What's that phrase — "consciousness returned with a jolt"?
I'd never understood that expression. Until now.
But right now, it was like a switch had been thrown in my head. My brain seemed to turn on, realizing the last thing that had been imprinted on my mind.
The ZPM room, flooded with water, me, stiff and suffocating without a single gulp of air. For some unknown reason, I jerked forward.
Already opening my eyes on the move.
The first thing I saw, and then felt, was a massive brown rectangle emitting a greenish light onto my body. And that it was harder than my forehead.
"God damn it!" I yelled, collapsing back... onto a cot.
Feeling that, against my will, I could breathe without any effort, drawing in incredibly wonderful, completely tasteless air. I could fill my lungs with it, hold it, let it out...
And not fear that my head and body would be crushed by pressure of several atmospheres or more.
Above my head, continuing its treacherous work, a bar with that same green-lit rectangle stopped. Having shone on my head, it slowly drifted toward my legs, illuminating my body with a pattern of numerous tiny green cells.
"That's a medical scanner!" I muttered, realizing what was happening.
Atlantis had many technological wonders that any professional would appreciate.
There was also an infirmary equipped with cutting-edge technology. Well, the series only showed a medical scanner. From the Ancients' equipment, of course.
I don't remember exactly what this thing is actually useful for, but for expedition members it could find internal injuries, parasites, nanites in the blood, tumors, and so on without much trouble. Something between an MRI and a CT scan all in one unit. I wouldn't be surprised if I find out later that the device can scan me down to the molecular level.
All of this is great, all of this is wonderful, no doubt.
The only question is: how did I end up here?
The infirmary is somewhere in the central Spire, I remember that. But during my time on Atlantis, I'd looked in here maybe once at best, realized I didn't understand a thing about what was going on here, and promptly forgot the way.
Atlantis medical scanner. Still from the series.
And there's no way I could have walked here on my own. Not while unconscious, for crying out loud! I'd at least have soaked everything around me with liters of ocean water...
Speaking of which!
Realizing I was lying on a "hospital bed" in nothing but underwear — not very much like what I'd been wearing during my unplanned swim — I decided it was time to get moving.
Obviously, I hadn't saved myself, hadn't dragged myself here. Someone was in the city. I didn't think it was an enemy, since there would at least be guards. At most, they wouldn't have saved me — if these unknown people could operate the Atlantis medical scanner, they had the Ancient Gene. And if so, then...
A shiver ran down my spine.
Could the Ancients have returned?
Interesting. Here the gate builders, supposedly the most advanced human race in several galaxies, have come home, and I'm strutting around in my underwear with bare feet. Not good.
I looked around but couldn't find anything to wear. I also didn't find my weapon. Everything was sterile, just like in a hospital!
So I was in the local hospital. While exploring the corners of the infirmary, I found a separate hall with an isolation ward, operating rooms, hospital beds for convalescents — or the other way around, for the sick... Not a trace of human technology — purely alien design.
A thought flashed through my mind that the expedition had arrived after all. But it died just as quickly — there would have been at least one or two people here. Again, guards.
But there wasn't a soul.
In short — enough thinking, time to act.
I needed to find out who was running the city and why the hell they hadn't come to help me while I was swimming in freezing water. But first, I needed to find myself something like a weapon.
For example, that narrow decorative panel over there would work great as a piercing weapon.
"I have only one question," a voice said behind me. "What, in the name of all scientific knowledge, are you doing?"
The panel came away from the floor easily. Gripping it in my hand, I turned around, demonstrating my ability to hide objects behind my back using only sleight of hand.
"You won't believe it," I said, exhaling in relief when I saw who was in front of me. "A contact lens rolled away."
The young woman with Latina features couldn't suppress the ridiculous expression on her face.
"You lie as terribly as you plan your schemes," she said. "For your information, the medical scanner didn't find any abnormalities in your health. Though, I'm no longer sure about the reliability of its readings."
"And why's that?"
"You most likely have brain damage, since you say things like that," she said without a hint of a smile, folding her arms over her modestly displayed chest. "You can put the panel back and close the energy conduit to prevent foreign objects from getting in. I'm not your enemy. I hope you're not mine, either."
"That depends on what intentions you came to my city with," I said, putting the ill-fated panel back in place.
"Your city?" She raised a thin chestnut eyebrow.
"You can check the central computer — that's what it says," I nodded. "Melia promised."
"Oh." The dark-skinned woman jerked her head. "Indeed. If Melia promised. Though I have no desire to argue or bicker. I'm only here because I wanted to help. My name is..."
"Chaya Sar, also known as Atar," I finished her thought. "Don't bother, I know everything about you."
A well-defined shadow crossed the woman's impassive face. Her body tensed so much that I felt awkward ogling her in my underwear. I noticed her tiny hands clench into fists, her knuckles going white from the strain.
Wait a minute... Can the Ascended do that?
Chaya Sar.
"And what do you know about me?" she asked, steel in her voice.
"You're an Ancient, one of the Ascended," I recalled. "At some point, while living among the local peasants, you decided to protect them from the Wraith and intervened. For which you were sentenced to exile on this planet."
I noticed the Ancient exhale in relief.
"Your memory seems fine too, Mikhail," she said, casting me a distrustful look.
"So we know each other by reputation, but I don't remember ever meeting in person," I shook my head.
"If you hadn't drowned, we would have met right where you choked," the mixed-race woman said with a slight smile. "But you chose to avoid that and swallow water instead."
"I assume my rescue was your doing?"
"Yes, but..."
"Thank you," I interrupted her. "If it weren't for you, my end would have been terrible. I hope the other Ascended understood this intervention?"
"Absolutely." She smiled sadly, looking away. "They just erased most of my memories from the time I was one of them, stripped me of all higher powers, memories, and knowledge of the Ascended. I think if I try to get it all back, they'll stop me. This time for good."
"I'm sorry, what?" I was taken aback. "You were Ascended... You were... how should I put it... cast down?"
"I'm mortal again," the Ancient took pity on my attempt to find the right words.
"Punishment for breaking the non-interference rule," I nodded in understanding. "I'm sorry..."
"I don't need your apologies." She shrugged her bare shoulder. "It was my decision to intervene and save you. Otherwise, you would have drowned, and Atlantis would have remained at the bottom of the ocean. At least that would have satisfied the Ascended community in Pegasus."
"Is that a joke?" I clarified. "They asked me to help them... to save the city."
I added the last part a little quieter.
Well, that figures. What schemers!
They needed me to save the city! The city, not to be saved along with it! It seems these guys decided to use me to fix what Hippaforalkus did. To undo a rule violation without violating the rules themselves.
Clever. I'll remember this trick. And I'll find a way to get back at them — but first I'll check if that's actually what happened.
"If it's all right, I'd rather not discuss the actions of other Ascended," Chaya asked.
"No problem," I spread my hands. "But we need to talk."
"I think so too," the Ancient nodded. "But I have a request for you, Mikhail."
"Whatever I can do, I will," I assured her.
"In that case, would you be so kind as to get dressed?" The Ancient, now returned to mortal life, shot me a sidelong glance — clearly not an angry one — spun on the low heels of her turquoise shoes (matching her dress), and left the infirmary. "The clothes are in the patient belongings locker."
The explanation came from somewhere in the corridor.
"Great!" I shouted after her. "Don't worry, I'll find it myself! Wherever that thing is..."
* * *
It took me half an hour to find my savior — the only Ancient I knew who wasn't suffering from a deficit of biological components.
She was sitting in the conference room on the left side of the gate room.
The girl was seated at the table, manipulating a snow-white Ancient laptop, whose tabletop lighting matched. I'd only seen one of those a couple of times in the series.
Still from the series. In the lady's hands — that very laptop.
"Sometimes the logic of the Ancients surprises me," I said, entering the room and taking a seat on the other side of the horseshoe-shaped table. Positioned so we could talk face to face.
"Only sometimes?" She looked up from her work and gave me a look full of restrained skepticism.
Chaya Sar and her skepticism.
"Exactly," I nodded. "Take this computer, for example. Why, instead of one big screen — so you can read everything written on it, get a better view, see more details — make two tiny ones?"
"It's more convenient," she shrugged. "For us, it's not difficult to make out even the smallest details at this resolution. But at the same time, it lets you work on two parallel tasks."
"Someone needs to tell you about dual monitors," I smiled. "So... our introduction wasn't the smoothest."
"That's for sure," the girl said calmly. She seemed quite young to me now — no older than twenty-five. That age where a woman's features start showing maturity. "Though I'm already glad you have enough tact to show up to our meeting in clothes."
"That sounds like you want to reproach me, but we're not married yet, so you have to hold back your claws," I continued with an innocent smile, getting on her nerves.
No, I was incredibly grateful she'd saved my skin. But that didn't change the fact that in the events I knew about, Chaya Sar never even considered becoming human to help expedition members. Yet she made an exception for me.
From what I knew about this lady's past, I couldn't boast many details.
The expedition encountered her on a poorly developed planet where they came under Wraith attack. The Wraith were destroyed by energy weapons, which made the Earth group want to investigate further. Chaya posed as a priestess of some goddess Atar that the locals worshipped. Later it turned out she was from that planet. Once, while Ascended, she had stood up for her people, preventing the Wraith from harvesting them. On the face of it — a rule violation. For that she was sentenced to be the protector of her people. But only them.
From the series, I concluded she was a sympathetic woman who took others' suffering to heart. And the Ancients made it so she couldn't do anything when other people — millions across the galaxy — died. Eventually she told them about herself, her origins, and her punishment. But by the will of the Ascended, she couldn't help the Earthlings.
Yet now she decided to go against that. Strange.
"Good joke," she didn't even try to smile. "I'll remember it."
"Since I've shared something personal, I'd like to hear in return the circumstances under which an Ascended, who'd already been punished for interfering, decided to step on the same rake twice."
"So you want to know why I saved you," Chaya simplified.
"Bingo. You didn't need to become human for that."
"It's simple," she said. "I didn't plan to. My help was supposed to consist of starting the water-pumping process before your brain experienced biological death. You got the battery, you restored the city's shield. You could have managed on your own after that. Unfortunately, my intervention was detected."
"Given how much I'm disliked for being here and what I am, it's unlikely they'd just scold you for that."
"I thought the same when I realized there was no way out," the girl said. "So I took mortal form."
"If you can't win, flip the table," I declared. "But they might not have stopped. After all, they have no bosses, and the neighbors won't peek in."
"The Ascended don't know for certain whether the Ancients in the Milky Way were destroyed," Sar said. "So breaking the rules is unacceptable to them."
"Because if other Ascended are alive, they'd give them a real thrashing," I realized.
"Most likely," Chaya said absently, looking away.
"You know, there's something I don't understand," I admitted. "You said the Ascended erased your knowledge of the time when you were one of them. But you're talking quite confidently about what they did and didn't do... I sense deception, my young padawan."
Sar, predictably, didn't appreciate the parody of the green Cheburashka.
She just turned her computer toward me with both screens.
"I admit, I have hawkeye vision, but those letters are awfully small," I said.
"And you also don't know Lantian well enough to understand what's written," a slight smile appeared on her face.
"Bingo," I had to concede defeat.
"It seems that while Ascended, I anticipated this outcome, so I left myself some notes," she said, pointing to the laptop's top monitor. "This indicates that you're from another universe and don't know much about our technology. But you have information about a possible future. That's... an extremely unusual fact, because breaching the boundaries of reality and working in alternate realities is very dangerous and was prohibited by the Lantean Council. And before them, according to the chronicles, by other Alteran government bodies preceding the Council."
In other words, what Hippaforalkus did was "haram" going back almost to the very appearance of the Alterans in the Milky Way millions of years ago. It's terrifying to imagine what they might have done in the past that they guarded such prohibitions so carefully from generation to generation.
"As I was told, time travel is also forbidden. Apparently that's one of the worst crimes from the Ascended's perspective."
"I can't say for certain, but in my time such prohibitions were punishable by exile or imprisonment in stasis prisons," Chaya said, growing sad. "At best, it would result in public censure. And that's a heavy burden, because then all of society turns away from you."
"They get offended and stop talking?"
"No. Usually no one crossed the line into simple meaningless communication. But whenever someone needed help or advice, everyone always had urgent business elsewhere. Alone in Ancient society, it was hard to get anything done. Resources that a single member of society couldn't have were required. Only together could we achieve significant success."
That reminds me of something... Something not exactly utopian, but progressive, strong, and leaving its indelible glorious (and not-so-glorious) mark on history.
"How about we switch to a more familiar form of address?" I interrupted her.
"Excuse me?" She looked at me with confusion.
"Don't tell me you didn't understand. Otherwise I'll be seriously disappointed in the genius of the Ancients."
"I understood perfectly, Mikhail," she said. "But I can't imagine how, given our age difference, such casual communication is even possible."
"It's possible, considering there are only two of us in a city you couldn't explore in a lifetime!" I exclaimed. "It seems we're in the same boat, so we should stick together. They —" I pointed at the ceiling, " don't like either of us. So..."
"I can't recall having problems with shuttles," she replied impassively.
Was that a joke, or did the Ancient really not understand?
"I was talking about the Ascended."
"I know." She smiled, showing she'd just out-joked the joker. I don't remember her acting like that as an Ascended in the series. It seems Ascended-Chaya and human-Chaya are as different as heaven and earth.
"So," I looked into her eyes. "Do we work together?"
"That would be the most optimal option," she agreed.
"Excellent. Now... Tell me, you didn't bring the city to the surface, did you?"
"That would deprive Atlantis of its advantage," Chaya said. "Much less energy is spent containing water than repelling an attack on the surface. Water dampens the energy charges of Wraith weapons. So the best option for us is to remain underwater. For as long as possible."
"Great minds think alike," I laughed.
Sar looked at me with curiosity. A question was written on her face...
"It's an expression," I explained. "Of course, an Ancient and I, with an age difference of..." Now I needed to give her a pleading look, begging for an answer. But Chaya didn't even think to clarify. "I meant I can't think the same way as a more advanced version of a human."
"That's a fact," she said. "The brain of my species is more developed than yours. But a million years of evolution, experiments, and improvements could put us on the same level."
"Or we could create another version of the Wraith," I suggested.
"I'd rather not do that," Chaya said.
"Then I suggest we do what we do best," I stood up, clapping my hands.
"Talk?" she clarified.
Why is it that when I hear something like that from her, it feels like she's baiting me with her seeming naivety?
"I meant we need to figure out what situation we're in and how badly the city was damaged," I explained, and she acknowledged with a nod. "And then try to find allies. Maybe some of the Ancients would agree to join us and..."
"That's unlikely," the girl said, pointing at her Lantian-origin laptop. "At least, that's what it says here."
"And what else does it say?" I asked with interest. "Coordinates of ZPM locations? Positions of warships? Shipyards? Drone arsenals? Secrets for reviving the Ancients who aged in stasis? I assume you, as a representative of a more advanced human species, thought ahead about how we should proceed, didn't you?"
"Possibly." Sar lowered her gaze, then gestured for me to come closer. "Actually, there isn't that much written here. I suppose I was afraid that if the Ascended saw very obvious hints, they'd destroy the device. Or stop us once we read what was written."
I don't like the sound of this.
Stepping behind the girl, I looked over her shoulder at the little monitors.
"If you don't mind..."
"Yes, of course," she caught herself, pointing to a series of sentences written one above the other. The first was the longest. "These are a series of theses that, without context, are meaningless."
"I assume this," I pointed at the first sentence, "is what you told yourself about me."
"I gave you the literal translation," the girl said. "Shall I repeat it?"
"Oh, no need," I waved my hand. "We primitive humans forget what's said quickly anyway."
"That's partly why many Lanteans didn't want to form personal relationships with representatives of less developed civilizations," Chaya said. "It's very hard to remember faces and names when you're new every century."
"Not offended at all." I swallowed the lump in my throat and forced a smile. "So, what's written here?"
"The notes aren't connected to each other," she said. "Or I don't see the connection. I think they're addressed to me, since the first one talked about you..."
I chuckled.
"Did I say something funny?"
"Usually, people write down the most important things first," I explained. "And since you wrote about me... Does that mean I'm important to you?"
"This text editor records lines sequentially," Chaya said. "Each new line pushes the previous one down. But even though you're listed last, it still means you're important."
So she wrote about me last.
"So what else is there?" I changed the subject.
"Something personal," Chaya said quickly, deleting several lines of text. Too quickly for me to memorize the symbols. "And, with your permission, I'll keep that to myself."
Curiosity isn't a vice, of course, but... I think everyone has a right to their secrets.
"What about the rest?"
"It sounds strange, but it says: 'It has already happened,' 'Jump,' and... something that worries me especially."
She pointed to the last written line.
"And what does that say?" I asked.
What could worry an Ancient who'd been Ascended for at least ten thousand years?
"'Others lie,'" she whispered, as if someone might hear us. Though the Ascended certainly could if they were nearby. "I don't understand what that means..."
"But I do." Chaya looked at me. "In my universe, 'Others' referred to the Ascended."