Chapter Text
After the last few months of each other’s uninterrupted company, the day spent on another planet without Stiles was almost a vacation - for a few hours. Derek was worried about things that weren’t his friend, but were still familiar, and he was able to tap into the wolf at his core. It wasn’t like being around family, exactly, but it was at least somewhere safe, to live with a side of himself he didn’t get to interact with very often, without looming threats. Yes, there was someone around who wasn’t a wolf, but Ronon wasn’t a hunter determined to stop him from it, he was someone helping him use the time.
Daniel was the most stressful part, just making sure the man didn’t attack a friendly. The new werewolf did lose track of himself for a little while, attacked Ronon twice while Derek wasn’t there to run interference, but the conscious attack wasn’t a bite. Ronon said he was fine with it, and, better than that, he acted fine with it. He still protected Daniel from places somebody out of their mind shouldn’t play, like cliffs and civilization. Alien civilization.
And in the end, Daniel calmed down, came back to himself, and let Derek coach him into the next shift phase. That had been an experiment, just a gut-curiosity like Derek sometimes got on the Sentinel thing, and he tried it. Daniel had spent years doing research on cultures that elevated meditation to an art form, he always seemed to have a solid handle on his own emotional state, if Derek’s sense of smell could be trusted anyway. There was more self-control required for the full-shift and Daniel had shown a lot of it even in the beta-shift. It wasn’t a great surprise that he pulled off the full-shift after a few tries. It had taken Derek months to learn, but he apparently had it figured out well enough to pass it along to someone else.
After that, everything seemed to calm down and Derek could relax again. Aside from the part where he was worried about Stiles, worried about making it back, because another planet was quite far away, and Derek didn’t know how to use the stargate. He watched Ronon use the DHD, but the symbols didn’t mean anything to him yet. Now that he had seen them in practice, though, Derek figured the next time somebody tried to walk him through learning the constellation symbols, he would pay better attention.
Walking through the stargate felt different than flying through it, or even than being dragged through it in a metal box. He still preferred the rush of the full-body tackle from Stiles when he got to the other side of it, though. That was his pack, his family, right there and waiting and accepting. He kept an eye on Daniel, to make sure there was no trouble, but Sheppard and Sandburg went right over to the other wolf to welcome him. There was no fear in their greetings.
Derek noticed, too, that the energy guides were out. Something had happened while he was gone. Blair’s wolf sat near him on the stairs, and Daniel stared right at it whenever Sheppard wasn’t trying to talk to him. The eagle sat on the balcony near the Ops deck, and a jaguar waited at the top of the stairs. The other big cat hadn’t shown up once while they were off-world, only the gangly looking, too-big coyote had dogged Ronon's every step. Now they both sat by the stargate, being harassed by a glowing fox.
The raven dive-bombed at Daniel’s ear when Sheppard wasn’t looking, and Daniel snapped at the air as the Colonel stood up to go talk to Lorne. Derek let out a whuf to keep the other wolf on track, but that was all that he’d had to do. They went back to their apartment, shifted back without trouble, only to have Sheppard and McKay show up a few minutes later and order them to Carson, to take care of the first of the off-world return protocols.
After that was the report to the boss, and Ronon had trained Elizabeth to let him do those one-on-one, in person, which seemed a lot better than having to write everything out like the Sentinel Project reports were supposed to be handled. Derek wanted to be anywhere else, but he definitely didn’t want to have to write anything down about off-world werewolf activities, ever.
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Elizabeth promised. "This is just a formality. Because of the nature of what we deal with out here. It's a good idea to make sure that everyone's experience… lines up. And when it doesn't, we need to know why."
"Well, the why is likely because werewolves," Stiles said, but that wasn't actually the Director's point. Derek had experienced enough weird in his life to have an idea, though, so when Dr. Weir declined to clarify, Derek didn't ask.
Dr. Weir also caught Derek and Daniel up to speed on what they had missed of the morning's meeting and the chat with Cowen.
"I don't expect either of you to need to be involved with the Genii again," the Director promised. "After this most recent interaction, we'll be instituting specific protocols for the Genii. No one with the ATA will be allowed through the 'gate of a suspected Genii outpost, other than a Jumper pilot, who will remain within the ship and under shield protections at all times."
“ATA like me,” reported Stiles. Because the rule that said Stiles went where Derek went would mean that Derek wouldn’t be allowed where the Sentinel couldn’t follow him, aside from werewolf stuff, apparently.
"Why are you even still trying?" Derek asked, uneasy with the report of the peacekeeping efforts. "I've met people like them before. It's never gone well, for me or my family."
"Because, unfortunately, we may need their resources. We have before, so we can't rule it out in the future," said Dr. Weir. "They have used up their third strike, however. So whatever their plans, we have already given them something to consider in terms of dealing with Atlantis going forward."
"We took their 'gate," said Stiles, quick and quite satisfied with that bit of news. Daniel raised an eyebrow at Elizabeth.
"Really?"
"Well, we moved it," Stiles clarified. "We take it when Cowen comes back like an asshole about it."
Smile held in check, Elizabeth clasped her hands in front of her and waited patiently for Stiles to get the helpfulness out of his system. He seemed to catch on and muttered an apology.
"But, I mean, you know he's gonna get pissy about it. I've met him twice and figured that much out," he said. Elizabeth nodded, grinning at the observation.
"Yes, politics often makes people a little pissy," she allowed. "However. We are making our way in a new galaxy. We have a team on a bounty list that we can't afford to lose to Chief Cowen's mood swings. So we'll get his attention and see how things go. With luck, he takes us seriously and cancels the bounty before it ruins our relations with any other planets."
"And what if we're short on luck?" Derek asked. Dr. Weir gave him an assessing once over before nodding at the question.
"In that case, we take the stargate and remove the problem. We will have to ground ATA field teams, at least for a few months, and try to reach out to friendly cultures ourselves to clear up the bounty trouble the slow way," she said. "What it all means in the present tense, for the city, for you and your team most directly, is that we will have to ration food supplies now, until we are certain we still have access to our trading partners. Pre-emptive caution. No one will starve. But this round of supplies from the Daedalus will need to stretch a little further than we have been used to. Thankfully, that should be the extent of it for you two."
That was the first indication that Derek had heard in a month that he and Stiles would be somehow dealt with separately from the rest of Sheppard's team. There was little chance the Colonel wouldn't be dealing with Cowen again, after everything that had been said and done so far about all things Genii. Teyla's family had been snared into Cowen's trouble, Stiles and Derek had been literally dragged through the stargate over it… Derek wasn't an expert on AR-1, but what he knew of them so far indicated the trouble with Cowen was far from solved. As members of AR-1, then, it stood to reason that they would have more to deal with than just food rationing.
Stiles looked over at Derek; he had caught it, too. Rather than ask for an explanation on the comment, though, Derek let it go. Maybe it was because Sheppard was still on leave. It could have been anything. They didn't know Elizabeth to know how to read her. After the last week, Derek was too exhausted to care. They could check with Sheppard later, when things were settled.
The trick was, though, that things didn't really settle on Atlantis. The city was always awake, either with an AI that wouldn't let Stiles sleep without an argument, or just expedition staff always awake to stay on alert and monitor her. The newest trick from the AI was a whale call, and it woke up Stiles and Derek both later that night, but Daniel hadn't heard it. Stiles said it had kept him awake the night before, too, and that Teyla and the other Sentinel teams had heard it. Derek remembered seeing the wolf on Blair's heels and the eagle perched near Ops.
"So is it… is there another energy guide somewhere? Another Sentinel in the city, maybe?" Derek asked. Stiles stared at him from his pillow.
"It’s a whale. How the hell would I know?"
Derek rolled his eyes at the unhelpful answer and resolved to ask the others in the morning. When he did ask at breakfast, Sheppard went very still and very quiet, looked over at McKay with an odd look that must have been fear because it smelled like fear. He finished chewing his weirdly blue-shaded scrambled eggs and looked down the table at Blair.
"How do these energy guide-things work?" John asked. Blair shook his head.
"We don't know. We don't have a lot of reporting cases. Not enough information was available because the Project didn't want to deal with it," he replied.
"The times we've heard the whale noise? It's been when I was trying to get the city to let me sleep," Sheppard said. "So I was trying to teach it how to… how to make sense. The interface is too fast, too jumbled up, so I have to show it how to work. Then after a few minutes, the whale screeching just steps in and knocks me right off that track."
"Well, maybe, have you thought about not doing that so the rest of us don't lose our hearing?" Stiles asked. Ronon smirked at him for it but Daniel wasn't as amused.
"It's not your hearing though," he pointed out. "I can't hear this thing. My hearing is pretty up there now, same as Derek's, and I can't hear it."
The conclusion was that it was happening on the same… Frequency, or whatever, as the energy guides. Blair was the only one who could easily see them, with a little focus and meditation. Derek and Daniel could see them in their wolf-shift forms, but that didn’t exactly help, given that Daniel hadn’t heard the whale song because he hadn’t been a wolf at the time. And they weren’t going to go for a swim to look for a glowing whale, either. Still, somehow, they were going to have to experiment with it to figure it out.
“It does mean that something changed, though,” Derek pointed out. “I couldn't see the guides before, until there was that trouble with the stargate. And now they’re all... watching over you directly.”
“Or that’s just the city,” John replied. Because it was a verifiable fact that the Sentinels’ stress and input levels went up a lot in the city.
“I wonder if we can get the guides to... talk to it,” Blair said. “I mean, to the whale song.”
“Derek and Daniel are the only ones who can even see them half the time,” said Stiles. “I mean, other than dreams. Or, I guess, life threatening situations -slash- zone outs-”
“Wait, what?” asked Blair. Sheppard nodded.
“Stiles zoned out, back with the Genii. The fox showed up to knock him out of it, I could still see it when I got in there,” the Colonel said. “It kinda... disappeared somewhere after I got there.”
“These things can get you out of zone outs?” Rodney asked, keenly interested in that perk. Derek wasn’t sure how he felt about it, partly relieved but partly like he had been replaced by an invisible fox, and that... was admittedly weird. Across the table, Sheppard was shrugging, dismissing the entire suggestion.
“I don’t want bit by a bird to snap me out of it,” he complained. He held up a hand, fingers and thumb a certain distance apart. “And those birds got claws this big. They are not cuddly.”
“I don’t care, if it’ll get you breathing-”
“Pain can pull you out if it’s done right. And the energy guides wouldn’t really cut you,” Blair said even as Rodney was arguing about it, too. Derek hid a laugh behind his hand as he aimed his fork at his plate.
“Bullshit those things can’t cut- I got a glowstick in the armory that’s energy and you need to see what it’ll do,” John replied. “Ever heard of a light saber? And you want me to let the bird version get me outta a zone? That raven’s a jerk!”
The Colonel automatically started the other two Guides off on an argument about Jedi Light Sabers and energy’s documented capacity to draw blood in the Pegasus galaxy so far, the two topics apparently not being entirely unrelated. Jim Ellison stood up and left the table when Stiles joined in on the Star Wars angle, just as opinionated as Sheppard, and with none of the science background of McKay and Sandburg to argue from. The original conversation derailed entirely, with Daniel staring at them, jaw dropped, food forgotten, and Ronon just short of giggling at the exasperation on display. Teyla made the mistake of asking what a Jedi was, which shortly thereafter had Stiles and Rodney arguing about the validity of Stilinski's Yoda impression.
They had actually important things to do with their morning, Derek was sure of it, but he couldn’t tell it by sitting at the breakfast table in the mess hall. He didn’t mind the random outbursts of crazy so much at all.
The next morning, though, Ellison made the team start running again rather than risk a repeat performance. For some reason, now that they weren't on the Daedalus, and there weren't little kids crowding in to demand they be allowed to go surfing on another planet, Stiles complained without hesitation about the six AM run. He kept it up for the entire run, trying to push Ellison's patience and annoy the man. It was partly retaliation, sure, but there was an extra layer to it. The Captain had announced a weakness by walking away from a conversation about Star Wars, and Stiles had to test it.
The moron played with werewolves, had survived being kidnapped by aliens, and he could talk to spaceships, so apparently Ellison's glare didn't cut it anymore. Sheppard finally got tired of the added running time and casually reminded Stiles that Atlantis still had pots and pans at the mess hall. Derek started pushing Stiles' run then, trying to get him to take the hint before they got stuck on more KP. By the end of the run, though, Stiles earned them two weeks of it. Both of them. Because teamwork.
~*~*~
A few days later, Cowen called back. Because Stiles had spent the day shadowing Rodney and Zelenka, he was present and accounted for when the stargate got the incoming call. Derek and Daniel were off doing book-nerd stuff with Blair, so they were going to miss the call, but Shepp and Captain Ellison had been not far away, working over the city's recent security challenges with Lorne. Sheppard showed up first, with Lorne dropping off to watch the stairs.
"Genii VHF frequency," Chuck confirmed. When Dr. Weir ordered the call sent to the tv screen-thingy, Stiles rushed to where he could see. Elizabeth seemed worried by it and looked to Sheppard with a “Colonel-” and the Colonel caught Stiles’ shoulder to pull him a little less front and center. He raised a hand to motion for quiet and Stiles nodded acceptance of the order, hoping he could actually hold to it for once. Ellison moved to stand beside the Director, so she faced the screen with the city’s two ranking military representatives as physical backup against the ornery alien Chief Cowen.
“Director Weir. How did you move my stargate?” The Chief wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries, which tracked with what Stiles had seen of the man so far. He hadn’t been very pleasant when Stiles had met him in person, either.
“It happens to be something we have the capacity to do,” said Elizabeth. “It is why I would encourage you to reassess your recent dismissal of Atlantis as an ally, Chief. We are capable of assisting each other in many ways, it would be a shame to lose that relationship.”
Stiles stood not far away from the Director and he easily heard the lie as it fell from her mouth. It made it hard not to laugh at the flustered annoyance on the face of the old man on the screen. He was an arrogant ass and scrambling for power, no different than Gerard Argent, but at least the Argents were a threat. The Genii could be disabled by moving a stargate, or sending two werewolves in to cause trouble, and they were just annoying in Stiles’ experience. (Though, admittedly, that perception might have been largely due to the fact that he was drugged half the time he was stuck with them, so Stiles kept that theory mostly to himself.)
“Fine,” said Cowen, like the pompous twit that he was. “Then put the stargate back where it belongs. We’ll talk about repairing this alliance at that point.”
“Excuse me?” asked Dr. Weir, crossing her arms.
“Yeah, that’s not how this works,” added Sheppard. “If you want to show you’re interested in repairing anything, you can get to work recalling that bounty you’ve got out on me and my men.”
Elizabeth nodded her agreement. “Once we have confirmation that our teams are safe to continue our visits with other allied planets, perhaps then we’ll consider moving the stargate back to its former location, but not until we have proof of your commitment.”
“One you won’t break this time, huh?” said Ellison. “Maybe think about it a little more seriously. Because if it doesn’t happen, the next time we move that stargate, you won’t be getting it back at all.”
The threat seemed to hold a little more weight than maybe it might have before Chief Cowen had spent a few days trekking out entire miles to find his stargate. Stiles could hear the man’s heart rate spike even over the shoddy video connection.
"Fine. I'll… see what I can do," said Cowen.
"That's a great idea," replied Sheppard, sarcasm evident to any moron.
"And in the interests of this being a more successful arrangement, for all of us, we'll set a fair deadline for the bounty recall. Let's say two months," said Elizabeth. "It shouldn't take that long for you to handle, as resourceful as you are, but just to be sure there's no hiccups. We want this handled completely, Chief Cowen. And then the agreement between Atlantis and the Genii can start over, from more equal footing?"
"Yes. We shall see," replied Cowen.
"Still holding out for the Daturans?" Sheppard asked, arms crossed. Stiles looked from the screen to the Colonel, uneasy with discussing the Daturans with Cowen. The doublecross from Gerard Argent was something no one would have expected from a Hunter, too, but he had sold Scott on it, nearly killed Derek in the process. Staring at the screen, Stiles didn’t like what he saw. Cowen seemed mad enough about the threat to the stargate; offering him an ally with the Wraith just then would have him turning into an Argent.
"That's none of your concern," said Cowen.
"Actually, it is," said Elizabeth. "And we would encourage you to reconsider."
"The Daturans work for the Wraith," Stiles blurted out.
If Stiles could hear the spike in the heart rate of the jerk on the other end of the grainy video feed, he could hear and smell the panic that he had caused on his own side of the connection, like some kind of stereo-smell-o-gram. Sheppard lifted a hand to catch his shoulder in a subtle hint but Stiles was determined not to take it.
"Look, I'm just saying, you're an idiot for trusting anyone associated with the Wraith. I'm new here, and even I know that," Stiles charged ahead, despite the fact that he could tell he was stressing out Dr. Weir. "And you've got their technology sitting there in your barn. You almost handed me over to them. I got opinions on that, and all of 'em say that if you're still trying to fix things with guys who are just gonna feed your guys to the Wraith, you're a moron. Like, that's putting it mildly. I got a whole alphabet of words you wouldn't like about what that makes you, but that's the idiot's version."
There was a strangled choke from Sheppard but he kept it near silent and didn't interrupt Stiles' rant. Cowen crossed his arms, uncomfortable, hiding it with annoyance.
"And I'm to believe a child-"
"I heard from your own mouth that you were going to put this same child behind the controls of a flying Ancients' craft," Sheppard cut in quickly. "So I think if you're going to trust a piece of technology like that to the kid, you can trust a piece of free intel. Obviously the kid knows more than you do."
"You would have me believe the Daturans are Wraith worshippers?" Cowen challenged.
"As I said, Chief, there's a few things you don't know about your friends there," was all Sheppard said in reply. He shrugged. "But if you're not interested in listening to us on this, that's a mistake you're going to have to make on your own."
"Believe it or not, we are trying to help your people, Chief Cowen. The Daturans technology is certainly an enticement to working with them, I understand that, really," added Elizabeth. She shook her head "But it was a product of their relationship with the Wraith. Which makes them a threat to you and anyone below their capability."
Cowen was not pleased with the entire call, really, and there was some aggravated discussion between the Genii leader and Dr. Weir, with Sheppard and Ellison randomly backing her up. They played Bad Cop so she could play Good Cop in the overall negotiation that was required to get the man to go away without being a pain in the ass about everything. Rodney caught Stiles' attention with a quiet word over the radio and he coaxed Stiles away from the Director and the other Sentinel.
"Seriously? What part of new kid on the galaxy block says argue with the bomb-loving dictator?" Rodney whispered at him when he got back to the station with him and Zelenka. Stiles waved a hand at the screen.
"The part where he tried to kill me cuz he's stupid?" Stiles returned. Rodney hemmed on that but allowed it.
"Rule number one hundred and four: We leave this part to Elizabeth," was all he said. Stiles just rolled his eyes and stayed quiet, listening until they finally got Cowen talked around to being a somewhat decent human in regards to their treaty and the not-conspiring-with-Wraith part. When Sheppard walked over after the stargate was closed, he had that whipped look on his face that Jackson used to get whenever he lost an argument with Lydia. Stiles rolled his eyes.
"Rodney already told me," he said, because it didn't take a genius to figure out what the Colonel had been sent to lecture him about.
"Oh. Good," said Sheppard.
Stiles still got handed down another week of pots-and-pans in the kitchen for it, though. The funny thing was, however, that an hour later, Sheppard took a week off of the original two weeks from when Stiles was messing around when they went running. Stiles and Derek were left at a sum total of two weeks extra chores as disciplinary detail. The Colonels still escorted Stiles to the kitchen personally, however, right from the gateroom. Just to make sure he didn’t get lost. When he looked at the Colonel a little funny for the very contradictory educational value of the disappearing KP-time, Sheppard shrugged it off.
"I'm the one who told you to go with your gut, and you did. You can slide on this one under the loophole.”
“But from here on out, leave the city-business to Elizabeth or it will not go well for any of us," Rodney added.
Derek showed up twenty minutes later, already informed of why his day had been rescheduled to accommodate the Guide-duties in the kitchen. Rather than help with the dishes, he sat down in a chair he stole from the cafeteria and read off a tablet, well away from the splash-zone.
“Hey! You’re supposed to help,” Stiles called over to him. Derek arched an eyebrow.
“I am helping,” he replied. “If you zone out, I’ll make sure you don’t drown. You can handle the rest. Just use the Force.”
Stiles rolled his eyes and slogged through the shift on his own. Derek would randomly read off something Lantean, because he was apparently working on his language skills, thereby being useful for something other than kitchen duty. Stiles reluctantly reconsidered the entertainment value of sassing off to the military guys as a form of protest when held up in comparison to actually getting to do something for the city. Maybe he wasn’t the greatest at learning a dead language, but he could have been in Ops shadowing Rodney and Radek on the tech stuff if he had maybe coordinated things a little better. What was he supposed to do though, just let the adults hand over a bad idea to the bad guy? Wasn’t happening. So Stiles put in his two hours work for it.
By the time they were back to the gateroom, McKay was in the middle of something that apparently required an argument with Zelenka, so Sheppard and Ellison redirected them to the armory. They each grabbed a few gear boxes and hiked out to a building far away from the central control tower. One level of it had been cleared out and turned into a shooting range. Ronon and Teyla met them there. The weapons set out for use were not all from Earth and Stiles didn’t honestly believe that they were real. He started to pick up something that looked like a silver pole, maybe a fighting staff with a bulb on the end, but Sheppard slid it away from him.
“Nope,” the Colonel said. “We don’t know enough about this guy yet. The only ones who are cleared to play with this one are me and Ronon.”
“What is it?” Stiles asked.
“Daturan glowstick,” the Colonel replied.
“Mean bastard. Uses electricity better than this one does,” Ronon added, holding up his own weapon. Stiles could hear the worn-looking gun buzzing even though it wasn’t primed to fire. “Can shift from low levels, just to get your attention, hurts like a bitch when it hits metal though. Then higher levels just cut clean. No different than throwing a knife, but doesn’t leave a mark, just a wound.”
They set up a demonstration for it, singed a paper target at the end of the row with a light hit. The next shot was aimed instead at a faraday cage on the other end of the room. The single pulse left bolts of electricity crawling over the metal for nearly a minute, crisscrossing and dancing in ways that Stiles swore couldn't be natural.
"Long story short, these guys hurt. Don't touch," said Sheppard as he set the Daturan weapon aside. The next one up for Show and Tell was the Zat gun, which Stiles had seen a couple of times on the Daedalus since running into them on Earth, but until that afternoon not seen in action. Watching the range dummy disintegrate into less than ash, he suddenly had a much better understanding of why Sheppard had folded like a deck of cards when the Zat gun was brought into play back at Blair's apartment.
The next weapon was another weird looking rifle that looked like it was made out of plastic, but the second Stiles touched it, he realized it was a lightweight metal, solid and cold. The Wraith stunner had a strange, bulky shape, like a swordfish with two pointy blades on the nose instead of one.
"This one… you guys are gonna get figured out," Sheppard said. He very carefully got out of the way before handing the gun to Ellison. "Best way to get rid of Wraith, short of a grenade or a rocket launcher. So we'll do some work with these. And then you'll start getting some bayonet training when Teyla thinks you can handle it."
Ellison tried to get comfortable with the awkward weapon but wasn't having the best luck. Ronon stepped in and showed him how it worked, firing again at the faraday cage. It shot off another electric bolt that danced along the wire, but it didn't seem to have the same amount of power as the glowstick had. Somehow, Stiles was still certain the thing would knock him on his ass the second he tried it. They spent the rest of the afternoon working up to finding out that he hadn't been that far off with the guess; Stiles went to bed that night with a bruise across his ribs from the first time he tried to fire it. He was not going to be in a hurry to play with the Pegasus guns.
Atlantis let Stiles sleep that night, no weird whale songs to contend with, so he was able to show up for Ellison's too-early running class and didn't grumble about it. Having discovered the carafe in the kitchen the day before, he was determined to reward himself with coffee for it later. Rodney had complained plenty about how quickly the coffee rations disappeared on Atlantis, so Stiles was getting first dibs.
He left his plate of food on the breakfast table to go back to the kitchen, off in another large room adjacent to the one used for the cafeteria buffet line and tables. The cafeteria wasn't wired for power, so the coffee pot was kept in the kitchen and monitored by the cooks to keep people from walking off with it. It was empty when Stiles got to it though. He checked with the on-duty cook and was pointed toward a room at the back of the kitchen space and told to get it going; apparently Stiles was already known to belong to the kitchen staff, which he figured could pay off in spades and wasn't about to complain.
Unlike the big, open area of the kitchen, there were an overwhelming variety of food smells around him in the makeshift pantry room. Everything smelled like coffee and fruit and vinegar and spices, and Stiles' eyes were watering. Finding a container that looked like coffee on one of the racks, Stiles started wrenching at the lid, trying to get the top off so he could make sure he had picked the right airtight metal tub.
His blurry senses weren't playing tricks on him though when he looked up from the metal canister to see the wall behind the rack had opened as Stiles fought with the lid. Oh crap. That was probably not supposed to be that way. Stiles carefully set the can back on the big pantry rack and wheeled the metal shelves out of the way of the door. He poked his head into the dark room beyond it and the lights on the walls lit up. The room was mostly empty, which Stiles already knew to be a lie in Atlantis, because he had personally pulled tables and control panels out of the floors and walls. It probably wasn't empty. Stuff likely was just hiding.
In the middle of the room, however, was a large pillar, triangular and taller than Ronon by a couple of feet, easily. It didn't look like anything fancy. But it didn't look like something that belonged in a pantry, either. And since Stiles had lit the room up after accidentally opening the door, he was cautiously afraid to just leave the room unknown to go get backup. So he mentally hit the switch on the radio to his team.
"Uh... hey... Colonel? I think I found something…"
There was a long pause before Sheppard got back to him. "In the kitchen?"
"Kinda," Stiles replied.
"I thought you went in to check the coffee," Rodney said.
"Well, I did. It was out," Stiles replied. "And a door opened up on me when I was trying to get the refill going."
"Don't touch anything!" Sheppard said quickly. Stiles easily heard the echo from Rodney, as well as three chairs scraping loudly across the cafeteria floor a few rooms away as half his team abandoned their breakfast.
"I won't!" Stiles said quickly. "I just figured you guys should see this..."
A moment later, Sheppard stood in the doorway with him, scanning the walls and floor and the pointed tower in the center of the room. Rodney and his tablet ducked between them to get a look at everything before they lit anything else up. Sheppard let out an annoyed grumble.
"Right in the middle of breakfast," he complained. "Can't let you go anywhere."
Stiles shrugged at him. "Does that mean I'm off pots and pans?"
The Colonel scoffed. "Nope. Nice try, though."
~*~*~