MGM owns all characters and dialogue from GateWorld.
A/N: Thanks for all the reviews. Koinekid gave me a glowing endorsement in the latest chapter of Valentine's Day in the Bay. I will tell you KK's one of my favorite authors; check out the story and others if you want some outstanding McKeller reads.
Thanks Betherdy Babe for the beta.
Jennifer reached into the jacket and pulled out the walkie-talkie, activating it. Rodney's going to kill me. "Rodney, can you hear me?"
Rodney, exasperated at Tunney for shutting down his attempt to shut off the bridge, grabbed a walkie-talkie and spoke to her, "Please tell me you got through to the S.G.C."
"No," Jennifer replied meekly.
"Well, you've gotta keep trying."
"I'd love to but my phone got a little soaked. It's not even turning on," Jennifer replied.
"What?" Rodney asked. "How'd the phone get wet?"
"My hallway got hit by that freeze lightning thing," Jennifer replied as a violent shudder wracked her body.
"Are you okay?" Rodney cried. Fear coursed through him as the image of Jennifer alone resurrected itself in his mind. Please be okay! I'll never forgive myself if she gets hurt.
"I am now, but I won't be for long," she replied.
"What happened?" Calm down. Deep breathes. She's talking. She'll be okay. It's just a phone.
"I'm frozen in and the pipe's busted open. M-m-my body temperature's dropping r-really f-fast. I'm soaked," she answered as she began shivering. Shivering is good. The body's keeping itself warm, the physician told herself.
"Tunney!" Rodney could be heard screaming over the radio.
"Okay, I'll radio security and we'll get someone out to her right away," Tunney replied.
"Hurry," Rodney snapped at him. Speaking back into the radio, he said, "Look, security's on the way. I need you just to sit tight and try to stay warm, okay? They'll be there soon." Glancing at the wall he saw the monitor read 20 F. If he didn't have to shut down Tunney's experiment, nothing would keep him from going to her.
"I'm s-s-sorry I didn't get t-t-the c-all through." Jennifer couldn't keep her teeth from chattering or feeling like a failure.
"You did your best," Rodney said, trying to make her feel better. He could've used Carter and company to help him, but he'd make due on his own.
"Did you shut that thing down?" Jennifer asked.
"Not yet. We're working on it," Rodney said with obvious disappointment in his voice.
"Hurry," she said softly. Stay calm. Try to say warm. Rodney said they'll be here soon and he's always right. Trying to stamp her feet in place to keep the blood flowing, she couldn't help but note that the oppressive cold was slowing her movements already.
"Yeah. Just stay calm and try to stay out of the water." He couldn't shake the sense that he needed to personally save Jennifer. He glanced toward the hallway with a thought of running to her, but…
"McKay," Bill Nye called out.
"Okay, look, I gotta go. Someone's on the way, all right?" Rodney said.
"G-go s-s-save the day," Jennifer said with a smile. The thought that she should remove the jacket, which was now stuck to her and had soaked through to her dress, passed through her mind after the radio fell silent. Because it belonged to Rodney it made her feel closer to him so she stayed her hands. Moving into the furthest corner away from the growing puddle of freezing water, she rubbed her hands up and down her arms. The tremors and chattering were getting worse and the symptoms of hypothermia began to float through her mind. "S-s-security's on t-t-the w-way," she said aloud to calm her racing heart.
Rodney ran over to see what Nye was shouting about. "What is it?"
"Containment failure in three... two ... one..."
The men in the control room looked at the ceiling as if waiting for a tornado to rip it off. When that did not happen, their eyes drifted to some external cameras on the wall and saw swirling sand and dust.
"Winds aloft reaching dangerous levels," Nye said as his eyes turned to the weather monitoring station in the control room.
"If it continues like this, we're gonna have a mess of tornadoes on our hands," Tunney added.
"Great – even less time before we die," Rodney snarked as his mind raced. What am I missing? Thoughts of Jennifer made its way into his mind and her words from earlier echoed through his brain. What I wouldn't give to have Radek here?
"Look, this device is capable of generating its own power, right?" Rodney began to talk out loud and hoped these idiots would say something intelligent.
"Yeah. A small percentage of the energy that we're transferring is siphoned off to power the device; once it's running it's self-sustaining," Tunney explained.
"Which is why we can't just pull the plug," Rodney said.
"Exactly," Tunney agreed.
"But it's only capable of powering itself to a certain extent, right? I mean it has a finite amount of power diversion capability." Rodney's mind raced down a new path and his face lit up.
"Well, yes, of course." Tunney rolled his eyes, glancing at Bill Nye.
"Maybe we've been approaching this the wrong way. We've been trying to force so much power through the bridge that it overloads it. I mean, maybe we should be trying to starve it – I mean, suck so much power from its generator that it stalls it out," Rodney said.
"Well, technically we could do that, but you'd have to draw an insane amount of power. The heat sink could never do that." Tunney's doubt was evident on his face.
"No, but another space/time bridge could." That's it! Finally.
"You wanna open another space/time bridge?" Tunney asked in disbelief.
"The device was rigged to power a single bridge. We open another one..."
"And it overwhelms the system and it fails." Tunney completed his thought.
Rodney ran to the console. "It'll work."
"Yeah, but d'you have any idea how difficult it's gonna be to configure the system to open two concurrent space/time bridges?" Tunney challenged.
"I never said it was gonna be easy," Rodney countered.
"It's gonna be impossible," Tunney cried.
"Hey, I'm Doctor Rodney McKay, all right? Difficult takes a few seconds, impossible a few minutes," Rodney said, spreading his arms wide.
Groans of disbelief from the other scientists in the room met his arrogant boast.
Jennifer was huddled on the floor in a corner of the corridor. The water was still flowing about halfway across the hall from her location and had reached her feet, which she stopped feeling several minutes ago. At least she thought it was a few minutes ago. Maybe I've been here hours. Pulling the walkie-talkie from her pocket, she noticed her hands weren't shaking. Shivering stopped, that's not good. "Rodney, can you hear me?"
"Have they got you out of there yet?" Rodney grabbed the radio as his heart skipped a beat. Her voice sounded weak and… fearful.
"No," she said. The young woman from Wisconsin always joked that if she had to choose her death it would be hypothermia because you just went to sleep. Now she wasn't so sure. The physician in her knew that the last thing she should do was sit down and close her eyes, but her body was overriding her brain.
"Tunney, what the hell! I thought you sent security?" Rodney screamed.
"They can't get to her," Tunney replied.
"What? Why not?" Rodney walked over, ripping the tablet from Tunney's hands to look at the facility schematics.
"That last round of freeze lightning sealed off one of the corridors. You see, they're making their way to her but it's gonna take some time." Tunney pointed to the map.
Jennifer overheard the conversation. No one was coming. "It's getting hard-harder to stay awake. I'm going into hypothermic shock," she said before her logical thoughts fled. "I love you, Rodney." Her final words came out after she dropped the radio with a splash in the water. It's not cold anymore, she thought. I guess I should have sat down a long time ago.
"Jennifer, just-just hang in there, all right?" The Canadian knew the dangers of extreme cold as well as any physician, having gotten lost and nearly frozen to death when he was seven. If she's self-diagnosing, she's still okay. We've still got time. "We're here, right?" Rodney pointed to the lab on the map.
"Uh-huh."
"So we can get to her. It's a straight shot," Rodney shouted, pointing at Jen's location. "I mean they should have come this way through the lab!"
"They're cut off from us too," Tunney said.
"Okay, I've gotta go get her," Rodney said, looking wildly around the room for a moment. Panic gripped him, but it was a controlled panic. Nothing else mattered except the fact that the woman he loved and cherished needed him.
"No, wait a minute. We're a little bit busy right now," Tunney shouted at Rodney as the genius turned to the door.
"She'll die." Rodney's tolerance of Malcolm Tunney reached its breaking point.
"Yeah, but you know what? If the storm keeps up like this, it's gonna rip the building apart and we'll all die," Tunney's panicky voice responded.
"Last time I checked, you were claiming to be a genius. I already gave you the plan."
"A plan full of holes," Tunney whined.
"So fill them," Rodney snapped. I gotta go. Time's of the essence when you're freezing.
"Wha-what if I run into a problem?" Tunney squeaked as his voice rose.
"Work around it!" Rodney clenched the radio tightly to keep from slugging Tunney.
"You're smarter than me," Tunney admitted.
"I know," Rodney said, straightening up. "And because I am, I have to go."
"McKay!" Tunney could be heard screaming as Rodney ran down the corridor.
Hang on Jennifer. I'm coming.
Jennifer jerked awake. It was so dark that she let out a cry. Since she was a little girl, she hated the darkness.
"It's okay, sweetie. I'm here."
"Mom?" Jennifer said as she pulled herself out of her bed. Her legs were shaky and she had no idea where to go because it was too dark.
"I'm here," Anna Keller spoke from a place nearby.
Taking several steps in the darkness, Jennifer slipped and fell onto the floor. "Rodney," she cried as her mother's voice was replaced with the man she loves' final request to just hang in there. Tears would not come because her body had already begun to shut down. I'm so sorry I can't hold on anymore.
As Rodney raced down the corridor he skidded to a halt after he passed a fire axe in a cabinet on the wall. I could use that. She said the doors were frozen. Running back, he opened the case and took out the axe.
The desperate man ran down a short flight of stairs to a frozen door at the end of the corridor and began to hack into it with the axe. After three blows he opened a small hole in the wood and the sight before his eyes when he peered in made his heart stop. Jennifer was lying unconscious in a pool of water.
"Jennifer!" Rodney screamed. It was a visceral scream. A scream like Rodney heard when someone's life was sucked out by a Wraith and that's exactly what was happening to him, a life with Jennifer Keller was being taken away.
His father and the Beavers in Fort McMurray could not teach him how to properly wield an axe, but the physicist chopped with an adrenaline-induced strength that would have made the naysayers of his youth proud. "Hang on, Jennifer."
TBC
A/N:We are nearing the end of the episode, but I am continuing this story to the end of the series (Enemy at the Gates). Getting lots of questions about that, so wanted to let you all know it won't be over for some time.
