Author's Notes: Thanks to PunkyRabbit, my beta, who pointed out some basic flaws with some of the science involved (something about sodium/potassium pumps, etc). I have absolutely NO medical knowledge, so I ask that you suspend your disbelief just a little. Alien devices might affect the human body in different than normal ways, who knows? Go with me here! grin

Dark, Still, Nothing

Part 1

He awoke to nothing! No sounds, no sight. Absolute silence and darkness. Worse, when he tried to bring his hand to his face (hoping against hope that his eyes were just bandaged and his environment was just quiet), he found that he couldn't even move. He couldn't move his arm, twitch a finger or even budge an eyelid. Now he wasn't even sure his eyes were open! He systematically tried every muscle in his body. Nothing! He tried to speak, but he couldn't open his mouth or move his tongue. He couldn't tell if he was making any sound at all.

Trying (without much success) to keep from panicking, he let his mind wander back to the last thing he remembered.

He had been in his quarters when Rodney came barging in, excited about something.

"John! I found one!" The scientist blurted.

"Found what?" lt had been a long, boring week filled with paperwork, and John wasn't really in the mood for a game of twenty questions.

"A ZedPM!" Rodney answered. "I found another planet in the Ancient database. It's interesting, really! It was off by itself, in a completely different file than you might expect. I found an obscure reference to it in some other work I was doing, but when I tried to track it down, it got complicated. I had to…"

"Rodney!" John interrupted. "Where's the ZPM?"

"MXJ-396," Rodney answered proudly, "but let me tell you about the search. I had to…"

John was out of the room and gone down the hall before Rodney could finish his story. The scientist thought about running after his team leader, but decided against it.

"Oh well," he said to an empty room. "We'll have plenty of time on the planet. I'll tell him then." He decided to meet John in Elizabeth's office. On second thought, maybe Dr. Weir would like to know how he had engaged in a brilliant game of hide and seek to find this planet.

John peeked his head into Elizabeth's office. "Hey, you busy?"

"Paperwork!" Dr. Weir responded as she pushed away the offending pile of papers, "It can definitely wait." Glad for the interruption, she leaned back in her chair and continued, "What's on your mind John?"

"Rodney says he's found a ZPM."

"Where is Rodney? I would have thought he'd have liked to share this discovery himself."

"I'm sure he'll be here."

Right on cue, Rodney all but jogged into the office. "Did John tell you?"

"A ZPM, Rodney!" Elizabeth confirmed. "That would be wonderful! Why didn't we find this planet before?"

"Well, we're uncovering new parts of the database all the time, but this was a pretty special case…" Rodney stopped, expecting an interruption from one of the listeners, but when none came, the scientist continued. "I found a mention of this planet when I was researching one of my other projects, but when I went to look for a file on the planet itself, I found that not only was the file completely segregated from the rest of the database, but it had been totally erased!"

"The whole file?" Elizabeth asked.

"Yeah. It was strange," Rodney picked up the story. "Of course, it was no match for me. I rewrote the code to find the deleted items and came up with enough of the file to know there's a ZedPM there…well, at least there was 10,000 years ago, and if the planet is as remote as it seems from what little information I could retrieve, then it should still be there."

"You're saying 'enough of the file' and 'what little information'," Elizabeth stated, concern in her voice, "You can't retrieve the whole file?"

"Well, no," Rodney's voice bordered on indignant, "Not yet. I'll keep trying if you want, but some of this data is pretty corrupted. Remember, I'm trying to piece together a file that was deleted ten millennia ago. It should be impossible. For anyone else, it would be impossible. If you didn't have me, you wouldn't even know about…"

"Yes, Rodney," John interrupted this time, "We all know you're brilliant and we're lucky to have you." John watched a smug smile creep onto the scientist's face, Rodney having entirely missed the sarcasm of the statement. The major shook his head minutely and continued, "but without all the data, we're all but flying blind, here."

"It's more information than we've had for some planets we've visited," Rodney defended his position.

"Maybe, but do we know if there are any threats there? Do we know if the ZPM is still there? Do we even know why the Ancients deleted the file in the first place?"

Rodney was becoming peeved. "No, no, and no. But we've been to planets before and didn't know about all the threats we'd find there, and we've been to planets known to have ZedPM's and still came away with nothing. It wouldn't be the first time."

"That last question is a pretty big concern, Rodney," Elizabeth put in.

"Yeah," John added, "for all we know, the Ancients deleted the file because the planet was overrun with Wraith or the atmosphere had been completely poisoned, or the whole place was consumed by planetary wide volcanoes or something."

Rodney finally lost it. "And for all we know it could have been deleted by accident, or to keep the knowledge from anyone who overtook Atlantis."

John and Elizabeth both looked unconvinced, so Rodney continued, "Look, the MALP will tell us if there are Wraith there or if the air is poisoned or anything. And, if the gate was consumed by a volcano, it simply won't open." The scientist's expression made it clear that he felt he should not have to address these completely outlandish objections. "What do we have to lose? What's the worst that could happen?"

John brought his hand up and started ticking off points, "We could be killed by Wraith; we could be captured by the Wraith and fed on later; we could be killed by poisonous gases that the MALP doesn't know to look for; we could…"

"Alright, alright," Rodney was really worked up now. "But we take those chances every time we step through the gate. Pardon me if I thought you'd be interested in a planet with a ZedPM!"

"A planet that might have a ZPM." John loved winding Rodney up.

Elizabeth interrupted his fun. "Okay, Rodney. Work on it a little longer. Get me all the data you can possibly recover, then we'll go from there."

"But…" Rodney started.

"It's been there for 10,000 years …"

"If it's still there!" John slipped in one more comment.

"…so I don't think it will go anywhere if we use a little caution here, Rodney," Elizabeth finished.

"I suppose, but…" Rodney cut himself off when he saw Dr. Weir's face. That was the look that said, 'my mind is made up' so McKay just agreed to continue his search and left to get to it.

After two weeks of searching, Rodney declared himself finished.

"Look, the rest of this stuff is so degraded, I'm lucky if I can get a 1 and a 0 per page of code. That's it! That's the best I can do!"

"I've read your report, Rodney," Elizabeth answered patiently.

"Me too," John agreed.

"There doesn't seem to be any obvious threat in what you've recovered, but…" Weir continued.

"I still want to know why the Ancients deleted any mention of this planet." John input. "My gut says that can't be because of anything good."

"Do you feel that the danger is too great to proceed with this mission?" Elizabeth was willing to cede to John's threat assessment.

"There's nothing I can put my finger on to warrant passing up the chance of a ZPM." John finally answered, after some obvious self-deliberation. "We can go. I'd just want to take a military team with us, and we'll be on our guard."

With that, Elizabeth made the decision that the mission was on, and planned for a briefing with John's entire team and the security unit.

The planet was nondescript, as far as John could tell. There was certainly nothing obvious to explain why the Ancients would wipe it from the database.

The area around the stargate was covered in ruins and Rodney assured them they'd find the ZPM. There was an energy signature consistent with a powered ZPM, but for some reason, it was defused and appeared to be coming from everywhere at once. There would be no way to track it using their own technology.

There were no life signs anywhere, but Sheppard still had a bad feeling about this and refused to let down his guard, much to Rodney's annoyance (which was just a side benefit as far as John was concerned).

"Will you just relax a little?" Rodney pleaded, "We have the whole planet to ourselves. Nobody's going to jump out at us from behind a column." But then Rodney looked around, just to make sure.

Building after building showed signs of having once had great technology, but they had long since been stripped of anything useful – whether by the Ancients themselves or by other cultures seeking technology, no one could tell.

They had been there for about an hour and had found nothing of interest, but then John himself made a fateful discovery. He had long since lost count of just how many buildings his team had searched and was becoming more and more willing to bet that the ruins went on forever, when he passed by the entrance of an unassuming alcove. He had seen a few alcoves in some of the other buildings, but they had been off the main rooms and much wider. This was a narrow opening in the wall off a side corridor.

He slipped inside the closet sized hole and found, to his amazement, a dais with an opening on the top that looked a lot like the housing of a ZPM.

"Rodney," he called on his comm. "I might have found something." He had left the scientist in the main room when he had decided to check out the corridor. He had been getting bored and thought that the long hallway offered the opportunity to stretch his legs, if nothing else.

While he was waiting for Rodney to get there, he depressed the top of the dais to release the ZPM. The thought that it might somehow be booby-trapped came a split second too late as he was engulfed in a flash of light and slammed against the opposite wall of the hallway.

After that, he remembered nothing until he woke up here – wherever 'here' was – in total darkness and silence, unable to move. Losing his fight with panic, he tried once again to speak, or move or anything. He had to make someone hear him. He had to find a way to get some answers.

"Carson! I think he's awake!" Rodney's concerned voice carried across the infirmary.

The doctor hurried to John's bedside. The patient was making a low keening noise but otherwise seemed completely still – too still. Carson lifted uncooperative lids to peer at the unresponsive eyes below. He shone a light in each eye, but, as had happened each time he had done this since John had been brought in, not even the pupils reacted. The doctor picked up his patient's hand.

"Major, can you hear me?"

John gave no sign of having heard the doctor, but continued the soft whining.

"Why is he doing that?" Rodney asked anxiously.

"I don't know, Rodney. I just got here myself." Carson tried not to be short with the worried man, but after hours of nervous questions, the doctor's patience was beginning to wear thin. "He might be in pain. Or perhaps he's trying to talk. I just don't know yet."

Carson squeezed John's hand, but there was no response. "Major Sheppard, I need you to squeeze my hand, now." The doctor said loudly and waited in vain for any movement. He turned to Rodney to head off the oncoming question. "I don't know if he doesn't understand what I want him to do; or if he just can't hear me."

Rodney purposely knocked off a metal tray from a nearby table. The resulting clang startled Carson and three nurses, but there was absolutely no reaction from Sheppard. "I guess that answers that question," Rodney was becoming a little panicked on his friend's behalf. "Carson, what did that damned artifact do to him?"

"I don't know yet, Rodney." Carson tried to stay calm. "None of the tests I've already done have given me any clue about what's going on; and we don't know enough about the artifact to even know what it was supposed to do. I'm in the dark as much as you are, right now."

As Carson rushed off to get ready for some more tests, Rodney settled in beside the major's bed and clasped onto his friend's hand. "John, I know you can't hear me. I don't know if you can even feel me squeezing your hand. But I'm here. I can't imagine what this is like for you. But I want you to know that we're working on the problem. We're going to get you out of this. It won't be like this forever. You have my word." McKay settled their joined hands on John's bed and hoped to hell he hadn't just lied to his friend.

TBC