Chapter Text
Elizabeth Weir stood in front of the window she’d claimed as her own trying to hold back her tears. The ocean in front of her raged angry and she shivered. Where had it all gone so wrong? This had been her dream. To explore another galaxy, discover the lost city of Atlantis, it had been the change of a lifetime.
Sure, there had been some hesitation at first on whether or not the expedition would survive. But everyone knew that the SGC had a ship in construction to come get them if anything went too wrong.
It had started the minute they’d arrived. Soon as the gate had shut down, all the active gene carriers they’d brought, including their Chief Medical Officer, Carson Beckett, had fallen ill. Without Carson to guide them through the newness of the ancient infirmary and indeed without any ATA gene carriers to work the infirmary, none of the other doctors were able to figure out what was ailing the sickened.
What’s worse, they’d found Atlantis to be under water with only a single shield holding the ocean back. Dr. Rodney McKay had worked hard to strengthen the shield with the limited power they had. He’d eventually learned that there was a failsafe in the program designed to raise the city once the shield started failing. Almost immediately after they’d all breathed that sigh of relief, he too fell ill.
So, stuck under water in a city that wouldn’t respond to any of them with all of their gene carriers invalid, Elizabeth and Colonel Marshall Sumner had set up a primitive camp in the central tower and sent a very brief message back to Earth asking for evacuation (the power of which came to nearly deplete the ZPM, but not quite yet enough to raise the city) as soon as the spaceship was constructed.
Elizabeth chocked back a hysterical sob. She had dreamed so much about the lost city, only to find that it didn’t respond to her at all. No lights turned on, no doors opened. It was dead except for only the most basic of controls.
Elizabeth had wanted to explore the other planets of the galaxy, but Sumner had vetoed. They couldn’t risk letting any potential hostiles know of their position. They were practically sitting ducks and there was a strange warning hologram that spoke of an enemy that had forced the Ancients back to Earth 10,000 years ago.
This was it, Elizabeth thought. The Daedalus was scheduled to beam them all up any minute. Back to international diplomacy, to her failing relationship with her fiancée Simon Wallace, back to a semi-normal life. Back to Earth where she’d have to pretend she’d never gone to another galaxy.
Elizabeth felt a single tear drip down her cheek and she hiccuped.
“Goodbye, Atlantis,” she whispered.
And then, with a bright flash of light, she was gone.
-0o0oOo0o0-
All over Earth, individuals felt the gate to Atlantis open, though they had no idea what it was they were feeling. One by one, they wondered what that strange sense of longing was. One by one, they slowly grew sick.
-0o0oOo0o0-
Mike Dorsey stood in front of the disciplinary committee with a ramrod straight back. It was just another black mark on his record. He’d never rise to Lt. Colonel at this point, but he didn’t regret his actions in setting the bomb off. The bastards had tortured and raped his teammates, they’d deserved it. “I understand, sirs.”
Colonel Ellis frowned at him. “Dismissed, Major.”
Dorsey saluted sharply and did an about face. As he walked away, he could feel the headache that had been plaguing him come back.
Dorsey rubbed his temples, digging hard into his skin. Wincing, he pulled back, certain for a moment that he’d actually bruised himself. Glancing down, he rubbed his hands together, skin feeling suddenly dry.
Dorsey shook his himself and sighed. “I’m too goddamn tired for this shit.”
-0o0oOo0o0-
Andrew Markham sat up in his military hospital bed, breathing hard. He felt at his chest, wincing as he pulled at the IVs in his hand. Where? Where was he?
“What?” Markham murmured to himself.
He didn’t know. Someone was missing, someone he cared for. He thought he cared for. Someone important to him.
“Who?” he asked himself. He had no family, no good friends, and definitely no lovers. He was alone in the world.
In the next room over, Richard Stackhouse groaned and rolled over on his bed.
-0o0oOo0o0-
Xiao Hu Kiang clutched her head, muttering Chinese and English curse words as the pain forced her to her knees.
The unknown plant in front of her began to wilt. She looked up at it, blinking as its leaves turned bright red, then back to green.
“Shen me?” she asked. “The hell?”
-0o0oOo0o0-
Rodney McKay stared at the ceiling of the hospital. His mind was blank; for the first time in his life he was having trouble thinking. All he knew was that he was missing something.
It had to do with Atlantis, he knew. It had to.
Something was there, Rodney thought. Something had happened.
Rodney frowned, but before he could develop that idea further another blinding headache hit him and he curled up tightly, screaming as the nurses rushed in the room.
-0o0oOo0o0-
“I think I figured it out,” Daniel said as he barged into the meeting room.
“Dr. Jackson?” Hammond turned to him expectantly.
“Nice of you to be late, Daniel,” Jack O’Neill drawled, twirling a pen in his hand.
“What have you found out, Daniel?” Sam Carter asked, shooting a glare at Jack.
“I think I know why the gene carriers got sick,” Daniel proclaimed.
“You do?” Jack sat up straighter. He hadn’t wanted to consider his own constant headache and wooziness. The first couple of days, he’d ignored, but almost two weeks later and he was forced to accept that something was going on with his own gene.
“Tell us then,” Cameron Mitchell urged.
Daniel sat down. “I was looking at some of the records on ascension. See, we got it a bit wrong. The Ancients didn’t consider ascension the final step.”
“I fail to see how this is relevant,” Hammond frowned.
“Hold on,” Daniel said. “I’m getting to that. Anyways, the Ancients actually though of ascension more of as a purgatory.”
“Purgatory?” Sam looked incredulous. “You mean they willingly put themselves into their own purgatory?”
“Well,” Daniel winced. “Not quite like you might think. You see, ascension was meant to allow the spirit to reflect on the past life and learn from the mistakes they made before finally moving on. That’s why they have the no interference rule. Because they’re supposed to only focus on themselves.”
“That is very interesting, Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c said.
Daniel grinned at the Jaffa. “Isn’t it?”
“Okay, so what happens when they move on?” Cameron asked. “Do they, what, go to heaven?”
“No, no,” Daniel said. “Supposedly they send their more wise souls into the wombs of a pregnant woman to be born again.”
“So they believed in reincarnation?” Hammond asked.
“They didn’t just believe,” Daniel said, practically vibrating in his seat. “They scientifically created it.”
“I don’t see what’s so scientific about sending your soul into a baby,” Sam pointed out.
Daniel shrugged. “Well, they had some calculations but they destroyed most of their notes long ago because some of their kind was starting to abuse the power of ascension without any wish to be reborn.”
“This is very cool and all,” Jack said. “But let’s focus, the sick people?”
“Oh, right,” Daniel sent him a sheepish look. “I think that it’s possible that all the people with ATA gene actually have the souls of previous ascended Ancients. Actually, I think it is ascension itself that gives someone the gene.”
“Wait, so you’re saying the Ancients weren’t born with it?” Sam asked.
Daniel bit his lip. “I think that Ancients were biologically human until they started researching ascension. Overtime, all the babies began to have old souls. That’s why there is still some Ancient technology we can use without the gene, but a lot of the newer and more advanced stuff requires it.”
“Daniel Jackson,” Teal’c frowned. “You ascended.”
“I know,” Daniel said with a blush. “I, uh, actually I asked Janet to check. I have the dormant gene.”
“What?” Jack dropped his pen. “I thought you didn’t.”
“That’s just it,” Daniel told him. “We looked at my genetic records from before I ascended for the first time. I didn’t have it then.”
“That’s good evidence to validate your theory,” Sam mused. “So wait, you think that by going to Atlantis, because it’s the city of the Ancients, the gene carriers got sick. That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Not quite,” Daniel explained. “We know that the Ancients had, uh, powers I guess you can say. Like some could heal or blow stuff up or teleport things. Those powers came when they were close to ascension, or that’s what we thought,” he paused. “I think actually those powers came because they ascended. The ATA gene gives them the powers.”
“What are you saying?” Hammond frowned.
“I think Atlantis woke up the dormant powers inside of the gene carriers,” Daniel said in a rush.
Jack’s headache worsened and he winced. “Shit.”
“Yeah,” Daniel nodded. “What’s more, I think that Atlantis sent out a sort of subspace wave signal across the gate when we opened it. That’s why the gene carriers at SGC are starting to get sick too.”
“Double shit,” Jack said.
“Is it just the SGC?” Sam asked. “A wave powerful enough to pass through the gate from another galaxy would have no trouble traveling across Earth.”
Hammond stood. “I need to go warn the President.”
“Are you beginning to feel ill, Daniel Jackson?” Teal’c asked.
Daniel slowly nodded. “A bit.”
Jack rubbed his head. “Me too.”
“Why didn’t you say, Jack?” Hammond stared at him.
“I didn’t really want to believe it, sir,” Jack said dryly.
“This could be really bad, sir,” Cameron said. “If Daniel’s right, than we’re going to have people all over the world who suddenly start getting magical powers. The public’s going to become hysterical.”
“I fully understand the implications,” Hammond assured him. “As much as it pains me, I agree with Jack.”
“Agree with me how, sir?” Jack looked up from his hands.
Hammond sighed. “We’re in deep shit.”
-0o0oOo0o0-
Miko Kusanagi bowed to her uncle. “I have heard my cousin is ill,” she said softly.
“What do you know of this,” her uncle glared at her. “You have been gone to America.”
“Please, sir, may I see him?” she pleaded.
Her aunt put a hand on her uncle’s arm and spoke quickly. “She is family.”
Her uncle snarled. “Fine. But be quick, else you will interrupt his healing.”
Then he stalked off, her aunt following closely behind.
Miko breathed out and crossed the house to her cousin’s room. She had snuck out of the SGC hospital after learning what might be wrong with her to escape back to Japan. Her cousin, Takeshi Yamato, was also a gene carrier. She’d wanted him to come to Atlantis with her, but he’d refused. Her uncle had not wished another of the family to work in what they thought was America.
It seemed Atlantis had come to Takeshi instead.
Miko opened the sliding paper door and quickly kneeled down besides her cousin. He lay in fitful sleep on his futon bed.
“Takeshi,” she whispered, shaking his lightly.
Takeshi woke with a start, eyes immediately finding hers. “Miko,” he breathed.
“Takeshi, I know why you are sick,” Miko said in a quiet voice, mindful that her uncle was still in the house. “I suffer, too, from your illness.”
“There is something different about you,” Takeshi muttered. “You seem, brighter, somehow.”
Miko frowned. Now that he mentioned it, there was something different about him too. He felt safe, for lack of a better word. She’d always loved her cousin who protected her from bullies that would make fun of her love of science, but she’d never felt him quite like she did now.
“I believe it is the illness,” she said. “It must be. We’re changing.”
Takeshi reached a hand out to clutch her own. “What must be we do, Miko?”
“You need to come with me,” she said. “To America. They can help us there.”
Takeshi closed his eyes, and then opened them again. “I go where you go, Cousin.”
“Arigato,” Miko smiled. “Aishiteru, Takeshi.”
Takeshi smiled back. “I love you too.”
-0o0oOo0o0-
Evan Lorne was thirsty. “Hello?” he called, but his throat was too dry for it be distinguishable.
His hospital bed scrapped against his heated skin and he coughed. “Water?” he tried to ask.
No nurse came into his room and he moaned at the pain in his mouth.
“Thirsty,” he mumbled.
Evan blinked. There was a glass of water on the table besides him. He frowned at it. Was it there before?
He shrugged, or at least tried to, and moved slowly over.
The glass was just out of reach. Evan strained, pushing his arm the extra inch to pick it up. His fingers curled around it, but instead of cool glass, they went straight through the cup. He stared, for a second not understanding.
Evan cried out. A nurse rushed in immediately upon the sound.
“You’re awake,” she said. “Are you okay, Major Lorne?”
“Water,” he said, gesturing to the now empty side table.
“Oh dear, I’ll get you a glass,” the nurse said, leaving the room quickly.
“Where’d the water go?” he asked the empty room.
-0o0oOo0o0-
Matak Jordan stood under the bright Sudanese sun. He was sweating hard, his body alternating cold and hot.
“Keep working,” the taskmaster yelled gruffly.
Jordan grunted, picking up another crate to life into the truck. He didn’t know what was in them, but they were heavy. They always were.
A shock of pain shot through him as Jordan bent to pick up the next crate. He stumbled, straightening only as the pain left.
“That one might need two of us,” his coworker warned as Jordan grasped the bottom of the next crate.
Jordan lifted, frowning as it easily came off the ground. “Nah, man, this is light.”
His coworker stared at him, slack-jawed, as he easily dropped the crate into the truck. It made a loud thumb as it landed, which seemed strange for its lesser weight.
Jordan shrugged and picked up the next crate.
-0o0oOo0o0-
“I hear you’re going to get special powers,” Radek Zelenka said as he sat in the open chair next to Rodney’s bed.
“Power, actually,” Rodney told him. “According to what Jackson found, we’ll each only get one power.”
“Just another thing for you to brag about,” Radek sighed.
“Yes, well,” Rodney frowned. “You wouldn’t be bragging if you had the headache I did.”
“I suppose,” Radek adjusted his glasses. “Hammond is trying to gather all of the affected from the world to one place.”
“He’s not going to find most of them until their powers start manifesting,” Rodney pointed out.
“That is what I said,” Radek nodded. “Rodney, people are not going to like these sudden super humans.”
“What are you saying?” Rodney looked from his beeping heart monitor to his colleague and, dare he say it, friend.
“Statistically, there are likely less than a thousand people in the world with the ATA gene,” Radek opened the laptop he held.
“That’s too few,” Rodney protested.
“No,” Radek shook his head. “It is too few if you think of the ATA as a hereditary gene. In ten thousand years there would be at least a million with it. But if we believe Dr. Jackson’s theory, then only having a couple hundred people with old souls does make sense.”
“More than that ascended, didn’t they?” Rodney scratched his head. “Wait, no, the ascended come in cycles. And since there have been none in the ten thousand years since the Ancients all died off, it would only be the leftovers of the very last group that are now in us.”
“Yes, exactly,” Radek nodded. “If we calculate based on the suspected final population of the Ancients before they all collectively ascended or died off, then make a hypothesis on the number of reincarnations every generation…”
“476,” Rodney said.
“What?” Radek looked up, startled.
“There are 476. We are the last of the ascended; they all must have come together and decided collectively. We’re all in the same generation. I looked at the news, there hasn’t been a single reported case of a child or senior coming down with this strange ‘epidemic’,” Rodney said.
“How did you come up with that number?” Radek asked suspiciously.
“I calculated it,” Rodney said. “I…” he racked his brain, but for the life of him he couldn’t put the words to the numbers in his head. Grabbing Radek’s laptop, he quickly typed out his proof instead. Radek would be able to follow the numbers.
“Rodney,” Radek said in a whisper as he stared at the screen. “That is, that’s not,” he stopped, gaping.
“What?” Rodney looked at his math. “That’s how I got 476.”
Radek closed his laptop. “I think I know what your power is.”
“What, how can you know that?” Rodney jumped.
“I do not understand your proof, Rodney,” Radek told him softly. “It is above me.”
“Above you?” Rodney blinked. “But you’re the third best physicist in the world, next to me and Dr. Carter, of course. You always get my math.”
“I do not think even Dr. Carter would see the leaps in your logic,” Radek told him.
Rodney paled, suddenly understanding. “Smartest man in the galaxy,” Rodney muttered. “Mon dieu, no one will be able to understand my work.”
“The power of the genius,” Radek said. “A curse as much as it is a gift.”
“I’ll never be able to win the Nobel Prize,” Rodney whimpered. All of the sudden the fog that had been over his mind lifted. “I see it, Radek, I can break the laws of physics, bend subspace, rip a hole in the fabric of the universe. It’s all here,” he tapped his head.
Radek clasped his arm. “Do not over exaggerate, Rodney. I am sure you can dumb yourself down, yes?”
Rodney took a deep breath. “Of course, I’ll have to won’t I?”
“That’s the spirit,” Radek said with a quirk of a smile. “But maybe now you can put that big brain to work.”
Rodney raised an eyebrow. “Come on, I’m having a mental breakdown here.”
“You need to help the others who are suffering,” Radek said seriously. “I know what governments do to things they don’t understand.”
Rodney’s head whipped up. “When their powers manifest,” he whispered. “They’ll need a safe place to go. I bet they’ll need to learn control before they can integrate back into daily life.”
“If they ever do,” Radek bowed his head. “You are right, Rodney, I would not be bragging. I never thought to be glad that I didn’t even have the dormant gene.”
Rodney ignored him. “I have a house,” he said. “A large one. More of a complex, really.”
“Is it listed under your name?” Radek asked.
“No, no,” Rodney shook his head. “After I worked with the CIA, I built it for myself, just in case. It was a failsafe if I ever needed to get away. I thought I could bring my family there. That was when I was 17, you know, and I still thought I would have a family one day.”
“That might work,” Radek nodded. “I will inform General O’Neill.”
“Yeah, that’s probably for the best,” Rodney muttered. “But only O’Neill.”
Radek stood. “I understand.”
Rodney clutched at his bedsheet. “We’ll get through this,” he told himself.
His new genius brain gave him the probabilities of revolts, executions, and banishments. The odds weren’t looking good.
“Shut up,” he told himself. “You don’t know that.”
Oh, but you do, his brain whispered to him.
Rodney scowled.
-0o0oOo0o0-
Laura Cadman wrestled her arm away from the drunken marine. “Get away, bastard.”
“Ah, Laura, babe,” the marine laughed. “You know you love me.”
“No, I don’t,” she snapped. “I’m warning you, Jonny.”
The marine laughed again and made a grab from her boobs.
Laura punched him in the face. He groaned, clutching his nose. “I warned you,” she said as she walked around him to the door. She should have never agreed to meet her ex-boyfriend. The man was nothing but trouble.
A scrape was all the warning she got before she turned and saw him picking up the side table in the enlisted men’s dorm. He lifted it over his head, an angry gleam in his eyes.
Shit, she thought, taking a step back. Her constant headache bloomed hard against her temple.
“Fuck,” Jonny shouted as he suddenly let go of the table.
The table bubbled, both of the staring at it in surprise. And then, all of the sudden, it exploded at his feet, knocking Jonny backwards.
Laura reeled back, coughing into the sudden smoke, before her eyes rolled into her head and she passed out cold.
-0o0oOo0o0-
Jack looked around the complex. Rodney stood next to him and on the other side Daniel bounced on his toes.
“It’ll do,” Jack nodded.
“It’s perfect,” Daniel said instead.
“Hammond doesn’t know where you are, right?” Rodney asked.
“Relax, McKay,” Jack said. “He knows I’m looking into a place to bring us new Ancients but he doesn’t know where it is.”
“Good,” Rodney sighed. “There was an earthquake in Houston yesterday.”
“You think?” Daniel asked hesitantly.
“There is an 83% likelihood,” Rodney told him.
“The news has taken to calling us mutants,” Daniel crossed his arms. “Kind of X-men if you ask me.”
“Much less liked than the X-men,” Rodney pointed out. “Russia and India have both started manhunts. Or, mutanthunts I suppose.”
“Okay,” Jack sighed. “We can’t risk bringing in any outsiders. Everyone will have to rotate chores and the like, with cooking and cleaning.”
“Maybe we’ll be lucky and one of us will be a five star chef,” Daniel grinned.
Jack snorted. “I’ll start rounding up those of us at Stargate Command and send out an email to the ones that asked to go home. McKay, can you get a hold of Beckett. You’re friends, right?”
“I’ll talk to Carson,” Rodney agreed.
“Great,” Daniel clapped his hands. Jack winced. “Sorry, still have the headaches?”
“Mine went away once my power came online,” Rodney said with a frown.
“Yeah, well I don’t know my new weird-ass trait yet, so I still got these damn migraines,” Jack said.
Daniel touched his arm and Jack pulled away. He’d been feeling a pull towards the anthropologist for a while, but ever since his stupid gene started doing its funky thing, the pull had gotten stronger. Jack wasn’t sure if he could control himself anymore.
“I’ll go see if I can find out more about ascension,” Daniel said with just a hint of worry in his tone as he looked at Jack.
Rodney looked once more around the complex. “Well, I guess this is home for a while.”
His newly cognizant brain sang to Rodney that he had a different home waiting out there. Atlantis was his home.
He ignored his brain.
-0o0oOo0o0-
Carson Beckett clasped his mother’s fragile hand. “I donnae wanna go, Momma,” he said.
“I know, dear,” his mother rasped. “But you need ta.”
“Who’ll care fer you?” he asked. “I donnae trust anyone at this damn hospice.”
“I’m dying, Carson,” his mother said. “You know it, I know it. You’re young still. You shouldn’ have ta care for me for the resta my life. You can’t.”
“Momma,” Carson whispered.
“You’re one na them,” his mother’s eyes were clear blue as she looked at him. “You’re changin’. You needta go before you cannot.”
Carson stiffened, then nodded. His mother was right as always. “They need me,” he told her.
“Go, Carson,” his mother said. “I love you.”
“I love you too, Momma,” he chocked back his sob and kissed her cheek. “More than you know.”
His mother smiled and closed her eyes.
Carson left without another word.
-0o0oOo0o0-
Frank Kersey heard the fire sirens before he actually saw the fire. It was a single small building on the side of the road. He was on the opposite side, on his morning jog. He remembered the building; it had been a local food mart.
And now it was on fire.
Kersey watched the flames lick the roof as the firemen frantically tried to salvage whatever was left of the building.
“Give up,” he muttered to himself. “It’s gone.”
As if responding to his words, the flames jumped higher, forcing the men to retreat slightly against the heat.
Kersey watched for a moment longer as the fire grew bigger and bigger, completely engulfing the building.
Shaking himself out of his daze, he turned and continued jogging.
Behind him, the fire died down.
-0o0oOo0o0-
“ETA 15 minutes, sir,” Sheppard said into the mike as he carefully maneuvered the helicopter over the glaciers ice and snow below them.
Jack nodded, giving the pilot a thumb up. He was heading to the Ancient outpost on Antarctica to collect Daniel and bring him back to Rodney’s safe complex. The public outcry against the newly mutated was growing everyday and even the slightly more tolerant members of the SGC were becoming uncomfortable around the sudden Ancients.
Jack didn’t like thinking of himself as an Ancient. As any of them as Ancients. They weren’t gaining any memories of past lives or bullshit like that. It was just the damn powers. And the weird six sense thing that they all got when around each other.
Jack turned an eye back to the pilot. Major John Sheppard, he mused. He’d felt the man’s power the minute he’d met him, but he wasn’t sure how to bring it up. The major wasn’t cleared for the SGC, but he was strong. Jack could feel that in the very depths of his bones.
It was a strange sort of hierarchy, he thought. The men below him that had mutated still respected him, but it was a different sort of respect now. And it wasn’t just him. Lieutenant Rivers had saluted a marine private the other day before realizing what he’d done. Jack understood. He could tell the private was more powerful than Rivers, and Rivers could too.
Sheppard though, he was possibly even more powerful than Jack. No, Jack frowned. Not that. They were equal, he thought. But different. Like how he felt with McKay.
Different types of powers, he realized. McKay was the most powerful scientist, even Daniel respected him now without conscious thought. Some of Jack’s men looked at him like he were a god, but not most. No, most of them listened to him in the same way he would listen to Carter about how to fix a broken rifle. As if, even they knew they were better at whatever it was he was telling them to do, but they respected him enough to hear him explain his instructions anyways.
“Fuck,” Jack muttered.
“What was that, sir?” Sheppard asked.
Jack paused, then made up his mind quickly. “Land somewhere, Major, I have to talk to you before we get there.”
Sheppard frowned at him. Jack thought for a moment he wasn’t going to obey, but finally he pointed the helicopter down to land on a flat spot of ice.
There it was, Jack thought. Respect, but not for being a commanding officer. Hesitation until he decided that the orders weren’t too bad to follow.
Sheppard landed the helicopter smoothly and turned it off. Jack lifted his headset away and waited for the major to do the same.
“Sir?” Sheppard asked with dark eyes.
“Have you been getting headaches recently, Major?” Jack asked, leaning back in his seat.
Sheppard’s eyes widened and Jack grinned. “I know what’s wrong with you,” he continued. “But first I have to ask, you cause any destruction lately?”
Sheppard stiffened. “Sir?”
Jack sighed. “I’m gonna tell you a story. It started quite a number of years ago in Egypt.”
-0o0oOo0o0-
John Sheppard looked around the complex he’d been taken to. It was certainly nicer than some of the bases he’d stayed at in the past.
“Sir?”
John looked at the marine who’d spoken. A part of him was confused by the attention he was receiving, but another part understood. It had taken him nearly three weeks to accept what O’Neill had told him, but here he was.
Speak of the devil; the Air Force officer was walking up to him with four people hot at his heels. John waved away the marine and turned his attention to the approaching group.
“Finally decided to show up, huh Sheppard?” O’Neill grinned at him.
“Didn’t want you to have all the fun,” John shot back. “Sir,” he added belatedly. That same part of him, the one that seemed to understand the admiration in the eyes of many of the men in the large courtyard, was saying that he didn’t need to salute O’Neill.
O’Neill chuckled. “No need for the sir, Sheppard. I have a feeling that rank isn’t going to make a difference to anyone here.”
John glanced around once more. At his look, several of the men who had stopped to watch the little procession turned back to what he supposed were their duties.
“Goddamn powers give us a damn hierarchy, too,” one of the men behind O’Neill muttered.
“Well, then,” John said as he turned to the general. “I think you should call me John.”
“John,” O’Neill nodded. “And I’m Jack,” he held out his hand as if it were their first time meeting.
John shook it. “Jack,” he agreed.
O’Neill, or Jack rather, turned to gesture to the men behind him. “Well, John, I suppose I’d better introduce the rest of our lovely little chief council.” He pointed first to the man who’d spoken earlier. “Dr. Rodney McKay, head of most of the sciencey mutants here, or rather the ones who can construct things I suppose. Next to him is Dr. Daniel Jackson, his second in command, we think.”
Jackson snorted. “Rodney just hoists off all of the soft sciences on me.”
Jack glared at him. “Then there’s Carson Beckett, our head medical doctor.”
The doctor gave John a little wave.
“And last,” Jack said, “is Major Evan Lorne.”
John glanced at the other major and he knew immediately who the man was. “My second, I suppose?” he drawled.
Jack sighed. “Seems that way.”
John looked once at Jack, and then his eyes gravitated towards the scientist, McKay. Blue, he thought as they locked eyes.
McKay turned away first, blushing just a bit, and John forced himself to turn his attention back to Jack.
“I just have one question,” John said. “What happens now?”
Jack and Daniel exchanged a glance. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Jack said. “Maybe you can help.”
John nodded and followed behind as Jack led the way inside the main building of the complex.
Aliens, he thought. As if being a mutant wasn’t enough. Just fucking great.