Fic: The Adherence of Memory

[welfycat]

The Adherence of Memory - Stargate Atlantis - Gen (John Sheppard) - Word Count: 15,040
Written for Stargateland Big Bang
Summary: John Sheppard discovers that who he thought he was is absolutely nothing in comparison to what he could become.
Content Notes: Violence, disturbing imagery. R.
Author Notes: Thanks to the fantastically wonderful emeraldsnakes for the beta read.
On AO3: The Adherence of Memory




"Unscheduled Off-world Activation!"

The words echoed in their radios, everyone pausing and focusing as they listened. John and Sam were the first to their feet, before Chuck had even finished the word 'unscheduled', with Rodney and Jennifer following a second behind. The doors to the conference room swung out, evening sunlight filtering into the room as they rushed out.

"Shield up," Sam said, unnecessarily, as it was standard procedure to have the shield in place until the GDO had been sent through.

"It is up," Chuck said. He had gotten to his feet and was staring down at the 'gate, along with everyone else in the room.

John walked forward to see what everyone was looking at. A metallic ball, a little larger than a soccer ball sat a few feet away from the 'gate, right in the middle of the floor.

Sam looked at the ball and then at Chuck, obviously alarmed.

"It came right through the shield," Chuck said, his gaze still fixated on the ball.

"Let's get containment around this thing, now!" John shouted, spurring the marines that were standing guard near the 'gate into action. John looked over to where they kept the containers for explosives, wanting to be down on the main floor helping but not able to get there without walking directly past the thing.

It started to make a high pitched noise, one that John automatically associated with things exploding.

"Down, everyone down!" Sam yelled before John had a chance to do anything.

Out of the corner of John's eye he saw Rodney and Jennifer scrambling for cover along with the rest of the technicians who were working, everyone except for Chuck. John turned and started to move, hoping that he would reach the man in time, but stopped when movement from the floor by the 'gate caught his attention.

There were, John hesitated to call them 'ghosts' or 'spirits' but he typically called things as he saw them, ghosts of some kind walking out of the ball, walking towards them. John's hand fell to his gun and he rested it there as he started down the steps.

"Sheppard!" Rodney shouted from where he was hiding from the potential blast, but John hardly even heard him.

John reached halfway down the steps and paused. It was like looking in a mirror, a very foggy and indistinct mirror, because there was another John Sheppard standing at the bottom of the steps looking up at him. The other specters were scattered out through the 'gate room and moving slowly as they seemed to gain solid form. John wanted to do so many things; to cover his ears as the sound grew in pitch and intensity, to shout for the containment team to get this thing under control, to look at the rest of spirits and see who else was there. But all he could do was stare at himself as his wavering form walked closer.

The John Sheppard he was looking at had longer hair, stubble on his face, and was holding a knife in the same hand that John had clenched around his gun. Unable to move, John watched as he moved closer, completely entranced by this vision of himself to the exclusion of everything else. Even the sound didn't hurt anymore, he didn't even think he could hear it except he knew that the noise was still there.

When the other Sheppard reached him, there was a flash of light, almost blinding except in the split second where John saw the knife raise up high above Sheppard's head. John broke free in the light and felt himself tumble forward through the air where his feet could no longer find the steps and his eyes could no longer see.

*****

Waking up in the infirmary was almost always a sign that something, somewhere, had gone wrong. Waking up in the infirmary with no memory of how he got there, or why he was even there, was a sign that something had definitely gone horribly wrong.

He opened his eyes, and was immediately grateful that the ceiling in the infirmary wasn't white, because the last thing he remembered was being absolutely unable to see anything but white until his eyes felt like they were burning. He twisted under the blankets, the nurses having tucked him in too tightly and a tight pinch on the back of his hand told him they'd inserted an IV.

Looking around, still blinking rapidly as he currently saw everything with an afterimage of white, he saw that three other beds near him were occupied; their occupants still unconscious and unmoving.

"Colonel, how are you feeling?" Doctor Keller was at his side, flashing a light in his eyes that was reminding him far too much of not being able to see.

"Better," he managed to croak, waving his free hand to try and get rid of the light. "What happened?"

The expression on Keller's face was enough to know that whatever it was, it was bad and they probably didn't know much other than that. John tipped his head back against the pillow and shut his eyes.

It only took a moment for the image of another John Sheppard, one he could see through to the 'gate behind him, to come full front in his mind, his knife swinging down menacingly before John jerked up with a short shout.

"Colonel?" Keller asked from where she'd been examining the machines that were still connected to John.

John swallowed hard and shook his head, answering and trying to clear the image from his mind. "What happened?" he asked again, this time more interested in the answer.

"Why don't you tell me what you remember?" Keller asked, turning back to him again and looking concerned.

Before John could answer, the man in the bed to his right started screaming, his back arching up off the bed and his arms thrashing through the air. Keller abandoned him as two other nurses ran over, all of them working to grab onto the man's flailing limbs.

John sat up, feeling twinges through his back as he moved, and peered over into the other bed, staring as Chuck fought off the nurses. Chuck continued to scream wordlessly.

In the bed that was on the other side of John's, Radek Zelenka gave a short shout and a string of curses in Czech. John turned and found Radek hunched over with his hands clinging to his head and visibly shaking. John stared at Radek, trying to figure out what was wrong with the situation other than the obvious answers. All the staff in the infirmary were occupied with Chuck, who had stopped screaming and was now sobbing incoherently but still frantically trying to get off of his bed.

John slipped out of the bed, grateful that they'd put him in scrubs instead of a gown, grabbed the pole that his IV was attached to and walked over to Radek's bed, adjusting to sharp but manageable pains that were echoing down his back and legs as he moved. "Radek," he asked, resting his hand on the edge of his bed. He didn't want to touch him in case he triggered something like what was currently affecting Chuck.

Radek looked up and stared at John, squinting without his glasses. After a moment, Radek reached out and the tips of his fingers grazed the edge of John's face very briefly before he pulled back, still shaking.

"You alright?" John asked, though he was pretty sure that Radek wasn't, and that Chuck certainly wasn't. John wasn't too sure about himself, apart from the pains in his shoulder, back and legs and the ghostly visage of himself he saw every time he shut his eyes, he felt okay.

Radek shut his eyes and shook his head, going back to holding his head in his hands.

"Alright then," John backed away to his bed, not really sure what he could do to help. In the bed past Radek he could see one of the marines, Stackhouse it looked like, still laying unconscious.

Keller and the nurses had sedated Chuck, Keller stepping away with a syringe in her hand as the nurses resettled Chuck back onto the bed.

"Doc, what's going on?" John asked again.

Keller turned and looked at John, more than a little rumpled after the tussle with Chuck. She shook her head. "We're still trying to figure that out. Whatever that thing did it only affected the four of you, as far as we can tell. Actually, I want to get a scan of you, see if anything is different than the last one."

"How long have we been here?" John asked, the disturbing feeling that something was very wrong slowly creeping back.

"Two days," Keller brushed her hair away from her face and moved to look at the monitor hooked to Radek. "You've all been unconscious for two days and we have no idea why."

*****

John was glad to be out of the infirmary, a full day after he'd woken up. He'd spent most of the previous day in various scanners as Keller frowned over his brain scans. Rodney stopped in briefly to assure him that he and Sam were doing everything possible to figure out what that machine had done to them, and the rest of his team had dropped by to see how he was doing.

For the most part, except for the bruising from falling down the stairs to the floor of the 'gate room and the cut across his left shoulder, John felt pretty good. Well, apart from the way that Radek kept staring at him like he didn't quite know who he was, John felt fine.

"So, you're saying that you saw people?" Sam asked, watching him from where she was sitting in the conference room.

"Well, not people, exactly," John frowned. "They were people, but you could see through them."

"Ghosts?" Rodney asked. "There've been ghosts on Atlantis before. It could have been ghosts."

Sam blinked for a moment. "Right, I think I read that report. But that wasn't a technology based phenomena."

"But it could be. There's been plenty of instances in the Stargate program where technology has caused people to see things that aren't there." Rodney tapped at his tablet with a frown.

"You didn't see anyone? Right after the noise started, you didn't see them?" John asked, a little bit frustrated as he shifted in his chair.

"All we saw was you walking towards something that sounded like it was about to blow up," Rodney sounded more than a little bit aggrieved.

John shrugged apologetically.

"And after that, you said there was a blinding light, and that was it?" Sam asked.

"Wait, were the people doing anything? Because the last time they were trying to tell us something," Rodney said before John had a chance to answer.

John frowned, he hadn't yet explained that one of the people was him, didn't just look like him but was him. The image of himself looking older and rougher with scars on his face and hands and that knife had kept him awake most of the night as he lay in the infirmary. He had woken up in a sweat, remembering the knife swinging down at his neck as he fell forward through the man. He'd spent the rest of the early morning piecing together his memory of the event.

"You didn't see the light?" John asked again, even though he'd already asked the question.

Sam shook her head. "No light, the sound just stopped and you collapsed and fell down the stairs."

"And Chuck collapsed," John added, his mind flashing to where Chuck was still curled up in the infirmary; no longer sedated but mostly unresponsive. Radek was still there too, barely speaking to anyone as he threw himself into the schematics that Rodney had brought him. Sergeant Stackhouse was still unconscious, though Keller continued to say that she had no idea why any of them had collapsed to begin with.

"Yes, yes, and Radek and Stackhouse did too, even though they were nowhere near the 'gate room." Rodney scowled at his tablet, frustration being his default mood when something didn't make logical sense.

John shook his head. "I only got a close look at one person. He walked over to me and tried to attack me, with a knife. That's where my shoulder is cut."

Sam and Rodney glanced at each other before staring at him, neither of them knowing what to say.

"So, I'm guessing they're not helpful ghosts then," Rodney finally said.

John rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I'm thinking that's a safe bet."

*****

John frowned to himself as he walked through the halls of Atlantis, only vaguely aware of people walking past him. He was on his way down to Rodney's lab, because Stackhouse was still laying in the infirmary and it had been three days and there was no sign that he was going to wake up any time soon.

Chuck had finally come around to where he was aware of his surroundings and mostly calm, at least until John came in the room. As soon as John had walked into the infirmary, after hearing through the Atlantis grapevine that he was doing better, Chuck had seized up and scrambled across the infirmary, tearing out his IV in the process and leaving spatters of blood across the infirmary floor. Feeling more than a little aggrieved, John had backed out and listened from around the doorway as Keller talked Chuck back down again and got him resettled. She'd appeared a few minutes later and shook her head while shrugging her shoulders.

John had steered clear of the infirmary after that, going around the side in order for a nurse to change the dressing on his shoulder.

It didn't really help that John had been virtually sleepless since he'd woken in the infirmary, unable to close his eyes long enough to actually achieve sleep without visions of his phantom self making his heart race. And even when he managed to drop off, his desperate exhaustion temporarily overwhelming his mind's ability to screw with him, two hours later he was jerking awake, soaking wet with sweat and shaking from nightmares that he couldn't remember.

He reached the lab and found it almost empty, Rodney working at the main table with a variety of probes and devices attached to the thing that had come through the 'gate, while a few other people worked silently at their workstations. John could see Radek in one of the side labs; Radek had been avoiding John and John had chosen to let him. It was better than instigating a breakdown like the one Chuck was having.

"McKay, what exactly is taking so long?" John asked, aware that his tone probably wasn't helping the situation but unable to really help himself. He walked over to Rodney's side and peered at one of the laptops, trying to make some sense of the jumble of equations and graphs that were scattered around it.

"I'm doing my very best, Sheppard, but this isn't like anything I've even seen before," Rodney didn't even look up from where he was rapidly typing.

"Fix the damn thing!" John slammed one of his fists against the counter, a little surprised when everything jumped a bit and Rodney swung around to stare at him. After a second he realized that everyone in the lab was staring at him. He swallowed hard and removed his hand and crossed his arms. "Sorry, I just want the effects of this thing to be reversed. Sooner, would be better."

Rodney stared at him, studying him like he was an unbalanced equation or a puddle jumper that was drifting a little to the side but he didn't know why. "When's the last time you saw Jennifer?" he asked, cautiously.

John stared back, suddenly feeling thoroughly chilled. For the briefest of moments, John had seen Rodney frail, broken and dead in his eyes. And for less than a split second, John remembered holding a loaded sidearm directly at Rodney's head and pulling the trigger.

"John?" Rodney asked, taking a hesitant step forward.

John shook his head and backed away from Rodney, feeling sick and swallowing convulsively. "Just, fix this thing. Soon." He turned and hurried out of the lab, bumping into people as he started jogging through the halls of Atlantis.

He didn't look up again until he felt the sudden rush of frozen air, realizing that he'd jogged out to one of the balconies on the side of the city even though he didn't remember the process of getting there at all. The reawakened pains in his legs and his back remembered though, joining the burning in his shoulder. Taking a moment, John leaned against one of the walls and allowed the cool metal to sooth his back.

The ocean surrounding Atlantis seemed a little choppier than usual, a steady wind blowing against John's face as he tried to blink away the images that had come to him in Rodney's lab. He couldn't even think about Rodney without the afterimage of a man who had given up coming to mind, a man who John couldn't imagine as ever giving up anything. It was one of the things that kept Rodney on his team, even though he sometimes thought that Rodney would probably prefer to stay on Atlantis, or that it might even be better if he did. But once Rodney set his mind to something, there was nothing he couldn't do, and nothing that would stop him. John didn't know what could reduce Rodney to such a state, and he didn't want to.

And, most of all, he didn't want to ever think of pulling a trigger while pointing a gun at Rodney's head. Doing that to Sumner was one more person than he'd ever wanted to do that to, and he honestly wasn't sure that he could do it again.

"Colonel Sheppard?" His radio buzzed insistently in his ear, Sam's voice sounding concerned and John could picture her frown and her worried eyes. Rodney had obviously gone and spoken with her.

John raised his hand to active his headset. "Sheppard here."

"Colonel, would please check in with the infirmary," Sam asked, careful to keep her tone neutral.

John closed his eyes for a brief minute, wanting to stay out in the cold air where the wind almost reminded him of flying free and weightless. "I'll be right there."

*****

It had been two weeks since the machine had gone off in the 'gate room; Rodney and Radek were no closer to figuring out how it worked, Jennifer still had no idea what it had done exactly, and everyone but Stackhouse had been released from the infirmary.

Stackhouse had finally woken up, though it wasn't much of an improvement. He didn't respond to anyone, even when John had gone in and snapped out half-hearted orders at Keller's suggestion. Instead, he would roam seemingly aimlessly, fighting when restrained but sedately walking through Atlantis when left to his own devices. In the end, John had just stuck a security team with medical training on him and let him roam; it seemed better than leaving him sedated in the infirmary.

Ever since John's little explosion in Rodney's lab, Rodney had been steadfastly following John around in his free time, cornering him for meals, walking with him to meetings and hanging out and bringing piles of bad sci-fi dvds for them to watch and mock in the evenings. Leave it to Rodney, John figured, to attach himself even more strongly to someone who most people would avoid after John's little freak outs. When John yelled, or swore and struck out at the walls, Rodney just took his temper in stride and continued the conversation wherever they'd left off. And, after a moment to catch his breath and let the pounding in his head recede, John let him.

It didn't help that when John looked at Rodney, he was almost constantly superimposed with the half-remembered image of Rodney ill and broken. That had been happening to more and more people that John saw, though he couldn't find a pattern to those who he was seeing with vicious injuries and ailments while others stood beside just as they always had. No one else seemed to notice the difference, though John wasn't about to go ask Chuck and Radek if they were seeing it as well.

Chuck at least had the common sense to avoid John when possible, and when John walked through the 'gate room in order to meet with Sam or whatever else he needed to do, he could feel Chuck's gaze following him warily. And John was actually glad, because he knew that Chuck was keeping an eye on him in a way that no one else, even Rodney, was. Chuck was afraid, and he should be.

It was the middle of the night, or some time in the very early morning; John didn't really care to check which. He'd managed to fall asleep shortly after Rodney left, aware that Rodney had tiptoed out of the room after stopping the dvd and closing the laptop, clearly hoping that John would go all the way sleep once he'd gone still. And John had slept, not that he felt any better for it. Waking up trembling and soaked and not able to take a full breath was becoming routine, another way that Pegasus was proving that just about anything could be adjusted to.

John shoved his feet in his boots, no socks and not bothering to tie the laces. He'd already dried off in the bathroom before grabbing a clean shirt and pair of pants, ready to walk the halls and mentally catalogue where everyone was. It had become part of his routine, and it was soothing to believe that he could find every single person on Atlantis, know where they were and know they were all safe, if only for that brief moment. He mentally checked people off as he passed doorways in his hallway, skipping people he knew were working the nightshift or were likely in bed with someone else.

The names came easily now, more easily than they ever had before. The extra weight of them being his responsibility, his people in this untamed galaxy, connected him to them in a way that had never happened on Earth. Even in his squadron he hadn't really felt like he was the same, that he was a real part of the team. It hadn't meant that he wouldn't have gone after any one of them if they needed him, but it wasn't the same either. On Atlantis his people, his team and the marines and the civilian scientists, all belonged to him. They were as much a part of him as his fingers or his eyes and ears.

He rounded and corner and came to a stop. It wasn't unusual to find people wandering the halls at night, on their way back from working overtime on an essential project or just walking off sleepless jitters. But the person he was seeing shouldn't be wandering the halls, shouldn't be on Atlantis at all.

"Ford?" John choked out, his hand halfway to touching his radio before he realized that he hadn't put it on before leaving his room.

The man kept walking down the hallway, his back straight and the profile almost certainly one that John recognized.

"Lieutenant!" John barked, his tone the very epitome of a stern military commander.

The man stopped and slowly turned, looking at John with lifted chin, his eyes examining him with an almost casual hatred. It was Ford, there was no doubt in John's mind, but there were no symptoms of the Wraith enzyme; his pupils were at normal dilation and his stance easy and relaxed. But there was something different nevertheless, his presence more predatory and grim than he'd ever noticed in the young lieutenant while he'd been on John's team.

"Ford?" John asked again, walking forward slowly. He stopped a few feet away, Ford suddenly backlit by one of the sconces and the light streaming through his skin. John took a quick step back, remembering the ghost version of himself swinging the knife, and the still open wound that was on his shoulder from it. Keller had insisted that it had been from the fall, that he'd struck his shoulder on edge of one of the steps. John knew better; he could almost feel the hilt of the knife in his hand, the weight of it as he brought it up over his head.

Ford's lips quirked in a smile as he watched John, raising his hands up in the air in a mockery of showing that he was unarmed. He watched John for another moment before turning again continuing down the hall, his feet silent as they fell.

John waited until Ford had disappeared from sight before hurrying back to the transporter and getting to Rodney's lab as fast as he could, jogging the last hallway there.

The device was still sitting on the table, looking the same as it always did and not making any sound at all. John approached cautiously, looking at the various monitors connected to it and seeing that they were all dormant before reaching out and pressing his hand against it. He felt something, very similar to touching something that could be activated with his ATA gene that was broken or had too little power to actually work. He pressed down harder, thinking at it as hard as he could. Rodney had said that he doubted that 'thinking' at things that were controlled by the ATA gene actually did anything, but John thought that it sometimes helped when it just need that extra push to get going.

The machine continued to do nothing and John pulled his hand away, not sure if he was disappointed or relieved. He turned to leave, suddenly feeling exhausted enough that he thought he might be able to catch another hour or two of sleep before his shift started.

His heart started racing and John took a moment to tell himself that it was just another ghost, that what he was seeing wasn't real, or at the very least it wasn't something that anyone else could see or touch. "Elizabeth."

She didn't move, blocking his path out of the lab, keeping her head turned away from him.

John swallowed hard, wishing that it was Elizabeth, having found some way to descend herself and come back to them, but the lighting from the hallway was proof enough that she wasn't solid to touch. He walked forward, less concerned about Elizabeth attacking him than he had been about Ford. When he was close to her, he reached forward, a little bit curious about what he'd feel if he touched her, if he could feel anything at all.

When his hand was right up next to her arm, Elizabeth turned, her head titling back as she looked up to meet his eyes.

John jerked away reflexively, horrified and feeling his stomach roll. "Shit," he swore, turning his head for a brief instant before forcing himself to look back.

There was a thick gash across Elizabeth's neck, running from side to side with dried blood glistening in the light and staining down the front of her shirt.

"Shit," John said again, backing up and leaning against one of the counters as he fought his gag reflex. He shuddered hard once before he got himself under control and looked back at Elizabeth again.

Elizabeth was watching him, her arms folded in the same way she always had as she considered him, the tips of her hair brushing against her shoulders as she dipped her head to the side, the movement emphasizing the wound.

John sat and waited, keeping his breathing as steady as possible as Elizabeth wandered through the lab, looking at all the different experiments that had been left out on the counters but avoiding the device completely. John had seen her do this dozens of times, coming down in the middle of the afternoon when she had a few minutes and talking to everyone about what they were working on and asking questions. It had been good for morale, and good for Elizabeth to take a breather and be proud of all the things that their people were accomplishing.

When she finished, she stopped by John, her hand coming up to her neck but not touching for the briefest of moments before reaching out and holding her hand beside John's arm, just like he had to her earlier. Her eyes met his again and she frowned, looking as sad she did when they lost someone, before turning and leaving him alone in the lab.

John gave her a few minutes head start, not wanting to run into any more phantoms in the halls. He went back to his room and kicked off his boots before wandering into the bathroom and turning on the faucet and splashing water on his face. He turned off the faucet and looked up, water trickling down his face and dropping in cold droplets on his shirt as he stared into the mirror. The image of him staring back wasn't himself; the straggly hair, the scarring running down the side of his jaw, and the dull and dead eyes not at all what he was used to seeing.

He reached up, pressing the palm of his hand against the side of his face and feeling nothing but stubble, not unkept beard and no scar tissue. Moving up, his hair was the same as always, thick cow licks pressing up stubbornly in clumps even as he pressed down. He considered the apparition in the mirror, wondering if wearing his hair longer would actually help keep everything down or if was just a byproduct of being unwashed. At any rate, the Air Force would never let him wear his hair that long, he was pushing the edge as it was. The only reason that he got away with it was because Carter didn't care and Caldwell was too busy busting his ass about other things to cause a fuss.

Closing his eyes, John counted backwards from ten before opening them again. His reflection had gone back to normal, but it didn't really mean anything. Something had to be done.

*****

"I saw Elizabeth in the labs last night."

Conversation ground to a sudden halt as everyone in the conference room turned to stare at John.

"Excuse me?" Sam asked, looking about as startled and confused as he'd ever seen her. Being in the Stargate program, especially for as long as she had, did a lot to be able to erase the ability to be surprised at most things.

Rodney had gone still, his eyes reflecting a little bit of hurt before he masked it with concern for John.

John instantly felt guilty. It wasn't how he had intended to bring up the subject, and seeing the pain of loss still shrouding Rodney, he knew that he should have waited until it had just been Sam before he said anything.

"In my lab?" Rodney asked.

John quickly looked away from Rodney, the image of him sick and hurt had been getting stronger and its presence more consistent, though he'd just flashed to Rodney with the bullet wound that Sheppard had put there. "Last night. It was exactly like the figures I saw by the 'gate. I think the machine must still be active, even though it felt like it didn't have enough power when I touched it."

"You tried to activate it?" Sam asked, her tone moving rapidly from someone who was concerned for his mental health to someone who was shocked by his dangerous stupidity.

"I was trying to turn it off," John snapped. This wasn't exactly true; he'd been trying to find a way to make it stop whatever it was doing and return him and everyone else back to normal, but the intent was the same.

Jennifer Keller had gone still and quiet, concerned but already slipping into physician mode. As far as John was concerned, she didn't have the experience to understand that this wasn't a medical problem, or a mental problem. This was something that a piece of alien technology was doing to him.

Rodney closed the lid to his laptop, not looking at anyone else in the room. "What was she doing? Did she say anything? A message?"

"No," John said firmly, not wanting Rodney to hope for that, because any hope they might have had for Elizabeth to return safely was long gone. "She's not real. I think she's somehow being generated by that device. If we could somehow figure out how to disable it-"

"How many times to I have to tell you, there is nothing there to disable. It's not doing anything!" Rodney snapped, standing up and pacing to the side of the room. "As far as we can tell, it came into the 'gate room, made a loud sound and turned itself off. That's it."

John got to his feet, pushing himself up with the palms of his hands flat on the table. "That's not it! It did something to us. Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean that it isn't there."

Rodney turned, his expression full of fear and frustration and more than a hint of anger.

"That's enough," Sam said firmly, catching both of them before they could escalate. "There has to be something that we're missing with the device. We can think about it, go back to the drawing board, something. We're just looking at it the wrong way somehow."

Rodney gave a short jerk of his head before flopping back down into his seat.

"John, I'd like Doctor Keller to take another scan. And we should take scans of Chuck, Doctor Zelenka and Sergeant Stackhouse as well. Maybe they've changed enough to tell us something. Or could explain why John is seeing these..." Sam trailed off a bit, waving her hand.

"Right," John agreed grudgingly. It was better than nothing. At least they were going to keep looking at the device, trying to stop it. John didn't know what he'd do if they gave up on it, if they decided to just leave him like this.

Sam dismissed the meeting, Rodney fleeing the room with his laptop tucked underarm and Jennifer not far behind. "John, stay a moment?" she asked.

John stayed, mostly because she held rank and he respected her enough not to make her send their own men on a hunt for him across Atlantis.

"I know this is not what you want to hear, and I'm not trying to suggest in any way that I believe this is your fault or of your own making, but I'd like you to talk with the base psychologist and move some of your responsibilities to Major Lorne. Just until we have a better understanding of what we're dealing with." She at least had the grace to look uncomfortable, but her stance was firm.

John blinked and nodded. With Elizabeth, he could have talked her down, told her that he didn't need the psych eval and that he would be fine after a good night's rest. And she wouldn't have bought it either, but she'd have let him go and trusted him to take himself out of the chain of command if he got to where he was a danger to the city. It wasn't that he respected Sam more than he had Elizabeth, but there were certain workarounds that he could go with when the person he was reporting to didn't have rank and wasn't intimately familiar with the military.

"I'll let the doctor know to be expecting you after you finish with Doctor Keller," Sam gave him a sympathetic smile and turned to the pile of reports and the computer in front of her.

After staying long enough that he felt Sam about to speak again, John got up and left the conference room. He walked towards the staircase, more than willing to go around the long way instead of walking past Chuck, but stopped suddenly and backtracked. He went right up to Chuck's station, really looking the man for the first time since he'd hurried out of the infirmary.

Chuck was superimposed with the same vicious bruising and injuries as just about everyone else that John saw like that, about a third the population of Atlantis as near as he could figure. The dark circles under his eyes were actually there though, John was sure of it because they were the same circles that were under his eyes, and he was sure that if he looked, Radek and Stackhouse would have them as well.

"You see it too, don't you?" John demanded.

Chuck's eyes flickered to John's right hand, and John clenched his fingers, certain that he could feel the hilt of the knife, of his knife, held there. That was all the answer John needed.

*****

"You've lost a lot of people, since coming to Atlantis."

John didn't even look up. The psychologist, the one they sent out to replace Heightmeyer and John hadn't even bothered to learn his name, had been offering statements, trying to get John to respond. John figured that when the man was smart enough to figure out that John was only giving responses when he was asked a direct question, then he might be willing to say something more.

The man paused, and shifted in his chair. "I understand that one of the," he paused as he searched for a word, "presences, that you've seen is Elizabeth Weir."

When John didn't speak, the man pushed. "Is that correct? You've been seeing the ghost of Dr. Weir?"

John shifted his gaze to looking out the window, the lights from Atlantis shining bright against the night sky and dark ocean. "What I'm seeing is not Elizabeth. It's just an image of her that's somehow being generated by that device."

The man nodded, making an encouraging sound. "You don't believe that it's somehow related to any misplaced feelings of guilt you might have not being able to save her?"

At least the question itself was easy enough to answer. "No, I don't."

"Alright," the man flipped to another page in his notebook. "How would you categorize your response to her death?"

John focused his gaze directly at the psychologist, fixing him with a look that would have sent any intelligent person in the opposite direction. "I wouldn't. I think that's a little beyond the scope of the topic."

The man nodded. "Anger, you see, is a perfectly reasonable response to someone asking questions about a topic that is obviously still bothering you."

"Great, my responses are perfectly reasonable. I'll just let you write that down and we can be done here." John allowed a little bit of an impatient drawl enter his voice. It wasn't really that he had better things to do; his team was grounded and Lorne was currently managing most of the scheduling and military matters. And, in some ways it was nice to be secluded away from all of the people who were walking around dead and bleeding and didn't even know it. But John had never fared well with people trying to poke around in his mind, and even less so when he knew they had control over whether or not he was allowed to fly. On Atlantis, it wasn't so much about the flying as it was about his city, but the principle was the same.

"Let's be perfectly honest here, Colonel." He closed his notebook and leaned forward, obviously ready to pronounce his judgment. "Whether or not these 'images', as you call them, are being generated by the machine or by your mind, they are clearly having a profound effect on your mental and physical health. Doctor Keller reports that everyone who was affected by the device has experienced disrupted sleep and visual disturbances, which are known influences on the ability to make sound judgments. Do you really feel that I can clear you for duty in such a state? Would you want me to make the same call for Sergeant Stackhouse?"

John closed his eyes briefly, dropping everything he wanted to say to the man into a little box in his mind and locking it tightly. "Sergeant Stackhouse hasn't spoken since this began, his being cleared for duty isn't even in question."

The man nodded. "That's true. But what about yourself. Do you feel like you are able to make sound and rational judgments in your current condition?"

Holding his hands relaxed against his legs, maintaining the ever so important illusion that he was calm even though he could feel the muscles in his calves and thighs about to tear apart, John raised his chin and forced himself to do what was right for his city. "I feel that it's better Colonel Carter and Major Lorne remain in command for the time being, and that I remain on the city until we learn how to disable the device." He put as much emphasis on the tail end of the sentence as he could.

"You're making the right decision," the psychologist assured him, standing up.

John got up also, well past ready to escape and go take out his rage and frustration sparring with Teyla or Ronon. His hands were almost shaking with the need to move in a way that would make everything else stop, just for a moment.

"I've scheduled a session two days from now, at the same time as this one. I think that we can do a lot of good work together," the psychologist said, with the nerve to actually smile.

John left the room before he could even let himself think of doing something he would regret, even if he could possibly get away with explaining it as a side effect of the machine.

*****

John only heard about it second hand. Neither he nor Teyla had been wearing their radios as they sparred, nothing but the steady sound of their rods clicking and breathing coming in gasps and pants as John neared the edge of his endurance and pushing past. When the marine had interrupted, John had nearly tossed his rods at him just out of spite and frustration and the general feeling of uselessness and exhaustion that had been slowly overwhelming him for weeks.

"Sir." The marine focused his eyes on a space behind John, ignoring the sweat that was dripping off of John and the damp material of his clothing.

"What is it?" John asked, honestly not knowing why the man was there. After a meeting with Sam, insisting that he at least attend the sessions with the psychologist even if he wasn't going to say anything, John had toed the line of the law. He'd gone to sessions, finished paperwork and sent it in, and helped with inventory and other odds and ends on Atlantis. The rest of the time he spent jogging along the edges of the city or sparring with Teyla and Ronon. Every night he checked in the lab, waiting for certain until Rodney had left for the night before going in and staring at the device and looking over whatever information had been left out.

Ford and Elizabeth were there every night, waiting for him and watching. John had tried everything he could think of; ignoring them, talking to them, acting things out in charades, and shouting at the them to just tell him what he needed to do. Granted, the last had mostly been out of rage, and he'd very nearly packed up the device in a puddle jumper and dumped it out in some distant sun. He would have, if he wasn't so afraid that destroying the device wouldn't be enough. After John had pleaded with Sam, she authorized a mission for John off-world, wanting to see if being far away from it would help. It hadn't, and the entire time John was twitching because being away from Atlantis felt so very wrong. When they came back, Chuck, Radek, and Stackhouse had been waiting. John had shaken his head, and they'd all dissipated like they'd never been there at all.

He knew that Rodney knew he was going to the labs, because he started leaving things out for him. Reports, diagnostics, theories were all common offerings, but they were soon joined by little odds and ends like pieces of candy, a pocket first aid kit, and once an Ancient hand held device. At first, John thought that Rodney had just wanted him to turn it on. John had held it in his hand for a long time, watching the flashing lights and feeling what was almost a low level vibration that wasn't physical, but mental. He had left a scribbled note on the back of one of the reports, having to dig through several desk drawers before he gave up and used one of the dry erase markers. When he came back the next night, the device was still there, sitting on top of a new diagnostic. John had turned to Elizabeth, who had sat and watched him the entire night before, and told her that he guessed it was for him. She had stared at him for a long time before smiling just a little, the closest he'd seen her to being like the Elizabeth he remembered.

"Sir?" The marine asked, his gaze flickering nervously to Teyla, who was watching John with a guarded expression.

"Yes?" John snapped, aware that he'd disappeared in his own thoughts, hadn't even heard the marine talking to him.

"Doctor Zelenka, sir. Major Lorne asked me to tell you," the marine said, looking distinctly uncomfortable.

"What happened?" John set down his rods and walked over to where his radio was sitting next to Teyla's, with Teyla following right behind him.

"He's in the infirmary." The marine backed up as John jogged past him.

John sensed more than saw or heard Teyla running beside him, aware that he was no longer out of breath or tired at all. They reached the infirmary more quickly than John thought was possible, though the trip to the infirmary always seemed either incredibly fast or impossibly slow.

When they dashed in, John came to a sudden stop, his heart pounding so loud that he could barely hear Rodney and Radek bickering. Radek was laying in one of the hospital beds but was propped up and typing rapidly on a laptop. Rodney turned and looked at him and Teyla.

"What happened?" John asked again, noticing that Radek was all hooked up to the machines that somehow seemed to multiply around beds in the infirmary but he actually looked better than he had been for a while.

Radek spoke in Czech again and waved Rodney away from his bedside.

After a concerned look, Rodney left and walked over to John and Teyla. "He had a seizure. Just standing there in the lab, and we were arguing about something and he started shaking and collapsed."

Even though Rodney was trying to cover it up, John could see how shaken up the experience had left him. Teyla had clearly caught it as well and was leading Rodney over to the chairs that were shoved up against one of the walls. It was usually used as a semi-private area for teams was waiting to know about an injury or other calamity, but was currently empty.

"What," John frowned and looked back to where Radek was focused on his laptop, typing rapidly enough that John could hear the click of the keys from across the infirmary. "What is he doing?"

Rodney shook his head and threw his hands up in the air. "When he woke up he demanded a computer, and said that he had to get it all down before he lost it. That he was already forgetting. Or something like that, my Czech is a little hit or miss."

As they sat, Teyla with one of her hands resting comfortingly on Rodney's arm and John leaning up against the wall next to the chairs, John thought that this was almost like everything had been before. They were still worried and people were still getting hurt just by being on Atlantis, but there was a sense of camaraderie that John had found that he had missed during his self-imposed isolation.

After nearly an hour, the sound of typing clicked to a slow halt, and they looked up again. Rodney got to his feet and walked back to Radek's bed, John and Teyla following. They waited for another moment while Jennifer finished checking over the monitors.

"You should be fine, I think." Jennifer shrugged and shook her head. "I'd like to do another scan though."

"Yes, yes," Radek pushed the laptop across the bed a bit before leaning back against his pillow, obviously exhausted. "This needs to get to Rodney and Sam. Very important."

"You realize it's going to take me forever to translate this," Rodney said after he scanned through the document.

Radek waved one of his hands. "Get started. I will help when I wake up. It's important."

Rodney rolled his eyes. "Yes, I'm sure you had a great scientific revelation while your brain was bouncing around in your skull."

"I remembered about the device. Very important," Radek said again, shutting his eyes.

"Let him sleep," Jennifer said, waving them all away from the bed before anyone could ask anything further.

"Doctor Zelenka will be alright?" Teyla asked.

John felt a little guilty for not asking himself, but ever since Radek had said that he knew something about the device, John had been reading over Rodney's shoulder. Though, it wasn't really reading, because he didn't know Czech, as it was watching Rodney slowly scroll through the text and waiting for him to say that he knew how to fix it. Rodney, however remained silent and focused.

"He should be. His scans came back different, though I've been taking regular scans of everyone who was affected by the device. I think whatever was affecting him was the cause of the seizure, and the seizure managed to reset him back to a normal state." Jennifer frowned as she looked down at her tablet.

"That doesn't sound very scientific," John said, wondering if that's what he had in store for his own brain. Though, if a seizure would fix everything, maybe Jennifer would be able to induce seizures in all of them.

Jennifer shrugged. "It's not. It's just my best guess to what's happening. They didn't exactly cover alien technology altering brain waves in medical school."

John nodded and thought that he'd had that exact same response when trying to write reports that people who had never seen the Stargate, let alone an alien, would be able to read and understand why he had to do what he'd done.

"I need to go to my lab," Rodney said, closing the lid of the laptop and walking out of the infirmary.

John resisted the urge to follow, knowing that he'd just be underfoot. "Mess hall?" he asked Teyla.

Teyla smiled and agreed.

The hope that Radek had found something that would be able to disable the device and set everything back to normal, or relatively normal at least, left John feeling more willing to face people, even though the images of mass destruction and injury were starting to overlap onto Atlantis itself, not just people anymore.

*****

The next day they gathered in the conference room, Radek conspicuously absent, but Major Lorne present as the temporary commander of the military on Atlantis. Major Lorne kept giving John apologetic looks, like he felt guilty for having to replace John, and John hadn't done as much as he maybe should have to relieve that guilt. John knew it wasn't the man's fault that he was left in charge, and even though John had frequently left him in temporary command of the military while John was on off-world missions, this was different and they both knew it.

Rodney slunk in at the last moment possible, sitting at the table between Sam and Jennifer but not opening his laptop immediately like he nearly always did. John knew enough about Rodney's habits to know that was not a good sign.

"Let's get started," Sam looked around to make sure she had everyone's attention. "I've had a chance to glance over the information that Radek and Rodney have translated, from what Radek has recalled, and to say the least it's very disturbing."

John took a good look at Sam for the first time since he'd sat down in the room and noticed that she looked a little pinched and worried. He hadn't seen her look like that except in situations where they were pretty sure they were all going to die.

"I think we need to keep in mind the source and veracity of the information," Jennifer interrupted, looking just as ill as Sam. "The brain is a very delicate organ, and even though Doctor Zelenka obviously believes what he's written down is true, there is no way of verifying it."

Rodney sputtered, pushing his still closed laptop away. "What do you mean? I think from the effects that have been described, that's exactly what that device is trying to do. The brain scans on Sheppard and the others support what Radek is telling us."

"I just don't see how it's possible," Jennifer shook her head.

"For those of us who haven't seen the report yet, do you care to summarize?" Lorne asked.

John felt incredibly grateful to the man in that moment, wanting to know what they were talking about even though he certainly hadn't been given access to whatever Radek had written out.

"Of course," Sam looked over at John and he could see her framing things in her mind and deciding what she needed to leave out. "Doctor Zelenka wrote a rather detailed account of what it was like on Atlantis in a different reality. They never received assistance from Earth, and the attacks were rather worse than what were reported in our reality."

When she paused, Rodney took up the rest. "They were barely surviving, dwindling food supply and ammunition. Basically, they were looking a lot like we were at the end of the first year, except they never made an alliance with the Athosians. Without their help, trade was difficult and people were dying."

"And the device that came through the 'gate told Zelenka all of this? Like a time capsule of some kind?" Lorne asked, frowning.

Sam, Rodney and Jennifer all exchanged glances but it was John who answered. "They put their memories in us? That's why I keep seeing things that aren't really here?" John felt his stomach turn, thinking of all the dead and dying people he'd been watching. All of those people were his responsibility and he had failed them so spectacularly.

"A little more than that, even." Jennifer spoke up. "According to what Radek has written out, the consciousnesses and memories were supposed to override yours completely. You were supposed to become them."

John stared and Rodney and vividly recalled pulling his pistol from his holster and shooting him, sighting down his arm and hand to his best friend and pulling the trigger just as easily as if it had been a Wraith on the other side. Swallowing, John stood and walked from the room, keeping his hands where he could see them and well away from any weapons. He walked until he reached an area of the city that he barely recognized, not sure if the damage he could see on the walls and floors was actually there or if it was just part of the afterimages he was seeing over just about everything.

He stood there for a long time until he heard footsteps. He turned, not knowing who to expect, but not really surprised when he found Radek staring back at him.

"It is fading quickly now, like a bad dream in the morning, after the first cup of coffee. I think that now the memories have been unseated, most of them will not remain." Radek walked closer and looked at John. "It is a relief, to see things normally again. I had almost forgotten what you looked like in this reality."

John nodded cautiously. Radek looked normal to him now too; healthy and uninjured. There were still dark circles under his eyes, his glasses magnifying them, and his hair was perhaps a little more wild than he recalled, but his color was healthy and there were no visible wounds.

"Why did I do it?" John asked, the words almost stuck in his throat.

The way Radek's eyes flickered meant that he knew exactly what John was asking. "The device, we called it a memory life raft. You started to think it was the only way we were going to survive Atlantis. Our only hope."

John could put together the rest of the pieces by himself, but he wanted to hear it. "And?"

"Rodney disagreed. He refused to finish the work." Radek shook his head. "That man was nothing like you. Maybe you started from the same place, but he is not you."

"Maybe before that thing came through the 'gate. But now I'm not so sure." John pressed his hand up against his head, his fingertips touching his hair. He was sure that it had gotten longer, longer than it should. There were unfamiliar creases on his face, that John was certain were starting to feel like scar tissue. "Radek, if I ever... If I become him. Stop me. No matter what."

Their eyes met and Radek nodded, his eyes sad and serious. "You have my word."

*****

Sergeant Stackhouse had a grand mal seizure two days later, a member of his team calling frantically over the radio for medical assistance from out on one of the piers. Eventually they had classified Stackhouse as mostly harmless and let him roam Atlantis as long as he had someone, usually one of his teammates volunteering, to keep an eye on him.

Stackhouse slept for a long time, and John was starting to wonder if the man had just wanted the extra sleep even though Jennifer had assured him that Stackhouse was recovering about as expected. When he finally woke, he was back to his self, or at least as far as John could tell, not having spent much time with the marine. The expressions of relief as the rest of Stackhouse's team filtered out of the infirmary, all of them having dropped by to check on him, helped John to relax a little. Even though Rodney and Radek were still working on the device, a lot of the progress from the details that Radek had written down, it was starting to seem like the situation would just resolve itself.

Somehow, John couldn't quite believe it, because nothing on Earth worked that way, and certainly nothing in the Pegasus galaxy did either. The only difference was that Earth allowed that false sense of security that everything might be alright and help was on the way. At least in Pegasus they knew upfront they had to fight for everything they had, for every day they were still alive.

"How are you feeling, Sergeant?" John asked, keeping his tone as laid back as possible. The man, like Radek, looked back to his normal self, if a little thinner and still exhausted. Maybe he did just need some extra sleep.

"Sir." Stackhouse started to push himself up on his elbows before John waved him off. "Better than I have in, I don't even know how long, sir."

When Stackhouse shook his head and looked around the infirmary like he was only just remembering where he was, John felt a pang of empathy. He understood that the device had messed with his sense of time; days seemed shorter, nights unending, and all surrounded by vague impressions of hazy sunsets and spaces in between. "I'm sure the doc will clear you in no time," John said, trying to sound reassuring and like he was in more possession of his faculties than he actually was.

Stackhouse bobbed his head. "Tomorrow, if my brain scans are clear. Everything is already starting to fade. I remember patrolling, almost like I've been doing it for weeks on end."

"Write down whatever you remember while you have the chance. Doctor Zelenka lost most of the memories pretty quickly. Whatever you remember about that device is the most important. I'll have someone bring you a laptop." John frowned as he remembered Radek typing rapidly, afraid that he was going to lose something important.

"Yes, sir." Stackhouse frowned as he looked down at his hands. As John was starting to walk away, Stackhouse called out to him. "Colonel Sheppard?"

John turned and resumed his place by his bedside. "Yes, Sergeant?"

Stackhouse looked directly up into John's eyes. "I'm sorry, sir."

John thought about asking what he was apologizing for, though John could think of half a dozen things he felt like he should be apologizing to Stackhouse for instead. Finally he just nodded. "Me too." He walked away, pausing to give a nurse instructions to deliver a laptop to Stackhouse and to have one on hand for the next person who experienced the seizures.

*****

"The device became the focal point of our existence. It was all anyone cared about anymore. Colonel Sheppard was very dedicated to making sure it was finished and deployed; all other goals were secondary." Stackhouse explained from where he sat at the end of the conference room, avoiding looking anywhere near John.

They had all gathered for the debrief, Rodney and Radek both listening carefully for any more information that might help them figure out how to turn the device off. Now that they knew it was on, even though they couldn't find a power source or any energy readings whatsoever, they thought that turning it off might at least resolve the phantom images that Chuck and John were still seeing.

Elizabeth and Ford had taken to following John around instead of just waiting for him, even though they still showed up in the lab more often than anywhere else. Radek had watched John knowingly, when John's eyes wandered. Even though Radek couldn't see her anymore, and even though no one had believed that John was just imagining or hallucinating Ford and Elizabeth, John still felt a little bit vindicated knowing that it wasn't just him.

Now, they just stood behind him in the conference room; Ford standing stock still as he focused on Stackhouse while Elizabeth wandered from spot to spot and watched thoughtfully. John barely even noticed Elizabeth's gaping wound anymore; her current appearance had almost replaced his mental picture of Elizabeth, something he would worry about if he took the time.

Stackhouse shifted in his seat, looking briefly down at the table before refocusing his eyes directly ahead in true military form.

"Take your time, Sergeant," Sam said gently, obviously aware of how much he was struggling with relaying the events.

"When the device was finished, there was some debate on whether or not it could actually be used. There was a faction that was determined that the device was either beyond the realm of morality or that it wouldn't work as it was supposed to." Stackhouse's eyes wandered around the room, taking in the people around him. "And it, didn't, clearly. This wasn't what was supposed to happen."

"Right, right. The device was supposed to transmit the memories and personality in its entirety. You were supposed to lose consciousness and wake up in another reality, correct?" Rodney asked, looking up from his computer.

"That's what they said would happen." Stackhouse glanced at Radek before turning away.

Both Elizabeth and Ford had walked over to Stackhouse, Ford standing directly beside him and glaring. It was the first time John had seen Ford express any sort of emotion, and it didn't help that both Ford and Elizabeth were seeming more solid as the days passed, until John couldn't really see through them anymore.

"But that's not what happened?" Sam prompted.

"No. The memories and personalities were incomplete, they degraded somehow while they were stored in the device. And, in that reality, after a person had been downloaded into the device, they were almost empty husks. They were still alive, but they had no idea who they were, or what was happening. When word got out, we had to round up the remaining survivors by force and bring them to be processed," Stackhouse looked down at his hands. "I never thought that I could..."

"It wasn't you, Sergeant." John said, staring at him. "This man may have looked like you, carried your name, had a similar past. But you are not that man."

It was the same thing that John had been telling himself over and over; it was the only way he could even look at anyone anymore. He hadn't looked in the mirror at all since he discovered that he could only see himself from the alternate reality. From the expression on Radek's face, it was something that the man had been trying to tell himself as well and it was working about as well for him as it was for John.

"Lieutenant Ford was the last person I processed before the Colonel asked me to connect myself to the device. He said he would take care of everyone else. I did as he asked without question." Stackhouse met John's gaze for the first time since he'd entered the conference room. "I followed orders."

After a period of silence, Sam spoke up. "Unless you can think of anything else that's important that we know, I think we can end this interview."

Stackhouse shook his head. "No, Ma'am. I wish I knew more about the device, but I only saw people use it. I didn't help with research and development."

"Thank you for your help. Your team is looking forward to having you back in the field with them," Sam gave him a sincere smile.

Stackhouse nodded and got to his feet. "Colonels, Major." He walked out of the room and John watched as Ford followed him out. John wondered for a moment if he should be worried about Ford exacting revenge on Stackhouse, but the ghosts had yet to physically interact with anything. There wasn't much they could do about it anyway, considering that the only person besides John would could even see the ghosts was Chuck.

"Any progress, gentlemen?" Sam asked, turning to Rodney and Radek.

Radek shook his head. "My notes, what I remembered from fixing the device, it is all confused. Many pieces are missing."

"We're doing what we can, but as far as we can tell the device was supposed to shut off after it transferred the personalities into their hosts. For whatever reason, it didn't shut off, and there doesn't seem to be an off-switch of any type built into the device." Rodney frowned as he looked back at his laptop. "The Ancients were bad at leaving instructions at the best of times, and I haven't found anything in the database in our reality about the device, and we didn't find it in the lab where Radek indicated it was found in the other reality."

"It does not seem like the device was ever invented here, and even if it was, it is doubtful that this was ever the intended purpose of the device," Radek shut his laptop and turned to John. "But we are working on it. We will not give up."

John nodded silently, watching as Elizabeth stopped by Radek's side and held her hands near the second laptop that sat between Radek and Rodney. She moved her fingers like she was typing, but the keys wouldn't depress. She looked back up at John and reached her hand up to touch the gash in her throat before she walked away, leaving the room through the closing doorway.

*****

It was three days after Chuck had his seizure that John sought him out. He had made himself scarce almost immediately after he'd been released from the infirmary, and had given his report on the situation directly to Sam instead of in a briefing. Sam had told them that Chuck knew nothing about the machine and needed some space before he returned to duty.

John gave the man as much space as he could manage before snagging a life sign detector and walking down to one of the lower piers. It was an area that was off-limits anyway, damaged in ways they neither had the time nor resources to repair. When John walked in, as unsteathily as possible so he didn't scare Chuck, Chuck didn't move. From the pack and the blankets, Chuck had obviously been camping out, but John couldn't bring him to berate the man or lecture about the possibility of sudden storms or Wraith attack. Chuck had memories of living through the destruction of Atlantis, Chuck knew more than could be put into words about the dangers.

"I knew you would come," Chuck said.

"I figured you would," John replied. He walked closer and sat down, near the man but out of striking distance. Ford and Elizabeth hadn't followed him, and when John looked around he realized that for the first time the damage to Atlantis he was seeing was real, and not superimposed. This area of Atlantis must be just as it was in the other reality.

"We hid here, for a while. Your teams were all over Atlantis, trying to round everyone up. Our cell was the last to be caught, and that surprised you. I think you thought some of the bands of defected military would be more difficult to find. But me, Elizabeth, and Kusanagi were better than that." Chuck shifted and dug around in his bag and pulled out a water canteen. He drunk before offering it to John.

John declined the offer. "It wasn't me, you know. And it wasn't you."

"Maybe not. But in some ways it was." Chuck leaned back until he was staring up at the night sky. "Part of me wants to get on the Daedalus when it comes back, go running back to Earth and pretend that everything is safe there. No Wraith, no one coming through the 'gate being shot at, no Ancient devices from alternate realities."

"But you won't, because Earth wouldn't be any better. You'd just be helpless waiting for the Wraith or the Ori or the Replicators, or something we haven't even heard of yet," John said. He had thought of going back to Earth, once or twice after it had become an option. Mostly it was in the infirmary right after a mission that had gone horribly wrong, or after they lost people.

Chuck nodded slowly. "Exactly. And they don't even know it. They could all be annihilated at any moment, and only a few thousand people would have any clue what was happening."

They sat in silence, and John tried to think of something he could say that would make things better, make it so that Chuck could come back to the 'gate room and not look at John like he thought he was a monster. His fingers moved back and forth over the side of his pants as he focused out on the water.

"You can feel it now, can't you?" Chuck asked.

When John looked, he found that Chuck was staring at where his fingers were moving. When he looked down, he saw that it was the hilt of the knife that he was stroking, the knife that he could see but couldn't quite touch, even though there was definitely a weight and a space of resistance that his fingers couldn't push past either. "Yes," John said. There was no reason to lie.

"When you caught me and Elizabeth, you and your soldiers brought us down to the machine. Kusanagi had leapt into the ocean, rather than be taken. We didn't see her surface. You attached Elizabeth to the device, and just before it activated, you leaned forward and whispered something to her. And then, as it was downloading her, you slit her throat. The device finished and she died shortly after." Chuck looked over at John, almost emotionless in his expression.

"You could see Elizabeth here, see her ghost?" John asked.

"Yes. She was with me a lot. I think she remembered me, remembered the months we spent hiding and running." Chuck tightened his hands around the canteen. "Radek says that the memories are already fading for him. That he's forgotten a lot already. I don't know that I can forget some of this."

John let out a breath and decided that he was relieved that he didn't remember the events Chuck was describing. It seemed that the seizures allowed the memories to process differently, more like remembering something that they'd watched or read than something they'd lived, or at least that's how Stackhouse had explained it. John wasn't sure that he wanted to remember all the things that he'd been told about his alternate self, from the vague details that the others had dared to say. From the sideways glances they gave him, there was a lot more they weren't saying.

There were a lot of things John should be saying, a lot of things that a good leader or military commander would say to reassure the man and get him back out to his job, and feeling good about it too. But John couldn't bring himself to say any of those things. Instead, he got to his feet. "Keep an eye on the sky. Weather is unpredictable here, we haven't seen enough of the climate patterns to know how bad the storms get."

He could feel Chuck watching him as he left, walking back up to the transporter. When he got inside, he reached to touch the control panel, but nothing happened. He turned and found that the doors had shut him inside, and weren't responding. The transporter had looked more than a little worn and damaged when he'd taken it down to the pier, but it had worked well enough and John had assumed the damage was just the overlap from his visions. Which, it had to be because there was no way Rodney would just let one of the transporters malfunction like this.

"Sheppard to McKay," John tapped his radio and waited with less patience than he might otherwise have mustered. "McKay, respond."

"What is it?" Rodney snapped an instant later. "You do realize that it's nearly two in the morning?"

John hadn't realized, not that he really cared. "I'm stuck in a transporter, third pier."

Even though John couldn't hear it, he could well imagine Rodney sighing as he swung his feet out of bed and started looking for clothing. "I'll have to go around. It will take me at least thirty minutes to get there. Anything else I need to know?"

"I can't get the control panel to respond or the doors to open. Emergency lights are on though." John said as he looked around the empty transporter.

"Copy that, McKay out." Rodney closed the connection without waiting for a response.

John gave a sigh himself and leaned against the wall of the transporter. In the dim light, he could see his reflection in the unresponsive control panel, a crack stretching across the glass marring the image. His reflection looked back out at him, shaggy hair, scars and all. John swore that it was moving without any help from him, the knife flickering idly in his reflections fingers. He wanted to turn away, not watch anymore, but found that he didn't trust it enough, the knife wound on his shoulder still not healing. He stared back, meeting the reflection's gaze as he waited.

*****

The doors opened before John even realized that Rodney had arrived or that much time had passed.

Rodney poked his head in, frowning as the transporter lit up and the control panel responded to his touch without hesitation.

"It wasn't working," John said quickly, glancing at the repair kit that Rodney held.

"I believe you. I saw that you were in here in the dark," Rodney frowned as he tapped the panel to return them to the main section of the city. "Maybe, this is doing something to your gene. Making the city not be able to respond somehow?"

John looked over and saw that not only did Rodney look deathly ill and wounded on top of that, all of which he had seen before even if he didn't think he'd ever be used to it, but beyond that, Rodney looked exhausted; his clothes rumpled and his hair unkempt. "You weren't sleeping, were you?"

"Not exactly. I may have drifted for a moment, but I was in my lab." Rodney sighed again and ran his fingers through his hair, only succeeding in making it more ruffled than before.

John felt a pain of guilt as he watched Rodney. Just like in that other reality, John was killing him with this device. Maybe not so directly as a gunshot to the head, but killing him nevertheless.

"When you look at me, you see me as I was in the other reality?" Rodney asked. Before John had a chance to continue, Rodney pressed onward. "You see me dead. That's what Radek said he saw. It only makes sense that you see the same thing. Jennifer thinks that it's something to do with what the device is doing to your visual cortex, that it's not just sense memory, but something else as well."

Rodney finally stopped speaking and after a moment John responded. "Yes, that's what I see."

They got out of the transporter and started walking. "I'm trying to fix it. I know it's not good enough. But I will. We've got more information now then we had before-"

"Rodney. Maybe you should just leave it alone." John spoke before Rodney tried to explain how they would somehow fix it. He knew Rodney well enough to know that if he said that he was trying, not explaining exactly how his amazing intellect already knew the solution, it wasn't going to get fixed. And somewhere, Rodney knew it too, or he wouldn't be trying to convince John that he could still fix it.

"What? Sheppard, I'm not just going to leave you like this. Even if you have a seizure like the others, we still have to figure out how to safely dispose of the thing. Who knows what kind of effects it could be having without us even knowing it." Rodney scowled as they entered the lab.

John ignored Rodney and walked over to the device, trying not to see it as the thing that was destroying his mind and his sanity, something that was keeping him from his position on Atlantis and on his team. Instead, he tried to see it like Sheppard must have; his last chance at keeping his people safe, even if he had to kill them to save them. For the barest moment, John managed it and was sure he felt something change, felt the air around him shift and all the hair on his arms and the back of his neck stood straight up.

Then it was gone and everything was back the way it had been only seconds ago, except Elizabeth and Ford were both there watching him with what looked like concern. Rodney had sat back down at his laptop but was just staring blankly at the screen as various monitors and graphs scrolled slowly. The area around his laptop was a disaster, empty mess hall trays and food wrappers surrounded by coffee mugs and discarded whiteboard markers, and two uniform jackets laying on the floor under the workstation.

In the end, it was the slump of Rodney's shoulders and the listlessness of his expression that made up John's mind. This couldn't go on. "It's late. Let's call it a night," John said. He reached across the table and closed the lid to Rodney's laptop. It only reinforced his decision when Rodney didn't even object.

He walked Rodney back to his quarters and waited until he was inside before starting his customary tour through Atlantis.

*****

John waited five days before he decided that it was time to act. The seizures in the others had only been a couple of days apart and it had been a week since Chuck had his. Rodney was still looking exhausted and rumpled beneath the overlay of John's visions, though it was getting harder and harder to discern what was really here and what was from the other reality. Radek was also starting to look more and more worn, despite the overlay from the other reality having vanished entirely. They had done all they could possibly do to disable the device, more than anyone else could have, and now it was up to John to fix it. In the end, when it really came down to it, it was always up to John.

He'd been going to the lab every night, half the time having to kick Rodney out and escort him back to his quarters before he could have the place to himself. Sitting, he would stare at the device and try to get back to that moment he'd felt before, the one that seemed to automatically draw Ford and Elizabeth into the room. They both seemed very interested in what he was doing; Ford watching and occasionally nodding, and Elizabeth edging closer to the device and starting to reach for it. John had made sure to watch what she did carefully, where her hands hovered over and the movements she made.

It was the middle of the night when John went down to the lab, already knowing for sure that everyone else was safely where they needed to be and he would be alone. Part of his mind suggested that he should have back-up of some kind, even if they couldn't do anything to help, or at the very least have a doctor around in case something went spectacularly wrong. But the sense that he had to do something and now, and the fear that they would try to stop him if they knew, pushed aside all other considerations.

Ford and Elizabeth seemed to know something was up and they accompanied him down to the lab, just about as solemn as he'd ever really seen them. John forced himself to look around as he walked, taking in all of the damage that he'd been trying to ignore over the past weeks. It hurt in ways that he couldn't look too closely at to see his city in such bad shape, to see the walls cracking, sections of the floor missing entirely, and the beautiful windows reduced to shards of colored glass. He kept his eyes open and all of his awareness focused externally, not allowing himself to think about what he was about to do.

The lab was dark when he walked inside and John didn't bother trying to force the lights on. Atlantis had been reacting less and less to the presence of his gene, doors slow to open, lights having to be handled manually, his shower unpredictable at best. After the incident with the transporters, John avoided them entirely unless someone else was with him. Light from various monitors provided just enough light to see by and John walked up to the table that contained the device without hesitation.

He placed his hands on it, in the same locations that he'd seen Elizabeth's hands hovering over, and reached with his mind as hard as he could. Elizabeth and Ford both approached, Elizabeth's hands resting just over his while Ford stood guard. John closed his eyes and allowed the wash of sensation and memory from the device flood into him as he searched for how it worked. He came across more information than he could ever want to know; Rodney researching how to open the 'gate to other realities in a whirl of equations that he could almost understand, the panicked treks of groups as they were hunted through Atlantis, the pure desperation and fear and near hopelessness that drove them all.

Just when he reached the core, where it was becoming more of the device than the people it contained, John felt a rush of wind, and resisted the urge to look up to see what was happening because he already knew. Sheppard was there, trying to stop him. He could hear Elizabeth's scream, but couldn't tell if it was the Elizabeth who had been haunting his reality or the memory of Elizabeth in the device. He supposed that they were the one and the same, when it came down to it. A moment later, a sensation of deep cold and shock was wrenching through his back, a sensation that John was only then able to identify as being stabbed. The knife still embedded in his back, John felt a tug on the hilt and turned his head to find Sheppard leaning into him, his gazed locked onto John.

It took everything John had to turn his head and close his eyes again. Even as he could feel blood slowly trickling down his back, John thought as hard as he could about how they were all safe, about the Atlantis that he'd come to know over the past four years, and all the people he knew were safe tucked away in their beds or at their posts. 'We're alive. We're safe,' was the message he directed over and over to the device, feeling something respond. 'The task is complete,' he insisted, feeling whatever consciousness the device contained turn off until he was just clutching onto dead metal.

John opened his eyes and stared out across the lab, the lights bright and everything looking about as it had before the fiasco had started. He let the counter take his weight and thought of reaching for his radio before remembering that he hadn't worn it to the lab in case he was interrupted. There had to be another radio somewhere in the lab, John was certain, but he just had to rest for a moment before he could go find it. Just close his eyes again, for one moment.

*****

He had barely managed to pry his eyes open a little bit when Rodney spoke.

"If I ever walk into my lab and find you bleeding to death again, I'm going to make you wish that whatever idiotic stunt you'd planned had killed you instead," Rodney blurted out, sounding caught somewhere between relieved and furious.

"Rodney!" Jennifer immediately rebuked, stepping into John's line of sight.

John blinked as the infirmary slowly came into focus, along with a group of people crowded around his bed.

"How are you feeling?" Teyla asked, looking more than a little worried.

After looking over everyone, relieved to find that Rodney looked like himself again, if still rumpled and worried, he looked around the room and saw that everything was back to the way it should be. "Never better," John managed, a little surprised at how much moving, breathing and speaking hurt.

"I'm sure," Jennifer said with a bit of a frown as she examined the monitors John was hooked up to. "Now that you're conscious, we can get you set up with some better pain management. And as soon as that kicks in, we'll go over and take brain scans."

"Goody," John managed to mumble, avoiding shifting as much as possible.

"Don't think you're off the hook for not telling me about your shoulder not healing," Jennifer added with a bit of a stern glare before she softened into a smile. "We're glad that you're doing better though."

John smiled in acknowledgement as Jennifer bustled away.

"You'll be back sparring with me in no time, right Sheppard?" Ronon asked, just a touch of menacing in his voice but John recognized the disguised concern.

"Put me on the calendar. Sparring with a stab wound is good practice," John huffed and shifted his shoulders, feeling the lump of the bandages under his back.

Rodney sputtered and John fought not to laugh or even breath harder as he closed his eyes again. Now that everything was alright, everyone was safe, it was easier to do. He drifted back to sleep listening to Teyla guide his team away so that he could get some rest.

When he opened his eyes again, in much less pain then he had been when he'd woke the first time, he found that he had company again.

"You fixed it?" Chuck asked, before looking away with a blush. "I mean, how are you feeling, sir?"

John nodded. "They're gone. All of them."

Chuck stared at him for a moment, his eyes traveling along John's face and down to where his empty hands were laying, before slowly nodding. "Thank you." He stood to leave, but John waved his hand to catch his attention.

"You're right," John said. When Chuck simply raised his eyebrow, John continued. "I don't think I'm going to be forgetting some of this either."

Chuck stared, a little sad and lost. "So we just learn to live with it?" he asked.

John shrugged as best he could, wincing a little as his shoulder and the muscles in his back protested. "Something like that."

With a final nod, Chuck left John's bedside, his stance a little straighter and more confident than the last time John had seen him.

John looked around the infirmary and listened to the steady chatter of voices, a doctor and a patient, and two nurses further away. Even though he couldn't block out the memories of Atlantis being destroyed, of his friends and colleagues dying or slowly becoming unrecognizable, all John had to do was open his eyes to see that none of it was real. Not here at least, and that was enough.

The End

Comments

[emeraldsnakes.livejournal.com]

Well you already know how much I love this!
I think some of my favourite parts were John's reactions to seeing each of the alternates for the first time. And the parallel between the two realities, how a few differences changes everything even tho a few fundamentals remain.

Also, pretty banner is pretty.

[welfycat]

Thank you! And thank you so much again for your awesome beta! So very helpful!

I always like to hear about what parts people liked or thought were interesting.

And yay banner! :)

[(Anonymous)]

*dies a little inside*

That was heart-wrenching. But so good
-Cass

[welfycat]

I'm glad you liked it, thank you for reading! :)

*hopes that Cass didn't die too much*

[gaffsie]

Very creepy! I'm so relieved John found a way to deactivate that device in the end.

[panisdead]

Oooh, creepy and nicely unsettling. I like how much the few affected are afraid of John (being chased through the city by him, GAH), and how much John's disturbed by his alternate self.

[michelel72]

This is a chilling scenario! (I really like that John was responsible and agreed to take himself partially off duty, by the way.) But just the arrogance of the device programmers, and the vulnerability of "our" guys to the technique ... ::shiver::

[welfycat]

I'm glad it was creepy!
And I am also very glad that John figured it out.
Thanks for commenting!

[welfycat]

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. And yeah, John would be a pretty terrifying guy to be hunted by.

[welfycat]

Thank you! I'm glad you commented about John being responsible, which is something that I really think he would be, when it came to the city.

Also, your icon is adorable!