Time Immemorial
Chapter 9: Cat and Mouse
July 16th
1953 Hours
Elizabeth found herself being tackled to the floor and John instinctively covering her. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted McKay across the room being flung behind a console in a similar manner by Teyla. Electrified bullets darted and sizzled through the air inches over their heads.
No sooner had they hit the ground then they were crawling in an awkward entanglement of limbs for cover. They pressed their backs against the side of solid desk and allowed themselves a moment to catch their breaths. John could see Teyla and a terrified Rodney huddled behind their own workstation clear across the room. Stray papers went flying as the bullets' wakes disturbed their resting places and carried them aloft.
John began to look around. There were three exits from the Control Room: the first was down the main staircase and into the Gate Room. Currently, that option was a no-go; all of the Lacedami forces were concentrated below. Second was through a door in the back of Dr. Weir's office, but that required dashing into the open to cross the bridge – also not a great idea. That left the smaller staircase up to the Jumper Bay. It would be the most difficult to target by the six combatants below.
"Teyla!" the major yelled over the sound of weapons fire. "We need to regroup! Stick to the original plan and we'll meet you at the spot we discussed!" He was careful not to specifically mention the weapons locker, not with the Lacedami listening. He received a nod from the Athosian. The final directions he relayed with hand signals: on three, run for the stairs up to the Jumper Bay. I'll cover you.
He spotted Teyla pass on the message to McKay before she nodded one final time. Then John held his fingers out in sequence for them to see: one, two, three. At the exact moment Teyla and Rodney burst from their hiding spot and ran for the stairs, John poked his upper body out from cover and laid down a burst of cover fire from his P-90. He merely aimed in the general direction of the Lacedami group, so he doubted any bullets had found their mark, but they didn't need to. The Lacedami were forced to abandon firing and seek shelter while Teyla and Rodney closed the gap between themselves and the staircase. In no more than five seconds they had made it, and John once again ducked back into cover.
"Well, this is fun," Elizabeth muttered nervously as he dropped down beside her. She forced her gaze to remain fixed on a spot ahead of her. "They want the Control Room, and probably the Stargate, too."
Well, they can't have it, John thought to himself.
"I don't suppose you have any tricks up your sleeve?"
"Working on it," he answered tersely as he popped in a fresh magazine. He surveyed the scene. The staircase up which Teyla and Rodney had fled only moments ago remained their only viable exit. There now existed two problems with that particular route, however. One: the stairway had been a lot closer to Teyla and Rodney's position than it currently was to John and Elizabeth. They would have to run clear across the Control Room to reach it, which presented the second quandary: no one remained to cover their retreat. They would be exposed during their escape attempt.
Risking a peek beyond their shelter, Elizabeth tried to get a better look at their aggressors. From her position on the floor of the Control Room, she didn't have the angle to see below to the Gate Room floor. If she could just crane her neck up the tiniest bit… there, she could spot two of the intruders –
Thwack! Thwack! Elizabeth dropped back to the floor as two bullets raced centimeters over her head and burrow themselves into equipment behind her. One struck a transparent Lantean display over her shoulder, causing the glass to shatter into hundreds of tiny shards and crash to the floor. She turned away and buried her face in her arm, but not before several shards grazed her cheek.
"Are you okay?" John asked instantly, yelling above the din. He dropped to a knee next to her.
A meager nod from her prone position was her only reply.
John shifted his eyes from Elizabeth to the main staircase down to his right just in time to see a different pair of Lacedami marching their way up it. He hoisted his P-90 to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. It was enough to send the two attackers back down the stairs, for now.
"John!" he heard Elizabeth call from the floor. She hadn't yet moved, and when he spun to look where she indicated, he saw why. The final Lacedami duo, gone missing from the Gate Room since the initial volley, had reappeared upstairs. They had somehow found their way to Dr. Weir's office via the back door and were now on their same level.
It didn't take long for this pair to spot John and Elizabeth, but before they could even think of crossing the bridge to the Control Room, John drove them back into the office with a quick burst from his assault rifle. A split second later, though, the staircase pair was back and firing, forcing the major to the floor across from Elizabeth.
They were now pinned down between three fronts: two Lacedami on the Gate Room floor below, two in Dr. Weir's office to their left, and two on the grand staircase to their right. It was the perfect offensive strategy.
Feeling completely useless, Elizabeth looked about her. She had intended to input her access code to the City's lockdown system before the attack had initiated. At the very least, she could still complete that task. Luckily, the desk she had ducked behind was the very one from which she needed to work. Reaching up and around to the front of the desk, she felt her way around the keyboard to the correct characters and punched them in blindly. In her mind's eye, she pictured the next prompt, selected option number two, and hit Enter.
Unbeknownst to anyone at the moment, she had just initiated the protocol that restricted all citywide operations to those with the Ancient gene: doors, transporters, computers – anything that required a user input. It was left over from the Ancients' war with the Wraith and had never been used since, disabled when her team arrived in the City a year ago. And while Antigonos possessed the gene, hopefully it hampered most of the other Lacedami's movements and protected those expedition members who had already locked themselves in their quarters.
John thought quickly, firing occasionally as a warning to the advancing teams not to get too close. Wedged on the floor in the narrow gap between two consoles, their options weren't many. Then he had a thought. He removed his Beretta from its holster and a full clip from his thigh pocket and slid both to Elizabeth.
"Do you remember how to reload that thing?" he shouted above the clatter of the battle.
"I think so…" the diplomat answered hesitantly.
"Good! I'm going to crawl up to the railing and take a look! I need you to cover me!"
"What!"
"Just fire at anyone who looks like they want to shoot me! You'll do fine! Now on three: one, two, three!"
As Elizabeth raised his handgun and began firing aimlessly in the general direction of the attackers, John crawled on his belly three feet to the railing ahead. Please let it be open, he prayed to himself. Cautiously, he raised he head up so he could see the Gate Room floor below. To his far left, there it was: a storage closest just below Dr. Weir's office, used to house emergency medical supplies for those returning from offworld. Its door was open. Perfect. Two Lacedami soldiers crouched beside it. Even better.
John shimmied back to his former position between the two desks. Checking his rifle's clip, he discovered he had more than enough ammo for what he was about to do. Besides, if he couldn't hit his mark in about five rounds the enemy would probably shoot him by then anyway.
He needed a better angle. Wanting to trade positions with Elizabeth, he informed her that he was going to crawl over her while she scooted underneath him to his current spot. Their gymnastics would leave little room for error. Anything taller than a crouch would present a sizable profile to the attackers on the stairs and floor below. Retreating even a few inches backward, away from the consoles, presented the bridge duo with two easy targets to pick off.
Following his directions, Elizabeth rolled from her belly to her back, ensuring stray shards of glass wouldn't tear at her exposed face and neck. John belly-crawled over to Elizabeth and slowly lifted himself over her. He stayed low. John and Elizabeth were close now, nose-to-nose, his body an inch above hers. He couldn't help but notice the tiny green flecks in her hazel eyes as they stared up back at him, the hints of freckles on her cheeks.
Clearing his throat, he mumbled a polite "sorry" as he intruded upon her personal space. Despite their predicament, Elizabeth couldn't stop herself from blushing. Here they were, inches away from death, and the normally cocky pilot had suddenly wilted into a bashful prude, like a schoolboy who had accidentally brushed hands with his crush. Still in tantalizing proximity, he froze for a split second, worried that he had somehow overstepped his bounds with the intimacy. John quickly broke free, however, and finally shifted passed her. Once separated, they each retreated to their new positions, the moment over.
"Okay, here's the plan!" he called to Elizabeth. He thanked god his voice hadn't cracked. "I need you to cover me again! Then when the time comes, we're going to run like hell for the back stairs that go up to the Jumper Bay! Got it?"
"How will I know when the time comes?" Elizabeth yelled back.
"Trust me, you'll know!" John answered simply. "And I'm sorry about your office!"
Elizabeth frowned, puzzled. Her office? She was about to ask him what he meant by his last statement, but he had already begun to crawl back toward the railing once more. Damn him, she thought. She raised her weapon uneasily and fired off several shots at the pair on the main stairs before turning and sending several rounds toward the two on the bridge.
Forcing himself to cast aside the feelings of moments ago, Sheppard cleared his head and focused on the task at hand. He peered once more to his target below, the medical storage closet – specifically the five-foot-tall emergency oxygen tank inside of the medical storage closet.
Contrary to popular action movies, John knew, shooting at the broadside of a pressurized aluminum cylinder would not cause a spontaneous explosion. The metal was simply too thick. However, striking the weakest part of the tank near the top valve….
He flicked a small lever on his P-90 to switch over to single-shot mode. Propping himself on his elbows, he definitely had a better vantage point now. Blocking out the sound of gunfire around him, he took a deep breath, expelled it, peered down his rifle's sight, and squeezed the trigger.
Miss. Wide left.
John cursed under his breath. It's times like these, when our new neighbors plan a hostile takeover of our City, that I really wish Corporal Kirkland and his sniper rifle were here, he thought to himself. But he didn't waste any time shouldering his P-90 again and taking aim at the oxygen tank's valve. If the Lacedami below had dismissed his first attempt as a wayward shot intended for them, they would undoubtedly wise up to his plan this time. John squeezed the trigger.
Miss. Wide right.
"Godddammit," he muttered to himself. He hastily depressed the trigger again. Another miss.
"John, get down!" he heard Elizabeth call from behind him. He followed her instructions immediately, dropping from his elbows to the floor - and not a moment too soon. Twin bullets sailed through the air his head had occupied only a millisecond ago, care of the Lacedami soldiers on main staircase. They had slipped by Elizabeth, but she rectified her blunder by emptying the remains of her magazine in their direction. They were forced several steps down the stairway.
As she reloaded, John saw the pair in her office recognize the opportunity. They attempted to cross the bridge once again. I don't think so, he thought to himself. He quickly fired off several of his own single-shot rounds at them, driving them back.
Now fully reloaded, Dr. Weir held her sidearm at the ready, waiting for one of the two groups to appear again. She had screwed up once and was determined not to let it happen again. "I don't know how much longer I can do this!" she shouted to John.
"Just keep doing what you're doing!" he yelled back, positioning himself at the railing again. On his elbows, he squinted through his boresight at the tiny target thirty feet away.
"I don't know what you're doing," Elizabeth called, "but you need to do it faster!"
John shut out the noise of the bullets whizzing up at him from below and the occasional one from either side. They were getting closer; the last's wake he could feel on his neck as it blasted by. Elizabeth's handgun fired intermittently to his left, then right. But he blocked it all out and fired.
Ping! He had hit the wide part of the cylinder, only inches below the top.
As if threatened by the resounding clang of the bullet striking the aluminum, the Lacedami teams began attacking with new resolve. All six men fired simultaneously. It was too much for Elizabeth, an unskilled marksman with only one 9-millimeter Beretta. She emptied the remainder of her second clip at one of the advancing groups before running completely dry.
"I can't hold them back anymore!" she warned, praying Sheppard could hear over the din. "They're headed this way!"
If he heard her, he gave no indication. He remained frozen solid, facing away from her, his cheek plastered to the stock of his rifle. Only partially shielded, he registered somewhere in the back of his mind the sound of bullets pinging off the metal railing in front of him. It was only a matter of time before his luck ran out and one got through.
"John! Did you hear me?"
His finger rested lightly on the trigger. He allowed his vision to tunnel in on the tank's valve and only the valve such that he could see nothing else. He let the ambient noise fade until he heard nothing. "Come on, come on…" he heard himself mutter.
"John!"
Inhale. Exhale. Hold. Fire.
Boom! The sound of a 50 liter tank of compressed oxygen exploding was earsplitting. As the bullet burrowed through the tank's thin aluminum surface, the spark instantly ignited the highly pressurized gas. Oxygen was a flame's best friend. A fireball completely engulfed one of the downstairs soldiers. He fell to the floor, writhing as he tried to smother the flames in vain.
But the fireball grew upward as much as it did outward to a full twenty foot radius, letting nothing stand in its path. The massive and sudden change in heat shattered the windows to Dr. Weir's office directly above, leaving the room exposed to the flame. Small spot fires licked the furniture situated closest to the Gate Room below. The two Lacedami inside had dove for cover just in time, escaping the inferno.
The full destruction, though, had not yet been wrought. The cylinder's 3,000 psi internal pressure rocketed the tank forward, plowing into the remaining Lacedami on the Gate Room floor. He was hit in the temple, dead before his body hit the ground.
The silence following the explosion was smothering. Elizabeth couldn't help but stand slowly, eyes glued to her office. Though the worst had passed, she could see papers wafting in the thermals. Whole piles of work were charred or still aflame. A table lay toppled on its side, covered in splinters of glass.
John pushed himself to his knees, not yet believing that his stunt had actually worked. He quickly surveyed the scene. He had seen the enemy pair below get taken out, but that left four remaining. If their prior tenacity was an indication, John suspected that the shock from his little stunt would wear off quickly. If Elizabeth and he were going to make a break for it, they needed to do so while they still had the element of surprise.
Making his way quickly over to Elizabeth, he noticed her jaw was wide open as she stared at the remains of her office. He grabbed her hand and pulled her away hurriedly. "Remember when you asked me how you would know when the time came to run?" he asked.
He received a dumb nod in response.
"Well, now would be that time!"
Elizabeth seemed to finally receive the message and the two ran for the back stairway. They had made it up six steps before bullets clipped at their heels. The four remaining Lacedami had pushed entirely through to the Control Room and were up firing again. John and Elizabeth rounded a switchback and continued their climb, blissfully but temporarily out of the line of sight of the enemy.
Several switchbacks later, they burst out onto the floor of the Jumper Bay and ran full-bore across. Having now ascended to the very pinnacle of Atlantis' central tower, their plan was to descend on the other side and weave their way through the corridors to the weapons locker.
"Major Sheppard, Dr. Weir, come in," hissed a hushed voice in their earpieces. It was Teyla's.
"What is it, Teyla?" Elizabeth answered as she ran.
"Rodney and I have just arrived outside the weapons cache. There are several Lacedami guards posted near the entrance. Do not, I repeat, do not proceed this way."
"Son of a bitch," John muttered between breaths. "They beat us to it."
"Then we're just going to have to find another place to rendezvous at," Elizabeth said, both to the major and into her mic. They rounded a corner and began descending via a stairwell, taking two stairs at a time. "Meet us at the gym. Hopefully its outlying location means they haven't found it yet. And be careful."
"We will," Teyla whispered. "We will be there shortly."
John's thoughts went to Ford, the guards he had posted outside the Lacedami guest quarters, and the rest of the expedition members. They had encountered none of them thus far. Hopefully that meant that most had heeded Elizabeth's warning and stayed within their quarters, but John wasn't so sure. The takeover was happening so fast. Worse, they had no idea where the Lacedami teams were positioned around the City. They could run into one at any turn.
They hit the bottom of the stairwell, once again on the same level as the Gate Room. They slowed to a creep; they would have to be cautious as they worked their way toward the nearest transporter.
"I don't believe it was shear luck that their first objectives were the Control Room and weapons storage," Elizabeth thought aloud, keeping her voice low. Talking through their situation seemed to center her.
"It's good strategy."
"That's not what I mean. After they landed, they certainly made their way to us awful quickly. I've been here a year and I'm not even sure I can find my way from the piers to the Control Room without at least one wrong turn."
"Yeah, about that," said the major. "When I dropped in on their quarters earlier, I saw something I wasn't supposed to. They brought maps of Atlantis with them, really detailed maps of every room and hallway. They've got to be thousands of years old."
"What…?" a flabbergasted Elizabeth started, unable to finish. "I don't understand. How?"
"I don't know where they came from or how they got their hands on them," John said dourly, "but it definitely eats into our home field advantage—"
He stopped as he felt her hand grab his arm tightly. Looking back, he saw her standing frozen, listening to something he had missed. Cocking his head to the side, he forced himself to listen more closely, but all he could hear was his own pulse pounding in his head—
There, he heard it: the shuffle of feet, a few muted voices. They didn't belong to any expedition members, of that he was certain. Instinctively pressing himself flat against the wall and motioning for Elizabeth to do the same, Sheppard pulled out his life signs detector and activated it. The display read three contacts, making their way toward the pair from an intersecting hallway to the right. Unfortunately, the transporter was also in that direction.
Not spotting anywhere to flee, Elizabeth pulled John back several paces and prayed that the offset was enough. She willed her body to become even flatter against the wall. Before she could even think to do anything else, the trio of Lacedami appeared ahead of them, seemingly intent on following their own predefined course to somewhere within the City. They turned right and picked up John and Elizabeth's own intersecting hallway, continuing on in the same direction but ahead of them, their backs to the pair.
She released a lungful of air… before a shout caused her to practically jump out of her skin. It hadn't come from the trio ahead of them, but rather from behind them. Elizabeth spun and saw two of the soldiers from the Gate Room. They had been tracked.
The cry had captured the attention of the three soldiers ahead, and they spun to find John and Elizabeth caught like deer in headlights. They were now sandwiched in between two enemies. The major knew there could be only one outcome to the situation, and it wasn't good. Before the Lacedami could raise their weapons, he opened his mouth to tell Elizabeth to run, but she was already on top of it. The two of them peeled around the corner to the right as the first bullets whizzed behind them.
John's mind raced almost as quickly as his feet. He didn't appreciate being put on the run in his own damn City.
They sprinted down the intersecting corridor as fast as their legs would carry them. At first he was worried that Elizabeth would struggle to keep up, but he was impressed that their paces were near evenly matched. It was only then that he recalled she had had a stellar college track and cross-country career, ended prematurely by a debilitating knee injury. Hell, she could probably kick my ass, he thought.
Turning to the left this time down another passageway, they managed to stay steps ahead of the bullets every time the Lacedami drew within sight of the fleeing twosome. As soon as they rounded the corner, they spied the transporter at the end of the hallway, some one hundred yards away. With Elizabeth's ATA gene protocols set in place, the Lacedami wouldn't be able to follow them into the transporter. They quickened their pace.
"Major Sheppard, Dr. Weir, come in, please," a distinctly Scottish voice came in over their earpieces.
"Carson, now's really not the best time!" Elizabeth half-yelled, half-gasped, abandoning all cause for surreptitiousness. She had forgotten about the doctor's failure to meet them in the Control Room as promised before all hell had broken loose.
"You're tellin' me. I'm hearin' gunfire outside my laboratory door. Just what in the bloody hell is goin' on?"
"In short," John answered tersely, "we've been attacked by those bastards we invited in as allies. Can we get back to you later?" He risked a look over his shoulder as he ran. The hallway was still empty.
"Good Lord…" they heard the doctor say. "In that case, I think you'll want to hear this. I've been runnin' some tests on the blood samples from our visitors, at least the four that we could get. I wanted to make certain before I shared the results with you, but there's no mistakin'. I've found a… peculiarity."
John and Elizabeth listened as they dashed down the passage. They were within ten yards of the transporter when the trailing Lacedami caught up with them and opened fire. Within the narrow confines of the hallway, there was simply no way the shooters could miss. One fated bullet struck the major's left forearm, passing through a small portion of flesh.
The force and abruptness of the impact threw Sheppard off balance. Already running at top speed, he crashed to the ground, his momentum carrying him through the open transporter door where he finally tumbled to a halt.
Simultaneously, Elizabeth had just reached the user control panel. Herself a recipient of the artificial gene therapy, she slammed her finger down on their destination: the closest transporter to the gym. The doors shut behind her immediately. Upon turning around, she finally spotted the downed pilot on the floor, attempting to sit up and wearing a grimace on his face. "John!" she cried as she knelt down beside him, but a bright flash of light temporarily delayed her concern.
Several seconds later, they were deposited in an identical transporter on the first level in the outlying edges of the City. As the white flash subsided, John suddenly had a terrifying thought. What if they had just transported into a region teeming with Lacedami soldiers? They'd had no means of checking beforehand. They could have just been dumped into the heart of the hornets' nest—
The doors parted and revealed an empty corridor, lined with labs. He breathed a sigh of relief. They were safe, for the moment.
"What's goin' on?" Beckett said frantically, having heard Elizabeth's prior exclamation. "Is someone hurt?"
"Everyone's fine, Doc," John said through clenched teeth. He pulled himself to his feet with his good arm and examined the wound. It hurt like hell. The electrified bullet had singed the surrounding skin, leaving a sizable black area of charred flesh that throbbed with his pulse. Blood trickled down his arm. Luckily, the round had pierced only a small chunk of his forearm, and the entrance and exit wounds appeared to be clean.
"What kind of 'peculiarity'?" John asked Carson, eager to resume the prior conversation.
"Jesus, John – are you okay?" Elizabeth asked, stepping in close. She kept her voice low such that her microphone didn't relay her words. Her brow creased with worry.
"Just a scratch," Sheppard whispered reassuringly, applying pressure to the wound. He'd have to find somewhere to dress it later, but now they needed to keep moving. He exited the transporter. Elizabeth followed, the slight strain in his voice not escaping her notice.
"Right," the doctor continued. "I ran blood tests on all four of our available subjects, three times over to be sure."
"And what did you find?" Elizabeth queried, her eyes still studying the major, concerned. She continued to follow him down the passage.
There was a deep breath on the other end before the Scot delivered the news. "The ATA gene is naturally present in Lacedami DNA."
The revelation stopped both John and Elizabeth in their tracks.
"What?" Dr. Weir blurted aloud.
"As you know, the ATA gene is naturally present in our own DNA, albeit in only a small percentage of Earth's population."
John instantly thought about Commander Antigonos' ability to use the life signs detector. At the time, he had assumed that the commander was one of the lucky few in his culture born with the gene, much like the major himself. Now he wasn't so sure. He felt the color drain from his face.
"And how many of the Lacedami tested have the gene?" he asked warily, already guessing the answer.
A reluctant pause. "All of them."
Just then, the sound of a door shutting behind them caused John and Elizabeth to spin as one. The transporter had sealed. It had been activated from elsewhere. The two shared a look of dread, knowing instantly what that meant: the Lacedami were pursuing them. Elizabeth's protocol had been useless.
They didn't even have time to turn and run before a familiar white flash preceded the opening of the transporter's doors. Out stepped the five hunters, guns leveled at both Atlantis' leader's forehead.
TBC