Chapter Text
The metropolis of Atlantis spread out beneath the balcony in a luminous net of light, the City of Ten Thousand Towers shining against the night like a carpet of jewels. In the darkness he couldn’t see the crystallized light of the shield woven around infected towers, an unbreakable aegis that imprisoned the people within. He couldn’t see the soft shimmer of the quarantine fields isolating each and every building until they were determined clean or contaminated.
He could almost pretend that in his mind he couldn’t hear the continous beep of the sensors logging the population of the city as it fell down, down, down…
Marcus shook his head and released his white-knuckled grip on the balcony railing, stepping back and through the sliding door into the ad hoc command center they had established nearly at the apex of the main tower. The discussion about whether they had waited long enough was finishing up as the door closed behind him.
“We’ve waited out the maximum known incubation period then half that again,” Ayiana said with finality. “If a section isn’t infected by now, it isn’t.”
“So where does that leave us?” Marcus asked as he reasserted himself into the conversation. “In terms of the evacuation, I mean.”
Vespasian signed, the darker-skinned man sitting on one of the console chairs with his hands clasped together. “We had hoped some of the ships would be clean, but none capable of making the trip are in clean areas.”
“Obviously the city isn’t going anywhere,” Ayiana agreed, propping her head up with one hand. “The stardrive might have been completed before the outbreak, but we can’t risk carrying the plague with us. Even with a complete purge of the capital we know that it’s no guarantee. We’d have to raze everything down to the superstructure, and then what’s the point?”
“So that leaves the Stargate,” Marcus concluded. “As we agreed beforehand.” He glanced at Vespasian. “Is the embarkation area safe?”
“It’s below the quarantine boundary,” he replied. “We swept the tower clean down to that level. The Stargate survived the purge cycle, and the environment has been cooling for the last week. It doesn’t look pretty, and all the local controls have been completely destroyed, but the gate itself is completely functional.”
Ayiana hummed thoughtfully. “How are we going to get people down there? I’m guessing the transit stations were damaged by the purge, and I doubt the stairs survived.”
“They survived,” Vespasian corrected her. “Maybe not the color or even the plates, but the trinium lattice and supports stood up. They look flimsy but they’ll hold just fine.”
“Wait,” Marcus interrupted. “If the local controls have been destroyed, how are we going to dial out?” He looked around the room, not seeing the comprehension he had been expecting. “You do realise that the city won’t release the power to dial intergalactically without the right control crystal? The thermal tap isn’t enough.”
Ayiana and Vespasian shared a look. She spoke first. “There’s a secondary control room a few levels below the embarkation area.”
“That’s infected space,” he replied. “It’s a death sentence.”
“If we purge we’ll destroy the controls,” Ayiana observed. “We could rewrite the control systems. Remove the authorization requirement.”
“Control systems we locked out to stop tampering from the infected areas,” Vespasian replied. “Lift that lockout and the quarantine won’t hold.”
“I’ll go.”
“Someone down there must still be alive,” Ayiana said. “We could get them to do it.”
Vespasian shook his head. “The control tower was one of the first places to be infected. There’s less than twenty lifesigns left below the quarantine shields and none of them have checked in for days.”
“I’ll go,” Marcus repeated.
Ayiana sighed, finally turning to him. “Marcus…”
“My sister is dead,” he said flatly. “My brother bled out from his eyes and mouth over a week ago in a tower I sent him into.”
“We’ve all checked towers,” Vespasian reminded him gently. “We all knew what would happen if we found any trace of the plague. We couldn’t trust people to report the truth after-”
“I know,” Marcus interrupted. “I also know that my daughter’s body is a liquefying puddle somewhere at the edge of the southwest pier.” He held Ayiana’s gaze. “I’ll go,” he repeated. “Then I’ll lock out the Stargate entirely after you’re all gone. Nothing in, nothing out.”
Ayiana pursed her lips into a thin line. “Walking in there is a death sentence. Even if you don’t get infected, you have to assume you are.”
“I’ll take some supplies,” Marcus replied quietly. “Enough for a few weeks. Maybe enough to ascend. Not like I’ll have anything else to do.” He gave her a thin smile. “Don’t worry. What’s one more dead man? I’ll have millions more to keep me company.”
The quarantine field tingled as he passed through it, the energy shield returning to forbidding solidity behind his back. His friends behind him were reduced to blurry facsimiles, the intensity of the barrier refracting the light into an almost incomprehensible mess. Marcus shifted the straps of his backpack and stepped onto the first flight of stairs down, the gentle spiral guiding him down deeper into quarantine. The air was stale after weeks of isolation, and he could distantly smell...no, he couldn’t focus on that.
Hopping off the staircase after about a minute of slow, slow descent, he stepped out onto the elevated floor which contained secondary controls for many of the city systems. One of them was larger than the others, the traditional circular dial of glyphs and central globe rendered in miniature on the sloping face of the desk-like control panel. He took a seat, but the displays remained dark.
“I’m in position,” he said. “Ready when you are.”
“Restoring power now,” Ayiana replied, voice emanating from the air all around him. “The first wave is ready.”
There was a muted electronic hum as the controls came to life. He tapped the first symbol, which illuminated from below in a crisp yellow light. With a small mental nudge the display at the heart of the console came to life, showing the first chevron on the Stargate glowing a ruddy orange. He could see the evacuees waiting in the wings, and tapped out the remainder of the glyphs in quick succession before laying a palm on the red dome at the center of the dialing device.
The stargate activated in a wash of blue light. The evacuation had begun.
It took days and dozens of intergalactic connections to send the remaining uninfected population through the Stargate, and by the time his friends stepped through the gate with the last group Marcus was just tired. He had said his goodbyes, emotionally exhausting as they were, and as the event horizon first brightened to an opaque white then tore apart he was left alone.
He had to admit that the temptation was there. He hadn’t come into contact with anyone infected, and he was sure that with enough effort and access to some of the systems he could bypass the quarantine shield and reach the Stargate. He reached out for the console and slowly began to write his code. Without access to the operating system of the city he couldn’t make rewrite or override existing code, only splice in new instructions between operations. But what he could do would suffice.
The Stargate showed no outward signs of his tampering as he inserted his malicious code. Even a simple link with the dialing device beside him would reset it to standard and purge his changes, as would any incoming wormholes with their own dialing devices which had the original operating code. But that wouldn’t be a problem. He methodically proceeded to cut it off from the rest of the Gate system, blinding it to its current spatial coordinates and the address it should answer to. He added in an almost unnoticeable wait time of several milliseconds in the activation code for the wormhole capture subroutine, long enough for any dialing gate to assume it was somehow damaged and abort the attempt.
That should be enough to stop any incoming wormholes. Marcus reached into his backpack and withdrew a small flask, the metal humming slightly beneath his fingers as it distilled pure water from the atmosphere. By the time he had pulled off the cap it was already full, and he took a short drink. With incoming wormholes dealt with, that left the risk of someone infected and able to get to the controls dialing out and undoing all his alterations in the process. Privately he doubted anyone left alive the in the city at this point was capable, but the Plague could cause delirium, and he was right here. The quarantine systems were locked out for as long as the sensors detected the infection, but he might be able to access the defensive protocols…
He let out a short cough to clear his throat and got to work.