In the middle of the woods lay a clearing with a strange stone-like ring propped up on its edge. For no apparent reason, it suddenly activated, the symbols inscribed across its surface starting to light up, particularly along its edge. With a woosh, a torrent of energy, resembling an eruption of water, poured out of the ring, before receding back to form a stable membrane, through which a squad of modern infantry moved.

"Looks all clear, Sarge," one of the soldiers said, watching the trees diligently.

"I see a hut with smoke-" another soldiers started to say.

"English! American English!" A young woman said as she slammed opened the door to said hut. "Midwestern accent! Americans!" That was when she noted their guns and carefully raised her hands. "Um, don't shoot?"

Sergeant Miller looked over his men with a raised eyebrow. "You, away from the hut. Johnson, check out the house carefully."

"So that isa transport device. I wasn't sure. There wasn't any path and no one is around to use it. And with the way it dematerializes things, it could have just been a fancy device for getting rid of trash. It's old, but I could tell-" she started rambling facts off about the device that she had figured out.

"It's all clear. All I could find that was odd was an iPod." Johnson was back outside now.

"What's odd about an iPod?" she countered. "Other than it was made on a different planet?"

"It's way too small." He held up the minuscule device. "And it has an LCD screen."

"Well, duh. It's an iPod Video. Not that it does me a lot of good. I haven't been able to cobble up something to charge it with," she said.

"And its going to be built next year," the soldier said while rolling his eyes.

"Um, it's June 10th, 2008." She looked quite confused.

"It's July 15th, 2004." The sergeant was watching her carefully.

"That's weird. The past on a different planet and then the Air Force shows up. This means, of course, that the UFO nuts are right and that the US Government doeshave clandestine spaceships!" She snapped her fingers to punctuate her point.

"So you do notknow about Stargates and the Pegasus galaxy, but you made it here somehow?" he asked incredulously.

"The Pegasusgalaxy? I knew I wasn't on Earth the first time I looked up at the night sky, but I only halfway thought I was that lost. Hmm," She took on a seriously contemplative expression, "But youareAmericans, right? USA, apple pie, rap music?"

"Yes, we are. Now shut up. I think we need to consult with Atlantis," Miller decided. "Turn around."

She shrugged and did as instructed. She heard them dialing something on the portal's control device, and the 'woosh' of it activating. The officer seemed to be arguing, quietly, with someone over a radio.

"Fine. Miller out." The sergeant stomped over to her. He roughly grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her while tying her hands with a slip-tie. That was also when he found out the 'prisoner' was packing a pistol. "Prisoner secure. We are evacuating this world."

"Can I consider myself oppressed? And don't forget my iPod! I need my tunes!" she called out to the soldiers, which were trying desperately to not laugh.

All of them stepped through the Stargate, where she was treated to a roller-coaster ride through the wormhole. As she materialized, her body posture in the exact same position she'd departed in, she crumpled to her knees.

"Oh, that didn't feel so good," was the last thing she said before she passed out, wondering why the gate was glowing so brightly.

Elizabeth Wier and the other technicians at the gate just stared in shock at the girl that was glowing with some sort of inner light as she collapsed.

"That wasn't human," Rodney McKay said. "You did see that, right?"

"I think we all saw that, McKay," Major John Sheppard said trying to hide his own surprise.

"She's unconscious," Miller called out. "And the glow seems to be fading."

Lt. Aiden Ford looked over to John Sheppard. "We probably ought to get her to the infirmary. She didpass out."

Sheila squinted her eyes, even while closed and then opened them to look around. "It wasn't a dream?"

"What was a dream?" a man with an Scottish accent asked.

"That I'm not all alone on a planet by myself. Hello, my name is Sheila. Did you take a blood sample? And did I sign a form that allowed that?" she asked as she tried to sit up to find herself thoroughly belted down. "And, wow, am I ever thoroughly trussed up. Are you guys afraid I'll go all Rambo on you?"

"I'm Dr. Carson Beckett. And the reason you are so tied up is that we haven't verified yet that you're human. Which all of my DNA testing has concluded you are," the doctor said with a small smile. "Finding an American out here, well that isa bit odd."

"The Pegasus galaxy isa bit off the beaten path. Now, a DNA test would only verify that my genes are human, wouldn't it? I could have many other changes that would not show up," she said helpfully.

"And that wouldn't explain why you were glowing after you stepped out of the Stargate, would it?" Dr. Elizabeth Weir said as she entered the infirmary. "Now an explanation on that score would relieve my security-minded second in command greatly."

"I was glowing?" she asked bluntly.

"Yes."

"I've never done that before." She tried to shrug under all the restraints.

"Humans usually don't glow after walking through the Stargate," Elizabeth continued while tapping her toes and holding her arms around her torso. "And by your comment, I would assume you are inhuman in a way that can't be detected by genetic testing."

"Ah..." Crap. Stupid motormouth. "Well, maybe. But I really don't know why I glowed."

"But you can guess a reason, I bet."

Sheila nodded pitifully. "My mother... claimed to not be human. I was totally normal until that time. After that... I wasn't."

"Not normal in what way?" the scientist asked.

"I was stronger, much smarter and much faster."

John was almost growling from the other side of the room. "And what was she?"

"She insinuated... heavily, mind you... that she was Pallas Athena nee Minerva of Olympus." She just gave him a crusty glare.

The major looked over at the doctor. "I thought you checked for Goa'uld?"

"What's a Goa'uld? And why would saying Athena is my mother make him do a check for that?" Sheila asked nervously.

"She has no markers, and the test came back negative. Even her x-ray was negative," Beckett replied amiably. "So I don't think she's a Goa'uld."

"She doesn't look like an Asgardian," Weir said with a small smile.

"I'm not big and muscly enough to be an Asgardian. Or fond of using giant axes to chop down giants!" she replied helpfully.

"You make it sound like you know an Asgardian," John asked curiously.

"Two, actually. Both big brutes of maleness and able to bench press small cars!" She gave them a sunny smile that seemed to make them more worried. "Is there a problem?" She seemed to deflate as she watched then.

"The Asgardians are... the 'Gray Aliens' of popular UFO mythology. They don't look that big in real life."

"Dolph was reallythat big. He was a Scion of Hel and pretty creepy, but he certainly was no little Gray." Sheila was giving Elizabeth a very odd look.

"Hell? Oh, Hel!" she said.

"You really aren't the sort to swear, are you Dr. Weir?" John asked in bemusement.

"No, that's actually her name. H-E-L." Weir tried to hide her irritation.

"Oh." The major looked sheepish at her explanation, while trying to hide it.

"Quantum shift." Sheila seemed to be busy thinking. "No way would the gods allow some alien to impersonate them. So, ergo, this is a different quantum reality. Mendezi Alphonse really wanted me lost."

"I take it you were sent to that planet?" John asked.

"Yeah, a nasty piece of work of a titan-spawn boot-licker. So what are you doing in Atlantis? It looks much more high tech than I'd expect," she said while still looking around curiously.

"I have to have you sign some non-disclosure agreements before we can do that."

"I can't sign anything." Sheila actually looked a bit smug about.

"You won't be allowed out of the infirmary without signing," Elizabeth said with an aggrieved expression.

"I didn't say I don't want to sign any forms, but that I can't. You still have me tied up." Sheila just smiled at Elizabeth's mounting frustration.

"Fine, we'll release you." John started releasing her immediately, with an exaggerated roll of his eyes just for her benefit.

She started reading all the forms, going over the different contracts. "There are several questionable stipulations. I certainly am not going to let my work be for free no claim no ownership of technologies I've developed." She continued reading, ticking a list with her right hand a list of issues with the contract.

"That really isn't up for negotiation," the leader of the expedition said slowly. She was startled to see Sheila taking apart the paperwork like she was a professionally trained lawyer. "Just out of curiosity, what skills do you have that would help our expedition to survive better?"

"I was, before I got booted into another universe, working on several different college level courses in medicine, biology, physics, politics and academics," she replied. "Several of these points break U.S. and California legal code for under-age minors."

"All at once?" Carson asked in shock.

"Yeah, though I still had to go back to High School for my track and field," she replied absently.

"After you were boosted by your mother's visit?" That didn't sound very ethical to Elizabeth.

"No, all that was before I was visited. I'm not sure any college or university could properly challenge me at this point." She was still reading the contract, but was almost finished.

"It does take a certain amount of time to absorb all that information," John noted as she continued to write on the papers on points that she was contesting.

"It took me three days to become an expert-level computer hacker by reading thirty-two books on the subject after my visitation."

John just whistled at that.

Elizabeth started reading over the contract a little more closer. "I'll have to review this, but from what I can see, you are probably correct on these points. On the understanding that you will sign a revised version of the non-disclosure agreements, I'll let you go."

"Yay! Do you have real food?" she asked John curiously. She patted herself down. "I'm missing my stethoscope, palm pilot and my pistol. I can understand why you took the pistol, but those other two are just as important to me."

"We don't allow civilians to carry firearms. We were having Rodney and his group take a look at the palm pilot. I guess the Greek writing in it makes sense, in hindsight." John opened the door and started walking her down the corridor.

They opened another door just down the hall, and found Rodney typing on a computer in frustration. "Why won't this thing talk to my computer?" he groused as he glared at the offending device.

"Because it only allows itself to communicate with computers, not for other computers to communicate with it," Sheila said helpfully.

"That doesn't make sense. Communication is two-way," he snapped back. "Oh, it's you. I take it we have another stray now?"

"Communication is always initiated by the palm pilot. My palm pilot, by the way." She snagged her device back. "Thanks. Where's my stethoscope?"

"It's over there. It was totally ordinary except for the intricate engraving," Rodney asked as she stomped over and took it.

"Um, right." Sheila stopped, looking at a computer with technical mathematical formula written across it. "What's this?"

"It's an equation for hyper-spacial math used to open a hyper-space window and the power requirements. It's far too complicated for you to- understand?" Rodney was watching her scroll rapidly through the equations. "You aren't going to say you understand that, do you?"

"Let me actually read it first." She continued to read, only to stop and ask him a question on a physics phenomena. "It looks like its mostly accurate. I think this part and this part need more clarification, but you can get it to work with only a minor feedback oscillation in the drive."

"When did you get- You haven't seen this before, right?" Rodney asked.

"No, I just went through it right now." She looked slightly perturbed at him.

"She's on my team, Major. Where did you graduate from?" Rodney asked brusquely.

"I haven't yet. I've only been taking college courses for the past two years." She raised an eyebrow at the scientist then looked over at John. He just shrugged back.

"Let's see if you can help with a problem that Grodon couldn't. He was supposedto be looking at this equation instead of the newest Ancient device."

"So you are telling me that Rodney likes her?" Elizabeth asked John seriously in her office.

"I think like might be a bit strong. It's more... he thinks she's not a raging idiot," John replied, then shrugged.

Aiden raised an eyebrow at that. "Not an idiot?"

"That's probably the highest level of praise possible from Rodney, actually." Elizabeth drummed her fingers on her desk. "Well, I guess I'll 'hire' her onto the civilian scientist staff."

"Here's the paperwork to sign, just like I promised," Elizabeth said, handing her the contracts later in her office still. "I understand that you've made some friends in the scientific exploration staff. It seems like everyone thinks you mesh well with Rodney."

"I'm not sure what to think about that, but I think I could manage." She started re-reading her non-disclosure agreement again.

"They say you speak eight languages?" the administrator asked.

"So far."

"Well, I think you will be a substantial help to our team." Elizabeth smiled at the young girl.

"And in exchange for helping you decipher this Ancient technology, I get to continue to look for means to return to my own time-space?" she asked seriously.

"Yes, that seems more than fair." They shook on it, and then Sheila signed the forms.

"McKay, have you seen Sheila?" John asked as he entered the scientist's laboratory almost a week later

"No. I'm actually a little upset at her. She said she was going to start deciphering Ancient technology and then she ups and disappears on me. She doesn't have any serious methodology or plan. And she's been hiding from me!" the brusque scientist declared angrily.

"Actually, I don't think anyonehas seen her in four days. And that was in the cafeteria where she grabbed a meal and the vanished again." John was starting to be worried.

One of the native kids suddenly spoke up from where they had been watching from the edge of the room. "I saw her talking to the Ancestor's devices down several levels. She called it a nursery."

"Nursery?" John asked in confusion. Rodney just shrugged.

"Her fingers dance with the lights," the child exclaimed with a gleeful tone. He took off down the corridor, John right behind her, Rodney a little farther behind, but close enough to keep them in sight.

Several levels down, they came to a door that was already open. Out of the corner of his eye, John saw Teyla watching from a corner of the room, but it was the blonde girl wearing glasses in the chair manipulating floating, 3D holographic images as several voices spoke that held his attention. Sheila said something in the Ancient's tongue and the voices and images stopped. "Hello, Major. Rodney?"

"What are you doing here? You're supposed to be helping with deciphering Ancient technology!" Rodney almost shouted.

"I'm just making sure you're okay!" John explained quickly. "What are you doing down here?" He looked around the room, noting that it appeared to be colored in pastels, rather than the rather strict colors of the rest of the city.

Teyla was just watching intently as her fellow Athosian came to sit at her side while handling her a piece of bread.

"Doctor McKay, I am helping to decipher Ancient technology by gaining an education as if I were an Ancient." She glared at him. "Just randomly figuring out technological trinkets isn't going to advance our knowledge at a reasonable rate."

"That will take forever!" Rodney complained. John bobbed his head a bit side to side even as he frowned, seeing where the lead scientist was leading. They really did not have time to learn everything an Atlantian child would have to learn.

"I'm already up to year ten of the Ancient schooling. Though, by their standards, I'm crippled because I can't see into the near infra-red and ultraviolet." She tapped a pair of glasses on her nose. "So I have to have these until I can understand their technology more, and do some minor genetic tweaking."

"You've learned ten years of Ancient- Okay, I might have been a bit abrupt about that. So what does a fifteen year old Ancient know?" Rodney was suddenly quite animated as he started thinking of all the possibilities. To actually know what the Ancients knew... that would be abig deal.

"I'm writing an abbreviated syllabus and training manual to gain the major parts of the education where it concerns to the physical sciences." She pointed over at a notebook plugged into a heavy portable battery pack. "You can read it when I'm done, which is probably going to be several weeks at this rate."

Teyla finally stood up before Rodney could interrupt. "I think it's time for a break. You haven't moved from that location for ten hours. That is not healthy."

Sheila opened her mouth to argue, but stopped. "Oh, yeah." She stood up. "I need to get out and jog. Really stretch myself out."

"Do you want a jogging partner?" John asked as he led the quintet back towards the cafeteria that was set up several levels above them.

"That would be nice... but, er, you really wouldn't be able to keep up." Sheila shrugged helplessly.

Teyla looked intrigued. "I will have to see this, I think."

"Exactly how fast can you run?" Rodney asked dismissively.

Sheila gave him a glare. "I can run almost four times as fast as an Olympic athlete."

"You can run almost 100 miles per hour?" the scientist blurted out, quite shocked.

"That is quite fast, is it not?" Teyla asked which John nodded in answer to her question.

"Quite," John drawled while raising an eyebrow at Sheila. "What made you decide to go through with the Ancient schooling?"

"They weren't born with all that knowledge and how to use it, so they had to learn it somewhere." She rolled her eyes back at him theatrically. Duh.

"That is a rather eloquent argument. Brilliant. I wonder why I didn't think of it?" Rodney asked himself.

Everyone else ignored him, as that was pretty par for him, as Rodney was quite certain only he should have all the smart thoughts.

The Stargate in the Atlantis gate room activated with a explosion of quasi-water. The 'unscheduled' gate-in alarms sounded, and marines ran into the room, training their weapons on the gate. The shield came on over the gate; In Atlantis's Control Room, Doctor Elizabeth Weir entered and walked over to a male technician on one of the portable computers.

"It's Major Sheppard's I.D.C!" the technician pronounced.

"They've only been gone a few hours," Elizabeth said worriedly.

The overhead radio crackled to life. "Atlantis, this is Sheppard. We're coming in hot."

"Lower the shield!" Elizabeth ordered with a grim expression on her face.

She moved to the balcony as more marines ran into the gate room and aimed their weapons at the gate's aperture. The shield flickered away, and seconds later, energy blasts started to come through the active gate. A marine on the steps directly in front of the gate dove for cover. Several more blasts came through, sending another marine diving out of the way, then John, Aiden, Rodney and Teyla ran through the Gate.

They turned around and stared back at the gate.

"Raise the shield!" Elizabeth ordered from above.

A final energy blast came through the gate, striking McKay in the face. He cried out and collapsed as the shield slid in place over the Star Gate.

"McKay!" John called out. He and Ford ran over to him and rolled him carefully onto his back as the gate shut down.

"Medical team to the Gateroom!" the director of the expedition called out.

Jon pressed his fingers against Rodney's neck. "I've got a pulse!"

Thank God, Elizabeth thought to herself.

Meanwhile, down many levels in the 'Nursery' Sheila was continuing her five tracks of education, when she suddenly flung herself out of the way of a Wraith stunner, cartwheeling to her feet across the room. It was not readily obvious who was more surprised, Sheila or the Wraith, as they looked over at each other.

The scion of Athena grabbed the walkie-talkie that John had insisted she carry when she was down there by herself. "Sheila here. Under Wraith attack in the Nursery," she said, calmly twisting around in three blurring burst of movement to avoid being shot.

Everyone in the gate room looked up at that, as they could hear the sound of energy discharges through the walkie-talkie.

"Damn it! Ford, with me! Come on men!"

Back in the Nursery, the Wraith was glaring at her in barely restrained anger. "What are you? How did you react to that attack?" he snarled in frustration. This was supposedto be a simple snatch of the human that dared learn the Ancient technology.

"I'm Sheila, daughter of the Goddess of War and Wisdom. And I actually have no idea on how I did that. I just moved before it could hit me. I knew I had good reflexes, but that takes it to a whole new level," she replied while calmly dodging another attack.

"So you are another who worships of the Ancients as gods." The Wraith snorted. "We destroyed them and we'll destroy your people as well."

"I am not related to the Ancients. I have met my mother and as far as I can tell, she isquite capable of miracles," she continued even as the Wraith started to back towards the door. "Trying to escape? That won't work. I can easilyoutrun you."

"But you aren't attacking me," he sneered back.

"I don't have a weapon. That means two things; I need to acquire a few of them and I need unarmed combat training, that's all. You still can't hurt me." She followed him out into the corridor, continuing to dodge his attacks.

The Wraith looked over as he heard the stomping of boots running towards them from up above. The Scion took his momentary distraction to take a strong grip on a nearby railing, and rip it off the edge of the overlook it guarded with a low crackof broken metal.

"That's much better!" she said happily, then charged him, leaping over the Wraith's next stun blast, and lashing out in a blur as she used the rod as a bo staff.

When John and Aiden's made it to the Nursery level, they were met by the sight of a five foot three inch girl beating the hell out of a six foot two Wraith. The staff smashed into his arm, sending his stunner flying, then whipped around into his stomach, before smacking down on his head three times.

"Why is there a Wraith on Atlantis?" Sheila asked, her voice excessively calm as she stood over the unconscious Wraith.

"That, lady, is a very good question," Aiden said as he looked at her in wide-eyed surprise. It was one thing for her to sayshe was superhumanly strong and fast, it was quite another to actually seeit.

"Sheppard to Atlantis, the Wraith has been captured. Henderson is fine too," he reported back to Elizabeth.

"Where did you get that?" one of the marines asked, pointing at her staff.

"I ripped if off that railing over there," she said with a shrug. "I think I need a personal weapon." The soldier winced at that.

"Anyone that has a Wraith specifically attacking them probably does. I'll see about getting you your pistol back," John said as he and another marine took the knocked-out Wraith between them.

"So we think this Wraith has been here for over a month? This is an intelligence disaster," Bates exclaimed; the sergeant seemed to be on the verge of exploding.

"This is very bad," Weir nodded to John, McKay, Teyla and Sheila in the 'conference' room, "We need more information on him."

"He also must have some form of FTL communication that we can't detect. I queried the gate room computer console and it detected no hyperspace communication devices. And we found no communication devices on him either," Sheila noted.

McKay frowned. "So, he hid it somewhere. Big deal."

"Or we just don't understand how to see it," Elizabeth countered.

"Or it's innate to the Wraith itself. Like a biological transmitter that's within his body or racial telepathy. If it is biological or telepathic in nature, that probably means that opening a wormhole allows him to 'radio' home or the nearest Wraith." Sheila said calmly, then smiled. "I didfind a few small local bugs within the gate room and cleared them out, so they can't see what gate addresses we're now going to." She looked around, then frowned. "Why is there a low range beacon in this room."

Everyone shared a quick glance. "No one here would have a beacon."

"Actually... Teyla? I think that necklace is giving off the beacon." Sheila was still frowning.

"This thing? It is just a trinket that I had from my home," she replied as she handed it over.

"Isn't that the necklace I found in the ruins at Athos?" John asked. "I returned it to you then, I believe." Teyla nodded at that.

"Hmm. Cunning design. It's got a medical scanner to detect the Ancient Genes (several of them, by the way) and then set off a beacon. It is not an Ancient design; I believe it is Wraith-made." She looked at it harder. "I think you had better scan everyone for trinkets like this. I turned this one off."

"Why are you so unworried about this potential security leak?" Bates demanded of her. He was all set to accuse the Athosian until John mentioned he had found it and gave it back to her.

"I bet Dr. Weir knows."

"It's only a security leak if we didn't know about it. Now that we know about this and the Wraith, we have a lot more options," Elizabeth responded. "We could lure the Wraiths into ambush."

"I like that idea. But now the Wraith know that Atlantis is back and if he can talk to them every time he opens a gate, we're still stuck not being able to send teams out," John said slowly as he drummed his fingers on the table.

"We'll have to knock him out then. Or put him in stasis."

"Oh, and we happen to have so many of stasis devices laying around that we know how to use," McKay snapped.

Sheila glared back. "They are considered standard emergency technology here. I'll help track one down and then we can stuff him in it."

"Nice! That solves either problem with him, but that leaves us with no solutions on other fronts. We still need an Alpha Site and our food issue is going to be fairly serious soon," Elizabeth said as she looked over the people.

"Nobody has tried fishing?" Sheila asked, completely surprised no one had suggested it yet.

Stunned realization met her remark, McKay was totally flabbergasted, while John just groaned at the simple thought.

"Haven't you been eating your MREs?" Elizabeth asked. "You should have known that we don't have a local food supply."

"No, I ate two weeks ago. I should be fine for a while yet," she replied. She was a bit hungry, now that she thought of it.

Everyone stared at her in surprise. Finally John spoke up. "Didn't you get a bite to eat four days ago?"

"No, I was just asking Dr. Beckett a question."

"Ah. Okay. So we need to figure out a way to fish and then explore more of the city. Then we can continue to explore through the Stargate once we have the Wraith in a stasis pod." Elizabeth looked over everyone. "Let's get back to work."

Sheila waited for everyone to leave, but stayed behind herself. "So, exactly what are you looking for?" she asked curiously.

"Some way to fix this city, useful access to the Ancient database, ways to protect us, and a way back to Earth," Elizabeth eventually said warily.

"Aye aye, kapitan!" she said with a salute and a horrendous naval accent.

Elizabeth snickered and nodded. "Well, back to the paperwork problems. An administrator's job is never done."

"What are you doing?" Rodney asked as he watched Sheila manipulating an Ancient computer console directly in the overlooking control room above the gate room. He and Radek Zelenka had stopped by on their way to the Puddle Jumper bay.

"I'm taking a look at the Ancient database to see if it has any answers." She frowned. "Unfortunately, it looks like most of it is encoded and we don't have any real security rights."

"But we have access to the Stargate controls and the database," Rodney argued as he started thinking over the ideas.

"We have access to the local mass transit device and to a super-encoded database we can't use," she replied back coolly. "By the way, is there some reason why Earth doesn't have a standard Ancient dial device control?"

"Because we didn't have one. We had to use Earth computers to dial out." Rodney rolled his eyes theatrically.

Radek suddenly looked at her in confusion. "Excuse me, but how did you know that Earth's Stargate doesn't have a Dial Home Device?"

"Because it wasn't responding when I tried to query it through the gate network. Hmm. Are they monitoring the background data communications, do you know?" she asked curiously. "And what operating system are they using?"

"Wait a second, are you saying that the Stargates communicate without opening wormholes?" Rodney asked.

"Technically, no. But they have micro-wormholes they use to send bursts of data back and forth. Why open a full matter-transmitter connection when you're just going to send a message or verify there is air at the gate address?" Duh.

"But-" Rodney and Radek looked at each other in shock. "They are using a Cray XL Series system to monitor the background information on the Star Gate."

"Can you get us into communication with Earth?" Rodney asked as she continued to manipulate the Ancient 3D controls.

"Possibly. Let's see. In 2004, Cray was still using-" she started to mumble to herself. Suddenly a new 3D screen appeared, looking like a Command Line Shell in English. "That works. I'll have to hack their system a bit and then write a communication protocol so they can talk to us."

"Olsen, why don't you go get Dr. Weir and let her know that Sheila is contacting Earth right now," Radek said seriously. "I think our job today is going to get canceled." The gate technician took off running at full speed.

"How are you doing that? That's compile level code!" McKay complained as he watched her work.

She rolled her eyes. "What were you guys going to do?" she asked the Czech Republic scientist.

"We were going to go over the Puddle Jumpers and try to finagle a few out a few more details about how they rn. I had noted some extra control runs from the anterior control system. Different than the DHD device built in," Radek replied absently.

McKay was still watching in fascination as she built a larger and more detailed access. "You're adding a TCP/IP gateway?" he asked.

"Yes." On another 3D screen, the Puddle Jumper schematics popped up. "Oh, I see what you're talking about. Looks like a standard communication channel for... opening bay doors."

"Bay doors?" they asked in chorus.

That was when the ceiling above the Puddle Jumpers opened, along with the main gate room.

"Yeah, it's the garage door opener."

"So we can fly around on this planet, not just gating out? Useful!" Radek exclaimed.

Then Elizabeth and John both showed up at a trot. "I understand that Sheila might be able to get us in contact with Earth?" she asked.

"Sure. I've got pretty thorough access to their computers on Earth that are connected to the gate," she replied with a shrug.

"How?" she asked.

"Oh, the gates are all linked like a swarm network. They can talk outside the swarm, but you have to configure for that. I added a network gateway so you can just use your regular computers. It looks like they need to ventilate that room more. The sensors are saying the air is a little stale." She had a whole list of items showing in Ancient on the screen.

"You can scan through the gate network?" John blurted. They would not need to use a remote drone to scan for air on the other side.

"Sure, they have scanners out to about one light hour, it looks like. Well, except for on Earth. That mountain is degrading their sensors a bit. Only about a light minute there."

"General O'Neill? I think we mighthave a problem," Walter said in the SGC command room. There was a bouncing smiley face on his screen that was saying 'Upgrade from Atlantis arriving now!' He started typing furiously on his terminal.

"Why do I never like it when you say things like that?" Jack asked as he walked over. "Okay, that is different. Is that good or bad? Somebody get Carter on the line, now!"

"Hello, can you hear me? This is Dr. Weir at Atlantis to Star Gate Command," a female voice said over the overhead radio. "Can they hear me?"

Jack looked over at the Star Gate to check that it indeed wasstill inactive. He was handed a phone. "Carter! I've got an impossibility or a prank going on. I've got supposed communication with Atlantis... without the gate being dialed."

"It looks like our computers that dial are being hacked externally somehow, sir," Walter replied helpfully as he continued to type away.

"Walter says our computers have been hacked. Did you cut the outside communication," Jack continued over the phone line to Carter who happened to be at home. "Yes, it does seem impossible, but that isn't stopping them." The general frowned when Walter nodded that he had cut the computer communication.

"Why aren't they responding?" Elizabeth's voice said over the overhead speakers again. "Oh, they haven't tried to speak to us. General O'Neill, this isn't a prank, we really are talking to you through the gate network."

"Get here as soon as possible, Carter. Over and out. Dr. Weir? How is it that you are talking to me through the Stargate without it having dialed?" Jack said suddenly after he hung up.

"The Stargates talk to each other in the background with micro-wormholes. They normally don't draw a lot of power, though we have to use a Naquadah Reactor to talk cross-galaxies," Elizabeth explained.

"So why are you hacking my gate computer," Jack asked bluntly.

"It's because Earth doesn't have a normal DHD, General O'Neill. Luckily, we have an... expert that was able to cobble up a connection through your gate computer's passive sensors." There was a pause on the other side. "She says that she's not the first person to have done this, as it looks like someone else has been through this back door before."

"What?" Jack shouted furiously. He looked over to Walter, who just shrugged his shoulders.

"Sheila's going to rewrite your system so it can't be hacked this way again. Though she would like you to leave a network gateway open so that we can email and send voice messages. What was that, Sheila?" Elizabeth's voice stopped for a bit. "General O'Neill, it appears the gate computer has been compromised several times. There are three hardware chips and two subroutines. One of those chips is not human technology, as it is storing the entire Stargate Command computer network on it."

"Oh, for crying out loud. The Goa'uld?" Jack was starting to be incredibly angry at this.

"No, she says it is too subtle for them and way more advanced. It would have to be someone that is more technically advanced by a great degree," she replied. "I guess the Asgard would make sense. Perhaps we should ask them?"

Jack thought that over. "Right. Well, it's good to hear from you. We were getting really worried there."

"General O'Neill!" Walter blurted out from his computer screen. His eyes were wild as the words 'Ancient Database' downloading.

"I look forward to reading your reports," Jack said with a grin, feeling years younger as he watched the computer.

"Well, that was a bust," Sheila complained to herself. "The best connection back to Earth would last one tenth of a second, even super-charging the Stargate for over a day." And there was no way that she could hack the entire Ancient database, even if she was downloading it to Earth slowly. It would take several days (and storage upgrades on the other side) for it to be transmitted.

Elizabeth and John looked over at her in surprise. "You were trying to connect us up to the Earth directly? But we knew we didn't have enough power to do that."

"I had to double check the numbers that you used to get to that informed decision. You don't need a ZPM, but you do need a lot more energy than these baby reactors can generate. I'm going to go check out the secondary and tertiary power systems here." She stood up and walked out.

John started to follow, but Elizabeth stopped him. "She has her radio, so let her go. I think she's very focused on a set of tasks and I don't want to distract her."

"Tasks? When did she get assigned to that?" Rodney complained as he tried to figure out how she had gotten that connection going.

"At least we're able to fly around on the planet now." Radek opened the ceiling doors for Elizabeth's perusal.

Teyla and the Athosians were gathered in one of their rooms.

"So their people have discovered land here? But we also wish to explore the city of the ancestors!" called out a belligerent man.

Teyla shook her head. "No one is asking us to leave, though they are exploring with an eye to harvest foods. And Doctor Weir says that with contact restored with Earth, it is only a matter of time for help or supplies to be sent to us."

"So things are improving?" a woman said.

"Yes, it appears so. With the capture of the Wraith and its imprisonment in the Ancestors device, they have been able to go to other worlds again without immediately running into the Wraith." Teyla was quite happy about that, as it had been becoming obvious that Bates was thinking the Athosians were a security leak, even if he had not said anything yet.

"We do not know the devices of this city, but we could be useful in this fishing and with the lands we could explore for foods and supplies." That male seemed pleased with that. "We wish to be a partner in this deal."

"I do believe that Doctor Weir would agree to this," Teyla explained. "We do have skills and knowledge that can help these people from far away." She seemed to consider things for a moment. "And our children could learn like the daughter of the goddess, in the Nursery in the ways of the Ancestors. As she said, even the Ancestors had to learn everything they knew as children themselves."

"Would Doctor Weir and Major Sheppard allow this?" another of the Athosians asked.

"We have just as much right to be here as they do, as they are our Ancestors too!" Teyla pronounced.

"Yet they feel that we are primitives and only able to help with menial things," argued another, "We have no desire to be servants to them."

"Then we must prove to them that we, too, can learn things of the Ancestors!"

Sheila reached into a vat of cooling water, pulling out a sword. With a flick, she cleared the water from the blade, then flowed into a sword form designed for the long blade. She nodded and then pulled out a sheath from the same, technological pool of water.

"That seems to work," she said, setting the sword across her back, "Though I'm sure that the Ancients would complain bitterly about making such a primitive weapon using a nanite forge."

She then walked across the dark room and picked up a four foot by six foot curved rectangle and lay it against a metal tank. It sealed up against existing seams that glowed for a moment, leaving a thirty foot long high pressure tank that had been labeled already with standard OSHA signs for carrying explosive gasses.

Then she grabbed a couple of hand holds and lifted the huge item with a grunt of exertion. It took a bit of effort to get through doors and up the different catwalks, as she moved with no readily apparent destination. After about twenty minutes of meandering a circuitous path, she saw an Athosian child stare at her from above on a catwalk.

"What are you doing?" the young boy asked.

"I'm carrying this to the outside, so that I can take it someplace in a Puddle Jumper," she replied. She set the tank back down with a loud clank to open the last door to an upper catwalk above the pounding surf.

"Can I come with you?" he asked. He'd wanted to fly in one of the Ancestor's devices for quite a while.

"Probably not, as I will have to leave for over a day, I believe."

"A day? That's so long! It only takes a minute to go through the gate!" the boy bubbled out loud.

Sheila made sure the tank wasn't going to roll around, then turned to him. "Would you like a piggy-back ride up to the command center?"

"What's that?" he asked innocently.

"WEEEEEEE!" screamed a young Athosian boy as Sheila skidded to a halt. "So fast! Can we do that again?"

Sheila shook her head and let him go so he could slide down. "No, I've got work to do yet. Oliver? We have a free Puddle Jumper, right?"

"Several. But you aren't cleared for gate travel," the technician in the control room said.

"I'm not going through the gate. I'm filling a fuel tank here for Atlantis, but I need the Puddle Jumper for the heavy lifting."

"Well, I guess that's okay then. Can you pilot it?" the technician asked seriously. "We don't have a spare pilot right now."

"I think so." She shrugged, seemingly without a care in the world. Sheila headed to the Puddle Jumper bay, popped one's hatch open, and jumped in, then put her hands on the control console.

"What's taking so long, Henderson?" Oliver asked.

"Finishing pre-flight. It's complaining that it hasn't had proper maintenance in 10,000 years. So it's being cranky," she replied as the back hatch lifted up. The Puddle Jumper floated to the center of the room as the door opened up.

"Be sure to check back within two hours," Oliver said, feeling relieved as the ship moved with machine-like precision.

"Disengaging auto-dock protocols. I'm clear for lift off. Lifting off," Sheila called out as the Puddle Jumper wobbled a bit, before rising straight up.

Oliver winced, then sighed, knowing he'd best follow the Puddle Jumper for a bit to make sure she was all right. She rocketed off and then started zig-zagging around for about ten minutes, seemingly in random control. He was about to call on her to tell her that the Puddle Jumpers were not for playing around with, when it snapped around and headed back to Atlantis in a very controlled curve.

It hovered for about ten minutes and then headed straight up... and up... and up.

"Atlantis to Henderson, where exactly are you headed?" Oliver finally asked as she was leaving the atmosphere.

"The gas giant in this solar system. Where else did you think I was going to get deuterium?" was her response. "I should be back in about a day. Henderson out."

Oliver swore to himself, much to the other technician's private amusement. "I guess I'll go tell Dr. Weir about the latest development."

A day later, Sheila signaled that she was reentering the atmosphere.

"This is Dr. Weir, Sheila. How was your prospecting trip?" the administrator asked from the gate room's control area.

"Pretty good. I have about twenty tons of fuel grade helium for the city's tertiary power plant. With another three trips, we can get fusion plant number six back online. That will quadruple our power locally. Well, as long as we don't lose any more Naquadah reactors. Then things will probably speed up a bit," she replied.

"Yet we can run it with just one ZPM," Elizabeth noted across the link. John nodded from the back of the room.

"That's pretty much a crapshoot and a lot of blind luck. I'm not a big fan of luck; it's too easy for it to, well, crap out at the last moment," she noted absently as she concentrated on flying the Puddle Jumper as close to the number six fusion plant as she reasonably could.

"Quadruple? That's fairly decent. But I take it that it isn't as fuel efficient as a ZPM," Rodney said as he started to think what he could learn about the tertiary power plant.

"As soon as I figure out how to make or charge up a ZPM, I'll let you know," was the barbed reply.

"Good luck! I haven't found any references to how to do that in the Ancient database," he snarked back in pure 'McKay' mode.

John had to hide his laugh as he could almost hear the derision in Sheila's voice.

"Do you think the Ancients were stupid enough to leave casual access to military secrets out in plain sight?" she asked the scientist. "It's not like any Earth countries leave nuclear technology specifications on the Internet." Duh.

Elizabeth cleared her throat to interrupt Rodney before they got in a full blown argument. "Sheila, we'd like to set up a video conference with you and some of the Area 51 and SGC scientists, to go over the changes you made to their gate computer."

"Didn't they check the change-log? I documented everything I did," she replied.

"They did, but they were wondering how you managed to write megabytes of machine-level code for their system and what tools you used," she replied.

"Oh. They aren't going to like my answer. But I guess I can talk to them for a bit after I finish unloading this Helium," she replied.

Elizabeth shared a raised eyebrow with John and Aiden. Why would they not like her answer?

"Hello, I'm Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter. This is Dr. Ulickmien, Dr. Rehnquist and Major Hauptmann. You're Dr. Henderson?" the blonde officer asked through the video call.

"I don't have a doctorate yet, so just Miss Henderson. Or Sheila if you want to be informal." Sheila smiled, keeping one eye on the computer as she did some research while talking to them.

"Miss Henderson, we would be obliged if you could tell us the tools you used to compile and rebuild the Star Gate Command computer network. It's seen a remarkable improvement in efficiency since you reworked it when you re-established contact with Earth," the major said; he was a man with a serious air, having dark hair and a trim military mustache backed by almost black eyes.

"I didn't use any tools beyond a keyboard and mouse," Sheila said with a sigh.

Sam just looked a bit confused. "I'm not sure I followed that. You're saying you didn't use any software tools to rewrite our system? That doesn't seem very likely. And the documentation you provided has been amazingly thorough."

Ulickmien nodded. "Yes, we just want to procure the same tools and hire experts trained in that system."

"I wrote that code bare-brained, Lt. Colonel. I know you think that isn't really possible, but you know that there are intelligences that have capabilities beyond your own. You even know a few of them, like the Asgard and the Ancients."

They four scientists on the opposite side of the conference shared a quick look, but then nodded. Elizabeth and John shared their own quick look. That explained why the Area 51 and SGC scientists were not going to like her answer.

Sam shuffled her papers, bringing up a document. "According to the non-disclosure and assignment forms you filled out, you are a citizen of the United States of America, yet all our records show a very bright, young girl that passed away about six months ago of 'cellular degradation.' Now, you mentioned that you were from a different quantum reality. Do you know how you survived quantum cascade failure?"

Sheila's expression suddenly looked horrified. "I killed my dimensional analogue by surviving quantum degradation?"

"Could you explain that a bit more thoroughly?" Dr. Rehnquist asked.

"I became very sick and nearly died after I arrived at the planet I ended up on. I would surmise that my extra-human toughness allowed me to survive the cascade failure by sending the feedback into my twelve year old self." Sheila had to turn away. "I didn't even realize I'd killed her. My parents must have been devastated."

"Do you need a minute, Sheila?" Sam asked, cutting of the other scientists.

"Yes, please."

After a few minutes, she looked up at Elizabeth's worried expression as the administrator put her hand on her shoulder. Sheila quickly took a glass of water and downed it. "Thank you. I'll try... to make up for her loss by doing everything I can here."

"If she was anything like you are, I'm sure she would appreciate that immensely," the Lt. Colonel said softly. "We have been in contact with the Asgard and they admitted that they were keeping an eye on us through that one chip. The other leaks appear to be N.I.D. security. We managed to get a couple of their moles within our maintenance staff. The President would like to extend his appreciation for you efforts in helping us bring a stop to that behavior."

"We understand that you are repairing a tertiary power system on Atlantis. Could you give us a small briefing on that?" Dr. Ulickmien asked.

"Certainly. After verifying the status of the tertiary and secondary power grids, I deduced that the thermal-electron flow fusion reactor number six was repairable in the immediate future." She sent them a diagram of what she was working with. "I think Earth could potentially build one of these quite easily and they would resolve most of the world's power issues within a few years."

All of the scientists on the SGC end were looking over the information with interest. "Direct thermal-electron induction? That could be used as a cooling system too," Sam noted happily. "And I think we can actually build one of these at Area 51 in short order as a crash project. We might be able to reopen a galactic Stargate again if we can do that."

Sheila noted to herself that the resources they had were actually greater than she had assumed based on her limited knowledge. "Once we get that online, we'll be able to start repairing the other tertiary reactors."

"What about the secondary reactors?" Sam asked.

"I'm still wrapping my head around the concept of Neutrino-Ion Reactors, so that might take a bit longer. I think its a limitation on my understand of hyper-physics." Sheila lied as coolly as she could. She had no doubt that she could get them fixed, but she needed almost three months to do that.

Elizabeth did her best to hide her expression; if the young woman had a good reason to not tell the truth, then it was best to ask about that privately.

They went over several more items, but then Sam and the other scientists had to leave.

"Sheila, a moment, please?" Elizabeth made a small shooing hand gesture to John. After he left, she continued. "Is there a reason that you weren't fully truthful on the Neutrino Ion Reactors?"

"Those have to be a last ditch effort, as I don't think they can run the city at full power but will probably stand out to a long distance scan that the Wraiths can spot us on. So we'll be a visible target with enough power to be dangerous, and not enough power to actually hold out." Sheila shrugged. "And I don't want people to be dependent on it if it came down to it."

"I see. That makes a certain degree of sense. So I take it you have a plan?" she asked back.

"I have the beginning of a tactic and a stratagem; it involves keeping the Wraith in the dark for as long as possible. Luckily, we have one advantage that the Ancients didn't." Sheila had a very bright grin on her face.

"Oh, and what is that?" Elizabeth asked curiously.

"We aren't pacifists that don't know how to fight our way out of a paper bag." Sheila said, her eyes hard as she spoke.

Doctor Elizabeth Weir nodded slowly, suddenly worried about the superhuman young girl.

"And activate!" Sheila said. With a hum, the large fusion plant came alive. "And diagnostics says that we're good! We now have limited power all across the city."

In the control room, there was a cheer from the civilian scientists. "That's great, Sheila. How much power will it be generating for us?"

"About a hundredth of what a ZPM can produce," she replied.

"So if we had a hundred of these, we could get back to Earth?" Rodney exclaimed. He had been pouting a bit since the last meeting, as it seemed Elizabeth had been asking Sheila more questions than him. And his latest adventure with Sheppard's team to the world with only children had been taxing.

"Actually, you only need about a third of the power output per second of a ZPM to open a Stargate between galaxies. But we have six, not thirty-three. So that's a no go. We don't have the time nor the room to build thirty more of these to get home. But we can start to use more of Atlantis." Sheila was rapidly working with the Ancient control panels in the manufacturing bay as robotics started to combine into more useful armatures for her. "I'm going to start working on Reactor Four and then Reactor Two."

She was still working several days later when her radio chimed. "Sheila here," she replied.

"This is Dr. Weir. I want to talk to you about sending you through the Stargate."

"What's going on?" she asked.

"Major Sheppard thinks that the people of Hoff might have a serum that can protect people from the feedings. And he mentioned that you have medical and advanced biology training. So he'd like you to accompany Dr. Beckett and Major Sheppard's team."

John Sheppard's team, together with Doctor Beckett, was walking along the dark corridors in a complex on the planet Hoff.

"It's not that I mind lending people a hand..." Carson Beckett was saying, trailing off.

"No, of course not." John was trying not to amused at the situation.

"You're a generous man, Carson," Rodney said, watching Sheila as she pulled herself together after passing through the wormhole.

"...but it's the principle of the thing, isn't it? You can't go volunteering someone for something without consulting them first. That's not even volunteering, is it? It's being pressed into service. Not to mention the fact that I'm not..." Carson continued to complain as they walked along.

"...not military, so I can't give you orders. I know." John was starting to get upset.

"Nonononono... he just doesn't like going through the Stargate," the Canadian scientist said with a smug tone. "I mean Sheila has a much worse reaction than you do and she didn't even bat an eye."

"He's worse than Doctor McCoy," John said with a grimace. "And he's right about Sheila. She actually has problems going through the Stargate."

"Doctor Who?" Teyla asked.

"That's a different character. The TV character that Doctor Beckett plays in real life is the one that complains about matter transporters." John winked at Teyla when she just got a bit more confused.

"Converting a human body into energy and sending it millions of light years through a wormhole... bloody insanity!" Carson complained.

"C'mon, how often do you get to travel to an alien planet?" Rodney asked.

"I was already on an alien planet!" the Chief Medical Officer of Atlantis exclaimed loudly.

"Doctor, please!" Sheila asked with a pleading tone. "I think the Stargate is starting to figure out how to transport me without side effects, but I'm still feeling pretty woozy. Have I stopped glowing?"

"Aye, you have. That reminds me, I always see you using the Ancient devices, but you don't have the Gene. How does that work?" Carson asked conversationally.

"Oh, I'm hacking them directly. I can talk to active computers." Sheila visibly perked up at that point.

That stopped Rodney. "You can just talkto computers? That is so unfair!"

In the Hoffan's science labs, Carson was walking around the lab looking at things. He picked up a rack of test tubes to study them intently; it was very clearly early 20th century technology, with just test tubes, bunsen burners, papers and books everywhere.

"Should you be messing with that stuff?" John asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I know what I'm doing, Major, thank you. From the looks of things they've mastered a few basics... biochemistry, physiology, perhaps even some form of molecular biology. Fairly impressive considering..." Carson was nattering on.

"No, actually he shouldn't be messing with someone else's lab. It's really rude," Sheila said.

That was when a female Hoffan scientist interrupted him. "This is our people's legacy. This room represents hundreds of years of medical knowledge. I am Perna, chief scientist for the project." Perna was a very pretty blond woman dressed in a white outfit.

John, Rodney and Carson all seem taken with her. "John Sheppard. Uh, and this is Teyla..."

Smiling in a very love-struck manner, the CMO of Atlantis spoke up, "Carson. Beckett. Doctor. I mean, call me Carson."

"I'm, uh, Doctor McKay, Doctor Rodney McKay." Rodney hold out his hand for her to shake, but she seems to not understand the meaning.

"And I'm Sheila Henderson. Our people exchange greetings by clasping opposing limbs to show that we do not carry weapons and so come in peace," Sheila said as she held out her hand to shake.

"I hope you will find our facilities suitable." Perna said, pleased by the young girl's clarification as they shook hands.

"Oh, the facility is quite charming! Perfectly charming!" Carson said quickly.

"Why did you bring your child with you?" she finally asked as she looked over the group.

"I'm actually a scientific advisor for Atlantis. It's a bit complicated, but Dr. Carson and I are here to see if we can help with your chemical solution to the Wraith feeding off of us." Sheila smiled winningly.

Perna gave her a surprised look, but smiled diplomatically.

While John and the rest of the team were given a tour of the archives, Perna took a book down from the top of a cupboard and brought it over to show to Carson and Sheila. "His name was Ferrel Mylan. Before he died in the last culling, he was one of our most celebrated medical researchers. He was the one who found it."

"Found what?" Carson asked curiously while Sheila listened intently.

She opened the book carefully. "The key. His journals tell of one man who survived an encounter with the Wraith. Ferrel and his team discovered that this man possessed a unique protein, one that enabled him to resist the chemical released by the Wraith to precipitate draining of life from their victims. After painstaking trial and error..."

"Ferrel made a copy of the protein!" the CMO of Atlantis exclaimed happily.

"And then he was eventually able to create a prototype of an inoculation that would generate the protein designed to interfere with the Wraith feeding process," the young Hoffan scientist explained fervently.

"And it worked?" The Scottish doctor seemed very intrigued.

"And managed to preserve samples of it for future use, even more importantly." Sheila was thinking rapidly of the discovery's implications.

"Ferrel was killed before the drug could be used to defend Hoff."

"Well, let's see what we can do to maximize what we can from his research," Sheila said seriously. "Don't you agree, Doctor Carson?"

"I do!"

"It's feasible. Very feasible. I can already see several ways that we can improve this and possibly expand it to protect hundreds of planets within a very short time," Sheila was explaining in the Atlantis conference room.

"Now, we're getting ahead of ourselves," Carson said. "While it seems to work, we would have to test it on living Wraith cells."

Elizabeth looked between the two as Rodney, John and Teyla watched closely. "Do you know what you are asking, Dr. Beckett?"

"I do!"

"We don't need to use it on our prisoner. I've cultured some Wraith cells by allowing them to feed on human plasma, so they're really alive. I'm more worried that I'm seeing some signs of toxicity in sixty percent of our human samples that I held back as control. It can kill the Wraith, but if it kills that large of a percentage its going to be a big choice for who ever uses it." Sheila looked over at Carson curiously. "But the serum needs to be carried into the cells more efficiently. It's not very effective right now."

"Both parts are worrisome. The Hoffan don't have the ability to advance their experiments across several cycles like that," Carson finally admitted.

"I'm not sure I could condone killing that many humans in a hope that they will become immune to the Wraith," Elizabeth said slowly.

Teyla shook her head. "Even that much of our population would be a fraction of what the Wraith take during their cullings."

"And the Wraith have awoken out of their regular schedule. That's the problem of being an super-predator that needs to eat regularly. You can easily outgrow your food supply."

"Continue your investigations. I want to know if it is toxic to humans first."

Sheila continued to work from Atlantis, while Dr. Beckett wanted to work on Hoff. But only a week later that Sheila was knocking on Elizabeth's office door. "Dr. Weir? I've got our solution, but there's a snag."

"Go on," the administrator said, gesturing to a chair.

"We can make it a synthetic enzyme, but there's a large subset of humanity that isn't compatible. Including anyone carrying the Ancient Gene." Sheila shrugged. "We could attempt a two tier inoculation, using Dr. Beckett's experimental genetic treatment and then the serum. But you'd lose your team's ability to access Ancient technology through the racial-level access controls."

Elizabeth looked frustrated. "Well, we can give the Hoffans our information. How soon can you have the genetic treatment ready?"

"I've already done that." Sheila held up several vials. "I may even have a plan that we can use to start supplying human colonies across the galaxy in a timely manner." She handed over a data disk. "I've got to get back. I'm almost ready to get the final fusion plant back online."

Elizabeth whistled at that. "You were still working on that? I'm impressed."

"It's mostly automation at this point. All the deuterium tanks are full and we should be able to access most of Atlantis pretty easily. Then I'll be going out to the L3 point on the opposite side of this sun to tow a large defense satellite into position and hopefully repair it."

"Dr. Grodan had mentioned that it was out there. You think you can get it fully functional?" she asked.

Sheila nodded. "I believe so. And I'm going to give the silly thing some point defense. The Wraith are very fond of fighter swarms, so you have to have a very redundant CIWS to deal with them effectively. And if we can get it in place on a large satellite like that, we will be much more defensible."

A few days later, the good news had been heard from Hoff. The inoculations after the genetic treatment had been taken, and was found to only have a two percent fatality. The response from the entire population was heartfelt and unanimous. They would all take the treatment.

Dr. Beckett returned with the rest of John's team, wondering if making them immune to the cullings was a good idea. He was sitting down to eat when Sheila came in. "Dr. Beckett!" she called out as she sat next to him.

"Sheila! I have to say, the work you did here was top notch. Especially the genetic treatment to make everyone more compatible with the enzyme," Carson said with a smile. "Everyone on Hoff can't stop praising your work. They've agreed to keep producing the serum as quickly as possible to put out to any planet that wants it."

"Thanks. I think I might be able to actually induce that into part of the human genome out here. It's pretty amazing. The Ancients were looking for something like this and then natural selection managed to do it on its own. Dr. Weir thinks we should probably look at a larger scale immunization." Sheila popped a bit of the white fish meat into her mouth. "Yum!"

"What about the worry that the Wraith might just wipe out any populations that are immune to the feedings?" Carson said in a worrying tone.

"That's why you give them the choice. You don't tell them what to do," she replied seriously, before passing a small printout, "Did you hear that the Athosians are asking for their children to be taught in the Nursery?"

"That makes sense. It's a long term plan worth implementing," the doctor replied as he looked over the proposed idea.

"But they need the Ancient gene to really be able to do anything. How is that coming along?" she asked casually.

"I haven't gotten to the point of human trials on that. Though with your research notes, maybe a couple weeks to give everyone here the Ancient gene," he replied as he started to run things over in his head.

"Then they can start getting a truly 'classical' education," Sheila said with a quirky grin.

Sheila's walkie-talkie squawked.

"This is Dr. Weir. Sheila, can you come to the conference room?"

"Sure. On my way!" She took off at a sprint, passing people in a blur, something that some of the scientists and soldiers had not gotten used to. The children of Athos just laughed and called out greetings as she zipped past them.

"That was pretty quick. Ran the entire way?" Elizabeth asked briefly, before moving on to the matter at hand, "Major Sheppard here has dropped us into interesting water. He's gotten his team into a sticky situation with a group called the Genii, who are attempting to make nuclear weapons."

"We were negotiating for food-stock but when they asked us to sell them C4 explosives we got a bit curious. We found out that they have these huge underground bunkers where they hunker down during the cullings. Once we found their nuclear breeder reactor, they got a bit hot and bothered. The only reason they didn't shoot us is that we have the ability to actually trigger nuclear super-critical explosions and we can help them with that. And they have access to Wraith intelligence." John seemed very intent. "With us working together, we could possibly take out Wraith ships on their way here."

"And I'm going along as a technical expert?" she asked curiously.

"Right."

"You really should be kept on a shorter leash. How does a negotiation for food turn into a tense diplomatic incident with nukes on the table?" Sheila asked, her expression a mixture of quizzical and wide-eyed.

"Hey! We were just showing them how to remove a stump with explosives!" John defended stridently.

Sheila looked at the fission reactor from above. "They do know how unshielded that is, right?"

"Yes, they do. But they feel confident they will be fine." John just shrugged to her.

The Genii soldiers with them pushed John a bit, leading them towards the conference room. One of them had her pistol and sword over her shoulder.

"Sheila!" Rodney called out. "This is another of our experts in physics. I was explaining to them what they need to trigger their atomic bombs, and they showed us a downed Wraith fighter they can access."

"Is this for real?" the older officer of the Genii named Cowen asked with derision.

"Yes. My age has nothing to do with how intelligent or knowledgeable I am," Sheila said with determination.

"And the one to claim she has the ability to talk to any computer?" he said with a snort of contempt.

"Any computer that is turned on, yes."

A high tech device was tossed in the center of the table. She looked at it and concentrated. "Ooh, Wraith." She pulled out her palm pilot and busied herself looking back and forth between the two. "Several Wraith Hive Ship locations and astrogation charts, standard communication processes and information for avionics. Not a lot more than that. It's only a black box off a fighter, after all. It does say that a young girl and an adult female were pulled up in the culling beam, but it gives a high probability that they're dead."

All the Genii looked at her as if she were growing a second head. "There is no way that she could have known the numbers and sex of the people that were pulled up in its culling beam."

"Perhaps your claims are not exaggerated," Cowen said slowly. "She should come with us when we scout the Hive Ship."

"After I saw her capture a Wraith that tried to ambush her, I decided she can have my back any time," John said with heart, "I should get you on my team permanently now that Lt. Ford has his own team."

"I should probably be on your team to keep you out of trouble," she grumbled.

Teyla wore a soft smile as she listened to them banter. "I have to say that Cp. Manning has not meshed very well. No offense, Manning."

"No offense taken. A sign of a good team player is realizing when you're the odd man out on the team. I'm sure no matter where I'm assigned, I'll still have plenty of work to do."

They start gearing up, and had their weapons returned, which made John feel much better. The Genii started loading up on their own weapons.

"So, the plan is to get in and out as fast as possible," John finally said as he check the safety on his P90.

"I've been studying these plans all my life," Cowen grumbled; he was nodding though. Speed was essential.

John was glad they were finally on the same page. "Good. Then we'll follow your lead and keep you covered during the breach and download."

Manning looked over at John. "Evacuation or try to take them out?"

"This is just a scouting mission, so same plan as we came in with. Fast and stealthy. Manning, you get to stay with the Jumper," John explained.

"Roger!"

"I should be going with you," Sora said in a challenging voice.

"What skills do you add to this mission?" Sheila asked as she checked her sword, pistol and a stunner she had cobbled up.

"Sora is a skilled fighter and an expert marksman, child. Still, she must stay here to carry on if we don't come back," Cowen said with a serious look to the young woman.

Sora glared back at him, unwilling to stay behind for her duties. They all finished their preparations and headed out. Tyrus turned and shares a long look with his daughter before he followed the others, leaving her behind. They walked along the corridors towards the exit ladder.

"We need you to deliver the C4 you promised us, Major, before we proceed," Cowen said in a stern voice that could not quite hide his greed.

"We need to get the proper intel first. No use in building a bunch of nukes if you can't put them to use," John returned smoothly.

"Those are your terms?" the Genii soldier snapped back.

"I'm sure you understand," John drawled.

"I do. It seems we have no choice but to trust each other," Cowen said with a hint of mockery under his 'respect'.

"Sheila, quit with the Mission Impossible theme," John ordered, irritated with the girl's humming.

"Spoilsport," she bantered back.

The Puddle Jumper zoomed out the Stargate on a Wraith planet and immediately cloaked. Sheila was sitting next to John, giving him a quick rundown of some of the more exotic controls and feedback, while he wore her extended spectrum glasses.

"How many of these ships do you have?" Cowen asked.

"Just the one," John lied readily.

"I am working on a gunship variant and a fighter version. The Wraiths and Ancients had a pretty good idea with flying ships through the Stargate. I'm thinking of even building cargo modules for interworld transit. It would so totally beat the snot out of hyperspace," Sheila started nattering along nervously. She was hoping that she didn't glow much, but it appeared the Genii had not even noticed. John just glared at her, obviously wanting her to shut up.

Teyla spotted the huge Hive Ship through the windshield. "There."

"Have they awoken?" Cowen asked.

"I don't see any activity. Same as last time. Alright, here we go... right through the front door," John said with little hint of his nervousness.

"You'd think they'd have added a garage door already," Sheila griped. John flew the Jumper towards the largest opening of the Wraith ship.

They landed on a walkway inside the ship. John led the way out, the team becoming visible as they left the protection of the cloak; they looked around cautiously, then John turned to Manning.

"We should be back in a few hours," John said. "Be ready to lift off at a moment's notice."

"Roger!" the officer said.

The infiltrators makes their way through the ship, Cowen indicating which way they should go with hand commands that were very similar to what the Marines used. Finally, they entered a large feeding chamber. Around the walls were the skeletal bodies of humans, wrapped in spiderweb-like cocooning.

"Oh, my God!" Rodney exclaimed with a gag. He leaned over to check a body.

"I don't think he's here. I'll accept prayers though," Sheila said in a too lively tone, trying to break the mood.

"These people were cocooned for a later feeding. Some of them may still be alive." Teyla looked very nervous.

"We don't have time for this," Cowen complained.

"They could be your people for all you know. Alright, Teyla, take care of this. We'll meet you back at the ship. McKay and Sheila, you're with me." John started to walk off as Sheila pointed at six locations in the room quickly to Teyla.

"I'll stay with her. Go. We'll meet you back at the ship," Tyrus said to Cowen seriously as he handed over the interface device.

Cowen followed after John while glaring at his back. Teyla and Tyrus started to move towards the spots that Sheila had pointed out.

They reached a room blocked by a door shortly.

"This is it," Cowen said, "But the ship's plans I memorized did not include the details on how to operate this door."

"We try to blow this door, it's gonna make too much noise," John said seriously.

"Boys and their toys," Sheila quipped with a smile. She started studying at the door and frame.

Rodney began scanning with a hand-held device, and started checking out the area. The beeping from the scanner repeated more rapidly as he approached a particular point.

"That's the sensor? Let me, please." Sheila stared intently at the specific point, "They've added an alarm if the door opens," She said, before the door opened sans alarm.

Over the radio, Teyla called them, "Major, we have been discovered."

Immediately after that, an alarm started to go off all around them; Sheila sighed dramatically and rolled her eyes.

"We gotta get out of here. Sheila? Rodney?" John asked as he covered them downloading information from the terminals in the room.

The scion was holding her palm pilot. "Almost finished. I'm setting off alarms all over the ship and I've grabbed a map of it as well." Sheila pulled out a silvery grenade-like device, then started to rapidly speak in the language of the Ancients.

"Sheila! It's time to leave!" Rodney shouted as he watched Cowen working with his own device.

Cowen and Rodney exited the room at a trot. John nodded as they showed the device that they had hooked up earlier; Sheila exited a moment later as the silvery globe rocketed off in a different direction.

Teyla reached the Puddle Jumper at a run. "Wraith guards!" she told Manning in a breathless pant. "Hurry, more are coming!" she called out when John, Rodney, Cowen and Sheila ran into view.

They all dove into their seats and the rear door closed; Cowen looked round and then suddenly demands, "Where's Tyrus?"

"He was struck by a Wraith weapon." Teyla's voice carried a great deal of hidden anger.

"But he may have only been stunned!" the Genii exclaimed.

"By now, the Wraith will be upon him," she replied coolly.

A handful of energy blasts hit the back of the Puddle Jumper.

Cowen snarls to himself. "Go."

Sheila took off at a rapid clip with narrowed eyes; the Puddle Jumper rocketed forward as she communed with its petulant alarms and warnings from the stun blasts striking the aft hull.

The Genii headed to the back of the ship as they rocketed out of the hive.

"Major, did you want me to destroy that ship?" Sheila asked coldly.

John, Teyla and Manning all look at her in surprise. "If you can, do it."

"Transmitting."

Deep within the Wraith ship, the silvery globe suddenly rocketed out of the darkness, and into one of the major reactors of the Hive Ship. With a whine, it powered up and exploded with massive force.

"What the hell was that?" John asked.

"Tactical Naquadah nuke. Grenade form. I'm still working on a useful grenade launcher that can fire it a long enough distance to not vaporize the user."

"That works."

"Where is my father?" Sora demanded as she and several soldiers walked up to the Puddle Jumper.

Cowen took a moment and then walked over to her and looked directly into her eyes. "He did not survive."

"How? What happened?" the young woman asked in a pained voice that tore at the hearts of those around her.

"I think we should find out. Take aim!" Cowen calls out to all the Genii.

Genii appear all around them, most in uniform and carrying their rifles.

"Cowen, I thought we were just learning how to get along," John said softly as his team lowered their weapons in surrender.

"She killed Tyrus!" the soldier that had accompanied them declared as an accusation.

"No," Teyla retorted.

"By leaving him to die, you may just as well have killed him yourself," he argued back.

"Getting all of us killed going back would have been really damn stupid!" Sheila retorted.

Cowen reached into Sheppard's pocket and took out the Wraith data device. "We will keep this intelligence information as payment for letting him die."

"You're making a big mistake," John said threateningly.

"And your ship, and whatever quantities of C4 you have in your possession," Cowen said with a sneer. The Genii around him nodded in agreement.

"That is all you ever intended. To use us," Teyla said, almost growling in anger.

"And for your efforts, I will spare your lives," he said magnanimously with a crooked grin.

Rodney said in his best, sarcastic tone, "How generous of you!"

"Guess the tava beans are off the table," John said with a sigh.

"Not a fan of beans anyways," Sheila noted.

"Your weapons," the officer declared.

"No, I don't think so," the major retorted forcefully.

"We have the advantage, major." Cowen gestured around at all the Genii about them.

"Yeah," he drawled out.

"This is what your father died for? In the name of people who would lie and steal from those they would call friends?" Teyla demanded of Sora, her voice heated.

Sora's return glare did not waver, nor her pistol move from Teyla's chest.

"Well, I lied too. Jumpers Two and Three, execute," John said as he activated his radio.

Two Puddle Jumpers abruptly decloaked right above them. From the distance a third ship with a very similar profile to a Puddle Jumper, but with turreted weapons mounted on its hull appeared.

"You didn't really think we only had one ship, did you? Tell your people to get back and nobody get hurt. And Sheila's new toy can probably kill all of you before you blink," John ordered the Genii in a very no-nonsense tone of voice.

"One thousand pulses per second per barrel!" Sheila said with a small wave.

The Genii looked around up in worry. Cowen was caught in a momentary panic.

"Jumper Two, prepare to fire on my mark," the major ordered.

"Wait! Do you promise to leave?" he quickly blurted out.

"Well, that's the plan. Guess we'll have to go somewhere else to find our tava beans. But..." John took the data device from Cowen's hand "...I think it's only fair we end up with something."

"You do not want to make an enemy of the Genii!" Cowen blustered back.

"You know what? Same here," John declared.

Doctor Grodin looked up over his shoulder from where he was working on the Wraith storage device with Elizabeth.

"Major, I thought you might want to see this," she called out.

"A lot of the information we downloaded from the data storage device was encrypted, so we're still working on that," Grodin explained.

"Yeah, I didn't think it would be easy," John said with a tired sigh.

"But we were able to ascertain the existence of twenty-one Wraith hives just in our quadrant of the Pegasus galaxy alone," the scientist continued.

"Twenty-one!?" he exclaimed. That was far beyond his wildest worst-case scenario.

"And there are indications of far more elsewhere in Pegasus," he continued helpfully.

"How many more?" he asked while sharing a worried look at Elizabeth.

"Well, there's no way of knowing for sure. Perhaps sixty, possibly more."

"That's a lot of ships." John looked pensive and moody. General O'Neill was notgoing to like that report.

"There are two hundred and seventy Wraith hive ships with the Pegaus Galaxy within scanning range of the Stargates," Sheila said from across the room. "Most are showing signs of movement or activity."

"So even if we were to have helped the Genii build nuclear warheads-" Elizabeth started to say.

"-we only could have nuked a handful of them simultaneously." John really hated things like that.

"Exactly." The administrator of Atlantis looked as if the weight of the world was on her shoulders.

"There's far too many Wraith ships for a coordinated attack," Grodin pronounced.

"No, that's too many with the resources we currently have," Sheila corrected. "We have to act very, very intelligently or we'll end up like the Ancients did."

Across the solar system, robotic drones continued to work on the massive Ancient battle station.

"That is really one monster of a storm brewing," Sheila noted to herself. The Ancient computer system had flagged it as a Class IV storm... on a scale of one to twenty.

Of course, the fact that a Class V could cause tectonic movements and Class VI storms generally only existed on gas giants meant that this was a very powerful storm for a habitable planet.

Luckily, the sensors of Atlantis had given them plenty of warning, so they had recalled everyone (and Sheila had recalled all her robotic minions) back to Atlantis, and the group was meeting in the gate room with the science staff.

"Even with all six fusion generators, we can't activate the shield to sink beneath the waters," Elizabeth noted to herself. "So we had better figure out some way to protect the city."

Rodney was tapping away on a Dell notebook. "Well, we could channel the energy from the lightning bolts to the shields. It would take some work."

"I wonder if we could disrupt the storm?" Sheila muttered aloud. She found it was technically possible, but not within the realm of possibility with their current weapon system's current output on limited power. They could probably weather the storm by reinforcing the city with low powered shields, but it could still break up or seriously drain our reserves.

"So we should evacuate the city except for essential personnel?" John asked seriously. "We do have a copy of the Ancient Database on Earth now."

"We still want to save the city if at all possible," Elizabeth countered.

"Hey, McKay, did you and your crews ever fix anti-grav ten?" Sheila called out, even as she pulled up another Ancient data screen.

"It needs more work. It'll probably hold in a microgravity environment, but nothing more than that," Rodney called back.

"I'd really rather avoid moving Atlantis out of the atmosphere right now," she called back.

"Why not? No atmosphere, no ocean, no worry about a storm, right?" he hollered back.

"And also painting a pretty picture of 'come get me right now before we can really fix more of this Ancient city.' Or do you want to push the Wraith to get here faster?" she called back.

"No, they can take as much time as they want," Rodney suddenly said in agreement.

"So we can't float, we can't move very fast and that's a monster of a storm. The six reactors should be able to keep us together, but there is still a possibility we could sink. That about sums it up. So I guess an evacuation of non-essential personnel does make sense."

"So what gate address should we use?" Aiden asked, turning away from where he was talking to his team.

Elizabeth, John, Teyla, Rodney and Sheila were among the few that were left on the planet. Stargate Command was informed of the location for the people to be picked up from in case Atlantis sank.

Sheila had gotten Atlantis to drift a little faster, but it was still going to be walloped by the storm, even just skirting the edges. John was with Elizabeth, while Aiden had taken Teyla to pick up a few stragglers on the mainland. She was down in the secondary classrooms with her radio on, taking a little time to learn more through the schooling they gave.

Two marines were overlooking the Stargate while discussing important things.

"Bacon," the first guard said.

"The one thing you wish you brought with you is bacon?" the second guard replied.

"Hey, it's the food that makes other food worth eating!" the first one replied with mock sincerity.

"You wish you brought bacon to another galaxy?" the second guard asked incredulously.

"Yeah, you asked me-" Suddenly, the Stargate starts to dial in. "Off world activation!"

"Doctor Weir said no one should be coming back..." the second guard says as they ran up to the controls and computers for the gate room.

The woman's voice over the radio informed them pleadingly, "There's been an attack on Manara. We've got wounded incoming. Lower the shield."

"They're broadcasting an Athosian I.D.C.," the first guard declared as he double-checked the controls.

"Please, before it's too late!" the females voice pleads.

"We're lowering the shield!" the first guard calls out.

"Oh, skip the okay from Doctor Weir!" the other guard grumbled as he sat himself down at the shield control.

"They're under attack. Lower the shield."

Without saying anything more in reply, the second guard lowered the shield. As soon as they'd done that, both guards head down to the actual gate room. "Doctor Weir, there's been some sort of an attack from Manara. We have an Athosian party incoming with wounded."

Over the radio, Elizabeth replied. "We're on our way."

The two guards run down to meet the cloaked people coming through the gate. Mr. 'Bacon' guard asked, "What happened?"

"They were everywhere. I can't believe they didn't kill us all!" Sora declared in a fairly convincing manner.

"Who?" the second guard asked.

Kolya suddenly struck, rolling off the stretcher and shoots the two guards with a pistol. Everyone else removes their cloaks to reveal Genii uniforms. Sora watched as a man checked the two guards. The Genii reported that they were dead, which upset her.

"Secure the room," Koyla orders, ignoring her glare.

"These men could have been overpowered. We need the Atlanteans to be co-operative," Sora argued.

"Secure the room," He growled again, before walking off without looking back.

"Cover the entrances!"

Five minutes later, John, Rodney and Elizabeth were taken prisoner as they ran into the room, easily surrounded by the soldiers.

"Genii," John almost swore as he held up his hands.

"What do you want here?" Elizabeth demanded.

Koyla's stone cold face betrayed no emotions, but he looked Elizabeth directing in the eyes as he pronounced, "All you need to know is that the Genii are in charge here now."

Then he went over his demands, that C-4 explosives be handed over so that the Genii could continue making nuclear bombs. The Genii also wanted their medical supplies and a Puddle Jumper.

They were just starting to interrogate Rodney (rightly assuming he would break most easily), when all hell broke loose as Sheila entered the gate room in a blur. In her right hand, she had a shining silver pistol that cracked loudly, spitting death. Two Genii died instantly, even as Sora and Koyla both dove for cover.

The three remaining Genii soldiers started firing at the quicksilver blur. They gaped in astonishment as they failed to hit her even at absurdly short range; Her pistol cracked again, taking life from another Genii.

John suddenly slammed into Sora from behind, knocking them both prone, even with his hands tied behind his back. Teyla snapped a kick at her head, knocking her out.

"I guess they don't care if you live or die, McKay," Koyla said as he raised his pistol as the last of his men fell to the small blur.

His gunshot cracked, striking a suddenly-interposed girl in the chest. "Damn," Sheila said even as Koyla started to squeeze his trigger again. They traded another shot, both crumpling to the ground.

John had himself and Teyla freed in a moment, using a Genii boot knife. "Someone dial Manara and get Beckett back for emergency surgery. She's losing a lot of blood," John shouted.

The moment Rodney's hands were free, his fingers started dancing across one of the computers. "Dialing Manara. Atlantis to Dr. Beckett, we have an emergency. We need you back as soon as possible."

"Welcome back, sleepy-head," Dr. Beckett said with a smile as Sheila's eyes fluttered open a day later.

"I was shot!" she blurted out as loudly as she could, coming out of sedation.

"Twice, actually. You seem to be recovering at an amazing pace," the doctor said.

"Better now that I'm awake," she mumbled.

"What do you mean?" he asked as he turned back to her.

Sheila's face tightened in concentration, her eyes closing for a moment, then she opened her eyes, blinking slowly. "Should be better. Have too much to do now. Need to get ba- to- wor-" she trailed off in a slur, falling back to sleep.

Five hours later, she was sitting up. "Doctor? I'm feeling better now," she called out.

Carson came around the corner of the curtained-off area. "I think that's up to me to decide."

She just smiled at him, her dimples showing her amusement. "I'm not actually being a bad patient because I'm medically trained. I should have only the barest of bruises left and those should fade in a few hours."

The doctor was quite thorough and quite surprised. The bruising (and that was all that was left of the wound) was quite old and yellowed; there wouldn't even be a scar. "Well, you're doing much better than any of the Genii you shot. Even the leader and Sora. She has a concussion where Teyla kicked her with her marine issued boots."

"And the leader?" Sheila asked as she stood up.

"If he lives through the night, he'll probably pull through." Carson shrugged; it really was outside of his hands. So he was quite surprised when Sheila walked over to his bed.

"What are you doing?" Sora asked from the bed where she was bound.

The young Scion put her hand upon Koyla's head, nodding to herself. "He would probably survive the night. Dr. Beckett does good work. But I want him and you off this city as soon as possible." She concentrated as she closed her eyes.

Once she opened her eyes, she started strapping him down. Then she moved over to Sora, who shied away from her touch.

"What are you doing?" the Genii demanded of her.

"I am merely healing you." Her hands carried no warmth, no light. Just one moment Sora was suffering from her concussion and then next... there was simply the release of pain. Sheila turned to Dr. Beckett. "Doctor? I'd like your medical opinion on this fellow."

"He's hanging by a thread," Carson asked as he walked over.

"No, he was hanging by a thread. How is he doing now?" she asked patiently.

"He's..." Carson started to pull off the bandages, seeing a mostly closed wound. "How's this possible?"

"I did it. There are actually some Ancient healing devices around, but I haven't tested them to see how they work yet. But this was all my work," she responded.

"Well, he could wake up at any time. Ah, I see you've already secured him. I'd better let Dr. Weir and Major Sheppard know of the change to his condition." Carson walked off.

"How... did you do that?" Sora asked huskily.

"By my own divine power, which I inherited from my mother." Sheila poked at her own wound, grimacing at the pain. "That's still got a few hours before its healed.

"He shot you! Twice in the chest. I'm impressed you are alive!" Sora was starting to get a little frantic.

"Sheila? What's going on here?" Elizabeth asked curtly as she walked in.

"I'm healing these two so they can get the hell off of Atlantis," was her equally curt reply. She headed out of the infirmary, heading towards her own quarters.

Once she was out of their sight, she curled up against the wall, clutching her chest as she began to shiver.

"I can still remember it," she whispered. This would probably be the first time her perfect memory scared her; the gunshots echoing through her, even as adrenaline pounded through her body when the first bullet slammed home. Then a pair of near simultaneous shots at nearly point blank range.

She'd nearly died to an idiot with a gun. Not even a Wraith, Titanspawn or Scion.

Just a greedy fool that thought they were the ones that would defeat the Wraith.

She snarled as she headed off towards her quarters.

"Okay. Sora and Koyla are both ready to be returned. We'll be polite, hand over their dead so that they can be dealt with and then we'll drop four bombs with their caves at the center of a big, giant X. Any questions?" John asked everyone at the table.

Sheila was quiet, having decided that she was not going to go. Teyla, Aiden and Rodney all nodded.

Rodney stopped beside Sheila as they were about to walk out. "We won't let them back to hurt us." His jaw muscles worked for a second. "Don't think I don't know you took them out because they were about to start torturing me." He ducked his head. "Thanks."

He was almost out of the room by the time she replied, "You're welcome."

John sat in the pilot's seat with Teyla as his 'co-pilot' while two Atlantean soldiers kept their guns trained on the two Genii. They traveled through the Stargate and landed.

"Unload the bodies!" Aiden ordered, jerking his P90 for emphasis. The two Genii soldiers quickly unloaded the other five bodies. They turned only to hear the back hatch close as the Puddle Jumper lifted off invisibly.

"I swear I'll kill them all," Koyla snarled out.

"They... could have killed us-" Sora was saying when the first bomb went off only eight hundred feet away with enough power to knock them over. "What was that?" she yelled out.

In the next two minutes, another three explosions struck, but each was further away than the first one; they saw the Stargate dial and heard the Puddle Jumper fly through the Stargate mere moments later.

The message, once they deciphered it, was chilling. 'We can kill you and your underground bases.' The perfectly spaced explosions mapped out the cave's entrance precisely.

The next words written on parchment in a tube were even more chilling. 'Attack us again and we will consider it a declaration of all-out war.'

"Welcome to the last line in the Ancient's defenses. The Wraith stepped right over or ignored it because it was so far away," Sheila announced from the pilot's seat of the Puddle Jumper as it approached the Ancient space fortress.

"Yes, yes. We can see that. Is it operational?" Rodney asked excitedly.

"Not yet. And I'm upgrading it!" Sheila said happily. She had finally started to overcome the deep funk she developed after she was wounded.

"You feel you can make a superior battle station than the Ancients? That takes some gall!" Dr. Brenden Gaul snapped out.

Doctor Abrams had to agree. "What sort of improvements can you see to add that they didn't?"

Sheila just gave them a crusty look over her shoulder. "Well, I'm adding Close In Support Weapons, essentially anti-fighter rapid-pulse cannons. If you want a mountain cleft in twain, use the super-bug zapper that the Ancient had installed. If you want to stop a swarm of Wraith fighters from cutting you down to itsy-bitsy pieces? Use my upgraded systems."

Rodney took a moment and thought about it. "That makes a remarkable amount of sense. Why didn't the Ancients think of that?"

John was nodding his head in agreement. "They couldn't adjust to the way the Wraith fought for some reason?"

"The Wraith were sneaky S.O.B.s and rarely fell prey to the same tactic more than once. Now imagine if you you gave a modern human admiral or general a Wraith fleet? Adaptive, sneaky tactics. I give this upgraded battle-station a one in ten chance of stopping the nearest Wraith fleet by itself. And the next fleet will probably hit it in its exact weakest point the second time around, dropping its chances to one in a thousand." Sheila shrugged as she sent the Puddle Jumper in a spin around the station. "There's the robotic drones I've got adding armored pulse-weapon ports."

"It's not going to be too useful out here," Gaul noted aloud as he watched several of the drones rebuilding the station.

"I've got some ion thrusters that will start moving it, But that will take the better part of a month," she replied.

"I'll feel a lot better with that over our heads," John said with a sigh of relief.

"Me too. Even if it probably won't stop the Wraith. It probably will bleed them a bit." She twisted her head slightly, as if she was hearing a noise. "The Puddle Jumper has detected a Wraith distress beacon on that nearby planet."

"We should investigate! Imagine what information we can get from a downed Wraith ship of our own!" Rodney said excitedly.

"Imagine what dangers there are and what booby-traps we could run into," Sheila called back to him.

"And we can have a full team there in just an hour with the hyper time back to Atlantis. Unless you believe those two are off world specialists?" John said, pointing to the two older scientists.

"Can I stay back at Atlantis?" Rodney asked with a nervous smile.

"No, we need you and Sheila for figuring out the alien technology. And I know you two can handle yourself," John said.

"Charging the hyper-drive," Sheila called out. The internal strap on module hummed louder, then flung them through hyperspace.

One fifteen-hour trip was turned into a ten-minute jaunt.

"I'm so very glad you figured out that these extra modules were out there," Rodney called out as he studied the hyper drive.

"If I was a nearly omnipotent race of spacefarers, I would not want to take fifteen hours to travel across a solar system. Would you?" she called back.

"Point!" Rodney replied as John chuckled.

"Why are we parked so far away?" Rodney complained.

Teyla stopped as she looked at the Wraith ship up ahead. "There is a Wraith. But it is very weak."

"That wreck has been there for centuries. How can there be a survivor?" John asked worriedly.

"Atlantis's sensors should have picked up any hyperspace activity since we got the sensors back online. So they can't have sent a ship recently. And they would have just dropped in on us, rather than drop a Wraith on this wreck. Something isn't adding up," Sheila said as she checked her pistol, then the sword on her other hip. Then she looked over Teyla speculatively, just like John was.

"How do you know that there is a Wraith?" the Major asked.

"I have always known when the Wraith are close. There are always people among my tribe that have had this ability," Teyla explained.

"And I bet you were wondering why you were always feeling Wraith close by, weren't you on Atlantis?" Sheila said, jumping ahead several steps in her deductions.

"Huh?" John asked.

"Natural adaption?" Rodney asked Sheila.

"Possibly, though there are many other possibilities, too. Teyla, would you mind undergoing some tests when we get back to Atlantis?" At Teyla's nod, Sheila continued with, "But right now, I think we need to see about capturing this Wraith."

They continued to approach the Wraith ship.

"It looks different than the standard Wraith ship. Smaller," John noted.

"That ship probably has a different function then. The Hive ships are really city-states that can move, so this is probably some sort of support ship. I wonder if it is a pure combat vessel?" Sheila mused aloud as they worked their way closer to it.

Glowing bugs floated through the air, much to Sheila and Teyla's delight. It distracted them for just the wrong moment as a Wraith stun grenade went off right at John's feet.

Sheila came to, just as she saw a Wraith slamming its palm against Teyla's chest. With a surge of adrenaline, she pulled out her pistol and snapped two shots into his side, knocking him down. The Wraith and Sheila then had to stagger back to their feet, rising at about the same rate, just a moment later.

The Wraith snarled at Sheila, leaping forward with his faster-than-human reflexes. She curled with the grab, rolling onto her back and then kicking him of, sending him soaring twenty feet away. She was back on her feet just as quickly as he was, the buzz from the stun starting to fade.

The Wraith was quite surprised when his second stun shot missed, the smaller human female leaning out of the attack's path easily. Sheila emptied her clip at him, sending him fleeing around the corner and closing the door into the Wraith ship.

Then she threw herself at Teyla in a flurry of medical hyperactivity; Sheila frowned as she mixed two anti-venoms with a powerful depressant in a desperate bid to save the woman's life. She heard a groan from John and Rodney, but ignored them as she injected the needle right in the palm of the Wraith's print on Teyla's chest.

"Come on, live!" Sheila said in a low voice. She laid her hand on the Athosian's torso where the Wraith had drained her just a scant few minutes earlier. "Live."

"What happened?" John managed to finally say. "Feels like I've been stunned."

"Some sort of trap. Teyla needs to be protected, Rodney. Major, I think we need to go after this Wraith." Sheila pulled the clip from her pistol and verified the load of bullets she had in her magazine. She put a hand on John's shoulder, instantly perking him up. "Easy to negate, thank goodness."

"Right," John replied, fully awake again.

After making sure that Rodney had his pistol out and an Ancient communicator ready to call for help, the two headed into the ship. They found hundreds and hundreds of dead, mummified humans. That was when they realized the ship must have been a food supply vessel.

Sheila was reading the life sign sensors, moving quickly enough that the major was half-jogging to keep up.

"Should we be rushing like this? All he has to do is set another trap and we're dead," John said, staying at least fifteen feet back.

"Point," Sheila said, slowing down.

They started to cover each other's movements more carefully as they advanced. Sheila was in the lead when a Wraith stun grenade came bouncing around a corner. John dove for cover as the Scion charged through the door, moving in a blur.

"Whoa!" she cried, dodging up the wall in a running curve, then diving behind a metal pillar.

The Wraith had kept firing, hissing in anger. Up until John peeked around the corner and, started shooting him in the back with his P-90, using controlled bursts that almost knocked the alien off of his feet. With a snarl, the Wraith turned back around, only to take a burst of fire to his head.

"Good shot," Sheila said as she stuck her head out.

"He was armored. We need better weapons if we're going to be getting into gunfights with the Wraith." He did not sound happy.

"You're going to be fine, Teyla." Sheila had the Athosian sitting on an Atlantean medical bed with Dr. Beckett watching closely. "I managed to stabilize you long enough to get you back here, and we should be more than able to repair the ravages that the Wraith's feeding inflicted on you."

The unnaturally-old woman smiled. "I truly hope so."

Beckett was watching the Ancient data screens; "Eck. Tis a right mess there. Do you think you can fix that?"

"I should be able to. The cellular damage is fairly extreme, but with the override that this was caused by a Wraith, the limitation on rebuilding 'aging' should be able to be circumvented." Sheila said, rapidly scanning four other screens.

Outside the room, John and Elizabeth were with a few Athosian natives watching the screen.

"As you can see, even Sheila can't instantly fix this sort of damage. She is confident she can help her-" Elizabeth was saying when she interrupted.

"Look!" one of the Athosian elders said, pointing to the screen.

They watched as lights started glowing from from up above as Sheila rapidly fiddled with the controls while Beckett watched.

Teyla's form started to lose its wrinkles, the skin started firming up as the ravages of the Wraith's feeding attack were repaired.

"It appears that a few Ancient's survived being fed on, and the computer's recognized the damage," Sheila said as she continued to manipulate the controls. "It isn't going to fix all the cosmetic damage."

"What does that mean?" Teyla asked.

"It looks like you'll have a white streak in your hair. Consider it a scar from your brush with death," Sheila replied with a quirky grin.

Sheila was back in her room, watching a display. "Dr. Weir, things look like they're going very badly back in the Milky Way," she said to the air.

"How bad?" Elizabeth asked from her office.

"Like evacuate Stargate Command to Atlantis bad. The Free Jaffa were just pulled out of position from Dakara and its weapon. Now Anubis has taken control of the system." Sheila stood up and fitted a breastplate with a plastic texture to her military fatigues. She then slung her sword over her shoulder and two guns to her hip. "I'm heading to the gate room."

"But we're cut off from Earth," Elizabeth protested.

"I might be able to time a wormhole with the generators we have. The wormhole will only be open about one half of a second, but that should be enough." She was almost trotting now. She slid into the control room as the technician suddenly exclaimed out.

"I'm reading an open wormhole to Earth. Looks like they've been locked out," the technician called out.

Sheila slid in front of another computer, eyes flickering across rolling screens faster than he could follow. "Super-charging the gate for intergalactic transit. They've opened a multi-wormhole connection to almost all Stargates within the Milky Way originating from Dakara." The lights in Atlantis dimmed for the first time since the fusion generators were brought online and to full power to charge the stargate.

"Someone is going to use the Dakaran weapon to terraform all of the planets in the Milky Way?" Elizabeth asked in a horrified tone as she ran into the room, John just a moment behind her.

"It looks like it. General O'Neil, do you have your two prototype Gatefighters ready for deployment?" the young Scion asked.

Back in Stargate Command, Jack nodded. "Yes, we do. But we can't deploy them through the gate like this."

"Just be ready." Sheila started typing at a breakneck pace. "Dialing Dakara!" She hopped to her feet.

"But it's already dialed out," John said.

"Haven't you ever hung up your phone when you don't want to talk to the other party?" she asked as she hopped to the floor below.

"Gate Address is locked in!" the gate technician called out as the Stargate exploded into activity.

Sheila charged the disruptive dematerialization field, her nose a mere inch from the wave as it collapsed inward. She hit the barely-formed Stargate a half-instant before it disconnected.

All across the Milky Way, Stargates disconnected from Dakara, much to Anubis's surprise as he watched from the Diner Between Time and Space.

"What? Something from the Pegasus Galaxy just disconnected my stargate. I'll gloat later, after I've wiped out all the life in the galaxy." Anubis disappeared just as Daniel and Oma blinked in surprise.

Sheila swept her nano-forged, quantum-vibro sword through the last Kull warrior that had been standing guard over the stargate. "Henderson to Stargate Command. I've seized control of the Stargate on Dakara. We've got a large command Hatak in orbit."

"Roger, dialing Dakara and positioning gate for fighter transport," he called back. In the gateroom, the Stargate was lifting up through the opened missile-silo door on a tractor beam, as two fighters were winging their way through the mountains.

Their wings and engines folded up, becoming needle-nosed tear drop shaped, which flashed through the Stargate at supersonic speeds. The moment they appeared through the Dakaran gate, they pulled up while deploying their wing-engines.

"Fox-1! Fox-2!" yelled the first pilot, as glowing green drones rocketed up towards the very Hatak and its very-surprised crew. His wingman followed him just a moment later, firing his own drones.

They struck to massive effect; The first two splashed on the uprated shields, the third collapsed those shields, while the fourth hammered directly into the armored behemoth, nearly vaporizing it.

On the ground, a near blur rocketed into the control room. "Oh, this makes much better sense in person," Sheila muttered to herself. She sheathed her sword as she started to quickly move the squares in patterns.

"I should torture you slowly, horribly for disrupting my plans. You are something outside of my knowledge and experience. And I wasn't watching the Pegasus Galaxy for interlopers." Anubis snarled as he arrived, cloaked in black darker than midnight, his current host's face hidden behind his faceless mask.

"I'm from a lot further than that, actually." Sheila said, trying to get him talking, but he discerned her intentions, lashing out with a force ripped her from the pedestal to smash her against the wall.

The half-ascended Goa'uld swept forward to reset the controls when bolts of energy slammed into him. He turned back around, snarling at his opponent "Fool! I am a god!"

"And I'm the daughter of a goddess! You hold no fear within my heart!" she lied gamely. Her heart was beating fast and furious; when he waved his hand at her, flinging lightning bolts of putrid orange, she was already moving. "And your aim sucks."

Anubis did not bother answering again, unleashing more lightning, which curved through the air and homed towards her. When it struck, her flesh burned and boiled as she screamed out in agony. "And I win again. Not even the Tau'ri will stop me this time."

The huge, cloaked figure was reaching for the pedestal and its blocks to reconfigure when a blinding white light entered the room.

"Stargate, the Dakara Weapon will overload in two minutes. Evacuate, repeat, evacuate-" Sheila managed to croak out through her radio. In the air in front of her, she could see a portal that was sealing itself. She reached out with everything she could as light welled up within her shattered body.

"Sheila? Henderson! Report!" General Jack O'Neill called out back at Stargate Command. "Captain Liard, can you land and evacuate Henderson?"

"Not in two minutes, sir. I'm 60 seconds out in orbit," the pilot replied.

Jack closed his eyes. When he opened them, his eyes were hard. "Belay that. Jump to hyperspace, head for your assigned evacuation coordinates. Close the wormhole."

"Sir?"

"That's an order." Jack kept his eyes on the wormhole until it shut down; Now he had to tell Elizabeth Weir that one of her people had died trying to save them all.

Dakara simply ceased to exist, disappearing in a burst of light; even its sun was disrupted by the overloading weapon.

Sheila looked at the outside of a quaint diner in the middle of a desert. Her physical form was glowing and barely holding steady, wavering like it was snapping in and out of focus. "I don't think I'm in Kansas anymore, Toto," she said to no one at all. She walked in the door just as a swirling maelstrom of light flashed out of existence. "Hello. That's not very normal, now is it?"

Daniel Jackson looked over. "How did you get here?" Across the diner, other patrons were looking in wary interest.

"Daniel Jackson, I presume?" she asked.

"Sheila Henderson? How did you get here... half ascended?" he asked.

"I just followed that light that grabbed Anubis." She shrugged. "I was dying, I think. More an instinct than anything else."

"Well, I was just about to descend back to a normal, human existence." He shrugged boyishly.

Sheila looked over at the other, unfriendly looking patrons of the diner. "Sounds like a wonderful idea."

The diner dissolved into bright white. Daniel headed back to Earth, while Sheila sent herself back to Atlantis.

Elizabeth stared across the room blankly, ignoring the gate technicians for a moment while the presence of John Shepphard raged silently without motion next to her. "I can't believe she's gone."

"Um, hello?" Sheila called, peaking out from behind the Stargate. She was going to hit Daniel. He could have warned her that she would have shown up naked.

"Sheila, exactly how did you end up in the Gateroom without your clothing?" Elizabeth asked as she struggled to not burst out laughing.

"I guess I descended, as Daniel Jackson put it. Since I wanted to be back here, I ended up back in the Gateroom. I'd really like some clothing, though."

"I think you had better handle this, Dr. Weir," John said, his face absolutely straight, "Men! About face!"

"So you ascended and descended? I wish we could have had some sensors tracking that. We could have learned a lot about Ascension," Rodney nattered on.

"McKay, we are looking to deal with current situation, which is the nearest Hive ships headed our way. We've copied the Ancient Database, but we need to be able to stop the Wraiths from killing us if possible." Elizabeth said, turning him away from his obsession about ascending.

"Atlantis is still rebuilding itself thanks to the tertiary power we have. We could, technically, still run. But I think we should wait and see if we can stop them first," Sheila said softly.

"Well, if we had that Ancient battlestation ready, we might stand a chance," Rodney snarked back.

"That's right, what happened to that?" John asked, turning away from Aiden where they were talking over military plans.

"It's in geostationary orbit above us. I have it cloaked for maximum surprise."

Weir nodded. "But we can't depend on it for long term protection, can we?"

"No, it didn't stop the Wraith the first time; why would it stop them this time? We'll be able to inflict damage, but its a sitting duck to long-range bombardment. I'm more worried that the Wraith have an overwhelming numerical superiority in fighters." Sheila frowned at that.

"Do we have enough power to run drones?" John asked intently. They had found an Ancient control chair. Drones would go a long way to redressing fighter inferiority.

"A possible 'maybe' but it leaves us less power to do other things. General O'Neill is trying to procure us a ZPM from the Milky Way now that peace has effectively broken out there. If he can do that, he's going to try to get permission to deploy the first wing of the Gatefighters. And it looks like we're running out of time on our own." Sheila activated the hologram. "The Wraith just bypassed their last projected stopping point. They're only a day or so out."

"Okay, I've got to let General O'Neill know. Everyone, do what you can. If we have to, we'll evacuate and self-destruct the city by overloading the fusion plants." Elizabeth stood up, calling the meeting to an effective end.

Alarms started blaring as a voice ordered nonessential personnel to evacuate. Teyla met up with her Athosians, which were trailing with the scientists towards the Gateroom. "What's going on?"

"I heard the Wraith will be here any minute. Will we ever be safe?" one of the elders asked.

Out in space, the three Wraith hive ships and their lighter escorts appeared in orbit. They immediately launched fighters, just before the first one was vaporized by the Ancient Battlestation as it decloaked. The fighters suddenly lurched forward, running directly into blistering CIWS counterfire from its new plasma turrets.

Sheila was sitting in the Ancient control chair. "Initializing Neutrino Ion Reactor number 1." The lights flickered across Atlantis. "Initializing Neutrino Ion Reactor number 2." The lights flickered again. "Initializing Neutrino Ion Reactor 3. Initializing Neutrino Ion Reactor number 4."

Back in the Gateroom, an address was dialed as a message was sent out. "Dr. Weir, we are dialing Earth."

She just nodded. "Let Stargate Command know that they can expect to receive the Athosians and non-military personell."

Rodney looked up from where he was typing away frantically on a notebook. "When did we get all secondary power generators online?"

"Sheila gave me a confidential report that she could activate them in an emergency. Well, its an emergency and we need the power," Elizabeth responded carefully. "Are you going to evacuate?"

Rodney stopped. He felt an almost overwhelming need to flee back to Earth where things were normal, safe. But he would always miss these new mysteries and fresh knowledge. "No, I want to stay."

The evacuees started to file through the Stargate as they were given the go ahead. It took remarkably little time to clear all of them out.

Sheila's voice came over the intercom. "Reverse dialing Earth. Raising the Gate for ship transport." The Stargate started dialing even as it rose through the door that opened up above it.

John nodded as he realized what was going to happen. They had discussed that in the past, using the Stargate to transport fighters to Atlantis. Out in space, the Atlantian battlestation was giving as good as it was taking against the whole fleet, when one of the smaller Wraith ships suddenly jumped into hyperspace from the opposite side of the fleet formation, while one of the two remaining Hive Ships was winged by the huge beam of energy.

The Wraith cruiser reappeared in a halo of energy, slamming directly into the battlestation at high speeds, even as ten Stargate Fighters (USAF F-401s Phoenixes) rocketed into the middle of the of the Wraith dart fighters. Each F-401 launched two drones. Far weaker, slower and kludgier than Ancient drones, they were still capable of smashing fighter formations on their own.

The Wraith fighter pilots has never even imagined what Ancient fighters would be like. The Ancients had been too egalitarian in their outlook, and could use their standard machines as weapons to devastating effect. But dedicated weapons of war using their technology were terrifying.

"We lost the battlestation," Sheila called out. "Prepare for combat maneuvering."

"Combat what?" Rodney asked even as Teyla nodded to herself.

Atlantis lifted off as the Stargate floated back down into the Gateroom, and the Ancient city shot into space at high speed. Sheila took in the energy production gauges with a nod; about what she expected. Less than twenty-five percent of optimal power.

But optimal power was three separate ZPMs, and Atlantis was sporting some new tricks of its own.

As the ship rose into the air, new anti-fighter turrets opened up and started cutting a swath through the massed Wraith fighters.

"Deploying anti-fighter flack," Sheila called out. Plasma balls flashed out, slower than the other anti-fighter weapons, but far more potent When the shots reached the center of a formation, they exploded, each detonation taking out ten to fifteen fighters.

All of the Wraith darts rapidly formed up out of the range of the flack, moving as a swarm ready to throw themselves at the city.

"All hands prepare for three gravities of force," Sheila's voice called out over the intercom.

Atlantis abruptly charged the tight formation of fighters, moving before they could begin their own attack run, its internal dampeners unable to compensate for all of the massive acceleration. It took a lot less force for Atlantis to smash the strike craft than the Wraith would have required to batter down Atlantis's shields.

Then the Deadelus dropped out of hyperspace right next to the nearest Hive ship, opening up with everything it had.

Colonel Steven Caldwell gripped the arms of his command chair. "Launch all fighters. Come about port five degrees. Fire missiles as you come to bear."

Heavy nuclear missiles fired, using new thrusters from reverse-engineered Ancient engines, flinging the missiles at the nearest Hive ship at mind-boggling speed. The damaged Hive ship listed heavily as explosions cascaded through its interior.

Then more of Wraith Hives dropped out of hyperspace. Three more hive ships and a dozen cruisers that each launched hundreds of fighters the instant they appeared.