Breaking The Siege
Part Four: The Fight
It was the noise in Teyla's mind that wrestled her out of somnolence into wakefulness.
There was a moment when a thousand sensations battered her consciousness; hunger and satiation, pain and pleasure, relaxation and restiveness, and many others. They swirled through her, like dark water through pale cloth, disorienting her senses, then ceased as consciousness intruded.
A gasp escaped her throat.
"She's coming around," someone murmured, and there was the sound of footsteps coming closer, the tactile contact of a hand on her shoulder, warm and familiar in its grip.
Her eyes opened to Aiden leaning into her line of vision. "Teyla. You okay?"
"Aiden?" She struggled into a sitting position, vaguely aware that the buzzing had eased but not ceased. "Where are we?"
"Some part of the city," Aiden said. "Prisoners of the Wraith. In a pretty hopeless situation." The youthful face developed a wry twist to his lips. "Not much new."
Teyla smiled at the momentary humour. "Not much new," she agreed, looking around her.
It was an internal room within Atlantis, one of the few without windows facing out. There were maybe twenty-five people in this room, Athosian and Atlantean. Most of the Atlanteans were people who had arrived with Colonel Everett only two days ago, and they were arguing softly among themselves.
Her own people looked fearful - as well they might. They were in the clutches of the Wraith, and few - if any of their people - had survived the Wraith.
A glance at those of her people present showed none of the ones with whom she had been scouting through the city, and she felt grief rise briefly in her throat, before she silenced it. She would mourn their deaths later - if there was a later.
"Are you well?"
Aiden's mouth twisted again. "We're alive. For the moment. No telling how long that will be." He sat back on his heels. "We've been looking at ways out. None yet."
She studied his face, familiar and known. "Have they fed?" The look in his eyes said much. "How many?"
"Four. One of your people, three of ours."
Four too many.
Teyla climbed to her feet, absently stretching muscles stiff from lying on the floor. And stopped.
As a child, she had learned the 'noises' in her head that told her when the Wraith were close. Now, with the help of Dr. Beckett's science and Dr. Weir's translations, she knew it to be the hum of alien minds in her own consciousness.
Louder than it had ever been before - louder even than it had been when she 'walked' the Wraith ship in the mind of one of them - it sang in her ears, across every nerve. Only once before had she felt this thrumming in her head, so constant, so loud. That had been when Major Sheppard and his people had first come to Athosia and she had been captured by the Wraith and taken aboard one of their large ships.
And now it seemed they had Atlantis.
Would Earth follow soon after?
"Teyla?" One of the Athosians approached them. "They came and took Kiaran. We tried to resist..."
She laid a hand on his shoulder, grieving for him. He and Kiaran had been longtime friends, rarely seen out of each other's company. It was a hard thing to lose one so close. "You did what you could, Jerrin," she reassured the young man.
"But still they took him!"
He did not seem reassured by her words, and she indicated the Atlanteans who were now speaking with Lieutenant Ford. "They also have lost their people and were unable to prevent them being taken," she pointed out. "We are all in difficult straits here."
The sound of muted arguments turned her head. Over by the door, Colonel Everett's people were talking intently among themselves. They made no move to include either Lieutenant Ford or the four scientists from Atlantis in their plans. In that, their behaviour reflected Colonel Everett's initial behaviour towards the original expedition members upon his arrival in Atlantis.
Teyla did not know this 'General O'Neill' of whom she had heard Major Sheppard speak. However, he did not seem like a very thoughtful man, to send in a commander who had no respect for the ones who had gone before.
Then again, she reflected, Colonel Sumner had possessed the same disdain for those not of his group. Perhaps it was that she and her people had been fortunate in Major Sheppard and his willingness to be inclusive - at least to her and her people.
With a squeeze of Jerrin's shoulder, Teyla went to speak with Aiden. He might know little more than she, but even that much would be preferable to the silence and uncertainty. "We have no news of the outside?"
He shook his head. "For all we know, the city's in the hands of the Wraith."
"If the city was in the hands of the Wraith, we'd be in cold storage by now," one of the scientists commented.
"Unless we're refresher snacks," remarked another Atlantis scientist dryly.
"Thank you for the image, Andrew," the first scientist retorted.
"Hey, I'm just the messenger, Tere."
By now accustomed to the peculiar humour of the Atlanteans, Teyla was not disturbed by their exchange. It alleviated the very real fear they were probably feeling - the same fear she was feeling.
Her people were less innured to such humour. Elis was staring with her mouth wide open, and several others were distressed. Teyla moved to reassure them.
As she passed the door, the buzzing in her head grew louder, and Teyla whirled on the balls of her feet even as the door opened and the Wraith stormed in.
She blocked the blow of the first one, her fingers closing around the wrist of the hand that would have sucked life-energy from her body. A hard yank hauled him off-balance and Teyla swung him towards the door, throwing him towards the other Wraith entering the room.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of Lieutenant Ford moving to intercept the next Wraith as it lunged towards the hapless scientists.
A glimpse beyond the door showed unfamiliar men in familiar uniforms fighting against the Wraith with stunners. She thought she caught a glimpse of Major Sheppard's dark hair, but she had no time to look further. Another Wraith was coming for her.
They were being rescued.
Relief surged but was swiftly curbed by practicality.
To truly be rescued, they would have to survive beyond this fight.
They were doing their best.
Behind her, the Atlantis personnel were fighting the Wraith with the hands and fists that were all the weapons they had. Some had already fallen; even as Teyla turned to defend against a new attacker, she saw one man's skin wrinkle and crack with age as the Wraith sucked the life-force from him.
This new opponent was stronger than the last - prepared for her blows and defences. The teeth bared in a grin of malevolent pleasure as she parried and panted.
The sensations that had battered her upon waking were beginning to return in strength - a gnawing hunger and a desire for the hunt, the kill. It disoriented her - all the more since there were now clearer, stronger emotions mixed in through the sensations. Anger and frustration, disdain and contempt, but also an anticipation of a time when there would be no end to the feeding.
Pleasure shot through her, the satisfaction of a kill. It surged through her with a tingling shock, like a fragment of generator power lancing through her flesh. A face flickered before her, staring hollowly into her eyes, then swam into nothing. She gasped, sickened.
One of the Wraith had fed.
The sensations flowed through her, stronger than she could block or ignore. She hardly saw the next blow by the Wraith that took her across her cheek and rattled her teeth. Her jaw ached, and her head spun as the sensations caused by the presence of the Wraith intensified, dizzying her. The follow-up blow was even harder, and although she blocked it with one arm, she had to step back to compensate for the force of it.
Her foot stumbled over something behind her and as she went down, twisting her ankle, the Wraith struck her again.
The blow knocked her into a world where everything had a hazy look to it, like cold fog blurring her vision.
Beneath her arms, the floor was cold - but not as cold as the death she saw in the Wraith's eyes: the same death that had come to the man or woman over whose dessicated body she had fallen. Yet she felt no fear. Fear was a distant thing, it could not break through the cacophony of noises that had risen in her head to feverish pitch.
The Wraith kneeled down beside her, grinning obscenely as one hand reached out towards her.
Something in her fought, screamed, protested this death. She would not fall to it. By her father's line, she would not!
From within her boiled up all the anger and hatred she felt for the Wraith, the sickening disgust at what they were, what they did to her people - and more: the terror she felt at the knowledge that she possessed some part of their nature - the 'DNA' that made up the flesh of her body.
As the hand reached out to her, her mind screamed defiance, a desperate desire to live.
The Wraith's nostrils flared. Its eyes widened. It jerked slightly.
And then a stun blast hit it from the side, toppling it sideways.
The clawed hand drifted across Teyla's waist - a perversion of a caress - and she pushed it back, almost sobbing. Something was running down her lip, heavy and sticky. Her hand came up and found blood dripping from her nose.
"You okay?" A woman - human, unfamiliar, blonde, blue-eyed - paused beside her and tossed her a square of material. Teyla wiped her nose and managed an answer.
"I...I am fine."
Her rescuer studied her a moment. "You're Teyla, right?" A moment later, a gun and a spare clip tumbled through her hands. "You know how to use one of these?"
Teyla glanced up to answer, and saw a Wraith approaching behind the woman. "Behind you!"
The woman turned, hands fumbling with the stunner. The creature reached her before she could get the stunner working, but her blow to the creature's jaw was not hard enough to halt it.
In her mind, Teyla felt the triumph of the Wraith as it struck the other woman in the chest and gripped, draining life from the woman like water through a punctured waterskin.
She was hardly aware of the cold, hard metal in her hand, although the sound of the gunshots was still loud enough to deafen in the middle of the fray.
The Wraith stumbled back, letting go of its victim as the bullets embedded in its throat and shoulder. The woman collapsed to the floor, shocked rather than dead, but Teyla couldn't spare her a glance. She had not killed the Wraith, only gained them a little time. Knowing it to be futile, but unable to reach the stunner, she emptied the clip into it, aiming for the head and shoulders rather than the chest.
It was not enough, and she knew it even as she fumbled with the spare clip. It hissed at her, contemptuous in its dismissal of her actions, and came for her with a renewed fury. The other woman was spurned with one foot as it strode towards Teyla and grabbed her by the throat.
She couldn't breathe, could hardly think through the noise in her mind, like an endless thunder. She could feel her death in the mind of the Wraith that held her, a slow, painful dying, insignificant in the eyes of her killer.
The terror that previously prompted her own mental response was gone now, emptied of anything but the hunger and anger of the Wraith before her.
Dark spots began appearing before her eyes, but unconsciousness didn't come so fast that she couldn't feel the cold of the clawed hand pressing her ribs, clammy, even through the material of her top.
Dimly, she heard a stunner shot discharge into the Wraith.
It was the last thing she heard before they crashed to the ground and her mind and body, overtaxed, gave way to unconsciousness.
- TBC -