CHOOSING HIS TEAM by Tipper
CHAPTER FIVE: LEAPING BEFORE LOOKING
McKay jumped down the stairs, huffing and puffing, trying to get down to level eight as soon as possible. Hadn't the ancients heard of elevators, for Christ's sake? He could hear a number of other people's footsteps ringing on the metal steps above him, and at least two other people taking them two at a time like him.
"Lieutenant?" Beckett called over the radio, using a voice McKay found disturbingly calm, "Can you tell me how badly you and the Athosian are hurt?" This was Beckett's quirk, McKay knew, having seen the other man utilize it several times while they were in Antarctica. When it came to medicine, Carson was a virtuoso, far more knowledgeable than a man his age should be in all the fields that he practiced in, and unfailingly competent. The more dire the medical situation, the calmer Beckett became. But when it came to, well, everything else, Beckett became more nervous than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.
"It's the Athosian, sir, not me," Ford replied on the open channel, sounding a little breathless and strained all of a sudden. "His leg—he says he thinks it's broken."
McKay frowned, finally hitting the landing on the level 8, and sprinted down the corridor towards the aft section of the floor, mentally following Grodin's directions from earlier. He heard someone hit the metal flooring a second after him. For some reason, even without looking around, he knew it was the major.
"Anything else?" Beckett asked over the radio, still too calmly.
"Not that I can see, sir," Ford replied, his voice still strained. "But you had better hurry. I'm not sure I can hold him up much longer."
Hold him up? McKay's eyes widened.
"Hold him up?" Sheppard's voice echoed behind him. McKay snorted a laugh at the jinx, despite the seriousness of the situation.
Around them, the lights of the corridor burst into life as they ran, until, finally, McKay rounded a corridor to find himself before a fairly large doorway, one much wider and taller than any others he'd seen. Without a thought, he pressed a hand to the panel on the side and stepped inside with Sheppard at his heels...only to immediately slip and fall with a sharp yelp down the smooth, slanted floor.
He would have slipped all the way down to the center had a firm grip not grabbed the back of his collar and thrown him sideways towards the wall. In seconds, McKay found himself standing at the very edge of the funnel-like floor, balanced on his heels on about an inch of flat surface, his back pressed up against the curved wall. He was several feet from the still open doorway, with Sheppard about an arm's length closer to the door than him, the major's front pressed to the wall. McKay stood rigid, momentarily struck dumb by fear, fingers and palms pressed firmly against the metal wall behind him.
"Sirs!" Ford called, clearly happy to see them. McKay looked up, and blinked at the odd sight of Ford hanging almost upside down from a large metal ring in the middle of the room, his arms around an upright Halling trapped in a harness made from Ford's flak vest.
"Woah!" a new voice called from the still open door, and heads turned to see Sergeant Stackhouse backpedaling from the edge, the perching there and staring into the room open-mouthed.
"Stackhouse, get a rope!" Ford yelled at him brusquely, "And hurry! I think this room is gearing up to do something big!"
"Yes sir!" Stackhouse replied without hesitation, turning to run back the way he had come, passing two more marines on the way. Sergeant Bates and Corporal Johnson blinked as they too stopped on the edge. Bates looked at Ford, then leaned in to look at Sheppard.
"Sir?" he called, clearly curious as to how Sheppard and McKay had ended up where they were. Frankly, McKay wasn't sure himself. All he knew was that he wasn't about to move and risk falling.
"McKay didn't look before he leapt, Bates," Sheppard ground out through gritted teeth, "And I stupidly followed him."
McKay's brow furrowed in annoyance, but his voice wasn't working yet, still paralyzed by fear...so the major got away with that one.
"Can you move back here, sir?" Bates called.
"Not sure," Sheppard replied. Swallowing, he steeled himself and took a couple steps down the sloping floor in an attempt to move sideways, not trusting his ability to stay on the sliver of flat surface under his toes. He slid immediately, even despite the thick rubber soles of his boots, and quickly scrambled back up to the flat bit at the top and pressed himself back against the wall.
"Careful sir!" Ford called a little redundantly from where he was dangling.
The room made another heavy clunk, and the floor shifted again. The hole closed up, then got a little bigger—now about a foot in diameter. Halling whimpered from his precarious hanging position, and Ford grunted, gritting his teeth as the muscles in his arms bulged under the strain. Sheppard took a deep breath and tried to slide along the wall towards Bates again, but it was slow going when he could only put his weight on the very tips of his toes. McKay, meanwhile, remained firmly pressed with his back against the wall. He didn't think he could move if he wanted to.
"What the...!" Beckett called skidding to a halt in the corridor behind Bates and Johnson. He shoved past them, putting down a bag of medical supplies just on the edge of the sloping floor. He stared at the opening floor, and then up at the two men dangling precariously in the middle, right above the hole. Brow furrowed, he stared in shock at the strange tableau. "What is this!"
"McKay?" Sheppard asked, turning his head to the side.
Rodney blinked back at him, and, with the mental nudge, finally started thinking again. "Um, uh, well...I don't know what it's for, but...I..." He looked around the room for the first time, noting its cylindrical nature, reminding him a little of the inside of a rotor. It almost looked like an amusement park ride he'd been on once called the Spinner...
His head tilted up, and took in the fact that there were several holes in the ceiling. Frowning, he realized they reminded him of...
"Waste chutes," he finished aloud, nodding to himself. They were waste chutes. Emptying into this room. Looking again at the floor, he noticed the grooved edge between the wall and the floor—the metal was stripped slightly.
It did spin. It spun all the waste to compact it, then, when it was full, the floor opened to dump it...probably onto barges that, clearly, hadn't been reactivated yet. Hence the gaping hole into nothingness.
Oh shit. It was a god damned trash compactor!
"Okay, okay," he said, finally trying to inch along the wall towards the still gamely moving Sheppard. "We need to, uh...we need to get out of here."
Just then the floor shifted again, at least, that's what it seemed like to Sheppard.
McKay, however, realized it had not been the floor. It had been the wall. He froze again, staring at it in horror.
And that's when the door slammed shut, nearly decapitating Beckett.
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TBC (Yeah, sorry, I couldn't resist posting this bit!)