"Hold your fire!" John shouted, not yet making a move. "Carson, what the hell do you think you're doing? Let go of him right now!"

Carson remained silent. Rodney struggled against the powerful grip holding him. He figured that if Carson wouldn't listen to him, it wasn't likely that he would listen to Sheppard, either. Panic slowly started settling in with each passing moment.

"Stun them both," Sheppard ordered languidly. He disliked the position that Carson was putting him in.

Several of the soldiers next to John fired their stunners. He watched with growing unease as Rodney slumped over limply in Carson's grip, but the target continued to stand before them unimpeded. Next to him, Ronon tightened his grip on his stunner, but didn't have a clear shot.

Huge beads of perspiration dripped off of John as he wiped his sleeve across his face, reluctantly taking aim with his P90. "Carson, just let Rodney go. I'm not going to tell you again."

Carson hesitantly took a step backward, but said nothing. His face contorted with the strain of all the rage, confusion, fear, and anguish he was experiencing as John watched him apprehensively. Carson did not let up on his grip. A moment later, a single shot from John's P90 rang through the corridor.

He felt the impact on his shoulder, but the strange sensation that resulted was foreign to him. Carson instinctively knew that he'd been shot, but was surprised that he felt no pain. A sort of tingling sensation filtered its way through his senses instead as he felt some of the strength being sapped from his left arm, forcing him to shift Rodney's dead weight to his right. He started to backpedal back down the corridor behind him.

Carson suddenly remembered the Beretta in his pocket. He pulled it out of his jacket pocket and switched off the safety in one swift motion, firing several shots randomly into the small crowd of soldiers. Two of the bullets found a target, one in the leg of a new sergeant from the Daedalus. The other did a ricochet off the wall and struck a glancing blow to Ronon's head. Ronon collapsed in a heap on top of the injured sergeant clutching his leg in front of him.

More shots sounded, making Carson's ears ring. He felt more impacts on his chest where he had neglectfully left an opening after shifting the weight he was carrying. He almost dropped Rodney as he looked down at his chest in horror. Blood trickled through three different well-placed bullet holes that graced his chest not far from his heart. The tingling sensation passed over him again, but this time shuddered through his entire body. Carson's breath caught in his throat. He could hardly believe that he was still standing.

Before they had a chance to fill him full of more bullet holes, Carson dropped the weapon and threw Rodney over his shoulder. He ran as fast as he could in the direction he had come from, leaving Sheppard to call for a medical team to treat his injured teammates, and Carson hoped that it would slow their pursuit for a while.

As Dr. Weir arrived in the infirmary, her first concern was that all hell must have broken loose. She'd been told that two men had been shot, but she wanted to see it herself. She was saddened to see that the report hadn't been wrong. Ronon lay unconscious on a cot with a bandage stuck to his right temple, and Sergeant Tillman, new from the Daedalus, was sitting on the cot next to him getting his leg bandaged.

Colonel Sheppard appeared from inside an adjoining room of the infirmary and walked over to make his report. "I just spoke with Dr. Biro. She says Ronon's going to be fine."

"What happened?" She asked with an incredulous look as she crossed her arms.

John took a deep breath. "Carson went a little crazy on us when we tried to stop him."

Elizabeth was insistent for more information. "What do you mean?"

His eyes widened, surprised that she even needed to ask. "Let's just say it reminded me a lot of a scene from a bad horror movie. We shot him dead-on in the chest at least three times, and he acted like he hardly felt anything at all. I'm really starting to get creeped out by all this."

Dr. Weir rubbed her chin pensively. "What about Rodney? What happened to him?"

"He was stunned when we tried to stun Carson." John's frown deepened. "Only God knows where he dragged him off to. Zelenka can't seem to pinpoint them with the life-sign sensors any more, either."

"Carson is smart, John," she assured him. "If he wants to avoid capture, he knows which areas of the city the sensors are unreliable."

John scowled and again wiped a cold film of sweat that had formed on his face with his sleeve. "Frankly, Elizabeth, those areas are still massive. There are huge gaps in the sensor coverage all over the north and east piers where they were flooded with water. Most of those areas are still flooded. There's no way we can search it all in less than a week."

"Then you and your teams had better get started," she ordered with her usual aura of confidence.

Not only did Rodney not enjoy the sensation of being carried, but as he slowly roused from stunner-induced unconsciousness, he felt the person carrying him staggering and swaying to and fro as he walked, as if exhausted. At first, it made him afraid that Carson might accidentally drop him. He wondered if it might not be a good idea to try to wriggle out of his grip and run away, but he had no idea where he was or where Carson was taking him.

Carson shifted the weight on his shoulders with a sturdy grip that belied Rodney's initial theory of exhaustion, which immediately prompted him to banish any hope of getting away. It certainly hadn't worked the last time he tried it. If he could feign unconsciousness for a while longer, a better opportunity for escape might present itself.

The sensation of being off-balance jolted him from his reverie, and he carefully resisted the urge to stretch out in an effort to regain his balance. Carson shifted his weight again and continued his trek. The faint tap of shoe steps on plate metal seemed strangely out of place, and Rodney carefully peeked to find out where they were going. They had been descending a staircase into the flooded bowels of the city.

Rodney suddenly realized with horror that they were probably still near the north pier that had been flooded during the rising of the city from the ocean, which meant that Carson had chosen to go this way for only one reason: the sensors didn't work in this area of the city, and he obviously didn't intend for anybody to be able to find them any time soon. If he kept moving, it could be weeks before enough search teams equipped with portable life-signs detectors managed to corner them.

Carson didn't seem to be able to find a spot that he deemed safe enough to set him down. The water level had slowly been rising as he was carried from section to section; it was high enough that Rodney's fingers dragged along the surface as he was carried, so it was at least waist deep in height. He made his way through more flooded sections and suddenly stepped down, which sent Rodney's head under the water as Carson waded chest deep.

So much for pretending to be unconscious, he thought. Rodney instinctively arched his back to pull his head out of the water, almost managing to dislodge himself from Carson's grip, but not quite. He couldn't help coughing and sputtering, but Carson paid it no mind and simply continued over to a ladder that he climbed effortlessly to finally reach his chosen destination.

As Rodney blinked the sea water from his eyes, Carson set him down hard on the grill-like surface of the platform. Water continually dripped and trickled from unseen cracks in the buckled walls, obviously the reason why the room was half full of water. The light was virtually to nil in the room, and the lighting outside the doorway flickered eerily. His only consolation was a beam of faint sunlight that managed to filter through a single small window on the opposite side of the room.

Carson ripped a fiber-optic conduit from the broken and shattered panels on the walls and used it to bind Rodney's hands behind him to a railing opposite the ladder. He sat relatively still as his fit of coughing subsided, not daring to say a word. When finished his task, Carson leaned tiredly against the wall and practically collapsed onto the platform next to him. Maybe he really was exhausted after all.

The faint clink of something small falling onto the platform was the only thing that interrupted their silent reverie for what seemed like a long time. Carson roused himself enough to look down and see what it was. After a moment of feeling around with his fingers, he happened upon what felt like a mangled and twisted bullet lying on the deck-plate next to him.

As he picked it up and examined it in the dim light, he could only surmise that, judging by where it had fallen, it must have become dislodged from his chest as he leaned against the wall. The grim symbol of the confrontation that he had just escaped from suddenly reminded him that there were bullet holes in his chest. He wondered wanly if his health might be in danger, and as he pressed his fingers against his chest to feel his wounds, he grew somewhat concerned at the lack of pain. He mentally remarked to himself that the other two bullets must have been expelled from his chest earlier and he hadn't noticed, because he didn't feel any trace of them.

"That's really disgusting, you know," Rodney muttered with disdain. "Do you have to do that in front of me?"

Carson's hand came away from his chest covered in a film of inky, red- and black-tinged mucus. The flood of emotion that had overwhelmed him early had abated somewhat in intensity now that he almost felt like he was alone, and the more logical and professional portion of his mind was reasserting itself. He began to grasp the significance of what was happening to him. He was finally beginning to realize that it was his friends, not an enemy, who had shot him in Rodney's defense.

"Rodney... I'm terrified." He swallowed hard against the bile rising in his throat. "I don't know what to do."

Rodney stammered in surprise, momentarily unable to think of something to say. "Letting me go would be nice."

Carson stared at him, suddenly afraid of himself and what he might do if he didn't let him go. As terrified as he was and as sympathetic as he felt, he simply could not will himself to get up and untie him. He trembled as he grappled with the conflicting emotions, finally turning his head and looking away. Carson could not force himself to acknowledge Rodney's plight. The hate and rage were coming back, beginning to well up within him once again. He desperately tried to calm his frantic breathing. If only he hadn't gone and opened his mouth, Carson thought angrily, this wouldn't be happening.

Rodney couldn't help himself. If Carson was conflicted, he had to press him. He had to trust him. "Please, Carson, get a hold of yourself. Stop acting so crazy and untie me, right now!"

Carson shakily climbed to unsteady feet. He grimaced with the effort of trying to hold back the tidal wave of rage and the palpable desire to strangle Rodney into oblivion, but in some dark place in his mind, he knew that in a few moments it would inevitably overtake him. Carson watched him shrink back in fear as he lunged for Rodney's neck, finally having lost all sense of himself.

Euphoria washed over him as any desire to retain the capacity for logical thought or compassion faded away.