Blood, she thought.
She went to the door and poked her head out. Keller was still there, but now a few of her nursing staff were bustling around as well, readying the infirmary in case of injuries. And to Carter’s surprise, Alexa Cassidy was awake; the physicist was sitting up, the screen partially drawn back, sipping at a cup of something that steamed. There was a nurse with her, standing alongside the bed.
The lights were still very bright, and it was obvious that Cassidy could still not be left alone.
Carter waved at attract Keller’s attention, then beckoned her over. “Doctor, can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“One of your nurses sent in a report a couple of days ago. There was a screw-up with some blood samples?”
“Er, yeah. That was Neblett — she’s over there with Cassidy.”
“So what happened?”
“You can ask her yourself. Hold on a second.” Keller went over to join Cassidy and the nurse. A few words were exchanged; Carter saw the nurse nod, then get up. Keller took her place.
When Cassidy looked over at Carter, she gave the physicist a wave and a reassuring smile. She hoped it would do some good.
“Colonel Carter?” Neblett was somewhat shorter than Carter, with dark hair tied back. “Is there a problem?”
“No, not at all.” Carter gently drew her away, out of Cassidy’s view. “I just wanted to follow up on that report you sent me. The blood samples?”
The woman’s expression changed, very slightly. As if she had been reminded of something she had been trying to forget. “Colonel, I don’t know what to say about that. I guess someone could have been playing some kind of a trick, or —”
“Really, it’s okay. I just need to know what happened.”
Neblett paused, gathering herself. “Well, like I said in the report, I’d put the samples in a TCL for storage —”
“Sorry, TCL?”
“Temperature-controlled locker. If the blood needs to be kept for long periods we’ll freeze it down to minus eighty, but we were planning to re-analyze it after forty-eight hours, so I just locked it up at four degrees C.”
That sounded like reasonably standard procedure to Carter. “Go on.”
“Well, when I went back to check it the next day, the blood was gone.”
“All of it?”
“Yeah, every drop.”
“But the sample tubes were intact.”
Neblett nodded. “Colonel, I swear the tubes hadn’t been tampered with. The locker was still shut tight, too.”
“Can you show me?”
“Sure. It’s right in here.” Neblett led her back into the lab. “This is the locker. I’ve not put anything in it since. It’s just how I left it.”
Carter peered at the thing: it was thoroughly unremarkable, a stainless steel cube with a pull-twist handle and a small temperature LCD above the door. She touched the surface of it, felt a slight warmth through the metal. All the heat taken out of the interior had to go somewhere, after all.
She twisted the handle and pulled the locker open.
Sure enough, a small rack of empty sample tubes stood on the top shelf, very much like those that had reminded her of the report. Carter lifted one of the tubes; it came up with a very slight resistance, as though it had part-frozen to the rack, but in all other respects it was exactly as she had expected it to be.
Including the label, which had the name ‘Angelus’ printed on it.
Carter put the tube back in the rack, and carefully closed the locker door. “Rhonda?”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to send someone to collect this locker. In the meantime, don’t touch it.”
“Is there something wrong?”
“Probably not. I’m just allowing myself a little paranoia right now.” She backed away from the locker, and turned to leave.
Then she paused. “In fact, come to think of it, it might be better if no-one comes in here at all until this is sorted out. Is there a lock on this door?”
Once Carter was out of the infirmary, she called a couple of marines in to seal the medical lab. Still wary of Cassidy’s fragile state of mind, she asked them to do so in civilian clothing.
As she had told Neblett, it was probably nothing. A mistake, or an act of theft. Maybe Angelus had spirited his own blood away somehow, unwilling to have it subjected to further tests; she had no real idea of the extent of his powers, if he had any at all.
But still, in these troubled times, she felt it best to take no chances.
She must have been a little early getting to the control room: Teyla was nowhere to be seen, but Andrew Fallon was already waiting for her. To her relief, though, he looked more concerned than angry.
“Colonel,” he said politely. “You can be hard to find, sometimes.”
“I’m sorry. As you might expected, these aren’t exactly normal circumstances.”
“Oh, I’m well aware of that.” He walked over to the sensor terminal, eyes fixed on the map and its pulsing circle. “I take it there’s been no change?”
“None at all. I’ve posted guards around the blast doors, just in case, but right now it’s completely locked down.”
“So basically we don’t know what happened in there, or what’s happening now.”
“Well, I’ve been told what happened —”
“Yes,” he muttered. “That news traveled quite fast, I can assure you.”
She shouldn’t really have been surprised at that. “You don’t believe it?”
“That Teyla Emmagan shot a man in the head and he didn’t die? I have to admit I have a difficult time with that element of it, yes. In all the zombie movies I’ve seen, a shot in the head normally does the trick.”
“This isn’t a movie.”
“More’s the pity. I’d probably know who the bad guys were if it was.” He went over to stand in front of the balcony doors. He didn’t open them, just stood there, looking out through the glass. “Colonel, how well do you know Teyla?”
“Not well at all,” she replied, after some hesitation. “But I like to think I’m a pretty good judge of character. I’ve seen nothing to make me think she’d cook something like this up.”
“There’s only three explanations,” he said. “She’s telling the truth, she’s lying, she’s mistaken. Until we find out which is which, all we’re doing is chasing our tails.”
“What do you suggest?”
“Well, if she’s telling the truth, I guess that’s your ball game. If she’s lying, it’s mine. Even if she’s just mistaken, it still leaves us with why she and Zelenka were down there in the first place, and why Alexa Cassidy is acting so spooked.” He glanced over at Carter. “Teyla and Zelenka aren’t a couple, are they?”
Carter eyebrows rose. “I’m pretty certain they’re not.”
He gave a slight shrug. “Just a thought.”
“Mr Fallon, Alexa Cassidy hasn’t shown any sign of mental weakness prior to this. If she had, she’d not be in Atlantis. She’s not just acting, believe me. Something frightened the hell out of her down there.”
“Look, Colonel…” He turned away from the doors, leaned back against them with his arms folded. “My first responsibility is to Angelus and his project. If your people went down there, and caused him to lock himself in for whatever reason, then trust me, there will be trouble. On the other hand, if they’re telling the truth about what they saw, then I consider that a direct threat to Angelus too. You’ve already said that the Replicators have tried to kill him — what if they’ve infiltrated Atlantis?”
Carter frowned. “There’s no way they could do that.”
“How much are you willing to bet? Colonel, right now, priority number one is that we find out what’s happening behind those doors. Let me talk to Angelus.”
“He’s not answering. We’ve tried.”
“You’ve tried. I haven’t. It’s possible he sees you as an enemy now.”
Carter mulled this over for a moment. If Zelenka couldn’t convince the blast doors to open from the outside, maybe Fallon could talk Angelus into reversing whatever protocol he had invoked to lock the section down. And then, she thought, she would take great satisfaction in throwing the Ancient right back where he had come from.