Sabine Bauer - Mirror, mirror

Across the tent, Radek ushered Elizabeth toward the exit, bellowing at the people who obstructed it, ordering them to move. A few of them actually obeyed, but the majority was waking from their initial shock and started to think straight, which meant they weren't about to let the Atlantis team leave without at least a hefty argument-for which they had no time. Another tremor jolted the ground and this one at least working their favor. Top-heavy with Rodney's weight on his shoulders, John barely could keep to his feet. But at the entrance people toppled like bowling pins, arms flailing and legs kicking.

"Colonel! Run!" Sword drawn and Teyla tucked in safely behind him, Ronon was ready to discourage anyone who harbored any notions of getting up prematurely or otherwise preventing their departure.

Climbing over sprawled bodies and twitching limbs, John staggered from the tent and out under a hideous bruise of a sky. In the evacuee camp up the slope a multitude of conflagrations had broken out, cooking fires, kicked over either by the tremors or panicked people, spilled flames on everything in their way. A sweating wind carried screams toward him. He clenched his teeth and forced himself to ignore it all, to focus exclusively on the jumper just a few steps ahead.

The hatch gaped, Radek and Elizabeth already aboard and waiting atop the ramp, helping hands outstretched, waiting to relieve him of his burden. As they eased Rodney off his shoulders and onto one of the benches, Ronon and Teyla came sprinting up the ramp at full tilt.

"Go!" hollered Ronon, slapping the pad to close the hatch.

Past him, John could see the men by the tent regaining their feet. Selena stood in the entrance, talking, cajoling, her words falling on deaf ears as everyone began to run for the jumper. Under the guidance of one of the technicians a few enterprising souls peeled off from the mob and made for the Stargate. Which could be a problem…

"Been there, done that, hated it the first time," John murmured unhappily and headed for the cockpit.

"Where is Ikaros?" Elizabeth asked as he pushed past her.

"Riding shotgun," announced a voice from the front. The kid had materialized in the co-pilot's seat. Clearly ascension had its perks. It saved you a hell of a lot of footwork.

A new tremor struck, shoving John sideways into the chair. He initiated the dialing sequence before his butt even hit the seat, then eased the jumper off the ground and out over the widening rift toward the Stargate. Through the viewport he saw the first of the wrecking crew arrive at the gate. They immediately set about unfastening the ropes that stabilized the frame. For now the quake would keep them from climbing up and deactivating the gravity clamps, but it wouldn't last forever.

On the Stargate the fifth chevron lit up.

"Come on, come on, come on," he whispered.

"Didn't you say you needed a `key' for the gate to work?" Zelenka had joined them in the cockpit, apparently with the express purpose of asking pertinent questions.

And he had a point, damn the man!

Pretending that sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach didn't exist, John slid a glance to his right. "Ikaros?"

The kid kicked up an eyebrow and gave another one of those insolent teenage grins. "You've got a `key'," he said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "You've got me."

"Well, here's hoping you fit"

Outside, the seventh chevron locked. Then two things happened.

The red and black nastiness that masqueraded as the event horizon soared toward them and retracted into something singularly uninviting.

And Radek shouted, "Do prdele."

John couldn't have agreed more. Either the quake or the wrecking crew had succeeded; the gate had worked loose from its moorings. For a second it teetered on a forward lean as if contemplating what to do next, then gravity won. John's reaction was pure reflex and never wasted a thought on the potential consequences, manifold and ugly. He dipped the jumper into a sharp dive, angled straight into the trajectory of the gate, and watched, heart hammering madly, as that red and black vision of hell rushed toward them and filled the screen.

If nothing else he'd found a whole new way of-

There was one thing to be said for the ride, Elizabeth thought once she could think again. It was over as quickly as it had started, though the exact duration was anybody's guess. She must have blacked out at some point, because she had no recollection of being thrown from her crouch beside Rodney and slamming into the bulkhead where she was lying now, butt over eyeballs. Squirming to get her feet where they rightfully belonged-in other words, below her head-she shoved herself up to a sitting position, took stock.

The jumper's aft compartment was illuminated by emergency lights, their dull reddish glow suggesting that whatever was affecting the wormhole had taken up residence in their ship. Which probably wasn't the best notion to harbor right now._..

The engines sounded odd-there was an expert technical description-and from the cockpit came a string of profanity, punctuated by Come on! and Hurry up, Radek.! which in turn suggested that the emergency lights were on for a legitimate reason rather than some kind of entropic infestation.

Rodney had been strapped down at the last moment before they hit the event horizon-or rather, the event horizon hit them-and was still safely on the bench, still unconscious, but still breathing. Just. Ronon was kneeling by his side, watching over him like a hawk.

Back at the hatch, Teyla was struggling upright, her face eerily blank in the red light that shone pink in opaque irises. Elizabeth swallowed a curse. Like everybody else she'd secretly hoped that the return to their own timeline would restore Teyla's sight. Obviously she'd been wrong and, appallingly, this was the lesser of two evils. The alternative-that this wasn't their timeline-didn't bear thinking about.

She climbed to her feet and groped her way into the cockpit, doing a double-take when she saw Radek. He, at least, had reverted to how he was supposed to look, if slightly more disheveled than normal, even by his standards. His attention, like John's, was focused on the system status display projected on the HUD, and he acknowledged her only with a brief look.

"Charybdis created a temporal distortion within the wormhole," he offered unhappily. "Its tidal forces as good as drained our fuel cells."

The explanation probably was as close to plain English as he could make it, but Elizabeth still only got the gist; they had a problem. So what else was new? "Where are we?" she asked. "Other than in space, that is."

They'd come through an orbital gate, that much was obvious-and a great deal more promising than yet another permutation of the ruins of Atlantis.

By ways of an answer John coaxed the jumper into a gentle turn. Past the display, the Stargate and the pin-prick brilliance of countless stars swung out of sight and were replaced by a small orange planet veiled in a dust-laden atmosphere.

She sucked in a sharp breath. "Is that-"

"Mykena Quattuor," John said. "Welcome back."

Directly ahead were two other jumpers, one in a geostationary orbit and the second one streaking toward the surface of the small planet.

"I'm guessing that's Stackhouse. And… me. With Ikaros," he murmured with a sidelong glance at the boy who was still sitting in the co-pilot's seat. "That's why it worked, isn't it? Why the gate brought us back? Your original is here."

Ikaros nodded. "Part of it anyway, but my program imprint in the quantum computer obviously was enough. And before you ask, no, I didn't know that, but there was no point in telling you. We had no choice, and hearing the probability of success just would have made you despondent and depressed."