Disclaimer: I don’t own ‘Stargate Atlantis’ or any related concepts or characters; you know the drill by now. Also, the basic details of the plot were inspired by ‘The Phantom of the Opera’, although I have naturally put my own spin on things; hope it meets with your approval

Feedback: Always appreciated, trust me

The Phantom of Atlantis

Almost as soon as the thought of letting Elizabeth die had occurred to him, the man known to all as the Phantom felt like throwing up.

No matter whether or not Elizabeth never wanted to talk to him again after she learned what he had done to some of the Genii earlier- she couldn’t care that he’d done it to ‘avenge’ her; the fact remained that she was simply too good a person to ever feel… that way… about someone who’d done what he’d done-, if the last few hours had taught him anything, it was simple; he would rather live in a world where Doctor Elizabeth Weir hated and loathed him than live in a world without her.

He would save her, no matter what the cost to his hopes of ever becoming as close to her as he wished; if he allowed her to die because it would be ‘better’ for him, how was he any different from Kolya?

All he could do to at least try and make up for his past actions was make sure to make it quick for his soon-to-be victims…

“I don't mean to be a bad prisoner,” he said, flexing his left hand in preparation for what he was about to attempt, “but Kolya is going to kill somebody if I don't get this thing back on in time-”

“Silence,” one of the Genii said, cutting him off mid-sentence. “You shall do nothing; your loss is merely just retribution for your own crimes against the Genii.”

Sighing, the new prisoner simply remained silent, quickly counting out the remaining time in his head- he had maybe a minute at most before Kolya shot Elizabeth for real-, swiftly coming to a decision about his next course of action.

“Well,” he continued, raising one finger of the hand that held the naquadah power core in an inquiring manner even as he continued to hold his left hand up in the air, “even if I am not allowed to ask you to permit me to repair this generator, may I at least point out one flaw in your current strategy?”

“Which is?” one of the soldiers said from behind him.

With that, the man known to the Pegasus Galaxy as the Phantom stood up and, spinning around, thrust the knife that had been concealed in his left sleeve directly into the eye of one of the soldiers, following the attack up by a powerful kick to the other one’s stomach that sent him to the ground, gasping desperately for air.

“Never assume that I do not have weapons on me,” he said simply, staring grimly down at the fallen soldier before he picked up his gun and fired a quick ‘kill-shot’ at the man before him; he might have been forced to resort to less ‘pleasant’ measures to take out the other man, but that didn’t mean he had to be brutal about it now.

Once again, the part of his mind that he spent so much time trying to deny taunted him with the knowledge that his more ‘merciful’ killings now didn’t make up for what he’d done earlier, but he forced it aside; unlike last time, he hadn’t taken them out in the most elaborate, brutal manner possible.

Besides, for the moment, he had more immediate matters to attend to than his guilt; specifically, making sure he didn’t have a reason to feel any more guilty than he already did. Turning back to look at the naquadah generator before him once again, he quickly inserted the power core into its centre, smiling slightly as the generator lit up once again.

He’d done it.

The grounding station was once again at full power- and, more importantly, Elizabeth was still alive.

Now all he had to do was get back to the control room- if Kolya wanted McKay to raise the shield they’d have to go back there; it was the only place that wouldn’t be a death-trap in the next few minutes-, take care of the remaining Genii- no more than ten, he was fairly sure; he might not have kept track of specific numbers, but he’d gathered a general impression of how many had come through the Stargate during the initial attack-, and then get to safety before Sumner could order his arrest.

Not the easiest task I’ve ever set myself, he mused, as he stepped back from the generator to admire his handiwork, but not the hardest, either…

“Put down your weapon and put your hands where I can see them!” a voice said from behind him, breaking his train of thought as he turned to find himself staring at the business end of a P-90 rifle, Lieutenant Aiden Ford standing at the other end of the weapon in question.

Damnit! he thought to himself, swiftly realising that the jumper that had been left on the mainland must have managed to get back to Atlantis in the last hour or so; he’d almost forgotten about them…

Just as he’d also forgotten, in his earlier desperation to call for help in fighting off the Genii, that not everyone on Atlantis was that appreciative of his continued presence inside the city; at the time he’d sent the message he’d been more concerned about getting extra manpower without remembering that, to some of the expedition members, he was regarded as almost as much of a threat as the Genii.

“Lieutenant Ford,” he said, raising his hands as he looked patiently at the man before him- he’d made it a point to note the names of as many of the expedition members as he could, in the hope that it might remind them of his own individuality to refer to them by their names-, “I respect your desire to do your duty, but as you are no doubt aware judging by your presence here, we are currently facing a serious hostage situation down at Grounding Station Three and there is only a limited amount of time available-”

“We can handle it; I’m already working on how to deal with the Genii,” Ford stated simply, his eyes narrowing as he glared at the man before him, apparently unaware of Teyla Emmagen and Doctor Carson Beckett as they hurried up behind him. He noted with some relief that the new arrivals looked uncertainly between the two figures, clearly undecided about whose side they should actually take; evidently Beckett was another member of the expedition with a neutral opinion of the Phantom as an individual. “What we can’t handle right now is a rogue element like you running around Atlantis and making it even harder for us to do our jobs; I don’t know what you’re trying to do here, but-”

Sighing inwardly at the lieutenant’s evident stubbornness- he seemed like a decent enough person, but his loyalty to the chain of command to the point of nearly idolising his superiors meant that he was clearly willing to stick to Colonel Sumner’s orders in this situation while seemingly ignoring the larger issue of the Genii army determined to take the city from its current inhabitants-, the Phantom sent up a brief apology to whoever might be listening before he swiftly kicked Ford’s gun out of his hand. Almost before the lieutenant had even had time to realise that he was now unarmed, his ‘opponent’- as much as the man didn’t like thinking of himself like that; he considered himself an independent ally to the expedition rather than a threat- followed it up with a quick shot from his energy weapon that sent Ford collapsing to the floor.

“What the-?” Doctor Beckett began, looking in confusion between the two men.

“Lieutenant Ford is a military man by nature, but he is unfortunately the type of man whose way of looking at the world makes it hard for him to go against the orders of his superiors; I lacked the time necessary to convince him that it would be best to let me handle this my way rather than allow him to attempt to do things his way,” he replied briefly as he looked at the Athosian woman and the Scottish doctor standing before him, slipping his gun into its usual holster under his cloak as he spoke. “I would prefer to be able to work with you two rather than have to stun you as well to save on the time I might waste arguing with you, but be assured; I will do it if I have to.”

After a moment of silent inquiry had passed between the two of them, Teyla turned and nodded at the man before them.

“I assume you have a plan to deal with the Genii?” she asked, her controlled manner perfectly reflecting the reasons why she had led her people for so long prior to their meeting with the Atlantis expedition.

“I do,” he replied, nodding briefly at the Athosian in thanks before he turned to address Beckett as well. “Doctor McKay, Colonel Sumner and Doctor Weir are currently being held in the control room by the remaining Genii- no more than ten of whom remain, if my calculations are correct-, who wish Doctor McKay to activate the shield. Given Atlantis’s current power condition, he has decided to activate the shield by channelling energy from the lightning into the generators, thus negating the need to use the ZPM, after disabling the grounding stations to prevent the lightning being channelled into the ocean; the obvious downside, of course, is that the corridors of Atlantis will thus be filled with lightning as the resulting electricity channelled through the conduits-”

“Hold on; he’s electrifying the entire bloody city?” Doctor Beckett cut in, staring incredulously at the masked man before him. “What kind of plan is that?”

“Doctor McKay’s plan; he was determined to ensure that you retain access to the remaining power in the ZPM until you have no other choice but to use it,” the other man replied briefly, before he continued. “On the positive side, the control room and Stargate operations- including the… gateship… bay will remain unaffected by the lightning; if you can reach the ‘gateship’ you arrived here in, you should be able to wait out the lightning safely enough.”

“And what of you?” Teyla asked, looking inquiringly at the man who had single-handedly done so much to oppose the Wraith.

“What else?” he replied, smiling slightly as he picked up Ford’s P-90, weighing it briefly in his hand before he slung it over his shoulder; with his weapon’s power cell rapidly depleting, he’d just have to improvise and hope he knew enough about the gun to use it properly. “I’m rescuing the hostages; the second that Doctor McKay raises the shield, Kolya has no reason to keep him, Colonel Sumner and Doctor Weir alive.”

“You will need-” Teyla began.

“No,” he interrupted, looking pointedly at the Athosian woman as he indicated the unconscious form of Lieutenant Ford. “I need you to get him to safety- he might have tried to take me prisoner, but I at least know his intentions were good- and stay out of the corridors; I have a plan, and I need to do this alone. If I need a distraction, I will let you know what you are to do; otherwise, simply get to the gateships and remain there until the storm has passed. Understood?”

“Understood,” Teyla confirmed, nodding in resignation- he knew Teyla’s type well enough to know that she resented being ordered to stay out of the fight, but would accept his authority for the moment at least- before she turned to look at Doctor Beckett. “Hurry, Doctor Beckett; we doubtless do not have much time.”

“Uh… right,” Beckett said, still looking slightly dazed at everything that had just happened, but nevertheless apparently still willing to go along with what he’d just been told. “Um… good luck?”

“Thanks,” the man in the mask replied, nodding briefly at the two members of the expedition as they picked up Ford’s unconscious body, each of them slinging one of the lieutenant’s arms over their shoulders before they began to hurry off towards the nearest teleporter.

For a moment, the Phantom simply stood in silence, listening to the ever-receding footsteps of the expedition members while he took the opportunity to go over his current ‘strategy’ one last time- admittedly, all he had at the moment was ‘get to the gateroom and assess the situation’, but it was still a plan- before he hurried off after them.

Right now, with time growing increasingly against him- by his calculations it was only a matter of minutes before the storm hit Atlantis with full force-, his only chance at doing anything was to reach the gateroom and do what he could to get Elizabeth and the other hostages out of harm’s way before anything else happened.

As he finally reached the gateroom, he quickly took up his position underneath the balcony where the control room was located; from here he could listen in on the situation with the Genii while simultaneously avoiding attracting attention to himself. As he took up a position that would allow him to quickly target anyone coming down the stairs to the Stargate before they even realised he was there, his energy weapon in his left hand and his new weapon- he vaguely recalled that it was called a P-90- in the other, he couldn’t help but clench his teeth in rage as he heard Kolya’s voice yelling at someone to engage the shield; evidently the storm was approaching the point where Atlantis would either be shielded or shattered.

“I'm almost finished!” McKay yelled back, the Canadian scientist evidently feeling just as frustrated at this situation as the Genii did.

“A massive wave is approaching from the west!” the voice of the man he thought was called Laden yelled. “Without the shields-”

“McKay!” Kolya yelled in frustration

“We're starting to get hits on the Northern peer!” McKay responded. “Routing power to the corridor… now!”

For a moment, there was silence, and then McKay spoke again. “Now!”

Once again, there was a brief silence, followed by a third “Now!”

After another pause, McKay spoke once more. “OK, this is a problem!”

“What?” Kolya asked; if the situation had been less desperate, the listener would have almost taken pleasure in the sound of the Genii commander having lost his earlier arrogance.

“Look, I told you this was a long shot from the beginning!” the scientist yelled in frustration; the listener briefly wondered if Kolya would even remember what McKay had warned him about earlier, or simply- like the traditional image of the worst kind of scientists- disregard all data that didn’t support his view of the situation they were currently dealing with.

“We already have serious flooding on the north and west piers!” Laden added (Their silent spy made a mental note to check those areas as soon as possible; he didn’t immediately recall the Ancients leaving anything potentially dangerous over there, but with the expedition’s attempts to capture him restricting him to the ventilation tunnels it wasn’t like he’d had much reason recently to regularly go over the maps he’d made to remind himself of where not to go in the city).

“It’s no use!” McKay insisted desperately. “The city conduits just can't handle this kind of raw power!”

Whether McKay was attempting one last desperate gambit to drive the Genii out of Atlantis by making them think its destruction was inevitable, or he’d made a mistake somewhere in his preparations and power just wasn’t getting through right, the listener wasn’t sure; he’d studied the Ancient databases for years, and he knew for a factthat Atlantis could cope with that kind of raw power, but it would still need to be channelled the right way…

“Is any power getting to the shield generator?” Sumner asked; as always, the expedition’s military commander

“Nominal amounts; nowhere near enough!” McKay replied, fear and frustration evident as he responded to Sumner’s statement.

“You said this would work,” Kolya said to the scientist; if anything, the fact that he didn’t yell this time only made the listener even more anxious about how the Genii commander would react to this latest problem.

“I don't know if you noticed or not,” McKay replied, his patience with Kolya evidently wearing thin, “but I'm an extremely arrogant man who tends to think all of his plans will work!”

“Idiot!” Kolya yelled, his voice accompanied by the sound of something being hit; evidently he’d just fulfilled the dream of most of Atlantis’s scientists and punched McKay.

“Hey!” Elizabeth yelled, evidently trying to spare McKay further punishment; he could have almost wept at this fresh proof that she was still alive- her voice now couldn’t possible be a deception; she really was still among the living-, but forced his emotions under control.

When he’d saved her for certain, then he’d celebrate her survival; not before.

“This was a long shot at best!” Elizabeth continued, evidently determined to make the Genii see their point of view on this latest turn of events. “Why else would we evacuate the city? It was always our intention to dial out in case this didn't work!”

For a moment there was silence, as though Elizabeth was waiting to see how the Genii would respond to her statement, before she spoke again. “Within minutes, Atlantis will fail! You can leave and survive, or you can go down with the city; you choose!”

For a moment there was further silence, the Genii frantically moving around the control room as they exchanged low comments with each other that the spy couldn’t quite hear from his current position, before McKay spoke again.

“Look, it’s no good; we're just not getting enough power to the shield generators!” he yelled; evidently he’d been trying to get around whatever was keeping him from activating the shields, but so far was having little luck.

“Are you really going to sacrifice the lives of all of your remaining men- including the information you might recover from the Wraith data device you just took back from us- on the off chance that this city won't be completely destroyed by that storm?” Sumner asked; if the listener had been in a position to see what was happening above him, he wouldn’t have been surprised to see Sumner glaring at Kolya as he tried to make his Genii counterpart see sense.

After a moment’s silence- evidently Kolya considering what the colonel had just told him-, the Genii commander spoke again.

“Open the Stargate,” he said briefly, evidently addressing the other Genii. “Start evacuating the remaining men.”

“You're making the right decision-” Elizabeth began, as the sounds of people moving about in the control room reached the ears of their unknown observor.

“You're coming with us,” Kolya interrupted, instantly ruining the brief hope in the listener’s mind that he was dealing with a rational man; he just could not let old grudges die…

“What?” Sumner yelled, his tone reflecting an incredulity that matched his own.

“You will all serve the Genii as payment for what you've done,” Kolya stated simply.

Once again, the Genii commander’s adversary wished he had Kolya’s throat within his reach; was this man even capable of acknowledging that he’d been in the wrong at any time? All the expedition had done was defend themselves from Kolya’s attack, and he was acting like they were the people who’d committed the crime!

“For what we've done?” McKay yelled, shortly before the sound of scuffling broke off any further conversation; evidently the Genii had decided to resort to physical action straight away and simply get out of Atlantis with what they could.

As the remaining few Genii came down the stairs, he smiled slightly as he noted that his calculations had been correct; there were indeed only around ten of them left, even with the small group of ‘reinforcements’ that Kolya had managed to bring through the Stargate earlier taken into account. The first two men- he recognised one of them as Ladon, much to his relief; that man had at least shown some respect for the prisoners while- he permitted to go through the Stargate unharmed, but as Elizabeth, McKay and Sumner began to walk past- McKay yelling about how this was a bad idea; evidently he objected to being taken prisoner like this-, he seized his chance.

Drawing his gun, he fired two quick stun blasts- all that his gun had the energy to accomplish with its current power cell- at Sumner and McKay to knock them out- the less awkward questions the better, and those two were large enough that it would be impractical at best for the Genii to try and carry them to use as hostages- before swiftly slipping the weapon into its traditional holster, pulling out one of the automatic weapons he’d taken from Atlantis’s armoury earlier, and firing at the nearest two Genii.

It was barely even a fight; after training his reflexes in conflict with the nigh-on-superhuman Wraith, even with an unfamiliar gun in his hands, it was almost childishly easy for him to outdraw the only human-reflex-level Genii. Almost without thinking it, his gun had automatically targeted and shot at two of the remaining four standing Genii, both of them falling like stones as the bullets struck their heads.

It was when he turned to look at the eighth- the seventh had run for the Stargate while his attention was otherwise occupied- that his blood ran cold.

It was a man who could only be Commander Kolya- the arrogance of the worst kind of commander was obvious in his every motion; the moves of a man who was certain that any move he made would be the right one simply because he was the one making it- with a gun pointing directly at Elizabeth’s head, her hair and jacket soaked from the rain.

“Let her go,” he said coldly, raising the P-90 to point it at Kolya, his expression once again as cold as the mask that covered it.

Elizabeth was rapidly reaching the point where she was beginning to question her judgement on any Phantom-related matters; it was starting to seem like she just could not focus on anything else when that particular topic came up in some form or another.

Even with a gun pointing at her head and her captor dragging her back towards the Stargate, she still couldn’t help but feel a slight thrill- whether from the tension of the situation or… something more… she couldn’t be sure- as she stared at the man before her, his P-90- where had he acquired that from?- pointing at Kolya.

As she’d gathered from her past brief glimpses of him, the Phantom was dressed in a long black cloak that came down to below his knees, with black trousers and a black top on underneath it, and- from what she could see of his hands where he was holding the P-90- he was also wearing black gloves, with a holster containing a weapon that she couldn’t quite identify strapped to his hip.

His most distinctive feature, however, was the silver mask that covered most of his face. Seemingly designed specifically for him, the mask’s design was smooth and simple, with two small holes that were just large enough for the Phantom’s eyes to be visible. It completely covered the upper part of his face- eyes, nose and forehead- while extending around the head to stop just over the ears, although how it remained attached Elizabeth couldn’t guess. The curious thing about the mask was that the lower half of the face was drastically different; while it concealed the entirety of the upper half of the face, the Phantom’s left cheek, the left side of his jaw, and most of his mouth were exposed, while his entire right cheek and the right corner of his mouth were hidden under the mask, which extended down to cover his chin.

“You…” Kolya growled, glaring at the man who stood between them as he continued to back towards the Stargate, rage evidently in his voice as he glared at the man before them.

“Me,” the Phantom replied, his tone almost neutral as he aimed his gun at Kolya. “Now, I won’t repeat myself twice; let. Her. Go.”

Despite the fact that he had a gun pointing at him, Kolya actually seemed to chuckle as he tightened his grip on Elizabeth, his own gun still aiming at the Phantom.

“You wouldn’t shoot me,” he said, his arrogant confidence enough to make even the normally pacifistic Elizabeth wish she had an arm free that she could use to hit him. “You might hit Doctor Weir-”

“As I told her, the city will protect her,” the Phantom stated simply, his eyes narrowing behind his mask as he stared at them. “I will shoot you if you don’t let her go…”

As the two men continued to stare at each other, locked in a temporary stalemate, Elizabeth’s eyes widened as she realised what the Phantom had just said.

Without ever letting Kolya know, he’d just told her exactly what she needed to do to get out of this situation…

Praying that she recalled the information from McKay’s report on his later experiments with the shield device correctly- after the Phantom had drawn the shadow creature through the Stargate the Canadian scientist had carried out a couple of brief experiments with the shield device to see what else it could do while not leaving it on long enough to seriously drawn the power-, Elizabeth reached one hand into her inner jacket pocket to grasp the Ancient shield device she kept there; thankfully, Kolya had never bothered to search her, evidently concluding that, as a diplomat on her home territory, she would be unlikely to have had a gun available to her, and his attention was so focused on the Phantom now he barely even seemed to register what she was doing.

As the Genii commander moved ever closer towards the Stargate, Elizabeth slipped the shield device out of the inner pocket- she knew there was a reason she’d wanted to keep wearing this thing even when she was this wet-, and placed it against her shirt. As soon as the device had activated, Kolya’s grip on her was lost as the shield automatically repelled the other individual; as McKay’s experiments had confirmed, the shield could only protect one person, with any person making physical contact with the user being forced to release their grip when the shield was activated.

Before Kolya could respond to what had just taken place, the Phantom had fired at him, sending the Genii commander tumbling backwards through the Stargate while leaving her standing in front of the event horizon, staring shakily at the Stargate behind her as the wormhole shut down.

If she’d been just a few seconds slower…

“Doctor Weir?” a voice suddenly said, drawing her attention back to reality. Turning in the direction of the speaker, Elizabeth couldn’t stop the brief jump as she saw the Phantom standing beside her, an unreadable expression on his face as he looked at her. “Are you all right?”

“N… no…” Elizabeth whispered, shaking her head as she reached up to turn her shield device off; she might be shaken at what had just happened, but with the immediate danger passed she had no desire to waste the shield device’s power unless she had to.

“You will be,” the Phantom said simply, taking one last brief glance at his surroundings before he turned around to look up at the control room. “Come on; we have a shield to activate.”

It was only after the Phantom had already reached the control room that Elizabeth realised what he’d just said; shoving the shield device back into her pocket, she hurried up the stairs to join him.

“But… but how can you activate the shield?” she said, prompting the dark-cloaked figure to look up from the console that he had just been studying prior to her arrival. “I mean, Doctor McKay already failed-”

“McKay’s good at what he does, I’ll give him that, but I’ve lived in this city for the last couple of decades or so; do you really think I haven’t worked out how to activate the shield myself by this point?” the Phantom replied, looking at her with what Elizabeth could almost swear was a smile under his mask before his expression turned grim as he reached up to his left ear, a quick tap with his fingers activating what she could only assume was a radio underneath or part of his mask. “Teyla, Doctor Beckett, are you all right?”

“We are fine, Phantom,” Teyla’s voice replied, her tone sounding somewhat grim over the radio (And Elizabeth was not jealous about the fact that the Phantom had apparently spoken to Teyla before he spoke to her; she was just… concerned about the woman who was rapidly becoming a friend to her making contact with an individual of fundamentally unknown motives, that was all). “Doctor Beckett and I had a… close call… but we are within the gateship bay and Lieutenant Ford has been positioned inside the ship; you may activate the shield whenever you wish.”

“Good,” the Phantom replied briefly, before he terminated the radio connection and turned his attention back to the matter at hand. “Right then; let’s do this…”

Before Elizabeth could say anything else, the Phantom turned away from McKay’s still-active laptop and began to press a couple of the controls on the Ancient console that the laptop was attached to (It only made sense that he’d use that, she supposed; the laptops might have been programmed to be compatible with Atlantis’s systems, but if the Phantom had lived in this city for as long as the stories she’d heard from the Athosians suggested he was probably more comfortable with the Ancient way of doing things).

“What are you doing?” she asked, looking uncertainly at the Phantom.

“What McKay wasn’t able to do; shutting down the emergency buffers attached to the lightning rods to enable the city to transfer the power to the shield generators,” the Phantom said by way of explanation, rapidly moving crystals around on the console before him, his gaze intent as he carried out his work. “It’s simple enough to turn them on again afterwards, of course, but turning them off isn’t exactly straightforward; you need to disengage just the right protocols to allow the power to get through without letting in so much power that you fry the conduits…”

With that, he removed one last crystal from the console before he turned to smile at her, patting the console like it as a dog that had just performed a difficult trick. “Of course, once you know what you’re doing, using the crystals like that is almost as simple as inserting slot A into hole B; you might find it hard to learn how to do it at first, but it’s almost impossible to forget once you have.”

Before Elizabeth could ask him how he’d learned how to do that, the Phantom had already turned to look out of the nearest window, a grim expression on his face as he apparently took in the sight before him.

“Of course,” he muttered, not even looking back in her direction as he spoke, “just because the controls to turn the shield on like that are simple to use, that doesn’t mean the time factor should be overlooked in a situation like this…”

Looking out of the window herself, Elizabeth couldn’t help but wince at the sight of the massive wave that was now approaching them, drawing closer and closer towards the outermost part of Atlantis with a speed that she would never have believed possible of something so large.

If she understood what the Phantom had just said correctly, then, even though the generators had been granted the ability to absorb the necessary power from the storm, they still needed time to gather enough energy to generate the shield in the first place; it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing that could just be turned on and off at a moment’s notice, after all.

Right now, unless the shield gathered enough energy in the next few seconds, Atlantis was almost certainly going to be shattered to pieces…

Then, as though it had always been there, the shield flickered into life, just as the wave was about to strike the outskirts of the city. As Elizabeth stared out of the windows, she could dimly see the awe-inspiring sight of the tsunami that had so nearly destroyed them breaking in half to sweep around the city’s shield, leaving the city unharmed as lightning continued to strike the city’ various assorted lightning rods.

The shield had been activated, the Genii had departed from the city with nothing but fallen soldiers and a practically useless raith data device to show for their efforts- as her team had already determined from analysing the data themselves, even if the ships were in the same places a recorded on the device there were just too many for the Genii to hit them all with nuclear weapons, and Atlantis itself had been saved.

Elizabeth almost couldn’t believe it.

“We… we did it?” she said, turning to stare at the man standing at the control console, a small smile on his face under his mask.

“We did it,” the man Elizabeth knew only as the Phantom confirmed, before he shrugged and indicated a nearby room, the smile fading from his face to leave a more professional appearance. “Well, I should probably be going now; my weapon’s stun effect will be wearing off soon, and I somehow doubt that Colonel Sumner will be as… understanding about my presence as you are. Don’t worry about the lightning getting me; I…”

He paused, as though uncertain if he should say what he was about to say, before he seemed to come to a decision. “I know a few places it can’t get to; I’ll be fine there until the storm’s passed.”

With that, the Phantom turned away from Elizabeth and headed towards the nearby room.

“Wait!” Elizabeth called, prompting the Phantom to turn back, the blackness of his cape merging with the shadows of the room behind him to give the impression that his mask was almost floating in mid-air.

“You’ve just saved the city…” she said, looking after him with an almost pleading expression; she somehow knew- most likely given his past habit of simply dropping in when needed and vanishing afterwards- that, once he walked through that door, she wouldn’t be seeing the Phantom again until he wanted to see her. “You’ve saved me. Can…”

She took a deep breath to steady herself, forcing down the fear a part of her still felt after seeing the swift manner in which he had eliminated the Genii, before she spoke again. “Can you at least tell me your name?”

For a moment, as he turned back to look at her, the gleam of the silver mask caused by the city’s dim lights and the flashes of lightning from the storm outside making the visible flesh of his left cheek seem darker in comparison, she thought that he was going to refuse to answer, or simply say “I am the Phantom” as he had said to Kolya during their earlier ‘conversation’ over the radio, rejecting her attempts to try and learn something about him as a person rather than as the Phantom…

“My name is John”, the Phantom said as he stared at her, breaking into her train of thought.

With that brief statement, he turned around and continued to walk, his dark cloak vanishing into the darkened corridors leading away from the gateroom before Elizabeth had the opportunity to ask him any further questions.

As she stood there in the dimly-lit city, surrounded by the dead bodies of the Genii and the unconscious forms of Colonel Sumner and Doctor McKay, Elizabeth couldn’t help but wish that he’d remained behind- and it wasn’t just because she wanted to ask him for more information about himself.

Even without having actually spoken to him beyond the required exchange to learn what he was planning to do right now, even with the fact that his motives for acting to save the city from the Genii were still a mystery to her, even with the ruthless way in which he’d dispatched the Genii soldiers taken into account (Elizabeth had always known that war wasn’t pleasant, but this was the first occasion where she’d directly witnessed soldiers in a combat situation)…

A part of her still wanted nothing more than to have the chance to talk to him face-to-face and learn more about him as a person rather than the legend she’d heard about already.

Elizabeth wasn’t sure what disturbed her more; the fact that a man could cold-bloodedly shoot six men like that, or the fact that she was still at least somewhat interested in him even after watching him do it.

‘Somewhat’ interested? She thought to herself, even as she reached up to activate her radio and confirm that Teyla and Doctor Beckett were as safe as the Phantom had told her they were. That’s a bit of an understatement, Doctor Weir…

Forcing the matter to the back of her mind, Elizabeth turned her attention back to the bodies around her, already trying to work out the best place to leave McKay and Sumner until they regained consciousness and the storm had passed.

Her thoughts about the Phantom- John- could wait; right now she had other things to deal with.