It was the second jumper crash he was on hand for. A part of him wondered if the people of Atlantis could continue on losing jumpers this way, even as he reminded himself that he had no idea what the limits of their resources truly were now. The Wraith who was sometimes known as Michael picked his way through the wreckage, identifying twisted and mangled bodies as unsalvageable, resisting the temptation to feed on the dying. It would only mark them as having been used by a Wraith and he did not need the people of Atlantis knowing where he was again.

Even if it meant Teyla knowing where he was. Letting her find him again, being able to see her again. To feel that bond. A mental connection with someone else. It was tempting.

It was very tempting, and the thought of her was so vivid in his mind that he knew without it playing through that she would not forgive him for feeding off of the dying. Not with all that they had shared and what he had been able to achieve. She knew that he was capable of better than that.

They were all dying, anyway. There wasn't much to be gained from the dying. He didn't know their beliefs or their rituals, had never studied the humans for customs. Had never even thought to do so until Teyla, and her people were not Atlantis's people anyway. Not in those ways. Her memories could not help him, all he could do would be to give them a soothing touch where they could not see who it was until it was over.

One looked as though he could be saved. The pilot, or at least he was found half-sprawled over what looked like the pilot's chair. It was in the right position in the debris. And the pilot, or the man who seemed to be the pilot, had been electrocuted. Michael knew the signs of a sudden death or injury by electrical charge as well as any other scientist. It was a hazard of life in space, even when the energy came from a biological source rather than a mechanical one, something that the humans had had a hard time learning to account for. Something his own people had had a hard time learning to account for, but then, the Wraith had a great deal of history in thinking themselves invulnerable.

One of the things Michael had been studying was human and Wraith tolerance. For pain, heat, cold, for many things. Biology was endlessly fascinating to him. Human biology, Wraith biology. He had gleaned some of the knowledge from her mind, though Teyla was no scientist. She was a warrior, she knew emergency procedures. And now he knew them.

Hands compressing the sternum over the heart to force the heart to beat. In surgery he had stimulated the heart to beat with measured electric shocks applied directly to the bloody muscle, but he had no such ability and no time, right now. Compressions would have to work. Breathing didn't. He'd heard that from her memories, something that had been decided recently, breathing had far less effect than getting the heart to start again. It made a certain amount of sense. If the heart did not pump the oxygenated blood to the organs that needed it there was no sense in oxygenating the blood. First start the heart, then the lungs, preferably within a minute or less.

Just one push. He knew that was all it would take, just one lucky push, but he couldn't seem to find that luck. He had to be careful. Wraith were stronger than humans. He could crack the man's sternum with one careless push and he had to balance that with the frustration that made him want to put his hand through the man's chest. Damn the humans for being so idiotically fragile. If this were a Wraith, if the man were one of his people he would have regenerated by now. He would have fed on the survivors.

Feeding. Michael's hand slammed into the man's chest with a desperate roar, pushing the power through. Trying to push the power through. He had done it once before, and even Sheppard had been resurrected that way, she knew it and so he knew it too. There had to be a way, if this power, this life energy worked to transfer to and from the species then it had to be able to restart a dying man who had only been electrocuted. Shouldn't he?

It didn't work. Of course it didn't work, he had been too human for too long, he had changed too much to be able to feed in the ordinary way, let alone do anything else. He was no longer able to draw energy from the humans and so he was no longer able to give energy back. The heartbeat had stilled before he had ever laid hand to the man. Compressions hadn't worked. Now this had failed too.

Michael rocked to his feet, heels digging into the mud. That was the last of them. Everyone was dead, everyone in the jumper, even the jumper itself was dead. There was nothing more for him to do here and he stayed anyway, not sure why, himself. He spread his hands out and stared at them, the lines and tones of them. He had killed so many people with those hands, with what his mind had incited them to do, and he couldn't even save one life. Only one life. Could he have saved Teyla, he wondered, if it had been down to this? He had taken lives in a heartbeat. He couldn't save them.

Perhaps it was time to give up trying.

Go to the top! For you have reached the bottom.