Disclaimer etc. in first chapter.
Author's Note: Things get a little icky here - and by icky I mean gross. I can't seem to help myself with the blood and guts.
Elizabeth was right, and John was disappointed. Disappointed and angry, but there was nothing he could do about it. As far as anyone could tell, the Palimins, at least those that they had found so far, were suffering from the strangest case of amnesia they'd ever heard of. There were no answers forthcoming about the skeletal hand or the whereabouts of the rest of the Palimins. Deciding that their best course of action was to determine what had happened to the people they could find, Elizabeth sent back to Atlantis and asked Carson to come take a look at them.
The Palimins were quite upset by this time. As far as they knew, nothing was wrong. They had no recollection of the people from Atlantis, nor of the rest of their people, and they insisted that they'd spent the last few days on a hunting trip. They knew of the Stargate and the existence of the other worlds, but much of their history seemed to be missing – they could only seem to remember as far back as the start of their supposed hunting trip. Still, none of these inconsistencies seemed to bother them, and they were mostly worked up by John's insistence that they go nowhere until Carson had looked them over. Alarad had only agreed to it after John had promised to let them return to their village unmolested if they complied.
It was several hours later, and darkness was closing in, when they all returned to the village. It had been a long day for most of them, and even Carson, after running tests on so many people ,was feeling a little worn out. They took shelter ion one of the empty houses
"Well?" Elizabeth prompted once they all settled. "What did you find, Carson?"
The doctor shook his head. "I'm not sure, Dr. Weir. It almost seems as if they've been drugged, but I can't tell with what. I can't even tell for sure that they were. Aside from the memory loss, they all seem perfectly healthy, although I did get Galira, the pregnant girl, to admit that she does remember falling asleep in the middle of the day today. Still, that's not entirely unexpected in her condition, and none of the others said anything about it."
"Have we learned anything about the hand or the caves?" John asked the room at large.
Everyone shook their heads. "I spoke with Alarad," Teyla said, "but he doesn't even seem to be aware of the cave's existence."
"Right," John said, looking around the room. Rodney was sitting at a table, resting his elbows on the surface and cradling his head in his hands. Elizabeth was leaning against one wall, looking weary but interested. Ronon was inscrutable, as usual, but John could tell that Teyla and Carson were also tired. Hell, even the indefatigable Major Lorne looked a bit wiped out, and John's own eyes were stinging slightly. "Okay, I say we all get some sleep tonight, and we'll take a look at the cave in the daylight."
"Shouldn't we go back to Atlantis?" Carson asked, although he really wasn't looking forward to moving any time soon. "I could run some more extensive tests with the equipment in the infirmary."
John shook his head. "We still don't know exactly what happened to these people, and I'd rather not go stumbling around in the dark. Besides, I want to stay here, where they can't easily throw us out. I don't want to come back through the gate in the morning and find out they're waiting to ambush us. Your tests'll have to wait a bit."
Although the rest of the team had come prepared to stay the night, expecting the festivities surrounding the trade agreement to last until nearly dawn, Carson had brought little but medical equipment with him. Fortunately, the previous occupants of the house had thoughtfully folded clean linens and left them on a bed before disappearing, so the team was able to make do. John, Ronon, Teyla, and Lorne worked out the watch, and Teyla took first shift in a chair by the front window.
It was not an easy night for anyone. The events of the day, beginning with the strange silence and vacant village and ending with the strange case of mass amnesia, had left them all more than a little disturbed, and they all found it difficult to sleep.
When morning finally dawned, the exhausted group quietly gathered their belongings and headed toward the cave. This time they all entered, moving quickly to the back of the cave. Carson knelt next to the hand, examining it.
"It's hard to tell in this light," he said at last. "Something certainly stripped the flesh from this, but I don't see any tooth marks or scraping on the bone. If it's all right with you, I'm going to take this back outside where I can see it better."
John agreed, and Carson reached a latex covered hand down to grasp the bones. He soon discovered that they seemed to be solidly anchored in the roots. "We're going to have to cut away some of these roots to get to it," Teyla said, letting her firearm hang by its strap and taking her knife back from Elizabeth.
She began cutting at the roots and made some slow progress. Ronon joined her, and between the two of them they succeeded in removing the first layer of roots, only to discover several more below it.
They had cut away two more layers when Ronon declared, "This is taking too long." With barely enough warning for the rest of the group to clear out of the way, he drew his gun and blasted a hole the size of his head into the mass of roots.
At first they thought he'd managed to blow a hole through the rock as well, but when Elizabeth approached it, she saw the area more clearly. "Oh my God," she said, examining the edge. "John, this whole wall, it's nothing but roots." She looked around her as if noticing the tunnel for the first time. "I think this whole thing is one big root system."
John was about to approach when she reeled back from the hole, covering her nose and gagging slightly. "Oh my God," she said again, then moved to one side to throw up. He was about to ask what was wrong when the smell hit him, too. It emanated from the area beyond the hole in the roots, and smelled of decay and death.
Holding his nose and breathing shallowly through his mouth, he approach the hole, shining his flashlight into it. At first he had no idea what he was seeing, but eventually he recognized some bones, sitting in a gooey, soupy, bloody mass of partially broken down something that covered the floor of the passageway beyond the root wall. Numerous vines and roots and what appeared to be large leaves lined the walls of this passageway, dipping down into the mess. It was a moment longer before he realized that he was seeing what was left of the rest of the villagers.
He turned away and lost his breakfast as well, and he could hear the others doing the same. They all left the cave as quickly as humanly possible.
It took them a little while to recover, breathing deeply to eradicate all traces of the horrible smell. They sat on the grass, watching the tree line or the sky, avoiding looking at the cave entrance. No one spoke, and they all tried not to think about what they'd seen. To John's surprise, Carson had produced some mint gum from somewhere, and while it helped mask the stale taste in his mouth, every time his mind drifted back to what he'd seen and smelt John felt the bile start to rise.
Eventually they all stood, warily watching the cave entrance as they discussed what to do next.
"We can't leave yet," Elizabeth said, disgust on her face. "As much as I'd like to never have to face that again, we really should find out what happened to those people."
John disagreed. "Look, we know we're not getting anything from the Palimins. We don't know what happened to those people in there and I really don't want to stick around and find out first hand." Although he could tell that Rodney and Ronon agreed with him, he recognized the look that came over Elizabeth's face. He was going to lose this one.
The doctor in Carson wouldn't let him leave without making some attempt to resolve the issue of what had happened to the people, and Teyla, too, wanted to stay. Although Lorne clearly wanted to head back to Atlantis, he simply said that his mission this time round was to protect Elizabeth, so if she stayed here, he stayed here. Elizabeth turned to John. "We're staying."
They agreed that Carson and Teyla would head back to Atlantis for some hazmat suits while the rest of them waited here and tried to get some answers out of Alarad and his people.
By the time Carson and Teyla returned, the rest of them had gotten no further in finding answers. Instead, they all trooped back to the root-cave, where Carson and John suited up to go in. Carson was hoping to bring back some samples of the... er... remains. John was just hoping that breathing the odorless, filtered air would keep him from throwing up.
He nearly did gag when Carson gathered his sample. John had dealt with dead bodies before, had even caused some of them to become dead, but he'd never dealt with human remains that were so... soupy. If there was anything more disgusting out there, he didn't know what it was.
When they returned to the cave entrance, the rest of the group were waiting anxiously. "Well?" Elizabeth asked. "Did you get what you needed?"
"Oh, aye," Carson replied as he placed his container inside a medical cooler. Stripping off his suit he continued, "I'd like to take this back to be analyzed."
"Fine," John said. "Let's go now, then." He really wanted off this planet.
"One moment, Colonel," Teyla stopped him. "Dr. Brown asked us if we could bring back a sample of the plant that created this tunnel. She seemed to think it might aid us in understanding what happened to these people."
Rodney perked up at that. "Katie asked for that?" He pulled his knife. "How big of a sample?"
"I am unsure, Dr. McKay," Teyla told him.
"Well, the bigger the better I guess," and with that, Rodney proceeded to attack the roots nearest to him. Whenever he cut with his knife, though, the vines above him seemed to shiver.
"Well, that's new," John said, watching them warily. "Rodney, why don't you get away from those roots."
Ronon, too, watched the shaking vines. "That didn't happen earlier, in the cave."
"There were no vines on the wall we opened," Elizabeth reminded them.
Rodney remained oblivious to their concern. "I'll be done in a minute. I just need to cut the bottom section." He began hacking at a section of the root about twelve inches below his first cut.
"McKay, move!" John snapped. When the scientist showed no signs of doing so, Elizabeth reached forward to pull him back.
When John remembered the next few seconds, they always seemed to happen in slow motion, and at the same time so fast he could barely recall. Elizabeth's hand was on Rodney's shoulder when a vine from the roof detached, swinging impossibly fast towards the two people. He watched in horror as it arced towards her forearm, striking it with such force that John could hear the bone snap. She screamed in pain, dropping to her knees and clutching her wrist, and John was sickened to see the bone protruding from her arm.
A second vine whistled above her head, catching Rodney in the side with a wicked looking thorn that pinned him to the root he had been cutting. Ironically, the force pushed his knife the rest of the way home, severing the root section.
Everyone was yelling now, and Lorne, John, Teyla and Ronon emptied their guns into the vine above Rodney's head. The bullets finally severed it from the rest of the plant, and Carson sprinted forward to help the injured man and woman.
John turned to Lorne and snapped, "Get to the gate and dial it, now!" He didn't wait to see the Major take off running, but spun back to Elizabeth, who was now rocking on the ground, silent tears pouring down her face. Teyla was crouched beside her, and as much as John wanted to join them he knew Rodney was the more pressing concern now.
Carson had managed to detach Rodney from the wall, although the thorn was still through his side. "I don't want to remove it yet," Carson explained, "not without better equipment around me. But we don't know anything about this plant; for all we know it could be poisonous." John could tell that the doctor was worried. He glanced at Rodney for a reaction, but his teammate had obviously passed out from the pain.
"We need to get to the gate," John said, looking over his wounded group. "Ronon, can you carry Rodney without bouncing him too much?"
The big man nodded, holstering his weapon and reaching for the scientist. Carson gathered up his medical supplies, including the sample he'd collected earlier and the piece of root Rodney had cut. Glancing briefly back at the still writhing vines, John turned to Elizabeth. He noticed that Teyla had helped her stand, and though she was clearly in pain, she seemed capable of moving on her own.
Teyla read his worry. "We will be fine," she assured him. "I can help Dr. Weir."
John nodded, and they took off as quickly as possible through the forest towards the gate.