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neostriatum · 9 months ago

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Interface

[Dreamwidth]

Sometimes, he thought, it was difficult to tell apart where Doctor McKay ended and the city began - the one who raised the city, the one whom they all went to with their questions about Atlantis, the one who sunk himself into the city so intrinsically they could only hold on and ride out the waves.

The lights swooned, Atlantis feeling acutely like a ship in sea, a frozen microsecond of questioning reality as Chuck's computer dinged with a sensor alert.

He read the message, pursing his lips and body still stiff as if to anticipate another swell of water against their perception of stability. The pulsing glow of the notification had not changed, and he raised a hand to his ear.

"Doctor McKay, please come in," Chuck said into his comm, deciding on the open channel first, finger raised to tap the side button to cycle between channels if necessary.

His hail was met with silence across both the bandwidth and the room, something tentative and rousing itself to alertness - it was unusual to call for the scientist randomly outside of a serious situation, and by then the man was already in the loop, likely going a mile a minute as he kept the city floating and operational. The monitor flickering its warning notification at him was a steady, if nerve-wracking, background light.

One life sign down, and none matching their chief scientist.

He swallowed, keeping the veneer of professionalism by dint of habit, and tapped his comm to a private channel, "Sergeant Campbell to Doctor McKay, please respond."

If he were lucky, the difference in tone to the hail would be enough to distract McKay from whatever he was absorbed with. Probably some lab thing, but it was unusual for him to be truly alone, given his position in charge of all of the labs and accessory scientific endeavours.

A bated breath of fifteen seconds - protocol, drilled into him by McKay and Zelenka after the background system was installed - with no response, he exhaled shakily, manually clicking on the notification of the dropped life sign and navigating its options to raise an alert.

Blue alert, McKay had joked, gesturing to the standard-issue shirt for his department with a wry smirk. An alert for unexpectedly missing personnel, really, but dead useful for situations like this.

He cringed at his own thoughts, forcing his face into something less likely to unsettle everyone else in the command room. The screen prompted him on the series of options available, and he clicked on the city-wide one. Unlike Star Trek, the lights didn't change colour, but he could hear the staggered ripple of beeps on all the comms in the room, knowing the program was running through personnel top to bottom - a high priority, automated alert.

In his own ear, he heard the recorded message, mechanical only through lack of organic fluidity of speech, "All personnel, please report to the nearest supervisor in your chain of command. Repeat, …"

Chuck closed his eyes, almost hearing the scramble as the message was processed by everyone aboard Atlantis. He exhaled, tapping his comm once more, "Sergeant Campbell to Colonel Sheppard, please come in."

"Sheppard," The colonel answered briskly, "What do you have for me, Chuck?"

He stared at the window on his laptop, fingers trembling over the trackpad, "Colonel, Doctor McKay's last known location was the ZPM room."

It was also standard protocol to deploy an emergency medical team to the missing person's location. What they would do with multiple missing people, or if there were a ceiling to the quantity, Chuck wasn't sure. McKay probably had something percolating in his brain about it.

But with the situation established as-is, he could only sit on the public line and do his job - mainly, make sure the gate was secured. What use that would be during an internal crisis, he wasn't sure, but the limits of his shift had just acquired an indefinite timeline, so he and the others on duty waited anxiously for the current crisis to be resolved.

Tapping his computer, he ran the program again, hoping for McKay's signature to flicker back to life. It hadn't, but he drew up the map associated with the program, zooming in to the right section of the city and correct level with the trackpad, once again pleasantly surprised at the UI as he set the visual angle and toggled the overlay for something resembling being in-person. All they were missing was the pushpin person to drag and drop, he thought, chewing on his lip as he watched the nearly-live updates of the ZPM room.

Everyone in the room had their own busywork, ears turned toward each other in case a true emergency developed - as if Doctor McKay being randomly out for the count within the city wasn't emergency enough, and he remembered the last time this happened, a lab accident that slowly killed the man and somehow didn't completely stall the science department. Deciding he was going nowhere making himself antsy like this, he tapped his comm on to actively listen on the public line, rather than have it set to any all-calls.

Colonel Sheppard apparently decided to keep his mic perma-on, and he wanted to flinch back at the man's tone, "- get that defibrillator down here, dammit, I don't know what this damn thing did to him."

He stared blindly at his screen, owl-eyed and numb. It was one thing to run the protocol and kickstart the process to solving an unknown situation, it was quite another to listen to someone's life hanging in the line while being able to only sit on your hands and watch everyone's six from a nearly-pointless avenue.

"C'mon, McKay," Sheppard muttered, the radio quality good enough to hear the breathless tone, in time with what must have been chest compressions, "Can't- can't crap out on me, now, c'mon. Fuck. I know you can do it, McKay, stay with me."

A part of him felt like he was there, watching the scene unfold. The map did its periodic update, McKay's signature flickering for a beat before timing out again at the next data sweep. He felt nauseated at it, seeing the scientist's heartbeat on the screen at the same time he was hearing Colonel Sheppard doggedly forcing the man to revive himself.

There was some feedback on the line, apparent that not everyone in that room was on the same line - or missing their comm, and what the hell had happened, everyone knew to keep those in when working on the city in just such cases of a- an injury. Fatality, he thought reflexively, grimacing and curling his hands tightly over the keyboard.

"No, dammit," Sheppard answered whomever was beside him, and he could faintly hear another person talking to the colonel, the range of the mic too short to get anything other than a human-shaped warble of speech. There was a pause, and he found himself counting the beats necessary to restart a heart, one-two-three-four-five…

It was a fixed point, Sheppard in a holding pattern until medical could arrive, and he breathed in unsteadily, eyes fixed on the screen as it continued its updates. McKay's signature flickered intermittently, the sight making his own chest hurt even as he heard Sheppard swear darkly, "You son of a bitch. Knock this shit off, or I swear to god- c'mon, c'mon, c'mon, Rodney, please."

He was vaguely aware of the rest of the room… existing, he supposed, around him, that there were other breathing bodies in the room waiting on the same tenterhooks. Absently, he wondered how many of them were tuned into the same channel, shock muting them more effectively than a button-click on their comm. Eventually their background noise was decided for them, filled with more earnest desperation than he could remember Sheppard ever voluntarily voicing in public.

"Rodney, Rodney, Rodney-"

Perfectly on point, in sync with the effort it takes to thump a heart back to beating. He found his breathing matching it, silently saying McKay's name right along Sheppard, gazing at the map and waiting for the man's life-signs to reappear and stay online.

An eternity seemed to pass, but he was unaware how many minutes it actually was in reality until they heard on the line Sheppard's breathless protest that made his stomach plummet hearing before the whine of a defibrillator registered in his ear.

"Clear!" He could hear over Sheppard's mic, and the choked sound from the colonel surely overrode the thump McKay's body likely made on the floor as he was resuscitated by medical personnel.

Squeezing his hands tightly together on the laptop, he listened to the sounds, Sheppard abruptly silent on the line. He wasn't the one logged into the security cameras, and was reluctant to leave his seat until the program itself assured him McKay's life was solidly back on the line.

"Alright, let's give him a little room…" Carson's voice, even second-hand, was reassuring, "There we are, Rodney. Take it easy. Alright, nice and smooth, one, two, three!"

Presumably that was the sound of Doctor McKay being lifted to a gurney, but he could only guess at what was going on. A blink to clear his vision and a glance at his screen confirmed that McKay was solidly back, and moving through the corridors to the nearest transporter.

The emergency was over, but the mystery was not. He listened to Sheppard's breathing over the line, how it wobbled for a moment before being forcibly steadied, "Yeah. Yeah," the colonel said, and he heard the huff of breath that indicated him standing, "I'm fine."

Like hell he was. He knew he sure wouldn't be, if it were his best friend's life on the line.

The tension seemed abated - the arrival of a medical team usually predicated a return to normalcy, if the sky wasn't actively falling down around their ears - but he could feel the swarming of the scientists as they analyzed whatever data McKay was aiming for. The man himself was still in the infirmary, being treated, he heard, for electrical burns and an arrhythmic heart that was probably more serious at that age.

Zelenka had popped in occasionally, muttering to himself and shooing them away to plug in a lot of wires into a lot of things. He looked frazzled, but he assumed the mad scientist hair kind of did that, anyway, especially when Sheppard magically appeared and they did a test dial of the gate.

The address looked like one of those uninhabited one, PX5-whatever, and he watched as everyone watched the gate. It didn't look unusual or anything, or even lagged (could gates lag? It made him think of a dial-up tone as the gate whooshed, and he had to press his lips together before Sheppard could turn to frown at him), but that seemed to mean something as Zelenka squinted at one of the portable computers and muttered to himself.

Sheppard made one of those "pay attention to me" postures, hands shoved in his pockets and eyebrows raised at Zelenka. The other man waved a hand, scrolling through the output of whatever it was, "Point one-five seconds."

"And…?" Sheppard drawled.

"It's drawing energy more efficiently," Zelenka replied, frowning.

"Isn't that a good thing?"

Zelenka shook his head, "Ordinarily, yes, but," The man turn to another computer, and he shifted out of the way while still hoping to be able to peer at everything. The view was mostly blocked, but he saw on one computer a live-feed graph, two lines squiggling around in a vaguely steady manner, "It's almost like the ZPM is unified. The feed is altogether much more smooth."

Sheppard frowned, "Unified?"

"Yes," Zelenka said, head bobbing as his attention was riveted to the data, "Energy transmission is the same, but the depletion rate has changed. I do not know what to tell you."

Now Sheppard's posture shifted again, crisp lines of command at odds with the soft tension of worry in his face, "Find out."

Zelenka was already gathering up all of the extra computers, mind obviously a million lightyears away as he chewed on the problem, "I will," The man promised, "Will need to run another test."

He shared a glance with Sheppard, both of them watching the scientist leave at a brisk clip. An uneasy feeling squirmed in his gut, matching the way Sheppard sighed and followed. And they say shit doesn't roll downhill.

McKay was too good to let a bout in the infirmary derail his department, and from one of the scientists gossiping on the table next to him, he was absorbed enough to have established protocols in place for exact such situations. He stared at his meatloaf and Athosian potatoes, wondering if it wasn't just good sense to expect a disaster.

Though it was a background memory for most people, and a vaguely confirmed rumor in the way it was for the new people, he was brought to mind the last time McKay had been long-term in the infirmary. Sheppard's voice was still ringing in his ears - and, god, it was multiple times McKay was kept in the infirmary for observation and care. He couldn't help but be stuck on the last accident in the city that warranted such attention.

It wasn't going to be ascension again, he didn't think. He hoped not.

But he saw a couple of nurses grabbing trays piled high with food, and cut his glance away from them, cutting a potato with his fork. McKay ate a lot, right? That didn't mean anything, necessarily. He was probably in good spirits, if they were bringing that much food up - it wasn't like there were a lot of patients at the moment staying long enough to need a meal.

The meatloaf tasted a little bland, now, and he sighed. Sometimes he really hated the "wait and see" stage of things.

Probably he needn't have worried, because between some teams coming back from the usual diplomatic missions and training that Sheppard and Lorne insisted upon, he was too preoccupied in relaxing into his shifts at the gate room to pay attention to the fact that McKay had been released from the infirmary with nothing more than some tentative caution and a watchful eye from his department. They seemed to be the only ones who remembered all the times McKay put life and limb out, even accidentally, which he appreciated the resiliency of.

Zelenka was back, muttering over his computer, but this time McKay was following him. The man's pace was a little slower, probably in deference to having the shit shocked out of him recently, and the paleness in his face showed only the usual strain of managing what seemed to be fifty different projects at a time.

He obligingly moved out of his chair, hoping he made it seem like both of the scientists were too busy with their work and he was being shooed aside, rather than freeing up a chair for McKay to sit in. It seemed the gesture was appreciated, anyway, McKay settling down with a poorly-disguised sigh of relief, some colour flushing back into his face after no longer standing.

Clocking a look at some of the others in the room, he took note that McKay was being observed on the sly. A lot of them were the same shift members from over a week ago, and he knew the way they were keeping quietly busy matched his own face and polite hovering to be used for Zelenka and McKay's beck and call.

"You see, here," Zelenka said, leaning toward one of the monitors, "Efficiency has increased five fold, core components of the ZPM working in synchronicity in the conduit chamber."

McKay nodded wearily, eyes on the screen but glazed nevertheless. The man looked a couple ticks from nodding off right in the chair, something that made him want to panic in the back of his mind - how would they even handle that? - but roused himself at the last moment. Eyes at half mast, the man said, "Were the simulations re-ran in the ZPM room?"

"Er. No," Zelenka admitted, crossing his arms, "We wanted to make sure you could review the data personally before we checked our design on how to proceed. This was… not in our parameters."

"I bet," McKay said dryly.

He heard McKay sigh, sounding an awful lot like his uncle Jacob right before the game came on TV, and he frowned over his head at Zelenka, wondering if there was something they ought to do. Zelenka shook his head in consternation, gamely trying to continue the conversation, "We will need to revise the sche-"

"Elizabeth," McKay said, sounding far more alert than his posture indicated and scaring everyone with the interruption, fond-voiced and instructional as it was, "Forty-five degrees clockwise. … Yes, exactly like that. Now do the rest of them, in the same order."

Zelenka was bald-faced with shock, arms falling to his side and looking as bewildered as he felt. They exchanged a glance, and he realized one hand was already on the back of the chair, frozen in indecision of turning it, lest he somehow hurt McKay. They waited a beat, heart somewhere in his throat, waiting to see if McKay would tell them whatever the hell it was that prompted him to speak to thin air and address someone that had died years ago now.

But it was only captivated by McKay's blank, drowsing stare, as if the man were sleepwalking. He bit his lip and counted to ten, then another ten when he chickened out.

In the background, he could hear the quiet murmur of someone talking on their mic, and he exhaled roughly, "Doctor McKay?" He asked quietly, hoping not to spook the man, "Are you alright?"

McKay blinked, eyelashes fluttering as if coming back to himself, "Hm? What were you saying?"

He swallowed, keeping his tone polite and careful, the hand he had on the chair gripping tightly, "Seems like you zoned out there; are you alright?"

Zelenka watched with him as McKay shifted in his seat, sitting more upright with a grunt, "Yes, perfectly fine. Radek, you were talking about reviewing the designs?"

The other scientist blustered, waving his hands, "Nothing that cannot wait. Please, Rodney, I think we have been more than exciting enough for today. Perhaps you should see Beckett, no?" When McKay looked like he was about to protest, Zelenka held up his hands, "Is only that, well, you look a little pale."

McKay seemed to weigh the request, giving his co-worker a gimlet stare. Someone murmured in the background, again, too quiet to be easily overheard. Probably to belay the request for a medic, he thought, only mildly hysterical with disbelief, He's not that delusional to make up Doctor Weir, right?

"Fine," McKay said, not sounding nearly so grumpy as exhausted, "Since you seem to think I'm in such dire need of being treated like a pin cushion again."

Zelenka smoothly redirected the habitual ire, playing along, "Perhaps if you ask nicely, they will let you have a laptop this time."

McKay snorted, already rising from the chair with a slowness that set his nerves on edge. Even with all of the complaining the man regularly did about his back, and this and that, he still managed to haul ass, as if conscious of the fact that slowing down meant a permanent decline into being decrepit.

It hammered home the point that the man had effectively died and had to be resuscitated barely over a week ago, even as McKay grumbled, "You'll be bringing it," He addressed Zelenka, straightening up and looking none the worse for wear, even if still drained from the effort of moving, "And the mess has brownies today."

"I will bring two," Zelenka bargained graciously, gathering up the gear they had arrived with and passing a significant look with him. He nodded, watching the two follow each other out of the room and down the stairs.

He realized his hand was still clutching the seat, and felt a bit like collapsing into it, himself. Looking bug-eyed at everyone else, he could feel the emotion ricocheting between all of them. Karolina rose from her chair, hand dropping from her comm.

"I will… get Mr. Woolsey?" She asked, her Swedish accent tinged with hesitancy.

Realizing nobody else would answer her, he nodded belatedly, "Yeah. Yeah, that would be. Good."

He tapped his own comm as she stepped away from her post to hurry over to the next office over, Woolsey visible from here, "Sergeant Campbell to Colonel Sheppard. Would you… please come to the Ops room?"

Sheppard's eyebrows were up to his hairline, and he resisted the urge to squirm, dutifully repeating the sequence of events upon the man's request.

"So you're telling me," And he cringed at the colonel's tone, but only internally, "That McKay just… what? Sat here and talked to Elizabeth Weir?"

"Well," He prevaricated, "No. I think he thought he was… talking at her?"

Sheppard stared at him. He shrugged, knowing that they had already dealt with this whole "will we, won't we" debacle of Doctor Weir's death and transformation into a replicator already. If it weren't so bizarre of a place to live, the events in Atlantis would be more difficult to remember.

"I'm not sure he remembers he did that," He confessed, "It happened while Zelenka was talking about schematics and designs to testing the ZPM after the, uh. The first test."

He watched as his superior's brow furrowed, feeling guilty for bringing it up even if that really was the context to the situation, "He kind of went right back to asking Doctor Zelenka about the data. Y'know, like he hadn't heard it the first time?"

"And how long did all of this take?"

He pursed his lips, thinking, "Like the whole thing? Maybe a minute, tops," He replied, wishing he were able to give more precise information to work with, "The zoning out thing, though, it was like he was responding to a call. Only a few seconds before he came back to himself."

"Hmm," Sheppard frowned, and he was reasonably certain this time it wasn't at him, but the information.

"I, uh," He said, wanting to fidget when Sheppard's gaze snapped back to him, "It did kind of, uh. Look like he was having a stroke. Sir? Even Zelenka was concerned."

"A stroke," Sheppard repeated woodenly, and god, he felt bad about saying it, knowing the guy probably wanted to turn heel and run all the way over to the infirmary.

"Yessir," He replied, nervous, "Except he was talking?"

"To Elizabeth."

"… Yes, sir."

This was certainly not one of the most uncomfortable conversations in his life with a commanding officer, but it sure ranked up there. He firmed his posture, grateful when Sheppard's attention focused on the opinion rather than him. It was awkward waiting in silence while Sheppard came to a conclusion, but he knew it was a worthwhile wait.

Sheppard ran a hand over his jaw, sighing, "At ease, Chuck."

"Yes, sir," He said, relieved.

"Let me know if this happens again," Sheppard said, already turning to leave, undoubtedly to the infirmary.

"Yessir."

It was a conundrum worthy of an investigation, apparently. McKay was ensconced back in the infirmary, probably undergoing a whole slew of neurological tests. He bartered for a packet of chocolate chip cookies, anyway, making sure it was slipped to McKay's bedside in apology.

Zelenka refused to let anyone go back to the ZPM room, especially after that last scare, which meant he was hovering around the controls with a gaggle of scientists instead of holing up in one of the labs like usual. It made for a crowded room, but the bustle was almost a little reassuring, watching all of them map and discuss problems in real time instead of waiting for the results to disseminate along the rumor mill.

Apparently McKay's… whatever it was shouldn't have occurred in the first place. There was discussion of it being related to the ATA gene, and some subconscious commands being entered, which meant that everyone with the gene was banned from the ZPM room until further notice. As a precaution, Sheppard was likewise banned from the Chair room, at least until they had a better handle on what the hell was going on.

He didn't think the colonel was particularly interested, at any rate, too preoccupied with keeping McKay company during the battery of tests after he let the - quite reasonable, he believed - suspicion slip that it might have been some weird Pegasus form of a stroke. Who knew, in this galaxy, especially since a regular cold could become a trip down memory lane and their biggest existential threats were literal vampires.

"Uh, Radek," One of the scientists said, peering at one of the laptops. The man navigated his way over between the small crowd of scientists, "This looks a lot like a wormhole."

"What?" Zelenka muttered, adjusting his glasses to look at some spreadsheet of incomprehensible numbers. The scientists quieted their bustle, as if waiting for some verdict, "No budu proklet. That is remarkable similarity to the gate."

He perked up, curious to see what the information was about. As predicted, Zelenka popped his head up, snapping fingers at him, "You. Sergeant? Were there any dials during the testing?"

"Uh," He stuttered, turning to his station. It was difficult to forget the exact time and date, but he logged everything both one hour before and after, just in case. The laptop spit out both a graph of energy consumption and all dials both in and out, the latter of which was predictably nothing, "No, sir, but we did have a power… surge?"

Zelenka frowned at him, "What do you mean?"

He waved a hand around, imitating the bobbing motion he had felt, internally feeling a little stupid for how he was describing the sensation, "It was maybe a second, but- the lights kind of… dimmed? And the city kind of. Swooned?"

The scientist repeated the word under his breath, turning back to the computer he appropriated. A finger was pointed in his direction, anyway, "Send me that data."

"Yessir."

It felt like progress, or at least some dots on a board they could try connecting. What the stargate had to do with the ZPM, he had no idea, but he was sure Zelenka would figure it out. Hopefully it would be faster with a team at hand, because he knew McKay would have been the best bet if he weren't laid out at the moment - this situation was unusual enough to make him uneasy, because there seemed to be a critical mass point where 'weird' became 'dangerous', and somehow or another AR-1 managed to get roped into it.

He felt vaguely haunted by Colonel Sheppard's tone over the mic from back then, and he hoped there wouldn't be a repeat situation, for all of their sakes. Maybe some miraculous explanation could be pulled out of thin air again, some explanation why McKay was talking to a dead person after nearly dying.

The scientists shuffled around for another few minutes, hunting down data and dispersing in ones and twos as Zelenka directed them back to various labs for analysis. When the man himself was left, he warily watched him flit between the two leftover computers and the ones permanently hooked up in the Ops room. It was apparent he was sending data back and forth, bringing up the email client periodically and presumably coordinating with the team.

It was pretty cool, even if he was on tenterhooks for an explanation. Finally, Zelenka muttered, minimising windows and closing the lid to one of the laptops, turning to him with a piercing look, "You will notify me of any changes, yes?"

He bobbed his head, wondering if all of the scientists were that forthright or if it was just a product of wrangling science into shape, "Yessir."

Zelenka frowned at him for a moment more, as if impressing the importance to him. He blinked, wondering if he had to be dismissed, "Good. I will be back."

One of the other techs mouthed a Terminator line to him behind Zelenka's retreating form, and he shot them a dirty look, not wanting to get in trouble for laughing. He was pretty sure Zelenka would be able to hear, anyway, the way the man looked eerily reminiscent to one of his trainers in basic.

He was admittedly, a little curious about the gate data. It gave him something to do, at least, and took his mind off the way McKay had seemed to age ten years in front of them.

Regular data that he was trained to interpret was a lot simpler than digging through non-dial data and trying to spot an anomaly. He remembered how the city had - not flickered, precisely, because that would have snowballed into the city sinking again, at least a little bit - felt like it rocked on its axis. A part of him was considering the ramifications of that, how something gone sideways with the ZPM would affect the entirety of the city, and he swallowed dryly when he realized that McKay, objectively, should not have survived whatever had happened down there.

It was certainly a learning curve to zoom in on the data, the DHD and other Ancient monitoring equipment logging information in a set of binary that might have been intuitive to them but had the science department swearing at it for a month straight as they built a compiler from scratch. He wasn't going to underestimate the allure of spreadsheets ever again, he thought with a brief smile, going through the pages of data and extracting some of it to a new database.

Setting everything up took the majority of his shift, and he had to switch between it and juggling the usual retinue of offworld teams that were slated to go out that day. AR-1 was grounded, but he saw the rosters adjusted for Ronon, and occasionally Teyla. Watching as they lingered in the periphery of the teams they were supplementing, he wondered if this was their way of handling the nerves that came with a team mate with an unknown illness.

He realized that it was not the first time they had to deal with such a situation, and not only with McKay, terrifying as the man's illnesses sometimes were. It was a sobering thought, and he silently wished them a sense of stability as he watched them step through the wormhole.

Turning back to his computer, he realized his shift was ending in a few minutes, the other technician on duty already waiting nearby to relieve him. He checked to make sure his nascent project was emailed to himself, and shut the window down, working himself up to a summary of his shift in change-over.

There must have been something tracking anyone who accessed the gate data, because McKay pulled some spooky sysadmin privileges and replied to his self-sent email with the database he was building to try and parse the data with an instruction to meet him in his office. It was a reappropriated lab, really, but it was the one McKay had most of his work in, and generally only shared with Zelenka, so it functioned well enough.

"Sir," He reported in, lingering close enough to the doorway that he could make a reasonably quick escape if needed. It wasn't that he minded being here, it was just… okay, it was strange as hell to be here without the other gate technicians or under threat of an imminent emergency. Outside of how McKay was moving carefully, snacking on some tossed salad that looked like kitchen leftovers, he wasn't sure what the most appropriate reaction was.

"I won't bite," McKay said, amused. He waved his fork at one of the nearby stools, resuming his meal with a perfunctory bite of some cheese, "Sit."

He sat.

The silence was awkward, but less so when he realized McKay's obvious enjoyment of his meal made him hungry. He grimaced at the rumble of his stomach - McKay tossed him a powerbar after rooting through one of the desk drawers, and it helped to pass the time between the two of them more companionably.

"So," McKay said, pointing at his monitor, where the recognizable crests and troughs of a typical gate cycle were displayed in one of the windows, "You had an idea."

"Uh. Yes, sir," He replied, crinkling the wrapper in his hand nervously, continuing at McKay's expectantly raised brow, "Doctor Zelenka was looking for any anomalies when the both of you ran your experiment in the, ah, ZPM room."

A little bit of tact was probably expected, for all of McKay's reputation to breeze through social niceties like so much tissue paper on his way to a conclusion. It earned him a sardonic smile, "The one where Beckett had to zap me back to life? I had the pleasure of lots of blood draws for that, but yes, what anomalies were you looking for?"

The blunt expression was oddly settling, and he relaxed on the stool, "Well, sir, I was curious if there was anything happening with the gate during the experiment," He responded, waving a hand around, "I know we didn't have any dials in or out, but there was some sort of power surge, so that might have affected gate stability."

McKay's eyebrows flew up, and he gestured for him to continue, spearing a piece of quartered fruit that looked covered in a vinaigrette.

He wet his lips nervously, pointing to the computer monitor that had his extracted data up, "I know I'm no good at the finer points of analyzing the gate activity, but Zelenka had mentioned that the ZPM demonstrated wormhole-like activity. What if that's something the gate could have logged, between itself and the ZPM?"

"Hm," And that wasn't the 'oh that's funny, we're about to die' kind of Hm, so he relaxed marginally as McKay turned on his own stool to scrutinize the data. The bowl of salad was placed off to the side, the scientist drawing the keyboard closer to tab through some of the data. It flickered across the screen, and he watched how the data was manipulated with ease, "I suppose theoretically such activity could occur between the two…"

McKay shook his head distractedly, and he watched in fascination as the man pulled up the main gate computer remotely, tagging a few things and drawing it into the database he had built during his last shift. All of a sudden everything looked more comprehensive, and with some more muttering and fussing with the program, a handful of line graphs showed up across the set of monitors. They circulated in real time, a mesmerizing cycle of different comparisons of data.

"Right. So," McKay clapped his hands, "What you see here is the ZPM power fluctuations during Zelenka and I's experiment, cross-referenced with wormhole characteristics, stargate power flows, and pings between the two technologies over a fixed period of time."

He nodded blankly, leaning forward to get a better look at it. There were certain crests and troughs that matched, but the power flows and pings were inverted to each other. Pointing to one of the graphs, he asked, "What's happening here, with the pings? It shouldn't drop the power flow, should it?"

Looking pleased, McKay reached for his salad again, taking a hearty bite, "Mm-mm. No. But if Radek is correct - and I stress if - then it means that any wormhole development was the ping."

What the fuck. He didn't even bother to pretend he understood it, because the primer on wormhole theory he was required to take to be part of SGC seriously didn't cover this situation, "How can wormholes ping?"

"I have no idea," McKay shrugged, ostensibly unbothered by whether that could potentially be a problem, "That's the problem with wormholes, is that we never actually pinned down the subspace it's connecting to when we make connections between gates. There's only some vague idea about why we have a difficult time accessing the Milky Way gates - different galaxies shouldn't develop a large power draw if you're folding spacetime like that, ultimately - and it's not like we have a rolodex of confirmed subspace dimensions to cross-reference."

He frowned, a thought occurring to him, "What if it connected to itself?"

"What do you mean, to itself?" McKay asked, frowning himself. The man turned to the computer again, salad held absently in one hand as he tapped his fork against the rim as he thought, "Like the ZPM connecting to itself? That would- hm, that would imply a lot of things."

"I don't know what the implications are," He hurried to say, covering his ass, "Just. What if it needed the gate as an orientation point in, I don't know, subspace or spacetime, and it connected to itself in. A different dimension?"

McKay sat back. He ate distractedly, mind obviously a million miles away. It was apparently a thought-provoking question, but he couldn't tell yet whether it was in a good or a bad way.

Abruptly, McKay leaned forward, drawing back up the gate data and pulling another stack of information from it. The variables were tightened, and he watched as McKay irritatedly shoved his fork between his teeth to use both hands on the keyboard. There was a muffled noise of success, and his shoulders dropped at the sound in relief.

"There!" McKay pointed at the screen, fork back in hand, where he had refreshed the graphs and paused them. The wormhole data had been cross-referenced to dial in and out pings. Where he had originally thought was an oddly quiet spot in the data must have been the exact time the ZPM experiment went live, "That's why you and Zelenka couldn't find anything - we had an in-ping and an out-ping simultaneously."

He blinked, bewildered, "And this is possible?"

McKay scoffed, "Obviously. The data wouldn't lie, and the Ancients were too good to design equipment failure in their gates or their ZPMs."

"That we know of," He felt the need to point out. McKay waved a prevaricating hand at him.

The man tapped his comm, "McKay to Zelenka," A beat, "Hey. So you were totally wrong, by the way, the gate totally did dial- what, yes it did, I'm looking at the data right here-"

It was apparently completely possible to hear only one side of a conversation and actually know more about what was going on than if he could hear both people. Glancing at the screen, where McKay was emphatically waving his fork at as he argued, he supposed it helped to have the data on hand that they were referencing.

"-No, I'm not saying… you're just looking at the wrong data!" McKay exclaimed, throwing his hands up, "Ye-here, I'll send it to you."

He wondered if he was dismissed, but as he didn't really have anywhere to be and McKay had bothered to feed him, there wasn't anywhere more interesting to go. The data and graphs were quickly minimised and appended to an email to Zelenka, zooming off-screen with a cheerful visualisation. It didn't look like the one on his laptop, and it made him wonder if that was a science special or a McKay special.

McKay was back to his salad, scraping the last bits of it from the bottom of the bowl as he waited for Zelenka to read through everything. The sound of metal on metal was jarring, and he grimaced to himself at the sound, only stopping when McKay was distracted by whatever it is that Zelenka was saying on the line, "Uh-huh, yeah- yeah, it does look like a ghost dial, but Chuck found out that the energy spiked during the dials. Yeah, he's right here next to me-"

Briefly, he felt panic grip him, knowing he wouldn't be able to answer whatever question it was the two of them had decided upon, but McKay only grinned at him, "Radek says thank you, by the way," He rolled his eyes, pointing to his mic, "What, yes, that's absolutely a thank you! Hah. No, it's not my fault you couldn't see anything right in front of your nose-"

And so it went. He wasn't sure what to do with the thanks, but one of them had apparently decided he had contributed enough. Slowly, he slid from his stool, gesturing if he could leave. McKay glanced at him, waving a hand.

He waved back in goodbye, and was halfway to the door when he heard McKay say, "The city would have sunk, Radek, I-"

Whatever it was, a gasping, choked noise that reminded him of his grade four classmate drowning in the community pool wasn't it. He turned abruptly, nearly knocking into one of the auxiliary tables, and saw just in time McKay beginning to slide off his stool.

It felt very much like a dive, and he was sure he had bruised his shins terribly getting to McKay in time to keep the man from cracking his skull on the floor - or worse, he didn't even want to contemplate it. McKay was struggling to breathe, going blue at the lips, eyes wild.

He checked frantically for a pulse, find it erratic. McKay looked as terrified as he felt, and he quickly patched to the medical line, "Medical emergency to the control tower, level seven. I repeat, medical emergency to the control tower, level seven. Doctor McKay isn't breathing."

Had he the time to contemplate it, the irony of being the one to work on resuscitating McKay instead of being one of the people to hear about it would have been staggering. He focused on keeping McKay breathing, wondering why the hell CPR wasn't working.

Being ushered along behind the entourage of doctors having only marginally better luck than him at keeping McKay alive put him in a daze. His shins hurt, and his knees from when he had fallen to the floor in his haste, but only if he thought about it.

It was unsurprising to be intercepted by Sheppard, who was quickly followed by a harried-looking Teyla and Ronon, the latter of whom still had their gear on from a mission. Right, he thought in vague shock at the time, We had some trade items this week.

"What happened?" Sheppard demanded, grabbing his arm. They were all keeping pace with the gurney, and all of them ignored the dirty look from the one person walking and talking to Beckett while hanging up an IV.

"I- I don't know," He said helplessly, eyes glued to McKay and the ambu bag being used on him. Tearing his mind away from what the medics had to do in order to resuscitate McKay, he looked at Sheppard, "We were just talking about some data with Doctor Zelenka, and I was leaving the room when I heard."

Teyla frowned, confused, "Doctor Zelenka was not in the room?"

And right, someone probably knew that. Had been around Zelenka at the time. He would have been more surprised at how quickly everyone talked to each other if he weren't still trembling from nerves, "No," He confirmed, "Over the comms. McKay said I was free to go, and- and-"

Sheppard changed his grip, shifting from angry to an attempt at soothing, "Hey. What happened?"

The infirmary wasn't far away, and he could already hear the bustle that indicated an incoming patient. He blinked, swaying into Sheppard's hold on his arm, "I almost didn't hear it."

"You were almost out the door," Ronon concluded, looking grim.

He nodded, surprised to feel a gurney at his back. Sheppard hefted him onto it, brows crinkled in concern and looking pale, "But you did. Okay? You caught him."

"I almost didn't," He repeated, staring at the medics surrounding McKay.

McKay's diagnosis - this time - was bizarre. Somehow he was still around, buffeted by all of AR-1 that wasn't already in an intensive care room. A doctor had come by and checked on him, a blur of white he hadn't paid attention to while his blood pressure was checked and eyes looked over with a penlight.

It was shock, probably. He ate the pudding that someone handed to him mechanically, barely feeling the warmth of Sheppard and Ronon buttressed against him. Teyla was probably somewhere, he hadn't noticed if she had left. The infirmary felt gauzed in weariness, and he wondered which would reach them first - McKay's mysterious series of blinks at death or the solution to the ZPM experiment's failure.

A part of him hoped it would be the ZPM. At least then McKay would be able to do something about it.

Doctor Beckett eventually exited the room McKay had disappeared into, closely followed by someone he recognized as an anesthesiologist veering off into another direction. Both had a portable computer in their hands, and Beckett looked downtrodden in the way of bad news. He felt himself stiffen right along Sheppard and Ronon.

"So," Beckett said slowly, "That was a mite bit of hypoxia there, we were lucky to stabilize it. Sergeant Campbell here did an admirable job working on Rodney until we could get to him."

"But?" Ronon said, his arms crossed.

"But we have no idea why that happened," Beckett replied. He ran a hand over his face, sighing, "We had to take multiple brain scans, but it was like his body forgot he could breathe air. We had a hell of a time convincing him there was plenty of it around him."

The silence after that remark was deafening. He crunched the pudding cup in his hand, feeling sick, "He. Doctor McKay looked-"

Beckett stepped forward, looking at him carefully, "What is it, son?"

Gulping in a breath under the scrutiny of the others, and well aware of its irony, he managed to say, "He sounded like he was drowning."

Sheppard jerked, standing up from the slouch he had against the gurney roughly to pace with a hand over his mouth. They watched him, and after a couple of paces to the computer console nearby and back, the colonel took the hand off his face and pointed at him, shaking his hand in emphasis, "Drowning? Are you sure?"

He glanced at Beckett, who was looking between the two of them in confused apprehension, "Yessir."

They watched as Sheppard decided to pace some more, the man only stopping when Teyla called out to him from where she was nervously folding and re-folding a blanket on another bed, "John. Please. Tell us what you're thinking."

Ronon shifted beside him, feeling coiled as if there was an attack nearby, "Elizabeth."

Sheppard nodded, "Right."

He bit his lip, wondering if he should ask. Doctor Beckett did it for him with a concerned frown, "Care to elucidate, colonel?"

Sheppard had one hand propped on a hip as he thought, waving the other, "You remember Elizabeth, right? The other one?"

"Wh-" Beckett frowned, "The older one?"

And he had officially lost the train of conversation. Hoping he wouldn't be dismissed, because he really wanted to make sure McKay was okay in person this time, he poked his head forward in attention.

"Yeah," Sheppard confirmed, nodding and looking at the floor as he paced, "She had to rotate the ZPMs in order to keep them working, so Atlantis wouldn't sink this time around."

A little hysterically, he wondered how many rumors he would hear confirmed just by sitting here watching everyone ping pong ideas. He watched Beckett nod slowly, "That was when you had Rodney in here again to test for a stroke."

"And then this time," Sheppard said, looking up at his team and swallowing roughly, "Sounded like drowning. Couldn't take in oxygen. Beckett, what did you have to do?"

"I…" Beckett looked at his computer, drawing a finger across it, "I had to treat it like acute generalized hypoxia with hypothermia. His body temperature was unusually low, considering where we found him."

Beckett looked thoughtful, turning to him, "And you said he had just finished eating, sergeant?"

He bobbed his head, "Yessir. He had a big bowl of salad from the mess. It had a lot, uh, cheese, and stuff in there?" A thought occurred to him, "There was vinaigrette in there, I think. It didn't have anything in it, did it?"

The doctor gave him a reassuring smile, clapping a hand on his shoulder, "No, lad, but that's good of you to consider. Doctor McKay is well-trained in what to do in case of anaphylactic shock, and he nearly always carries epinephrine with him just in case."

It was an unaccountable sense of relief, making him drop his shoulders. He had known, vaguely, that McKay was allergic to something, but it had been so long since they were last on Earth that he had forgotten what it was, other than being something disconcertingly common.

The reminder was less well-received by the man's team, as if the thought hadn't occurred to them alongside all the new problems. Teyla was finally in eyesight, having gravitated toward them during conversation, and she looked disconcerted at the idea.

"How did this happen?" She asked, shaking her head, "That was another timeline, Rodney could not have the memories of it."

The question nearly made him drop his empty cup in realization, "The experiment," He breathed, looking to Sheppard, "There was some data points we were discussing. A wormhole might have opened up between our ZPM and, uh, another one. The gate showed an in-dial and out-dial at the same time."

All of them looked baffled, and he straightened up, "I was curious about something Doctor Zelenka said when he and some other scientists were analyzing some data in the Ops room, so I pulled some data to try and look at it. Doctor McKay saw the email I had sent to myself and called me to his office."

Ronon snorted, and he grinned a little sheepishly, "Yeah. I thought I was gonna get yelled at, but he was wanting to see what I was getting at. He did… something with the data, and found out that whatever happened during the experiment on the ZPM, it might have created a wormhole between our dimension and another, and used the gate to reference its position."

The only one who looked like they could follow along was Sheppard, who sighed and tapped his comm, "Sheppard to Zelenka. You were talking to Rodney about some data? … Yeah, you wanna do a little show and tell?"

They all shuffled into the meeting room, minus Beckett, who had to stay in the infirmary and keep an eye on everything. Mr. Woolsey was sat in one chair, staring wearily at the whiteboard Zelenka had dragged into the room for the sake of expediency.

The board itself was covered in formulas and drawings, different marker colours used to highlight different areas. Sheppard was nodding along like he could follow most of it, and that made sense, given that McKay was his teammate and also, apparently, a whiz at math himself. It made a little spark of awe flare up, and he had to wrest his attention back to Zelenka's explanation.

"We are still incorporating data from Sergeant Campbell's dataset," Zelenka said, nodding to him, "I believe this would explain the anomalies in power stratification with ZPM and also Atlantis."

"Is this still ongoing?" Woolsey asked. He was looking at his coffee cup like it would resolve the meeting sooner.

"That…" Zelenka tilted his hand back and forth, giving up and shrugging, "We do not know. They might be fluctuating on a very small scale, and we had not thought to look. If not for Campbell's data, we would not have known how small of fluctuations."

"Atlantis is still floating," Ronon interjected, "Can't be that bad."

Zelenka held up his marker, "Only because we do not know what kind of bad it is."

Ronon looked thoughtful, the nodded once as if that answered his statement. Maybe it did, but then Ronon always appeared to look at a situation literally. It was helpful in an emergency situation, and he didn't know if this quite qualified as one.

That idea made him frown to himself. He raised his hand briefly to catch everyone's attention, and then pointed to the whiteboard, "Have we figured out how Doctor McKay's… illnesses are factoring into this?"

Zelenka shook his head, "Unfortunately not. But if your idea is correct, then it could be that Rodney was the one who initialized this process."

"Is Rodney experiencing what the ZPM is experiencing?" Teyla asked, gesturing to the board, "This seems to be a remarkably similar situation, if it is true that the ZPM is accessing an alternate reality."

"It may be more than one alternate reality," He said, looking at the portable computer propped up on the desk for them to look at, noticing it was one of the graphs McKay had set up, "Doctor Zelenka, what were the parameters of your experiment?"

He watched as the question truly registered, the older man paling, "Dobrý Bůh. We had been attempting to unify various sections of the ZPM to communicate with each other more properly and establish more cohesive power flow. Our upper boundary was only theoretical."

"What does this mean, Zelenka?" Sheppard asked, looking forbidding.

Zelenka looked to be calculating in his head, rotating the whiteboard marker in his hand, "It means that… that we had been attempting to figure out a means to configure a spare ZPM into a rechargeable state, rather than a power outflow state. It was only at twenty percent capacity, but…"

"Twenty percent?" Woolsey prompted, sitting straighter in concern.

Shaking his head, Zelenka turned to look at the board, muttering to himself, "If this is true, then as a matter of it being a zero point- yes. We only managed to install a one percent total additional charge to the ZPM."

He turned back to them, looking nervous and grave, "Rodney might be experiencing one percent of total possible alternate realities connecting to the ZPM."

Looking back, one percent didn't sound like a lot. But then it apparently wasn't a one percent in the sense of going from twenty percent to twenty one percent, so the actual number of change was even smaller. If this was enough to nearly kill McKay multiple times in the span of two weeks, then he dreaded to think what would have happened with a fully-charged ZPM.

Probably they would have been blown out of the water.

This was a failed experiment? It made him wonder what the scientists actually got up to in their labs, and all of a sudden Doranda made a lot more sense, if 0.202 zetta electronvolts increase in ZPM capacity was enough to wreak this much havoc.

With the new data in their arsenal, at least, things were looking a lot busier. Sheppard was helping to diagnose which parts of the city might be prone to electrical surges, blocking off things mentally - that never got any less cooler - so the shield doors in various hallways came down and locked in place.

The gate room and ops was du jour, but also under heavy scrutiny. If the ZPM could treat the stargate like a proxy, there was no actual telling what it could do, and they risked a short databurst back to Earth informing them of the situation before restricting all activity. He had to lock out Earth's address and the bridge program manually, and they shuffled around redirects to the alpha site in case one of the gates somehow blew.

He didn't think they would, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

The jumpers were also rearranged, and they managed to buff out the dents in a couple of other jumpers that were hanging in the bottom-level docks around the different piers. They hadn’t been fully repaired, but apparently were sea-worthy enough to act as substitutes if needed.

McKay was still in the infirmary, but once again in long-term care. It spoke a lot about how much this last scare had spooked him, given that he didn't hear any rumors of attempted jailbreaks. He didn't blame him; a part of him was still recovering from that, himself.

Given that it was his data, at least in part, that had spurred the newest discovery being studied, he had been co-opted by the science department. His shift was covered, and Sheppard seemed to split his time between the Ops room and the infirmary as the highest priorities.

It had probably been done for personal reasons, but maintaining the security of Atlantis was still the colonel's job. He certainly wasn't going to be the one to broach the subject, though, even if it was handy that Atlantis' priorities were also Sheppard's priorities. As it were, they all slowly acclimated to seeing the man let himself be taught a gate technician's job, at least for the few hours when an overlap wasn't available.

He was here himself, though, doing whatever Zelenka thought he should be doing. Currently it was helping with simulations, feeding data into computations and seeing what it visualised. There was a method to the madness, Zelenka had promised, but he wasn't at the stage to understand it.

And that was fine by him, the learning curve for applying formulas to raw data enough to baffle him. There was a time crunch, given the context, but he let himself be wrapped up in the excitement of learning something new that had immediate applicability. ZPMs were still the peak of understanding Atlantis - he combed the data with that in mind, doing his best to flag anything that looked similar to a wormhole developing with its energy patterns.

So far it seemed that mitigating the power allocations had a beneficial effects on the stability of the ZPM. It reminded him of the early days, when the only one had been half a clue about what a ZPM even was was McKay. Now there were half a dozen people on that research, all trained by McKay and the various troubleshooting methods used for applying and fixing it. Even though this seemed to outstrip everyone's knowledge capacity, everyone's mind was turned toward the next bend in the road, attempting to predict the unpredictable.

Tapping his laptop idly, he scrolled through the data again. There were a few discrepancies that haven't been spotted by the others on the team, so he set flags on them with the standardized commentary Zelenka had coached him in about pertinent parameters.

He didn't think there was anything he could add at the moment, though. For that, they were still waiting on McKay himself to finalize conclusions between him and Zelenka on everyone's findings. Swallowing the thread of dread he's been unable to get rid of, he hoped the man was doing alright.

Asking Teyla for a sparring session seemed like the right idea, especially after he had it cleared between Zelenka and Sheppard that it was alright to take a bit of a break. Go, before steam blows out of your ears, Zelenka had advised with no little amusement, We shall hold the fort down.

So an impromptu bantos lesson it was. Teyla was nice enough to realize he was having trouble following more than the very basics, so they spent more time with her directing the flow of their mock fight, only expecting him to intercept her blows instead of reacting to them.

It was calming in the way that a productive distraction was, and he let himself lean into the sound of their sticks clacking against each other at a pace just quick enough to keep him on his toes. They weren't speaking, but then there was no need to - he could see why so many of her students in the city came out looking calmer after a session, the rhythm of the bantos rods enough communication.

His thoughts inevitably slid to their current crisis - waiting for the peak of the problem to crest so they could solve it was nerve-wracking, despite actively working toward the resolution. Nobody knew, for sure, whether McKay would survive this, or even why he was affected in the first place. All they had was speculation that was capable of spiraling out of all recognizability without any concrete data to rely on.

Carson was doing his best, but despite having McKay in the infirmary, this seemed more like a medical corollary to a mechanical issue. He could only tell McKay was alive and otherwise healthy from the way Sheppard was interacting with everyone; there was none of the manic, suppressed grief surrounding him if that had been the case.

Hopefully that wouldn't be the case. Zelenka was stressed enough doing the job of two people with a city that might only maybe be on the verge of a meltdown - not something he realized a guy from his part of the world would like to experience again - without having to deal with his boss dying on him, too.

The sharp rap of Teyla's bantos rod across his knuckles forced him back into the present, and he dropped into a forfeit stance with an embarrassed flush heating his face, "Sorry," He apologized, "Mind got away from me."

Teyla only tilted her head in acknowledgment, smiling graciously, "It is understandable. We are all under much stress right now."

"Yeah," He sighed, curling the rapped hand into a fist and rotating it with a grimace, following her to the rack where the rods were stored, "It sucks, having to sit around and wait for something to happen, in order to do anything about it."

"This is true," Teyla responded, accepting the rods he offered her, setting them carefully back in their place. She gestured to see his hand, holding it in hers while she inspected it. The knuckles were showing signs of bruising, and she tsked as she prodded the inflamed parts, "We shall see Doctor Beckett, I am not sure if these are fractured."

He nodded, letting her lead him out of the sparring room. It was a short enough walk to the transporter, but Teyla's presence made it feel communal rather than awkward as she escorted him to the infirmary. It was a busy area on a typical day, and Teyla flagged down the doctor as he was exiting the room currently housing McKay.

"Hello there, love," Beckett greeted her. The wide smile on his face didn't seem fake, so he hoped with a quiet exhale that it boded well, "What brings you into my little corner today?"

Teyla smiled, gesturing to him, "Sergeant Campbell and I were sparring, and I'm afraid I don't know whether I fractured his hand. Would you be able to take a look at it?"

He got the same tsking noise Teyla had given him, Beckett reaching out to take a look at his hand in the same way. The prodding was, well, more clinical, and he hissed when a sore spot was prodded, "Aye, that looks like a simple enough break. I'll get you some painkillers and a brace, if you'll wait over there?"

'There' was a free bed, which Teyla steered him toward and effortlessly parted the loose crowd around them. It was near McKay's room, close enough that he could see the door was still open. Probably Beckett was in the middle of something when he and Teyla had interrupted, and he had to refrain from clenching his hand in a fit of guilt lest he make the injury worse.

Teyla had also spotted their relative position, and he saw her looking at the open door with a complicated expression. If he concentrated, he could hear a voice from inside the room, but it didn't sound like McKay's. He nudged her shoulder with his own, "You don't have to stay with me, y'know. But thanks for walking me here."

Her smile was thin, "It was no problem, Sergeant. It was the least I could do, as I was the one who injured you."

At the very last moment he remembered not to swear, "Sh- uh, stuff happens, ma'am, don't worry about it. But if you wanted to pop in and say hi to McKay, I'm not gonna tell anyone."

Teyla shook her head, but seemed a little bit cheered up, regardless, "Colonel Sheppard is in there, now. I do not believe Doctor McKay requires further attention at the moment - I shall visit later, when it is quieter."

If anyone was a master of subtlety, it was Teyla, and he nodded in agreement. The colonel had been taking it hard that McKay was still hurt from the ZPM accident, and not having any clear-cut answers to it was probably adding to the man's stress. He remembered the way Sheppard sounded on the city-wide comm, and shivered right as Beckett was stabilizing his hand for a wrap.

"Och," The doctor said, looking concerned, "You aren't sufferin' from a bit of shock, now, are ya?"

"Ah- no," He shook his head, embarrassed at the frowns both Beckett and Teyla were wearing, "No. I am feeling a chill, though, maybe because we didn't do our cool down exercises?"

Teyla looked thoughtfully at the careful way Beckett was binding his hand, "That is a possibility, Carson. You said you would be prescribing him something for the pain?"

Nodding in a consoling manner, Beckett gave his hand a gentle pat when he was done securing the wrap over the splint, "Aye, just a few milligrams of paracetamol ought to do it."

Flexing his fingers experimentally, he could tell that the pain was already subsiding, and he grinned, "Thanks, doc."

"Not a problem," Beckett smiled, "I'll have those pills for you in a moment."

Teyla looked ready to bid him goodbye, likely needing to get back to her other duties, but they both paused when they saw Zelenka stride into their section of the infirmary. He could tell the moment they were spotted by the way the scientist redirected his path, "Ah! Just who I am looking for. Here, look at this."

He barely had time to grab the computer Zelenka shoved at him, wincing as it pulled the newly-made brace, "Doc, what's this?"

"It is the projection of energy consumption by the ZPM," Zelenka said, looking faintly apologetic at the way Teyla helped stabilize the computer so it wouldn't drop, "Rodney, do you know if he is awake? I must tell him what these results mean."

Scanning the data in all its line graph glory, he frowned, "Isn't that our upper boundary it's hitting?"

Zelenka sighed, twisting his hands together before unclasping them to gesture, "Nearly so, yes. That was our projection from our original data. Somehow, whatever Rodney is experiencing is changing the parameters."

Teyla frowned, "What does this mean?"

"I have some ideas," Zelenka replied, sighing, "But I am not sure. I will need to speak to him."

"He's awake, Doc," He said, "Colonel Sheppard's in there, though."

Zelenka and Teyla looked at each other, doing that complex not-talking all the senior staff seemed to do at some point. Eventually they both looked unhappy, and Zelenka sighed again, taking the computer back from his hands, "Vím, ano, but I must speak with him. The colonel will understand."

He exchanged a look with Teyla, both of them apparently coming to the same conclusion to eavesdrop as Zelenka went inside McKay's infirmary room. Hiding on either side of the doorway was easier said than done, but the weary look Beckett gave both of them upon his return subsided when he realized why they were trying to surreptitiously peek into the room. There wasn't quite enough stuff to hide the way their heads poked around, but from what he could tell with only one eye looking, both McKay and Sheppard seemed riveted by Zelenka's presentation of the computer.

"There does seem to be an upper boundary of the amount of energy accrued by the experiment," Zelenka was explaining, pointing to something on the screen, McKay frowning at the data and nodding, "We have been able to approximate when it will achieve this mark - it is much more energy than we were anticipating, I think because the stargate had modulated the process of drawing power."

"…consolidating it," McKay murmured, the tail end of his sentence just barely audible. Zelenka nodded, and he could see Sheppard leaning forward, bracing himself on the gurney as he peered at the computer, "This doesn't make sense, though - there must be some variable we missed to get this order of magnitude."

Sheppard made a low sound, "You, Rodney. You're the variable."

He heard McKay make a derisive sound, "All I did was press a button."

"All you did was die, McKay," Sheppard grabbed the other man's arm, squeezing it tight enough that the alarm for McKay's pulse beeped at them, "We had a hell of a time getting you back."

He looked away from the sight of McKay looking at Sheppard in shock, seeing Teyla's face being tightly-drawn, and behind her, Doctor Beckett looking grim. Nobody that had their comm on at the time would forget that incident any time soon, he thought. When he heard Zelenka interrupt McKay floundering for something to say, he forced his attention back to the scene in the room.

"Sheppard is correct, Rodney," Zelenka said, tapping a button on the keyboard and then pointing to the screen again, "If you see here, the fluctuations in the power draw are matching your, ah, incidents."

"Near-death experiences, you mean," McKay said sourly.

"… Yes," Zelenka admitted, pushing his glasses up, "There is another thing."

McKay sighed, making a 'hurry up' gesture with his free hand, Sheppard still gripping McKay's forearm. Both seemed to either be unaware of their position or ignoring it, something that Zelenka likewise seemed to be playing along with.

"The next fluctuation will be in a few minutes," Zelenka said flatly, "The increases in power are mostly logarithmic in scale."

Everyone within earshot froze. The only sound for a moment was the flutter of McKay's heartbeat, audible only through the monitor hooked up to him. It smoothed back to a normal pulse quicker than he expected, though, McKay responding, "How many?"

"I-" Zelenka inhaled roughly, "At this scale? Not many more. Rodney-"

McKay's lips pursed, "I see," He watched the scientist hand the computer back to Zelenka, who seemed to stumble under its weight, light as the device was, "… Thank you. For your time."

It was an uncharacteristically courteous thing for McKay to say, but it seemed to resonate with the other two men in the room - likewise, he could sense Teyla and Beckett stiffening out of the corner of his eye. McKay glanced at Zelenka before turning his attention away in clear dismissal, his only other movement turning the arm Sheppard was still holding palm-up. He watched Sheppard strangle whatever he was going to say, only moving to slide his hand into McKay's as Zelenka nodded and left without a word.

When Zelenka passed through the doorway, he didn't betray their presence there, obviously eavesdropping, only holding his head up as he presumably exited the infirmary entirely. Teyla had a hand over her mouth, reaching behind her to grab at Beckett. He felt the need to be as silent as them, waiting for whatever happened next. If the last time was Beckett struggling to revive McKay, what would the next time bring?

He wasn't sure he wanted to find out, but he found his feet glued in place, unable to bring himself to move.

Inside the room, McKay sighed, "John-"

"No."

A wordless grumble, almost too quiet to hear, "John, I'm serious."

"The answer's still no."

"You don't even know what I'm going to ask of you," McKay said exasperatedly.

Sheppard's dogged reticence was obvious in his tone, "I do."

"… You do."

There was a beat of quiet, and he imagined there was something he was too reluctant to peek inside to see. Teyla seemed to be in the same position, and for lack of anywhere better to look as they listened, they looked at each other. He didn't know what expression was on his face, but he imagined it was something similar to the grief carving rivers into hers.

"We're good, right?"

Sheppard made a small, choked sound, "Yeah, buddy. We're good."

His fractured hand was aching again, enough to draw his attention away from the steady, reassuring sound of McKay's heart monitor, and he realized that he was balling it into the fabric of his uniform. It felt exactly like the tenterhooks of the first time he overheard everything, back when Atlantis had informed him a life sign had dropped off the monitor. He found his breath caught, waiting once more.

Whatever Zelenka's predictions, they were on the mark, some electric zing raising the hair on his neck as another monitor made a noise in a way that had Beckett startling, only held back by Teyla's grip on his shirt. McKay was speaking again, his diction softer, fonder.

"Don't forget, John, this is important," McKay said, "You don't have much time to get through the gate. Go on- I'll be right there."

Sheppard was responding, even though it was apparent this wasn't McKay, not really, "I will, Rodney. You- you be safe, okay?"

He clenched the fistful of uniform tighter at the way McKay hummed, gentle and amused, "Young man, what are you doing here? I don't think I could store that much data."

"You're here," Sheppard gasped, "Here. You did it, Rodney, I made it back. There's- there was an accident, Rodney was attempting to recharge the ZPM."

"Oh," Rodney chuckled, "Isn't that ambitious. But yes, you seem to be correct. What am I doing here, then? I may be a hologram but I'm no subspace."

Hologram? He mouthed the word to Teyla, who looked unsettled. It was strange enough to make him peek inside, Teyla apparently doing the same by the glint of how her hair fell across her shoulder. Sheppard was leaning into McKay's space, conveniently keeping them from being seen, even if they wouldn't be able to see whatever expression was on McKay's face.

If this was what he thought it was, though, he was glad the sigh was obscured. Watching McKay struggle to stay alive was difficult enough the first time - he wasn't keen on seeing it again.

"Chuck- do you remember him? Chuck Campbell?" Sheppard said, speaking quickly, as if he was trying to beat the clock, "He found some connecting piece of data. You and Zelenka were attempting to recharge the ZPM, and you- you initialized it. Your heart stopped."

That was as painful to hear as it was, apparently, for Sheppard to say. But he saw how McKay reached his free hand up, placing it on Sheppard's bowed head. The gesture was unbelievable gentle, despite how it drew a broken sound from Sheppard, "It's alright," McKay soothed, "How many times has this happened so far, hm? Tell me."

Sheppard inhaled raggedly, lifting his head, but not enough to dislodge McKay's hand upon it, "Three times. You're the fourth."

"I can feel the power draw," McKay murmured, "Not a bad way to go, all things considered. Beats waiting for the sun."

"It's- it's shorter, yeah," Sheppard replied.

"What do you need, John?" McKay asked, "I didn't spend all that time for something to go wrong now."

"I need you," Sheppard said immediately, then cringed, the shape of his shoulders bowing, "I mean- I need my Rodney. This is killing him."

McKay was silent for a moment, seemingly fascinated to draw his hand through Sheppard's hair. He didn't know if they were already like that, but Sheppard offered no complaint, and he wasn't about to ask any questions. The other monitor, which was apparently monitoring a brain wave or maybe an EKG, he didn't know, was picking up in pace in small, noticeable increments.

"Alright," McKay agreed simply, "Let me see what I can do."

"Thank you," Sheppard gasped, leaning forward to brace his forehead against McKay's in the same way he'd seen the Athosians do.

"John," McKay said, hand going to the colonel's shoulder and gently pushing the man away, "It is good to see you. Regardless of the circumstances."

Sheppard covered McKay's hand with his own, grasping tight enough that McKay would have usually yelped in pain. The scientist instead looked only fascinated, staring at the white-knuckled grip upon him, "Oh- oh my. Can I really-"

Nodding quickly, he could hear Sheppard swallow, "Yeah. Really."

He had to blink a few times at the unmistakable sight of both of them leaning together to kiss. It wasn't anything particularly scandalous, other than the fact that he wasn't expecting to see it, and he was really only able to see the way Sheppard was apparently willing to accommodate McKay by contorting himself over the infirmary bed.

It was over as quickly as it began, Sheppard clasping the side of McKay's head and letting himself be entangled with the other man. He could hear speech, but it was too quiet and too low for him to even guess what was being said.

"Time to go," McKay eventually said, settling a hand on Sheppard's face, thumb brushing at the corner of Sheppard's eye, "Take care, John."

"You, too," Sheppard said roughly, breathing in shakily and leaning away, composing himself with a quick swipe at his eyes.

He was still processing what was in front of him when the machines hooked up to McKay blurted out in alarm. Beckett practically dove into the room, Sheppard easily stepping into a corner as other medical staff filed in. They all looked grim, ignoring him and Teyla as they carried in equipment.

The ensuing chaos was enough to convince him to back away, pulling Teyla with him. She looked shell-shocked, hand still faintly cupped over her mouth, cheeks streaked in unexpected tears, "C'mon, ma'am," He said quietly, his own heart still shaking from the scene, "Let's let them work."

Teyla nodded, and he cast a glance back into the room. Sheppard's eyes were glued to McKay being resuscitated, arms crossed over himself and looking small where he had pressed himself into the corner.

Whatever it was that this- this holographic, apparently, version of McKay did, it had Zelenka running into Woolsey's office uncaring of how many people he ran into. It had already been daylight, so he hadn't noticed the purported power spike that had made all the lights on Atlantis glow, but from the colonel's pale countenance as he was called into the office, McKay's efforts had been significant.

Teyla had been the one to inform him of its magnitude. Both of them were sitting at a table in the mess, long enough past dinner hours that even she looked fatigued. They picked at the fried fish that the kitchen staff had decided to serve that night, some creamy sauce overlaying it and an unappetizing mix of vegetables that didn't quite hide the sharp bite of spices the botany department confirmed was high in vitamin C.

"Doctor Beckett assured us that Rodney is stable," She confided in him quietly, spearing a morsel of wannabe-carrots on her fork unenthusiastically, "They're using a regenerative scanner to heal the damage of the electrical shock he endured when his alternate self transferred energy to the ZPM."

"How-" He coughed on a piece of pepper flake, reaching for his glass of juice, "How much energy was it?"

Teyla raised an expansive eyebrow, shaking her head at her plate as she frowned, "I am not sure the precise number, but Doctor Zelenka assured me it was a significant amount. Rodney is lucky to have survived it."

"Is this a good thing?" He asked. The sharp whine of the defibrillator had only been in the periphery of his hearing as he escorted himself and Teyla out of the infirmary, but the pitch of it had stayed as an incessant buzz in his ears even hours afterward. There had been a lot of scientists running around in the interim time, making all the soldiers anxious about having nothing productive to do.

He watched her shrug limply, shoveling a bite of food into her mouth in a blatantly automatic action. It was obvious her thoughts were far away, and he guessed from the scuttlebutt that she had been helping Woolsey to coordinate information and keep Sheppard calm enough to be useful. Come think of it, he hadn't seen anything of the colonel since earlier that day - Beckett was likely to kick people out when he was busy with a patient, but it was Lorne who had been sending soldiers on preemptive patrols in case they needed to be anywhere quickly.

The golden hues of the setting sun morphing into dark blues made Teyla's sigh more effusive than it really was, "Doctor Zelenka has predicted that Rodney's actions have ensured the plateau will be achieved sooner. Presumably this means that there will be fewer incidents incapacitating Rodney."

Chewing on his fish thoughtfully, he tilted his head to one side, doing his best to recall the data that Zelenka had showed him in the infirmary. They had all more or less established that - whether anyone liked it or not - McKay being the initializer to the recharging program meant that when- if, he reminded himself sternly - the man could no longer act as a conduit, then the program would have run its route. None of them had admitted out loud what the end of that road meant; Zelenka had been the closest, earlier, having calculated a more or less exact time.

He gripped his fork tighter, setting it down before the tremble in his hands could cause him to drop the utensil. It clanked loudly in the relative silence of the mess, too few people taking up room to lose the noise in background chatter. Teyla's head rose sharply at the unexpected noise, eyes focusing before realizing there was no immediate danger to be had.

Her compassionate look made him want to sink into his seat - McKay was one of her team mates, he ought to be the one comforting her, not the other way around. It looked like taking on the mantle of responsibility was a hard habit to break, though, and he had the feeling it was more helpful to her. He sighed, accepting the curl of her hand over his forearm with as much grace as he could muster.

"I really don't like the Ancients," He muttered, shooting Teyla a wry look, "No offense."

She smiled easily, "No offense taken. I, too, have learned to question their ways. It has been a difficult lesson, but a useful one."

They ate their meal a little more easily after that, the food tasting more palatable now that he was a little more grounded in the present. It was a companionable silence, one that was refreshing after the events of the day.

When Teyla raised a hand to her ear, head tilted, he felt himself tensing, but a quick shake of her head dissipated the reflexive fear. She listened intently to whatever was on the other side of the line, smiling after a moment, "That is excellent news, thank you," She said, smiling warmly, "Yes, you have a good night as well, John. Let us know if you require anything."

He raised a curious eyebrow as they stood from the table and bussed their trays, "Good news?"

"Yes," She confirmed, grinning, "Rodney woke up briefly and has regained lucidity. They will be watching him carefully, but for now we have ample opportunity to rest."

He grinned back, "That's great news."

Teyla briefly clasped him on the shoulder before they parted ways, "Indeed. Thank you for sharing dinner with me, Sergeant, and have a good rest of your evening."

"Same to you," He replied, feeling himself finally settle, for real. They might not be out of the woods, but the confirmation that they were most of the way there was encouraging.

It was relatively deserted in the hallways back to his room, everyone either cooped up in the labs or long since winding down to bed. He found himself enjoying the solitude. McKay had come through yet again - their little cornerstone would last just a bit longer.

For a while it seemed like the coast was clear. He was able to take a couple more shifts at the Ops room again, and whenever the colonel swung by, the man seemed to be in a much better mood. McKay was still tentatively in the infirmary, watched closely as he recuperated.

But just like a ship exiting the threshold of a storm, he kept a nervous eye on the horizon, checking the data Zelenka let him have access to several times a day. It had become rote habit - once an hour, or more, if his fingers felt the wrong sort of twitchy.

Zero-point-two-oh-two. It was the magical number, approximately.

They hadn't even reached it yet.

So he pasted on a smile, did as he was ordered, and waited for the next wave.

When it came, he was merely in the infirmary for a routine check-up, one of the doctors on shift scanning his hand with a little oval-shaped device that would record the pace of his healing and administer some sort of electrical field to hurry things along. It made his hand a little numb, and he was still flexing it absently as the doctor left for the storage cabinet in search of a softer brace that would function more as a reminder than anything else when an alarm trilled from McKay's room on the other side of the infirmary.

It was alarmingly similar to the last time, and he felt drawn to move toward McKay's infirmary room, as if it were a gravity well drawing in everyone in the vicinity. Something seemed to be out of order, though, the doctors clearing out unusually quickly but with strange expressions on their faces.

He lingered by the door, again, uncertain whether he intended to keep watch or to eavesdrop. The decision was taken from him, though, when Sheppard tentatively said, "McKay?"

"Ah."

The voice was McKay's, but the tone was not - or, rather, not one he could imagine. It reminded him vaguely of Woolsey, whenever he had caught the man's arguments with the IOA through gate transmissions. Firm, vaguely condescending, and brooking no argument.

Few arguments of that type had ever crossed their proverbial desks, mostly because setting up communication buoys between the two galaxies was expensive, exhausting work according to McKay, and hardly worth the work when an email would suffice. It wasn't like the IOA had much pull here, according to the invectives McKay had thrown when Woolsey had made one half-hearted attempt to hand down circumspect orders.

He barely tuned his attention back to the conversation at hand, still caught up in memories of how all of them had been grilled when they had hauled ass to save Earth. McKay was speaking, in that unnervingly controlled pace that the man usually lacked.

"-must be in another dimension, correct?" McKay said, laying out facts as if they were options on a table. It was entirely like McKay, that even alternate universe versions of him were able to deduce a situation after being thrown head-first into it.

"… Correct," Sheppard said, drawling out his answer.

"Don't sound so uncertain," McKay said chidingly, "It doesn't become you."

"And how would you know what 'becomes' me?" Sheppard replied, sounding some mix of unconcerned and angry. Given how Sheppard had reacted to the last McKay that hopped into, well, McKay's brain, he was a little surprised at the reaction, and wondered what exactly it was that he had missed.

"Because I have never known a John Sheppard that did not fling himself into death without the slightest provocation," McKay snapped, and whoa, how many Sheppards did this McKay meet? He frowned at the headache-inducing thought, leaning his head against the doorframe and wondering what McKay would say next, "And either I am dead or dying, because I am seeing you in the infirmary, so tell me what is going on."

The pause that followed that was long and tense. He felt himself straightening up in reflex at the rustle of cloth that was undeniably the colonel stalking toward McKay in a pissed-off mood.

"You are not dead or dying," Sheppard hissed, "Or if you are, I'm not currently giving a shit. What's going on is that my McKay is maybe dying, because all of you alternate universe McKays are butting in to his head and trying to kill him. So you tell me what's going on."

He could hear the beeping of the machinery, feeling like he was perhaps listening in on something more private than originally believed. Still, his feet were too leaden to move, and he was able to hear the way McKay exhaled.

"Maybe I am," McKay said thoughtfully, "And I'm just too far gone to realize it. Alternate universe, you say? How is that happening? I don't see a quantum mirror anywhere, and at any rate, they don't work like this."

"There's no quantum mirror involved," Sheppard ground out, "Also, what? What would you be dying from?"

"Hm," McKay sounded amused, "Take your pick. We're - or perhaps I - have been having a war of attrition with the Wraith. I take it by your presence on Atlantis that this is a universe in which you came along with the expedition? How many people are left of the original expedition?"

There was a metallic rattle, as if Sheppard had grabbed the bed railing and shaken it, "Seventy-seven percent."

"Not bad," McKay sounded impressed, "I had always known your presence kept more people alive, but it's always nice to have a figure on hand."

"Are you-" Sheppard's voice caught, and he pressed himself further into the little alcove by the door, heart thumping. Seventy-seven percent? He remembered how many had died the first year, from sheer bad luck or from being on a gate team, but it hadn't occurred to him that Sheppard had kept meticulous track of the number of- of survivors. Dozens of people lost from the original two hundred, and that before the miraculous arrival of the Daedalus.

Sheppard seemed to have found whatever energy was required to keep speaking, "Are you from one of the realities where I didn't go?"

He listened to McKay chuff a laugh, too full of honest grief that he had the feeling no version of McKay would ever indulge in public. Sheppard didn't count, and he doubted Sheppard ever counted as a true stranger, "John Sheppard. You were dishonourably discharged long before this expedition ever formed."

The weak feeling in his knees caught him off-guard. Not staying in the military? Sheppard? It seemed too ridiculous to be true. The man wore his uniform like it was the only thing he would ever volunteer for, and had figured out how to lead the military contingent as Weir's right hand through literal thick and thin when everyone seemed to believe Sheppard wasn't cut out for it.

Colonel Sheppard was their commander, and he couldn't fathom anyone else in the role. Who was it this McKay had? Sumner? Someone else? He had been pleased at hearing about a seventy-seven percent survival rate, when they had all grieved over it. What hellhole did this McKay come from?

"What happened?" Sheppard asked, rough and almost too quiet to be heard.

There was a pause, quick enough to be glossed over, before McKay spoke, "We had Wraith on Earth, some freak accident of an invasion we were barely able to keep wraps on. You were the only detective in Las Vegas capable of tracking down the victims. Eventually," McKay sighed, "Eventually you ran into your perp."

"A Wraith killed me," Sheppard said flatly.

"No," McKay chuckled, an unexpected sound, "Or at least not then. I was in charge of your interrogation. You didn't want to join the program - too much debt, I believe. Then you were off, probably heading down to Mexico in your little sports car, when you called me."

"Thought we didn't know each other."

He felt the urge to peek into the room at Sheppard's tone, but held back, vaguely wondering why nobody was around to pluck him away from the doorway and scold him for the intrusion. But the area seemed curiously clear, as if in deference to Sheppard and McKay conversing with each other.

"We didn't," McKay confirmed, sighing as if releasing a great burden, "But I had still given you my number. You had called me, made a U-turn in the middle of the nowhere. Apparently, you had figured out where the Wraith would be, sending out the signal of Earth's location."

"Wanted to keep in touch, eh?" Sheppard said weakly. It was the first time he had heard Sheppard attempting to deflect. Maybe the colonel had picked up on what he had - that this McKay wasn't a nice one, or maybe hadn't had the luxury of it.

"Something like that," McKay replied wryly. In the background, the pace of the monitors shifted, so slight it would have gone unnoticed if he hadn't been working with Zelenka almost non-stop for the past couple of weeks attempting to parse the problems with the ZPM and McKay alike, "I had called in the airstrike on the coordinates you gave me. I… didn't know if you had managed to escape the strike zone in time. Not then."

"I'm sorry," Sheppard said, and he wondered if this would be like last time, if he looked inside the room.

"Don't be," The bitterness was apparent in McKay's voice, "I was at least able to meet you. It doesn't seem to be guaranteed in these multi-verses of ours."

"How long? It doesn't sound like a long time."

"… Three days. Give or take," McKay admitted, over Sheppard's sharp inhale, "All sounds very biblical, if you ask me. Only you didn't rise again. We- we didn't have time for a proper funeral. Atlantis had to move back to the Pegasus galaxy in order to contain the rest of the Wraith invasion. It was only because of you that the coordinates burst wasn't sent out to more galaxies through the rip in spacetime. I can only imagine if it made it to your sensors or not."

"We'll handle it," Sheppard promised, seeming to gloss over the news of his own alternate universe's death, Atlantis being able to make such a miraculous journey, and a projected doom that might be sent their way entirely, "Was there anything you wanted to know?"

"Do you really like spearmint gum?" McKay asked, sounding faintly uncertain.

Sheppard, unexpectedly, laughed. It sounded surprised, and honest, "Only you, McKay," Sheppard said, when he managed to let his belly laughs peter off into chuckles, "Only if I'm smoking. Why do you ask?"

There was a sigh, a fwump as if McKay had slumped into his pillow, "I was wondering why that Sheppard insisted on it. Seems he had picked something up about how I was asking. You were always too smart for your own good."

"Yeah," Sheppard said wryly, "I get that a lot."

"From me, I suppose?" McKay asked. It sounded, if he didn't know any better, vaguely coy. He felt his cheeks warm by proxy, wondering if it would be too late to slip away and find that doctor looking for his replacement brace.

"Funnily enough, you always seemed impressed," Sheppard replied, "Always surprised when I said something smart."

"Well, you are a flyboy," McKay said ruefully.

Their laughter sounded almost normal, as if this were yet another post-mission infirmary stay rather than everyone waiting on tenterhooks whether McKay would survive a leap of faith experiment. His heart clenched painfully at the demonstrated fact of McKay and Sheppard getting along in any reality, and across realities, Zelenka's words from the last incident rearing up in unpleasant reminder.

"So," McKay said, his curiosity warm and unlike the crispness of earlier, "What's it like? Here?"

"… Ah. Pretty good," Sheppard hedged, "It's a lot more fun when it's both of us."

"That sounds nice," McKay sounded wistful, "I would have liked that. Just once."

"Well, I'm here now," Sheppard insisted, "As long as you have me."

And now, now, he felt like he was undeniably intruding. He inched away, hoping nobody would catch him doing it, the indulgent, overlapping chatter from the colonel and McKay echoing in the background as he sought out a doctor. Whatever would happen, he thinks, it should be alright.

Neither of them would let it fall apart.

Whatever had happened with that particular McKay, he didn't know - only that Zelenka had pinged him over the comms, ordering him to the Ops room to track fluctuations with the gate. He ran, sliding into his seat right as the gate powered on, and his fingers flew over the keyboard to look at the data.

"No incoming IDC," He confirmed aloud, hearing the familiar steps of Woolsey skidding to a stop behind him. Wherever Zelenka was, he could only assume it was back in the lab, or else the ZPM room. Inhaling mostly to steady himself, he ran the program Zelenka and McKay had mocked up, something that would check if the dial-in was from Atlantis or not-Atlantis, "No… incoming address, either."

"Do we have any other information?" Woolsey asked him.

He shook his head, tapping his comm, "Campbell to Zelenka."

"I am very busy!" Zelenka shouted into the line, sounding out of breath. Right on cue, there was some muttering in Czech, the city giving an imperceptible sway, as if it were a ship about to breach the boundaries of a storm. Swearing to himself, he clutched at the console reflexively, feeling Woolsey grab the back of the chair, "You, run the code again. Do you see anything?"

Biting his lip, he did as instructed, pressing run on the program and waiting anxiously. It seemed like the rest of the room was waiting with bated breath - he didn't even want to consider the potential chaos in the infirmary, briefly screwing his eyes shut to ward off any bad luck. Behind him, Woolsey's hand clenched tighter on the chair, the plastic creaking under his grip.

When the computer pinged, he exhaled roughly, quickly reading over the results, "Incoming address is Atlantis, sir."

There was more muttering, a mix of Czech and English, too rapid for him to make out any particulars. Watching the active portal on the gate, he wondered once again at what the gate was connecting to, at how the wormhole looked from the inside. The iris would prevent anything from coming through, anyway, but for a moment the possibility of something intangible traversing that barrier made his heart skip a beat.

"ZPM has regained stability," Zelenka announced, making him startle. Behind him, Woolsey made a wordless murmur of concern, abruptly making him remember that he was the only one on the line with the scientist, "Zero point… zero point three zero zero zetta electrovolts increase in ZPM charge."

He echoed Zelenka's disbelief with a faint gasp of his own, turning around to grip tightly at Woosley's arm, "Doctor McKay-"

Woolsey nodded sharply, tapping his comm, "Woolsey to infirmary. I need a status report on Doctor McKay."

The silence in both the room and at the other end of his call with Zelenka was deafening. He found himself watching Woosley's expression with desperation, needing some finality to the situation.

After a beat, and then two, Woolsey relaxed, a faint smile on his face, "Thank you, doctor. Please convey our regards."

It took effort to bite back the instinctive Well? that he wanted to ask, but it must have been written all over his face, anyway, because Woolsey patted his arm reassuringly and then peeled his hand off with a hesitant kindness. "Everything is well, Sergeant," The man announced, smiling at him indulgently, "Is Doctor Zelenka still on the line with you?"

"Ah-" He flushed, "Yessir. Doctor Zelenka, did you hear-"

"Yes, you are quite loud, both of you," Zelenka griped, sounding nevertheless relieved, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," He replied automatically, "Campbell out."

Tapping the call off, he slumped in his chair, staring out at the gate as it closed with a sedate whoosh. He listened with half an ear to the tentative chatter burbling up around him, feeling a little shell-shocked at the problem being resolved at all. Absently, he shook out his hands, the tingle of adrenaline still sparking at the ends of his fingers.

Woolsey pressed a hand at his shoulder, "That was very good work, Sergeant. Why don't you take the rest of your shift off, relax a little?"

He nodded blankly, the words making sense to him after the fact, "Oh. Um. Thank you, sir."

Stumbling out of his chair on wobbly legs, he realized he knew exactly where he needed to go, pushing past the people milling about the room and directly to the transporter.

Whatever was going on in the infirmary, it seemed all was clear. There had been enough time between the Ops room and the infirmary for him to calm down, the erratic, nervous patter of his heart finally settling. He straightened when he saw Doctor Beckett coming toward him, only relaxing when the man gave him a reassuring smile.

"Are you here for Rodney, then?" The doctor asked, corralling him in with an arm when he nodded and leading them to McKay's infirmary room, "He should be resting right about now, that business with the ZPM scaring the hair off of us, but all's well that end's well, I suppose."

He nodded along to Beckett's chatter, both of them navigating the other personnel and lingering at the room's door. It was quiet there, a calmness emanating from its stillness that had been absent during the entirety of McKay's stay in the infirmary. He frowned, not wanting to intrude if McKay was finally able to get a restful sleep.

"Ach, don't worry about it," Beckett said, albeit in a hushed tone. The man pushed him forward by his shoulder, steering him into the room, "You'll hardly be able to wake either o' them at the moment."

The question rising to his lips of Both? Fell away when he saw what the doctor meant. Colonel Sheppard had scooted up the guest chair to the very edge of the infirmary bed, one arm entangled with McKay's. Both were snoring lightly, and someone had propped the colonel's head up with a pillow tucked over the edge of the chair.

He noticed that both of them looked peacefully asleep, a notion that was supported by the even beeping of the monitor recording of McKay's vitals. It undid that persistent tangle of fear he had been harbouring since McKay had first collapsed on him in the labs, letting the remembered echo of Sheppard's voice over the comms that had been repeating McKay's name fade away.

Perhaps those memories would still crop up on the bad days - probably the next time they needed McKay and Sheppard to save the day and fix whatever had gone wrong, but for now he just sighed, hearing the way Beckett did the same.

"Better now, lad?" The doctor asked, patting his shoulder.

Nodding, he smiled, "Yeah. Thank you."

Beckett returned his smile, watching the two for a moment more and seeming to relax the longer both colonel and scientist were undisturbed, "Aye, well," The doctor blinked back to himself, "Let's let them rest."

As he walked away, he could swear he felt the city settle, its normal rhythm restored. He breathed out a sigh of relief, letting the sunshine filtering in through the corridor windows warm him. Everything would be alright, now.

Author's Notes

Glossary

No budu proklet - Czech, "Well I'll be damned"

Dobrý Bůh - Czech, "Good God"

Vím, ano - Czech, "I know, yes"