Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 164

Chapter 164 - Interlude - Team Atlantis

John let out a breath as he stepped out of the wormhole and back onto Atlantis, glad to see things hadn’t fallen apart in the week since the city’s last update.

Quickly moving off to the side to join Teyla and keep out of the way of the teams following behind them, he glanced down at the Athosian to see a relieved smile gracing the corner of her lips as she looked across the bustling gate room. “It is good to be back.” 

“Yeah.” John nodded in agreement. “Though the lack of space vampires trying to eat us was kind of nice.”

“Among other things.” Teyla agreed. “But as much of a respite as our time on your world was, I was beginning to feel somewhat stifled with the constant need for supervision everywhere I went.”

John winced. “Yeah, sorry about that. But hey, at least you managed to work out that thing with the IOA.”

Which had been more than a little surprising in and of itself since he hadn't thought they'd do more than the bare minimum.

“And get a significant amount of shopping in.” Teyla added with a smile that quickly turned impish. “Now that we're back, I look forward to putting to use some of those swimsuits I purchased.”

Oh, that was just mean. John thought to himself as his mind flashed back to a few of the more risqué suits he'd seen in her bags.

“You know, I still technically have another full week of leave left.” He put forward with his best casual grin. “We could head out to that one beach on the mainland, just you, me, and a jumper to spend the nights in.”

Teyla bowed her head and smiled. “Tempting, but we both have much that needs to be done now that we’ve returned. I have things to arrange with my people, and you need to start working through the responsibilities of your new rank.”

“Careful with that!” McKay yelled out suddenly, causing both of them to turn to see the scientist in the midst of berating an increasingly panicked looking airman. “The Zed-pm inside is literally covered in an electro-sensitive explosive!”

“Like that.” John sighed, heading over to defuse the situation only to pause in his step as he noticed the distinctly out of place woman looking down on them from the upper balcony.

She looked ancient, both in her dress sense and general age which, for a human, he would have pegged at somewhere between her late seventies to early eighties.

Frowning in confusion at the unlikely presence, he looked around for Weir, finding her on the other side of the room staring up at the older woman with a look similar to his own.

Weaving through the still arriving strings of people, he hurried over to Wier’s side and leaned down to whisper. “Didn’t Evan say it would be at least a week before we could expect the Asgard to arrive with the Tria?”

“He did.” Weir whispered back.

“Oh thank goodness.” Beckett suddenly exclaimed, drawing both of their eyes to the control platform steps the man was rapidly hurrying down. “I thought ye'd never get back.”

“Did something happen?” Weir inquired in concern, briefly glancing back up to where the Ancient woman was still focused on the gate before returning to Beckett.

“Aye.” Beckett scowled. “Ye left me in charge. I had enough trouble just keeping up with the Ancient’s treatments, let alone everyone and their mothers coming up to me about all the other things around here that needed doing.”

“It can't have been that bad.” John frowned, considering the various steps they took before heading back to minimize how much the man would have on this plate. “We halted city exploration, and the only gate travel coming in should have been from our trading partners.”

Beckett shot him a deadeyed stare. “Which left me with an entire base of soldiers and field researchers with nothing ta do but each other.”

“Really? But I thought…” John trailed off, grimacing slightly as the realization hit that he'd considered downtime requirements from the angle of a normal deployment instead of the heavily isolated location Atlantis actually was.

“All right, I suppose that one's on me. I'll see about asking for a few shipments of extra rec gear to be included in the next Daedalus supply run.”

He nodded up at the Ancient woman. “So what’s going on there?”

Beckett followed his gaze before letting out an annoyed sigh. “Now that I managed to get her up and about, Silvina was hoping to talk to Evan about the city’s repair schedule.”

“How is she already out of stasis?” Weir asked, glancing between Beckett and the Ancient with a mix of concern and confusion on her face.

“I stepped up the treatment schedule to once a week instead of once a month.” Beckett put forward. “She still needs another month’s worth before she’s back to her chronological age, but that’s a lot better than what we were going with before.”

That made John frown. “I thought Evan said it wasn't safe to do more than one treatment a month?”

“Aye, he did.” Beckett nodded in agreement. “But he's not a medical professional. And a month between sessions was just the general suggested length so as to minimize potential ascension impact. Technically if someone's willing to accept that, you could put them through a treatment a day for at least a week before energy buildup would start to cause detrimental mental and physiological effects.”

“Which is why you're limiting the treatments to one a week?” Weir followed along.

Beckett nodded again and shot them a wry grin. “That and the fact a single procedure is the three hour long mental equivalent of performing open heart surgery.”

“So, stressful.” John nodded in understanding.

“Like you wouldn’t believe.” Beckett agreed as his eyes flicked to the people still coming through the gate. “Please tell me you found another Doctor or two with the right qualifications to run through the Ancient’s learning system?”

“We managed to find one.” Weir admitted apologetically. “Doctor Kumiyo Miyagawa, she’s a pathologist from Japan with a natural gene expression slightly above your own.”

“Oh thank god.” Beckett slumped in clear relief. “We’ll just need to get Evan to unlock the teaching machine then.”

“Yeah…” John grimaced, feeling kind of bad about having to delay the clearly stressed Doctor’s dreams of having a couple days off. “About that… Something apparently came up that Evan needed the Asgard’s help to deal with. So he’s probably not gonna be back in the city for at least a week.”

“But hey,” He continued, hoping this next bit of news would help soften that blow. “There’s supposed to be another shipment of Ancients showing up in a week or two. And these ones aren’t going to need any help getting up and about.”

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Author’s Notes: It always was the plan for Eventus to have been using the overly cautious “general knowledge” estimation for the “safe” length of time between de-aging treatments. Because as wide ranging as his knowledge can seem, it doesn’t really extend far into “specialist” areas outside of things he’s had a direct personnel interest in like bio-engineering.

In other notes, here begins a few after arc interlude chapters.