Signs and Portents

#12 of The Carson Diaries, from the episode “The Gift”

by Setcheti

Disclaimer: Don’t own them, wish I did since now I know I was RIGHT about SciFi screwing up the show sooner and not later.

Author’s Note: IMPORTANT! This is where the series goes AU – like you didn’t see that coming, right? Well, I didn’t plan on it happening, believe me, but the little Scottish plot jackalope had other ideas and who am I to cross him? So if you’re looking for canon, it ends here, all right? The last episode of the show that I’ve seen is the one this installment is a tag to, not counting the teasers for the finale, so beyond this point I’m just following the jackalope tracks.

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I’ve been sittin’ here for a good half-hour now, just starin’ at the walls and not thinkin’ of anythin’ good or pleasant. And even though I feel quite a bit like continuin’ to do just that, I’ve got to pull myself together, right now. Rodney’s on his way, he called down only a few minutes ago to see if I was busy, said he wanted to go over some findin’s with me. He probably does, but he most likely mainly just needs to talk. I don’t mind, I could stand to talk myself. To him, anyway.

The bloody Wraith will be here in a week…and we’ve got no place to evacuate to, none. Oh, poor Sergeant Bates is tryin’ his best, but three out of the last five planets he’s taken his team to they’ve either met with the Genii or the Wraith, and the others were uninhabitable for various reasons. Unless he gets lucky, we’re pretty much stuck here waitin’ for the monsters to come wipe us out. No one at the last big meetin’ Dr. Weir called had any answers for her.

She didn’t call me to the meetin’, or anyone from my staff; not that we had any answers to give her either, but it didn’t go unnoticed that none of us were there. And when someone asked her if she wasn’t goin’ to wait for someone from the medical team to get there before they got started…she told them that ‘wouldn’t be necessary’. Thank God mine and Rodney’s eavesdroppin’ setup is still workin’ in there – and thank God she hasn’t found the bloody sensors. I shudder to think what her reaction would be.

Bates knows; he’s all for it, said he should have thought of that his own self. And after yesterday he might have to be makin’ use of it, since yesterday he got himself on the wrong side of Dr. Weir and Major Sheppard all at once. Pity that havin’ some forethought is likely to cost him his spot in Weir’s inner circle. Of course, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s even helped me out a bit, since now he’s bringin’ his news to me instead of to her. And what news he’s had…

Our major has been back to Proculus again. He’d been improvin’ since the talk I had with him – and since I injected him with the counteragent for the pheromonal reaction Chaya had set off in him – but then all of a sudden he turned right back around and was twice as bad as he’d been before. I couldn’t understand it, I even tested myself again to make sure the treatment had stayed effective…and then Bates comes sneakin’ down here last night and tells me that he’s overheard Ford tellin’ someone that on their last trip through the Stargate Sheppard had taken off in the jumper and been out of contact with he and Teyla for a few hours. I guess Ford thought it was funny that Sheppard had gone to visit his ‘girlfriend’ on the sly like that, but Bates didn’t think it was funny at all and I had to agree with him. I wrote the major off then and there as a lost cause.

Neither of us told Dr. Weir; we both knew it wouldn’t have done any good. I’d already gone to her after my little ‘discussion’ with Sheppard and told her about the pheromone reaction and the behavioral changes, and I’d given her my recommendation that Major Sheppard needed to be grounded until we could be sure the reaction had worn off for good and his reasonin’ was back where it should be. I also let her know that until we were sure we simply couldn’t trust the man around Rodney, and I was a bit worried about how he might be influencin’ Ford and Teyla as well.

She sat there and nodded, and I thought she was takin’ me seriously…until she called in Dr. Heightmeyer. Katie’s assignment to the mission was one I never approved of, wasn’t consulted on either; she’s here because she was a friend of Elizabeth’s and Elizabeth wanted her here, no other reason. I’m not sayin’ the woman isn’t good at what she does, not at all, it’s just that what she was doin’ before she got here was talk therapy for civilians in government service. She’s got minimal experience workin’ with the military and none at all when it comes to dealin’ with combat situations, she’s exactly the wrong person who should be overseein’ the mental health of the personnel on this sort of mission. I’ve sent people to her, yes; I’ve sent the civilian scientists who never go offworld to her and she’s done all right with them. But the soldiers and the civilians like Rodney who go out with the missions, I’d always sent them Major Sheppard’s way when they need to talk to someone.

Lately, of course, I’ve been sendin’ them to Sergeant Bates. And if he’s not available, he’s set up two other experienced soldiers I can use that way instead, and he makes sure that at least one of them is always in the city just in case. He wasn’t over-happy about Katie Heightmeyer bein’ assigned to us either, even moreso than myself since he’d been servin’ in the SGC for a time and knew firsthand how badly any mission like ours needs a full-fledged medical-doctor psychiatrist, someone who can tell the difference between a psychological problem and a neurological or chemical one and knows what to do about both. Not to mention that Katie, thanks to Elizabeth’s influence, no longer seems to know her own limitations.

That was very much in evidence that day. I repeated what I’d already told Dr. Weir, the two of them sort of looked at each other…and then Katie said she didn’t think Cheya’s interference with the major was really a problem. In fact I’m not sure she even believed a word of what I’d just told her, because she immediately started goin’ on about the stress gettin’ to everyone and different people reactin’ to it in different ways. Then Elizabeth asked her what her recommendation was. I almost had to pick my jaw up off the bloody floor when she said that she thought the best solution would be to let Sheppard’s team keep doin’ their job and goin’ through the ‘Gate…and to let Rodney do his here, in the city.

And Elizabeth agreed with her. Then Katie suggested that Rodney needed to be comin’ in to talk with her so they could sort out the problem…and Elizabeth agreed to that too, with a nasty little smile in my direction that I understood all too well. I’ve gone against her successfully time and again since we’ve been here, and I know it must have been eatin’ at her – Elizabeth doesn’t like to lose. And she knew she couldn’t go after me directly, not and get away with it, so she was goin’ to get her own back by goin’ after Rodney instead. She would have called him in to tell him right then, over the open communication system, if I hadn’t jumped in to stop her and said I’d tell him myself. I held back the absolute rage I was feelin’, and the horror at what I’d just set into motion, and I reminded Katie about how much antipathy Rodney has for the mental health profession and convinced her that he might take to it better if I took a bit of time to talk him around to the idea in private. She’s not a bad person and she’s not out to hurt him, so she agreed that might be a good idea and gave me a time to get him to come in…and then Elizabeth dismissed me like she’d been doin’ me a favor by lettin’ me come talk to her in the first place.

I knew I’d lost – that round at least – so I came back to my lab, called Rodney down, and then just sat there and shook until he showed up. Bless him, he was more worried about me than he was about himself; once I’d told him what had gone on, he said he was just glad she hadn’t tried to force me into therapy sessions too. That surprised me, especially since I’d never even given it a thought. And he was confident in his ability to run rings around Dr. Heightmeyer, who in his opinion wasn’t very bright to begin with although he did note that she was nicely decorative.

I warned him not to underestimate her. She’s not as smart as he is, true, or even as diabolically intelligent as Dr. Weir has proven to be, but she’s been trained to manipulate people into talkin’ about things they’d rather leave silent and she’s fairly good at that. He thought on that for a bit, and then he smiled that mischievous lopsided smile at me and said that if it was talk she wanted he’d be more than happy to give it to her – after all, wasn’t everyone always tellin’ him to shut up? He’d just let her help him with that.

We laughed over that one, and then I had another idea. Since Dr. Heightmeyer would have to take notes of everythin’ he said, what if he made sure to include all the little incidents there’d been with Sheppard since they’d encountered Chaya? He’d have to expose himself more than a bit emotionally to do it, but technically it was the problem he was bein’ ordered to see her about and then if it ever cropped up again we’d have her records as well as mine to prove there’d been a problem in the first place…and to prove that Elizabeth had known about it and refused to deal with it in any sort of logical fashion. I knew it would be hard on him to do it, especially knowin’ that Katie would share everythin’ he said with Elizabeth and then Elizabeth would find all sorts of little ways to use it against him…but it might be the only way we could use the situation to our own ends and get somethin’ out of it that was of value.

A couple of days later, he came into the lab and asked me if I’d ever been tested for prescience. We didn’t know it at the time, but it was the same day that Sheppard had gone back to re-visit Chaya on Proculus; all we knew then was that he’d turned into a right bastard again. And now this last mess with Teyla…well, if I hadn’t been before, I’m now convinced that most likely Sheppard is beyond savin’, and I’m not even considerin’ tryin’ to cure him again. I’ve got more important things to worry about, like gettin’ everythin’ I can ready to move if Bates can find us a place to move it to. And preparin’ for casualties if he can’t, not to mention continuin’ my research on the Hoffan serum and tryin’ to turn it into somethin’ we can use. And then there’s the anomaly in Teyla’s DNA…

If Sergeant Bates hadn’t been a bit prescient himself, that could have ended up very, very badly. It’s bad enough as it is, what with the Wraith knowin’ everythin’ about us that Teyla knew. Rodney spent all of last night changin’ every password, every security clearance, everythin’ she might have come in contact with since we’ve been here that the Wraith might possibly be able to use once they arrive. And then he said he needed to talk with me this mornin’ just as soon as I had a moment to spare for him.

I didn’t have to ask to know he hadn’t slept at all. He’s not really slept in days, except for the occasional catnap on his desk. And when he mentioned that at Dr. Weir’s farce of a meetin’, she had the bloody gall to ask him what he had to show for it. The way I understand it from Dr. Zelenka, even young Dr. Kavenaugh wasn’t any too happy about that one. And since Teyla caught Rodney comin’ out of Dr. Heightmeyer’s office a couple of days ago…well, I’ve no doubt she’ll tell Sheppard and Ford, and they’ll tell everyone else. So I made sure Zelenka knew that Dr. Weir had ordered him to go in for sessions because of the problems he’d been havin’ with Sheppard – and I also made sure he knew that Sheppard hadn’t been made to go in for anythin’. Elizabeth’s not the only one who can play nasty.

Rodney comes in before I can get in any sort of a good gloat about that, closin’ the door to the lab and then droppin’ into a chair like his legs just can’t hold him up any more. It doesn’t escape my notice that he’s locked the door as well, and now I know it’s somethin’ important he’s got on his mind. “Tell me,” I say.

He sighs and scrubs at his face like he’s tryin’ to wake himself up. “What do you want first, the bad news or the worse news or the news that’s just generally crappy and disappointing?”

“Start at the beginnin’,” I tell him. “Is it all related?”

“In a way.” He sighs again. “We’ll start with disappointing first. I’m as finished as I’m ever going to get with that clandestine project I’ve been working on. You know we found a couple of those chairs, like the one I made you activate in Antarctica, right?” I nod. “Well, I also found something else; it’s sort of a chair, but what it controls is the shield, and the submersion process for the city. And all it takes to activate it is an ATA gene, no ZedPM necessary.”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “And this is bad because…?”

“Because it drains off the life-force of the user in order to work.” He runs a hand through his short hair and grimaces. “As near as I can tell, sitting down in the damned thing is pretty much a death sentence…unless of course you happen to be an Ancient from ten thousand years ago who will just Ascend into whatever happy level of arrogant hell it is they go to. Or if you happen have a handy-dandy Ancient medical staff hanging around who can bring you back, either way. That suspension chamber the other Dr. Weir was in? It’s entirely possible the thing’s real use is to hold patients in stasis until a doctor can figure out how to save them.”

“That could be a very useful thing,” I say, noddin’. “If we’re still here a week from now, you’ll have to be showin’ me how that works.”

“We won’t be here a week from now, trust me,” is his reply. He leans back in the chair. “All right, on to the next. I was going over more of what we found on that Wraith scientist planet, and I noticed that the technology we found there was very similar to the Ancient technology found on Earth. So I dug a little deeper and found that the Wraith systems were actually incorporating components of Ancient design – actual parts, Carson, not just copies or similarly designed technology. And I thought, well, they’d been fighting the Ancients, maybe they were stealing their stuff at the same time, right?”

I nod. “That’s a reasonable supposition, I’d say.”

“That’s what I thought, but it isn’t – it’s just the most obvious.” Normally he’d be startin’ to bounce right now, but he’s so bloody tired that he’s barely even gesturin’ at me. “Once I was really looking at things, I realized that even though the parts were old they were obviously original equipment. So next I took the samples of the Wraith language down to Barrett in Linguistics and asked him what he made of the similarities there – something Dr. Weir never did, by the way. And he said that it wasn’t some sort of pidgin language at all, like we’d all first thought; it’s actually a dialect of the Ancients’ language.” He leans forward again. “And now we find out that Teyla has Wraith DNA incorporated into her genetic code. Can you see where this is leading, or am I really just nuts?”

Through the shock I feel a little frisson of anger stir up again; he’d not be doubtin’ his sanity if it wasn’t for Dr. Heightmeyer. But I’ll deal with that in a bit. “I can see it,” I assure him. “I don’t like it, but I can see it. What do you think they were tryin’ to do?”

He just melts back into his chair, so relieved that it makes me even angrier. “I think they were trying to create – or rather, they did create a race of supersoldiers to use against the other humans in the galaxy. They made something that was vicious and merciless and able to regenerate itself until it was practically immortal, and then they stuck them in these huge hive ships and scattered them all over the place so they could be awakened from hibernation and show up anywhere they were needed within a matter of hours. But they’d made them too smart, too self reliant, and after who knows how many years the Wraith got away from them and then got the drop on them…and that was all she wrote.”

“Wasn’t it, though.” My God, I just know he’s right. And that would explain why the Wraith don’t appear to have any offspring, and how they managed to gain the use of the Stargates here in the Pegasus galaxy even though they’re not able to use other Ancient technology. “So you think the experiment all those generations ago on Teyla’s ancestors…”

“I think it wasn’t really about improving feeding efficiency,” he tells me. “That theory fits the evidence we found, but if you think about it for a while it doesn’t really make sense. But if the Ancients had been behind the experiment, it does; it makes sense that they’d be trying to gain any advantage they over this perfect enemy they’d created, and that little settlement was a good place to try things out. And I think they planted false records just in case one of their other enemies – or worse, one of their allies – found the place, did their best to make it look like the Wraith were in charge and then killed all the humans when the experiments didn’t work.” He sighs again. “I’ve no doubt that the Wraith really did kill everyone they could find on the planet, but that was because they’d figured out what was being done there and knew they had to put a stop to it.”

I can tell by the look on his face that there’s more, and I take a guess at it. “And you’re thinkin’ this is the same thing they did on Hoff, am I right?”

“Exactly – except that on Hoff, the Wraith showed up and ran the Ancients off, leaving the Hoffans to spend generations diddling around with the genetic mess of a project they’d left behind.” He gives me an apologetic look for that, but he’s still not done. “And…well, there’s no easy way to say this; I screwed up before, big time. Now that I know what I know, I went back and took another look at the nanites we stumbled onto and…well, they were created by the Ancients too.”

I should be surprised, but I’m not. “Which would explain why they didn’t attack anyone with the ATA gene, yes; it was a genocide weapon.” I shake my head. “And you didn’t screw up, you just didn’t have all the information you needed to come to the correct conclusion. I didn’t think of it either, you know.”

He looks at me a moment…and then he nods. “I’m not going to tell anyone else.”

What he’s not sayin’ is that he knows they wouldn’t believe him even if he did, but I hear it loud and clear. And the truly unfortunate thing is, he’s right. I doubt they’d believe me either. “So what are we goin’ to do, Rodney?” Now it’s my turn to lean forward, catchin’ his eyes. “What do you want us to do?”

“Nothing.” He slouches a little further into the seat, rippin’ his eyes away from mine to stare at the ceilin’ with a look so hopeless it hurts. He waves his hand, aimlessly gesturin’ at the whole of Atlantis around us. “This whole beautiful city, it’s just…a monument to evil,” he whispers. “And all the remnants back on Earth too. I have to wonder what they did there, what kind of future the Gou’ald spared us by taking over and wiping the Ancients out.”

I can only imagine, now. And I certainly wish that I couldn’t. But now’s not the time to be dwellin’ on the sins of our forebears – or rather, of my forebears, since Rodney was only adopted into this nasty genetic family. “There’s one thing,” I say. “There’s one thing you’ve got to tell them, Rodney.” He looks at me, and I put all the confidence I have into it. “You’ve got to tell them about the chair, about the shield.” I hold up my hand when he starts to protest. “I know,” I tell him. “I know that as irrational as Weir and Sheppard have been lately it’s takin’ a huge risk; I won’t pretend that after what I saw and heard the past few days I don’t positively know that they’d both be ready to sacrifice someone to get that shield up.” I wait until he looks at me. “I promise, Rodney, I won’t let that sacrifice be you.”

He sits up slowly, an odd look crossin’ his face…but then it’s gone again before I can identify it and he’s shakin’ his head. “I’d rather it be me than…anyone else, Carson.” He cocks his head, thinks a minute, then shakes his head again. “You’re right, you usually are. I’ll put together a report and have it to Dr. Weir this afternoon.”

I stand up when he does. “Do you want some help?”

“I’d love some, but you’re not qualified.” Rodney smiles at me then, a real smile if a bit sad. “I’ll let Zelenka in on it, if his name’s on the report our good Dr. Weir won’t be able to dismiss it out of hand,” he says, and then his smile takes on just a bit of a wicked tilt. “And if Dr. Heightmeyer comes around looking for me…tell her I said she’s fired, okay?”

“Aye, I can do that.” I smile back, but so soon as he’s gone it falls off. I don’t know what it is, but somethin’s wrong. I think there’s still somethin’ he’s not tellin’ me, or maybe several somethin’s. And seein’ as how I’m right now the only person in the city that Rodney trusts completely…I think that’s a very bad sign. A very bad sign indeed.