Part 2: Stuck in the Middle With You
Overload. Oh shit. If there is one word Rodney never wants to hear again, it's overload. Although he's also not fond of vacuum. Or explosion. Or mistake.
"Did you try telling it to turn off?" he demands reflexively, his voice cracking as panic attack number three circles around him. Red spots flare in the darkness, scaring him until he realizes it's because his eyes are closed too tightly, although he doesn't remember closing them. His hand shakes on the radio until Teyla grips both to steady it. Or maybe to steady him.
"Gee, Rodney, I'm glad you thought of that." Sheppard's voice sounds almost as strained as Rodney's, not that Sheppard is buried and in imminent danger of being reduced to his component atoms by an overloading generator. Or actually, he is in imminent danger, but he can run, like they did last time. Not that Sheppard is likely to run while his teammates are trapped, but that's something else Rodney doesn't need to be thinking about. "Of course I tried! But it's a little cranky after the earthquake, and apparently not in the mood to take psychic orders from strangers!"
"Okay, okay!" Rodney closes his eyes and fights to breathe evenly through panic and memory, sweat running cold down his forehead and back. Teyla's grasp on his hand, warm and firm, helps more than he expects; he focuses on his teammate, breathes out hard, and tries to remember everything he can about the facility and the generator. "Okay. Okay. Colonel, describe exactly what is happening."
"Right. Um..." A long pause and some scuffling noises, presumably Sheppard making his way back over to the generator, and just how bad does it look outside their little Pit of Hell? "Okay. That amber control panel on the front is blinking off and on, faster than it was last time I looked, about five minutes ago. There's lights going off on both upper quadrants, too, where it starts curving around towards the back; looks like they were hidden under some panels before. It's shaking some, also harder than it was last time I checked, and that line of yellow lights underneath the main panel is blinking, too. Plus, there's the alarms, which have been going off since right after the quake."
Alarms. Flashing lights. Overload. Sheppard. "How many yellow lights are lit?" Rodney's voice doesn't shake and he's surprised by that.
"The first... seven of the ten are lit. Which I'm guessing means we've got three lights to go before Bad Things start happening."
"That's a surprisingly sensible and very disturbing conclusion. Anything else? What about those devices in the corners, are they doing anything?"
"You mean those round things that you couldn't figure out?"
Rodney draws his head back as far as he can, offended by Sheppard's phrasing. "I'm sure that, given more time, I would have--"
"Yeah, yeah, you're a genius, Rodney, we got that." Sheppard's voice is impatient. "No change on those things, they've still got lights showing, that same yellow color -- except for the one that was over on your side of the room, the one that wasn't glowing before. I don't know about that one, seeing as how it's buried now."
Interesting information, but none of it helpful at the moment. Rodney takes another deep breath, and gets a supportive nod from Teyla. "All right, the lights came on when we came into the facility, or more likely, when you came into the facility, Colonel." Which is still irritating on several levels. "We traced the major power signature the MALP found to the generator and why couldn't the Ancients have just used a nice, stable ZPM? Seriously, if they just--"
"Rodney!"
"Doctor McKay."
Sheppard and Teyla cut him off simultaneously, and he starts to bristle, then mentally backtracks and refocuses. "Right, right, sorry. All right, so, a 10,000-year-old generator with no immediately obvious source to be generating power from, but everything was functioning initially. Possibly it took damage in the quake -- can you see anything that looks broken, Colonel?"
"Nothing," Sheppard replies promptly. "Ronon and I checked it top to bottom as soon as it started making with the flashing and the alarms. The ceiling only collapsed around you and none of the debris came anywhere near it."
"Only around us? How fair is that?" He keeps going before either Teyla or Sheppard can yell at him again, although it's a completely legitimate complaint. "Okay, that's both good and bad. It rules out an immediately obvious problem, but there's no way to be sure nothing was damaged internally without opening it up, which I can't exactly do from in here."
"I sent Ronon back to the gate," Sheppard says with a grunt, as if he's moving something heavy, hopefully wreckage from over Rodney and Teyla. "They should be sending teams to help us dig you out, and Zelenka to look at the generator."
Rodney feels an utterly irrational flash of hurt that Sheppard doesn't trust him to fix this, but actual sanity chases that away quickly, and Rodney sags against Teyla in relief. "Oh, thank God." Yes, it's good that Sheppard isn't expecting him to fix the generator by himself from inside a pile of wreckage and with one hand trapped behind his back (or under his head, actually). Not that he couldn't, of course, but there are few people on or off Atlantis he trusts as much as Radek when death is on the line. "Yes, Zelenka would be good here. Excellent call, Colonel, very good."
"We will be very grateful for Doctor Zelenka's assistance," Teyla agrees. "Although I'm certain Doctor McKay will be equally helpful."
"I'm sure he will," Sheppard replies, and Rodney can hear the mostly-sincere amusement even over the radio. He rolls his eyes and tries to shift his right arm even a centimetre, as pins and needles start setting in again.
"Yes, yes, fine," he snaps, half touched by their blatant stroking of his ego, and half appalled that they think it's still necessary. "If we're done with the kindergarten pep talk, can we go back to preventing a presumably massive explosion and getting us out of here before all blood is cut off to our extremities, or we suffocate and die?"
"Keep your shirt on, Rodney, I'm doing my best here. Look, you were poking around this thing for two hours trying to figure out how to unhook it before you decided to go play with that door. Didn't you see any off switches, or any--"
Sheppard's voice breaks off abruptly and Rodney's stomach clenches. "Aw, shit!" Sheppard swears, and then the shaking starts again -- the room, not Rodney. He yelps, flattening himself over Teyla as the debris shudders around them. The remains of the archway shift against his shoulders and he yelps again; Teyla wraps her arm around his back as if she can protect them both, and buries her face in his vest.
The shaking subsides, and 10,000 years worth of dust drifts over their faces. Teyla coughs deep in her chest and flinches in pain, and Rodney tries to lift himself enough to not be adding to her problem even as he chokes. Sheppard's voice comes through the radio, shouting their names; Rodney gropes for the talk button and yells, "What the hell was that? Is that going to happen again?"
"How the hell should I know?" Sheppard yells back. "An aftershock, I guess; you're the one who lived in Nevada!"
"Oh, so that makes me an expert in earthquakes?"
"You claim you're an expert in everything else!" Which is completely untrue in addition to being a low blow, and Rodney is about to inform Sheppard of this when Sheppard swears again. "Crap. Rodney, we're up to eight lights, and the main panel is going crazy. Damn it, why won't this thing just turn--" There's a thunk, followed by a loud, sharp CRACK; Sheppard's cry of pain is cut off abruptly.
"Oh god," Rodney breathes in the sudden silence.
Teyla grabs the radio from his frozen hand. "Colonel Sheppard!" she shouts, and they both wait. There's no response, just the empty noise of dead air. "Colonel Sheppard! John!" Still nothing and Teyla glares up at Rodney. "What could have happened?"
"Like I'm suddenly gifted with the ability to see though... this?" He waves his hand spastically at their surroundings, his voice rising to an unsteady shout. "Because everyone's been taking a great deal of pleasure lately in reminding me that I'm not Superman, so it's a little unreasonable of you to expect me to be now!"
"I did not ask you to--" She cuts herself off and closes her eyes as she takes a deep breath. Rodney stares at her through the lingering dust, distracted for a moment from his own terror because he's rarely seen Teyla this close to completely losing it. After a very long moment, she opens her eyes and asks carefully, "The loud sound we heard, before Colonel Sheppard was cut off. Do you have any idea what it could have been?"
He tries to think through his panic, to answer calmly, uncertain how far he can push this unusual, off-balance Teyla. The stink of burned flesh is suddenly strong in his nose and the back of his throat, and he can't tell if it's from then or now, or even what the difference is. But Teyla is definitely here and now, her eyes boring into his and the warmth of her body under him, and he clutches at her reality like a drowning man. "I... He was trying to turn the generator off. It's... it's possible that something blew, a circuit breaker or the equivalent. The cracking sound could have been some kind of power discharge, like lightning."
It's not the best comparison he could have made, not when Rodney's memory of Collins' corpse is still vivid, only now the remains of his face look like Sheppard's.
Teyla's eyes grow wide with horror, and Rodney wonders when she's remembering. The storm, maybe; flying a jumper through lightning, its power coursing through the corridors of Atlantis... "Then Colonel Sheppard is alone and most likely injured. And we can do nothing to help him."
Her eyes are shining in the glare of the flashlight a little more than they should, and Rodney realizes again that not even Teyla can be strong all the time. He gropes for something to reassure her, babbling out a frantic stream of words and wishing yet again that Sheppard was here.
"Ronon went for help; any minute now, he'll be back with the cavalry. You know Elizabeth, she'll send everyone who can possibly help, and probably a lot of people who actually can't. Zelenka, Major Lorne, the entire geology department... And, and, oh!" Inspiration hits. "Beckett will suck it up and come through himself, and he'll probably bring half the infirmary with him. Sheppard will have more help than he knows what to do with any minute now. Seriously, he will."
Amazingly, Teyla's face gradually loses some of its horrible tension; by the time he runs out of steam, she's almost smiling. Not quite -- he'd be sure she'd actually gone over the edge if she was smiling, because their situation really is appallingly bad -- but almost.
And oddly, reassuring Teyla has steadied him. He can only smell dust and sweat and a trace of blood now, along with something warm and musky that he associates with Teyla. He tries not to think about what he smells like, and gets Teyla to hold the flashlight so he check his watch; it's not like they're going anywhere, but Carson gets picky about things like exact timelines when he's dealing with injuries.
And Carson's going to be here any minute. Absolutely. And he'll bring Radek with him -- just in time for everyone to get blown up because Rodney is in here and not out there fixing the generator.
Not that Rodney working on the generator is any guarantee that things won't still blow up, take out the building and the planet and maybe the solar system for good measure. But he really is trying not to think about that, honestly. He focuses on the generator that's here and now instead, picturing its huge, round bulk in his head and letting his mind roam over the possibilities. It came on by itself, and was functioning perfectly until the quake... or, at least, had shown no signs of malfunctioning until then. Not necessarily the same thing, is it?
"We should turn the flashlight off," he says reluctantly, after several minutes of chasing currently untestable theories around the inside of his head. "The batteries won't last forever and we don't know how long it'll take them to get to us."
"Yes," Teyla agrees, but neither of them move to turn the light off. The darkness presses in too close without Sheppard's voice to lighten it, to remind them that a world exists beyond this cramped space. But darkness that can be conquered by turning the flashlight back on is infinitely preferable to the darkness following dead batteries, with no source of relief available. Finally, Teyla shifts and the light dies with a tiny 'click'.
The blackness is sudden and absolute. Terrifying. Rodney bows his head against Teyla's, breathing in and out slowly, feeling her hand fumble for his and grip it tightly. They're buried alive, but as long as he can hear Teyla breathe, feel her chest moving beneath his, then they are alive. All they can do now is wait, and hope the generator doesn't explode before help comes for Sheppard. And for them.
But the memories press in with the darkness, of standing in an ancient laboratory and watching the red climb higher and higher. Of Sheppard shouting, and knowing beyond a doubt that he'd just gotten himself and his friend killed. Of Radek's voice, pleading with him to be reasonable, and of Collins' body being zipped into the bag, and the burnt smell overpowering everything--
"Talk to me, please," Teyla says suddenly, and he jumps, banging the back of his head against the 'ceiling' and wincing at the impact. "I'm sorry, I did not mean to startle you."
"No problem," and it isn't, really, because the renewed throbbing in his head is so much easier to focus on. Teyla tugs slightly at his hand and he realizes that he's been crushing hers. It takes an effort to loosen his grip, but when he tries to release her altogether, she refuses to let go.
"Talk to me," she repeats.
"About what?" Rodney asks stupidly. He coughs, sending spikes of pain through his ribs, and wipes his hand over his mouth to try to get rid of some of the dust clinging to his skin. All he succeeds in doing is moving it around to new and more irritating locations.
"I... don't know. You are usually quite capable of finding a topic."
"Oh, thank you," he replies acidly, although he's not sure if it was an insult or not. Experience with, oh, everyone else in the universe tells him to assume it was, but this is Teyla, so...
"It was not intended as an insult," she says, a trace of impatience in her voice, before she prompts, "Tell me about how you met Colonel Sheppard."
He knows she's heard the story before, from Sheppard himself on a long jumper ride, and probably from Carson or Elizabeth, but he's got nothing better to do except dwell on Sheppard's unconscious body and the overloading generator and all the other things that he can't change unless he invents another time machine.
"I, uh... We were in Antarctica, had been for weeks." He still remembers the cold, and wearing his parka all the time, and how he almost didn't care because it was all so... neat. "Jackson hadn't figured out the gate address for Atlantis yet, so we were working with the equipment the Ancients had left behind. Carson was whining about not wanting to sit in the chair, as usual, which was completely annoying since it wasn't like we had anyone else who could make the damn thing work. Only he managed to fire off this drone that Grodin was working on--" And Rodney has to stop for a second because he really does miss Grodin, and everything seems to hurt a little more here in the darkness.
"I miss him as well," Teyla whispers, and he wonders if he said the last part out loud.
He coughs to clear his throat, wincing as his ribs protest again, and resolutely ignores the burning in his eyes. "As I was saying, Carson manages to fire off a drone, which is something of a miracle since he has never, not once, been able to do the same thing on Atlantis when we actually need him to. The drone almost takes out Elizabeth in the elevator on its way to the surface, and then, of course, flies straight for General O'Neill's helicopter. Carson couldn't have aimed it better if he'd tried."
Rodney shakes his head in grim amusement at how close they'd come to ending this little trip before it ever started. "But O'Neill's pilot somehow manages to run the drone into the ground, and O'Neill is so impressed, he blows off every single security and clearance procedure the SGC has ever established -- and believe me, that encompasses quite a lot of blowing off, not that I'd expect anything less from O'Neill -- and brings him into the facility. So here's this tall skinny guy in a flight suit with what I assumed at the time was a particularly bad case of helmet hair, little did I know, and he proceeds to stupidly sit right down in the chair and light it up like a Christmas tree..."
He tries to lose himself in the story and Teyla's presence, and ignore the darkness as it presses in around them.
TBC
