Author's Note: I'm back everyone! Thanks to dark faith5, Ranye 21, and highonscifi for the reviews. Yes, the pairing will be (and it starts soon...) Sheppard/Weir. I was originally going to write it as McKay/Weir but I'll save that for another story. Anyway... :) Just to let you all know: no, the girl isn't McKay's daughter or anything like that. That'd be...nevermind lol. Anyway, hope you enjoy and I'll try and get another chapter posted a week from now. Please review!

Spoilers: Little mention from "The Brotherhood" about the Wraith coming to Atlantis.

Chapter 3

By the time Elizabeth Weir and the others caught up to Rodney he was standing in front of the quarantined room, staring through the glass at the girl lying between the white sheets. He looked like someone had just punched him in the stomach. "Rodney…" Elizabeth said cautiously. McKay didn't move a muscle. "Rodney, what's going on?"

Rodney was so caught up in his own whirlwind of thoughts Elizabeth's words had been lost on him. He continued staring at the girl in the room. For all of the thoughts rushing through his head, he couldn't make one coherent sentence even begin to leave his mouth. "What did she say her name was?" he said finally. Light brown hair, defined cheekbones… Someone who didn't know him could mistake her for his daughter.

"Lia," Elizabeth replied finally, biting down on her lip uncertainly. She took a step forward, touching Rodney's forearm gently. "What's going on, Rodney?"

"I…" Rodney stopped and shook his head.

"Oh, just come out with it," John said, rolling his eyes and scoffing, "It can't be that hard, can it?"

"Major," Elizabeth said warningly, giving him a dirty look. He shrugged and leaned up against the wall opposite of them.

"She's waking up," Aidan Ford told them, and they turned to look as Lia's pale green eyes opened slowly, wincing at the sudden light.

Not waiting for any instruction, Rodney stepped through the door, followed closely by Carson. After sending another warning glance at Sheppard, Elizabeth stepped through as well.

Lia looked up at Carson as he walked near her, pulling on rubber gloves. Fright danced just beyond her eyes. "Where am I? Who are you?" she asked. She moved to shift to the end of the bed, but found herself restrained. "Why am I restrained?"

"It's only as a precaution," Carson said as he opened a cabinet and began filling a syringe with a clear liquid. Lia turned her questioning eyes to Elizabeth.

"You're at Atlantis," she told the girl.

"She took me here to kill Odethious," Lia whispered in realization a moment later, more to herself than to the others.

"What?" Elizabeth asked.

Lia looked up, meeting the other woman's eyes. "You know," she said simply.

Elizabeth frowned and pulled up a rolling chair next to the bed. Rodney stayed in the back, his arms folded across his chest. "Who is 'she'?" Elizabeth asked.

Sighing, Lia looked to the other side before turning her gaze back to Elizabeth. "She is called Zedako," she answered softly.

"We ran some tests on you," Elizabeth said, "We found out that Wraith DNA had been fused to your own. Why?" she asked.

Lia sighed and looked at Dr. Weir. "I used to live on a different planet; somewhere far, far away. One night, something happened. A beam struck me and it transported me somewhere else."

"An Asgard transporter," Rodney supplied from behind Weir. Lia's eyes fell on him for a moment before she looked back to Elizabeth.

"I was in a room alone. There were lights floating around me…" she frowned for a moment. "It was like that for a while. But then…something happened. Everything disappeared and lights came on. I was in a ship of some sort. We were traveling past galaxies in the blink of an eye," she said softly, "And then it stopped. Someone was attacking the ship."

"Who?" Elizabeth questioned.

Lia shook her head. "I don't know. The next thing I remember was waking up inside of a Wraith ship and having this…thing…inside of me."

"What do you mean?"

"I can't describe to you how it feels…" Lia told her, "It's like another person jammed into your body with a whole different set of morals and behavior, just lurking below consciousness."

Carson walked over, injecting the liquid in the syringe into the IV. "Nothing to worry about," he told Lia reassuringly.

"So who is Odethious?" Weir asked, bombarded by the sheer complexity of the situation.

"He was a human king who annually sacrificed half of his people to the culling," Lia said, her voice matter-of-fact. "He and his people fled the planet in ships during the last culling. Because of the size of their population, Atlantis was the best bet of where he had gone. Zedako came to kill him and deliver a message to his people not to disobey the Wraith."

"How do you know what's Zedako and what's you?"

Lia turned her head away from Dr. Weir, but before Elizabeth could say anything, her attention was drawn to screaming and shouting outside of the door. She only glanced back once as she and Rodney raced out of the door.

Outside, a fuming Major Sheppard was yelling at Aidan Ford, who, for his part, was simply furrowing his eyebrows and saying silent. "What the hell is your problem, Lieutenant?" John shouted, shoving Ford. Ford took a step back to steady himself, not retaliating.

"What's going on here?" Elizabeth demanded, but she was ignored. She turned to Sergeant Bates, who was watching the scene, a Wraith stunner in his hands, obviously having heard the yelling. "John, I'm giving you until the count of five to back down," she announced loudly, her eyes narrowing. "1…2…3…4…5," she finished. The countdown had no effect on John. Elizabeth turned her gaze on Bates. "Stun him," she ordered.

"But—"

"Now," she hissed. Bates paused for a long moment, looking between Sheppard and Weir before laboriously hauling the stunner to eye level.

Just as he was about to hit the trigger, John stopped mid-sentence, his shoulders caving inward and his hands reaching up to clutch his head. He stumbled backward a few feet, pain breaking across his face and melding with confusion mirroring that on the faces surrounding him.

"Sir!" Ford shouted, rushing forward as Sheppard crashed unceremoniously onto the floor, his eyes closed and his body motionless. Carson ran onto the scene, seeing Sheppard's fall from the other room.

"Move," he ordered sternly in his accent, kneeling next to John and checking his pulse. He was about to speak after he felt the contractions beneath his fingers when he spotted something. Carson picked up John's limp arm in his hands and flipped it around. He watched, frowning deeply in confusion as the veins on John's arm slowly darkened to black. "Ford, help me out here!" Beckett ordered quickly.

"What?" Ford said, his voice frantic.

"Grab him and help me take him to the main infirmary," Carson told him.

Elizabeth watched worriedly as John was carried off by Carson and Aidan, Rodney already ahead of them and helping. She bit her lip tightly, staring at the spot where John had fallen. 'Damn it,' she cursed to herself, running a hand through her head. 'I should've known something was wrong.' Sure, John and Rodney were always at each other's throats, but not like this. She'd even thought that something was wrong, but she'd pushed it aside. Grinding her teeth at her own incompetence, she turned and headed back for her office, knowing that Carson would call her as soon as everything was okay. And it was going to be okay…it had to be.

She sighed to herself as she walked down the hallways. It seemed odd, in a way. Now that the Athrosians had moved to the mainland, Atlantis seemed empty and their population few. Though, she supposed that was a good thing. It was hard being here—hard watching good men and women walk off to the uncertain, wondering if every word you said to someone was their last… Heck, even today, no one had gone off-world yet and chaos was happening. Rodney had become a hermit since the briefing—not that anyone had talked to him since, but obvious by the air the encompassed him that he did not want to be spoken to—and now John was unconscious, hurt by God-knows-what.

As she walked, Weir thought through her schedule. She had briefings nearly back to back today—maybe she'd cancel a few. 'I'll cancel the third one,' she decided, 'By then Carson will have some answers about John and I can get Rodney to come in here and give me some answers then.'

No matter how hard she tried, her orderly thoughts could not comfort her.

The Wraith were already on their way to Atlantis—who knew how long it would take for them to arrive?—something was wrong with John, Rodney was hiding something, and Atlantis had what could be a time bomb in their presence in the form of a teenager. She knew it was horrible luck to think that things couldn't get much worse-but she did anyway.