"See, now? That really is pretty cool."
Lorne was glad that McKay was getting to see his bipartite sky. For all his time off-world, McKay didn't really get a lot of opportunity to crash out on his back under the sky and just... look. For one, he was the busiest thinker and heaviest sleeper Lorne knew. For another, he had a positively eerie ability to choose planets in the middle of their rainy season for his missions.
"It sure is," McKay agreed dreamily. Yep. Lorne wouldn't be surprised if this was the first cloudless sky McKay had seen off-world in a long, long time.
Cool? It really, really was. After the obligatory greeting ceremonies and dinner, Lorne had broken McKay free from the festivities and hustled him outside and up to the plains. Nightfall took hours to finish on this wide flat terrain, and McKay had taken the opportunity to spend some uninterrupted quality time with his laptop. Lorne had taken the opportunity to stretch out in the grass and just relax, wishing he'd thought to bring a sketchpad or a camera so he could try and capture some of the incredible colours washing the cloudless sky. He pretended not to notice the muttered curses and muted crashes of team Kilo taking up positions around them, though he did wonder what terrible punishments Sheppard had promised if anything happened to McKay. The teams were certainly taking their assignment seriously, whatever it was.
Lorne made a mental note to ask. He was always on the lookout for new and creative ways to motivate his teams.
Once night had fallen completely, a incredible vista appeared overhead. Lorne had never seen anything like it on any planet anywhere. The closest he could remember was the view from outside Midway station, where to one end of the station you could see the Milky Way in all its glory, and at the other the misty blob of Pegasus.
Here, Pegasus' glow was barely noticeable, for the multitude of stars that made it up were distinct and clear and denser than he could believe. It was like looking at the end of a fibre optic cable in the dark, full of colour and mystery and gut-wrenching beauty. At sundown, the galaxy had filled the sky, but as time progressed Akarym turned away from the galactic core and the sky darkened, the stars spreading out more and more until suddenly there were none. It was like watching an eclipse from the inside, seeing that wedge of darkness expand as if it were eating the sky.
"Wait for it," McKay said into the silence. "Any minute now."
There it was. Galaxy-rise.
It wasn't the Milky Way. Instead it was a great barred galaxy that looked like a fireworks pinwheel frozen in time, spraying stars out in a glittering golden-red arc from the white-hot central bar. It took up only about twenty degrees of sky, about the same as the Earth's moon, but what a glorious twenty degrees it was. Against the starless inky black of the intergalactic void it stood out like a beacon. Lorne grinned, chuckled under his breath. "If that one arm went the other way it would look a little like the bat signal," he observed. McKay snorted softly.
They watched the sky in contented silence for long enough that Lorne lost track of time, but the track of this alien sky was too fascinating for him to be bored. Kilo seemed to agree, since the mutters had died into infrequent murmurs of awe. Bravo straggled up to join them, pitching a small camp under the stars and enjoying the view. The rest of Lorne's team came in a half-hour after that, smothering the small campfire pretty much as soon as they got it started at McKay's annoyed snarl about them ruining his night vision.
It was peaceful. Lorne loved it.
McKay tensed and sat up suddenly, staring at the sky intently. Instantly Lorne was alert and at his side, scanning the same direction closely. It took him a moment but then he saw it; a bolt of iridescent green streaking through the night sky, growing bigger at an unbelievable rate. "Holy shit," McKay breathed. "That's weapons fire." The first bolt was joined by another, and another.
"Incoming!" Lorne screamed at the top of his lungs, curling over McKay's head protectively and fumbling for his radio with his other hand. "All personnel, all personnel, incoming fire, incoming..."
The world blew up around him. Lorne had a fleeting impression of crushing pressure and heat and McKay being torn away from him and pain and then it all descended into darkness as complete as the void.
***
The trip through the gate seemed to take a long time. Scenarios raced through his mind; maybe the gate had closed when he was only partway through. Maybe he was lost in a collapsed wormhole, destined to be a bodiless mind forever. Maybe he'd missed the gate and knocked himself out on the platform. He was just working himself up to a Rodney-worthy rant when the gate reformed and catapulted him out onto a hard, rocky surface with a loud 'oof!'.
Lorne and Simon turned to stare at him.
"Sheppard," Lorne said in open disbelief. Almost immediately, his expression changed to one of fear. "Oh, no," he breathed, looking around desperately. "Oh, shit."
"Sheppard!"
The fury in the voice distracted John from trying to get up, and he looked up to see Simon stomping towards him. "You, you idiot! What the hell were you thinking?" Simon hissed at him. The rage in his face and the wildly gesticulating hands were pure Doctor Rodney McKay. John felt his chin drop. "Oh, right, of course, how foolish of me. You weren't thinking, were you? Nooo, Colonel McMartyr-Pants just had to come through a closing gate and, oh, almost get himself killed."
John lifted a shaking hand and laid it against Simon's robe. It felt real, the woven cloth a rough texture under his fingers. "Rodney?" His voice broke.
"No," Lorne said gently. "It isn't." He paused and frowned. "Well..."
"We have to hide him," Simon-Rodney said urgently, looking around furtively. "Lorne. Now."
"I know," Lorne bit his lip, clearly thinking rapidly.
"Right. Now."
"I know!" Lorne heaved a breath and rubbed a hand over his forehead. "Ok, it'll have to be the cave."
The animation faded from Simon's face and his hands fell back to his sides. John hadn't really realised how still Simon was until that happened. "I am returning to the city," he told Lorne flatly, not looking at John. One hand dipped into the robes and pulled out the bracelets removed from Jarvath and Dorovici. He extended them to Lorne, who took them gingerly. All trace of Rodney was gone. He strode away towards a nearby machine that John belatedly realised was some form of single-person vehicle.
"What the fuck, Lorne?" John found his voice, unsurprised that it was shaking. "What the fuck?"
Lorne smiled faintly, tucking the bracelets into the breast pocket of his shirt. "He started off as 'Sim'," he said. "Short for 'simulacrum'."
John opened his mouth but nothing came out.
Lorne continued. "Doctor McKay called him 'Golem'."
"Simon," John choked out.
Lorne nodded. "He's our conduit to Doctor McKay. And what Simon says, we do." He extended his hand to help John to his feet. "Right now Simon says, 'hide'."
He led John to a second vehicle nearby, this one clearly multi-passenger. John stared at it blankly a moment before figuring out how to open the door and get inside. "When are you going to tell me what the hell is going on here, Lorne?" He stared at Lorne challenging across the top of the vehicle.
Lorne bit his lip again, making John twitch. "When I get you hidden," he said. "Then we'll tell you what's going on. Then, you'll know why we have to keep you hidden."
"Then, you'll take me to McKay," John got into seat and did his best to slam the door behind him. "Then we'll get out of here."
Lorne got in and gave him a pitying look. "No, Colonel," he said. "We won't."
John glared at him then turned away to watch the scenery as they began to move. "We're not on Akarym," he noted with surprise.
"No. This is somewhere called Mingbe," Lorne pressed a button and the vehicle went transparent around them in a way that turned them invisible as well. John suddenly felt like he was in a dream, flying mere feet over the ground, bodiless. It was disconcerting as hell. Lorne continued talking, apparently undisturbed. "One of the first things we did here was try and identify the basic location of the planet against known stars, but we came up blank. We aren't even in Pegasus. It took eight chevrons to dial through to a gate we knew, that we could use as a way point to Atlantis."
John was thrilled to discover he could still at least feel his body. He tried not to think too hard about how strange it would look to have his hands running up and down his body and limbs if he was actually visible. Embarrassing, most likely, but he couldn't have stopped doing it. Not being able to see himself was just too damned weird.
The ground they were passing over was some sort of weird hybrid plains-urban. From the ground everything looked level, but as they passed over it John could see protrusions and humps. He thought at first that they were natural but quickly realised they were constructs, extrusions of formed metal and glass.
"This civilization is largely subterranean," Lorne said, making John jump. "Very, very high tech. Much higher than Earth. McKay says more advanced than the Ancients."
"Subterranean because of the Wraith? How did they manage to escape getting culled?"
"First, because these guys would kick the Wraith's ass," Lorne replied.
When a minute had passed and he hadn't continued, John prodded, "and second?"
The vehicle, and their bodies, swam back into existence around him. John blinked and removed his hands from his neck and hip respectively. "What?" Lorne sounded distracted.
"You said, 'first'. That means that there should be a 'second'."
"Ah." The vehicle slid to a stop and sank into the ground until it came to rest in an underground garage. Lorne turned, leaned over him to open the door. "We're here."
Here seemed to be a room formed out of solid rock, illuminated from above through some means that John couldn't quite make out. The walls were perfectly slick, shining faintly as if wet or maybe thickly varnished. He trailed his fingers over the wall, and it was cool and dry to the touch. John turned to the vehicle. It was sleek, wide enough and deep enough to take four Earth-sized people. Its long aerodynamic lines reminded him a little of a hydrofoil, or maybe one of the weirder designs for solar cars back home. It looked advanced, efficient, and was made of a brown-grey alloy that reminded him of something he couldn't quite put his finger on.
Lorne waited patiently for him to finish looking around. John took the time to run his fingers over the shell of the vehicle, trying to get the sensory input to jog his memory and failing. Finally he lifted his hands and nodded at Lorne that he was ready to continue. Lorne shook his head in amusement but let the little power play go, waving his bracelet near the wall. Immediately a portal opened, shaped like an arched entranceway, about five feet tall. Lorne ducked through without hesitation. John followed, getting a face full of leaves when he stood up too fast. Whatever kind of room he was in was dimly lit, thickly humid and very warm. John felt sweat break out all over his body at once.
"Kitchen?"
"Hydroponics," was Lorne's crisp reply. John swatted at the plants blocking his view, finally realising he needed to duck. He looked down and followed Lorne's boots as they led him deeper into the structure. A second doorway led him into a room that was finally large enough to stand up in.
"Major Lorne!" A long-haired, heavily bearded Parrish barrelled out of another doorway to their right. He skidded to a stop at the sight of Sheppard. "Colonel? Oh no," his eyes went to Lorne frantically. "Atlantis?" He demanded with his voice high with fear.
Lorne dropped into what John belated realised was a chair. It was nearly the same colour as the floor and walls, and his eyes hadn't even noticed it. Now that he was looking, he saw that what Lorne sat in was actually quite wide, and he gingerly lowered himself onto it.
"Atlantis is fine," Lorne was reassuring Parrish, who sagged with relief, running both hands through his hair. It was much longer than he'd worn it on Atlantis. Parrish had it brushed back from his face but it fell well past his ears. Eight months without a barber, John supposed, which made Lorne's still short cut strange. He noted Parrish's bare wrists with interest. "We left Doro and Jarvath there, getting medical attention." Lorne rubbed his eyes with stiff fingers, looking unutterably tired. "Colonel Sheppard followed us back through the gate."
Parrish jerked upright. "You did what?" he demanded incredulously. "Are you insane?"
John lifted an eyebrow and considered how to answer.
"We didn't get a chance to tell them anything," Lorne explained. "Things went.." He looked at the ceiling, tilted his head as he thought of what to say. "Sub-optimally," he concluded. John had to agree. "Simon says he needs to hide."
"OK," Parrish said, the most focussed John had ever seen him. "Here is good."
"Here is just fine," John said lazily, sprawling a little. "Now all we need is beer and explanations."
Lorne leaned back and closed his eyes.
"Water is the best I can do as a drink, Colonel Sheppard," Parrish said, "and I think explanations are unlikely. But," he inclined his head and sat down across from them in another dark hued chair. "We can tell you what happened."
"All right," John agreed. "Let's start there."
***
Even before he awoke, he was aware of pain. Radiating from every part of his body, right down to his fingernails he hurt. He tried to take comfort in the fact that at least it meant that everything was still attached, but really it all hurt so goddamned much that it wasn't much help.
A heavy jolt made him groan. Immediately there was another, and then he felt someone slapping his face. He tried to lift his hand to swat whoever was hitting him. He failed.
"Major!" It was a familiar voice, urgent, pitched high with stress and forced calm. "He's waking up. Major!" Lorne moved his tongue, forced his eyes open a crack. He recognized the face hovering over him.
"Doro?" He managed to croak out.
"Dorovici, sir, that's right." Another slap to his face, not so gentle this time. "You need to wake up, sir. You need to wake up now."
A different, deeper voice spoke. "We need to get him up and moving, Lieutenant." This voice was familiar, too. Reluctantly, Lorne pried his eyes open again, to see Dorovici looking up at someone looming over them both. What the hell was going on?
"I don't know if he's alert enough to be moved," Dorovici protested.
What felt like a bucketful of cold water was dumped unceremoniously over his head. Lorne jerked upright, spluttering furiously. McKay screwed the lid back on his canteen, ignoring Lorne's – and Dorovici's - glares.
"Perhaps I was unclear," McKay said. He sounded brittle, like he was holding on to his calm with both hands, both feet, and possibly his teeth. "He needs to get up right now. " His eyes flicked away, looking towards something Lorne couldn't quite see. "They're killing the ones who can't stand."
"They're what?" Lorne felt his head pound at the exclamation.
Dorovici was already scrambling to her feet, pulling Lorne up by what had to be sheer strength of will. "Right!" she said. "We're up!"
Being dragged upright made Lorne's vision swim alarmingly. Dorovici threw his arm over her shoulders and braced her feet apart. She was actually almost his height, a fact he'd never had cause to care about until just now, but was significantly slighter than his 180 pound frame. Her dark hair tickled his nose, making him fight not to sneeze. "Sir, please," she said under her breath. "Don't puke on me."
"Wouldn't think of it, Lieutenant," he assured her, his voice slurred and drunken-sounding. He was pretty sure he should be worried by that. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes as wide as he could, surveying the current state of affairs.
He seemed to be standing on the edge of a crater; one of many craters that dotted the landscape around him for pretty much as far as he could see. It looked as though someone had been dropping 500 pounders, or even Ancient drones. The edges of the craters were serrated-looking, with weird shelves and protuberances that his blurry vision couldn't make sense of. He had the feeling they might be a lot bigger than his mind was processing, though, an impression that seemed to be confirmed when an explosion on the other side of the one he was looking at took more than a second for the deep rumble to reach him. Lorne rubbed his forehead with his free hand, wincing when he hit a lot of sore, wet places. When he looked at his fingers they were wet and dark with blood.
Jesus. Forget 500 pounders. That thing was closer to a mile wide. He had a quick flash of a long virulent green blast streaking towards him from space, but before he could close on the image it was gone. Clearly they'd been attacked, but by who? Why? He returned his attention to his surroundings.
The broken ground was littered by pieces of twisted metal and glass. Paper, or something similar, fluttered in the breeze. The scent of burning organics overlaid with ozone and a bitter chemical that left a thick aftertaste on the back of his tongue lay heavy in the air. There were people everywhere, dazed and staggering. Terror was writ large and clear on every face. Lorne swayed, almost toppling them both. Dorovici's fingers tightened painfully on his wrist. Now that the adrenaline was starting to ebb, he became aware again of the bone-deep aches all over. The worst was his head, and one particularly vicious throbbing just under his right shoulder blade. Dorovici was tucked under his left arm, but every shift in weight made the agony on his right worse. He groaned.
"You've been wounded," Dorovici told him. "Not too bad, we don't think. Concussion," she paused, and when she continued her voice sounded strange, a tone he'd never heard before. "Shrapnel in your back. Stopped by your scapula."
"Shrapnel?" His voice sounded weak.
Dorovici winced, but she'd never been one to lie or to varnish the truth. "Bone, sir. Lieutenant Martin."
"Oh. That's ...I need to sit down." Lorne's eyes were closing whether he wanted them to or not.
"No! No! You need to stay on your feet." His knees sagged. "Major!" Her voice whip-cracked near his ear and he stiffened to attention in reflex. "You will stay awake and you will stay on your feet, do you hear me?"
He nodded. "I hear you, sir," he smiled faintly and closed his eyes, but kept his legs stiff.
"Do you remember the attack, sir?"
The attack!
For some reason, those words cut through the fog in Lorne's mind and he jerked the rest of the way upright. A new flood of adrenaline washed through him, pushing all his pain away. "Akarym. An air attack. Jesus!" He felt Dorovici nodding against his arm as he craned his neck, trying to make out the Atlantis uniforms among the throngs surrounding him. The bumps and hummocks in the craters resolved into the gutted cross-sections of buildings, now that he knew what he was looking at. He felt his gorge rise and barely got control before he broke his promise. "Report, Lieutenant!"
"Two dead, eleven injured, three badly." Dorovici replied baldly. "Martin and Juliard were in their tent. It took a glancing blow from one of the air to ground strikes. They were killed instantly."
Lorne clenched his hands into fists. Half of Kilo wiped out with one shot. Damn it!
"Jessop and Blaine were nearby and were knocked out by the blast. Neither of them has woken up yet. It's been several hours. Ophelio's with them now."
Lorne nodded. "Who else?" he demanded.
"Who else, sir?"
"You said three seriously wounded. Blaine, Jessop, and?" He tasted blood and lifted his hand to check, wiping it on his pants first. His lip stung at the tentative prod, and his tongue automatically went to trace the wound. A nice tear in his lower lip. Great. That was going to hurt like a bitch when he tried to eat.
"You, sir."
"Right." He was definitely concussed. He should have figured that one out himself.
"Everyone else has minor wounds. Broken bones, lots of minor shrapnel wounds, but nothing life threatening. Doctor McKay has a good wound on his right calf, but he says you saved him from the worst of it. He and Captain Terovic are getting everyone organized. With Ophelio working on Jessop and Blaine, they've got Doctor Parrish and Corporal Julian bandaging everyone up."
It looked as if the mob of people surrounding him was marshalling into some semblance of organization. Excellent. Now maybe he'd be taken somewhere he could sit down. The crowd started moving past them, heading away from the craters. Lorne squinted in the direction they were heading, barely able to make out a large grey-black vessel perched on the plain a kilometre or so away.
The other direction showed a nice, slightly inclined hillside. He nodded at it. "Let's go over there and sit down, Lieutenant. Get out of the way of these people. Set up medical help."
Dorovici looked up at him out of wide brown eyes. He noticed that half of her hair was singed away. "No, sir," she said. "We're not going to do that. Don't you remember the attack?"
"Yes," he replied curtly, "I remember. But it's over now."
"Yes, sir. It is." She explained carefully, like maybe this wasn't the first time. "But we lost, sir. We're prisoners."
Oh. Oh, shit.
"How long until check in?" His heart was trip-hammering in his chest, making the pounding in his head worse.
Dorovici looked away. "Still eight hours away."
Too long.
"They're taking us off-world," Lorne guessed.
"Yes, sir. It does look that way." She still wasn't looking at him.
The crowd moved slowly, buffeting them. Dorovici gritted her teeth and dug in with her toes, keeping them upright. To the sides, Lorne could hear loud cracking sounds, like electric whips maybe.
McKay materialised out of the crowd beside him. "Time to go," he said. His face was tight and blanker than Lorne could ever remember seeing it. His eyes were hard and determined. "Can you walk?"
"Yes," Lorne lied. McKay rolled his eyes and looked at Dorovici.
"We will," she said firmly.
McKay nodded, glancing down. "Get ... shit. Shakespeare guy to set that wrist." Lorne followed McKay's gaze and realised that Dorovici's arm, the one she wasn't holding him up with, was hanging limp at her side. Her wrist was the size of a grapefruit, but the flesh was still pink so at least the break hadn't interfered with the circulation.
"Corporal Ophelio," Dorovici supplied helpfully, her grip on Lorne tightening painfully when he tried to take more of his own weight.
"Don't fall behind, don't stop to rest," McKay said intently, glaring at them both to ensure they got the message. "Don't stop."
"Yes, sir," Dorovici said. Sudden shouting and screaming from their right had all three of them ducking and turning.
"Get him out of here," McKay snarled, then turned started pushing through the crowd, to where a circle had formed around two prone figures on the ground and four people crouched protectively over them. Blinking hard, Lorne recognized Atlantis uniforms. He automatically took a step towards them. Dorovici held him fast.
"Doctor McKay told me to get you out of here," she reminded him. Her voice shook.
"Doctor McKay is not in your chain of command," Lorne growled. "I am. Move it."
She turned her face away, but led him with slow limping steps towards the commotion. It was hard going against the crowd, which had thickened and sped up to escape whatever was happening.
They broke through to the edge of the cleared circle. Sergeant Jarvath saw them and pushed his way over. Jarvath's right shoulder was a mess. The weird angle he held his arm at pointed to either a dislocated or broken clavicle, and as he came to Lorne's side he could see it was the latter. Someone had set it, but the thick bump over the break was bulging and purpling nicely.
Blaine and Jessop were the two prone bodies. Corporal Ophelio knelt beside Jessop, slapping her face hard to try and wake her. His other arm was clearly broken but set, and was bound to his ribs to hold it steady. Corporal Kristova was shaking Blaine's shoulders, but the huge sergeant barely moved. Half his face was swollen, a deep blue bruise covering it from hairline to neck. From the look of it his jaw was likely broken. There was no way he was coming to anytime soon. Corporal Julian was on one knee beside Parrish, who stood staring blankly at nothing at all as Julian rapidly bound a long wound on his right leg. A thick white bandage and splint on his left knee indicated a joint injury. When Julian finished the bandage he struggled to his feet, and Lorne realised that a pile of sticks and cloth nearby was another splint for the corporal himself. Jarvath noticed at the same time and started for him.
"No!" The shout, and the way Dorovici jumped, brought his attention around to his left, where Captain Terovic and McKay stood in the way of something Lorne had never seen before. They were humanoid, silver-grey skin stretched taut over heavy bone structures with blinking red lights set prominently into one of the brow-skull ridges. Implants of some sort, he deduced, possibly communications structures or maybe some kind of bio-feedback mechanism. Their eyes were red, and they wore weird bronze-grey articulated body armour that might be metal. He couldn't quite tell. There were easily fifty of them, arrayed in a multi-layered phalanx. Soldiers, he immediately understood. One snarled, peeling lips back off of needle sharp teeth and he drew back instinctively. These things looked like the nightmare offspring of the Wraith and the Borg.
"They will walk, or they will die." The one alien without the blinking lights said, expressionless in the face of Terovic's rage.
"They can't walk! They're still unconscious. We just need some time for them to wake up!" Terovic shouted, her face red with fury.
"They will walk, or they will die."
"Look, what if- What if you just left them here, instead of killing them? They're probably going to die anyway, right? If they can't walk and they aren't useful to you, then just leave them." McKay had a hand on Terovic's arm, holding on tightly enough that his fingers were as white as the bandage around his leg.
The creature tilted its head, considering. Lorne held his breath. The creature decided. "No."
"Ok, ok. What if.. what if.." Lorne could see McKay's brain cranking though options. Terovic looked ready to tear the creature apart with her bare hands. "What if we carried them?"
The creature blinked. "That is acceptable." Although its face didn't change, its voice communicated a sneer. "Though unlikely." It gestured, and all but four of the soldiers spread out, herding the larger group of humans away. Another loud crack sounded nearby, followed by a wailing scream, and Lorne realised that the sound hadn't been whips at all. It had been a small hand-held weapon like a pistol, and the sound had been the soldiers killing the ones who couldn't move.
McKay's words echoed in his head. "He needs to get up right now. They're killing the ones who can't stand."
Bile rushed again into his mouth, and Lorne looked at the rest of the Atlantis team. They weren't in any state to carry anyone. He and Dorovici together made one barely functioning person, and Parrish and Julian might be able to walk if they leaned on each other. Jarvath couldn't lift anything at all with his broken collarbone, Ophelio had only one arm, and when Kristova sat back Lorne glimpsed yet another crude splint around her ankle. That left only McKay and Terovic to carry Jessop and Blaine... Blaine alone was six foot nine and close to two hundred sixty pounds. Jessop was tall for a woman, taller than Lorne, and Terovic for all her forceful personality was barely five foot four in her boots.
"Travois?" McKay asked urgently.
"Good idea, but everything we had to work with is destroyed." Terovic was pale, now that her anger had waned.
McKay scanned the area desperately, turning in a complete circle. Lorne looked too, but the biggest piece of anything they had was maybe six inches long.
"Drag them?" McKay snapped his fingers at Julian. "Give me all your remaining bandages, right now!" Julian dug them out, and McKay fashioned them into makeshift pulling straps. His fingers flew over the bindings of Blaine's tac vest, weaving the bandages through them. He made two large loops faster than Lorne could figure out what he was doing, and slid them over his own shoulders.
McKay got into a position like a sprinter on the block, leaned forward into the crude harness, and pushed with his legs. Lorne could actually see his quads bulge with the effort. Blaine scraped a couple of inches over the rocky, uneven ground. Ophelio grabbed one of McKay's wrists in his good hand added his weight to the effort. Blaine slid another foot then both men toppled to the ground. If he hadn't been such utterly deadweight, or if he'd been wearing slipperier clothes, or if only he wasn't so damned big...
"Ok, that didn't work." McKay scrambled back to his feet. He ran a hand through his hair.
The creature watched, impassive. "You have until the last prisoner passes," it said.
Lorne looked. There were maybe two hundred people still to pass them. He estimated they had perhaps as long as a minute.
"I, what? How is that reasonable?" McKay shouted. Ophelio used his leg to drag himself to his feet. The creature pulled its weapon. McKay grabbed the loops in both hands and started to heave, moving Blaine by inches. "There! " He screamed. "There! I'm moving him! He's moving! You ..." A loud blast cut him off. The creature replaced its gun in a holster on its leg. McKay stared blankly at where Blaine's head had been just a moment before. His throat bobbed and his mouth worked, but nothing came out. His eyes were wide and horrified. Behind him, wavering on his feet, Ophelio was in tears.
"You killed him!" Terovic threw herself at the creature like something possessed, hands extended into claws, swinging blindly in her rage. A second blast, from one of the soldiers this time, dropped her in her tracks at the creatures' feet.
"You will walk or you will die," the creature said calmly. "And you will obey, or you will die."
McKay's hands opened and the harness fell to the ground. He gave a long, slow blink, and for a second Lorne wasn't sure he was even tracking. His own head was spinning, the combination of the concussion and the shock of watching two of his people gunned down in seconds warring for which would make him throw up faster. When he beat the impulse back he felt an obscure pride.
McKay took the three long steps necessary to reach Jessop's side. He dropped to one knee beside her, grabbed a wrist in his hand, and heaved her into a sitting position. Her head lolled and she was about as graceful as a sack of potatoes, but McKay managed to get her the right way round and pulled her over his shoulder. He grunted his way to his feet with her slung in a standard fireman's carry. Ophelio hurried over to place his good hand on her hip, helping to keep her balanced. Lorne was pretty sure McKay didn't even see him.
"Then we walk," McKay said.
***
"McKay carried Sergeant Jessop and we walked to the Kor ship," Parrish said. John noticed that Lorne was biting his lip again. "We were ... well, 'processed' I suppose you'd call it – processed together. Rafa – Corporal Ophelio – was able to set Dorovici's wrist on board. We were in transit for a few days, in and out of hyperspace, before we reached here."
John braced his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands.
"Colonel. Captain Terovic, Lieutenant Martin, Sergeant Juliard and Sergeant Blaine – were you able to take them home?" Lorne asked.
Without lifting his head, John shook it 'no'. He spoke through his fingers. "When we tried to get in touch with you after you missed check in, the gate was non-functional. It took two months to get Daedalus back into Pegasus to go check Akrym in person. When we got there, there was nothing." He lifted his head. "The planet was a wasteland. We couldn't even find the gate. Zelenka," he smiled grimly, "Zelenka decided that the database co-ordinates were wrong and we simply got the wrong planet completely. He's been looking for months to find the right ones." He scrubbed wet palms against the fabric of his BDU pants. "When you came through the gate today, I actually thought he might be right."
A low rumble echoed through the room. Parrish was on his feet immediately, gesturing frantically for John to follow him. He grabbed John's arm and towed him across the room, waving open a door into a small alcove and stuffing John inside hastily. He reached down to drag something just across the doorjamb. A shoe? "Shhh," he said, waggling a finger under John's nose, then stepped away and waved the door shut. It closed on the shoe, leaving a sliver of space for John to see out. Also to breathe through, he realised a moment later as he felt the hard stone walls surrounding him.
The low rumble came again, this time deeper and more urgently, and Parrish hurried out the door to the hydroponics section. Lorne headed out the opposite one, returning a moment later with a glass of water. Seeing it, John realised that he was thirsty, and that he had to go to the bathroom. Lorne glanced at the closet with a half-smile, as if he knew what John was thinking. John glared.
"Good to see you, Doro," Parrish said as he re-entered the room, followed by a smaller figure John couldn't quite make out from his angle. Parrish sat, gesturing for his guest to sit too. She did, giving John an unobstructed view of her face.
Lieutenant Dorovici! What the fuck?
"Simon said you wished to see me," she was saying, her voice curiously flat. "Simon said I needed to come immediately."
"That's right," Lorne said, coming to sit beside her. He took her hand in his right, while his left held up the bracelet John had seen removed from her wrist in Atlantis. "We need to get you back into the system before the next battle," Lorne continued in a calm, reasonable voice. "I know we have to take them off sometimes, but there's sure to be an action soon."
"Oh, of course." Dorovici nodded emphatically. "I forgot that you had it." She tilted her hand to give Lorne easier access to her wrist. "I'm glad you remembered." Her voice was still that strange monotone.
Lorne pushed the thick bracelet against the side of her wrist, and it seemed to stretch elastically before twisting and flowing into place like liquid metal. Dorovici closed her eyes as it hardened in place, frowning slightly. Lorne and Parrish watched her intently.
"What is it?" Lorne asked her softly. "Is something wrong?"
Dorovici's eyes opened wide. "No, no. Of course not. It feels lighter than usual." She gave a half-smile, the first emotion John had seen on her face since she walked in.
Lorne and Parrish exchanged a quick look, then Parrish held her hand to help her stand. "Perhaps because you've had a rest," he offered. "You'd better get to your quarters before the next action is announced. I hear it could be any time," he said and led her out of the room.
Lorne came to lean beside the door to the closet.
"What the hell, Lorne?" John hissed angrily through the crack. "We left Dorovici on Atlantis!"
"That isn't Dorovici," Lorne muttered back out of the corner of his mouth. "That's a simulacrum of Doro."
"She didn't act like a robot," John challenged.
"That's for two reasons. She's a very, very sophisticated robot. And," Lorne straightened as the low rumble came again, presumably announcing Jarvath, "she doesn't know she is one."
John settled back in the closet, trying to find something approximating a more comfortable position. This was getting weirder by the minute, and given what he'd been through in the past few hours, that was really saying something.
He wasn't surprised when Sergeant Jarvath was ushered into the room. If Lorne was telling the truth and these were simulated people, then John was seriously impressed by the technologies that created them. Now that he was paying attention, he saw that Jarvath breathed, that his skin flushed a little as he came out of the heat of the hydroponics area.
He wished that he'd known Jarvath better, to be able to compare the man's baseline behaviour against what he was seeing now. The best he could do was notice a complete lack of distinguishing personality traits. The person, or whatever, that he was looking at didn't gesture, didn't wipe the beads of moisture from his face. Instead, it seemed he just was. John nodded to himself. It wasn't natural, that was for sure.
"Simon said you wanted to see me," Jarvath said after he sat down. "He said it needed to be now."
"That's right." Lorne held up the other bracelet, and Jarvath nodded immediately. None of the explanations required for Dorovici seemed to be necessary; Jarvath simply held up his arm steadily and watched the bracelet flow into place, emotionless. Once it was in place, he flexed his hand a few times as if to check the fit then looked up at Lorne and nodded once sharply.
"Is that all, Major? If there is an action scheduled I should return to my quarters."
Lorne shook his head. "Nothing else, Sergeant. Thank you for coming so fast."
"Simon said I should," Jarvath said and stood. Parrish walked him back out through the heat and the densely packed plants. Lorne released John, kicking the shoe back into the closet and closing the door tightly.
"That is creepy," John said with a shudder.
"No kidding." Lorne grimaced and moved to step away.
John grabbed his arm, poking a finger at the bracelet circling his wrist. "What's the story on these, anyway?" He demanded.
Lorne twisted his arm and pulled away violently. "Don't touch it!" He backed away as if John was holding some kind of super weapon on him or something. "Jesus! Are you trying to get us all killed?"
"No?" John held up his hands in a clear 'no threat' gesture. "I just wanted to see it."
"Then look! Don't touch!" Lorne had caught his breath but was still looking at John like he was about to leap across the room and wrench the bracelet from him by brute strength. He was genuinely spooked.
John sat down, ostentatiously on the other side of the room. Parrish came back in, bearing a couple of containers of water. Immediately John picked one up and drank thirstily. The material was close to glass but had a strange elasticity to the surface that made it feel ever so slightly rubberised. It provided a nice grip.
"What happened?" Parrish asked. He really had come out of the vacuous bubble he'd seemed to inhabit back on Atlantis, John mused, and it seemed there really was a mind back there that could process things other than plants.
"Colonel Sheppard almost touched the tether," Lorne sank into the chair across from, and still a safe distance from, John. He buried his head in his hands.
Parrish went deadly pale and stuck out a hand to brace against the wall. "Doctor McKay always did say he couldn't keep his hands away from the shiny stuff," he said fearfully. "Did he touch it?"
"He is right here," John said, stung. "And no, I didn't touch it." He coughed. "Lorne yanked away before I could."
"Oh, thank god," Parrish breathed and sat down beside Lorne. He picked up the second glass of water and drank it with shaking hands.
"Well, if you'd tell me why it's so important to keep my hands off, it won't be an issue anymore," John pointed out self-righteously.
"They're how the Kor keep track of their slaves," Lorne said baldly. "They link directly into the mainframe and are monitored for bio-signs and tampering constantly. They can be taken off for brief periods to allow medical assistance when required, but they must be replaced within a set period of time or ..." He swallowed hard. "Else."
Parrish was nodding, and John noted that the glass in his hands still shook. "An unregistered bio-sign making contact would initiate an immediate alarm," he said. "And that would be bad."
"Especially one with a natural gene," Lorne interjected. "You must not touch one under any circumstances, Colonel. It would be catastrophic for all of us."
John stared silently at them both for a long minute. When he leaned back into the chair abruptly they both jumped. John relaxed more, crossing his legs at the ankle and stretching an arm out along the chair back. "Fine," he agreed. "Hands off the shiny."
"Thank you," Lorne said sincerely.
"So everyone was made into... slaves?" John asked, his lips twisting in distaste at the word.
Lorne and Parrish nodded.
"But you don't wear one of the bracelets," John pointed out in a drawl.
Parrish blushed fiery red. "I wasn't useful that way," he said, embarrassed for a reason that John couldn't divine. "They keep track of me a different way." He leaned forward, twisting his head and raking a hand into his hair to draw it away from his ear. A line of furiously blinking red lights ran from the base of his skull into the hair behind his ear, following the curve of bone.
"Jesus!" John recoiled. An instant later he was leaning closer, lost in horrified fascination. The implant was almost completely beneath the skin, except where it extruded just at the bottom of Parrish's head. It followed the hairline quite closely and explained why Parrish had grown his hair so long. John lifted his hand and tentatively stretched out his fingers, stopping with them hovering a good three inches away. He glanced at Lorne, who seemed unperturbed. He fought a mental war between courtesy and morbid curiosity. The curiosity won. "Can I ... Does it hurt?"
"No," Parrish's voice was muffled by his twisted position. "You can touch if you want."
John ran his index finger gently over the lights. The skin felt disturbingly normal; warm, slightly sweaty. The lights were hard bumps like bone underneath. John's finger paused over one and the light underneath lit up, shining through the tip of his finger before he yanked it away. He scrubbed his hand on his pants, knowing it was rude but unable to stop. "That's..."
Parrish sat back up, flipping his hair back into place with both hands. "Even creepier?" he offered.
"Yeah," John replied uncomfortably. "How did you end up with that instead of one of those?" He gestured vaguely in a way that reminded him of Rodney.
"Well," Parrish said with a quick look at Lorne, who gestured for him to continue. "Let me go back to our explanation. I told you we were on the Kor ship." John nodded. "And that we were kept together." It was Parrish's turn to run his hands down his thighs to dry them. "So I guess I should start from there." He looked at John straight on, but John could tell Parrish was looking right through him. His eyes were haunted. "They took me first," he said. "The team tried to stop them, but they took me." He gave a small smile that was a shadow of his once bright, beaming grin. "And so, I was the first one they tethered."
***
The ship was a dark, humid, smelly, sweat and vomit stained slice of hell.
At least the Atlantis teams had been allowed to stay together, Lorne kept telling himself. It was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a genuine comfort to him. Even if they were all wounded, even if the remaining nine survivors were jammed together into a dark compartment barely the size of the back of a jumper, at least they were still together. With the hatch closed the darkness was absolute, but Kristova had dug up a small MagLite that they were using as sparingly as they could bear.
Ophelio had announced his self-appointment as medical chief pretty much immediately and had set himself to going over each team member with embarrassing thoroughness, cataloguing wounds and damage, and ruthlessly chivvying them all into taking care of both. Jessop had been placed on her back in the centre of the compartment, with her head in Kristova's lap and her feet on Parrish's, arranged carefully to avoid jostling his own leg injuries. Lorne had been placed sitting up in one corner with Kristova's broken ankle propped up on his thigh. He was wedged into the corner, twisted to the side to keep the wound on his back from hitting the wall. Julian was beside Parrish, providing a shoulder for him to lean against. Jarvath had given up on finding any kind of comfortable way to recline and was leaning heavily on Dorovici, who sat across from Parrish. Ophelio hunched uncomfortably at the opposite end of the room from Lorne, except when he would shuffle in and over them to check on their wounds.
And then, there was McKay.
McKay had taken one look at the tiny space they were to share, had turned pasty white, and had started to shake. He stopped dead in his tracks in the companionway and flatly refused to move. "No no no nono," he'd babbled frantically. "I can't go in there." He'd crossed his arms over his chest, had lifted his chin furiously, and had set himself in such a way as to make it impossible to simply shove him through the hatch. The sheer terror in his eyes had been terrible to see, and Lorne thought he would never forget the sheer bravado McKay had displayed. It was kind of ironic, he supposed, that one of the bravest things he'd ever seen was caused by someone refusing to face his fears.
Ultimately it had been for naught, of course. One of the supervisor-creatures had lifted an imperious hand and one of the soldier-creatures had cracked McKay over the head with his hand-weapon, and the revolt had been over.
McKay now sat wedged as far into the corner opposite Lorne as he could get, which was a surprising amount given the width of the man's shoulders. He'd curled over his legs and had pulled them into his chest as tightly as possible. His eyes were squinched closed and his forehead was pressed against his knees. He was rocking a little in place and muttering to himself. Ophelio had approached once to try and dress the head wound, which had still been seeping sluggishly after several hours, but the expression in McKay's eyes when he opened them had been so terrible that he'd stepped back with his one good hand up. Every time Lorne closed his eyes to try and sleep, the constant murmur of McKay's voice would resolve into a single sentence repeated over and over, and Lorne would have to lift his head to escape them.
wide open skies, wide open skies, wideopenskies, ...
"Doctor. You need to shut the fuck up," Julian finally said, the weariness in his voice eliminating any sting from his words. "Please, dude. Stop. Talking."
McKay's hands curled into fists and his lips compressed into a white line, but he managed to bite back the endless litany of his mantra against claustrophobia, and finally Lorne slept.
The sound of the hatch opening brought them all awake, and the light spilling through it had them wincing and turning away as much as was possible in the cramped quarters. Parrish was closest to the hatch, and one of the soldiers simply reached in, grabbed him by the shoulders, and pulled. His head and one arm was outside the hatch before they even realised that he was being taken. Kristova's foot fell off Lorne's lap and slammed into the floor, wringing a scream from her, and Julian lunged for Parrish's legs to try and keep him with them. Even McKay broke free of his near-catatonia to reach for them, scrambling over Kristova to do it. He got a good grip on one leg and held on doggedly, but a slap from a second soldier outside the hatch had him staggering back holding his head and one of Parrish's boots. The hatch closed with a deep clang.
All of them had been heavily jostled by the quick struggle and for a moment the compartment was loud with the sounds of groans and whimpers as the team members re-arranged themselves. Lorne had re-opened the wound on his back and he could feel the hot trickle of blood down his ribs. Forcing back the flare of pain, he leaned against the wall hard, hoping the pressure would encourage it to slow.
The noises of pain subsided, leaving only the whisper of breathing and the soft rustle of fabric. The crinkle of foil tearing, when it came, sounded incredibly loud.
"I.. uh. I have some power bars," McKay said too loudly into the inky blackness, as if he could maybe browbeat his fear into submission. "Since we, uh. Since we don't know how long we're going to be in here, or if they're going to feed us, we'll need to ration." He gave a swift snort and muttered under his breath, "I hate rationing."
Everyone laughed. It was strained, painful laughter, but there was also a thread of relief running through it. Relief that there was still a constant – McKay's hunger – and something to laugh at. Lorne knew that the others had been as thrown and demoralised as he'd been by McKay's breakdown. The fact that he was now cracking sarcastic was a huge morale booster, despite the barely-restrained hysteria they could all hear.
They turned on the light and broke apart the first power bar into equal pieces. McKay clutched the remaining bars closely to his chest, looking not unlike a demented squirrel hoarding its nuts. No one said anything, but he looked down at the stash and said, "These should be spread out in case I'm taken," and handed half to Lorne. Lorne gripped his wrist hard in reassurance and took them.
"Hey," Jarvath said, leaning against the wall and looking up intently. "Give me the light a second." Kristova handed it over, peering up curiously. The suspense was too great for her and she heaved her way upright, carefully not putting any weight on her broken ankle.
"Hey! Is that?" She fumbled around on the wall for a moment, and a small spout protruded into the compartment. "Water!" A tiny stream trickled out.
"Canteens!" Lorne commanded instantly. They needed to get as much water as they could in case it stopped.
After filling two canteens, it did.
They all took short drinks, enough to wet their throats and mouths but not enough to slake their thirst, and settled back into uncomfortable mounds on the floor. McKay had kept it mostly together but had gone back to his corner, and the others huddled together to give him as much room as they could. From the crooked smile he gave them, he appreciated the effort. From the barely controlled terror in his eyes, it wasn't helping much.
Parrish had been gone just under forty minutes by Lorne's watch when the hatch slammed open again. This time they tried to avoid the soldiers by scuttling as far as they could from the door, to no avail. Once again one of the soldiers simply stepped inside, grabbed Lorne by the scruff of the neck, and yanked him out into the companionway. He managed to throw most of the power bars McKay had given him back inside before he was pulled away.
He was forcibly dragged, kicking, for at least twenty metres until they reached a bulkhead hatch. Lorne used the pause to gain his feet, though the soldier still held him hunched over by the grip on the back of his neck. He figured it said something that this was actually an improvement.
Another twenty metres of pitted metal companionway and he was shoved roughly into a compartment significantly larger, and better lit, than the one he'd left. Banks of shining steel-coloured boxes lined all of the walls, reflecting the light and making the compartment brighter. A supervisor stood inside the door, lights pulsing obscenely under the skin of its bare forearm. Beside it rested something that looked like an electric chair. Lorne wanted, more than anything in that minute, to stay out of that chair.
The soldier half-carried, half-dragged him to it and shoved him into place. A button press from the supervisor triggered arm, leg, and neck restraints to snap into place. The soldier left.
Ceremoniously, the supervisor lifted a small metal canister from one of the metallic boxes lining the room. A glint of silver shifting inside reminded him of molten steel and he tensed instinctively. The supervisor's lips peeled back, showing him its red-stained needle-like teeth. He grimaced.
It poured the contents of the container into one clawed hand. With the other it struck, grabbing his fist tightly, keeping him from moving. The metal slid off of the creature's hand and curled around his wrist.
Lorne gasped, jerking in the restraints. The bracelet hardened around his wrist, but it was the sensation of an intelligence touching his mind, shuffling through his self in some indefinable way that bowed his back. It hurt, damn it, and it was sensuous and organic and also near-bliss. It reminded him of the electric frisson around the gate. This was like being submerged in that sensation, all over his body. He cried out, re-splitting the cut on his lip.
That small pain helped him gain some control before he completely lost himself in the incredibly intimate sensations, so he deliberately made it worse. He stretched the cut as far as he could with just his lips, and when that wasn't enough he bit at the wound until he could feel the blood drip off his chin. He glared at the Kor-Trang, his breath heaving his chest like a bellows.
Wait a minute. Kor-Trang?
The Kor-Trang snarled a complicated set of syllables at him, and though Lorne knew for a fact that he'd never heard the language before, it made sense in his head.
"You are tethered. You serve the Kor. You will serve, or you will die."
Lorne spat blood on the floor.
"Your tether will be linked to those with you in your cell. They will serve, or you will die." It stared at him with as much malevolence as he'd ever seen from a Wraith. "This is the way of the Tey-im. You are now Tey-im."
Lorne stared back at the Kor-Trang defiantly until the Kor-Yul came back and dragged him to their new cell, where Parrish was waiting.