The Bola Kai were on us in a heartbeat. Ronon did his best to keep them at bay, but there were just too many of them. For every warrior he shot down, two more took his place. Ronon tried to keep them away from me, shooting any who got too close until a group swarmed him, and it was all he could do to save his own skin.
One particularly greasy specimen shoved his way past the others, knocking his fellow Bola Kai aside in his eagerness to reach me. His hair was long and matted, whatever color it had once been now long obscured by layers of accumulated filth and grime, and the teeth he bared at me were chipped and rotted. Up close I could see a leather thong hanging from his neck, strung with tiny discolored bones; finger bones. My stomach heaved as I took in the sizes- children's bones, all of them. I stared at them, and my vision went red. Adults know the universe is a cruel place where any atrocity can and will be committed by those with a taste for such things. But kids should be protected. No child should ever be hurt.
Blood pounded in my ears as I reached up to tear the necklace from his neck, because there is some shit with which I won't put up. Not my smartest move, I agree. I blame the blood loss. In any case, the warrior grabbed my arm and tried to haul me up out of the water. I shoved my other hand deeper into the mud of the bank and tried to pull away, digging the toes of my boots into the silt. Screams began to drown out excited shouts, but it took me several moments to realize they weren't coming from me or Ronon.
I thought it was a trick of the moonlight at first, the pale, pale blue light reflecting off my skin. Then the soft glow began to increase, illuminating veins from inside, revealing shadowy bone. Fucking fantastic. On top of everything else that had gone wrong, I was now a human glowstick.
The warrior stared at my hands puzzled. He opened his mouth to speak, but words turned to screams. His fingers tightened around my wrist, grinding the bones together, while I tried to figure out what the hell was happening. That's when I saw the worms.
Remember the snake-lamprey thing? Imagine its tiny, meaner, hungrier cousins. The length of my hand and slim as a pencil, they glowed with the same internal light now afflicting me, which meant that when they crawled out of the soil and up the warrior's legs and began tearing into his flesh there was no darkness to hide the sight.
Still gripping my wrist, he tried to brush them off with his other hand with increasingly frantic movements. They simply swarmed over his hand and crawled up his arm, biting and burrowing as they went. I could see his skin rippling as they tunneled their way through the fat and muscle.
"Get off!" I screamed. "Get away! Ronon! Ronon, get away from the dirt!"
As I tried desperately to pull my arm away, the warrior continued to scream. His leggings, arms, and bare abdomen were soaked in blood and as I watched in horror, unable to look away, the flesh of the hand trapping me began to writhe. Several worms burst from his skin and headed straight for mine.
"No no no!" I wept. This wasn't right. I knew going off world with Sheppard was a risk, but couldn't his bad luck just be content with getting me scalped and shot? Apparently not. Apparently now it had to introduce man-eating, flesh-burrowing killer worms, and that's just not right, man.
Speaking of Death's favorite team leader, I was vaguely aware of gunfire coming from the forest. Sheppard, Teyla, and McKay were not far away. They had come back for us, the morons. I tried to scream for them to run, but panic had finally stolen my voice.
The worms infesting my captor crawled across his clutching fingers to my hand, then stopped. While I hyperventilated, they explored my skin with their frilled, tapeworm-like heads, then drew back as if repulsed. The sensation of those tiny mouths on my skin stayed with me, and I shivered. The worms burrowed back into the warrior's flesh and disappeared in seconds. The warrior finally loosened his grip, and as I watched, his eyes dimmed and he fell to the grass, finally dead. More worms burst from the ground to cover him in a living, glowing shroud, and as I looked past him, I could see dozens of similar sights across the valley. The screaming was dying away now; most of the Bola Kai were dead. The few that still lived shouted and tried to beat away the tiny predators before they too fell.
"What the hell is happening?" Ronon breathed, shoving a dead Bola Kai off him and onto the grass. The worms attacked the corpse hungrily. "And why am I glowing?"
The blue glow running through his veins was even brighter than mine, and the worms gave him wide berth. Curious, he tried to pluck a worm from the nearest corpse, but they writhed away from his fingers.
I closed my eyes and rested my head on edge of the embankment, displacing several worms. My side burned where the bullet hit and my brain was starting to go fuzzy. I felt myself begin to slip further into the water but I couldn't bring myself to care. The cold water closed over my head, then I was being pulled out of the stream and onto the grass. Ronon groaned loudly as he collapsed beside me.
"You alright?" he grunted. I touched my side again, and my fingers came away crimson.
"Not really," I mumbled, my tongue thick and heavy. "One of the bullets caught me. I'm bleeding."
He rolled over and pulled my shirt up. I tried to push his hands away, but he ignored my protests and proceeded to poke and prod the area around the wound.
"It's not too bad," he said, as my vision began to dim from the pain. "I can feel the bullet only a few inches in. Want me to pull it out?" That got my attention.
"Don't you dare!" I snapped, forcing myself back to full awareness. "The last thing I need is battlefield surgery done by a guy with a concussion." I reached into a side pocket and pulled out a plastic bandage and a pill bottle. Luckily both had withstood being submerged in water, and I quickly dry-swallowed two of the pills and chewed two more, gagging at the taste. I tossed the painkillers to Ronon and slapped the bandage over my wound. The protein binders infused in the bandage would stop the bleeding until I got back to base. In theory, anyway.
"What the hell is going on?" Sheppard asked, as he, McKay, and Teyla trotted up to us. McKay was whimpering quietly to himself and scrubbing at his brightly glowing skin with a wet-wipe. Teyla just looked concerned for everybody, as usual.
"Don't ask me," Ronon grumbled, tossing the painkillers back to me. "I want to know why I'm blue, what the hell those things were, and why they didn't touch us."
"Hey, aren't those Carson's new protein bandages?" McKay interrupted. "I didn't know he cleared those for use yet."
"He hasn't," I admitted. "I swiped a few while looking for Percocets. I figured at least one serious injury was inevitable."
"You broke into Carson's office?" Teyla gasped, appalled. Thank the gods I didn't mention the morphine syringes in the pack now dangling from her shoulder.
"Looks like it's a good thing she did," Sheppard chuckled. "I've been after Woolsey to approve personal med kits for every person who goes off world. Looks like you two just made my case. How are you doing, Chewie? Looks like you got a little roughed up."
"I feel great," Ronon said, a goofy grin spreading across his face. "Guess I wasn't hurt as bad as I thought." He tried to stand up, but fell right back down with a surprised grunt.
"Uh, buddy, how many of those pills did you take?" Sheppard asked.
"Same as her," he said, gesturing to me. "Two swallowed, two chewed."
"Oh shit," I muttered. Ronon giggled.
"Looks like I'm going to have to run to the gate and call Atlantis for a jumper and a quarantine set up," Sheppard sighed. "Teyla, you're with me. Rodney, you keep an eye on these two. Make sure Ronon doesn't pull a Jimi Hendrix. And I want samples of everything, including worm specimens. The docs will take blood draws from all of us as soon as we get back, and- Uh, Finn? Didn't you have more hair just a little while ago?"
"You know," McKay cut in. "I think Kavanaugh had that same haircut after one of the cooks cut off his stupid pony- Oh. That was you."
I made a mental note to replace his coffee with decaf for the foreseeable future. Beside me, Ronon toppled over and began to snore. Apparently despite his near weekly trips to the infirmary to get stitched up, dude's got no tolerance for the good stuff. Go figure.
Nearby, the mounds of feasting worms began to diminish. The sated worms began to disappear into the rich soil, pulling the defleshed bones under with them. In minutes the valley was again still and dark, lit only by the moon and the cold stars. Teyla wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and gave my hand a squeeze before jogging off with Sheppard. Beside me, Ronon muttered quietly in his sleep. I thought I heard the word 'dragon', but I can't be sure.
"You know," McKay said, lowering himself to the grass beside Ronon. "I've gotten shot before. So, you know, I know how you're feeling."
"That right?" I said, digging through my pack for the morphine.
"Twice, actually," he said proudly. "Of course once was an arrow, and the other time it was John who shot me. But still... Hey, do you have any of that snake ceviche left? I think my blood sugar is low again."
As McKay continued to whine about his non existent medical issues, I jabbed the needle into my vein and let the sweet, sweet morphine carry me away from what had to be the most fubar'd mission I'd hopefully ever be on.
A/N: Thank you all for your patience. I had some pretty horrific stuff going on the past six months, and writing took a backseat. There will probably be some breaks in the future (this story and my others), but I will finish all of them, eventually!