Part 5: I'm Still Here
If this is being dead, then he wants to find someone to complain to, because the whole pain thing? Not supposed to carry over to the so-called afterlife. The leaders of every major religion are going to be getting some very angry emails, always assuming he can figure out how to send them from whatever hellish final destination he's wound up in, and honestly, he hadn't been that bad! Not even close!
"Doctor McKay!"
His ribs hurt, his head hurts, his leg really hurts, and he'd just like to curl up and die now except that he's already done that and it didn't help and where's the justice, huh?
"Rodney, you must wake up!"
"'m not asleep," he mumbles. "'m dead."
"You are not dead," Teyla's stern voice informs him loudly, right in his ear, her small, strong hands pushing at his chest, and he remembers vaguely that Teyla rarely lies. Which means...
His eyes pop open and his head shoots up, and he hits it on the ceiling once again, sinking back with a moan. Except that he can sink back, which he definitely couldn't the last time this happened. "What the hell... We're not dead?"
"We are not dead," Teyla confirms, still shouting in his ear, and he manages to open his eyes again to see her underneath him, body twisted out to the side through a hole that hadn't been there the last time he'd looked, her hands shoving at him as she tries to wriggle out from under him. "But we have very little time before we may well be!"
He shifts automatically to try to give her room to move, his ribs fighting him when he lifts his upper body with his left arm. The right one, he discovers, is able to move, but not willing; motion sends agony tearing through his shoulder. But the left one is enough; Teyla pulls herself back with her arms and, with a strangled scream, falls backwards onto a rubble-strewn floor where she lays panting for a moment.
Realization begins to sink through slowly. "We're in the other room. The door opened, we're in the other room. And we're not crushed and dead. And the converter hasn't exploded. Oh, this is good."
He looks around him in the light of the flickering flashlight, and discovers that it's almost as dark in here as it was in the wreckage, although there's air now, stale air that is nonetheless a thousand times better than what they've been breathing. He can't see any of the corners, but he's perfectly able to make out the mounds of wreckage balanced precariously above and around them, filling the entire corner of the room they've fallen into and spilling out over the floor. And he still can't move his left leg, but... "Well, it's better. Yes. This is definitely an improvement."
"It will not be an improvement for long," Teyla reminds him urgently, struggling to her knees and picking her way back to him. The side of her face is bloody, and she's carrying her right arm pressed hard against her chest. "Do you see, across the room? The light?"
"What light, there's nothing..." He follows her gesture to discover that, unsurprisingly, she's right. A large panel is blinking bright, furious amber in the darkness about 8 metres away, and he realizes that the reason Teyla's been shouting is that the alarms are shrieking loudly here, live instead of over the radio, which suggests even to his confused mind that--
"You said this might be a control room, to turn the converter off safely. Is it? Can you do so?"
"I... Maybe?" He closes his eyes and starts thinking really, really hard: Off. Off. Off. Safely and without blowing up, please, oh god, off!
He opens one eye hopefully after a moment, but the alarms still blare and the panel is still flashing, fast and bright, and why should an emergency cut-off respond to mental commands when nothing in this entire death trap of an Ancient facility has? "You'll have to turn it off manually," he tells Teyla, trying to free his leg again and immediately stopping. "Can you get over there?"
"I will," she responds, her face set in its familiar determined lines. She drags herself to her feet, clutching at chunks of rubble until she manages something resembling balance. Her right leg is dragging heavily and blood stains the thigh of her BDUs in an ominously large patch, but she struggles halfway across the room before falling to her knees.
"Teyla!" Rodney yells, and she flaps one hand weakly back at him, clutching at her left side with the other.
"I. Am. Fine," she grits out; after a minute, he can just make out her dim form moving forward on her hands and knees. When she reaches the panel, she uses the ledge beneath it to pull herself nearly upright, silhouetted against the light of the panel. "What do I do?" she shouts, barely able to make herself heard above the alarms.
He's hardly in the ideal position to be diagnosing hardware functionality, lying mostly on his face across the room, awkwardly twisted half-in and half-out of their cave. But really, how many ways can there be to turn something off? "Are there any buttons around the panel? Any other displays?"
"No."
"Then just put your hand flat against the panel, like on Atlantis!"
Teyla lifts her right hand, the left still bracing her against the ledge, and Rodney braces himself as she lays her palm against the panel--
And nothing happens.
"Shit!" he screams in frustration. Then he gets it, and nearly screams again. "You don't have the gene! Those stupid, short-sighted, intellectually-advanced Ancients didn't bother to think anyone else might need to do an emergency shutdown!"
"Then you must do it!" Teyla shouts back.
"I'm a little trapped here at the moment!" Rodney starts fighting the wreckage over his left leg in earnest; the first good, solid tug nearly makes him throw up from pain. He swallows hard against his greasily swimming stomach and focuses on his right arm for the moment, easing it slowly from its trap. His shoulder protests every movement, and he can't rotate it more than a few degrees, but he's making progress by the time Teyla is beside him again.
"Dig out my leg," he instructs breathlessly, and needlessly. She's too tired to respond, her eyes huge in the paleness of her face, but she's already doggedly clearing rubble away, shoving it into a heap behind her. It seems like an eternity of digging and pain and the alarms remind him with every breath that just because they didn't die a few minutes ago, doesn't mean another quake won't hit and kill them now. And the longer they wait, the closer Sheppard will get to evacuating the main room, and then he'll shut off the converter and then they all die, so he really has to get out of here now!
And he pulls as Teyla yanks and suddenly he's free, rolling and crashing down into a heap on the wreckage of the floor, wrenching his other shoulder and adding more bruises to his back. He wants to lie there and breathe for a moment, but the alarms press in on his head, and there's just no time. Ever since he came to Atlantis, there's been no time, which is ridiculous since Atlantis's day is just over two hours longer than Earth's. He has no idea how long the days are on this planet, but that's really irrelevant, and only serves to distract him from how much it hurts when Teyla hauls his left arm over her shoulder and they begin staggering together across the room--
And his left ankle collapses the moment he puts weight on it. He's too tired even to grunt in agony as he collapses, taking Teyla with him in a heap, and it seems they're right back where they started.
"Rodney?" Teyla coughs and pants, dragging herself back to her knees beside him, and he waves his hand limply at her, echoing her earlier gesture.
"Just... crawl," he gasps. "Just help me... crawl."
And she does, shifting to support his right side when it turns out that his right shoulder refuses to take any weight at all. The pressure of her hands hurts like hell, but he's almost too tired to care, as long as it keeps them moving forward towards the panel that has become the be-all and end-all of his world. He thinks the room shakes once while they're moving, maybe twice, but he's pretty sure they're still not dead, which means they're alive, which means he needs to keep moving.
Then it's suddenly there, one endless impossible metre above his head and he stares helplessly up past the narrow ledge. "Rodney!" Teyla urges, and he wants to make it up there, he owes her that much, but he just can't. "You must!" she answers, and he must have said that out loud. It's certainly possible, the way his head is swimming and the alarms are echoing in the emptiness.
Teyla stands abruptly and he almost falls over without her support. She catches his arm, the right one that he still can't bring down all the way, and yanks it to full extension, pulling him high on his knees. He yelps in agony, but feels something hard and flat and warm under his palm.
"Off!" Teyla yells, nearly screams, and he thinks it with everything he's got left.
OffoffoffoffoffoffoffOFF!
And there's a sudden, thunderous CRACK from somewhere outside the chamber, and Rodney knows that they're dead, that he's too late, that it's all blown up, game over.
Silence falls.
And so does Teyla, collapsing to the floor next to him. He can still see her breathing, so he doesn't panic too much; panic takes energy and he hasn't got any. The ringing in his ears drowns out everything except the glorious lack of alarms. If this is dead, then it has some points in its favour -- but he doesn't feel dead, really. He lets his abused arm drop as far as it can, leans his forehead against the ledge since he's too tired to move anything else, and pants, "Do you... feel dead?"
"I... do not," Teyla answers breathlessly after a pause for consideration.
"Ah... good. That's good. Me neither."
"Then we must be... alive."
"Yes. That's a... a promising hypothesis." He twists awkwardly, slides down the wall until he's sitting. Teyla is half-sprawled on her side next to him, her arm over her head, her eyes closed. He can make out the faint gleam of the flashlight across the room where they left it, and wishes vaguely they'd had a hand free to bring it. The darkness is looming again and if they're actually not dead, which he's beginning to believe they're not, he'd like some light to chase it away.
On cue, the panels above them come to life, casting a faint glow throughout the room. Rodney stares for a second, then his chin falls forward onto his chest in disgust. "Now everything decides to turn on. Fabulous timing, thanks very much for that."
Teyla's eyes open to slits; she smiles faintly when she sees the light, then closes them again. "Hey." Rodney would poke her if he could move but a) he can't move and b) poking Teyla is usually a bad idea anyway. "Do not pass out and leave me stuck in here all alone. I mean it."
"I will not," Teyla says without opening her eyes again, which is actually a lot less than reassuring than she probably thinks.
"Hey," he says again after a long minute, broken only by their panting breaths, "If we're not dead, and I'm becoming reasonably certain that we're not... then we did it. We shut it down."
"We did."
"Wow. We're... really amazing."
Teyla smiles again, but she doesn't disagree.
Both of them jolt when they hear a sudden crackle, then a loud burst of static and what sounds like broken voices. Teyla blinks a few times, then carefully rolls over to reveal the radio neatly clipped to her vest.
Rodney gapes down at her. "In the middle of a life and death situation filled with fear, panic and pain, you remembered to pick up the radio?"
"Yes," Teyla answers simply.
"Okay, the next time I get caught in a hellish pit of darkness -- I want you with me again."
She fights her way mostly upright, using his left hand as a lever when he offers it, and settles next to him against the wall. "I must decline that honour, Doctor McKay. It is..." She stops to think, and her lips curve up as she remembers the phrase she wants, "Nothing personal."
"Ah. Yes. Can't really blame you." Another burst of static, and this time the voice behind it is definitely Sheppard's, although they still can't quite make out the actual words. The tone, however, is loud and clear.
"Colonel Sheppard sounds quite upset," Teyla observes, but not as if she intends to do anything about it.
"Yes, he does, doesn't he?" Rodney considers that, which takes longer than he thinks it probably should, which would worry him if he wasn't so tired. "We should answer him. You know, tell him about us not being dead. Which we're not."
"We should," Teyla agrees, and fumbles for the radio. It takes her three tries to get it unclipped, then she passes it to Rodney instead of talking herself. It takes him two tries to find the talk button.
"Sheppard. This is McKay. We're alive. Did the converter shut down?"
"...McKay?" Sheppard's voice is still almost obscured by static, but getting clearer by the moment. "Wh-- the hell di-- do?"
"We turned off the converter and saved the day. Didn't we?" He has an awful moment of doubt, suddenly and irrationally sure that he was wrong and actually everything is still about to blow up. "We did do that, right?"
"Yeah, R--ney," Sheppard says after what feels like much too long. "Looks li-- you did."
Rodney sags down, leaning more heavily against Teyla, who leans against him in return. He doesn't know who's propping up whom and honestly doesn't care. "Oh, good. That's good. Did it discharge?"
"And then some." Sheppard's voice is almost clear now, relief and -- dare he think it -- awe behind his words. "Damn, McKay, Lorne says it was like lightning, just CRACK, up into the sky; the static charge in the air wiped out the radios for, like, five minutes. Just what the hell did you do? And how did you manage to move 20 feet when you were buried?"
Rodney thinks about it. "I'm not entirely sure of that myself."
"Which part?"
"...Any of it, really."
"The wall opened," Teyla contributes, her eyes closed again. There's a pause, as if Sheppard's waiting for her to continue. She doesn't.
"And I'm sure there'll be a fascinating story behind that at some point," Sheppard finally says. "Looks like you two did all of our work for us. Mind if we take over now? You know, with digging you out and everything?"
Rodney waves the radio in a gracious little loop -- at least, that's the idea. It probably looks more like he's having a very limp seizure, but it's not like Sheppard can see him anyway. "Feel free, Colonel. We're just going to take a little break while you work on that. Radek?"
"All is well, Rodney." Zelenka responds immediately. "We are down to five lights on the converter, and the alarms have stopped. We should not delay more than necessary, but I believe you have given us enough time to free you."
"Yes, very good. Thank you." It's so nice to have subordinates who know how you think.
"McKay, Teyla, are you both clear of the wreckage?" Ronon asks.
"We are," Teyla answers before Rodney can, and he gladly turns the talking over to her for the moment. "But Doctor McKay is injured, as am I. We would like to leave this place. Quickly."
"Amen to that," Sheppard agrees fervently, and starts shouting orders. Carson takes over the channel, asking medical questions that Rodney and Teyla try to answer. Teyla mostly glosses over her own wounds and goes into detail about Rodney's; Rodney retaliates by dwelling on her head injury and the jagged gash in her thigh at some length. Carson sounds alternately terribly worried and extremely amused, which is completely unprofessional of him and Rodney intends to point this out as soon as he can do so in person.
For the time being, though, Rodney follows directions and gets a pressure bandage in place on Teyla's leg, which is still bleeding fairly heavily. The room shudders twice more while he's working, a quake Rodney judges to be about a 4.5 and a fairly strong aftershock, but both times Radek tells him instantly that the converter is still behaving itself, which is almost comforting.
After a little while, Sheppard comes back on the channel. "Okay, we need both of you to get as far away from where you were buried as you can. And you might want to find some cover if there is any."
"We will find it," Teyla responds calmly, beginning the process of moving.
"Oh, god." Rodney swallows hard and stays still. "You're going to let Cadman blow us up, aren't you? Haven't we done enough of that today? Even you must be able to come up with a better plan than that!"
Sheppard sighs. "Rodney, no one's going to blow you up. Remember, we had a long conversation about that? But digging you two out the old-fashioned way is going to take a pretty long time, and Radek doesn't want to take that kind of chance with the converter. So you can sit in there and bleed and bitch for about 12 hours, or we can blow some of the bigger chunks of this and get you both out here -- where there's food and water and painkillers -- in about 40 minutes."
It's the painkillers that resign Rodney to the plan; the very thought of Carson's vast and glorious pharmacy almost makes him stop hurting. Almost. "Good point, Colonel. Just, um, let's do this very carefully. Please? In fact, is there someone else besides Cadman who can do it?"
"Have a little faith, Rodney," Cadman butts in impatiently. "I told you I wasn't going to leave you in there, and I meant it. Now find some cover and let me work."
Rodney opens his mouth, but his words are cut off by Teyla's grip on his arm; she gives him the glare that means her patience is running thin again. And she looks tired and sick and her face is pale beneath the blood, so he closes his mouth and sighs. "Fine, fine, fine. Just try not to kill us."
"Will do," Cadman replies, that evil grin back in her voice, and he desperately wishes for Ford for a moment; Ford, who would be equally gleeful at the thought of blowing things up, but at least has demonstrated competence in doing so. But Ford is far away and Rodney is too tired to think about him, so he doesn't.
Teyla has already scouted the room out; leaning heavily on each other, they manage to crawl a few metres to the farthest corner. There's no real shelter, but Rodney curls up into the smallest ball he can manage, and Teyla huddles next to him, wrapping her arms and shoulders over his head and back, their painfully-removed tac vests spread over them for added protection. When some testosterone-driven, Sheppard-esque impulse temporarily takes over Rodney's brain and makes him protest the arrangement weakly, she just smiles and tells him, "It is my turn."
He's also too tired to argue -- and it is, in fact, her turn -- but he wraps his left arm up and over her shoulders and head.
"You two ready?" Sheppard asks far too cheerfully.
"No."
"Yes," Teyla overrides Rodney firmly.
"All right, brace yourselves."
It's a little anti-climactic; at least, that's what Rodney tells himself, to calm his racing heart after the first explosion booms through their chamber, shaking the walls with the same force as that first quake. But it's controlled and ends quickly, so he can convince himself it wasn't the converter randomly deciding to explode just to complete the universe's vendetta against one Rodney McKay. The second blast, several minutes later, is louder and closer, and a spray of fine dust and rubble showers over them. The third explosion -- three? just how much C4 are they letting Cadman wander around with? -- is the loudest and closest yet. The blast wave hurts Rodney's ears and makes them pop... but it brings with it a gust of glorious, mostly-fresh, very dusty air.
Rodney unwisely takes a deep breath and spends the next several minutes coughing and moaning and trying to get the tac vests off his head, so he completely misses the moment when the excavation team shoves aside the last huge piece of wreckage, before the glare of an industrial-strength flashlight breaks through.
"Rodney? Teyla?" Sheppard shouts, and it's his real voice, not distorted by mics and static. He's really here. They're actually being rescued.
"Over here!" Teyla calls back and Rodney shoves the Kevlar away just in time to be nearly blinded by the flashlight shining in his eyes. It stops moving and Sheppard, amazingly, laughs.
"You know," he says archly, "if you two are busy, we can come back later," and Rodney realizes that he and Teyla are still tangled together on the floor with their bodies wrapped around each other, no doubt painting quite the picture to certain extremely juvenile military minds.
"Very funny, Colonel." Rodney tries to work up a good snarl but can't quite manage it. Teyla is no help; her face is buried in his shirt and her shoulders are shaking, and Rodney's jaw drops a little when he figures out that she's actually lying there giggling. Teyla. Giggling. "Oh, for-- Teyla, do not encourage him. I mean it."
Teyla just giggles harder and okay, he admits that maybe it is a little funny. Just a little. Maybe.
By the time the rescue team (led by a grinning Sheppard, a grim Ronon, and a completely exasperated Carson) reaches them, they're both snickering as helplessly as their battered ribs will allow. If there's a slightly hysterical edge to the laughter, no one mentions it.
The trip out of the control room and back to the jumper is thankfully quite blurry. Carson jumps in with adequate painkillers as soon as he finishes his initial exam (which consists mostly of Carson asking, "Does this hurt?" and Rodney yelling, "Yes!"), cleans and rebandages Teyla's leg, and splints Rodney's ankle with an air cast. As the drugs kick in, Teyla makes noises about walking out under her own power; Ronon stands back to let her try and is waiting to catch her one-armed when she falls over. Carson is not amused, although Sheppard is. Loading them both onto stretchers is another painful process and Rodney discovers that he's actually not very happy to have Teyla so far away from him, a fact he attributes solely and completely to the painkillers.
Sheppard carries the far end of Rodney's stretcher, with some bulky young Marine whom Rodney vaguely recognizes at the head, and swears as they manoeuvre it through the remains of the door, and around and over the bits and pieces left after Cadman finished her reign of destruction. Rodney does some swearing of his own at the bumpy ride (Carson won't give them the really good painkillers until he's got them back in the infirmary), barely acknowledging Radek, Simpson and Cadman when they appear beside his stretcher.
He can see the fucking converter over Radek's shoulder as they go past it, five lights glowing softly on the front, cables and conduits spilling out of the back. If he could, he'd get up and kick it, or shoot it, or get Cadman to blow it up, but he can't muster the energy to try. So he lays his head back and closes his eyes until he feels the stretcher tip slightly, and Sheppard walks them up the ramp into the warm, safe glow of Jumper One.
Sheppard sets his end of the stretcher down carefully, and rolls his shoulders as he kneels next to Rodney with a reassuring smile. "Almost home now, McKay," he says as he pats Rodney's arm carefully, then lets his hand rest there, making no move towards the pilot's seat.
Ronon and Lorne settle Teyla's stretcher next to him and Ronon imitates Sheppard, crouching beside her. She looks even worse in the bright lights of the jumper, bruises livid against her skin, her face frighteningly pale under the dirt and blood that remain even after Carson's hasty clean-up. But she's awake and they're alive and he didn't get his team killed and today, Rodney will take that as a win. Radek and Simpson hover over them until Carson shoos them away; Cadman leans against the bulkhead behind the pair and grins.
"Nice work, not blowing us up," Rodney tells all of them; Teyla echoes him with murmured thanks. Radek and Simpson both blush faintly; Cadman just smiles even more broadly, salutes neatly, then wanders to the front of the jumper to kibitz Lorne's takeoff. Carson kneels between the heads of the stretchers, his worried eyes moving constantly from Teyla to Rodney as he fusses over blood pressure cuffs and IVs, and Sheppard and Ronon stay where they are all the way back to the gate and through the wormhole to Atlantis.
Elizabeth meets them in the jumper bay, beating Carson's medical team onboard Jumper One; Rodney is blearily certain he sees her use her elbows at least once. Her smile is warm and her eyes are worried and relieved as she kneels next to his stretcher and takes his hand. "Welcome home, Rodney," she says, laying her other palm carefully against his forehead to avoid the various bumps and bruises, then looking past him to smile at Teyla with equal warmth. "Don't do that to us again, all right?"
"We'll take it under advisement," Rodney mumbles, and the last thing he really remembers is turning his head to see the weary curve of Teyla's lips before he finally, thankfully passes out again.
TBC
