AN: noydb666 sorry for the confusion, the gun she had trained on Alicia, but then when Sheppard confronted her, Vasquez was reaching in her vest to pull something out. Lorne came in and thought it was a gun, and shot her, when it turns out, she was pulling out the patch from her vest (and not a gun), so the useage of 'unarmed' was probably not the best. I'll go back and edit that portion so it's less confusing, thanks for the heads up!Sorry for the space between updates, Shelly's working on her other fic, and I've got mine, and yikes, we're both struggling to write lately (poor shelly got this part at least three times and then I said 'forget it, don't read it, I've got to rewrite' and then I started working on it again!)
About a Baby…part seven
No one was sitting with Vasquez when Lorne slipped behind the privacy curtain. He tried not to feel the emotions so much as he looked at the bandaged head, ventilator tube, and other monitoring equipment that meandered from machine to human.
But he didn't manage it.
He'd screwed up, again. No one had called him on it the first time, but he knew. They'd gone to that damn bug cave, seeking out iratus eggs in hopes of saving Sheppard's life, and while in there, everything had gone to hell, and he'd panicked, trying to get them out alive and losing two men in the process.
Not a morning or night went by where he didn't wake up or go to bed thinking he should've waited on tossing those grenades. Ronon had tried to tell him he'd done the right thing. 'Better to lose two, then lose all' the runner had quoted, but Lorne didn't sit well with even losing two.
And now he had to stare at Vasquez's vacant face, because the fucking bullet lodged in her brain, his bullet, was making damn sure she'd never wake up again. Was it worse that she hadn't died?
He'd tried to pin Beckett down, and all he'd gotten for his trouble was a 'maybe' she'd be a vegetable for the rest of her life, though pneumonia and other health issues were likely to take her before too long.
"I really thought you were going for a gun," he croaked, talking to the still figure as if she were awake and could understand. Maybe even forgive.
Lorne ran a guilty hand through his hair, "Hell, you had a gun on the nurse in the first place, how was I to know you weren't going for another to blow Sheppard away? After he and McKay were almost killed by the gas leak, it was just…" too much of a coincidence.
Why hadn't he confronted her after Ronon found Sheppard and McKay practically at deaths door from the poisonous gas? Because they'd recovered quickly with treatment, or because he was too chicken shit to face someone that he'd trusted, and thereby put his superior officer in jeopardy…was that why he'd been so quick to pull the trigger? To recoup what he'd thought he'd lost, because he knew Sheppard suspected Vasquez, and also him? To prove himself?
"Yeah, I proved something, all right, shooting you in the head sure proved," he cringed as he spoke the words, "that I'm a jackass with a trigger finger."
"Major, I'm sorry to intrude -"
Lorne looked away from Vasquez to see a young female nurse move in, and politely point to the IV bags and pole that were behind him, next to her bed.
He flushed with the realization she'd probably overheard him. Standing up, he moved out of the way, pulling the chair to the side with him. "Sorry," he muttered.
She was acting skittish, like she believed all the rumors circulating about him, and he fought against the urge to run and hide away until this was all finished, but Lorne wasn't a quitter. It was why he was here in the first place, and though he was finding life on this city a great deal more challenging than he'd anticipated, he wasn't going to give up.
He'd clear his name, no matter how long it took, and as much as he hoped Vasquez wasn't guilty, equal parts of him hoped she was, because he didn't want to live with this for the rest of his life.
Withdrawing the patch Sheppard had given him, he looked at it again. It wasn't any special forces that he recognized, and that bugged him.
"Were you involved," he murmured.
The nurse finished, and left, her movements projecting uneasiness and distrust.
He sighed. There wasn't going to be anything easy about the days ahead. He'd already faced weeks of the same but he'd thought it was improving. Maybe people were just getting better at hiding the suspicion.
He sat there for a while, staring at her, as if her body would betray her secrets – or maybe she didn't have any.
"You're still here," Alicia whispered quietly behind him.
"I can't -" he couldn't finish it. Believe…or live with not believing?
He wasn't naïve enough to think she was going to recover enough to satisfy his need to know either way.
Alicia slid closer to him, and offered a sympathetic touch – the only sympathy he'd gotten since he'd shot Vasquez and been tossed in the brig. It felt like a dose of heaven, and he was loathe to leave the comfort of it, ever.
"I was the one being held at gunpoint by her, Major. I know what she was…is, don't blame yourself."
"It's only by your word that I'm free," admitted Lorne. "She didn't say anything about who she worked for?"
Alicia was the last person to talk to Vasquez – what had gone down between the two before Sheppard and McKay had arrived?
Alicia shook her head faintly. "No, I'm sorry, all she wanted were the files on the retrovirus. It was all she talked about."
He found himself leaning towards the nurse, seeking out the comfort of not being judged. Sheppard was off-world with his team, and he was in charge of the military, despite the taint coloring him lately. He had a job to get back to.
Reluctantly, he stood up. Impulsively he cupped Alicia's chin with the palm of his hand, and lingered longer than he should've, knowing even as he did so he was intruding too far into her personal space, but the sheer weight of being free of the accusing looks, it was heady. "Thanks," he said, finally pulling his hand back, and turning to leave.
Alicia returned the soft smile before answering ever so quietly, "You're welcome."
In the days to come, Lorne would wonder more and more why someone was going out of his or her way to frame him, because he'd barely cleared his office doorway, when the call came down that there was a medical emergency in the infirmary.
He'd ran back so hard it took him minutes to catch his breath, only to face Beckett, shaking his head sadly, as he pulled the sheet over Vasquez's face.
"But, I was just here – she was," he stumbled to make sense of it, "stable."
And that's when he saw the sadness harden, and the suspicions start again. Beckett ordered him taken into custody until an autopsy could confirm the cause of death. This time, Lorne didn't protest as they led him away. He was too busy trying to figure out just what the hell game someone was playing.
OoO"Did you pick this planet?" Rodney shot an accusing look at Teyla.
"Rodney, I believe it was you that picked this world."
John knew, in fact, it was Rodney that had selected this as a world to scout. The energy readings had been logged months back, but with the issues at hand, it'd been put on the back burner, the need for a ZPM not as urgent as before.
Still, the banter felt normal, and good. All those months with the bond screwing him up and his inability to do his job, and the few times he had been off-world, things had been a complete disaster. The coup on Baltar, the trips to Eradia, everything was tainted by a deep unrelenting sadness because Dreya was dead. So this…this was good. And he wasn't going to be the one to point out that McKay's choice might have been less than perfect.
"It couldn't have been this hot when I did the initial survey, because, seriously, I'm melting into a puddle."
Sheppard ignored the surreptitious looks Rodney kept shooting him, as if he were a fragile piece of spun glass, and couldn't take a little heat. He was hot, but so was everyone else. He was sweating more than anyone, though, and that was kind of unfair. John had been working to regain his fitness, but the progress he'd thought he'd made was being stripped bare and proven how woefully inadequate it was by this harsh environment.
He tried not to be pissed at how cool Ronon remained, despite everyone else literally oozing water out of their pores right after they drank it.
Ronon was easily the largest of the four members, and with all that hair, you'd expect him to be sweating like a Popsicle on a sunny day, but he was the least affected.
Even Teyla seemed disgruntled by it.
"Quit complaining, McKay." Ronon didn't mince words.
"I'm not complaining," he refuted. "I'm discussing. It's entirely possible to have a conversation based upon adverse conditions without complaining!"
John swung his machete against a thick vine and said, "It's not so much what you're saying, as the tone you're saying it with, Rodney. It's whiny."
McKay was close behind Sheppard, so close, he had to move to avoid John's backhand swing of the cutting weapon, but he dodged and pursued. "Whiny?" He glanced over his shoulder at Teyla, "I'm not whiny, am I?"
Teyla was a tactician, and a diplomat, and because of that, she wouldn't often come out and admit the blunt truth, preferring instead to coat it in sugar and offer it subtly like a treat, but this wasn't one of those times she could do that.
"You can be," she said reluctantly. "Occasionally, from time to time -"
Ronon interrupted, "What she's trying to say is yes, you're whiny."
A slash of bright light split the sky, and thunder crackled overhead. Conversation stilled, as did bodies, as everyone looked upward just in time to feel the first splashes of rain against their faces.
The time from spitting drops to downpour was less than thirty-seconds, and in less than two minutes, they were soaked.
"Oh, this is great," snarled McKay.
John kind of had to agree on that one. They'd been slogging away in the tropical heat for going on six hours, breaking a path through the thick jungle while following the faint energy source reading, and that alone had, admittedly, been enough to complain and whine about, though he'd never give that much to Rodney willingly, and now they were going to get to spend the remainder of the trip soaked to their skin.
Not to mention that their uniforms when wet weighed about twice as much.
Suddenly being stuck in a small room with Lily fussing seemed preferable to being here.
"Can I whine now?" McKay asked, sweeping everyone with a disgusted face.
Ronon nodded abruptly. "Yeah. This is whine-worthy."
Despite the weather, the team pressed on, Sheppard and Ronon taking turns swinging the long knife to cut swaths through the thick overgrowth, that was now swimming in the water from the rain. John had considered calling it off, but he'd caught Rodney watching him again, with that same damning look, and he'd have to crawl home before backing away from this mission now.
McKay and him, they were like two alpha dogs circling around, trying to figure out who was going to dominate who. Rodney hovered, and cajoled, and blustered and forced himself into John's personal space, while Sheppard merely jogged in, nailed his point home, and sauntered back out.
Conversation dwindled as everyone focused on keeping out of the way of vegetation and swinging machetes and managing to not swallow more of the water then they had too. And probably, everyone was also lost in their own thoughts. God knows, they had enough to ruminate on.
As the day waned, John started to wonder if it was monsoon season on this planet, because the deluge just wasn't letting up. He lifted his face to the sky, part of him reveling in the stormy nature, and felt a freedom from the weight of the past events for the first time in a long time. He was tired, emotionally and physically, but this – this made him feel alive again.
Not that Lily didn't, but it was a different thing, being out here and having the urgency and excitement of a new mission, and a new planet. And how desperate was he, that this mission was one that he was enjoying, when before the bond, he would've gated back to Atlantis and said it was a complete and total disaster. Nothing like time to give you perspective.
"Sheppard, look," Ronon called ahead of him.
The runner had made some more cuts in the jungle, and it revealed a metallic shine ahead. John's eyes narrowed and he pulled McKay forward with him. "Check the power readings now," he ordered, pointing at what could possibly be a building hidden underneath the overgrowth.
This is it, had to be. Returning with a ZPM would be another hail mary – a thumb in the face to the recent events, because it'd prove they could still get out here and do what needed to be done, regardless of how crippled the internal attacks had made them feel.
Rodney seemed surprised that they'd actually found something, maybe he figured it really was a needle in the haystack, but he quickly assessed what his equipment reported. "Yes, yes – that's it!"
As untouched as the plant life was around it, at least they wouldn't have to worry about bad guys lurking inside. They'd had enough bad guys to last him the rest of his lifetime. Sheppard moved towards the building, and hoped the ZPM was waiting inside, a treasure waiting for the taking. The structure definitely looked Ancient. The same burnished metal that seemed to age without showing wear.
"Spread out, look for a door, but don't touch anything!" John had pictures of his teammates being transported inside and him left out wondering where they were.
Ronon stayed near Sheppard, while Teyla and Rodney branched off to examine the rear of the building, that is, once they managed to work their way to the rear. It was rectangular, and longer than it was wide, but it was still plenty wide enough to indicate the building was big. Very big.
"You really think there's a…what is that thing…ZPM…in here?"
Ronon was finally working up a sweat even with the cooling effect of the rain as they worked to free the walls enough to inspect for a door. The vines were clingy, and intertwined, and at some areas, the soft feathery undersides of leaves were peppered with not so soft tendrils.
"I don't" John grunted as he struggled with a particularly tough vine "know."
"Then why are we here?"
Sheppard paused in his fight with the plant. "Because Rodney thinks there's one in there." And he had desperately needed to get away from Atlantis and all the emotional baggage, but he didn't add that part. Judging from the looks he'd been getting from Ronon all day, the man had known that, too.
Rodney watched him like a hawk, waiting for him to fail emotionally, while Ronon watched him waiting for him to break any which way. Both sucked. Teyla was the only one that seemed able to accept his state of being as it was…on the mend, and capable of doing what needed to be done – without watchdogs.
So, John kind of felt like a kid telling his Dad the reason why he'd written on the wall, was because the wall was blank. Stating the obvious, but not being entirely truthful.
The runner shrugged noncommittally. "In all these months of looking, you guys never found a better way?" Ronon was willing to play along.
"Like what?" John edged into annoyed.
It's not like they enjoyed looking for ZPM's by gating to all the backwater planets in the galaxy, and it sure seemed that the Ancients favored putting these gems in the remotest of locations at times. If there'd been a better way, they would've been using it.
"A ZPM detector?" Ronon glanced McKay's way, even though the other two were out of sight. "McKay's smart, why don't you ask him to work on building one. Gate to a planet, flip a switch, if it lights up you know there's a ZPM instead of this vague 'energy reading' goose chase."
"What if I like the goose chase?"
It might have had a chance of being considered, if it weren't for the fact that his hands had started to bleed from pulling on the vines, and he was soaking wet, with rainwater running from his hair to his chin in rivulets.
Despite the fact that he had started out enjoying just being here, it had degenerated into a fight against the elements, and against his two doubting sallies – Ronon and McKay - to prove that he could handle it. And now John was looking forward to getting the damn thing – if it existed - and going home. It hadn't even been a day, was he that out of the routine? Granted, his mind kept drifting back to Lily, and his warm dry bed, and -
Sheppard stared at Ronon for a beat, before sighing. "Right," he said, before turning back to the vine that was kicking his ass. "Note to self, tell Rodney to refine a ZPM finder."
"You should pull more from the shoulder," advised Ronon, decimating his plant in one swift tug. "More leverage."
John watched the runner lever up for another thick vine, and without bending at the elbows, the runner braced his arms straight, bending his knee instead, and pulled backwards in one smooth motion.
He copied Ronon's stance, and put all his weight into the tug, but either he'd loosened it before, or he misjudged how much effort Ronon used, because he went flying backwards as the vine gave, both him, and the vine still in his hand, flopped onto the soggy ground with a splash.
It was a good thing he was already wet, because the ground was now simmering in about two inches of accumulated water that hadn't been absorbed into the saturated ground. He would've hated to have gotten wetter. John was pretty sure that wasn't a possibility anymore.
Dry bed, he mentally repeated; Lily, dry bed, and just maybe, Rodney would bring him some of that atrocious blue Jell-O that he really didn't like, but it'd become some kind of weird symbol of their relationship.
Ronon smirked but held out a hand for him to latch on to.
John took it.
"Colonel Sheppard, we have located a door!"
Teyla had shouted and for Teyla that was pretty excited. John and Ronon shared a relieved state of mind before trudging on to the trail Rodney and Teyla had created to get to the back of the structure. A door meant they were almost on the way back to the gate…almost. Better than still searching for a way in, right? Progress no matter how small was still progress.
Rodney was scanning the surface with this machine, and Teyla was waiting impatiently for them. When they got in eyesight, she waved them over, and once near enough, John stepped towards the door and Rodney. John glanced at the hands holding the detector, and noticed they trembled slightly. It'd been a lot of work getting here, and then clearing away growth to find an entrance, could be he needed to eat, or maybe Rodney was just excited?
He'd have to remember to ask McKay about it when Ronon and Teyla weren't hovering right behind them.
"Anything?" he asked, moving his hand around the seam without touching…searching with his mind for anything Ancient waiting for a command.
"Power's…" Rodney tapped the screen and shook his head, "No. This isn't right. It was there and then it's just gone." He looked up at the door, squinting to keep his eyes dry. "It's got to be shielded."
Sheppard touched the door.
Light flared, and he heard Rodney shout, and was McKay panicking? Then he felt nothing at all…
OoO
When John opened his eyes again, it was to the dark. He fumbled for the flashlight on his vest, and when he got it switched on, the change made his head pound harder. Headaches had dogged him since Dreya's death. He didn't think it was from the severed bond, the Eradian healers had dealt with that, but stress – probably.
Tension headaches were a real bitch.
"Ronon? Rodney?" he coughed on the last name. Dust…there was a lot of dust in the room, wherever this was. "Teyla?" he tried again.
The odd thing, when he finally noticed, was that he wasn't wet anymore. So, either he'd been out of it for a while, and he didn't think it'd been long enough for his uniform to dry otherwise he'd have a lot more pressing needs than finding his team, which meant the transporter had rematerialized them sans water.
There was no response to his calling out names, and Sheppard felt a seed of fear begin to form in his gut.
A transporter that was so finely calibrated that it filtered out water from clothing? When he'd reached out earlier he hadn't sensed any active tech, but Rodney had said that some kind of shielding was up. When he touched the door, it must have triggered something.
He snorted to himself. Of course it triggered something. Didn't it always? The question was, since when did the Ancients have transporter technology like this?
Swinging the flashlight around in an arc, he realized that the room was an oval empty space, almost reminded him of a cell. It was bare, and there was a door leading into a corridor.
He needed to find his team…needed to find Rodney. Teyla and Ronon, they could take care of themselves, but Rodney, as much as he was waiting to see if John would fall, Sheppard felt the same in regards to McKay.
Since Lily, it was even worse. He'd dreaded the first mission out because of that. John had already lost Dreya, and he hadn't even gotten to be that close with her, other than the connection with the pregnancy and Lily.
He didn't think he could face losing McKay. John had a lot more time under his belt with Rodney, and a lot more to their friendship than he'd been prepared to realize. It'd taken all he had not to go to Elizabeth and ask for Rodney to be grounded. The only thing that had kept him from doing it was the realization that Rodney would most likely convince Elizabeth why he should be grounded as well.
Tit for tat, and yet, first mission out, the shit hit the proverbial fan. He should've talked to Elizabeth.
Painfully, he got to his feet, and tried to fight against the pins and needles coursing across his skin. John didn't like how it felt uncomfortably close to recovering from a wraith stunner.
The doorway was open. Or should he say there weren't any visible barriers, and he really really wished there was something, because by there being nothing, he could either walk right out of the room, or be bounced back because of a force field. It was the bouncing back part he didn't want to experience.
Hopefully, if there had been one, it wasn't working now, because nothing else seemed to be working in this place.
Shutting his eyes and waiting for the pain, he tentatively poked a hand into the doorway, extending it slowly when he didn't meet with resistance. Soon, Sheppard had his entire body through, and he was breathing a sigh of relief. Dead, or powered down, whatever, it wasn't working, and he was pretty sure that at some point there had been a force field there.
The walls were bare, the floor bare, and he could make out as many black holes spaced evenly down the corridor, as up, and he guessed there were a lot more of the cells like the one he'd woken up in.
It almost eerily reminded him of a prison.
Shivering at the thought of running into any Ancient prisoners, he started forward, flashing his light into the next cell. It almost surprised him when the first cell yielded an unconscious McKay.
"Rodney!" John exclaimed, rushing to kneel beside him and assess his physical condition. He felt all kinds of conflicting emotions. Anger, worry -
The groan was instant relief, because it proved the Rodney was alive, and coming out of whatever had knocked them out.
John looked with the flashlight for the handheld energy detector. It was by Rodney's leg, and when he lifted it, he saw that it wasn't going to help them any more. The screen was cracked, and dead. Shit.
Definitely going to talk to Rodney about building a ZPM detector.
Nudging McKay, John called again, "Rodney!"
"Wha-," Rodney slurred.
John frowned, before shaking him a little harder than the earlier nudge. "Wake up, we've been…" he looked around the room trying to find a good word for it. "Transported." Maybe…
Though it was probably a good guess. The only issue that really made him worry was how similar the entire process felt to those wraith stunners – but the Ancients had built this building, he was sure of that, so that counted for something. He doubted they'd been caught in a culling beam, because they hadn't seen or heard any darts, then again, the niggling problem with the fact that they hadn't run into any Ancient tech that could actually beam you free-standing anywhere before bothered him.
Here you had the wraith stunner effect coupled with the beaming tech, and mixed in with an apparently Ancient built prison, and what did that give you?
He had no fucking idea, which is why he really needed McKay to wake up.
"Where are we?" Rodney slurred more intelligibly. He was pushing himself into a sitting position and John helped him with his free hand.
"I could answer that, but you're probably not gonna like the answer," John said dryly.
"I'm not in the mood for a round of twenty questions," grouched McKay. And John had to admit, Rodney looked pretty miserable. "Let's try this again, shall we. Where are we?"
"Inside an Ancients prison," answered John promptly. Hey, he'd asked for it.
Rodney's face drained of the annoyance, and he looked around the empty room for the first time, then at the door leading out, before back to John. "I didn't want to know that."
He watched as McKay patted his uniform, and realized he was dry, and then looked at Sheppard and noticed that John was dry also. "How -" he started to say.
"Not the scientist," Sheppard said. "Frankly, it's weird."
John climbed back to his feet now that Rodney seemed steady, and peered into the hall, checking to see if Ronon or Teyla were somewhere looking for them. All he saw was darkness. He turned back to McKay saying, "It's only a guess, but I think it has something to do with the design of the machine that did the transporting."
"Unfortunately, your guess is probably a safe one, not that it helps us any." McKay was studying the broken piece of equipment. "I know I recorded a level of energy before it was shielded, and it correlates to a Zed PM. It's here, John, I know it."
His use of John felt awkward and right all at the same time. The natural progression of things, but the first attempts were always odd. Sheppard sighed. Everything about his life had become odd. John needed to focus on the issue at hand, and that was finding the rest of his team, finding the ZPM, if there was one, and getting home. Lily awaited, and he knew Elizabeth wasn't the most natural of baby-sitters, though she did try.
"Let's get looking then." Sheppard handed McKay his flashlight, and settled his P90, and at Rodney's worried look he shrugged. "Just in case. Hopefully we'll run into Ronon and Teyla along the way."
They left the cell, Rodney shaking his limbs about in a way that spoke of his uncomfortable recovery similar to what John had felt, or maybe he still needed to eat. The fact that Rodney wasn't bitching about it bothered him more than anything. It brought home how serious the situation was.
It didn't take long to walk the full length of the corridor and realize that they were alone. Another corridor branched to the left, and Rodney was trying to light it up enough to see any detail before they made their way in that direction.
"Do you think Teyla and Ronon are still outside the building?" John asked. He had a sneaking suspicion about the fact that the only two people in the building were the two with the gene, and seeing how they'd woken up in cells close to one another –
The impatient 'how stupid do you think I am' glare from Rodney made John sigh.
"Right. Obvious conclusion."
McKay threw him a bone. "Obvious yes, but still impressive for your type."
"My type?" John spluttered. He was being typed?
"Your 'type'," echoed Rodney. He flicked the flashlight up ahead again, before stepping into the new corridor. It wasn't said disparagingly, but as a simple fact, though there was a level of detachedness that John hadn't felt from Rodney in a while, and it hurt…just a little.
John pulled McKay back with a hand on his shoulder, and aiming the P90 forward, moved to the front.
"My type happens to save the lives of your type." And maybe that was just a bit of defensiveness at the thought that Rodney hadn't given him more credit than being the stereotypical soldier along to protect the scientists. And, that he didn't mean enough to McKay that he'd look deeper into John's psyche. Had Sheppard imagined earlier events, and what they'd meant?
"I didn't say there was anything wrong with your type, just that…at times…soldiers can be a little slow."
The pot calling the kettle black, because you'd think a geek would be the last one to accuse someone of being stuck in a preset mold of any kind of label.
"So, if I'm such a slow soldier, why do you hang around me so much?"
"I never said you were slow!" Rodney was getting angry and John kind of enjoyed it. "I said your type, big difference."
"The fact that you're typing me alone is insulting."
Rodney finished processing John's comments and he huffed, "Besides, I don't hang out with you so much…you keep wandering in my space."
Liar, and they both knew it. The earlier conversation they'd had when John had been on Eradia, or the lack of the conversation and then later when Sheppard had tried again to get McKay to open up – he was always running and then he'd had the nerve to tell Sheppard that John was running, too.
There was a sound of feet moving on bare floor, and John whipped his gun to the right, only to see an empty room. He narrowed his eyes, and stepped into the cell, his thoughts on Rodney temporarily displaced. He could've sworn he'd heard something, but there wasn't anything there.
"I don't wander in your space, you're always bugging me to come and 'test this' or 'test that'," John mocked. He could pretend just as much as McKay could. He did wander into Rodney's lab, often, and for any stupid reason he could find, more so since Dreya's death. Since he hadn't been able to figure out exactly why, he didn't imagine Rodney knew anymore than he did.
And the room was definitely empty.
The hairs rising on the back of his neck, John backed out, and got in front of Rodney again, who had stopped and waited while he did the check.
"What's there?" McKay asked.
"Apparently nothing."
"Then why'd you go in there?"
John wondered again why he'd wanted to go on this mission. "Because, I thought I heard something. Obviously, I was wrong."
But he didn't think he was, and it made him even uneasier. What was this place?
"Let's go," John said. He didn't want to linger in here. It was starting to get to him. The darkness, and the emptiness, was creepy, like something out of a ghost story. He was just imagining things because of that, had to be.
"How do you know there isn't something there?" asked Rodney. "It's darker than…"
"Than what?"
"I don't know, I'm thinking. That transporter-stun contraption rattled my brain."
John chuckled, but he didn't loosen his grip on the gun. It felt a lot like old times. Danger, darkness, skulking about – too many missions like that in the past.
The sudden disturbance of the air going by him, made him whirl to the point where he had to drop the gun, otherwise he would've been pointing it at Rodney.
"Did you feel that?" he asked, glancing around in an almost paranoid state.
"Feel what?" McKay was following John's eyes with his own, and shifted nervously. "Will you stop doing this? You're starting to make me think something is here, and there's not. It's just us," Rodney asserted, but it came out weak, and almost as if he were trying to reassure himself along with Sheppard.
Maybe John was losing it, because the corridor was empty. He let out the lungful of air he'd been holding, before turning front again, and steadying his weapon. A way out would be good, definitely worth finding, and screw the ZPM.
Ronon and Teyla were probably frantic trying to find a way to get in to them, while he was beginning to get frantic to find a way out.
The corridor ahead branched, this time two directions, left and right. John waved at Rodney to examine the left, while he scanned the right with the feeble light from his P90 scope.
"Mine doesn't look promising, what about yours?" he asked McKay.
Rodney was peering downward, squinting. "I think I see…"
He took a couple steps forward and strained his head forward. "It looks like an actual door, not an empty space where a force field would be, like the other rooms we've seen."
"Left it is," said John, pulling away from the right hand corridor and getting in front of McKay, again.
"Would you stop doing that!" bitched Rodney. "I can't see, just…I understand your urge to protect, but step to the side a little, okay?"
John shot Rodney an irritated glare, but slid over slightly. Funny how his overprotective urges were annoying Rodney, while he'd felt the same about how McKay and Ronon had been doing it to him earlier.
He walked a few steps, but heard something stepping closer to them up ahead. He froze, holding a hand up for Rodney to stop.
"I know you heard that," Sheppard swore. "Tell me, that you heard that."
McKay shrugged. "Your wearing combat boots, it's going to echo in a building of this size."
"It's not a damn echo!" argued John.
Rodney waved the flashlight over the empty hall running away from them. "Do you see anything that could be making those sounds, other than us? It's an echo."
Clenching his jaw tight, John fought against arguing further. Rodney wasn't opening himself up to it because his eyes couldn't see anything, and scientists were notorious for only believing what they could see.
But Sheppard was becoming convinced something was stalking them, yet, he couldn't see anything anymore than Rodney could, so what the hell was going on?
"Just go," McKay prodded. "The door's up ahead, and hopefully it will contain control consoles and we can get the ZPM and leave."
John never thought he'd see the day when Rodney was making more sense than he was. He debated for another second, staring distrustfully down the empty corridor, before jerking forward. The door was only a few steps ahead, and as soon as John approached, it slid open to reveal another dark room, but this time, when the flashlight pierced the gloom, they were rewarded by control panels and consoles glinting in the tunneled light.
Thank god.
Sheppard stepped in, and did a cursory inspection, before letting Rodney pass. "Find the way out, now," he ordered gruffly.
"The ZPM?" Rodney protested.
"We'll come back later, with everyone. Something's not right, Rodney…I can feel it."
What McKay was going to say next was lost, because John felt a sudden wind stir, as if something had blown by, and a force that he couldn't see abruptly knocked him down.
"John!" screamed a now panicked Rodney.
But Sheppard was only aware of being dragged at an awfully fast speed, and as his head hit the wall, because whatever was running away with him turned the corner and didn't consider the angle of John's body making the turn with it, he lost even that awareness.
TBC…