Archive of Our Own

Elizabeth Weir leaned over the communication console. “This is Dr. Weir,” she announced. “Go ahead.”

Lieutenant Read’s voice was thick. “We made it through,” he said quietly. “The earthquake collapsed more of the lab than we thought, ma’am. I’m sorry, but.... Dr. Beckett is dead.”

Elizabeth closed her eyes and said a silent prayer. “And Dr. McKay?” she asked, fearing the answer.

Read’s Irish brogue went tentative. “Dr. McKay was conscious but… disoriented. He kept insisting Dr. Beckett wasn’t dead.”

Oh, Rodney. Elizabeth had always known that, of all of them—even Colonel Sheppard—Carson was the one who could push Rodney McKay over the edge.

“Read, it’s Sheppard.” John’s voice, close and soft, startled her into opening her eyes. He stood beside her. Chuck must have called him, or he’d been eavesdropping on comms. “You said he was conscious?”

“Yes, sir,” Read confirmed. “Just passed out on us a minute ago. He’s injured as well—definitely got a concussion, some cuts and bruises—but Simmons thinks it’s mostly exhaustion. He walked out of the complex under his own power, but he was…” Read trod lightly, and any other time, Elizabeth would have smiled. No one stood between Sheppard and McKay. “He wasn’t in his right mind, sir. Kept giving out about flying monkeys and EMPs.”

John met Elizabeth's gaze with steel in his own, and she let him have his anger. She’d recalled him and Ronon from their fact-finding trip as soon as Read reported the earthquake, but it had taken time for them to get back. He’d arrived only an hour ago.

It wouldn’t have helped to have him at the research lab. Read’s team were doing all they could to dig Rodney and Carson out, and there was no more room for another digger. And honestly, she hadn’t wanted him to be there if the worst happened. He could resent her all he wanted, but she’d made her choice. Not that it did much good.

Feeling defeated, Elizabeth shook her head and broke eye contact. “How far from home are you?” she asked Read.

“Just about there,” he told her.

Elizabeth looked down to the lower level, at the medical team who’d been standing by near the gate. Their shoulders were slumped, heads bowed as they dealt with the fact that they wouldn’t be saving one of their own. Ronon and Teyla were in the background, watching and worrying and waiting for their fourth to return. It still amazed her that Ronon had integrated into the team so quickly. His worry was less obvious, but no less intense than Teyla and John’s.

“Receiving their IDC now,” Chuck murmured.

“Lower the shield.”

John headed for the stairs and Elizabeth followed slowly, watching the procession appear out of the shining puddle of light. A stretcher bearing Carson’s body came first, and Elizabeth put a hand to her mouth. So much blood. Too much. She supposed all she could do was pray he hadn’t suffered, and even that just wasn’t enough.

Read and another man had Rodney between them, his arms over their shoulders. His head hung down and his feet dragged behind. Elizabeth was struck by how gentle both men were as they laid him on the empty gurney the medical team had waiting for them.

John approached the group carefully, staying out of everyone’s way. He lingered for a long moment at Carson’s side before straightening brutally and walking on toward Rodney.

“He was conscious at the site?” Dr. Furlan asked, listening to Rodney’s heart.

“Yeah, but like I say, he wasn’t making much sense.” Read nodded at Sheppard as the older man came to stand nearby. “He was raving, sort of.”

“Did he throw up?” Furlan demanded. “Any sign of—”

Rodney choose that moment to come back to himself. Violently. “Where—?” He tried to sit up and started sliding off the gurney. John was there to catch him, supporting him as he regained his feet.

“Whoa, McKay,” John said quietly, still holding on to his friend tighter than he probably needed to. “You’re safe. You’re home.”

“Home?” Rodney looked around and groaned, fixing on the sheet-covered body. “No. NO!” He glared at Read. “Don’t any of you listen ?!”

Elizabeth stepped forward, trying to radiate peace no matter how rattled she was. “Rodney, calm down…”

Rodney glanced at her for a second, then shoved John from him and stumbled toward Carson, pulling the cover off his face. He didn’t even seem to register the damage done to the body before him. “Don't just cover him up like that—he's....” He tittered disturbingly. "He's only mostly dead."

“Rodney,” John tried, sounding calmer than Elizabeth thought she had. “Carson’s—”

“Dead, yes, fine. But I still made him a promise .” He met John’s eyes with that total trust that Sheppard would somehow understand him in that way that no one else ever did. “Forget it, okay? Just listen, please. We have to be ready when he wakes up, or Carson is going to stay like this. Forever.”

*******

12 hours earlier

“I still don’t see why I needed to be here,” Carson griped, dropping his pack on the floor.

Rodney went straight to the main control console and tried to figure out how much power they had and where it was coming from. He pulled his Ancient-adapted drive out of his pack and connected it to the console to download the local data.

“The Ancient database says this was a medical facility,” he explained slowly and carefully. “You are a doctor.”

“Aye, I am,” his companion complained. “A medical doctor, in point of fact. Not a doctor of physics or engineering or any other damn thing.” Still, he gazed around, interested. Rodney hid a smug grin. For all his whining and paranoia, Carson had a curiosity at least equal to his own. “What exactly were they doing here, then?”

Rodney pulled up the console’s files, hunting for answers. “Looks like it was originally a hospital,” he said, skimming. “Or a research facility.”

“I’m banking on the latter,” Carson said, distracted.

Rodney glanced up at his friend and stopped. Carson was shining his flashlight on a set of cages. Each fifty centimeters cubed, the cages went floor to ceiling for about three meters along the wall. “Ew,” Rodney breathed. Some still had skeleton parts in them.

“They look like monkeys,” Carson said, peering in at a particularly intact set of bones in a bottom cage. “Or the Pegasus equivalent.”

Rodney grinned despite himself. “Flying monkeys?”

Carson snorted in appreciation of the lame joke and moved on, searching the room as he went.

Honestly, this was why Rodney had invited Beckett along on this expedition. Sheppard was off with Ronon meeting a new trading partner, Zelenka would have been fun, but… Rodney just didn’t get to spend a lot of time with Carson these days. He missed him.

“Do you know what they were researching?” Carson asked, his voice receding into the shadows as Rodney concentrated on the computer console.

“No, I don’t,” Rodney quipped. “That’s why we’re—” He scanned the current article on the screen before him. “Here we are. Tissue regeneration.”

“What kind of tissue regeneration?” Carson headed back toward him.

“The kind where tissue regenerates?” Rodney offered. “I don’t know. Not Wraith research—this facility is older than that...” He pulled up a journal from one of the researchers. “‘Test 13344. Subject shows miraculous recovery from previous injury. Blood tests confirm complete repair of internal structure. Reversion time as expected.’”

“‘Complete repair of internal structure’?” Carson repeated dubiously. “How exactly would that work, then?”

“I don’t know,” Rodney replied, digging further. “I’d expect nanites, but I don’t see anything about them.”

“This is viral research here,” Carson disagreed. “Not biomechanical.”

“A virus that regenerates tissue?” Rodney asked dubiously.

“It’s essentially what the Wraith were to begin with, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but this is decades before that.”

“It’s not outside the realm of possibility,” Carson lectured. “Encounter a damaged cell, use the genetic blueprint found in it and repair or replace it. Though it’d be damned hard to make sure it replicated the correct DNA. Use the wrong pluripotent cell, and you’ve got runaway cancer, inappropriate gene splicing...”

“As opposed to appropriate gene splicing?”

“Hey now, your Ancient gene is appropriate gene splicing.”

“Oh.” Yeah. “Point taken.” Rodney continued to scan back through the research logs as they talked back and forth. “Here’s one: ‘Test 9440a. Subject shows tumor growth in and around wound closure.’”

“See?” Carson crowed. “Damned difficult business, gene manipulation.”

Rodney smiled absently at Carson’s obvious pride in his own accomplishments, but the rest of the journal entry took the majority of his attention. “‘New mutation is a viable experimental vehicle for Construct 45X.’” He looked up from the screen to see Carson watching him curiously. “So what’s Construct 45X?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Carson asked, like Rodney’s question was actually his to answer.

Although maybe it was, Rodney thought, as he spied another computer console near the cages. He strode over to it. “Come on.”

“Come on where ?” Carson griped.

“You wanted to read their research,” Rodney said, smiling as the secondary console booted up. “Here’s your chance.”

Beckett sighed, but he sat in the chair before the computer screen and started reading. Rodney headed back to the main console. “Look for anything having to do with Construct 45X,” he ordered.

“Yes, obviously, Rodney,” Carson said, already engrossed. “Good Lord—they must have had a vast number of subjects.”

Rodney let the hemming and hawing and critiques of scientific procedure wash over him as he hunted through the records. About an hour later, he found a manifest that made him stop dead and gape. “They had 132 subjects.”

“They couldn’t have,” Beckett disagreed. “I mean, I’ve read multiple incidents here where they were running dozens of experiments simultaneously. They’d had to have had more than that. hundreds, even.”

“Not with Construct 45X, apparently,” Rodney said. “Whatever it is, it let them injure and heal and then re injure subjects—”

The room shuddered, and Rodney gripped the console to keep from falling. Carson cursed as the rumbling stopped with a clatter, his flashlight dying suddenly.

“Are you okay?” Rodney called out. He started to reach for his own flashlight when Carson’s flicked back on.

Carson sighed, extricating himself from the handful of cages that had fallen. Rodney grimaced as the doctor shook off bones that had dropped on him and examined a long line of red down his arm. “I’ll likely need stitches. And a tetanus booster. Cut myself on one of those cages.”

Rodney nodded and sighed at the now-dark computer. Another tremor shook the room, harder this time, and he came to a very sensible decision. He hated to leave all of this, but—

Another earthquake hit, bigger than the one before. By the end of it, they were both crouched on the ground and the remaining cages and part of one wall had fallen.

Okay, then, Rodney thought. “Looks like it’s time for us to get out of here.”

“Aye,” Carson agreed. Rodney turned on his own flashlight and the two men headed toward the entrance, grabbing their packs as they went.

“Dr. McKay?” Lieutenant Read called over the radio. “Dr. Beckett? Are you two all right?”

Rodney flicked on his radio. “We’re headed out. Don’t send anyone in. The place—”

The place beat him to the punch and fell in.

It was really dark and Rodney’s head hurt. A lot. Where was he again? Research lab. Flying monkeys. “Carson?”

“Rodney?”

The weak call had Rodney regaining his wits much more quickly than usual. He groped for his flashlight and turned it back on, even as he keyed on his radio. “Read, this is McKay. Can you hear….” His beam fell on Carson and his heart stopped. His radio dropped from nerveless fingers. “Oh God.”

Carson had been impaled by a rod of some sort. Maybe from one of the walls? It went through his chest at a weird angle. And there was so much blood.

“Carson?” The word was less than a breath. Because Rodney couldn’t breathe. It was painfully clear—in the way that all the many deaths he’d been cursed to witness in this God forsaken galaxy were painfully clear—that Carson was bleeding out too quickly for anything but goodbye.

“Rodney,” Carson whispered, wincing in pain as Rodney climbed over the rubble between them. “I…”

“I know,” Rodney murmured back inanely. “We’ll um… We’ll get out of this,” he lied badly. God, why was he even trying? There were sudden tears on his face and he had no idea where they came from, but for some reason, they brought a sad little smile to Carson’s face.

“Damn it,” Carson murmured, even weaker. He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry I…” He exhaled with a rattle.

Rodney knew that sound, too. The sound of air leaving lungs that aren’t going to take any more in.

“Carson?” he whispered anyway.

He always was a glutton for punishment.

*******

Read stared at the wall of rock that used to be the entrance to an overgrown Ancient facility and cursed a blue streak.

“Dr. McKay,” he called into his radio. “Dr. McKay. Dr. Beckett. Can you read?” He glared at the rubble. “Dr. McKay, please respond.”

Sheppard was going to kill him.

“Rutherford, call this in to Atlantis—tell them we’ll start digging them out.” He grabbed up one of the shovels they’d used to uncover the opening once before, then nodded to his team, who stood ready and waiting.

“Right then,” he called. “Let’s get digging.”

*******

If you focused on his face and ignored the splattering of blood across his chin, Carson looked completely normal. Like he was just in the middle of a bad dream, maybe. It wasn’t that peaceful resignation Rodney had seen before. Or the agonized fight against death. Beckett might have been sleeping.

Rodney didn’t know how long he just sat there staring vacantly, his flashlight determinedly on Carson’s face and nothing else. He needed to get them out of here. He needed to survive, right? Because that was what Rodney McKay did. He survived. Dumais died. Gall died. Peter died. Carson—

He survived.

Rodney turned his flashlight back to where he’d woken up, spying his radio lying where he’d dropped it. He ignored the way the blood on his pants seeped in to make his knee cold and reached for the fallen device.

“Read, this is McKay,” he called, trying to sound… something. Normal. Strong. Not on the verge of a complete breakdown. “Read, do you read?”

Ha. Read , do you read ? Funny. The radio must be broken.

Steeling himself, he turned back to Carson’s— The doctor’s vest hadn’t stopped the pole from killing him, but it held his radio. And Rodney needed to at least try to use it to contact Read. He hovered a moment, staring again.

I shouldn’t have invited you. Of course, then it would have been Radek lying there. Or John…

He took the radio in his hand, blanking out the way it was smeared with blood. “Read, this is McKay.” He got nothing. Not even static. “If anyone can hear this, please respond.”

Of course, no one did.

Rodney slumped down and his flashlight beam shifted slightly, highlighting the way the pole stuck through Carson’s body. Obscene… just… wrong . Without thought—because if he thought about it, he’d never be able to do it—Rodney grabbed the end of the pole and pulled with all his might, sending himself ass over head and the pole off into the darkness as it came out easier than he’d expected.

You’d think a body would create more resistance, he thought. And then he rolled over and promptly threw up. His head was pounding and he stayed where he was for a long moment, trying to breathe.

“I’m sorry, Carson,” he whispered, wiping a hand over his face.

His watch caught his attention. Had they really been buried here for hours? Times flies when you’re having fun.

Still, that hinted at more serious injuries, didn’t it? That wasn’t good. He couldn’t get out of here if he dropped dead of a blood clot or something, could he? He giggled a little. Beats the alternative. Which was a relatively quick death, like Carson’s had been. Or Peter. So maybe the alternative was actually the better choice, because a long lingering death was just… long.

He shook his head, noticing dully the way it rang with the pain. And his watch, blurry as it was, had suddenly jumped ahead at least half an hour when he wasn’t looking. He was getting a little delirious, probably. So delirious, in fact, that he almost fancied he heard Carson breathing.

When he was little, one of the kids at school loved to tell stories about zombies. Jeannie had been terrified by them—still was, as far as he knew . Rodney didn’t really think they were any big deal; even if there were a drug or a virus or whatever capable of reanimating a dead body, why on earth would it then need brain tissue to survive, right?

But there was that one part in horror movies; where the good guy thinks he’s alone, and then he hears something, and suddenly the camera pans up to show that there’s a monster behind him? Of course he turns around, because he always turns around. And then he’s horribly mutilated or eaten or whatever.

Zombies didn’t really scare him, per se, but that one second between the audience knowing the monster was there and the good guy actually turning? A world of scared stupid.

Like now. Because there was definitely a noise behind him.

“Rodney.”

Rodney tried to suck in a breath. Failed. Listened to Carson— Carson?! —breathe instead…

“Rodney, can you hear me?”

The worry laced through the perfectly normal call was what finally spun him around. And just as he thought, a reanimated corpse lay on the ground there before him, staring at him with eyes that begged for something.

“What the hell happened?" Carson grated. “Are… Are you all right?”

Rodney sputtered out a laugh. “Am I all right?”

“Aye,” Carson repeated, like he wasn't lying there dead . “You look like you’ve—”

“Please don’t say ‘seen a ghost’,” Rodney begged.

“I was going to say you look like you’ve been smacked in the head.”

Rodney just gaped. “Maybe I have,” he allowed. “Maybe that’s it—I’m hallucinating again. It wouldn’t be the first time, after all, would it? Trapped in a small space, all alone, waiting to die, massive concussion.”

“You’re hardly all alone,” Carson pointed out.

“You?” Rodney said, pointing at him. “You don’t count—”

“Oh, well thank you —”

“You’re dead!” Rodney glanced around for the pole that had killed Carson hours ago , and failing to find it, flung his pointy hand out into the darkness beyond them. “You got impaled and you died and now I’m hallucinating you.”

Carson’s body propped itself up on an elbow and examined itself in the flashlight glow. “Bloody hell,” it whispered, fingering the hole through its vest.

Rodney felt hugely inappropriate laughter bubble up in him. “‘Bloody hell!’ That’s good—better than flying monkeys.”

“Rodney, lad, you’re getting hysterical,” Carson said, sitting all the way up now and frowning at the lake of red around him. Zombies didn’t usually care about blood. Unless they were thirsty. “I’m alive, all… evidence to the contrary.” He stopped a moment because of the wet and sticky on his hands before he scrutinized Rodney. “Honestly, Rodney, are you all right? You’re covered in blood as well.”

Rodney backed up as Carson started moving toward him. “It’s yours,” he said. “Because you’re dead. You’re dead and you reanimated and…” Reanimated. Oh, of course—how could he be so stupid? “‘Complete repair of internal structure’,” he breathed in wonder.

Carson hung his head, connecting the dots immediately. “Lovely.”

“When the bones fell on you,” Rodney went on, warming to his subject and to the fact that Carson was there to talk to—alive, really alive, and shaking his head with that horror-filled exasperation that he was so good at. “The flying monkey bones? The virus could have lain dormant in them all this time, right? Don’t viruses live longer than cockroaches?”

Carson reached up to run a hand across his face but stopped before he smeared blood all over himself. “I don’t know. I mean, viruses can last millions of years, but I somehow doubt that it would be able to mutate sufficiently to transfer from an animal subject to a human so quickly.”

“Unless they used Construct 45X.” Rodney cast his flashlight beam about until he spied his pack, half crushed and abandoned in the collapse. The lab was barely accessible behind them, he saw. They should get in there— they . Because Carson was, yes a zombie in a literal sense, but still… ALIVE.

Carson was watching him move around, but wasn’t joining in. He seemed more than a little freaked out himself, which was completely understandable. “And what exactly is Construct 45X, again?” he asked wearily. He unzipped his vest without a sign of pain or stiffness and stripped it off. Below it, his shirt was even more blood-stained.

Rodney forcibly ignored that and activated the life signs detector. It showed the two of them and seven other people in a cluster about fifty yards away.

“Seven,” Rodney pondered. Who else died? Or maybe they sent someone to the gate to get help...

“What’s that now?” Carson asked. He was suddenly next to Rodney and Rodney tried really hard not to freak out. “There’s only seven life signs outside,” Carson remarked sadly.

It was such a uniquely Carson thing—just the compassionate, worried way he said it, and the little tilt of his head—that it, combined with the overwhelming smell of blood from his clothes, caused Rodney to go ahead and have that complete nervous breakdown he’d been working on when Carson died .

He bolted for the lab, not even noticing how incredibly tight the passageway now was, and once there in the dark—even with zombie virus probably floating through the air— still felt better than he had trapped in that tunnel with another friend who’d died on him. Because of him.

“I’m sorry, Carson,” he panted. Carson’s flashlight beam preceded him and Rodney looked over at him. “I should have waited for Sheppard, or brought Radek, or not come at all. I should have—”

“What are you on about now?” Carson asked, but with none of his usual asperity. He didn’t come close, though, and that was good. “Are you apologizing because you invited me along, or because you just had the mother of all horror movie flashbacks?”

Rodney sputtered out a laugh. “Um… yes?”

“Well you’re an idiot on both counts, then,” Carson told him gently. “I wanted to come, Rodney. I feel as if we haven’t even seen each other in weeks…” He seemed to realize that this was really not helping. “Now then, let’s figure out what’s going on and what this Construct 45X is, and get the hell out of here, all right?”

Given something concrete to do, Rodney did it. Survive, right?

“Right,” he said briskly. “Right.” He looked at the life signs detector in his hands and then at Carson. “So, according to this, you’re a living something.” He tried to sound serious. “It doesn’t differentiate between humans and zombies.”

“Shut up,” Carson growled, all in fun. “I haven’t the least desire to eat your brains.”

Rodney grinned, his world righting itself bit by bit. “Just means you don’t have very good taste.” He stopped. “Hey, that brings up a question. If you are a zombie, why aren’t you… zombie-ish? Zombish?”

“Excuse me?” Carson asked, annoyed and normal and calming Rodney down even more with his Carson-ness.

“You were… you know, dead for hours. Why didn’t your brain stop working? Permanently?”

Carson went a shade paler, and Rodney was abruptly sorry he’d asked. After a minute, though, Beckett shook it off, intrigued by the puzzle.

“It wouldn’t do to let the brains of their subjects die, would it?” he thought out loud. “I suppose if the virus could hold the brain in some sort of stasis… Though I’ve no idea how.” He sighed his frustration. “This is beyond my area of expertise, Rodney,” he complained.

“Well then we’re in trouble,” Rodney said. “You’re the doctor—you’re supposed to deal with this stuff.” He set the detector for electromagnetic signatures so he could find out whether the power source was still… “Or not. Um, Carson,” he said quietly.

Carson was turning in a slow circle, surveying the damage to the lab. “Aye?”

“I know what Construct 45X is.” He glanced up as Carson approached. “You have nanites.”

“I thought you said there were no nanites,” Carson complained. He examined his hands as if he could see the little machines inside him. “So what are they doing, then? Are they the—”

“—zombie makers?” Rodney finished for him, because now that Carson was alive and well and whining, this was actually really fascinating. “I don’t know.” He walked to the main console. “First we need to see if we can get this working again so we can… whoa.” The world spun around him a minute and he staggered.

Carson was suddenly holding him up. “Dizzy?” the doctor asked briskly. His no nonsense tone helped. A lot.

“Um... “ Rodney tried to figure out the answer. “Not dizzy, really. I turned around and the world kept spinning that way, even when I stopped.” He brushed away the hand Carson had to the back of his head. “What are you doing?”

“You have quite the goose egg up there,” Carson said. “Perhaps we should get you sitting down at that console, then. You can rest and work at the same time.”

Rodney let himself be led. “You know, I am not the one who was dead an hour ago.”

“Yes, well, I got better,” Carson commented, tongue firmly in cheek.

The shared chuckle and a seated position focused Rodney on the task at hand, and he ran the life signs detector over the silent machine. “Thank goodness.” He reached beneath the console without tilting his head too much and felt around for the backup power activation button. It had to be around here—

The console lit up and the screen glowed as the system initialized. Rodney grinned up at Carson. “Backup battery,” he explained. The screen showed ready, and he bent to his task. “Now, let’s find out exactly how you became a zombie, and then…”

********

Rodney was an ass.

But today, Carson would let him have his fun. As his friend typed away at the only surviving computer, Carson wandered what was left of the lab. Absently, he fingered the sodden, sticky hole in his shirt, knowing there was another on the back side, the two in fatal alignment. He’d been dead.

He stood still as his hands shook a moment.

He thought he even remembered dying, though his mind was clearly trying to soften the memory. It was a blur of fear and aching and worry and a deep resignation. No pain, though, thank God. The shock to his system had been too overwhelming for that. Rodney had been a vague shadow before him, and he’d been both glad he wasn’t alone and hurt beyond reason that Rodney was having to watch.

And then he woke up, as if nothing had happened—not even a twinge to show he’d died. Not a physical pain, anyway. But the look on his friend’s face when Rodney had turned to look at him—utter terror and insanity and a vast longing hope—was more than Carson had the energy to contemplate.

And so he made his rounds of the room, then stood behind Rodney until he was shooed away, then wandered again, not counting the minutes in anything but boredom and an absent wonder that he was alive to feel it. He came again to the cages, now mere scrap metal on the floor, strewn with bones and dust. “Poor wee monkeys,” he murmured.

“What?” Rodney asked in that distracted way of his that meant he wasn’t really listening to you at all, but could tell you exactly what you said when he got round to processing it.

“I said, ‘poor monkeys,’” Carson replied.

“You experiment on mice,” Rodney pointed out.

So he was listening. Probably won’t start taking my resurrection for granted for at least a few days, Carson thought with a fond smile.

“Aye,” he agreed. “I don’t do it lightly, either.” He found a convenient bit of rubble to sit on. It was funny—he’d felt fine when he first woke, but he was winded now. Perhaps just too much too soon. He grinned to himself and checked his watch, surprised by the time that had passed. Give yourself a break, Carson. You’ve only been alive a couple of hours.

“Maybe that’s why they limited their cohort so severely,” Rodney said, talking and reading and typing away all at the same time. “Concentrate the…”

Rodney was quiet for a long moment before he started typing furiously.

Carson rubbed at the spot where the pole had gone in. It ached vaguely.

“Oh no,” Rodney whispered, so quietly that Carson barely heard him.

“What?” Carson asked, his heart dropping in dread at the tenor of his friend’s voice.

“We have a… really big problem.”

*******

Rodney couldn’t explain any more—not right now. He ran across the room, his flashlight beam bouncing off the walls and the broken cages and Carson sitting bloody and confused on a piece of ceiling. This time, he did notice how incredibly tight the fit was between the two piles of rubble that made up the new hallway. With a breath of relief, he burst into the larger space where they’d started this horror show and stopped dead as his light played over the spot where Carson died.

Or more specifically, the large storage canister that lay half crushed on the spot where Carson died.

“Oh, this is not good,” he whispered.

“Rodney, what the hell is going on?” Carson called from the main lab.

Rodney swallowed hard. He hated the Ancients. Right this second, he hated them with every fiber of his being. Of all the bloodthirsty, callous, cruel, evil, monumentally stupid things to create…

He headed back into the main lab, doing math in his head. Four hours. They had four hours.

He had four hours. He didn’t know how long Carson had.

“Are you going to explain what’s going on?” Carson asked as Rodney finished squeezing back into the room. He sounded slightly out of breath. It would only get worse.

“How…” Rodney started, petering out. He hated this. “How are you feeling?”

“Tired, sore, and irritated, how do you think?” the Scotsman snapped. He paused a minute. “Actually…” His hand went to the spot where the pole had been and Rodney sighed. “What’s going on then?” Carson asked, clearly not wanting the answer.

The explanation came out dry and textbook and Rodney loathed every second of it. “The monkeys they were using were incredibly rare. They only had 200 to start with. And there were only four researchers... So while they were experimenting, they asked another group to create a nanite construct to make sure the virus ‘reset’ the subjects appropriately.”

“What now?” Carson asked. He was starting to breathe a little heavier.

Rodney kept staring. “They hadn’t cracked the code of how to create a fully integrated nanovirus yet. They had industrial nanites mutate the virus as they went, so that they could reset the experiment to any point in the injury cycle.”

Carson blanched. And then he took his hand away from the place on his chest he’d been rubbing at. Rodney didn’t need to be shown the fresh blood. He already knew.

The virus had come from the monkey bones, probably, but the nanites were in the storage container. They thought ‘dead’ was the proper reset. And they were going to keep resetting Carson’s virus to the point of his death unless Rodney could stop them.

********

“Without the nanites, the virus would have done its job and just fixed it,” Rodney was rambling. He had managed to restore minimal power and now dashed back and forth from the console to a small closet he’d found that held a nanite scanner. The technology was rudimentary to hear him tell it, but it was all they currently had. “Of course, eventually, the virus itself would probably overproduce, and grow tumors and God only knows what else…”

Carson sat, unable to do much else, honestly. Rodney had helped him bandage the holes in his chest and back, though both still bled. Eventually, the nanites would teach the virus to drill holes in his lungs and his pericardium and he’d die. Again.

It was taking a damn long time this time. The worst part of it was, of course, that there was no actual trauma, so there was almost no pain. The bleeding holes ached, dimly, but that was the extent of it. It was like watching someone else’s body slowly, slowly bleed out...

“If—” Rodney stumbled again, struck by another of those moments of dizziness he’d been having off and on. The concussion he obviously had should be treated, he should be resting, recovering, but it wasn’t as if they had much choice in the matter. In the Pegasus galaxy, they never seemed to, did they? “If we can reprogram the nanites, we can have the virus repair the damage and then the nanites can destroy the virus and then we can—”

“Rodney, stop,” Carson called, as loudly as he could.

“—set off an EMP—”

“STOP, RODNEY!”

Rodney stopped, his head down. Carson ignored how much the shouting had winded him and patted the rubble beside him. “Sit down before you fall on your ass,” he commanded.

“We don’t have time for that!” Rodney whined angrily, every bit the little boy who was being told he couldn’t fix his broken toy. He also didn’t sit, and Carson supposed he couldn’t blame him. Rodney hadn’t really been able to look at him since he’d tied off that last bandage. Carson was sure his dear friend had seen enough.

“Just for a minute, then.” Carson forced down a cough. He’d hold off as long as he could. Give Rodney all the time possible without his deteriorating state distracting him.

He just didn’t think it would be enough. Already, his lungs were going, still in that eerie, pain-free but completely obvious way.

Rodney sat heavily beside him. “I can’t do this again, Carson,” he said in a very small voice. His hands were covered in Carson’s own blood, and Rodney clenched them and unclenched them, watching flakes fall to the ground. “I… You died.”

“I know,” Carson answered. Because he did.

“It wasn’t like John, you know?” Rodney continued quietly. “Just a flash of light and gone. I…” He snorted painfully. “John was easier than watching while it happened.”

They’d had that discussion, late at night. Rodney had told him that, when the hive ship exploded and he’d known John was dead, something had snapped in his brain. “How many more people am I supposed to lose, right?”

Self-centered, of course, but quintessentially Rodney. Because he had watched far, far too many people die in the last year and a half.

And he was going to again.

The knowledge froze Carson’s gut, his own fear completely self-centered, because he couldn’t do this again, either. A cough caught him unaware and he hacked for a long moment. That hurt, which he guessed was some consolation. It just seemed… perverse… to die in such a silent, painless, bloody fashion.

“Will the virus fix it a second time?” he asked weakly, dreading the answer. He hadn’t even asked the question because he didn’t want to know. Either answer was equally terrible in its own way.

Rodney understood. “And a third. And a fourth.”

Carson managed not to throw up. “Well then,” he said, too bright and too jovial and too laughing in the face of complete ruin. “At least you’ll have another chance, right?”

Tears were standing in Rodney’s eyes, but he gave a smile anyway. Carson didn’t miss the way he squinted in even this dim light.

“Head aches, does it?” he asked quietly. Because selfish fear was easier to sublimate when you had someone else to take care of.

Rodney shook his head in denial and immediately looked a little green. He caught Carson’s worry easily and stood, retreating. “I can worry about that… after,” he said lamely.

After I’ve died again. Carson sighed, bowing to the inevitable. Rodney was surprisingly good at sublimating when there was a crisis. It made this harder, strangely, and Carson longed for his brash, egotistical friend.

“Don’t take aspirin, now,” he counseled. “Tylenol and nothing else. We don’t want you bleeding into that brain of yours.”

“No, of course not.” Rodney turned on him, concerned. “Wait, bleeding? Into my brain ? That’s not likely, is it?”

Carson grinned. “I knew you were in there somewhere,” he murmured. His voice was getting thinner every time he spoke. Would he bleed out quickly, he wondered, once the virus got to his heart? Or would he feel it all happening over the course of long minutes, endless and unending until it wasn’t? The fear came over him so intensely he was struck dumb by it. He’d felt it before, the first time, but it had been a flash before death—too quick to process. Now he had much more time to let it grow.

He didn’t want to die again.

“Rodney?” he called, coughing again as the strain of speaking told on lungs that were obviously being dismantled from within. “Can you do something for me?” It was a horrible thing to ask, but in this moment, when he knew he was dying—soon, now, maybe—he was selfish and unrepentant.

Rodney nodded at him, his eyes huge and frightened, even as they burned with determination to fix this.

God, Carson only prayed he could. “Make this the last time?”

********

Rodney struggled to breathe. “I promise,” he whispered. He didn’t know how—he didn’t have the equipment to reprogram the nanites, he didn’t have an EMP to kill them when he was done. He didn’t have anything.

But he promised. Because he couldn’t watch Carson die again.

Carson panted suddenly, terrified and just like last time only worse. “Rodney?”

Maybe one more time, Rodney thought inanely.

He slid Carson down to sit on the ground, propped against the chunk of ceiling he’d been using as a chair. Carson gave him a little smile that hurt a lot and then started coughing.

Coughing blood.

Dying again.

“Last time, Carson,” Rodney whispered fervently, as he held Carson’s gaze for too long until those blue eyes went glazed and dark. “I promise.”

It took some time before he was able to reach up and close Beckett’s eyes, but the moment he did, his brain kicked in even as it ached in his skull. Survive, right? It told him. Fix this and get on with it and save him and because he’s counting on you and you promised .

He stood, rubbing his hands against his blood-stained pants, and headed back to the console to finish reviewing the nanite programing. He ignored the blast of vertigo as he sat. Don’t think about Carson, dead over there. Don’t think about the fact that he’s waiting for you to fix this.

Academic exercise. A life and death academic exercise, like every other day in this insane galaxy…

He wished his laptop had survived the earthquake—this would have been easier with his own search programs, and he already had a shell of the nanovirus program that had almost killed them all after the storm. He could have backtracked from there. At least his external drive was intact. He unplugged it from the console and tucked it into his vest. He’d downloaded the console’s database for safe keeping, so at least he had that...

His head really hurt. He was supposed to take something, right? Aspirin? Or, no, not aspirin because Carson said that would make it worse and he’d bleed out his eyes or something and wasn’t there enough blood already? He looked across the room to where Carson was waiting.

“Stop,” he counseled himself sharply. “Focus, Rodney. Focus!”

The nanites were piggybacked onto the virus in Carson’s body. Reprogram them to kill the virus once the regeneration portion of the program was complete, and then…

“God, your code stinks!” he yelled at the Ancients, because it really, really did. Confusing and backward and who the hell thought this was a good idea anyway!?

Focus.

There was a loud sound from the passageway where Carson had died the first time, but Rodney was focusing, wasn’t he?

His head really hurt. He was supposed to take something, right?

“Dr. McKay?”

Carson? So soon?

Rodney peered up at the man standing above him and realized that the voice was Irish, not Scottish. Lieutenant Read, then. “About time,” Rodney told him. “Does anyone have a laptop?”

Read stared at him like he was nuts and didn’t produce a laptop. Rodney snapped his fingers impatiently. “Come on, come on! Dr. Beckett’s life depends on me getting a laptop. Now.”

Again, there was that pitying wow-you’re-nuts look. “Dr. McKay,” Read said gently. “Dr. Beckett is dead.”

“Yes, I know that,” Rodney said testily. “But I promised him he wouldn’t die again, and I need a laptop to—” Dr. Tilman was bent over Carson, and he had a laptop on his pack. Rodney darted unsteadily past Read to grab it, ripping it off its velcro hooks and surprising the younger man. “Now.”

Read grabbed his arm and Rodney nearly fell at the abrupt change in trajectory. “Dr. McKay, please, stop.”

“I’ll stop when I’m dead.” Rodney giggled suddenly. “Or when Carson’s alive.”

“Dr. McKay?” Corporal Simmons laid a hand on Rodney’s arm, and he swung his gaze round to take in the very young man’s black hair and worried blue eyes. Blue like Carson’s almost, but different. “Dr. McKay, we need to get you back to Atlantis.”

Atlantis. Yeah, because Atlantis had an EMP and it had a full interface that could help reprogram the nanites and… His head really hurt.

“Okay,” he said in a suddenly small voice. “Yeah. Let’s go home and fix Carson.”

Simmons and Read exchanged a look Rodney didn’t exactly understand, because there was nothing to pity here. He’d have the program written and ready to upload as soon as Carson’s regeneration was complete, and then they’d kill the nanites with an EMP…

And then maybe they’d go fishing.

“Do you have any tylenol?” he asked wanly.

*******

John Sheppard just stared as Rodney flew around the smaller of the two medical bays, from his laptop, to the bed where Carson’s body lay, to the nanite scanner he’d cobbled together the last time the Ancients had left a gun lying around for the kids to find.

McKay was in full cry, but he was also, clearly, injured worse than he probably even knew. Simmons, Read’s corpsman, thought he had a moderate concussion at least, and should be resting. But Sheppard was a little afraid McKay might actually shoot anyone who tried to stop him at this point, so he just kept everyone out of the man’s way and let him and Biro and Zelenka work.

Simmons hadn’t left, and was currently standing over by Carson’s bed, waiting for Rodney to collapse. Which seemed like it would eventually happen because sometimes, Rodney would stop dead in the middle of the room and stare, and John or Radek would have to prompt him. Like now.

“The virus eradication program is complete,” Radek pointed out quietly. “All there is left now—”

“—is the self-destruct. I know!” Rodney responded, sounding exactly like himself but completely wrong. Strung out and failing. “Except that that’s not going to work is it?” He looked over at Carson’s body again.

John was beginning to hate Carson’s body, honestly, because they really only had Rodney’s slightly dubious word that it was anything more than a body anyway.

Their doctor had been stripped of clothes that held more blood than a single body should be able to bleed, carefully cleaned by people who’d never wanted to do that job, and now lay there—his face visible because Rodney came over and yelled at the one person who dared to cover it—draped in a sheet that hid the deceptively small entrance and exit wounds that had literally drained the lifeblood out of him.

Twice, if you believed Rodney. Which, strangely enough, John did.

Biro seemed to think that, crazy or not, Rodney’s hypothesis had merit. She’d taken cells from the wounds in Carson’s body and watched the nanite-reprogrammed virus rebuild them in a test tube, but she wasn’t at all sure that would translate into Carson’s brain somehow magically working when they fed it the little bugs.

“I don’t know,” Rodney had already said in answer to that very question. “Carson said something about the virus holding the brain cells in stasis. It’s probably the nanites, though—has nothing to do with the virus. All I know is that it worked and it’ll work again and this is the last time I want it working, all right?”

Right now, Rodney was berating Radek about something John didn’t quite understand, about threshold impulses and electrical load variances across the nanite colony. He looked like he was going to fall over, and John realized he hadn’t seen the man eat since he got back, which was a rare occurrence after a mission gone wrong.

He looked at Carson’s body and sighed. This one was a hell of a lot wronger than most.

“John?”

Sheppard sighed at the tentative call. Elizabeth was letting him run with this, but he knew she thought Rodney was just too grief-stricken to accept the truth.

“He needs to stop,” she said, walking up next to him. She hadn’t stayed here this whole time—had it really only been an hour and a half?—but here she was again, and already planning to shut it down.

“He’ll stop when he’s done,” John drawled dangerously, still angry. She had ordered him— ordered him— to stay on Atlantis. He couldn’t help but believe Rodney wouldn’t be in the state he was in if he’d been there to talk the scientist down.

“Or when he’s run himself into a hospital bed,” Elizabeth said, her own anger and worry showing. “Is indulging this really going to help him, Colonel?”

John ignored her.

“All right, so the EMP really is the only answer,” Rodney said quietly. He looked at Carson again, exasperated. “Okay, it shouldn’t be taking this long.”

“Sheppard?” Ronon said suddenly, standing up straight from his slouch against the wall and staring at Carson… who was breathing suddenly.

“Oh, finally!” Rodney exclaimed. And then he was across the room in a heartbeat and calling Carson’s name and John was pretty sure Elizabeth was going to pass out on him.

“Oh my God,” she whispered.

John felt an unlikely smile break across his lips as Rodney took hold of Carson’s hand and, miraculously, Carson gripped him back.

“Rodney,” Carson murmured. He opened his eyes and looked around. Alive. Like, really alive. “We’re home?”

Rodney helped Carson sit up, but the doctor barely seemed to need it. His chest, where that hole had so obscenely marked his death, was completely smooth and healed.

“Have you had me lying here naked all this time?” he asked incredulously, blushing. Simmons started violently when Rodney snapped his fingers, then mutely produced a pair of scrubs from a nearby shelf and held it out, his hand shaking.

“I told them you were a zombie and you didn’t want to wake up naked, but no one believes me,” Rodney shot back, glaring at Simmons, who shrugged meekly.

“ Rodney ,” Carson grumbled, smiling his thanks to the corpsman and very demurely dressing himself under the sheet. It was completely surreal and John was going to go with it. He’d have a freak out later.

“Carson?” Elizabeth managed, her voice small and shocked and just this side of crazy. She was clearly choosing to have her freak out now.

“See!?” Rodney proclaimed triumphantly. “Not dead.”

“Currently,” Carson put in, though the smile he gave Elizabeth was understanding. “I expect he’s tried to explain?” he said quietly. Elizabeth walked toward him carefully, like she expected him to disappear. “It’s…”

“Complicated,” she murmured, a joyful smile breaking out as she touched his arm. She grabbed him into a fierce hug and let go quickly. Wouldn’t want to break protocol , John thought, more amused than angry now.

“Aye, well, let’s hope they’ve gotten the complicated bits worked out now, yes?” He examined Rodney and frowned. “Have you rested at all?” he scolded, sliding off the bed. “Did you even take a minute to get checked out?”

He glared at Biro like it was her fault Rodney was being Rodney, and she shut her mouth where it had been hanging open. “He was told to rest and let Dr. Zelenka and myself take care of things—”

“I thought we were talking about you,” Rodney interrupted, ignoring the question and leading Carson to the table where his backup laptop and the vial of serum and nanites he and Biro and Zelenka had been working on sat waiting. “I could have left it to them to do it, but you know that would have taken forever and...” He swallowed hard, then forced a fake smile. “I promised you, Carson, right?”

“You’ve done it then?” Carson asked, a wealth of relief in his voice that went with the disturbing horror that had been dogging Rodney this entire time. John’s stomach twisted. Dying twice…

Beckett stood next to Zelenka, who was about as shocked as Elizabeth was, and reviewed their notes on the laptop’s screen. “Oh, well done, Radek, Rodney,” he praised. “Good to know you’ve been paying attention.” He smiled at Biro. “Thank God you’re here, my dear,” he told her. “Rodney’s already admitted he knows less than nothing about viral constructs.”

“Yes, yes, point out my one inadequacy here. Can we get on with this?” Rodney was jumping out of his skin. Whatever they went through in that research facility, it was bad. John was painfully reminded of the trip back to Atlantis after Gall, and he wondered when Rodney’s crash was going to come and how bad it would be when it did.

He looked across the room where Ronon had planted himself like a sentinel, then back to Radek, who was hovering and trying not to. Teyla was talking to Elizabeth, who was still staring at Carson, who was assessing Rodney at the same time as he was anxious to get on with this himself…

At least he won’t be alone, right?

“Please,” Carson breathed thankfully. He watched Rodney draw a syringe of fluid out of the vial. “Dr. Biro, if you please?” he asked, snorting at Rodney’s indignant look. “I’d rather a shot from someone who knows how to give it.”

Biro grinned, still shocked and trying to hide it. “You’re not really a zombie, are you, Carson?” she asked. “Because I happen to like my brains where they are.”

“He’s probably not really a zombie,” Rodney replied, sounding a little punch drunk. “He said… um, that he wasn’t interested in my brain. Any smart zombie would just naturally want the best.”

“You want to field that one, Radek?” John asked meanly, wondering exactly what Rodney had glossed over at the beginning of that sentence.

Radek raised his hands defensively.

Carson winced as the needle jabbed into his bicep. “Is there a possibility we could all stop making zombie jokes?” He walked back over to the bed and took a seat on the edge.

“I don’t think you’re going to live that down for a while, Doc,” Simmons put in.

They all settled in and waited for something to happen. Something obvious. Anything.

After ten minutes, Carson sighed in annoyance. “You can all stop staring now, you know?” His hand drifted to his chest and rubbed absently, and Rodney blanched.

“Carson?”

McKay’s voice was quiet and child-like and Carson’s gaze shot over to him in concern, then in confusion as he saw where Rodney was staring.

“Habit,” Carson murmured. “I’m sorry.” He pulled his scrub top down some to show his unbloodied chest. “It’s okay, Rodney.”

Radek backed up the assessment with his latest scan. “It appears the nanites have migrated to the site of the… injury, as programmed.”

Biro drew a sample of blood from Carson and nodded to herself. “I’ll want to take samples every fifteen minutes, until we’re sure the virus is dead.”

Rodney tried to rally. “There’s no way to program a self-destruct on the nanites themselves, so we’ll have to kill them the old-fashioned way.”

“Nuke them out of existence?” John offered, trying to give a normalcy and lightness to the room when Rodney and Carson both were so clearly waiting for things to go horribly wrong. Ronon moved forward slowly, and John wondered if he thought one of the two of them was going to end up on the floor.

“That was your solution, Colonel,” Rodney reminded him. “Not mine.” He stood too close to Carson’s bed, vibrating. “But yes, essentially.”

“Well, looks like it’s already begun, Carson,” Biro said in that no nonsense way of hers, looking up from the microscope she’d been using. “I’m detecting waste product consistent with the virus Doctors McKay and Zelenka had the nanites destroy in our test tube.”

Carson sighed hugely. “That may be the best news I’ve heard today, dear,” he told her, sagging back.

“It worked?” Rodney said, uncharacteristically tentative. “We’re sure?”

“Well, I’m not ready to say yes absolutely until we’ve had a few hours to make sure all the virus is dead, but,” Biro smiled. “Yeah. It looks like it.”

“Who knew you could cure zombie-ism?” John asked, grinning.

“A little… anticlimactic, isn’t it?” Rodney offered, sounding dazed. Any minute now , John thought.

“I doubt I could weather any more excitement today, Rodney,” Carson replied. There was a shadow in his voice along with the overwhelming relief. “In fact, I believe I’ve had a lifetime of it already.”

“Never again,” Rodney murmured, turning to lean his back against the bed, his arm touching Carson’s. “I promised.”

“Aye,” Carson agreed. “That you did.”

No one was the least surprised when Rodney McKay slid down toward the floor. He never even got a chance to land before Ronon grabbed him and Carson moved and suddenly Rodney was lying in the bed and John wasn’t the only one with a faint smile on his face.

“Took longer than I thought it would,” Ronon remarked, standing out of the way so Carson could start looking McKay over.

“He’ll stop when he’s done, right, Colonel?” Elizabeth commented wryly.

John was too relieved to be annoyed.

********

Seven hours later, Rodney was still sleeping. Carson was incredibly thankful for that.

Beckett would later swear that he himself didn’t breathe for the first four of those hours, waiting for the wounds to open, for the blood to rush out. Waiting to die silently and painlessly and horribly. Radek and Biro and Elizabeth had all kept him distracted as best they could, but he was selfishly glad he didn’t have to deal with Rodney’s nervous energy.

And wasn’t it just like Rodney to be the one to end up injured when Carson was the one who’d…?

Radek had stolen him away six hours after the reprogrammed nanites had gone in and undone the nightmare, after the virus was undetectable and the nanites themselves hadn’t started dismantling him. He didn’t feel the controlled EMP, or the nanites as they, too, died. It was painless, but not the kind of painless he’d been dreading.

Biro had made him promise he’d stay in the medical bay, just to be sure, and having Rodney there unconscious made it easier to convince him. He could watch over the idiot who’d ignored a low-grade subdural hematoma and would be paying the price for it for a while.

Daft fool. He’d known Rodney would keep his promise, because he always kept the important ones, but it didn’t stop him worrying about the man. Rodney had lost too many people, been there and present and watching while too many friends died.

They all had. One miracle save after another did nothing to lessen the impact.

And it didn’t stop Rodney’s nightmares.

“Carson!”

Rodney’s call was quiet, but the room was quieter still, and the pain in the cry was like a gunshot. Carson slid off his bed and walked quickly across the room.

“Rodney, wake up.”

The sleeping man’s face scrunched up in pain and his eyes popped open, blinking once before settling on Carson.

“How long?” he asked roughly, looking around the empty room and trying to orient himself.

“Seven hours,” Carson replied, putting a hand on Rodney’s chest to stop him trying to rise.

“What about the EMP?” Rodney demanded as he struggled up anyway. “And…” He looked Carson over, fear lingering in his eyes. “You’re okay?” he all but begged.

“Biro confirmed complete virus death at four hours.” Carson was as matter-of-fact as possible. Radek just ‘nuked’ me about forty-five minutes ago.”

“De-zombified.” Rodney murmured as he lay back, a little green, and closed his eyes.

“Oh, let’s not start that again,” Carson begged.

Rodney nodded. “My head hurts.”

Carson smiled. “I’ll get something for that in a minute. You’ll be taking it easy for a while, by the way,” he tried to lecture. “I told you you needed to slow down or you’d bleed into your skull.”

“You said I shouldn’t take aspirin.” His eyes popped open. “Wait—are you serious?” There were times Carson just loved to mess with Rodney. It was normal. Normal, right now, was golden. “Shouldn’t you, you know, being doing something?”

“We normally drill a hole in your head,” Carson said.

“You are never drilling a hole in my head,” Rodney vowed. “There isn’t… I mean, do you have to?”

Carson smiled. “You could just lie here and rest.”

Rodney nodded again, then looked green again. Carson figured at this point he could take pity on him. “I’ll get you something for that stomach. And your head.” He patted Rodney’s arm. “Be back in a moment.”

“Carson?” Rodney called sleepily.

Carson turned, nearly at the door. “Yes, Rodney?”

“‘M glad you’re not a zombie anymore.”

Carson sighed, and turned the lights down on his way out.

*********
the end