Not mine. Don't own'em. Didn't create 'em. Stargate Atlantis and all related characters are the property of MGM as far as I can tell.
Sheppard
KA BOOM ! The world tackled me. Okay, maybe not the whole world but it sure felt like it.
The echo slowly died away and I found myself lying on my stomach under a pile of rubble. Dust still hung thickly in the air and emergency lights cast a dim glow. My ears were ringing.
"What the fuck happened?" I wondered, though I only managed to articulate one of the words…
"Fuck?"
"Boom," agreed Rodney from somewhere in the rubble to my left.
"Whappened?"
"Dunno."
Great, at this rate, we'll be up to sentence fragments by the end of the week. I tried to move but found I was too tightly pinned. Upon further reflection, I decided it was also hard to breathe and my right leg ached like nobody's business.
"Stuck," I gasped.
"Yeah, give me a minute."
A record five words and a complete sentence - trust Dr. Rodney McKay, Atlantis Mensa Chapter President, to be the one who excelled. I heard the sounds of crashing debris as he tried to work his way free. He must have succeeded because a cloud of dust suddenly rained down on me and I had a very intimate view of a dusty boot.
"Are you hurt?"
"I think my leg's broken."
"Help will be here soon, Major," he said encouragingly.
"Are you sure they even know?" As I remembered, it had been just the two of us checking out this lab and we were in a pretty isolated area of Atlantis.
"I'm pretty sure the deafening alarm will give them a hint," he said, pointing upwards at no place in particular.
"Oh. I thought that was just my ears ringing."
He grabbed a sturdy leg from a now not-so-sturdy pile of toothpicks that had probably been a worktable just a few minutes ago. After a bit of prying, I felt a weight lifted and it was much easier to breath. I could even turn at my waist a bit and get a better view of the pile of stuff that was pinning me to the floor. "Thanks!"
"My pleasure." He continued to pry up chunks and push or throw them to one side.
"Stop, stop, STOP! WRONG WAY!" I exclaimed as a piece of beam began to separate my hip from its socket.
"Sorry."
"See if you can move that bluish chunk off crap off of me so I can squeeze out of here."
He had to dig up another table leg and rearrange some of the wreckage before he could get the leverage to lift it far enough for me to crawl out. Exalted and somewhat nauseous from my painful escape, I turned over on my back and concentrated on trying not to black out.
Rodney let go of the table legs and the beam came crashing down. The impact sent several shards of debris catapulting into the air and a large cloud of dust fell from what was left of the ceiling. We both instinctively threw our arms over our heads for cover. There was an ominous creaking noise from somewhere that could be heard even over the alarm. "Jesus, Rodney, be careful!"
"Sorry," he said, lowering his arms cautiously and shaking off the latest layer of dust.
He crawled over and examined my leg. I could see that he was sweating and shaking from his exertions. Not one for heavy physical labor, our boy, Rodney.
How bad is it?"
"How should I know? I'm not a medical doctor."
He turned back to the pile of crap that had tried to smother me. Using the proper respect this time, he wiggled the table legs free and used one of them and strips torn from his lab coat to start splinting my leg. I made a few choice comments about his medical skills and he told me what I could do with the table leg. I replied that it would probably be a damn sight less painful than what he was doing with it at the moment.
"There, that's the best I can do."
I chanced a look, "Could be worse."
"Yeah?" he puffed up a bit.
"I could have broken both legs."
He deflated. "Shouldn't you try to wiggle your toes or something?"
"Probably, but it'd hurt like hell and what would it accomplish at the moment?"
"Fair enough."
The alarm stopped and we were plunged into eerie silence. We sat wheezing in the dim lighting for several minutes.
"I wish they hadn't turned it off. It makes the creaking seem louder."
"Come on, Rodney, don't tell me you were one of those people who just keeps turning up the radio when their car starting making a strange noise." I could tell by his perturbed expression that I had hit a nerve.
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Just because you can't hear it, doesn't mean it's not there." Still, he was right, the groaning and creaking was disconcerting.
I gazed intently through the sifting dust, trying to get a better idea of our situation; though sitting on the floor with one leg splinted straight out in front of me didn't give me much of a vantage point. "Shit," I said, somewhat awed by the damage, "Did we blow out the next chamber too?"
"At least." He squatted down beside me. "Did you forget some C4 you squirreled away down here from the Genii or something?"
"C4 doesn't just explode for no reason," I corrected him automatically. "And before you ask, I didn't touch anything."
He scowled at me. "You wouldn't necessarily have to touch something, would you? You could have just 'thought' at it."
"So I was broadcasting 'blow the crap out of us' thought waves and some ancient device picked it up? Is that what you're saying?"
"No." He dumped accusatory tone but continued to grill me. "Could you have thought 'on' at something, by accident?"
"No."
"Are you sure?"
"Pretty sure." And I was. Mainly because I remembered what I was thinking right before I was body-slammed to the floor by half the east wall. Rodney had been in the middle of some mind-numbing techno-babble about the naqueda generators that only another triple doctorate physicist would have been able to understand. I had tuned him out and was thinking about Antarctica; how much quieter and peaceful it had been there as opposed to being on Atlantis - more specifically, as opposed to being in the vicinity of Rodney on Atlantis.
"Rodney, John, if you can hear me, we're working on getting you out of there," came Weir's calm and reassuring voice over the speaker system. It was distant and tinny but it was music to my ears! Too bad we couldn't return the favor. The nice thing about the headsets was that they were lightweight and unobtrusive. The bad thing was that they were not the least tiny bit explosion-proof. What was left of ours, assuming there was anything left, was buried somewhere in the rubble.
"A few more details would be nice," Rodney yelled sarcastically into the empty air. He plopped the rest of the way to the floor and rummaged in the pocket of his now shredded lab coat. Pulling out a power bar, he unwrapped it and snapped it in two, offering me half.
"Yum." I said without enthusiasm, taking the bar from him.
We munched in relative silence for a few minutes. I say 'relative' because the creaking and groaning had become almost commonplace by now. I swallowed down the last of my bone-dry bar with difficulty. "You know, Rodney…"
"Shh!"
Normally I wouldn't have taken Rodney shushing me without handing back a smart-ass comment, but there was something in his body language that made me shut up and strain my ears.
"Do you hear that?" he asked.
"Sounds like water. You think we blew out a main or something?"
"Or something."
The tone he used didn't inspire confidence. He got up, prowling the confines of our damaged room and eventually climbing over a pile of wreckage to pass out of my sight and into the next chamber. I heard a yelp and a splash.
"Rodney?" I yelled. I couldn't make out his muffled reply but there didn't seem to be any urgency in the tone so I stayed put. He reappeared shortly and made his way back to me leaving a trail of damp footprints in the dust.
"Why are you wet?" I asked narrowing my eyes suspiciously. I had the feeling I wouldn't like his answer.
"Water pressure can have an interesting affect on weakened bulkheads."
"Um. Aren't we above sea level?"
He shook his head. "Not all of Atlantis is above the water."
"Let me guess, this part of the city's below the water line." He didn't answer. He didn't have to. The look on his face told me all I needed to know. And then Atlantis shrieked. Well, more likely it was the damaged metal bulkheads screeching as they were stressed beyond tolerance but it sounded like she screamed to me. The sound of gushing water in the adjoining chamber was now unmistakable; more than that, it had Rodney's undivided attention - no small feat.
"How long before we get wet?" I asked.
He dragged his eyes away. "Not long." Lifting me to my feet, he began half dragging me backwards up a pile of debris. He paused about half way up to get a firmer grip under my arms and to give me a chance to get my good leg solidly under me. I was mildly appalled to see a thin layer of water covering the floor where I had been sitting only a minute earlier.
"You can swim, right?" Rodney asked, struggling to drag me higher as the water began gaining on us. "I mean, you military types have to learn to tread water or something don't you? 'Be all you can be' and the rest of that bullshit propaganda?"
"Oh yeah. They load you up with about a hundred pounds of gear and shove you into the deep end of a pool - and you'd better damn well make it out of there on your own, 'cause they're in no hurry to pull you out if you get into trouble. Don't worry, Rodney, I can keep my head above water."
Even standing on top of the largest debris pile in the room, the water soon passed our shins and continued rising steadily; and let me tell you, nothing quite compares to the slow agony of ice cold sea water creeping inch by inch up a broken leg. I shifted a little, trying to find a more comfortable position. It was a mistake and I let loose an expletive as yet another sharp pain shot through my injured leg.
"So, Major, why did you join the military?"
"What?" Fine. Okay. I'd play along. "Because I wanted to fly and flying is expensive, very expensive."
"So if you love to fly so much, why give it up and come to Atlantis?"
I shrugged. "I don't know." I cocked my head at him, "But I can tell you I wept with joy at the sight of the puddle jumpers."
His lips twitched in amusement. "Blackhawks, Apaches, Cobras, Ospreys, and now puddle jumpers."
"You've been reading my file, Rodney," I said suspiciously.
"Um," he had the grace to look embarrassed. "Elizabeth did ask my opinion on several potential team members before the expedition."
"You picked me?"
"Don't let it go to your head. I picked Kavanagh too."
"Insubordination, failure to follow the orders of a commanding officer…." I said ticking off what I knew would be in at least one of the reports he would have seen.
He waved away my list. "Just shows you're not the standard 'brainless military goon' type."
"I'm not so sure Dr. Weir would agree with you," I said, remembering her righteous anger when I countermanded her orders during the quarantine.
"Yes, well…We've all made some mistakes since we've been here, haven't we?" he said dejectedly.
"You?" I said, clutching my chest in feigned surprise. Rodney glared at me and wiped some water off his face. It had risen high enough so that I had splashed him a bit during my theatrics. At least it seemed to have distracted him from whatever mistakes he had been contemplating.
We were both working hard at the whole 'not panicking' thing. It helped that we had blown a sizable hole in the ceiling as well; so we had at least one more chamber full of water to go before we faced certain death by drowning. And by then, who knew? We might be above the water line. A man's entitled to his delusions.
Our best option, we had agreed, was to bide our time and tread water until the level rose high enough to give us access to the room above. At long last, I had discovered the secret to getting McKay to agree with me without arguing - make sure there's only one viable option.
It didn't take long before we had to sink or swim, so to speak. Not the most pleasant way to spend time, going slowly numb in frigid sea water, but it was actually starting to deaden the pain in my leg, so who was I to complain? I was glad to see Rodney wasn't having any trouble keeping afloat. I had been a little worried about that. I had a hard time picturing McKay in swim trunks splashing happily around a sunny swimming pool.
It was probably a good fifteen minutes before we were clumsily hoisting ourselves into the chamber above us and onto what remained of its floor.
"Any idea if we're still below sea level?" I asked.
"I was studying the floor plans of this area, not a cross section," Rodney replied through chattering teeth.
The cold had affected him more than me. I had been wearing my jacket, which even wet, helped retain some body heat. McKay had only a short-sleeve shirt and the remnants of a thin lab coat. He stumbled to his feet and weaved his way over to the door control panel. It took him several tries with stiff fingers to pry the panel off. The water began to fountain through our escape hole so it seemed we hadn't managed to climb above the waterline yet.
"McKay, do you think that's such a good idea?" I didn't know much about the intricate workings of ancient technology, but it seemed to me that standing in water while poking at the door controls may not be entirely safe. The words had barely left my mouth when Rodney was thrown backward in a shower of yellowish-green sparks.
