"The place looks fine to me," Ford said, grinning. "Kinda like something out of Indiana Jones." He gave an amused shake of his head as yet another huckster tried to press his wares on the new arrivals. "No. No, thank you." He continued to elbow his way through the crowd. "All we need is a bunch of guys with big knives and a truck."
"Don't go borrowing trouble!" replied Sheppard. He resisted the urge to clamp his hand on his wallet as Stackhouse led the way through the press of people to the last known location of their missing crewmates. Though it would have been easy for Zelenka and Kavanagh to get lost in a crowd this size, he knew they should have been able to make their way back to the gate long before now. McKay suddenly jumped back with a short high-pitched exclamation, colliding with Sheppard and nearly toppling them both.
"Sorry," murmured the scientist shakily as Sheppard steadied him.
"What's with the girly scream, McKay?" The major glanced around in concern, then saw what had made the scientist jump - a tall, long-haired albino man in a black coat who had suddenly appeared in the crowd in front of him. He gave McKay slap on the back and said in an undertone, "Can you picture the wraith shopping around here? 'Yes, I'd like the creepy tight Goth outfit in black.' Where do they get their clothes anyway?"
"Do I care?" asked the scientist, still somewhat unsettled. He leaned back against Sheppard in an attempt to avoid physical contact with the albino as he passed within millimeters of them in the dense crowd.
"By the way, McKay, you smell puuurrrty," needled Sheppard into his ear.
"Shut up!" he snapped, jerking away and giving him an irritated look before pushing on through the crowd. They were briefly separated by the crush of people, but as they got closer to the far end of the booths, the crowd began to thin out and they had the opportunity to regroup.
"McKay and I will make a sweep of perimeter. The rest of you try questioning the vendors and customers. Stay within sight of one another at all times." The team split according to the major's instructions. He and McKay headed towards the perimeter. As they got further away from the press of the crowd, Sheppard sniffed loudly and cut his eyes towards the scientist. "Lilacs."
"It's the only thing that would get rid of the skunk smell!" Rodney replied defensively.
"Mmmm…and you just happened to have some perfume lying around?"
"It's not perfume and I borrowed it, okay?"
"From who?"
"None of your damn business." He hiked his new backpack a little higher. The straps were still stiff and cutting into his shoulder painfully.
Sheppard clicked his tongue in a disapproving manner, "Testy testy."
McKay shot him a look of pure venom.
Meanwhile, elsewhere on the planet…Radek awoke to dim light and a dank, musty smell. His head was pounding and his mouth was dry. He hadn't felt this bad since he sampled a shot of doublings made from that mash of alien pink corn and that other weird-shaped purplish grain. Trying to remember what Teyla had called it just made his head hurt more. He remembered waking up the next morning, surprised to find he had slept all night on the cold floor of the empty lab that he had appropriated for some of his more congenial experiments. This was especially worrisome since he hadn't remembered lying down, or much of anything else for that matter, after he'd sampled his brew. He thanked his lucky stars he had woken up at all and had crawled back to his room to nurse his sore head. It was by far the most wicked hangover he had ever experienced. So much so, that he had thrown that entire batch away, burned the recipe, and swore never to experiment with the purple grain again.
This experience, he decided, ranked a close second. He lay quietly on his dirty mound of straw and tried to get his bearings. It looked to be a cell of some sort. Somehow he doubted it would be anything as innocuous as a drunk tank. Groaning he sat up and grabbed his aching head, trying to remember what had brought him to his current condition. The last thing he could recall was an incredibly attractive female at a booth offering him a cool drink. He remembered Sheppard using a term for it once… "mickey" wasn't it? Why Americans named something so unpleasant after a cute cartoon mouse he had no idea. He let go of his head, pleasantly surprised when it didn't explode. Blinking rapidly to clear his fuzzy vision, he soon realized his glasses were missing. A brief panicked dig in the straw yielded them, luckily undamaged. He wiped them on his now dirty shirt and put them on.
A look around revealed he was alone in a cell. It had three very sturdy stone walls, one containing an impossibly high, small window which allowed in a little weak light to filter down. The fourth wall consisted of bars and an iron gate. He rose wobbly and walked over to it. Beside it he found a bowl of water, which he drank greedily. It was warm and tasted a little bitter but he was too thirsty to care. His thirst sated, he looked through his door and across the hall. In the dim light, he could make out an entire line of small cells mirroring his own. He thought he saw a familiar figure in the one directly across from his. "Kavanagh?" he hissed. The figure's head jerked up and looked around. "Kavanagh, over here," he said a little more loudly.
Kavanagh lurched to his feet and stumbled to the bars. "What happened?" he asked thickly.
"I don't know."
They both quieted when the door opened at the end of the hallway and light flooded the cells closest to the door. Men groaned and shielded their faces from the sudden glare that disappeared when a huge man entered the corridor. He was dressed in leather pants and a vest that allowed the enormous amount of hair from his armpits to show. Following closely behind him were three similarly dressed, though less hairy, men carrying chains and what looked like whips.