The machine cradled her, giving air and food and a precise, practical sort of warmth. The city was her nerves and her limbs, her ears and eyes and skin.
There had been a time when she had had a body of her own, separate, but that time was gone now.
When the first hint of something wrong became clear, it was already far too late. She'd seen the room they'd chosen as their incubation chamber, the masses of what had once been her people clumped in the corners. That there were both Atlantis personnel and Athosians could be told by the scraps of clothing that remained; she had not then been able to look long enough to determine individuals.
It seemed such a petty thing to be stopped by, now.
What they hadn't yet realized, in that first shock of learning where the missing personnel had gone, was that that was just the final stage. The things, the little mobile lumps of half insect, half shadow, only settled for the incubation chamber when the flesh in which they'd clothed themselves became too distorted to move around under its own power.
It wasn't until halfway through an emergency meeting to discuss possible cures and preventatives that she'd understood she was talking to what had once been Carson, but was no longer.
After that there had been chaos, as more people disappeared and still more were determined to be suspect. If there was a way to detect infestation in the early stages, they had never found it. A few cases had been spotted when the person in question was caught subtly working against the survivors' strategies; she was fairly certain all of those had really been infested, even those who'd insisted otherwise with their last breaths.
The machine had been their last, best hope, once they'd realized that all conventional definitions of hope were obsolete. She remembered, in that distant way of all memories before the machine had become her home, McKay and Zelenka constructing it, cannibalizing the now-useless weapons chair, the medical unit, and half the laboratories in their desperation. They had argued non-stop while working like two halves of the same brain, amidst a litter of coffee cups and power bar wrappers. The preservation of the coffee machine had arguably been the proximate key to the preservation of the city.
In all fairness, Rodney had been quite clear that he intended to be the one wired into the device. Zelenka had not argued with that, although she'd seen him practicing the biofeedback techniques needed to work within the artificial nervous system, just in case. It had never been Elizabeth who was destined to become as much a part of the city as the ventilation system.
She'd known that when she'd finally had to turn the welding torch on the flesh that had once been McKay. She thought she'd seen gratitude in what was left of his face, but that could well have been her imagination trying to ease her conscience.
She remembered when it had mattered that these lumpy, flaccid bulks might still be people somewhere underneath, had mattered more than anything. That too seemed a long time ago.
Now she only fought them, with all the resources the crippled city could muster under her electronic command. Atlantis' own defenses were long since deactivated, but heat and light and cold and wet made good enough weapons. The environmental controls could take the city past the point where humans, and things that live in humans, could survive. The incubation chambers could become dry and frozen, just as they could be made warm and damp and welcoming to the new young ready to emerge.
It was all about survival now. It always had been. It was the most basic of instincts, to survive. To grow. To make more of their kind.
There were many other beings of flesh in this galaxy.