After yet another fruitless search for the missing Teyla, Sheppard returns to Atlantis, only to find it deserted. Worse yet, the city isn't just abnormally hot, but the entire ocean has completely dried up, leaving a sandy desert! Sheppard then finds a hologram of an aged Dr. McKay, telling him that a solar flare had sent him 48,000 years into the future. Once he learns the demise of Atlantis and everyone on it, and worse yet that the sun in the solar system is dying and he won't survive there much longer, he and the holographic McKay must find a way to send Sheppard home and potentially change all of this.

When the power is shut down and most of the inhabitants are locked out of key controls, it is apparent that Atlantis has been taken over by an off-world group, soon identified as Michael and his hybrids. He is after Teyla's newborn child who is key in his quest to gain control of the Pegasus galaxy. While Sheppard and McKay try to get their hands on a jumper to launch an attack, Ronon and others who were taken prisoner by Michael during his initial invasion launch reprisals of their own. When Teyla manages to get away and hide, Michael gives her a simple choice: surrender herself and her child to him or he will use the city's self-destruct mechanism to kill everyone.