Meanwhile, Rodney was trudging through the forest trying to ignore the rain. He knew he couldn't get any wetter but the chilling cold was slowly crawling into his bones, making him more numb and freezing. He realised he couldn't continue like that much longer.
He looked into his left hand again to check if he hadn't lost the projector because he had no feeling in his fingers. He was hurt, exhausted and emotionally shattered. He thought that had Jorgenson been like his John, he wouldn't have been left alone, he would have been rescued straight away when the rest would have brought a backup. He could expect nothing like that. His team was almost out of the reach of communication systems and they had no need to worry about what was happening at Atlantis. He didn't know that they had already arrived at the planet with a rescue team and looked through the area around the Stargate. He didn't know they had just left a sentry at the Gate and set off through the forest.
Rodney desperately searched for a dry place to sit down and just rest.
"Of all the planets I could have gone stranded on," he complained, "I had to choose this drippy damp hell. It's only my luck. Yuck!"
He dragged his asleep legs through water puddles and slimy mud pools, and over moss and lichen, which were brightly green with the newly-come water.
His teeth chattered with cold and his shiver returned with vehemence. His head was pounding, his hearing was filled with pops of water in his ear canals.
To his bad luck, trees in that area were high and very old, with trunks so wide that one man wouldn't encircle them. They looked like a trunk with nothing for long and long and somewhere high in the clouds a branch here and there appeared. This lack of cover meant that it was pelting down right on him.
Rodney didn't stop searching. He hoped for a nice dry cave or a little ruin with a roof. Unfortunately, none of it was on his way and he had lost perspective of time long ago.
The old trees gradually yielded to newer generations and Rodney sighed happily when he spotted one short conifer in a small hole with branches full of long needles. He got near the tree and eyed it hopefully.
It seemed relatively dry under it so he crouched down to take a more thorough look, but it was much more demanding than he had expected because his entire body protested due to all his contusions and strains from the river surge.
He did manage to get down enough to get inside and more of fell than crawled there. The hideout wasn't particularly big but the tree shielded it from the rain almost completely.
Rodney leant his back on the trunk and breathed out tiredly, delighted that, finally, he had found at least something adequate to pass the worst of the storm. His foot reminded itself when he tried to make himself comfortable but he had already got used to the constant strong pain so it wasn't so bad.
He couldn't stretch his legs completely because of the width of the hole, but he made it with the hurt one bent in his knee and the left unharmed one under it. He sighed and held his hands in front of his eyes. They were trembling a lot although he tried to keep them still.
Rodney closed his eyes and shook in cold. He re-opened them and thought about the state he was in. He mused aloud: "Alright. I need to have a look at what I have saved."
He opened the zip on his wringing-wet jacket and took it off. He needed a lot of effort to accomplish so because his back had been badly bruised, but it was worth it.
Once he held it in his hands, he opened its pockets and pulled out everything he found. Then he remembered his trousers and rummaged through those pockets as well. When he finished, he looked at his stack of supplies and sighed. It wasn't as much as he would have loved to have but it had to be enough. He had a Swiss knife, his full Epi-pen with two doses, a thin cord, a short pencil, a pen, a small torch, which may have been short-circuited due to water, and four Power bars which had miraculously escaped the water and hadn't become pulpy. Thank his excessive need to have something for his blood sugar.
"Well, it won't replace the GDO but I would be able to reach the Stargate," he told himself. "It'll be fun," he chuckled ruefully. "When I get there and dial Atlantis, I would shatter into molecules due to the iris. That's just me."
He ignored the low rumble of his stomach, looked around and noticed he didn't have the projector on him anymore. He could have sworn that he had it before he had crouched to the fir.
He sighed and tried to see through the long dark green needles. He spotted the casing lying just behind them, outside his little dry sanctuary, in rain.
"I can leave it there. No-one would steal it, anyway." He sighed tiredly, his eyes closing slowly in exhaustion, his head falling down to his chest. He snapped back to consciousness when his chin touched his wet blue T-shirt and he realised he was about to fall asleep.
"You must not," he whispered, knowing that he couldn't allow his body to switch off just like that.
He took his drenched jacket and stretched as far as he could to wring it out. He removed more water so the jacket became only annoyingly wet, and, suddenly, he realised that that water should be drinkable. He looked at the casing; it was lying on the hatch with wires so it should collect some water around the lens. "Thank you, Teyla, for teaching me that," he murmured to the rain.
He knew Teyla was fabulous. He had taught her how to shoot, being more patient and understanding than war-trained John and, consequently, later on, she had enough patience to explain to him how to spend a long time in a strange environment without supplies. She had taught him to collect rainwater when there was no stream. She had shown him which berries were to be picked and which to be avoided. The only thing he needed to watch for with new ones, was animals' behaviour around the bushes. He was finally able to survive stranded somewhere without help. He so missed her surprised questions about things he considered normal, usual.
Rodney rubbed his eyelids and spread the jacket on the needles on the other side of his pit. He was sure it would dry sooner like that.
Just then his stomach reminded itself so loudly that it would make Rodney jump jerkily if he had been somewhere else and not so dog-tired. "Fine, when was the last time I ate?" he wondered aloud, putting his left hand under his ribs to stop the growling.
He realised how hungry he was and that his last meal had been a Power bar three hours after arriving in the ruins, but that was God knew how many hours ago. He sighed and took one wrapper from his pile.
He didn't care about the flavour; he needed to help his starving body to have at least the slightest chance to make it through the night. He knew he had to be careful with them because he had no more than four and he may need them later. And so rationing was a good idea to apply. "One now," he told himself, "and then another one in the morning. It might take me some time to find an edible substitute."
He tugged at the wrapper but his fingers numb with cold couldn't open it because he didn't have a decent grip to pull it apart. Rodney groaned in frustration and bit into the foil. Finally, he did get it open and was rewarded by the smell he had got to know in Stargate Command in Cheyenne mountains. A quick energetic foodstuff for when you didn't want to spend time in the mess hall.
He peeled off the wrapper and dug into his thin dinner. He tried to make it last, taking small bites and chewing as if it was some sort of viscous meat that you couldn't swallow in the entire piece not to suffocate. However, no matter how hard he tried, it disappeared way too quickly. He was still hungry but he told himself mentally that the power bar had been a four-course meal full of calories, that it had been warm, that he was too full to eat anything else.
It helped him only a little because he'd always been very realistic and too well aware of what was going on. To stamp on all the unpleasant feelings, he lay down and curled into fetal position on his left side.
It wasn't like his bed on Atlantis in any way. Although it was harder than beds he had been used to from the Earth, he would have given anything for it because it was perfect even though he had groused about its comfort on many occasions.
He pulled his knees closer to his chin, giving special attention to his injured ankle. He had decided that his foot was alright but his ankle had been twisted and it was possibly sprained. He moved his view behind the green curtain and watched the steady fall of water, not really seeing it. And its soft hiss filled his ears.
Suddenly, Rodney felt a weird sensation just at the door of his left ear canal, then it was gone and he blinked in surprise when he finally heard all sounds around him not muffled.
Then he tried turning to his other side carefully and even his other ear emptied out. He sighed content that the water finally found an escape.
"That's better," he said softly, smiling happily that he wasn't deaf anymore.
He shivered in cold and turned back on his left side with the trunk behind his back. He leant over it and let his mind wander. One of his thoughts concerned Jorgenson's team who must have already debriefed Elizabeth about what had happened. He hoped a rescue team would be sent for him. But the holo-Dart was gone and the rain had already washed away most of his footprints. It would give them hard time to find anything and, just to add, with the vessel and him missing, they would soon assume that he had been captured. The search and rescue mission would meet an early end and they all would return back to Atlantis, to the warmth of the subtropical planet, where it was dry although they lived on the ocean.
Then his thoughts returned to the projector and he occupied himself with the idea of making himself a hologram and projecting himself through the wormhole. But it had to wait. He decided to give it more time when he would be rested and able to repair any possible damage on wiring. He was more than exhausted, more than freezing and too hurt to do it straight away. He would try to fix everything later.
He closed his eyes tiredly, listening to the music of falling rain. He didn't fight it, he succumbed to the darkness which enveloped him so eagerly, letting it take him to a place where nothing hurt, where nothing ached, where all his wishes, as well as nightmares, could come true.
– – – – – – – – – –
John, Teyla, Aiden and Maria reached the ruins. John stopped them at the edge of the forest with a raised fist. The ruins looked like…ruins. They were what he always expected to see when hearing the word. Remnants of the past, some stone, some wood, partly-missing roofs, everything in different states of decay.
John scanned the entrances for a sign of a shadow or a figure. Nothing. But that didn't mean that Rodney wasn't hiding in one of them and, being under stress, he could shoot them without verifying who was really approaching him. "Rodney? Rodney, can you hear me?" he called out not to be hit by a nervously launched bullet.
Nobody responded to John's call but admitting that Rodney wasn't covered somewhere in there was unthinkable for the team.
Maria looked thoroughly in every shadowed part but the ruins appeared to be empty.
"Damn it," John swore silently. Then he looked at others and went to the buildings. Teyla followed him closely behind, Aiden a little while later. Maria pressed her left ring finger to the inner corner of her left eye and wiped the wetness on her soaked uniform. "I'm so sorry, Dr. McKay," she whispered before following John's team.
Meanwhile, John had found the specific entrance which Rodney and Sarah must have studied. It was fully ornamented or rather full of letters. They seemed Ancient but there were some symbols at the very bottom that didn't belong to this race.
"Dammit, McKay, where are you?" John muttered silently, wishing Rodney to appear out of nowhere if nothing else.
Maria motioned to others to go inside not to be exposed to the heavy rain. They all squeezed to the entrance and shone their lights along the corridor.
John noticed that the walls were covered in carved Ancient but he saw a drawing here and there, which looked rather fearsome.
He didn't see any pattern in the symbols but Teyla was more sensitive, frowned at the writing and hummed to herself before announcing: "Have you noticed that a same set of symbols seems to mark a specific part of the wall? Look at that."
She put her torch in her mouth and used her arms to draw imaginary lines across the wall only a few centimetres from the entrance. It was an area of one times two metres and every line was 'moved' by two symbols to the left.
Others watched her astonished and Maria wondered why neither Sarah nor Rodney mentioned that. "By sheer curiosity, can anyone read that?"
John lifted a brow in her direction and she put her hands up, palms facing him in the most unthreatening way. "Just asking."
"Dr. Weir has given me a few lessons in Ancient but I can still distinguish only letters," Teyla admitted, studying the wall. "But this set of symbols," she showed a group of five letters, "is meant to be a warning of sorts. Beware, be afraid of, something like that."
"So the usual 'stay away from our sacred ground' stuff?" Aiden asked her.
John rolled his eyes. This area seemed to be dedicated to the Ancients. And every person who wanted to follow them was welcome in such places. So it may have been a warning for those who wanted to steal something from here or play with technology light years ahead of their evolution. Just like them, in fact.
John called into the corridor to move his attention some place useful. "Doctor McKay, are you down there?" An echo bounced off the walls sending a silent 'there' in all directions.
"Wow," Aiden breathed out. "How deep do you think it is?"
"No idea," John answered looking for any hint of Rodney's presence. Nobody replied to his question so the logical reason was that Rodney wasn't there anymore.
"One would have thought that Dr. McKay would stay here. This corridor is quite a good hiding-place," Maria commented glumly.
"He should have listened to Captain Jorgenson," Aiden supplied.
"Rodney and listen?" John asked incredulously. "That would have been his first." He sighed and looked at the ground. In the dust, there were so many footprints leading in and out that he couldn't say which were Sarah's, which Rodney's and which belonged to Jorgenson's team.
Teyla looked at him, his fixed eyes and stated: "Captain wants to shoot the Dart down at all costs because he couldn't get it the first time. He won't let Sarah disable it with the virus. He doesn't care that Rodney may be onboard."
Teyla completely forgot about Maria but she didn't say anything. She couldn't defend her commander when everything Teyla had said was true. Well, except for the reason. Maria thought that Allan would shoot the Dart down to mask his fault, to mask that he had left Rodney behind to his fate.
She must have looked rather thoughtful because Teyla touched her saying: "Don't get me wrong, Sergeant, but I doubt…"
"Teyla, it's all right, I get it, really." Maria smiled in a more strained way than ever before. "It's partly my fault, I should have said something to Allan…"
John came near her. "Sergeant, it's not always good to oppose commanding officers when they think they're right. It could destroy the relationship people have created among the team. I partly understand that Jorgenson wanted to have you three, whom he's got used to, within his sight but Rodney would have caught up with you easily. He isn't some sort of a gross unfit computer geek who doesn't know what a gym and being in the field are."
The statement caused three giggles to escape and fill the corridor. John's voice softened only to show how fond of Rodney he had become. "We have been attacked by Darts and ground troops so many times that he does know what to do when they arrive. He would stop his work, run, dodge the culling beam and outwit the drones to get to his team. And he knows very well that he has to take the shortest way to the Stargate so if you only let him get to your position and waited for a little while, he would have reached you and nothing of this," he waved his arms around, his shaky voice showing how upset he was, "would be happening."
"We failed, again," Maria hiccuped sadly. Then she inhaled and braced herself. "Dr. McKay informed us that he had found a room at the bottom of the corridor. He might have sought shelter there."
The new hope moved John's team into action. "He may have closed the door or he might be too deep to hear us," John mused. "So, let's go have a look."
Then he remembered others out in the rain, activated his radio and called: "Stackhouse, Jorgenson, do you have something new?"
The first one to answer was Stackhouse: "Everything's clear and calm, sir. Haven't heard a buzz."
Then Allan updated their position: "We haven't found anything, either. Not even a footprint. We're gradually moving to the ruins, checking the maximum of the forest. If anything, we'll let you know."
"Fine," John sobered. "We're at the site, going down the corridor Drs. McKay and Ginger were checking. We'll let Sgt. Vysockaja on guard. Sheppard out."
Then he looked at Maria and asked: "Are you okay with that?"
She nodded. John nodded and set off, Teyla and Aiden following him closely behind.
When they left her imminent hearing range, Maria whispered: "This has to be it. He has to be down there. Please, Dr. McKay, be down there."
John's team carefully descended quite a steep slant of the corridor walking in one line. All around them Ancient letters marked the walls and even the ceiling. Some of them were more eye-catching than others as if they were of more importance. But bare letters couldn't tell them the story. John scratched his head and looked at others; they were watching the walls but more than that they were trying to hear the tiniest noise because they didn't have a clue how long and deep the corridor could be.
Teyla felt as if they were on the way to the centre of the planet. Aiden was in the same mood because he tried joking by: "Do you think Jules Verne got his inspiration in a story about this planet?"
She didn't know the name, didn't need to right now. She decided to ask Rodney on their morning tea…and squeezed her eyes shut when she realised that there wouldn't be any more teas in the near future and maybe anytime in her life. John stopped and sighed. Aiden and Teyla stopped as well because they were walking behind him. John moved to the left so that they all could come close and asked: "How deep do you think we've got?"
"I have no idea," Teyla admitted.
While she was saying that, Aiden began to lean to the wall, paying no attention to anything behind him. Just when John looked up at Teyla, Aiden's back pressed a certain symbol like the one Rodney had missed by few millimetres earlier.
Something clicked, then clattered. And John knew something bad was about to happen. Aiden looked up, terrified at what he had done. The corridor started to creak, crack and groan. John urged Teyla and Aiden away with hands on their back, recognising the sounds. They didn't get too far when the ceiling came down on them…
You know, that happened about the same time Rodney fell under the fir. Just a coincidence…?
