Sunlight filtered down from somewhere above, setting the walls and floor alight with color.
"This is amazing," Teyla murmured, staring in awe around the cavern.
Sheppard stared around with assessing eyes. "Cool."
"Isn't it?" McKay was almost vibrating with excitement. "What's more, I'm getting some interesting energy readings . . . ."
"What do you think it was used for?"
Teyla shrugged. "We are unfamiliar with any people so large as these must be." She indicated the doorway. "Nor have I ever been to such a planet as this before."
"It's defensible," Sheppard commented. "One entrance."
"That we can see," McKay pointed out. "This place is immense. I can't see to the other end – and these formations may block parts of the room from sight."
"True," Teyla agreed.
But Sheppard was searching through the room. "Where's Venner?"
"He was right -" McKay turned, and saw only stalagmites. "That's funny."
"Funny? A member of my team is missing."
"Two, actually."
"McKay!"
"I suggest we split up and search for Gabriel," Teyla broke in, heading off the impending argument.
Sheppard sighed, aggravated. "Stay in visual contact at all times."
The three broke off, weaving through the stalagmites in different directions. For all the huge size of the room, they often caught sight of one another among the rock formations, and there was no interference with the signals from their radios.
They carefully swept the room, realizing as they continued that the room was narrowing, channeling them toward the wall opposite the entrance.
Stalagmites and stalactites plunged from floor and ceiling all around them, casting shadows that loomed and wavered. Surprisingly, the ground grew smoother and less difficult to tread the farther they went, something that Sheppard was grateful for as her realized that in their sweeps of the room, they were not traveling as far as they had been. They were being funneled away from the entrance; but toward what?
It was McKay who found the SF.
He rounded a corner, and saw the man's back as he faced a wall of rock. The room dead-ended in a cul-de-sac that looked as if someone had scooped the rock out of the cavern from the side, forming a smooth bowl-shaped surface. It was here that the light, increasing with every step, was concentrated. The ground in front of this smooth, curved wall, was flat, forming a circle bordered perfectly by the wall in front of them, and stalagmites behind them.
The colors on the rock face rippled gently into one another, punctuated by glittering ores and limned with veins of minerals winding through the rock face.
If he ventured to touch it, McKay was sure that the surface would be polished smooth.
But it wasn't the smoothness, nor the staggering size of the curved wall that caught his attention. Rather, the figure standing in front of the massive wall, staring upward into a towering darkness of cathedral silence, was the end focus of his attention.
Wary and unable to see Venner's face, he made no sound, peering around a concealing stalagmite, and watching.
Venner pulled off his P-90 and set it down on the floor. McKay frowned.
There was a pool of light spilling down from some hidden window, high above Venner moved away from the light and to the side, staring intently at the wall. He took a small step, just brushing the circle of sunshine, and then another. For many long moments his attention was fixed wholly on the wall, as he edged around the glowing ring of light.
McKay shifted his weight, and Venner's head whirled, as if he had heard some sound. Glowing hazel eyes – from the reflected light, McKay assured himself – fixed on him.
He squeaked. Stood, awkwardly, and coughed. "Private."
The P-90 was in his hands again, though he didn't remember seeing the soldier grab for the gun.
Venner quirked a brow in that odd manner of his, and if McKay didn't know better, thought he saw the man suppress a smile. Instead, Venner only sighed, lowly.
"Dr. McKay?"
"We've been searching for you," McKay snapped, somewhat irritated. He gripped his mike, speaking into it.
"Where are you?" Sheppard demanded once he'd announced that he'd found their wayward teammate.
"We'll meet you back at the entrance," Venner spoke up for the first time, reaching for his own radio.
Anger was palpable in Sheppard's voice. "This isn't over, Private."
"Sir."
Only acknowledgement in the tone; no defiance or agreement – nothing. McKay shook his head. Private Gabriel Venner annoyed him. The man seemed to have no personality – he was as blank and unreadable as the stone around them. There were hints of humor, and he seemed devoted to Atlantis, but other than his uncomplaining, supportive assistance in finding Ford, McKay had learned nothing of him.
And that made the scientist uneasy.
He could accept that there was something a little different, a little off, about the man. Something that, apparently, made him able to detect the wraith on a level that Teyla, who was genetically linked to them, could not. But he could not accept the lack of an explanation for such a phenomenon. He was not a doctor, but as a scientist, he knew that there must be an answer. He had been determined, for quite awhile now, to find it.
It was the blankness in the man that unnerved him the most, however. He had been on several missions with Venner, but knew as little of him now as he did at the beginning. The man was taciturn and rarely spoke, making it all the more important to heed him when he did, for it seemed he didn't waste words. His skills as a soldier were undeniable, but he kept himself apart from the team. Perhaps because he fully expected Ford to return and replace him. At this point, however, McKay was starting to doubt that.
It was clear that Sheppard also knew little about the man, though he obviously knew more than McKay. He was constantly looking to the other, searching for . . . something. But he had to know more. Rodney was convinced that whatever Sheppard wasn't telling them was the root behind why he had chosen Gabriel Venner in particular as Ford's temporary replacement.
Strangely enough, it was Teyla who knew the most about Venner. Some aspects of their personalities struck McKay as similar. The strange way of twisting some phrases, the care in choosing words. Formidable as warriors, yet both maintained a slight distance from others. In Teyla, McKAy recognized it as necessary to be both leader of her people, and a subordinate to Sheppard; it was a delicate balance of responsibility that required both service and independence. But in Venner, he couldn't understand it.
His thoughts lingering on the puzzle of a man who followed him back through the maze of rock formations. Reaching their starting point, he found Sheppard and Teyla already there.
"Venner. What the hell did you think you were doing?"
The private didn't even turn a hair at the immediate, scathing rebuke. "I thought I felt something," he answered. "It turned out to be nothing."
"And you couldn't answer the radio checks for what reason?"
"It escaped my attention," Venner admitted. "Sir."
A lie. McKay was damned if he knew why he thought so. Perhaps it had something to do with the soldier's strange behavior, which he had clandestinely observed. Perhaps it was the way the man stared over Sheppard's shoulder, not meeting his eyes. Whatever it was, McKay was almost certain he was lying.
Looking at Sheppard's narrowed blue eyes, Rodney realized with a start that the Major suspected the same thing. But why didn't he do anything?
"Any sign of Ford?" he asked instead.
Venner shook his head. "He's somewhere in the complex." He locked gazes with Sheppard once more, speaking honestly. "I can't pin down where. It's likely to be a maze further inside."
Sheppard nodded, once. Then he looked to the others. "What do you think?"
Teyla shook her head. "It would be unwise to tread further if we have no secure means to return."
McKay shrugged.
Sheppard glanced over all of them again, and came to a decision. "Right. Let's move back to the outer rooms of this maze. We'll wait for Ford to come out, and see if we can't grab him then."
The wait was long, and McKay was bored. They had camped out in the shelter offered by one of the outer rooms. McKay would much rather have been exploring the vast complex, but Sheppard had found that there was only one external entrance on this face of the rock, and so they were guarding it. Eventually, Ford would have to come here.
In the meantime, he had studied the energy readings in the cavern, collected a few botanical samples, and run out of anything else to do.
"So, Venner. Where are you from?"
The man gave him a blank look. McKay flattered himself into thinking that he'd surprised the man, but knew he'd be lucky if the other didn't consider him insane.
"Earth," Gabriel answered baldly.
"Oh, no really?" McKay snarled, a little put off by the joke but willing to go with it. A fight was better than sitting here in silence.
"Michigan," the other amended, a little smile on his face.
McKay was irritated by the easy response. Venner baited him, and then ruined his chances for a good argument. But he didn't know anything about Michigan, so he changed tactics. And the subject, but that was incidental.
But Sheppard was there first, making it a double-fronted attack. "What about family?"
"A little brother. And an uncle and cousin." Gabriel shrugged. "And you?"
Sheppard shook his head. "Only child."
Hazel eyes turned to McKay. "A sister," he admitted. "We're . . . not close." How had this interrogation turned around? "And a cat."
Sheppard shook his head. "Dogs," he affirmed. "Venner?"
"Black Lab," the other agreed. Remembered joy slipped through hazel eyes.
McKay shook his head. It had been so quick, it might have been just his imagination. Still . . . "You military types are all alike."
"Hey!" Sheppard was offended, sitting up straight against smoothed stone. "I had a cat once."
"Yeah?" Polite disbelief in the scientist's face.
"Once. It brought me a dead mouse."
"That's what cats do," McKay felt duty-bound to point out.
"I was in bed, asleep, at the time!"
McKay couldn't seem to find words to that, for a moment at least. He fiddled with his pack a moment, searching for an appropriate rejoinder. "Well, that's still what cats do."
Sheppard snorted, eloquently.
Gabriel shook his head, a rare smile pulling at his lips.
Teyla chose that moment to return, breaking the conversation, such as it was, into shards of silence.
Waiting until she had settled, Gabriel stood, stretching, and shouldered his P-90. Sheppard stared at him. "Where do you think you're going?"
An even golden stare met his eyes, unnerving in its intensity. "I'm going back to the cavern," Venner answered mildly.
"Like hell you are."
Teyla's eyes widened at the anger there. McKay stared. This was what it had been building up to, then. The two men clashed at every opportunity, but never in the field. Venner backed down off-world, toning it down until all that was perceived of his presence was a shadow. Why challenge Sheppard now?
Gabriel quirked a brow up, the expression on his face unchanging as he stared evenly back into suspicious blue eyes.
Then . . . he was staring through Sheppard, the Major erased from his sight as something else took hold of his senses. Sheppard shook away the sensation that Gabriel had lost hold of his presence.
Just in time, the strange, ancient distance faded from hazel eyes, and Venner focused in on him once more. "Sir. I am going to the cavern again." Try and stop me.
Gabriel took a step to the side, stepping past. The Major grabbed his arm. "Venner. What the hell are you doing?" A harsh demand, helpless to stop him short of violence, yet needing to understand in the same way they all had, from the beginning. A pleaded order; Sheppard seemed unaware of his own actions, focused in on the other.
Gabriel looked for a long moment as if he wouldn't answer, lips a tight line. Then something seemed to shift in his eyes, and he glanced back at all of them.
McKay shivered at that gaze.
It was as if something had changed within him, altering how he saw them all. But why would that matter? What was truly going on here?
"There's something there," Venner quietly confessed. "Not Ford, but – I can feel it."
Coming from anyone else, the words would have meant nothing. McKay had heard something of this ilk from the man's lips before, however. It had him standing, checking his gun, even as Teyla wrapped slender fingers around her own weapons.
"Why didn't you say anything?" Sheppard demanded, loosing his grip on the other man in favor of cool, semi-automatic steel.
Gabriel looked at them all, weapons at hand, and shook his head ruefully. "It's not like that," he remarked.
"Stop being so vague and tell us what it is, then," McKay snapped. His patience had run out with all this doddering around.
Gabriel sighed, ducking out the door.
Sheppard rolled his eyes, muttering threatening imprecations under his breath. "You know, Venner," he snapped out to the man striding ahead. "If you weren't so damn useful, I'd have your ass locked away on Atlantis for the duration."
"Sir." And a sound that might have been a chuckle.
McKay huffed in exasperation. The man was impossible – irritatingly mysterious and at times strangely paternal, for all he could be no more than thirty-one. Oddly commanding and in-control for an enlisted man without discernable achievement or rank; but that was more than likely due to the way Venner bucked the system. And he had thought Sheppard was a wild card.
But still – they were following him. There was no why; by all rights, McKay had no idea how he had been persuaded to follow a man he was, half the time, absolutely certain had lost his mind. "This is insane," he muttered.
They reached the cavern without incident, and McKay was not surprised in the slightest to see Venner leading them back to the place where the scientist had found the wandering SF.
It was later in the day, now, and the pool of light which had been dripping directly in from above was now angled, hitting the rock and stone and bouncing crazily off, reflected and redirected within this circular area.
Venner pulled up short on seeing it, holding one hand up. They stopped behind him.
"What is it?" Sheppard demanded immediately.
Venner looked carefully to each side. "Ford isn't here."
Tension went out of the entire team.
"Well, now what?" McKay needed to know.
Venner studied the strange light, nodding to himself in satisfaction. "We wait."
"We wait?" Sheppard protested, half-snarling. "What exactly is going on, Venner?"
"More than likely, you'll see." Vague disgust and dissatisfaction in that tone; an irritated resignation which very clearly stated that Venner would prefer they didn't.
"What are you hiding?" Sheppard asked lowly, something in the myriad of emotions in the other's impassive statement pulling him to inquire.
Golden eyes met azure; something sizzled in the air around them. McKay tasted power, fear, helplessness, and . . . hope?
"Are you sure you want to know?"
McKay, for once in his life, wasn't.
But they had time to ponder the question, as the strange SF looked at his watch and gazed at the falling light. And waited.
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Sorry for the delay on this; I truly meant to have it out much sooner, but ended up rewriting it three times, before going back to the original draft. It was a bit tough, since I knew where I wanted to go, but not how to get there . . . anyway, expect the next chapter sooner!