In Case of Emergency, by Sophonisba [amnesty2007|ways to die/fight or flight/not happening]
-title- In Case of Emergency
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-warnings- Gen. Strong language and some violence. In my head, this is part of my canon-asymptotic AU, but it isn't doing anything alternative in particular here.
-timeframe- Between "Hot Zone" and "Sanctuary."
-spoilers- For "Hot Zone," and... well, it references something that happened in early SG-1, but something that's fairly general knowledge (and I don't know the episode title, anyway).
-characters- AR-1, Miko, Zelenka, Kavanagh, Simpson, Elizabeth, Bates, et al.
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine.
-word count- 1464
-summary- The emergency failsafes in the Ancient labs are ATA-compliant.
In Case of Emergency
The explosion ripped through the lab, shockingly loud. Sheppard half-lifted himself off Rodney McKay to see what had happened, and then with a curse rolled off his teammate, over Dr. Zelenka (who'd also been knocked down when he'd slammed into Rodney), and to his feet, reaching Drs. Kusanagi and Simpson in two strides.
Behind him, Teyla was asking "Attack?" from under the lab table where she had been napping, having apparently woken and come alert at once, and Rodney was bellowing "Medical team to phys-eng lab one, medical team to phys-eng lab one!" as if repetition would make it arrive more quickly.
Sheppard noted as much in some quiet part of his mind as he yanked Simpson aside from where she stood, dazed, and sent her reeling into Kavanagh's arms; the latter snarled "Hey! What do -- shocky -- will someone get the blanket from that woman?"
And then there was nothing between him and the red ruin the whatever-it-had-been had made of Kusanagi's front when it blew up and threw her back across the lab table behind her.
"...it wasn't supposed to do that, she was trying to turn it off, I think she was trying to shut it down," Simpson said vaguely, to the accompaniment of sounds that suggested that somebody was rubbing her vigorously with Teyla's blanket.
Sheppard was too busy trying to hold pieces of Kusanagi in (her face between her nose and collarbone was unmarked, bizarrely, ghastlily) and desperately trying to infuse the concept of "emergency!" into any pieces of city between them and the medical team to turn and look, and then the miracle happened.
An otherwise unremarkable piece of lab floor, next to the alcove that converted itself into an emergency shower, glowed blue and slid aside, revealing a coffin-shaped hole with the flickering lights of Ancient technology within.
"Son of a bitch," Rodney said fervently, as Sheppard placed the device and knew what, despite its covering, it must be.
""Get her in that!" Kavanagh snapped, but Sheppard was already on the move, trying despite the illogic to carry her gently -- she was so light for a full-grown woman, although heavy enough, especially given all the limp extremities.
"For an emergency," Sheppard thought aloud, still off his game. "Emergency shower, emergency -- healing chamber," he only just managed to correct himself, his brain supplying him with the gatespeak phrase from wherever in its depths the stargate had planted it.
"Sarcophagus," Rodney glossed in English, helping him lay Kusanagi in it and fit any loose bits in more or less where they ought to be. The floor/lid hummed shut as soon as they withdrew their hands. "Son of a bitch."
"Will that -- " Teyla began.
"It should heal her wounds," Zelenka snapped. "Leaving medical team to take care of Dr. Simpson -- where are they?"
"Teyla, you watch over Sampson till they get here," Rodney ordered. "Zelenka, you pull up the room logs, I want to know how that opened and how long it'll take. Kavanagh, you were next closest, what did you see of what happened? Sheppard ... "
"Shouldn't we, uh, get some of those black apricots and some blue-rose tea for when she wakes up?" Sheppard said. "In the stories... "
"What stories?" Rodney demanded, blue eyes blazing into his.
"Look, is it my fault if you always have better things to do than make small talk with the locals? In a story I heard, the hero got killed, and the Ancestors laid him in a silver bed and drew a silver coverlet over him. When he woke from under it, they gave him blue-rose tea and black apricots when he yawned and said the usual sort of things about how soundly he'd been sleeping, and paraded the people he cared about by to make him recollect mercy and charity and remember that there was a world beyond the limits of his skin again."
"Very poetic," Kavanagh muttered.
"Hey, it's in the story."
"You've been improving your storytelling skills," Rodney snorted. "Wherever the sarc-- healing chamber routes healing from, it does tend to take away empathetic feelings first, that's at least half of why Goa'uld tend to stay sociopathic assholes. Son of a bitch."
At that point the medical team burst in, Lieutenant Ford hot on their heels.
"An emergency signal came from somewhere within the room," Zelenka reported to those present in the lab and listening on the radio. "This apparently repaired a portion of the lab sensors' neural net, causing their processing of injury to a technology-activator to speed back up to what I think were the Ancient specs, and thus to be identified as serious enough to warrant the use of a healing unit and to activate one while we watched."
"Son of a bitch," Rodney said. "The fucking gene... she was right there, I was right there..."
"Strangely enough," Kavanagh sniffed, "you are not in fact omniscient."
"We don't know whether a sarcophagus could even treat a nanovirus," Dr. Biro said over the radio as gently as her manner would bend to.
"I could have tried!" Rodney threw his hands out and dropped, heavily, onto one of the lab chairs.
"I should have been there," Sheppard snarled bitterly, kicking a stool over by him and sitting on it, close enough that their outspread knees touched.
Ford quietly sat on Rodney's other side, bumping him with one shoulder.
Teyla draped her blanket around the three of them as Zelenka said harshly, pacing back and forth, "Do not presume: one of the thieves was damned. Do not despair: one of the thieves was saved."
"Does that even have anything to do with the subject?" Kavanagh demanded, twisting a retractable ballpoint pen apart and then together again.
"I will have the tea and apricots sent," Elizabeth told them. "And you think the presence of people important to her on first waking might also help counteract the side effects? Do we know who that would be?"
"The other physicists?" Sheppard said. "And she's gone out with Bates' team a few times, maybe them?"
"She has a giant thing for Dr. McKay," Kavanagh said. "If he can move himself to make some sort of, ah, gesture when she pops out -- "
"Meiko's a COLLEAGUE," Rodney snapped.
"Miko," Zelenka corrected him as Rodney went on "You can take your insinuations and -- "
"It is not tender feelings Doctor Kusanagi entertains for Doctor McKay," Teyla observed at the same time to anyone who might be listening, "but a great respect."
"In ten minutes, I believe?" Elizabeth sighed. "Try not to descend to blows before then."
Ten minutes later, the floor duly slid open and Kusanagi blinked up at them; "them" now including Bates, Mavroukias, Koehner, and Franklin, Beckett and Biro, a bandaged Simpson, Heightmeyer, Elizabeth, Grodin, Dee the American gate tech, and anyone else who'd turned up to see and was stuck behind one of the aforementioned.
"Rise and wake to a world made new and precious," Sheppard told her in careful and rusty Japanese, "having once passed through death." He dropped to one knee and helped her to sit up, ignoring Elizabeth's startled and speculative look and wriggling his free hand for the teacup.
Bates, on the other side, got it and held it for Kusanagi, and she sipped before looking around. "The central core -- it was volatile..."
"It exploded," Rodney answered her in gatespeak.
"What have we told you about poking around in ordinance, Doc?" Bates grumbled.
"There was everyone," Kusanagi tried to explain, shifting her language, "so if I could stop it..."
"She went forward instead of behind someone else," Sheppard said. "Good instincts, if personally hair-raising."
"Oo-rah, ma'am," Private Franklin said.
"Don't encourage her," Bates said quellingly.
Kusanagi ignored them, staring out at nothing. "I don't care," she said, confused. "I ought to care..."
"You've just been in a sarcophagus," Rodney said dryly. "It'll come back in a bit if you don't push it."
"Ah." Kusanagi nodded and drank some more of the tea. "Your formal speech is very good, Major. You have studied it?"
"I'm wretchedly out of practice," Sheppard shrugged, "and -- I talked down instead of up when I did, didn't I?"
"It is all right," Kusanagi said, her demurral rather less convincing than normal.
"Here, have an apricot," Grodin said, handing her one.
Kusanagi blushed.
Sheppard met Beckett's eyes, and then Heightmeyer's, smiling at the slight relief in them -- it was a good sign, then.
That was luck for you, though, and if he'd at least gotten something to go to plan afterwards it didn't change the fact that he needed to --
He needed --
Well, actually, what he really needed was a vacation. The chance to do something stupid just for himself.
Yeah.
-author- Sophonisba (saphanibaal)
-warnings- Gen. Strong language and some violence. In my head, this is part of my canon-asymptotic AU, but it isn't doing anything alternative in particular here.
-timeframe- Between "Hot Zone" and "Sanctuary."
-spoilers- For "Hot Zone," and... well, it references something that happened in early SG-1, but something that's fairly general knowledge (and I don't know the episode title, anyway).
-characters- AR-1, Miko, Zelenka, Kavanagh, Simpson, Elizabeth, Bates, et al.
-disclaimer- SGA, of course, is not mine.
-word count- 1464
-summary- The emergency failsafes in the Ancient labs are ATA-compliant.
In Case of Emergency
The explosion ripped through the lab, shockingly loud. Sheppard half-lifted himself off Rodney McKay to see what had happened, and then with a curse rolled off his teammate, over Dr. Zelenka (who'd also been knocked down when he'd slammed into Rodney), and to his feet, reaching Drs. Kusanagi and Simpson in two strides.
Behind him, Teyla was asking "Attack?" from under the lab table where she had been napping, having apparently woken and come alert at once, and Rodney was bellowing "Medical team to phys-eng lab one, medical team to phys-eng lab one!" as if repetition would make it arrive more quickly.
Sheppard noted as much in some quiet part of his mind as he yanked Simpson aside from where she stood, dazed, and sent her reeling into Kavanagh's arms; the latter snarled "Hey! What do -- shocky -- will someone get the blanket from that woman?"
And then there was nothing between him and the red ruin the whatever-it-had-been had made of Kusanagi's front when it blew up and threw her back across the lab table behind her.
"...it wasn't supposed to do that, she was trying to turn it off, I think she was trying to shut it down," Simpson said vaguely, to the accompaniment of sounds that suggested that somebody was rubbing her vigorously with Teyla's blanket.
Sheppard was too busy trying to hold pieces of Kusanagi in (her face between her nose and collarbone was unmarked, bizarrely, ghastlily) and desperately trying to infuse the concept of "emergency!" into any pieces of city between them and the medical team to turn and look, and then the miracle happened.
An otherwise unremarkable piece of lab floor, next to the alcove that converted itself into an emergency shower, glowed blue and slid aside, revealing a coffin-shaped hole with the flickering lights of Ancient technology within.
"Son of a bitch," Rodney said fervently, as Sheppard placed the device and knew what, despite its covering, it must be.
""Get her in that!" Kavanagh snapped, but Sheppard was already on the move, trying despite the illogic to carry her gently -- she was so light for a full-grown woman, although heavy enough, especially given all the limp extremities.
"For an emergency," Sheppard thought aloud, still off his game. "Emergency shower, emergency -- healing chamber," he only just managed to correct himself, his brain supplying him with the gatespeak phrase from wherever in its depths the stargate had planted it.
"Sarcophagus," Rodney glossed in English, helping him lay Kusanagi in it and fit any loose bits in more or less where they ought to be. The floor/lid hummed shut as soon as they withdrew their hands. "Son of a bitch."
"Will that -- " Teyla began.
"It should heal her wounds," Zelenka snapped. "Leaving medical team to take care of Dr. Simpson -- where are they?"
"Teyla, you watch over Sampson till they get here," Rodney ordered. "Zelenka, you pull up the room logs, I want to know how that opened and how long it'll take. Kavanagh, you were next closest, what did you see of what happened? Sheppard ... "
"Shouldn't we, uh, get some of those black apricots and some blue-rose tea for when she wakes up?" Sheppard said. "In the stories... "
"What stories?" Rodney demanded, blue eyes blazing into his.
"Look, is it my fault if you always have better things to do than make small talk with the locals? In a story I heard, the hero got killed, and the Ancestors laid him in a silver bed and drew a silver coverlet over him. When he woke from under it, they gave him blue-rose tea and black apricots when he yawned and said the usual sort of things about how soundly he'd been sleeping, and paraded the people he cared about by to make him recollect mercy and charity and remember that there was a world beyond the limits of his skin again."
"Very poetic," Kavanagh muttered.
"Hey, it's in the story."
"You've been improving your storytelling skills," Rodney snorted. "Wherever the sarc-- healing chamber routes healing from, it does tend to take away empathetic feelings first, that's at least half of why Goa'uld tend to stay sociopathic assholes. Son of a bitch."
At that point the medical team burst in, Lieutenant Ford hot on their heels.
"An emergency signal came from somewhere within the room," Zelenka reported to those present in the lab and listening on the radio. "This apparently repaired a portion of the lab sensors' neural net, causing their processing of injury to a technology-activator to speed back up to what I think were the Ancient specs, and thus to be identified as serious enough to warrant the use of a healing unit and to activate one while we watched."
"Son of a bitch," Rodney said. "The fucking gene... she was right there, I was right there..."
"Strangely enough," Kavanagh sniffed, "you are not in fact omniscient."
"We don't know whether a sarcophagus could even treat a nanovirus," Dr. Biro said over the radio as gently as her manner would bend to.
"I could have tried!" Rodney threw his hands out and dropped, heavily, onto one of the lab chairs.
"I should have been there," Sheppard snarled bitterly, kicking a stool over by him and sitting on it, close enough that their outspread knees touched.
Ford quietly sat on Rodney's other side, bumping him with one shoulder.
Teyla draped her blanket around the three of them as Zelenka said harshly, pacing back and forth, "Do not presume: one of the thieves was damned. Do not despair: one of the thieves was saved."
"Does that even have anything to do with the subject?" Kavanagh demanded, twisting a retractable ballpoint pen apart and then together again.
"I will have the tea and apricots sent," Elizabeth told them. "And you think the presence of people important to her on first waking might also help counteract the side effects? Do we know who that would be?"
"The other physicists?" Sheppard said. "And she's gone out with Bates' team a few times, maybe them?"
"She has a giant thing for Dr. McKay," Kavanagh said. "If he can move himself to make some sort of, ah, gesture when she pops out -- "
"Meiko's a COLLEAGUE," Rodney snapped.
"Miko," Zelenka corrected him as Rodney went on "You can take your insinuations and -- "
"It is not tender feelings Doctor Kusanagi entertains for Doctor McKay," Teyla observed at the same time to anyone who might be listening, "but a great respect."
"In ten minutes, I believe?" Elizabeth sighed. "Try not to descend to blows before then."
Ten minutes later, the floor duly slid open and Kusanagi blinked up at them; "them" now including Bates, Mavroukias, Koehner, and Franklin, Beckett and Biro, a bandaged Simpson, Heightmeyer, Elizabeth, Grodin, Dee the American gate tech, and anyone else who'd turned up to see and was stuck behind one of the aforementioned.
"Rise and wake to a world made new and precious," Sheppard told her in careful and rusty Japanese, "having once passed through death." He dropped to one knee and helped her to sit up, ignoring Elizabeth's startled and speculative look and wriggling his free hand for the teacup.
Bates, on the other side, got it and held it for Kusanagi, and she sipped before looking around. "The central core -- it was volatile..."
"It exploded," Rodney answered her in gatespeak.
"What have we told you about poking around in ordinance, Doc?" Bates grumbled.
"There was everyone," Kusanagi tried to explain, shifting her language, "so if I could stop it..."
"She went forward instead of behind someone else," Sheppard said. "Good instincts, if personally hair-raising."
"Oo-rah, ma'am," Private Franklin said.
"Don't encourage her," Bates said quellingly.
Kusanagi ignored them, staring out at nothing. "I don't care," she said, confused. "I ought to care..."
"You've just been in a sarcophagus," Rodney said dryly. "It'll come back in a bit if you don't push it."
"Ah." Kusanagi nodded and drank some more of the tea. "Your formal speech is very good, Major. You have studied it?"
"I'm wretchedly out of practice," Sheppard shrugged, "and -- I talked down instead of up when I did, didn't I?"
"It is all right," Kusanagi said, her demurral rather less convincing than normal.
"Here, have an apricot," Grodin said, handing her one.
Kusanagi blushed.
Sheppard met Beckett's eyes, and then Heightmeyer's, smiling at the slight relief in them -- it was a good sign, then.
That was luck for you, though, and if he'd at least gotten something to go to plan afterwards it didn't change the fact that he needed to --
He needed --
Well, actually, what he really needed was a vacation. The chance to do something stupid just for himself.
Yeah.