COULD BE WORSE - by NotTasha
Some people have commented that I am not nice after leaving you with that last cliffhanger. This might be true

CHAPTER 14: NUMB

Teyla's one good hand flashed out and grabbed for the flying ring. For a moment she fumbled it, but she would not fail. She caught it as it tumbled, and clasped it tightly. Quickly, she managed to finagle it onto her finger as the Osoyoos lurched forward. The robot plunged its unstoppable arms into the side of the tank.

Water erupted in an explosion as the tank burst, spewing and spraying. Teyla gasped as the liquid came up over her, dousing her, filling her ears, blinding her, and momentarily leaving her senseless. She closed her eyes, sealing her mouth as it coursed around her head.

Eyes shut, she felt around, finding the depression in the robot's neck as the Osoyoos still moved forward. It threw aside the remains of the giant tank. The water coursed through the factory.

The Osoyoos kept moving, splashing through the water that had pooled -- and it headed toward the next tank.

Teyla shook her head, clearing her eyesight as her wet hair hung over her face. On the next tank, she recognized a symbol for 'flammable'.

Without wasting a moment, she shoved the ring into the depression, thinking 'Off, Osoyoos! Turn off! Stop!'

Metal hands reached toward the sign that said 'fuel', and – the whole thing just stopped. Its raised foot came down with a bang, and the machine ground to a halt. One last display of blinking lights, and then the robot went dim. Teyla was left clasped to the shoulder of a giant not-moving robot.

She felt numb and tired as she looked toward the others, to smile in triumph, but they were already running in the other direction.

"Rodney!" John shouted as he splashed through the layer of water. "Rodney!"

Ronon was right after him, ducking and dodging the destruction.

Teyla watched, her eyes wide with horror as she considered the water that now covered the floor, and that Ronon no longer carried their teammate. "You left Rodney?" she shouted in disbelief. "John! Ronon! Where is he? Is he…?"

Sheppard was shouting something, and Teyla stared in disbelief. There wasn't a great deal of water on the floor, but a man could drown in an inch of liquid if he couldn't move his head.

No, she thought. No...

Sheppard yelled out, "The floor is raised here! Thank God! Rodney, we're coming!"

Teyla twisted about in the robot's grip, cradling her hurt arm as she saw Sheppard step around the busted conveyor system.

And then Sheppard shouted -- not a word, but rather a sound of rage and fear.

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No! No no!

Sheppard leaped over the wreck of the conveyor belt, hardly able to see McKay. There was only a sea of flailing hissing lizards – tails, legs, heads. And more were coming, streaming from the vault.

God no! NO! Sheppard felt an icy horror grip him as he lunged at the mass, grabbing handfuls of skahas.

Ronon roared as he dived in. He reached toward Rodney's neck and jerked away the coat that had covered him. Lizards went flying everywhere, smashing into surfaces. Hardly pausing, Ronon grasped onto Rodney and lifted him off the ground and onto his shoulder.

Sheppard breathed out when he realized that the heavy coat had mostly protected the man. It lay crumpled on the ground now, tattered and frayed by the jaws of lizards, bitten to pieces. Rodney was bloodied on his hands and face and a few places where the lizards had made their way through the coat… but at least it hadn't been worse. Still, the knowledge of what had happened under their noses, filled Sheppard with anger.

Sheppard worked quickly, smacking off the lizards that managed to stick to Rodney. Ronon moved backward quickly, stomping on lizards as he moved. John kept close, swiping at the newcomers who continued to leap up at McKay. The skahas weren't giving up. The damn things weren't giving up!

The lizards were everywhere, swarming under their feet, climbing their pant legs. They skittered up walls and came sailing at them as Ronon tried to maneuver through the ruined factory, as Sheppard kept knocking them down.

"Bastards!" Sheppard yelled as another one jumped down from above, aiming for McKay's head. It was smashed into a wall instead. "It's okay, Rodney," Sheppard tried to assure. "We got you now."

And Rodney gave no response. He just breathed with a labored rhythm, his eyes closed and his face pale.

They would make it to the door – to the exit. But there was so much destruction in the way -- it was taking forever to maneuver around it. Ronon did his best, stepping and balancing with McKay. There were so damn many of the skahas.

Suddenly, something blocked their path, and then there was a horrible hiss and a thick mist rose up around them, blinding them.

Sheppard choked. He coughed and blinked against the stinging fog. He could see nothing. No! NO! The hissing increased in intensity and his eyes burned.

"Hold still!" a muffled voice called.

He rubbed furiously at his eyes, blinded.

"Just hold still, fellows! Hedley, get in behind them! That's right. Smart boy! There's more back there! Vernon! Help your brother!"

"Yes, Papa!"

"You're doing great. Go on, Oliver. Get that one that snuck behind that stamping machine. That's it. You got it! Good work, men!"

The fog cleared, slowly sinking to the floor of the factory, revealing Winfield and a small army of children, all masked and wearing goggles, armed with tanks and spray-rods. One boy, who no more than five, was spraying the bejeebus out of an obviously dead lizard.

Winfield pulled the mask from his mouth, and dropped a hand onto the boy's head and mussed his hair, getting the child to stop his attack. "Good boy, Oliver. You did it just like I taught you." The boy did a little dance of glee.

All around them in the settling mist were the carcasses of lizards -- hundreds of them, maybe thousands, in horrible twisted poses – dead.

The Bankier Exterminator pulled off his goggles and beamed at Sheppard, with that smile that was just a bit too large for his face. "Colonel Sheppard!" he called. "The missus did it in time! She whipped up a batch of lizard killer, and then me and the boys took it from there."

As glad as Sheppard was that the lizards were dead, there was something more important at the moment. Ronon was jiggling McKay as he held him tight to his shoulder. The Satedan's face furrowed in concern.

"Ronon?" Sheppard asked. "How is he?"

"Breathin' real bad," Ronon responded. And together they listened to the shallow, irregular gasps.

Rodney was fighting for air. Sheppard felt numb at that realization. He pressed a hand to Ronon's back and ordered, "Go!"

And Ronon, holding tightly to Rodney, and took off in a run, dodging through the rest of the room, smashing dead lizards beneath his feet. He disappeared through the doorway and ran out into the alleyways of the city.

Sheppard watched him go, then turned abruptly and went in another direction. He hurried to the Osoyoos, where a dripping-wet Teyla was still clasped in its grip. Winfield and his boys continued their search and destroy mission.

"Rodney?" Teyla asked, as John reached her. "Is he going to be all right?"

Sheppard shrugged, and he set to work freeing her.

"You should have gone with them," Teyla chided. "It is a long distance and Ronon could have used your help."

"He'll manage it," Sheppard responded as he fussed about, trying to figure out how to make the robot's arm lift.

"You should have gone with Rodney," Teyla persisted.

Sheppard didn't deny her statement, but returned with, "I'm not leaving you. And we need some more information before we can go back." And he cursed himself because his hands didn't want to work. He wasn't able to do much of anything as he pried at the Osoyoos.

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Sheppard woke in the infirmary. He felt a little numb, and for a moment, he was confused and lost. It took concentration to remember what had happened.

He'd managed to free Teyla with the help of some of the Bankier workers and a crowbar. Winfield had supplied him with samples of the lizard killing concoction, along with several dead lizards for analysis. The exterminator had offered up information on how they usually treated victims of skaha bites, had given them access to medications.

By then, the numbness had crept up to John's elbows and had taken over most of his feet. Teyla was suffering from a concussion and a broken arm, along with a number of abrasions and colorful bruises. Together, they'd leaned on each other and managed to make it through the Gate to return to Atlantis – where Rodney and Ronon were already being treated.

The samples gathered from Winfield were given to Keller, and Sheppard had been confined to the infirmary, along with the others. And then they waited. He remembered looking across to Ronon, who sat up in bed, looking bewildered and numb as his unmoving arms were crossed in his lap.

Sheppard didn't even remember getting bitten. It felt like his arms were dying -- inch-by-inch. It felt as if he were losing his legs. It was horrifying, to feel the numbness creep up on him, to know that it might not stop.

Rodney, they'd taken him away. They'd spirited him to another room where the entire complement of Atlantis' doctors were leaning over him, shouting and whispering and keeping him apart from the rest of them. The doctors were worried, that's all Sheppard knew. They were very worried.

And then Keller came bustling in, looking nervous and unsure, but injecting both John and Ronon with a substance that she said would hopefully cure them. She'd examined what Winfield had given them, and cleared it for administering. When it didn't immediately kill them, she rushed away, to try the same thing on Rodney.

The numbness stayed, and John was tired. And so he slept without really meaning to. He had strange dreams of green and purple lizards and robots with flashy lights, of stairways and factories and autumn colors and terribly lonely emptiness that ate at him until he couldn't stand it anymore, and so he awoke.

He knew that he was in the infirmary from the instant he took his first deep breath. He knew the scents, he knew the sounds and the sights. There was the standard beeping of monitors, and the quiet clatter of tools being moved about, softly murmured voice -- but also a strange wheezing that he couldn't identify.

Carefully, he flexed one hand, finding he was capable of moving it, but he had very little sensation, as if he'd leaned on it for too long, as if the hand had fallen asleep. He stared, watching his hand move.

"Colonel Sheppard," he heard a friendly voice call, and looked up to find Doctor Keller beside him. "It's good to see you're finally awake," she said cheerfully.

"It's good to be awake," he said hoarsely.

Sheppard quickly looked beyond her, searching. Ronon sat up in the next bed, watching him speculatively. "Sheppard," Dex said as a greeting.

Teyla was in the bed beyond -- bandaged, bruised and sporting a cast. She gave him a friendly but reserved expression -- and said nothing.

Keller smiled kindly. "I see you're able to move your hand. That's excellent progress, Colonel." She picked up the hand and kneaded it gently for him. "Do you have any sensation? Are you able to…"

"How is he?" Sheppard asked, not looking at her, but rather at his teammates because he knew they would tell him the truth. "Rodney? Where?"

Their expressions changed to something solemn. "Over there," Ronon stated, pointing to the bed on the other side of Sheppard.

John turned and finally realized what the strange whooshing noise came from.

Rodney -- Unable to breathe on his own, he was hooked up to a ventilator, along with a half dozen other monitors and devices. Sheppard stared, trying to take it in. Rodney looked utterly helpless amid all the equipment, machines that were the only things keeping him alive.

Keller cleared her throat and explained, "His organs were starting to shut down, but we were able to get to him in time. We believe we stopped the advancement of the toxin, so there's been no further damage. It's just that…. we haven't seen a turnaround yet." She walked around the bed until she was beside Rodney and she checked his monitors.

"He'd stopped breathing before I got him through the Gate," Ronon informed solemnly. "He was struggling, then he just stopped. Didn't know whether to set him down and start rescue breathing – or just run. I ran."

"Which reminds me," Keller said, not turning from the devices, "Ronon, did you really need to carry him all by yourself? He's not light, and there were other people around. You could have found some of the Bankiers to help."

Ronon snorted derisively.

Keller nodded, understanding, and said, "Well, I had to say something. You're not going to be a spring chicken forever, you know."

"Chicken?" Ronon repeated, not sounding happy at all.

"We were able to intubate him almost immediately," Keller assured. "I believe we caught him in time."

"How is he?" Sheppard asked softly, watching the machine that breathed for Rodney, not wanting to look at the pale, expressionless face, the hands that seemed so lifeless at his sides. The tiny bites of the deadly lizards had been bandaged and stitched, leaving him looking pockmarked and strange.

"He's… hanging in there," Keller said, smiling again, and Sheppard noticed the phoniness to her expression, the forced pleasantness.

"How much longer is he going to be like this?" Sheppard went on, squeezing his hands into fists and feeling more sensation with every passing moment.

Keller sighed. "You and Ronon received several bites from the creatures while you were fighting the off the skahas."

Sheppard looked for patches on his arms and hands.

Noting his examination, Keller told him, "I guess they barely break the skin when they make their first attack on a person. They wait until their prey is immobilized to do any… real damage." And she turned her head toward McKay as she spoke.

"Is he…okay?" Sheppard asked tentatively.

Keller looked as if she didn't know how to answer the question. "He did receive several more bites. None were severe. They'll heal… if…" And she shook her head as if she didn't want to go any further. "You and Ronon were both able to recover relatively quickly because we caught it so soon." She pointed to Sheppard's hands. "Feeling and movement is returning, isn't it?"

Sheppard flexed his hand and nodded.

She tried to keep her expression neutral as she said, "There's been no progress for Rodney. The toxin was allowed to go unchecked for a very long time, and there were those extra bites." She sounded discontent as she stared at the monitors.

Sheppard glanced to Teyla and Ronon. Neither spoke. Both reflected the same look of helplessness that he felt.

Keller went on, quietly, the cheeriness gone from her disposition, "I've been able to modify the Bankiers' medication to make it more effective. I would have hoped for some improvement by now, that he'd have some response to stimuli, but there has been no change."

"So… maybe he's stuck like this?" Sheppard asked.

"It's possible," Keller admitted, sounding quiet and small.

"A vegetable?" Sheppard spat out the word.

Keller turned sharply to face him, with a strange expression of surprise. "We don't use that terminology, Colonel," she said, and then sighed. "And, it's not like that." She pointed to one monitor where a line pulsed rapidly across the screen. "His brain activity has been quite pronounced. He's awake right now." Her voice took on a sadness as she went on, "He's awake, but he just can't hear us, can't see us, can't feel anything. He's just there – in his head."

Sheppard closed his eyes, trying to take in this information, and finding it almost beyond his comprehension. He ran his numbed hand over his forehead. Crap, Rodney, he thought. I'm so damn sorry.

From the next bed, Ronon said nothing, and Teyla sighed.

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TBC - Okay, so...they're home at least, right?