To my friends at Atlantis. I wish there was something more I could say for my actions. It was never my intention for things to turn out the way they did, but we can't always force situations to align with our desires. There's something I want to tell all of you -

-E-

She froze in her tracks, every muscle in her body straining to sense what had gotten her undivided attention. Her ears perked as she registered the monotone dialing process from the ring of the ancestors.

Her body jumped into action, responding to the reflexes honed from a decade plus spent evading the life-sucking monsters. She double-backed, silently twisting around the trees. Better to ambush the Wraith than let them ambush her. Maybe take one prisoner, force him to disable the tracking device on her. Her dark green eyes honed in on the blue wormhole, and she flipped the switch on her gun to 'kill.' She'd stun the last one if possible. If she couldn't, didn't matter. Then she'd make a beeline for the ring, dial out and get the hell off this rock.

What she didn't expect was for a group of four humans to walk through. Two men in military gear, while the other man and woman wore clothes clearly designed to allow fighting without encumberance. The dark-haired man in uniform was clearly in charge. His words didn't carry, but the tone of his voice did.

The dreadlocked man not in uniform was eyeing the perimeter with a practiced precision. Not military, but definitely a warrior or mercenary of some sort. And smart, especially compared to the other uniform bent fussing over a gadget.

She swept her blond locks behind her ear and holstered her gun.

Runners lived a solitary life of necessity. Too many had died because she'd stopped through a village, thinking a few hours wouldn't matter as she bartered for clothes and food. For a brief moment, she felt a pang of regret, but stomped on it. It'd be nice to talk to someone, but they didn't need the one thing she was guaranteed to bring them: death.

She'd gone just over half a mile when she heard shouts and gunfire. Eva stopped dead in her tracks, breath slowing, heartbeat escalating as she felt the familiar surge of adrenaline kick through her system.

Without thinking she turned around and ran back the way she'd come. She jumped over a log in her way and hit the ground hard with a practiced bend of the knees to absorb the shock. Two Wraith hunters suddenly appeared in front of her. She blasted the first one in the chest with her particle magnum and tucked into a roll, coming up just as the second hunter raised its stun gun and honed in on her position. She shot him in the face and he crumpled to the ground.

No mercy.

She approached the first one and ripped the band off his arm. It showed 5 more Wraith in the vicinity. Perhaps they'd made the connection that it was her they were tracking. She knew for a fact that there weren't very many Runners. If only one walked through the ring, it'd be easy to figure out which one it was.

With a grim expression she continued running towards the ancestral ring. The supple material of her boots and the years of practice of stealth meant she barely made a noise as she ran through the woods, avoiding twigs and dead leaves with practiced fluidity. According to the Wraith device, another hunter was just ahead. She crouched behind a tree and peered around it.

One of the humans had fallen and was bleeding all over the ground. He flailed his limbs, grasping at something in his vest while he shouted, 'Sheppard!' as the hunter bore down on him. It stretched out its feeding hand and the man flattened against the ground as if he could burrow to safety, raising his hand over his head.

Eva charged out from cover. Surprise was on her side and she pushed him to the ground and quickly rolled away. She spun and kicked him in the head, knocking him back to the ground before he had a chance to rise. He attempted to stand again and she raised her gun and blew a smoking crater in his chest. The Wraith fell back to the ground, surprise etched on his face as he died.

"Who the hell are you?" the human demanded behind her.

She didn't answer, scanning the area immediately around them. He repeated his demand, and she raised a finger to silence him, but he kept talking. Once she was confident that no Wraith were nearby, her conclusion supported by the Wraith device, she spun around to look at the man below her. How he'd been separated from the others didn't matter. She'd have to find them later.

"Are you going to tell me who you are, yet? Or better yet, help me up? Kind of bleeding all over the place, if you haven't noticed. Are you Satedan? Where'd you get that gun? -"

"Do you ever stop talking?" she asked, her green eyes piercing his blue ones. Now that she got a closer look at him, he didn't really seem to be military. He wore the uniform, but his eyes lacked the hardness of someone practiced at killing sapient beings, despite the gun resting on the ground a few feet away.

"Well excuse me for wanting to know the name of the person who came out of nowhere on a planet that's supposed to be abandoned."

"Eva." He looked at her in surprise. "Can you walk?"

His face paled at the prospect. She knelt next to him and examined his leg. Her brow knitted in consternation. He'd fallen on a very sharp rock, which was still lodged in the underside of his thigh. Now she knew why he was still sitting there.

"This is going to hurt." She removed one of her sleeves from her arms and took off her belt. Without waiting to warn him, she yanked his leg off the rock and hot blood flowed over her hands.

"A little warning would have been nice!" he shouted as she wrapped her sleeve around his leg and tied it off with her belt. "Is that sanitary? That doesn't appear to be sanitary. In my bag I have a kit that we can use..." He fell silent as she glared at him.

"There's no time. The Wraith will be back. Lean against my shoulder."

"Why? What are you going to do? I'm not feeling so well, maybe we should just stay here..."

Eva grabbed him and slung him over her shoulder. He shouted again and she resisted the urge to smack him. Then he fell limp.

Terrific.

A/N: Thank you to everyone for all the story alerts! It was a pleasant surprise, especially since I wasn't really expecting anything after breaking out of my ME comfort zone. :) And thank you for the reviews, too! Props to anyone who figures out who Eva just rescued ;)

MaxPayne51: Thank you! Definitely trying some new things with this story, and I'm glad they're working so far!

Anyway, thanks for reading and reviewing! :)