Oh nothing at all,” Trent says, and his tone is chilly like ice. “Just torture us into submission. No risk at all.”

The ‘t’ word – the word that they’ve all been avoiding using or even thinking – doesn’t do anything for Ethan’s temper. In fact, it makes his more aggressive ranger instincts surface, subconscious frantically searching for the threat to his teammate, and unable to find it.

He’s catalogueing all the ways he can take Ronan apart when he realises that Ronan doesn’t look disturbed. Or even surprised. He just keeps chewing on his toothpick, gaze steady as he asks Trent:

“How long did they have you?”

Trent falters.

“Three months,” he says automatically, and covers his mouth as if horrified to let that much slip.

Ronan nods as if that’s more or less what he’d expected.

“Elsa helped torture you?” He asks, sounding like he was enquiring about the weather. It’s a neutrality that Ethan couldn’t have managed to save his life, but Trent responds to it as if it hits some hidden trigger in his brain.

“No, she just helped restrain me sometimes. Broke my feet so I couldn’t run…” He stands up suddenly, shoving his chair back. “I need some air.”

He walks away. Ethan and Kira jump up to follow him. Ethan’s ranger instincts are an urgent pressure on the inside of his brain, telling him to go after Trent, to keep him close, to find out all the ways that Mesagog hurt him and pay them back a hundred times over, to keep him safe and protected and do it right this time–

“Sit down,” Ronan tells them. Kira says hotly:

"Don’t tell us what to –”

"You think he wants to talk to anyone right now? Sit down and stay here.” Ronan gets up and follows Trent out of the mess hall, long legs easily covering the distance between them.

“He doesn’t want to talk to you either!” Ethan shouts after him, but it’s lame, really lame. He can’t decide whether he wants to curl up and cry at the awful, unspeakable reality of what Trent went through or take it out on something with knuckles and violence and blood.

“Was that the first you have heard of it?” Teyla asks, and even though she looks sympathetic and like she wants to help, Ethan hates her for witnessing this.

"No,” Kira says shortly, sitting down.

“We’re not idiots.” Ethan sits down and stabs at his broccoli. This time it’s Mesagog he’s picturing ripping to shreds. “He’s just never gone into detail before.”

Broke my feet so I couldn’t run…

The back of Ethan’s throat tastes sour and he has to put the spork down. Back when Trent was crazy, the rangers had had no idea. They’d simply assumed that Mesagog had presented a more appealing deal to the white ranger. Occasionally Ethan had wondered at the sudden turn around; why the white ranger, who only cared about a fight and not where it came from, had become obedient to Mesagog’s will. But he’d never followed the though through to it’s horrific conclusion.

To be fair, maybe he hadn’t wanted to. Maybe none of them had.

Then a surge of Power had bitch-slapped Trent back to sanity and he’d fled Mesagog’s lab for the rangers. It had only taken a day – a day of watching him flinch when anyone touched him and tense at the smell of ammonia – for them to realise something really bad had gone down. Even then they didn’t realise the true extent until a week later when Conner initiated a playful wrestling match – something he’d done a hundred times before with Ethan and Kira – and Trent freaked out at being pinned.

Ethan still remembers the awful moment of realisation when Trent kicked Conner off him and ran for the bathroom; that utter sense of helplessness as they listened to Trent heaving his guts behind a locked door.

Trent flatly refused to admit anything had happened, of course. Pushing just makes him get nasty, and he’d stuck the verbal knife in pretty ruthlessly when Hayley and Dr O suggested he talk to someone. It drives all of them crazy with worry; does he not want to make it real by talking about it? Or does he just not trust them enough to admit how badly he’d been hurt?

This admission to Ronan is the closest they’ve come to progress in a month, and forces Ethan to conclude that the second assumption was the right one. Trent wants to talk about what happened to him; he just doesn’t want to talk to them , the team that had abandoned him to Mesagog’s non-existent mercy in the first place. And Ethan can’t fault him for it.

Ethan’s plate goes blurry and he blinks the tears away ruthlessly. They have enough trouble getting the adults to listen to them in the first place; he is not going to cry like a little kid in front of them.

One of the Marines clears his throat.

“So, Elsa,” he says. “How do we kill this bitch then?”

Trent’s aware of Ronan following him down the hall. He could trigger his camouflage and ditch the guy, but Trent is sick of running. He’s done enough of it to last a lifetime.

He turns sharply on his heel, bringing them suddenly face to face. He has to crane his neck because Ronan’s the size of a grizzly, but height is never going to be intimidating to someone that fights building-sized monsters on a weekly basis. 

“Leave me alone,” he says in the glacial tone that Zeltrax would have recognised as his final warning.

Ronan just looks bored.

“No.”

“Turn around and walk away,” Trent tries again. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Who says I want to talk?”

Trent searches Ronan’s face suspiciously, but Ronan looks the same as he always does. Utterly uninterested in anything Trent might have to say.

Trent relaxes minutely. He likes knowing where he stands with people, and it’s a relief to know that Ronan is remaining consistent. There was no show of friendship like the other Atlanteans, no fake kindness that disappeared when the truth came out. Not even Sheppard’s annoying ambivalence. Ronan didn’t like the rangers before, and he doesn’t like them now.  That stuff in the messhall was probably just him wanting to know what they could expect from Elsa.

“Good,” Trent says warily and wonders what to do next. Usually anyone he threatens take the first opportunity to exit his vicinity, and he doesn’t want to lose face by being the first one to turn away. After a few seconds the Atlantean says:

“You wanted some air. There’s a balcony that way.”

The balcony door opens automatically when they approach it and the sea air hits Trent in the face like a welcome smack of cold. He leans against the railing, curling his fingers over the alien metal, and tries to empty his mind of Ronan standing behind him, Ethan and Kira waiting in the mess hall, Conner up in Weir’s office trying to explain the situation, Elsa lurking somewhere in the far reaches of space…

He doesn’t realise he’s started to climb over the railing until Ronan grabs his arm.

“No.”

Fortunately Trent is more bemused than threatened by Ronan’s grip on bicep. Then he realises what it looks like he’s doing.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to jump.”  He’s had much better opportunities back home, if he were going to go that way. “If I did that, you’d probably have to take my place and I wouldn’t wish you and Dr O on each other, ever.”

Ronan’s grip doesn’t loosen, and Trent adds reassuringly:

“I’m a flier. I like to be up high. It’s relaxing.”

Finally Ronan’s grip loosens, though he hovers, ready to grab Trent if he takes a dive. Trent swings his legs over the railing and settles so that he’s sitting, looking out over the ocean. It’s a dizzying height, almost too much even for a brain adapted to deal with the incredible speeds and swoops of the DragoZord. But it’s exactly what he needs, pushing everything else out.

“So what instructions has Sheppard given you about us?” He says over his shoulder.

“What do you think?” Ronan has settled against the wall, watching Trent but no longer alarmed. It reminds Trent of how Zeltrax used to watch him, except Zeltrax had a hunk of metal for a brain, and Ronan is far from stupid.

“I think he said to let us kill your monsters.” Trent pauses for a second, then adds the hook: “Then once we’re done, you’re to kill us.”

“Why waste good fighters?”

Trent nods thoughtfully:

“True.” So Sheppard wants to exploit their abilities for himself. Perhaps Elsa’s a blessing in disguise; at least the rangers know for a fact what she wants, while the other three remain frustratingly naïve about the Atlanteans’ intentions. Not that Trent minds protecting the others (in a weird, secret way he enjoys it), but he doesn’t want them to learn the hard way about how the world works. Not now. Not ever.

“Sheppard is a good leader,” Ronan says. “He takes care of his people.”

His total lack of subtlety makes Trent smile.

“Are you trying to recruit us?”

“Why not? There are plenty of rangers where you come from. We could use fighters like you.”

“I bet you could.” Trent wonders which of the others has been giving Ronan information about the teams back home. Most likely Conner but possibly one of the others; none of them have any idea how to keep stuff to themselves.

Ronan’s silent, but it’s the silence of one who’s said all they intended, not someone waiting for an answer. For a long while, they remain as they are, listening to the distant sound of waves and the faint call of birds that might or might not be seagulls.

Then Ronan says:

“Any tips on how to deal with this Elsa?”

“Don’t shoot her with bullets.” Trent pauses a moment and decides that the Atlanteans deserve more information, if there’s a chance Elsa might show up between now and the rangers leaving. Whatever their intentions, they don’t deserve what she’d do to them. “She’s like us; projectile weapons can hurt her, but she wears a projector. Anything over a certain velocity gets re-directed. You shoot her, use your energy weapon. She’ll be resistant, but at least it will hit her.”

“What does the projector look like?”

“Small, black thing about this big. She keeps it under her clothes, so your chances of getting close enough to find it are pretty much nil.” Trent closes his eyes, leans back to enjoy the breeze. “Ethan and Kira are right about one thing; if she does show up, leave her to us. Any of your people get in the way, she’ll kill you.”

There’s a pause while Ronan digests this.

"You’ve threatened to stab me four times today,” he says finally.

“Five times. And so what?” 

“So now you worry about us dying.”

“Yeah, well.” Trent shifts to a more comfortable position. “Punishment after the crime, right?”

A few minutes later, Ronan’s radio bleeps. He answers it, says “Later” and switches it off again.

Chapter Text

Teyla’s always been good at keeping her feelings to herself. Pegasus encourages a stoic survivalism, and future leaders like Teyla are trained from childhood to only show what emotions they wish to be seen.

Right now she falls back on those early lessons, showing none of her deep unease as she watches Kira and Ethan finish their meals. She’d insisted they wash their hands and faces before eating, and on their clean skin she can almost see the second-by-second fading of their injuries. Bruises have formed, turned purple, then yellow, then faded completely, all in the space of an hour. Cuts are less easy to track, as they scab over swiftly, sealing them from view. But when Kira absently scratches her arm, the dry scabs peel away from smooth, whole skin beneath.

Like a snake throwing its skin, Teyla thinks. Snakes are sacred to some cultures, anathema to others. Earth can’t seem to make up its mind on the matter.

“–so if you can get Elsa angry, she might make a mistake,” Ethan concludes, waving his fork at the Marines for emphasis. “’course since she’s super strong and a complete psycho, her mistake will probably be ‘kill you now instead of later’, and honestly her values are completely skewed so your chances of actually hitting a nerve are pretty slim… where was I?”

“Ways to kill this Elsa,” Atwood says. “Which seem to basically be Harris’ suggestion – call an airstrike.”

“What can we say, Mesagog built her tough.” Ethan grimaces a little.

Teyla wishes she’d spent more time with them when they first arrived; they’re ridiculously easy to read and Trent aside, they’re terrible liars. It’s all a matter of asking the right questions. Even when they don’t admit to anything, there’s a whole world to read between the lines. Right now Ethan is deeply worried about Elsa coming here, and what it means for such a vulnerable people.

Not that he or Kira have come out and called Atlantis vulnerable (an odd politeness from such tactless youths), but it’s in the way they talk, the way they look at Atlanteans. Teyla’s seen Earth visitors direct the same looks at Pegasus villages, somewhere between contempt and concern. Except that with Ethan and Kira, the contempt is entirely absent. It’s as if they look at a small child, caught between fretting over their safety and trying not to alarm them.

How deeply must their people look, Teyla wonders, to find individuals with such an urgent need to protect? Or are they raised to be so, traits deliberately cultivated just as her father encouraged her own leadership qualities? 

Her radio signals for her attention, and she taps the headset.

“Teyla here.” 

“Teyla, it’s Sheppard. Get our visitors up to the gateroom.”

“Is there a problem?”

“Yes. Get them up here now. We need some answers.”

Ethan and Kira are watching Teyla as she signs off.

“Let me guess,” Kira says. “They want us up at the gateroom.”

“They do.”

The girl sighs and stands.

“Okay, lets get this over with before the next set of monsters show up.”

Atwood and his Marines stand as well. Atwood pulls a chair back so Kira can move past and his expression is troubled as he watches her and Ethan. Atwood has nephews their age, and it seems to colour his view of them. He spent most of the last six hours trying to steer the four youths away from the wraith; efforts which had been mildly embarrassing to watch. Their visitors, at least, had been kind enough not to point out the obvious.

Teyla had given Ethan an apologetic look after one particularly mortifying instance where Conner had just killed two wraith and Atwood had spoken to him in the same tone that Teyla would use on a child that had climbed into a wild nek-la pen and lived to tell the tale. Ethan shrugged as if to say “what can you do” and Teyla had felt slightly better. Clearly being understimated is neither new nor unexpected for them.

Atwood falls into step with Teyla on their way to the gateroom. Ethan and Kira are walking ahead of them, talking to Harris, awed by the constant barrage of filthy words that come out of his mouth. They apparently have enough decorum not to repeat any of the words, but they seem to like listening to it.

Atwood breathes out.

“What the hell kind of world do they come from,” he says quietly to Teyla.

“It is not so unlike Pegasus,” she points out. “As the wraith terrorize us, so do their monsters. At least in their world, they have protectors.”

It is difficult not to resent that, just a little.

“Not that.” Atwood shakes his head. “Who the hell uses children to fight a war? They can’t tell me there was no one more qualified.”

“Perhaps there was some physical requirement,” Teyla shrugs. “Or religious significance. It would not be the first time we’ve encountered it.”

“Children, Teyla. How would you feel if someone told you that Jinto had to be used to fight the wraith?”

“If he could fight like that?” Teyla nods towards Ethan, with the dried wraith blood all over him and no sign that he’d taken any damage at all. Laughing at something at Harris said; healthy and vital and victorious. “I would worry, but I would be glad that he was keeping our people safe.”

“And if the same thing happened to him that happened to Trent?”

“You know what the wraith do. Jinto risks as much by simply existing. If he could fight like that – even if it meant he was driven to seek out more dangerous situations – I would be glad that at least he has a good chance to survive if the wraith came for him.”

Atwood stares at her a moment, then shakes his head.

“Sometimes I forget that you Pegasus people look at things differently from us.”

It doesn’t sound like a compliment, but Teyla doesn’t rise to the bait. She’s had a great deal of practice these last few years overlooking odd Earth sensibilities. She doesn’t quite understand how Atwood cannot see the wonder in this. Teyla’s abilities mean she has some advance warning, but there had never been any real possibility of victory until the Atlanteans came. To find someone who can win effortlessly, from no other motive than to protect…

Well, there is a reason that she is jealous of the world their visitors came from and a reason that Ronan’s been subtly feeling them out for recruitment. She doubts he’ll be successful, but appreciates that he has to try. 

In the gateroom, a gateship is waiting. Conner is standing on the gateroom floor, arms folded in a clear sulk as McKay runs a scanner over him. Teyla is dismayed to see his face and arms are still covered in dried wraith blood which is starting to peel and flake. Has anyone given him access to a bathroom to clean up?

“The hell…?” Atwood mutters, not seeming to expect an answer, but Ethan hears seems to hear, which makes Teyla wonder how much of their prior conversation had been truly private. 

“Looks like Weir listened to Conner.” The boy shoots them an apologetic look. “For the record, we’re sorry about all this.”

“All what?”

But Sheppard is walking over, jaw tight with restrained anger. With a sense of helplessness, Teyla realises they’re about to witness one of Sheppard’s rare moments of temper. Sheppard doesn’t often allows his anger to show, but when he does it’s ice-cold and explosively destructive to whatever’s in range: wraith ships, Genni bunkers, and diplomatic relations of all kinds.

“Colonel Sheppard–” she starts, trying to head off the inevitable, but Sheppard ignores her, directing a cold glare at Ethan and Kira.

“I suppose you knew about this.”

“Knew about what?” Teyla says, and is ignored again.

“Yeah, we knew,” Kira says to Sheppard. “We figured Conner was the best person to tell you. Or, you know, the fastest.” 

“And wasting six hours pretending to know nothing was part of the plan?”

“Woah, hey.” Kira holds up her hands, startled and affronted. “We had no idea it was us – not until we found out that Elsa was in this universe. The minute we found out, we came to tell you. Just ask Ronan.”

Sheppard’s gaze flicks across the assembled group.

“Where the hell is Ronan? And Fernandez?”

“Trent needed some air,” Atwood says. “Ronan went with him.” 

“Alone?”

“Yes, sir. We notified them to meet us at the gateroom.”

“Radio them again.”

“Yes, sir.”

As Atwood steps aside, Teyla says firmly to Kira and Ethan:

“What exactly is going on?”

“Oh.” Ethan hunches a little, looking like Jinto when he’s trying to avoid being noticed. “We’re kind of sending out a morphing signature, which Elsa is using to send your monsters here.”

“What?”

“It’s not on purpose,” Kira adds swiftly. “And we can’t turn it off. Well, Trent and Dr O can turn it off. They’ve got a stealth mode. But the rest of us can’t.”

Teyla stares at them in dismay, wondering for a second if she’d misread the situation entirely. But both of them look utterly miserable as they make their confession. Ask the right questions, she reminds herself.

“What exactly is a morphing signature?” She says, settling on the most obvious one.

“A sub-space signal,” Sheppard answers, glaring at the two youths. They don’t deny it and Teyla demands incredulously:

“Why, by the Ancestors, would you be sending out a sub-space signal to your enemies?”

“We’re not sending it to Elsa,” Ethan says defensively. “Okay, so Elsa can track it, but not accurately. Without the right codes there’s still a ten-k margin of error, which is pretty useless in Reefside. To narrow it down any further, we’d have to be morphed or carrying some sort of tracking device like she did with–”

“The point is,” Kira interrupts. “It’s usually not an issue, so we didn’t think of it. And it still wouldn’t be an issue if it wasn’t for Elsa.” Her tone sharpens when she says the name, suggesting that she’d like to be including some of Harris’ filthy language when referring to the woman but has better manners than that.

Sheppard says coldly:

“Seven people are dead.”

Kira pales as if she’d been slapped. Ethan swallows and looks at the ground.

“The only reason we are not taking this further,” Sheppard continues. “Is that McKnight has convinced Weir and I the best way to keep Atlantis safe is for the four of you to leave immediately, leading the wraith away.”

A frission of horror washes down Teyla’s spine. She opens her mouth to protest, but Sheppard is still talking:

“A gateship is being prepped. The minute it’s ready to go, you four are on it. We’ll drop you off on an uninhabited planet, and you can go back to killing as many wraith as you like, away from collateral damage.”

“Thank you.” Kira actually sounds sincere. “Can we go talk to Conner now?”

Sheppard makes a dismissive gesture, and they quickly head across the floor to their teammate. Atwood quickly adds:

“Harris, go with them. And get that kid cleaned up before he contracts tetanus.”

“On it, sir.” Harris follows Kira and Ethan.  

Teyla waits until they are all out of earshot, then a bit longer just to be safe, then says:

“I am not convinced of the wisdom of this.”

“You heard them,” Sheppard says. He’s watching the youths, his mouth flat and unyielding. “They can’t turn that signal off even if they wanted to.”

He speaks the last words with derision: if they wanted to. Teyla desperately hopes he does not make this implication to their visitors’ faces. While the four youths might be oddly compassionate where the wraith are concerned, never dragging out the kill, there’s an unforgiving purpose to their actions that would do the Genii proud. In their eyes, a monster isn’t something even worthy of existing, and even joking about collaborating with them would be a disaster.

Correction: more of a disaster.

“Similar obstacles have not stopped us in the past,” she points out. “A sub-space signal must be technological. If we can find and get rid of it, there’s no need for such a senseless waste.”

“Yeah, McKay already brought that one up. Conner says it’s stuck to them. We remove the source of the signal, they die.” Sheppard shakes his head wearily. “I really shouldn’t be surprised by this kind of thing anymore.”

“So we are not even going to attempt to find a way around it?”

“If it gets them off Atlantis and away from us? No, we’re not.” Sheppard glances at her and says with some surprise: “Teyla, they lead the wraith here. I thought you’d be the first person to want them off Atlantis.”

Teyla drops all pretense of detachment.

“I witnessed them kill three dozen wraith with their bare hands in less than an hour,” she says. “After which, they complained that we were slowing them down. They are immune to stun weapons, culturally pre-disposed to kill wraith or wraith-equivalents, and have issued no unreasonable demands in return for their services. My question is not ‘why are they leaving’, it is why are we not trying harder to keep them?”

The Marines are too well-trained to betray any opinion of their commanding officer’s decisions, but they’re watching the exchange with intent interest.

“Teyla, we can’t take the risk. You know we can’t. All we know about them for certain is that they’re liars and that they enjoy killing. Do you really want me to risk the safety of everyone on this base for the people who endangered it in the first place?”

There is only one answer to that. And judging by how eager their visitors are to get off Atlantis, they agree with Sheppard’s assessment of the situation. By inclination and calling, their role is to protect, and the best way they can protect Atlantis is by leaving.

But Teyla is not done yet. As her father taught her; to survive Pegasus, one must seize opportunities as they come. To lead in Pegasus, one must create them.

“And what of Trent?” She says.

“What about him?”

“Kira just said he has a stealth mode that he can use to hide his presence.”

Sheppard’s expression shuts down.

“No,” he says. “Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“Sir, Fernandez isn’t a bad kid,” Atwood contributes helpfully. “You just need to know how to handle him right. Ronan’s pretty good at –”

“Atwood.” Sheppard’s tone has the Marines straightening automatically. “You and your men are off duty. Go get some rest.”

None of the Marines move, which is a sign of how seriously Earth people take their ideas about protecting children. Atwood sends a helpless look toward Teyla, and she says, a little desperately:

“Trent need not stay here. He would be welcome among my people.”

“Teyla…” Sheppard’s eyes widen in horror and disbelief. “For god’s sake. Your people have kids and elderly. Trent’s a raving psychopath.”

“No, he is not. If he were what you call a psychopath, he would not have bothered to protect us.”

“Because it fitted his agenda. Because he likes killing and the opportunity presented itself. Christ, that’s what they’re all like. You’ve seen them. It’s like a game for them. They get off on it –”

“Oh boy would you and Elsa have so much to talk about.” Ethan’s low, trembling voice makes Teyla realise that the youth has approached them unnoticed and is now standing a few feet away. He tosses an empty water bottle to one of the Marines, saying brusquely: “Harris wants to know if anyone has any energy bars left. Conner missed the mess hall and no one’s given him anything to eat yet.”

The failure in hospitality is almost as mortifying as being caught discussing their protectors behind their backs.

“Ethan– ” Teyla starts, but he cuts her off, addressing Sheppard.

“If this is the way you talk about your friends, I don’t want to hear how you talk about your enemies.”

“We’re not friends.” Sheppard seems unbothered at being caught out. “You going to try and tell me you don’t enjoy it?” He jerks his chin toward the pile of dead wraith.

“No.” Ethan holds his gaze. “But that’s monsters, not people. And it’s not a game.”

“Could have fooled me.”

Ethan’s lip curls.

“I didn’t like you to begin with, but I can’t believe that Trent was right about you. He’s usually a lousy judge of character.”

This is all spiraling fast and Teyla seizes the chance to salvage the situation.

“Speaking of Trent, Sheppard and I were just discussing the possibility of him staying with my people.”

“No, we weren’t because I said no.”

Ethan’s attention switches from Sheppard to Teyla so completely, Sheppard might as well have been invisible and inaudible.

“So you want to help the ‘psychopath’,” he says with air quotes.

“You and I both know that is not what he is,” Teyla says, refusing to be baited. “He is young, healthy, has good manners and he kills wraith. If he can keep his stealth mode on indefinitely, I see no reason it could not work.”

Ethan’s façade cracks a little, and she can see how deeply hurt he is by Sheppard’s words.

“And what would you offer him? Somewhere else he can feel like a freak?”

“Teyla’s people are hunter-gatherers,” Atwood interjects. “They don’t have a formal military or chain of command, and they’re pragmatic about what skills are on offer. He might feel safer there than here. He’d certainly be more valued.”

“Atwood,” Sheppard snaps. “Go. Now.”

“Sir.” Atwood’s tone is clipped. He pulls an energy bar from his tac vest and hands it to Ethan. “Good luck, son. Be careful out there.”

Ethan clutches the energy bar to his chest, and nods, looking as young as his years. Two others of the escort Marines give him their remaining energy bars before following Atwood, all of them casting deeply uneasy looks over their shoulders.

Once they’re gone, Sheppard says coldly:

“Trent’s not going to the Athosians, because I still need to approve travel and I’m not.”

Teyla takes a deep breath; she rarely challenges Sheppard outright, mostly because he is usually a very astute judge of situations, and also because she has better results gently guiding him toward answers than pushing him. That does not mean, however, that she can’t and won’t go toe-to-toe with him in an argument or go over his head to Elizabeth.

Ethan steps in before she can say anything.  

“That’s a shame,” he says. “Because if Trent doesn’t go to the Athosians, maybe none of us are going anywhere.”

“Excuse me.”

“You heard me.” Ethan holds Sheppard’s gaze defiantly. “If you don’t approve the travel, we might just stay right here and let your monsters keep coming.”

Teyla knows immediately that it’s a bluff. Firstly because she has seen Ethan make threats he means to follow through on, and this is not it. Secondly because Ethan had been as angry as the others about some unspecified behaviour of Trent’s in the gateroom, suggesting that there are certain taboos on what violence is permissible. As committed as they are to protecting others, this threat of Ethan’s would almost certainly violate it. 

But while Ethan doesn’t know how to bluff, Sheppard does.  

“Will you now,” he says, hand settling on the gun at his hip. “Because I have a room full of armed Marines – ones you haven’t spent six hours convincing you’re harmless – who say otherwise." 

“Please. Like humans stand any chance against us.”

“Maybe not, but their guns do.” Ethan’s confidence wavers and Sheppard gives a pleasant smile that means exactly the opposite. “We’re not idiots, James. You might be immune to stunners, but you don’t seem to like projectile weapons very much. Are bullets a problem for you by any chance?”

All the expression bleeds out of Ethan’s face. His eyes are empty and tranquil as he studies Sheppard. Teyla tightens her grip on her P-90 but doesn’t lift it, not sure whether it would defuse the situation or make it worse.

“You want to draw that gun now,” Ethan says to Sheppard.

Sheppard tenses further.

“Why?”

“Because I just felt a breeze.” While Teyla puzzles over that non-sequitar, Ethan says almost gently: “Where did the breeze come from?”

“It –” And suddenly she realises; they’re inside. There is literally nowhere that breeze could have come from. Hard on the heels of that, she remembers one of the indicators Kira had told her earlier of Invisi-Portals: sudden displacements of air.

She spins on her heel and shouts to the crew of techs and on-duty Marines:

“Wraith!”

The warning comes nearly too late.