The jumper bay didn't have any windows, at least none that they had ever managed to find or open. A portal could open in the ceiling or floor to admit the jumpers, and there were of course the human-sized entrances, but they did not open to the outside. So when the lights went out, they were plunged into a thick, inky blackness that was almost entirely unrelieved.
In fact, the only light left was that which came from Rodney's tablet. To prevent the imp from hopping in and shorting it out and then jumping back to the Atlantis mainframe, Rodney had disconnected the tablet from the rest of the network, in fact pulled the hardware that allowed it to connect with other computers at all in order to protect it until they were ready.
Every other light in the room had been plugged into and powered by Atlantis because Rodney hadn't wanted to waste a second with a new setup, hoping to get there before the imp concentrated enough of its power on this particular room. It had several other things to do after all.
Up in operations, Sheppard had assigned the 'Gate Operations team to the task of attempting to reassert control over the systems the imp had been fooling with. There was an additional team in the power room trying to assume direct control, not with the expectation of succeeding, but in the hope of keeping the imp busy. It seemed they almost had, seeing as the worst Rodney and Zelenka had been forced to put up with up to now was a chattering imp.
But now, it was clearly abandoning all other areas of attention to put a stop to this jumper bay nonsense. Assuming it was truly enough of an AI to "know" anything, it knew that this was the end for it if it could not stop Rodney from implementing his plan. Thus, it had marshaled all of its control over the Atlantis systems and was attacking the jumper bay with everything it had.
The darkness was merely the first step. Zelenka, well inside the jumper, had almost immediately made a lunge for the emergency equipment therein, which included flashlights. Zelenka had barely clicked the light on when Rodney felt a blast of heated air rush by him like the furnace breath of a dragon. It struck Zelenka and hit with enough force that he dropped the flashlight, which then rolled into the cavity in the floor left by the panel Rodney had earlier removed.
The light went out.
Vaguely, Rodney wondered how much wind force the air conditioning systems of Atlantis could bring to bear. The exploration and research teams deployed throughout the city really hadn't messed with those systems much, as the default settings kept things quite livable and they all had much more interesting matters to pursue. Now, for the first time, Rodney wished he'd assigned some teams to the more mundane aspects of the city. He would have felt better knowing if Atlantis could generate its own hurricane-force winds. He had already recently been acquainted with the fact that it could crank up the heat sufficiently to roast a live turkey, which had been news to him, albeit not terribly surprising news.
Suddenly the blackness was full of skittering, hissing, snarling sounds. Hellish noises that jarred him out of his train of thought and managed to freak him out despite the fact that he knew they were just sounds. And then came more of the damnable demon cackling, first coming from across the room, then suddenly right up next to him. The ruffle of heat from the A/C made it feel like something was hotly breathing on him as it laughed in his ear, and he involuntarily recoiled, which resulted in his crashing into the panel he'd propped against a bench. He let out a startled cry as he staggered, trying not to fall.
"Rodney!" Teyla called, her clear voice sharp yet reassuring, "Remember: it is unreal. It is merely attempting to distract you. Finish your work now."
Her advice was solid, and he knew it, but it was easier said than done. Looking around, Rodney spotted his tablet, left on the bench when he'd gotten up to talk to Ronon and Teyla. Cautiously, he went to it, nearly colliding with Zelenka as they both sought to bring an end to this.
Zelenka unleashed a stream of Czech that sounded like cursing, and then something like an apology. Rodney chose to ignore that, and picked up the tablet.
"Be ready to power up the jumper on my signal," Rodney told him.
They needed to get this right. If the tablet connected to the network too soon, the imp would have the chance to destroy the tablet, make the leap to the jumper and then make good its escape back into the Atlantis mainframe. If the jumper came on before the tablet connected, the imp would go there directly, sabotage it again and return to the mainframe, bypassing the tablet entirely. Their timing needed to be perfect, and that was what the imp was now seeking to prevent.
It had first tried to stop Teyla from receiving permission for them to go ahead, but now that they were abandoning getting a final word of permission altogether, it needed to upset Rodney and Zelenka's coordination, to get them out of sync. More hot air rushed into the jumper, but Zelenka had found the manual control for the hatch, and shut it. The air blasted against the jumper's skin and it rocked. The interior began to heat, but only slowly.
"That should buy us time," Zelenka remarked.
Some. But not much.
Lorne took the stairs one careful step at a time, deeply aware of his current isolation from any other member of the human race, which was a much more uncomfortable thing than merely being outside his home galaxy. Even if the team was still in range, he doubted the radio signal could penetrate the thick rock walls of the lower level. He didn't trust his footing, tested each step before placing his full weight on it. The stairs might have been stone, but Lorne had just had a hard lesson in how easily that could give way once enough time had gotten to it. He also found as he went from a relatively level floor to the steep, winding staircase that his balance was still a little uncertain after the fall.
The walls were close around the staircase, which otherwise had no railing, and Lorne considered it a good thing he wasn't claustrophobic… because the space already felt quite small enough without the irrational sense that it was shrinking. The stairs were small too, as if they had been made for something much narrower of body than himself, yet with legs that were the same length as his or slightly longer. Trying to visualize such a creature brought only a mental picture of a bipedal stick insect-like creature, and he didn't like that image very much at all.
After about an eternity in the confines of the stairs, he finally was released into the openness of another room. The air smelled the way it does when it hasn't moved or been breathed in years. Not even dusty, as nothing down here had been disturbed in so many centuries that the dust had settled into an almost solid state. It was cold, but not biting as the chill on the surface was, it was simply the numbing kind of cold you can almost ignore but that gradually sinks into you, reaching more for your soul than your bones. It felt like the sort of place that even the ghosts had left behind eons ago, but turning back didn't so much as cross his mind. Maybe it was just the headache combined with his earlier case of nerves, but he still had the uncanny feeling that he'd fallen down here for a reason.
If there was a device in here, he had to try and shut it down so the team might make it home in time for Christmas… whether they liked it or not.
As with the room upstairs, there were passages adjoining the room he'd entered. But there were a lot more passages down here, twisting and turning in about a thousand different directions. The prospect of trying to explore the place in full was daunting, particularly as the passages were narrow and seemed to swallow the light from his flash rather than allowing it to illuminate them. At first glance, it looked like Lorne had wandered unknowingly into a maze, a thought which gave him a moment of pause, before he gathered himself, picked the nearest passage and started down it.
The passage cut left and then right, and then seemed almost to turn back on itself, before abruptly ending nowhere. Lorne again stopped. For a little while, he examined the end of the passage and its surrounding walls, thinking maybe there was a hidden mechanism to reveal a secret room or something. But he gave it up before long. If there was some sort of hidden mechanism, he couldn't find it. But if there wasn't, then he couldn't fathom what the passage was for. The latter possibility worried him more, because it served to remind him how little he knew of whatever race had built this place.
A few forays down some other passages revealed that they tended to lead to dead ends or rooms with unidentifiable objects (or nothing at all) in them. This was vaguely reassuring, as it meant the place wasn't as maze-like as it first appeared to be. At the same time, it made him more uneasy because the design continually didn't conform to anything familiar. The lack of clear markings or etchings also bothered him. Most races tended to decorate their walls, or leave written instructions or messages. He didn't expect to be able to read it, but for it not to even be there made him still more uncomfortable because of how unusual it was out here in the galaxy.
Most of the doors had broken down with age, leaving behind frames for something definitely narrower in body than the average human. Lorne could fit through the doorways easily enough, but they felt cramped, as did the width of the passages. But the height of the ceiling (and top of the doorways) continued to suggested creatures as tall or taller than himself.
Either that or the race had really loved high ceilings. The Ancients certainly had.
He was becoming less certain that he would even be able to recognize what he was looking for when he found it. It was true that most technology had basic features in common. On and off switches, trigger mechanisms and so on, and the more alien tech you were familiar with, the easier it got to recognize the similarities between them. But it was also true that there were vastly different species out there in the universe, whose technology conformed to no human expectation. The fact that there were tunnels and doorways at all said this race had some features in common with humans, but the passages that seemed to wind around and ultimately lead nowhere suggested some definite differences as well, and those might include what he was still assuming was an anti-Ancient tech device.
Nagging at the back of Lorne's mind now though was all the species capable of accomplishing any number of feats mentally and physically rather than technologically. What if what he was looking for was actually some kind of creature, and this was its lair or nest? That wasn't a happy thought. Nor was considering the possibility of a creature capable of taking out a puddle jumper with the power of a thought, or something even less comprehensible. If it was a creature, had it been very near them but somehow invisible when it knocked them down? Or could it kill the jumper from far away? SG-teams had encountered both types in their travels, and more.
It didn't feel like these passages had been used in hundreds of years, there hadn't even been any animals down here helping the crevices to collect dust or spiderwebs. But that could be an illusion. In fact, the whole place might be. There was a truly unsettling thought.
Lorne decided he had to believe in the reality he was experiencing until given cause to suspect it of being false, otherwise he couldn't function. That being the case, he had to accept the evidence that nothing but him had been down here recently, despite the hair on the back of his neck standing up, warning that he might find a horrific monster around the next corner, or the one after that.
No more than a few minutes after making that decision, he became aware of a low thrumming. Putting a hand out to the nearest wall, he felt a vibration in it, one that repeated. He remembered the tremors he'd noticed before, and realized this was the same thing, but from a different angle.
Something powerful was at work down here in the dark, and that demanded a closer look, even as his instincts rebelled and told him to get away from it, the same as an insect recognizing the web-lined hole of a tarantula will flee if it recognizes the danger soon enough.
It was disquieting to be thinking of insects and spiders just now, but Lorne couldn't shake them out of his imagination, which normally couldn't be called hyperactive but certainly seemed to be in full gear now. Nothing like mysterious noises coming from dark, twisting passages to fill the mind with all sorts of horrible notions. He tried to be amused by his own unfounded feelings of alarm… but it was easier to fool everyone else than it was to fool himself, especially with no one down here but him.
Rather than go down first one passage and then another, which was liable to take all day, Lorne chose to take a risk, and trace the thrumming to its source.
Following the sound certainly wasn't difficult, but it did take awhile to track it back to its point of origin. The closer he got, the more the air around him seemed to vibrate, until he could feel the pulse of it in his bones. His brain wanted to find a rhythm to it, like a heartbeat, but if there was any pattern at all, he couldn't find it. The irregularity of the sound renewed his unease, and sharpened its edge.
Eventually, he became aware of a light besides the one he was carrying. Turning off his flashlight, Lorne saw the passage he had entered was actually awash with a blue glow, distinctly the same hue as he'd seen on the plinth. He stopped warily. Though its significance was often overlooked on Earth, SG-teams had learned that certain types of light could do a lot of things to people, everything from inducing a trance-like stupor to suicidal depression to manic insanity.
Not that it was much protection, but Lorne decided to put on his sunglasses, figuring they were unlikely to do him any harm, and they might even do a bit of good if he was lucky.
Then he continued on towards the doorway through which the glow, and the thrumming, emanated.