Life on Atlantis

Life On Atlantis

Tomas was busy, working in his private lab. He was looking at a slide of Emily’s DNA, then switched to a slide of Wraith DNA. After that he carefully mixed the two slides together, the reaction that occurred was exactly what he wanted to happen. The door to his lab opened and someone came in.
“Emily is acting up, the temperature in her room is rising,” Alexias said.
“The serum I gave her should be suppressing her powers,” he replied not bothering to look up.
“Well it isn’t.”
Tomas sighed, he put the slide away and walked over to the serum cabinet and pulled out a vial of yellow-green liquid out. “If we give her a stronger dose than this, it might hurt her.” He pushed past Alexias to leave his lab.
Alexias moved to follow him.
“I will go alone!”
Tomas made his way to Emily’s room and stood outside, he could feel the heat coming from the door. He finally entered, the heat inside was worse, stifling. Emily was sitting on the bed, staring towards the door like she somehow knew he was coming.
“I want to see Misha!” Her eyes turned completely black.
“I wish we could, I really do, but the team we sent to find Misha reported back and said the Hive ship that took her was destroyed and all the slaves were killed,” Tomas said smoothly.
“I was good for an entire week, give me a surprise like you promised,”
“We can let you explore Atlantis,” he said. “If you take your medicine again.” Tomas held the vial out towards Emily, carefully making eye contact with her.
Emily took the vial from Tomas and hesitated. “I do not feel sick,” she said.
“We found some traces of a bacteria within your bloodstream. If you do not take the medicine soon you will be really sick and could die,” Tomas said.
She opened the vial and swallowed the contents, shivering as the effects took hold, almost instantly. She began to feel a little different, like she was disconnected from a part of herself.
“That wasn’t so bad,” Tomas said.
“It tasted like crap.”
Tomas had Emily follow him into a medical lab, made her sit down on the bed.
“Everything is so white,” she said.
Looking around she saw a monitor by the bed, its screen was black. Tomas walked over and flipped the switch to turn it on. Then he unclipped something from the side.
“No needles,” Emily said.
“I promise no needles,” he said. “I just need to put this clip on your finger, to check your vital signs.”
Emily slowly held her hand out. Tomas put the clip on her finger, lights popped up on the monitor. He noticed her body temperature was a few degrees lower than normal, for her at least.
“Is something wrong?”
“No everything is just right, in fact it’s all working.”
Emily said nothing she sat still, letting Tomas study the monitor all day, she enjoyed this new freedom, even if she only was able to go to this medical lab.
This might not be so bad. Emily thought to herself. Maybe I will enjoy being here, they can’t be worse than my parents were.
The next five years past, Emily was given more freedoms the more she got along with the Tauri. They kept giving her different kinds of medicine, though one day Tomas pulled out a needle and she freaked out. But he was able to convince her to let them use needles.

Emily, now ten years old, was allowed to explore Atlantis alone, even sometimes being left alone in the huge city. This was given to her in exchange for her agreeing for them to use needles. She was hesitant at first, being afraid of the pain, but she wanted more freedom.
Her skin now held a green tint to it, she remembered a time when she was younger, being able to change her appearance with just a thought, but now she couldn’t. Tomas explained that she must have outgrew it or an undetected sickness took it away.
Right now she was alone on Atlantis, Tomas and the rest went to another base on another planet for some briefing on a new enemy. Emily enjoyed these moments of freedom as they were few and far between. She was free to explore Atlantis, to go to the forbidden side of the city and into Tomas’ private lab. Once she was almost caught and after that time she promised herself to only go there when the city was empty.
She donned her black lightweight leather outfit, this was her favorite outfit as it made her feel sneakier when wearing it, that and it kept her warm. She quietly left her room, making her way down the brightly lit hallways, as she got closer to the forbidden half the lights got dimmer. They did this in an attempt to make Emily too scared to explore this far, but she was too curious.
She snuck into Tomas’ lab and walked over to his computer, it took her a couple of minutes but she was able to bypass the password login. Then began to read through his files, looking for one that seemed interesting. She came across one titled Emily, so she opened that one first.
“Emily’s powers are perfectly suppressed right now, though we need to watch her as she gets older, the serum dosage might need to be upped. . . . her acceptance of Wraith DNA is going better than planned, we need to watch how many more dosages we give her though, we don’t want her adapting to the Wraith’s way of feeding without warning. Soon we will be able to begin the next phase of experimentation.
Emily closed her file feeling horrified, they had lied to her, telling her they were trying to find a way to make all people immune to the Wraith’s feeding just like she was. And they were suppressing her powers?
She went on to the next file that caught her attention, one titled Misha, it was a field report.
“We found a crashed Hive ship, it looked severely damaged. Aboard it we find hundreds of corpses all Athosians. There was one small girl among them, still alive somehow, though just barely. She called herself Misha, asking for our help to fix her and to find her Emily. We took her to one of our off Atlantis medical bases. We are debating experimentation on her.
End of report.
Emily quickly turned off the computer, making sure everything was how it was before she entered the lab. She left the lab and continued down the hall, it kept getting darker the further she went. She got to the room end of the hall and heard a noise coming from a room on her left. When she waved her hand over the control panel to open the door nothing happened, except for the panel glowed red, meaning the control crystals were not in there properly to keep it locked. Emily pulled out her small knife from her boot and forced the control panel cover off. The first crystal was missing. She closed her eyes, images went through her mind, trying to figure out how the crystals were supposed to look like. Finally she moved the bottom crystal to the top and the lights turned green, she replaced the cover and attempted to open the door again. This time it opened.
Inside the room was dark, Emily waited a few minutes for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. Then she heard a ho voice.
“You don’t smell like the humans,” it said. “You almost smell like my people, but a little different.”
‘Who are you?” Emily looked around, then saw a dark figure sitting in the corner. “What do you mean I smell like you?”
“You know what I mean, you are different now, more so than when you were a little girl.”
Emily was silent, wondering how this man even knew her, knew what she was, what she became. “What is your name?”
“The Wraith do not name their people. I have no name,” he said. “Emily.”
The person moved closer towards her, till he was standing in front of her. It was a Wraith, with short white hair, skin more green the Emily’s had become, and black eyes. “You can give me a name if you want,” he offered.
Emily thought for a moment, trying to decide of a name and wondering if this was some kind of trap. She gripped her knife tighter in case it was. “I will call you Michael. But how do you know me?”
“I hear Tomas talking about you, what with you being his favorite experiment, a living weapon against the Wraith, being able to infiltrate and destroy them before the find out what you really are.”
“You’re lying. Tomas just wants to find a way to make everyone immune to the Wraith’s feedings like me.” Emily backed herself into a corner, away from Michael.
“You are not immune to our feedings, but with your longevity in your dna, which is flowing through your blood, you seem immune, our feeding on you will just make you weaker now. Tomas lied to you to try to fix their mistakes, just ask him.”
Emily shook her head, she was too confused, first she found out Misha could still be alive and now this. “If you know about me then you must know about my Misha.”
“She was found,” he said. “Alive, just barely, so they helped her and kept her for experimentation.”
Emily slid over to the door, shaking her head. “You’re lying.” She left the room and ran away, down the hall.
“You will be back!” Michael yelled.
Emily paced back and forth in her quarters. She was trying to piece together everything that she had just learned. She wrote everything down in her journal and then sat down on her bed. Emily was, to say the least, -blocked-ed off. Tomas was hiding Misha from her, faking the evidence so prove to her that Misha was dead. It was still another day before Tomas would return, but Emily didn’t want to wait for answers.

“I knew you would return.”
Emily looked at Michael’s feet. “I want answers. Tell me everything you know.”
Michael stepped closer to Emily and pushed her head up so she was staring into his eyes. “What is in it for me?”
“I can help you escape if you help me first.”
He walked over to the bare cot in the corner and sat down. “Get comfortable. This may take awhile.”
Emily cautiously sat down on the ground, a couple of feet away from Michael.
“Forget everything Tomas told you. It most likely was all lies.”
Michael began telling her everything. How Tomas experimented with the Iratus bug, how it evolved into the Wraith, that it was his fault that the Wraith even existed. Emily was Tomas’ last hope for defeating the Wraith, since his last project ended badly. Nanites, that eventually evolved into living replicas of humans, his need to banish them away to another galaxy.
“So to him I’m just an experimental weapon to use?”
“Yes.”
“Then I want to leave. Let’s escape now.”
“You can’t, not while your powers are suppressed and not before Tomas’ experimentation is done.” Michael noticed Emily’s confused look. “If you leave now, being too weakened to protect yourself, you will be easily overtaken by anyone. And with you looking so . . . unique, you need to wait until you can protect yourself.”
Emily opened her mouth to argue, but stopped. She could feel slight vibrations. “I need to go!” She ran back to her quarters and hid her journal. Then she slowly walked to the gateroom to greet the returning Tau'ri. She forced a smile as Tomas greeted her.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
Emily shook her head. “I’m just tired, had bad nightmares last night.”
Three years passed and Tomas had finally finished the experiments on Emily. The final thing to do was to get Emily to help beat the Wraith.
“We need a way to get the Wraith to accept and trust her,” Tomas said.
“You still have the captive Wraith, have her help him escape, we can plant a tracker in him,” Alexias said.
Meanwhile Emily had snuck back into Michael’s holding room again. “They stopped giving me the crappy serum.”
Michael smiled. “Soon you will be strong enough to even destroy this city if you wanted to.”
Emily laughed, but she had other ideas on her mind to do first. “I want my parents to pay first.”
“I will help find them once I can escape.”

Tomas brought Emily to the debriefing room. The elders all sat around a U-shaped table. Emily and Tomas stood in the middle facing them.
“Are you sure she is ready to know the truth?” Solan asked.
“She has proved herself trustworthy,” Tomas said.
Emily tried to stifle a giggle, she already had a pretty good idea what they were talking about. Everyone looked at her and she just smiled innocently.
“But she has proven that she has a too strong a free will, and if she disagrees with us. . .,” Solan began.
“Isn’t free will one of the fundamentals of our beliefs,” a female elder interrupted.
The others all murmured their agreement while Solan scowled.
“Fine! She is your responsibility, Tomas!”
Tomas led Emily to his lab. He stood silently for a couple of minutes staring intently at Emily.
“So apparently I am not trustworthy,” Emily tried to break the awkward silence.
Tomas smiled. “Solan doesn’t trust anyone really.”
“He trusts you.”
“He knows about me than about you.”
Emily scowled. “No one ever trusted me, because I look different.”
Tomas pulled Emily over to a stool and made her sit down. “I have a long explanation to give you.”
Over the next few hours Tomas explained to Emily what they needed her to do. Their plan for her to win the trust of the Wraith. He paused a minute to give Emily a chance to soak it all in. Her calm reaction to it all surprised him. Her slight smirk made him feel nervous, but he shook the feeling away.
“When do I get to leave?” Emily felt a small rush of adrenaline, she never left Atlantis before, this was different from the excitement of planning her escape with Michael.
“As soon as we get the Wraith ready, we need to implant a tracking device within him.”
“Can I go get ready?”
“Yes.”

Emily pulled her black leather outfit on and tossed her white robes into the corner. She made sure her door was locked before reaching into a small hole in her pillow. She pulled out two small daggers and placed one in each boot. Then she placed her journal into the side pack she was wearing. Emily returned to Tomas, he was waiting for her in the gate room with Michael, who was in arm restraints. Emily raised an eyebrow.
“Only until you leave, we don’t need the Wraith escaping here,” Tomas said.
“We can’t go to the Wraith planet directly from here,” Michael said.
Tomas glared at him. “We know. Let me warn you something. Do not attempt to hurt Emily or you will be sorry.”
“I wouldn’t dream of hurting your angel.”
Tomas left them and headed to the control room, he gave Emily the key to the arm restraints. He powered the gate up. Michael went through and Emily turned around and waved before leaving.

Emily fell to her knees as soon as she came through the gate. “That was awful.”
Michael laughed as he walked over to her. “Get used to it.”
Emily slowly stood up and shivered. Then she handed Michael the key to the restraints. “Will it always be that cold?”
“Unfortunately. As the Tau’ri would say: It is like walking through a blizzard naked.” Michael got the restraints off and tossed them aside. “Before we continue I need you to remove the tracking device.”
Emily paled. “Where is it?”
“Back of my left shoulder. You will need to cut it out.”
“Won’t that hurt you? And I don’t know how to stop the bleeding.”
Michael took hold of Emily’s wrists and flipped them over so they were facing palm up. In the center of both palms and on the tips of each finger were small slits. “I will be fine.” He released Emily’s wrists. “Come, I know where there is a cave.”
Emily followed Michael through a forest, the sun shining lightly through the leaves on the trees. He led her to a giant hole in the ground. Before they entered Michael made a torch with nearby sticks and moss.
“I need you to light this up, without burning me.”
Emily held her hand out to the torch and concentrated. A small fireball appeared and lit the torch. She smiled and bounced up and down.
“Such a child,” Michael muttered but he was smiling.
He led the way through the cave, lighting every torch on the walls as they went further. He stopped once they reached the main antechamber. After he lit all the torches within the chamber, he just tossed the torch into the small pond in the center. Then he faced Emily.
“I know you keep daggers in your boots,” he said.
Emily pulled her best ‘I’m innocent’ look she could muster. Then she pulled one of her daggers out. Michael knelt by a huge boulder.
“After you get it out, you will learn something that the Wraith can do if they choose so.”
Emily lightly placed the dagger against Michael’s shoulder blade and hesitated. “Are you ready?”
“Yes.”
Emily cut into the back of his shoulder, digging the device out and placing it aside. There was blood all over her hands. “Michael, what do I do now?”
He suddenly fell back into Emily, paler from loss of blood. She fell back struggling to get Michael off of her.
He opened his eyes, then closed them again, the blood pooling around was getting to be more. Something clicked in Emily’s mind, somehow she knew what she could do. She placed one palm against Michael’s neck and leaned forward to kiss his lips. She felt strength draining from her, but knew it was helping Michael. She finally collapsed into darkness.
When Michael came to, he was surprised to find Emily laying on him. “I guess your way worked just as well,” he whispered as he slowly slid Emily off. “You look so peaceful, so innocent.” He picked her dagger off the ground and went to wash the blood off of it.
Emily jerked awake almost an hour later. She felt dazed and weak. “Michael!” She noticed he was missing.
“Calm young Wraithling. I’m right here.” Michael stepped out of a shadowy part.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes thanks to your little stunt.”
Emily blushed and smiled. “What do we do now?”
“We send this device to another planet before continuing.” Michael held up the tracking device.
“We should attach it to an animal.”
Michael handed Emily her dagger and she placed it back inside her boot. Wordlessly they left the cave. Outside was grey, dark clouds threatening to rain. Michael stopped suddenly, throwing his arm out to stop Emily. He pointed in the distance and Emily could just make out something moving beyond some trees. She pointed to a nearby tree before jumping up its branches and began to jump tree to tree. Leaving Michael to sneak around on the ground.
There were a couple of kids, in burlap tunics playing. “This will work just as well.” Emily whispered. She jumped down surprising the kids.
“Can I play too?”
They boy and girl stared at her. The girl ran off afraid of Emily, but the boy stayed. Emily stared into his eyes mesmerizing him, distracting him from his surroundings. Michael came out from behind and grabbed the boy tightly. He began to yell.
Emily came close and placed her palm on his neck. “Go to sleep.”
The boy quit struggling.
“You let the girl run,” Michael said.
“I don’t like girls.” Emily pointed her nose into the air.
“We better leave now.”
As they got closer to the get Emily felt like something was off. A twig snapped nearby, confirming her suspicions.
“Why are you stopping? You’re not carrying the boy.”
“Tell me which planet we are going to. We need to move fast.”
Michael told Emily the symbols to push. They ran towards the gate. When Emily got close to the dialing device people came out of the trees shooting energy weapons at her. She screamed and began to dodge the beams, her foot got stuck into a hole and she felt a red hot pain on her backside. She ignored the pain as she quickly dialed the gate. Then ran after Michael through it.
The planet they came to was colder and was covered with light snow. Michael placed the boy down and began to tightly tie the device to him. “We should go before he wakes.” Michael looked over to Emily and noticed her weakened stance. “What happened?”
“I fell when I should have jumped.” Emily turned around to show Michael, her tail had been shot off.
“Look on the bright side.”
“Which is?”
“Now it will be easier to pass you off as a Wraithling.”
Emily tried to force back a laugh but failed horribly.
“We’ve wasted enough time.” Michael dialed the gate to a Wraith planet. “Come little Wraithling, let’s help you become a double spy.”
Emily smiled as she followed Michael through the gate. Once they got to the planet Michael led her to a giant hive ship.

Emily hopped from one foot to the other. Michael was taking forever to explain things to the Wraith queen. He was trying to prove her worth to keep her alive. Though Emily didn’t care if he failed, she could destroy this planet if she wanted to. After what seemed like forever Michael came for her.
“Answer her questions. Don’t play games,” he said.
Emily smirked and nodded her head.
“So you are the mixed breed mutt that your friend told me about,” the queen said.
Emily let out a low hiss. “Don’t call me that.”
“Your . . . . Michael says you can be a double spy,” the queen said, hesitantly saying his name.
Emily was confused for a second then remembered Wraith don’t usually have names. “Can I give you a name!?”
The queen stared for a moment, “Maybe later.”
“Okay. I can be a spy. I know how to sneak and hide. I also have a perfect memory.”
“You do?” The queen was impressed at her eagerness. “What can you tell me about the Tau’ri’s defenses?”
“Well, they think they can use me, but they can’t. They also have some warships, but they are weak and then there is Atlantis.”
“How many Tau’ri are there?”
Emily closed her eyes and mentally counted. “Only a couple of handfuls now. Many have left or reached ascension.”
The queen then sent her away with Michael.

“Michael?”
“Yes?”
They were now in what Emily assumed was a Wraith version of a science lab.
“What is the Hive ship made from?”
“Organic material. It can heal itself over time and if intruders come aboard it can change its structure to confuse them.”
Emily wanted to ask another question, but was afraid of Michael’s reaction to it. Back in the cave when Michael had almost died she felt something bad, like a sad longing and it confused her. She was afraid to mention it, as emotions were a human weakness and she refused to be like the people who hurt her.
“We need to send you back,” Michael said.
“But we just got here, I wanna stay free!”
Michael put his hands on her shoulders. “Listen, I need you to go back for a little while, be good, annoy them. We need a spy there and you want revenge.”
Emily looked down. “Alright, if you say so. But I am going to bully Tomas into telling me about Misha.”
“You won’t like what you find out about that.”
“If you want to beat the Tau’ri so bad, why can’t I just blow up Atlantis?”
“She wants the city intact.”
Emily nodded, “She” was the Queen of all Wraith queens. When she ordered something everyone had to listen, at least, that is how she understood it from when Michael had explained things to her.
Before they sent her back Michael pulled her aside. “If they ask about my tracker just lie to them.”
Emily nodded her head. “I will try to contact you soon.” She felt Michael slip something into her hand, she looked down, then hid the items into her sleeves. Emily slowly walked away and went through the gate.
Tomas took Emily to his lab to question her.
“We tried to follow his tracker, but it was attached to a boy on a different planet.”
Emily made a confused look.
Tomas continued to speak. “The boy won’t speak much, just babbling about how a Wraith kidnapped him.”
“I think they trust me.” Emily carefully walked around the testing table and slipped a small device from her sleeve.
Tomas didn’t notice the movement, he was too busy talking excitedly about how their plan was actually working, like he had no faith in Emily before. She carefully attached the device on the underside of the table and activated it.
“While I was there the queen mentioned my Misha. She said that you found her, that you are keeping her from me.”
Tomas paled. “Why should you believe her?”
Emily stepped closer to Tomas. “If you want me to help you, then you must tell me the truth. . . . or else.”
Tomas sighed deeply, looking nervous as he began his story. “Misha was too injured to save when we found her, she was the only slave not fed on when we found the wreckage of the hive ship. Solan thought it was something in her blood. So he had us take her body to a medical base to run tests on her blood, dna, anything to find something to help against the Wraith.”
“So she is dead?”
“Yes.”
Emily left his lab and made her way to the debriefing room. Solan had sent for her. When she got there only Solan was in the room, this made her feel nervous. Solan motioned for Emily to sit down. As she sat down, she slid another device from her sleeve, placed it on the underside of the table, and activated it.
“Tomas informed me that the tracker idea failed.” He placed his hands on the table and leaned close to Emily. “I believe you know what happened.”
“I don’t know how his plan failed. I thought it was a good one.”
“MY problem is I don’t trust you.”
“Well, Tomas does.”
“You are a demonseed, anyone who trusts you is mistaken to do so. Everyone close to you will eventually die horrible deaths. Look where Misha ended up.”
Emily hissed and stood up. “I am not a demon!” She quickly left the room.
She went to her room and forced the door to be locked, dimmed the lights, and pulled the com device from her sleeve. She placed it into her ear. “Michael, if you can hear me, I planted the bugs for you.”
Static for a second, then crackling, and finally a voice. “I can hear you. The computers show the bugs are working perfectly.”
Emily smiled and she switched her com device off. She layed down onto her bed and drifted into a nightmare free sleep. Only a couple years of being a spy and she would be free from her prison. Free to gain revenge on the ones that hurt her, that abandoned her. As she welcomed the darkness she smiled brightly, enjoying the freedom that being a spy would bring her.