Thank you everyone still reading! I know it's not a standard story layout, to use this POV, and I appreciate you hanging in there! (Edit: the site's line breaks aren't showing up on my screen after I save it, so I'm compensating with my own. I.e., you may see double lines for scene breaks. Sorry)
THE SEEKERS
By TIPPER
CHAPTER SIX: THE STAIRS
"Damn it!" Sheppard swore, lowering his weapon as he peered through the entranceway into the sand colored room. It was still unfired, though Sheppard's finger was cramped up over the trigger.
Ronon knew Sheppard and Teyla couldn't risk firing their weapons, not when McKay was so close to the woman who had been shooting at them. Too much chance of a ricochet in such a small space. But he could—and he was furious that he had missed hitting her with the stunner. He saw Teyla giving him a sympathetic look when he smacked his hand into the wall in frustration.
"Let's get after him," Sheppard said then, stepping through the entranceway into the room.
"Stop!" Teyla ordered. "Wait!"
Sheppard had halted immediately, and he rocked back a step, looking around as if something might suddenly jump out at them. "What?"
"Well," Teyla said reasonably, "besides him…" She pointed with her P90 across the square, sand colored room, at the man sitting in the entranceway on the far side. A burnt out torch lay a few feet away from him. "So far, every room in this place has had some sort of built in trap. It seems like this one does as well. It would be best if we proceeded with caution." She arched an eyebrow at Sheppard, and he grimaced in return.
"Right." Sheppard moved aside to allow all three of them to enter the room, but they didn't move beyond the entranceway for now. When the metal door slid shut behind them, Ronon couldn't deny a sigh of relief to be done with the noxious lamprey room.
"Is he dead?" he asked, his blaster fixed on the man's body ever since Teyla had pointed him out.
"Looks like," Sheppard said, his P90 also pointed at the man. "But, Ronon? Just in case?"
Ronon nodded, firing a blot of red across the room and hitting the man squarely. He didn't react to being stunned. That answered the question. Even the sleeping reacted to being stunned like a person electrocuted—they always convulsed.
His eyes narrowed. "Think the woman killed him?"
"No," Teyla replied. "Look at the floor."
Blood stains. He should have noticed them before. The man on the far side had either crawled or was dragged across this floor to the far door. From the smeared patches of soot fairly evenly placed, it was pretty obvious that he had crawled, likely with the torch in one hand.
"He crawled," Sheppard noted. "On his own. You can see his handprints." He pointed to some of the more obvious prints on the ground. "But he must have collapsed at one point, probably up there." He pointed to a spot where more blood smeared the floor, near the spent torch.
"They all crawled," Teyla noted.
"McKay shouted to 'stay down,'" Ronon said, looking at the walls now. "Guessing he meant we should crawl too." He saw the thin gaps between the stones—probably the source of this room's "trap."
Sheppard shrugged, and smiled slightly. "And Rodney's always right."
Ronon smiled as well, and, glancing over his shoulder, he saw Teyla smiling as well. They couldn't help it.
They knew McKay was alive. Even better, they were close. They also knew what they were dealing with now—one woman. Admittedly, a woman with good aim (every shot she'd fired had gone through the doorway—they'd been lucky to avoid being shot), but still, just one kidnapper to deal with was a lot better than a whole lot of kidnappers.
"Well," Sheppard got down on his hands and knees, "shall we? We have a damsel in distress to rescue, and I'm betting he's getting pretty bitchy about how slow we're being."
Ronon just grinned.
___________________________________________________
"These stairs are definitely Ancient, almost identical to the staircases in Atlantis. Even more interestingly, unlike every other place we've been, this small staircase isn't lined with stone, so we can actually see the Ancient architecture that filled this place. See? That's the arrow and dustpan design I was describing before."
Raina was only half listening, letting him prattle on as she pressed the gun in his back. He was nervous, scared of her, and he had reason to be.
She was finding it very hard to care about anything right now. The only reason they were even moving was because her brother had told her to keep going. For him, she'd find the gold.
"Which is why," McKay continued, "when you asked me what the trap might be here, I said there probably wasn't one. This staircase leads up to the fifth room on the map, but isn't a room itself. It's just a staircase."
Lights flared to life as they moved up the steps, reacting, she knew now, to his presence.
"Shame they covered up the rest with that stone," McKay added. "I mean, the Ancients had a pretty nice aesthetic. I've grown pretty fond of it. I'd like to see what this place really used to look like."
"Why…," she swallowed, blinking slowly, but she needed the distraction. "Why do you call them that?"
"What? Oh, why do I call them Ancients? Because that's what we call them. Well, that's what we call their race. Like you and me, we're human, they're Ancients."
So, he was human. She found herself a little relieved, although she hadn't really believed otherwise. She tapped her gun on his back again when he tripped a little on a step. He was getting tired.
"But you also call them something else," she said.
"Lanteans. Yeah. That's what the people who built Atlantis called themselves. Lanteans. Like calling yourself Genii, or Belkan, or Athosian. Me, I'm a Canadian and you're…?"
She didn't answer the prompt. But she understood. He glanced at her over his shoulder when she didn't reply, a vaguely troubled look on his face.
"Raina…."
"So what's at the top?" she asked, hating how hoarse her voice sounded. She had to get it under control. If she didn't, McKay's teammates would be on top of them before they'd reached the gold.
"Room five of six. It's got a puzzle I didn't wholly understand. I'm hoping, like the others, it'll become obvious when we get there."
She nodded, even though he couldn't see her.
"Raina," he said, and she could tell he was about to say something she didn't want to hear. "Raina, look, about your brother—"
"Don't."
"I just…I never really got the impression that you two were as cold-blooded as you wanted me to believe. Your brother, he was—"
"Shut up."
"He really did remind me of my friend Ronon. They both had this….I don't want to say a goodness since Herod did threaten to break something inside me, but—"
"Please," she begged. "Please don't talk about him."
"I just—"
"Blood and spit!" she snapped, her voice cracking as the tears started again. "Don't you ever shut up?"
He was quiet for about a second.
"What I'm….What I'm trying to say is, he loved you, that much was clear. And you loved him. And I don't think he'd really want you to kill yourself—"
"Stop. Please."
He made an effort. She could see it in the way he held his head. But, he was right—even with a gun pressed to his back, it wasn't in his nature.
It was almost admirable.
"Raina, please listen to me. My teammates are right behind us. You know that. They'll be through that door and up these stairs before we're able to sort out the puzzle that works the next room. And they'll stop at nothing to get me back. I know that sounds arrogant, but I know them. I could be someone they hated, but because I'm from Atlantis, they will not stop until they've—"
"Then you'd best hurry up," Raina suggested, pushing on his back harder with the gun. "I wasn't kidding about not caring about much right now, Doctor."
"I'm just trying to explain that…," she could see his shoulders bunch under the black shirt. "They'll kill you, Raina. You might get one lucky shot in, maybe hurt one of them, or me, or whatever, but the other two will kill you. They will. Your brother wouldn't want that."
Raina slammed the butt of the pistol hard between his shoulder blades and he fell forward onto the stairs, landing hard on his hands and knees. He turned to look at her, his surprise quickly turning to annoyance.
"Why did—?"
"I warned you," Raina stated harshly, "not to talk about my brother."
The annoyance faded instantly. Instead, his shoulders slumped. "Raina, please. If you let me go now, if you stop this from going any further, they won't kill you. I promise you. You don't need to die. Just give me the two guns and—"
She shot the metal stairs next to his head, cringing when the bullet ricocheted, bouncing off the walls. When she looked at him again, his mouth was shut. It was remarkable how he could look furious and terrified at the same time.
"Better," she said, hating herself so much now, she could taste the bile in her mouth. "Now keep moving."
He breathed in deeply, and his brow furrowed angrily. "Why won't you listen to me? I'm trying to save your life!"
"You mean, your life."
"No, I mean both our lives! Raina, I'm a terrible liar, you said so. You know I'm not lying now. You need to listen to me here!"
Her head hurt. Her face hurt. Her chest hurt. Everything just hurt.
"And I told you," she hissed through gritted teeth, "that I don't care about a lot right now. That includes you." She swallowed, because at some point that had become a lie. "Keep moving, Doctor. I'm not giving up now."
He closed his eyes, and then pushed himself up off the stairs in order to start climbing again.
_______________________________________________________________________________
Ronon watched as Sheppard fought the urge to stand up and start running to the doorway, the colonel's eyes glued on the metal separating them from McKay.
That single shot fired a few seconds ago still echoed faintly through the silent room.
Teyla ducked her head.
"That woman is dead," Sheppard muttered. "She just doesn't know it yet."
Ronon couldn't agree more.
_______________________________________________________________________________
At the top of the stairs was another square room, this one with a gorgeous mosaic on the floor, made up of five interweaved colors: red, black, blue, white and yellow. The pattern was sinewy, as if it were depicting five interlocking snakes, all crossing each other five times.
"Five colors," McKay said, looking down at the floor. "Okay."
"Okay?" Raina asked, still pressing the gun to his back.
"The puzzle for this room was made up of five separate lines, all short. This floor is made up of five colors, and I don't believe in coincidence. Well," he shrugged, "I do believe in coincidence. The universe is built on coincidence, but not here. I don't believe in coincidence when it comes to anything man-made. No," he shook his head, "five lines of bad poetry, five colors intertwined on the floor? Not a coincidence."
Raina shut her eyes to ignore the rambling, and then opened them again. "Just solve it and let's go."
He frowned, still staring at the floor. "It's not that easy. This one…this one isn't as obvious as the others."
She sighed. Of course not. "I hope you are not stalling."
"I'm not, I…" He trailed off.
She waited a moment, then prompted, "the riddle?"
"'The place of beginning'," he said, "that's the first line."
"The place of beginning?" she repeated, frowning a little.
He nodded. "Followed by, 'the preservation of life, 'the cradle of existence, 'the source of light', and, lastly…." His expression twisted a little. "'The necessary element.'"
She looked down at the floor.
"I assume," McKay said, "that we start off on one color, until the color representing the second line of the riddle crosses it, then we head down that color towards the third color, and so on and so forth."
"Which color is first?"
"Whichever color represents the first line of the riddle, I suppose."
"The place of beginning," Raina repeated.
"Right, but the beginning of what? The universe? I suppose that would be black, before the stars and planets were formed."
"Or white," Raina suggested. "I have been told that the universe was born of an explosion of light."
"Hunh," McKay actually smiled slightly, and then glanced at her in surprise. "Wait, really? You were taught a Big Bang theory? I just assumed everyone from here thought the universe was created by the Ancients."
She frowned. What a silly idea. "No. The Ancestors are our ancestors, but they did not create the universe. They were just the first. Everyone knows that." She looked at the floor, then laughed slightly, his words repeating themselves in her head. "Big bang?" she repeated. "That's what the greatest mind in two galaxies calls it? That's not very scientific sounding, Doctor."
He just snorted. "Just as good a name as anything else."
"And what's at the end?" she asked. "The small fizzle?"
He snorted a short laugh, and Raina found her smile growing. He shook his head.
"I hope never to find out," he admitted quietly.
Her smile faded quickly, her mirth as transitory as everything else felt to her right now. She wasn't even sure what was real anymore. It was almost like she was floating.
"The place of beginning," she repeated again. "So, either black or white, then?"
He shrugged. "Want to flip a coin?" he asked, smiling weakly. "That's what Sheppard would do."
"He's your team leader?" she asked.
He nodded, all smiles gone.
"The one who is going to kill me."
He didn't answer. He just stared at the floor. Then he shrugged again.
"Actually," he said, "could also be Teyla or Ronon."
She emitted a quick laugh, feeling a little dizzy. Another tear ran down her face, and she quickly brushed it away with her gun hand. Lifting her gaze as she did so, she found herself studying what turned out to be a very odd ceiling. It was shallow and, strangely, didn't look solid. There were visible gaps between the stones. They almost looked like…wait….Did one set of stones just move?
McKay was looking up now as well, matching her gaze. "Oh," he said. "I think I know what happens if you pick the wrong color."
"The ceiling falls on you," Raina said. Her eyes trailed the gaps—whole sections of the ceiling must come down, crushing anyone directly underneath. She didn't feel scared for some reason, though she knew she should. She just couldn't shake the disconnected feeling she had.
"'This temple will crush you,'" McKay quoted. "That's what the map said. That if a Wraith tried to follow it, they would be crushed. Guess it was being somewhat literal here."
Raina just nodded.
It also made her think of something. She had her brother's pack. He always carried something for moments when they were forced to escape places quickly attached to the side.
"Take the torch, Doctor," she said, handing it up to him. McKay frowned, but he took it.
"Aren't you afraid I might try to use it as a weapon?" he asked.
"No," she said, "because I'll shoot you before you even try."
As she spoke, her free hand was feeling down the side of her brother's pack. She knew it was here some…ah. There.
She smiled, and drew out the small red ball, one that fit perfectly in the palm of her hand. Perfect. McKay frowned when he saw it.
"What is that?" he asked quietly. He was nervous again, even though he clearly didn't know what the redcap was for.
"You'll see," she answered.
As if on cue, the distinct sound of the metal door at the bottom of the stairs opened. Raina turned, flicked the cap off the red ball, and dropped it down the stairs.
Then she jumped on top of McKay, protecting him as the stairwell behind them exploded.
TBC…
(There's the explosion, JB!)