Chapter Eleven: Restoring the Lost I

“How’s it going Rodney?” John asked watching as Rodney sighed. “That bad?”

“It’s just that all this is horribly complicated,” Rodney answered. “I mean I can only work on this on my free time but that free time is dwindling significantly seeing on how we always seem to be off world and—”

“—and I know that you’ll get it in the end Rodney.” John interrupted. “I have faith in you.”

“Oh thanks so much for your vote of confidence.”

John smiled and shook his head. “Come one. We have to go.”

Rodney looked at John inquisitively. “What for?”

---sparky---

Rodney and John were walking towards the gateroom and Rodney was not pleased. “I don't know what all the fuss is about. If we do this every time someone comes for a visit, we'll never get any work done.”

“We're just meeting them at the Gate.” John replied.

Rodney shook his head. “We're not just meeting him at the Gate! I've been pulled from my regular duties to help him with his database research! I've got stuff on the go, you know: important, vital projects for the -- the betterment of the human race and your fiancée I might add. I’m never going to figure out how to create human cells that sustain themselves if I have to be a freaking librarian.”

John smiled. “Apparently there are other people doing equally important work, Rodney, as hard as that is to believe,” and with that they walked into the gateroom and stood on either side of Elizabeth. “Exciting day isn’t it?” he asked watching as Elizabeth smiled and nodded once. Rodney for his part grimaced and then before their eyes both Daniel and Vala were beamed down in front of them.

“Daniel, Vala welcome back to Atlantis,” Elizabeth stated with a smile.

“Don’t you mean Daniel Disneyland?” asked Vala with an arched eyebrow and when she received a quizzical look from her Daniel she just shrugged her shoulders. “What that’s what Mitchell calls this place Daniel, you know that.”

Daniel smiled warmly at Vala, something that did not escape Elizabeth’s notice. “I know,” he replied softly before turning back to matters at hand. “Could Vala and I begin at once with Rodney’s help?”

Elizabeth nodded. “Of course.”

---sparky---

It was hours later and while Vala was doing her best to be as interested in what they were doing she wasn’t doing a good enough job with it. Her one consolation was that she was handling herself better than Rodney. “Just get to the point,” Rodney snapped.

“Okay,” Daniel agreed. “He never talked about it in his entries, but several of Janus' peers suspected he had a "bastion of unfettered thought and experimentation" or -- as one of his lovers put it…”

“Lovers?” asked Rodney. “Janus had lovers?”

“Is it so surprising?” asked Vala with a smirk. “He was a genius.”

“…anyways it was an isle of solitude within the city walls,” Daniel explained.

Rodney sighed. “ Well, that could just mean he's hard to talk to. People say things like that about me all the time.”

“Now, none of these writers had any idea where the lab could be, but one of his young assistants recalls a day where Janus turned a corner down a hallway.”

“Oh right,” Rodney stated with an exasperated sigh. "Today: saw Janus in the hallway." There's a real page turner!”

“He chased after him with a question about his work but when he rounded the corner, Janus was gone. The hallway was a dead end. He had seemingly disappeared and, I think, into his secret lab.” Daniel continued ignoring Rodney’s attitude.

“Well, did this assistant happen to mention ...”

“... which hallway?” Vala asked as she finished reading over Daniel’s shoulder. “Yes, he does. So that means that my Daniel was right and you were wrong.”

Rodney scowled at her. “The jury’s still out on that one.”

---sparky---

“Are you insane?” John asked as he and Elizabeth walked along the corridor. “Going to meet Todd all by yourself?”

“I’m going on the Daedalus John,” she pointed out. “I’ll be fine.”

“But do you really think he's gonna show up, huh, and let you guys try out Doctor Keller's and Caron’s gene therapy on a few of his guys?”

Elizabeth shrugged her shoulders. “Who knows? We did hold up our end of the deal.”

“Right,” John agreed. “He has what he wants. I should go. I know him.”

Elizabeth shook her head. “No. This is a diplomatic mission John.”

“A militaristic diplomatic mission,” he countered.

She smiled softly. “You’re my fiancée John and I know that you want to be there but you are still the second in command and the only one who I trust to come after me should something go wrong.”

“Do you think that—”

Elizabeth shook her head and kissed John to stop him from worrying. “I don’t think that any thing is going to go wrong but it is still better to be prepared.”

John sighed. “Just be careful okay?”

Elizabeth nodded. “Okay.”

---sparky---

Later, once Daniel and Vala and Rodney had found the lab the three of them were looking around when suddenly out of now where they were all stunned. Vala was the first to awaken and she quickly scrambled over to Daniel. “What happened?” he asked groggily as she handed him his glasses. “We were kidnapped again weren’t we.”

“Yes,” Vala agreed. “We were.”

“Ugh..” moaned Rodney as he too came to. “What the hell happened?!”

“We were attacked.” Vala pointed out with a smile.

“That much I got, thanks! By who?” Rodney stated and asked irritably.

Vala sighed. “We were kinda hoping you could tell us.”

Rodney of course had no idea what was going around and thus the three of them were left to look around the small triangular cell that they were trapped in. “Okay,” Rodney began finally. “There is no way this is a coincidence. I mean, we discover Janus' super-secret lab and less than twenty-four hours later a bunch of aliens show up, all guns blazing?! That’s odd don’t you think?”

Daniel nodded as did Vala. “This is not a coincidence,” she stated. “But how are we going to get out of here?”

“And more importantly,” Daniel added. “How did they find us?”

Rodney went on to explain his theory of how they were caught and then all three of them were taken by a strange looking being in an exoskeleton like suit. They were told to get the device before them operational and figuring that they had to do something to stall for time they set to it. Vala wasn’t much good for anything except helping Rodney and Daniel translate the ancient writing into plain english and sooner than even she expected Rodney had it figured out. “I think I know what this thing does. It’s an endgame machine.”

“Like in chess?” asked Vala with an intrigued voice.

“How so?” asked Daniel a little more nervously.

“If it works the way I think it does, it would mean the end of the Wraith once and for all.” Rodney explained. “This device would stop them dead in their tracks by creating a very specific sub-space static ... uh, turbulence is probably a better way of looking at it…” he paused and noticed the confused faces on both Vala and Daniel. “Okay, look. Um, although they're all based on a fairly similar technological premise, each race has a slightly different type of hyperdrive. Ours are based on the Asgard drive with our own little twist; the Ancients had their own particular system; and the Wraith, again, have their own separate hyperdrive technology. Here at its base level, a hyperdrive allows you to travel great distances by entering and exiting sub-space.”

“We know that,” Vala assured.

“Okay,” Rodney stated. “If this machine is capable of actually functioning safely, it disrupts the very specific sub-space frequencies the Wraith use.”

“So they wouldn't be able to engage their hyperdrive.” Daniel figured out.

“Well, that's the genius. They would be able to engage their hyperdrives. It's just that their particular channel of sub-space would be destabilised and their ship would be ripped into a million pieces.”

Daniel looked at Rodney. “When this device is turned on, every time a Wraith ship enters hyperspace, it self-destructs?” Rodney said nothing but nodded. “It's a pretty effective idea.”

“Very effective,” Vala agreed. “Too bad we couldn’t have used this with the Orii.”

“It is very effective,” Rodney continued. “I mean, because even if word got back to the other Wraith that the ships should stop using their hyperdrive, they'd be stuck where they were. They'd only be able to travel using sub-light engines.”

“And because an Ancient ship's hyperdrives operate on a different frequency of sub-space, the Ancients could fly around the galaxy and pick them off one by one.” Daniel interjected.

Yeah, or you just leave ‘em to die in the vastness of space,” Rodney suggested.

“So, what's the catch?” asked Vala. “There’s always a catch.”

“Ah, well, the catch is that Janus ran a three day test about ten thousand years ago and then shut the whole project down because of unforeseen side effects which are not clear.” Rodney stated. “This thing from Atlantis is the key to the whole shebang. I mean, Janus brought that back with him to Atlantis but kept it connected to the main system here. One won't work without the other. We can probably get it working again, I mean I can get it working again though the question is whether I should.”

“Why wouldn’t you?” asked Vala. “Don’t you want to destroy the wraith?”

The last time I went down this road, I ... I kinda destroyed a solar system.” Rodney admitted. “And those unforeseen side effects have me nervous too.”

“So what do we do?” asked Vala. “Reason with them?”

Just then as if cued by some cosmic force one of the aliens came in and Daniel began trying to reason with it. “Now, obviously you're excited about the possibility of ending the Wraiths' reign over this galaxy once and for all, but the reality is: this device and this facility were abandoned by their creator for a very good reason. See, uh, it doesn't work -- at least, not safely. (He gestures to Rodney beside him.) That's from what my friend can tell. Look, we share the same goal. Perhaps we have many things in common…” he paused but the alien didn’t respond in the slightest. “Look, given the right amount of time, it's possible we could get the device to function safely, but we'd have to contact our people and bring in a much larger science team. See, I'm not that kind of scientist, and my friend here,” Daniel continued pointing to Vala. “Isn’t that kind of scientist either but Rodney is and uh—”

“Get the device operational within one hour or I will kill her,” the alien responded pointing a weapon at Vala who was frozen in place. “Do you understand?” the alien asked again and both Daniel and Vala noticed when Rodney nodded slowly and stated that he did understand. With a satisfied grunt the alien left the three of them alone and Daniel wrapped a protective arm around Vala.

“You’re not going to let them kill me are you?” she asked looking frantically between Rodney and Daniel. “Are you?”

Daniel shook his head and held Vala a little closer. “No of course not.”

“Of course not,” Rodney agreed as he continued on with his work.

“You took long enough to answer,”

“I was just thinking,” Daniel assured.

“About what? Losing me?”

Daniel shook his head. “I am not going to lose you. We’ll figure something out.”

“Then what were you thinking about?”

“I was thinking about the suits,” Daniel began. “I mean they're not in battle any more. Originally I thought it was just their version of SWAT gear, but they still have it on. Maybe they're more than just armour; maybe they're some sort of protective suit. Maybe they can't function on our liveable atmosphere.”

“Maybe we should just add it to the list of things that have nothing to do with the task at hand,” Rodney stated angrily as he continued wading though the information on the consol. “I mean yes the suits might be the key to figuring out who these guys are but I’m trying on working how to get your girlfriend killed.”

Daniel looked sharply at Rodney trying not to wake Vala who had fallen asleep out of sheer exhaustion. “She’s not my girlfriend,”

Rodney rolled his eyes. “Like I believe that.”

“Well you should.”

Rodney shook his head. “I spent the better part of three years watching my two best friends dance around their feelings for one another. Believe me. I know how to recognize the signs.” Rodney fell silent and continued to work, occasionally glancing out of the corner of his eye at Daniel who was holding a sleeping Vala. Daniel for his part was thinking about Rodney had said. Somewhere deep down inside him he knew that he had to question whether the feelings he held for Vala were purely platonic. After they had defeated the Ori, when she had told him that Tomin had asked her to come back with him Daniel had been deathly afraid of losing her, and then when she had told him that she had no intention of leaving the SGC because for the first time in her life she felt as though she had somewhere to belong, Daniel had felt elated. And not once in the year and a half since had he questioned her decision, or his. As far as Daniel had been concerned he and Vala had been the best of friends. When Sam left to join the Atlantean expedition she told him not to wait too long and he had brushed that comment off and now he couldn’t help feel that he had left things too long. ‘What if we don’t get out of this,’ he thought to himself as Rodney continued to work and Vala slept on. ‘What if they kill her like they say they are going to do? How will I be able to live with myself knowing full well that I—“

“Done,” Rodney stated, snapping Daniel out of his musings. “It wasn’t broken like I thought. Janus just shut it down. All we need is that, the key from the Atlantis lab and a basic understanding of Janus' coding style and -- here's where I come in again -- the Ancient gene. I mean, we're ... we're ready to roll.”

“Vala wake up,” Daniel whispered as he turned to Rodney. “You don't have to do this.”

“They’re going to kill Vala.”

“We can find a way out of this.”

Vala shook her head hearing the tale end of the conversation. “No. We have to do this. She paused and looked to Daniel. “They are going to come in here and kill me Daniel and then they’ll go for you.”

“Yeah and then me,” Rodney pointed out in a hysterical voice. “And to tell you the truth here, I'm quite fond of me, so we might as well do it, you know, now, while you're still alive, as opposed to ... you know, then.”

Daniel sighed. “Alright. Let’s do this then.”

All three of them held their breath waiting for the room to explode around them once the device had been turned on and it hadn’t and they all wondered what was going to happen next.

---

Meanwhile on the bridge of the Daedalus, Elizabeth greeted Todd. “You have an urgent message from your Hive,” she explained as she held out an ear piece for him to take. “I assumed you'd want to take it privately.” She watched as Todd nodded, took the ear piece, listened carefully and then barked out an order. “What was all that about?” she asked curiously.

“One of our facilities is under attack by a rival Hive. Our two support ships must depart for battle. My Hive will remain here; continue the work with Doctor Keller.”

Elizabeth looked at him. “How generous of you Todd to stay here to work with us when your people are in danger…hopefully the two of you will get the job done quickly and then you too can go and join the fight.”

Todd nodded and turned to the windshield of the Daedalus to watch his hive go. However as soon as the hive hit the window it exploded. “What the hell happened?” Elizabeth and Steven Caldwell yelled at the same time.

“How did you do that?” Todd asked turning on Elizabeth who just stared at him.

“How did we? Todd we didn’t do anything.”

Todd glowered at her. “You tricked me.”

“I swear that we did no such thing and…”

“And you have found the Attero device.” Todd accused angrily.

“Attero device?” Elizabeth asked. “What is that?”

But Todd wasn’t having any of it. He stunned everyone on the bridge, including Elizabeth despite the fact that her nanites should have protected her but her close proximity to the device rendered her as helpless as the rest of the crew.

---sparky---

Meanwhile Rodney had just figured out the side effect. “Oh no,” he muttered in horror.

“What?” asked Vala as she held her arms across her chest in a defensive pose.

“What is it?” prompted Daniel as he came to stand behind Vala.

“The side effect is something that is going to royally screw the ret of the galaxy,” Rodney stated horrified at what he had done. “I have to shut this thing down.”

“What does it do Rodney?” asked Daniel with authority.

“It causes Stargates to blow up.”

Vala and Daniel felt the colour drain from their faces as they watched Rodney whiten at the thought. “Atlantis,” Vala whispered in horror when suddenly the room opened and the three of them found themselves being stunned once again.

---sparky---

Meanwhile, back at Atlantis they were discovering first hand the devastating side effect even though they didn’t know what it was. “Everyone who doesn't need to be here, get to the edge of the city. Move! Everybody!” The crew started to scatter and John turned his attention to Teyla. “You're gonna want to get out of here.”

“John, I ...”

“Teyla you have a baby to think about,” John pointed out angrily. “And you have to tell Elizabeth what happened.” For a few breathless seconds John watched the pain of what he was asking her to do cross her face and then unhappily she joined the people fleeing the gateroom and John turned back to Radek. “You can do it, Radek.” He encouraged gently. “You can save us all.” Radek said nothing but continued to type and the yellow glow of the burning Stargate began to diminish a little. A wave of relief washed over John. “It's going down. We're gonna make it.” But then he saw Radek shook his head and utter four words before his world exploded.