Day One
Chapter Five
Whether it was the sudden rain of gun-fire coming somewhere behind him, or the blood curdling scream that was all too quickly cut off, Sheppard couldn't quite tell which made him panic more. It was the sudden realization that his team had been cut in half and that the missing half was in some dire situation.
Turning back, he ran, rifle raised unsure of what exactly he might find round the next few bends, Estin tromping behind him. John at first couldn't tell if it was the burst of ammunition or the pounding of the blood in his ears as he backtracked. All he knew was one thing, Ford was no longer behind him and now the shit had most certainly hit the fan.
With Estin close behind Sheppard turned a corner and skidded to a halt. There laying on the ground was someone's gun, either Bouds or Fords, the Major didn't know for certain. The rifle's light was still turned on, its beam hitting a vacant stretch of wall. Sheppard gingerly picked up the gun, examining it, startled to find that its light was splattered with tiny specks of blood.
"Sir?" Came Estin from behind, his voice hesitant as he saw the blood soaked gun.
John looked about the section of hall, noticing several scattered patches of blood here and there, becoming more frequent where the corridor lead back towards the main way into the sector. Without orders Sheppard followed it, slowly, keeping an eye out for any sign of his missing team members, though he wouldn't even dare let himself think of the possibility that they might be dead. The blood trail lead on as the small splatters became bigger, more numerous as they moved causing a lump to grown in John's gut. All the while somewhere in the back of his mind, he registered hearing a low thump, in fact a series of thumps coming up ahead.
Sheppard stopped and urged his ears to focus, glancing about the hallway as he found himself near the first of the enclosed rooms contained in the sector. "Do, you hear something?" He asked Estin, turning to him.
The lieutenant paused, nodding his head after a few moments. "I think its coming from, here." Estin went passed Sheppard moving along the right wall until the corridor opened up and they were back where they started, main hall to the left, secondary corridor up ahead. The thumping continued, followed by what sounded like muffled yelling.
John walked up the solid wall, he remembered noticing this enclosed room when they first came upon it. He hadn't seen a door and assumed it must have been down one of the other hallways or, entered from another room that it was connected to. Sheppard placed his hand on the wall, feeling the pounding under his fingertips he quickly pressed his ear to the warm metal.
Beckett grabbed McKay's arm, halting him from hitting the door again as he raised a finger to his lips, requesting silence. Rodney looked to him wondering how the doctor could have possibly heard anything with all the commotion they were making. McKay then realized that outside, everything had grown deathly silent. A fearful thought crept over his mind that perhaps Sheppard and his men had met up with whatever was running around out there and----he shook the notion from his mind, he couldn't bare to think about it any longer. They had to get out of here, all of them, he wouldn't except any other alternative to that.
Rodney had braced himself against the doorway with one hand on the panel, suddenly he yanked it away as if the metal had grown unbearably hot. Carson watched as the physicist quickly placed his hand back, waiting. From the other side there came a set of thumps –thud thud thud – taking a long deep breath McKay knocked on the door with his fist. – thud thud----thud thud thud –
There was a pause, both doctors held their breath. –thud---thud – Came from the other side making McKay smile.
"Shave and a hair cut." Mused Beckett as he clapped Rodney on the shoulder.
"Looks like we might make it after all." Rodney slid down the embankment of the debris blocking the door and jogged over to the generator, slipping behind it and giving Beckett a wave that he was going to shut it down. With a spark of electricity, the machine died away plunging them into darkness.
Pulling the walkie-talkie out of his pocket, Carson clicked over. "Major Shappard, please tell me that's you on the other side of this door." Beckett waited then, hoping Rodney was still standing by the generator just incase they had to reactivate it quickly.
"One and only."Came the voice of the Major, making Beckett openly sigh in much needed relief.
"It's good to hear from you John, how's everyone out there?" As Carson took on his nurturing role, making sure all was well before he concentrated on his own survival.
"Wish I had good news for you doc. Ford and Bouds are missing, I followed a trail of blood here. As of right now, I don't know if either of them are seriously hurt."
Beckett swallowed hard, that must have been the gun-fire they had heard before. It wasn't Sheppard trying to make contact with them or, a small encounter, it was possible the last ditch attempt made by Bouds or Ford to live. "Major you have to get us out of here, I can't do any good trapped in this room."
"Tell me about it." Sheppard sounded more worried then his usual unobtrusive chilled tone. "Well from what I can tell, it seems someone went to a heck of a lot of trouble to seal this room off." John's voice shifting to its typical calm extreme, though this didn't put the doctor at any more ease then he was before.
"Wait---what do you mean John? I'm sitting right in front of the door out, where are you?"
"Ah, right in front of you. That's what I'm saying, there's no door. I've been knocking on every panel this place has to offer. Go figure you're in a room with no exit because there's no exit to begin with." Sheppard urged trying to get the point across that he wasn't going nuts, that there was in fact no door what so ever to the room the two doctors were trapped in.
"Alright, so, this exit is twice as thick now, that's what you're saying?"
Sheppard replied sounding like he had a touch of laughter in his voice, when really it was an awkward titter. "You're the one telling me you're by a door Beckett, so yeah. We would have found you sooner, in fact, I'm amazed we found you at all considering for all intensive purposes, your door doesn't exist."
"Tell him there's a control sensor." Called McKay from across the room, sounding quite raddled from the conversation between the doctor and the Major. He made his way carefully and slowly back to the entrance, his hands reaching out as he felt the caved in ceiling. Rodney moved to his left, to where he remembered the door sensor was, wondering if he could, with the generator off, make the damn thing work.
Beckett turned round in the darkness, talking to where he thought he heard Rodney's voice coming from, assuming it was his current location and finding it surprisingly right beside him. "It won't matter. The entrance has been sealed on the other side, hence why Sheppard missed it in the first place. This door is pointless."
McKay retorted. "Yeah but not if we can get it open, that's cutting the thickness of the wall in half right?"
Beckett shook his head, talking with a hand that Rodney could barely see in the blackness. "You yourself said the sensor was destroyed beyond usefulness, your saying now you can fix it?"
"I'm saying I can try." Rodney replied honestly, trying to impede the doctor's worry. "But I need to get inside the sensor and work with it, but I need to be able to see to do that."
Feeling up his pockets, Carson pulled out a thin short object, which felt like a pen. He ran his thumb over it handing it towards McKay's voice. "All I have is my penlight. Will that do?"
"Do you like, carry that thing around everywhere?" Letting out a snort, the physicist reached a hand out, grasping at thick heated air, searching blindly for Beckett's hand.
"Ah, I am doctor am I not? Of course I do, they practically issue them out with your diploma. Now will it be enough or not?" Beckett spoke hurriedly not wanting to drop the only light they had into the debris below, if that happened, they would never get it back.
"It'll do." Finally the two met hands and the penlight was exchanged. McKay clicked the little push button on the top and the little light shown softly. He shined it up at Carson, almost thankful to see the doctor was still sitting there. Without warning came the Major's voice once more over the radio in Beckett's hand.
"You guys still alive in there?"
"Yes Major. McKay and I have come up with a plan but we need your assistance on the other end. Now, Rodney thinks he can get the door open by jerry rigging the sensor."
Sheppard was silent for a moment, seeming to be thinking. "I could get a blowtorch run up here, start cutting through on my end meet you half way, how does that sound?"
"Just what we had in mind Major." Beckett was glad that he and John were on the same ball. "Now, it's going to take some time, but I'm guessing by the time you get back with a torch we'll have things all sorted out."
"We hope." Muttered McKay with a hopeful frown.
"We will." Cut in Beckett, as if trying to reassure both him and the physicist. No one was giving up that easily, the trick to beating this place he found, was keeping a resilient heart.
John clicked back, sounding as if he was ready to head off. "You got it, give me a half hour, I'll get the torch and some back up, I just hope Ford and Bouds are alright."
"As do I Major. As do I. From now on the generator will be off, so, be careful. Those things will be heading for the hallways now."
"Same to you doc, see you on the other side." And with that, Sheppard was gone.
"I'll need the tracker." McKay held his hand out. Beckett complied as he watched Rodney go to work, prying off a cover on the backside of the tracker he fiddled around with the wires, every so often glancing back and forth from tracking device to door sensor. Placing the penlight in his mouth McKay set to work resting the tracker on his knee as he went at the busted panel with both hands yanking out wires and causing the sensor to spark and fizz.
"Thiss is gonna tak a whiiile" Rodney spoke, mouth full of pen as he scratched his head. Shrugging he began to clipping some of the wires with the tiny scissors on his pocket-knife inside the door sensor and then some in the tracker, bringing up the device to where he could easily connect wires.
"Do you know what you're doing?" Beckett asked suddenly after he thought he heard something moving around in the room with them.
Rodney looked up to him, shining the light in Carson's face. "Nowt wealwy. But there's a fifst time fow everwything. Wifsh I had somfe paper clipfs."
"Just don't swallow that pen you're sucking on, that's my favorite one, and I'm not planning on fishing it out of your throat."
"Nowt anwymower." McKay mused, smiling with the penlight between his teeth as he sobered himself quickly and got back to more important matters, like, getting them out of that wretched room. At least with the generator off, the place was getting thankfully, cooler.
Looking the wall over, Sheppard couldn't see where the door had been covered up, but it certainly had been. He thought then that maybe this generator that the doctors had found was more then it was cracked up to be. The damn thing might even had something to do with the Wraith, hell even the obnoxious little creatures running about in the dark might be part Wraith as well. But now wasn't the time to think of these matters, he had a plan that needed to be set in motion.
John left the wall behind and walked over to Estin who was keeping a lookout on all three hallways, the lieutenant seemed itching to leave so Sheppard was going to give him the greatest of all opportunities.
"Estin, how fast can you run?" Sheppard asked suddenly, drawing the boy's attention as he was replied with a confused look.
"I was second captain in my track squad back home sir." Estin replied awkwardly, unsure why his commanding officer had asked in the first place.
"I bet you were." The Major clapped a hand on Estin's shoulder pulling him away from his post and towards the long stretch of corridor leading back to the base sector. "I want you to run as fast as you can, back to the control base."
Estin thought it over for a moment, finding his loyalties too high to simply turn tale and leave Sheppard all to himself, especially since Ford and Bouds were MIA. "But sir, shouldn't I stay with you, back you up?"
John disagreed trying to reassure his young team member. "That's not important now. What I need you to do is, tell Dr. Weir the situation, be brief. I need you come back here with a blowtorch, a handheld ram, all the men Weir can spare, and a whole lot of fuel. You think you can remember all that?"
Estin nodded repeating quickly what he had heard. "Yes sir, torch, ram, men, fuel."
"Alright." Sheppard felt more then trusting in Estin's capabilities, more so then that say of Bouds, he gave the boy a swift pat on the back. "Get going, pretend it's the finals." John added as a brief smile crossed Estin's face, the comment meaning for him to make this the best run of his life.
"You got it sir." Estin pulled his gun to his side as he bolted down the hall, not looking back as the Major saw him disappear into the distance, amazed at the kid's speed.
"Should have been captain of the squad." John remarked with a smile, turning his interest back to the wall, giving it one more look over before he radioed into Beckett.
"Hey doc, I'm going to see if I can't find Ford round here somewhere, I just can't shake this nasty feeling I have. I sent Estin back to the base for our supplies."
"Do you really think that's wise Major?" Sheppard laughed thoughtfully, he knew if Carson was on the other side of the wall he would have, without a second thought, agreed to go with him.
"Now doc I can handle myself, it's Ford and Bouds I'm worried about."
"Just be careful John. If something did happen to them, well, I don't want to add you to the situation."
"Duly noted." John clicked off and was about to head down the right hallway when he heard the strangest sound coming from behind him. John turned slowly, shining his flashlight down the pitch-black main corridor, seeing nothing. The sound came again, like a low, hissing sound, almost a growl. "What the heck?" The Major said to himself shining his light about. There came a soft chucking sound, making Sheppard lower his light to where he got the rudest of surprises. There, hunched on all fours, was one of Beckett and McKay's 'black biting things'.
John froze where he stood, finger poised on the trigger of his rifle, almost fascinated by what he saw before him. The creature lowered its head much like a dog would do, its short jagged ears tucked back slowly to the sides of its small head, before hissing at the Major.
What he saw could be described only as this: standing about a foot and a half off the ground, poised on four crookedly bent legs, it wavered, body thin and sickly looking, showing the bone structure, even recognizable ribs beneath. Stretching from its matted, darkly covered fur body, which look like it was missing large patches of its short scruffy hair, revealing a sickly grey/white skin underneath, was what looked to Sheppard like two tails. A large main one with another thinner, knotted looking one branching off to the right.
Even more disturbing was the creatures face, resting on a stubby neck scrunched back into projected, boney shoulders. It seemed the thing's head, the size of a plum, was complete with two large eyes, glowing with a red luminance in Sheppard's flashlight, a piggish nose that deformed outward and ran longer on the left side of its face, giving the creature one mismatching extra long nostril. From a leering mouth, two rows of jagged teeth, salivating with a shine in the light.
But probably the most horrifying part of the beast's over all appearance, what really freaked the Major out more then the damn thing's presence in the first place, was that branching off from the upper left of the creature's face was what looked like another head, the size of a chestnut, misshapen and underdeveloped. There he could see the beginning of another mouth, the bump of a nose and the curve of a forehead into a sunken, twisted eye. It almost reminded him of some sort of badly deformed Siamese twin.
"Uh----hi?" Sheppard winced, not wanting to look at the thing a second more, yet it seemed his curious sympathy for the thing caused him not to fire on it at first. Almost like when a small bug is in your presence, and you've let it stay around so long that you can't bring yourself to kill it, when you should have immediately squashed the thing in the first place.
The creature began to step backwards, waving its tails back and forth, the smaller one twitching as if its deformity couldn't get the motion right. Blinking it began to growl lowly, reaching a greater and greater pitch.
"Ah, nice little space monkey, I'm not gonna hurt you." Sheppard backed up himself, slowly raising his gun and aiming at the creature. "Not unless you try anything stupid."
Seeming to sense the Major's defensive position the thing tore its head up and let out a long screeching howl that made John wince. Rearing back the creature sprung at him aiming for his face when suddenly it was blasted away from Sheppard's left. Dark blood splattered the floor as the creature was flung to the ground, hissing and yelping until it finally lurched to a halt and collapsed.
John looked to his left to see Ford standing there, still smoking gun in one hand, the other wrapped around Boud's waist as the barely conscious lieutenant hung an arm around Aiden's neck for support.
"Hope you weren't trying to make friends with it." Ford said quickly as Sheppard went to him, both men helping to move Bouds back towards the wall John plan to cut through.
"Not like that was the last one, I'll have another chance later. You got a lot of nerve sneaking off like that." Sheppard tried to sound reprimanding when in fact he was too pleased that Ford was back with him and safe.
Both men took one side of Bouds and slid him down the wall so he could sit upright, the soldier's head lulling to the side as let out a slow moan, barely audible.
Bouds was a mess. Bite marks and scratches all over his face and hands, wounds that bled through his fatigues. John stared at him for a moment before turning his attention to a very tired looking Ford. "What the hell happened to you guys?"
Aiden swallowed air in gulps, trying to calm himself enough to explain what happened. "Bouds pretty much lost his nerve, I found him standing in front of a doorway where he said he saw, glowing red eyes or something like that."
"Glowing red ones huh? Go on."
"Well, I managed to get him to follow me, when we got attacked." Ford quieted down not breaking his gaze from the Major, a frightening amount of sincerity in the young man's voice. "I've never seen anything like it Sir. One minute Bouds was there, the next, he was covered from head to toe in those, things. I manage to pick off a few before I got swarmed myself, after that, things moved so quickly. Before I knew it I'd cleaned the things off me and tried to tear them off him."
Sheppard looked down to see how torn up Aiden's hands were. It seemed though in all the excitement, Ford hadn't even really noticed it himself yet. "I laid down some suppressive fire and got me and Bouds out of there, came round here, didn't find you guys so I headed up the right corridor, hoping we'd meet. I heard thumping so I doubled back."
"You did good Ford."
"Not good enough." Ford said softly, seeming disappointed in himself as he squatted down, looking Bouds over. John jerked the radio from his side and called for Beckett.
"Hey Beckett how's it coming in there?"Came the voice of Sheppard from within Carson's pocket. The doctor quickly pulled out the walkie-talkie as he drew his eyes away from McKay's busy work. The physicist had been trying various combinations of crossed wires, shifted crystals and commands placed through the tracking device.
Sometimes McKay would swear under his breath, muffled by the penlight in his mouth, other times he would sigh, and looked up to Beckett as if for support that the doctor simply could not give him.
Clicking back Carson spoke up, sounding exhausted. "Slow but surely Major. McKay seems to think that the falling ceiling shorted out the panel box so it's a matter of finding which wires crossed with what will essentially jumpstart the sensor."
"Easier said then done." Grumbled Rodney as he pulled the penlight from his mouth and shined it deep within the wall, looking about.
"Have you found Ford and Bouds yet Major?"
"Yeah, yeah I did, actually Ford found me to tell ya the truth. Listen doc, Bouds is, well, he's in pretty bad shape. Aiden said they had a run-in with our little visitors, I even saw one myself, nearly ate my face off. I ah, don't think they're too happy to see us."
"Wait!" Beckett sat up with a jolt. Here he was trapped in this generator room when someone needed his help. "How is he? What are his wounds like….Blast it McKay would you get this bloody door open!"
Rodney shot the doctor a defying glare almost as if to say 'you want out so bad, you get over here and fix it then.' Instead he said frustrated, trying to keep his own cool. "I'm trying the best I can under really crappy circumstances, so unless you know the proper sequence then by all means---" McKay motioned to the sensor with a frown. "be my guest."
Before Carson had time to come up with some sort of retort the Major clicked back over. "Bouds's breathing is shallow, but his pulse is strong. I can't find a spot on him without teeth marks and he's bleeding like a stuck pig. I think, he'll be alright for the moment, but, then again I'm no doctor."
Thinking the soldier's condition over, Beckett calmed himself, the key here was to be level headed and professional. Though if Carson had the strength he would have busted through that wall then and there to get to Bouds. "Alright Major, if you have some water, keep him hydrated, and watch out for any signs of shock, if that happens, well, you know where I am."
"Will do, don't worry doc, as soon as Estin gets back, we'll all get out of here, one way or another. Besides, if I remember correctly you owe me thirty bucks." Sheppard's voice mused over the walkie-talkie, making Beckett smile. He could always look to John to keep to the lighter side when things grew dark, and trust in him to carry them out when the darkness grew to be too threatening. If Sheppard said they were all getting out of here, he meant it. Comforted by this, Beckett settled back, leaning his head against the door as he held onto the radio, finding he could do nothing else now but relax. He found himself instead listening to the room about him, to McKay cursing in the blackness with only the glow of the little penlight to show he was still in fact with him.
Carson closed his eyes, praying Estin would hurry up, that Dr. Weir would send every available man back here. He knew this rescue was the least of their problems, they still had what now seemed like a mass infestation in the sector to deal with. Carson wondered just how many of the little creatures were lurking about, how many unseen beady red eyes were staring at him this very moment. Even if John was right, and they all got out in one piece, how in the world could they ever fight something so massive and almost embedded into the very walls of the city?
"Son of a bitc…"McKay snarled as a spark from the open door sensor singed his index finger. He quickly stuck the throbbing finger into this mouth, finding that in most situations spit to be an almost miracle cure to what ailed you. Suddenly the sensor wavered, building up a glow as the crystals within began to come to life. Beckett had looked down at the physicist on the initial outburst and was now staring at the panel as its wavering glow steadied and he felt the door behind his back, shift, slightly.
A/N: woo and the plot thickens, people are reaching their breaking point soon…I tried to make the little beasties as nasty as possible; hopefully you can picture their true grotesqueness. Thanks for all the wonderful reviews everyone!!!