Chapter 9

John ran. And as his body ran, his mind coldly observed his surroundings, noting the great swathes of rock removed from the walls and floor, realising, as he reached the end of the underground section, that both walls and floor and high-arched ceiling were scoured and scraped, and this meant that the creature was growing; already big enough to fill the passageway, how big would it grow? How much damage would it do to this world before it was stopped, if it could be stopped? John ruthlessly cut himself off from such thoughts, and incised a line in his mind behind which speculation and longing and crushing guilt must and would stay.

The creature had carved a path down through the terrace in front of the bathhouse, and on into the lower city and the slopes of the mountain beyond. John decided to follow the path, refusing to ask himself where the creature was going, so swiftly, so urgently. He ran headlong down the gouged trail, skidding on the powdery grit that covered the strangely smooth surface, single-minded in his determination to get the Jumper and then pursue the creature to its extinction.

oOo

Ronon raised his blaster and fired, bringing a cascade of rock tumbling down the ancient terracing. He fired again, and again, and then stopped and began hurling the rock where he wanted it, stamping it down to create a firm surface; firm enough for the Jumper to land on once at least. He relished the activity, the urgency, the burning in his muscles, and was glad that he could do something; that he had a means to channel his helplessness and fear into hard, brutal work. He raised his blaster again and took aim, seeing Teyla above him and to one side, safely out of the way, but alert, watching, her P90 ready. She sat on a rock, one leg stretched out, because climbing all the stairs and then walking the length of the passageway had been too much for her knee. The subtle tap and clatter of Rodney's laptop came from behind him; they all had their tasks. Ronan fired.

oOo

How much to push himself? How hard? How fast? John had no consideration for his own pain, his own ragged breath and burning lungs, in his downhill flight; his body was a tool, a machine to be used, and he was prepared to push that machine to its limits. But as he ran, his mind flittered with risk-assessments; the advantage of jumping from the end of an outcrop versus the risk of injury, the time gained by ski-ing, arms spread, knees bent, down patches of scree, against the likelihood of losing his balance and pitching forward. The machine must do its job, must complete its task, but John felt he was always tipping the verge of his limits, veering almost too far, pushing his body harder and harder toward disaster.

He hurtled down a deep-carved ravine, saw a rocky precipice ahead of him that jutted out into the void, then skidded and flailed on the loose rock, turned sideways and crouched, leaning into the slope, like a downhill skiier; his legs went out from under him and he crashed down on one side, slid for a few feet and stopped, his feet within inches of the edge. John lay, chest heaving, heart pounding, coughing in the churned-up dust, but his unremitting sense of urgency forced him up, staggering, to his feet. The bandages on his hands were loose and he tore them away impatiently, noticing his pants hanging in ragged strips down the right side, from his fall, cut by the jagged rocks, and corresponding red lines beneath, just beginning to bleed. He absently noticed blood running in streaks down the underside of his right arm from where he'd flung it out. He mopped at them with the strips of bandage and then hurled the rags away, feeling nothing but the fizz and surge of adrenaline, and distracted by the sight before him.

The creature had met an obstacle in its path; a rocky bluff, similar to the one John and his team had climbed around. It had gone straight through; through and down in an undulating tunnel that bored straight into the rock, paying no need to its utter and complete solidity. The creature's power was immense and John heard himself give a great sobbing breath before he gripped his despair tightly and shoved it to the back of his mind. He would take advantage of the destruction and follow.

oOo

The noise of Ronon's blaster echoed round the ruins, again and again, so that Teyla heard the great, cracked dome pick up the vibrations and begin to hum. She shifted slightly on her uncomfortable rocky seat and the icepack on her knee fell off. Picking it up and brushing off dust and rock chips, Teyla wondered how far down the mountain John was and hoped he was alright. She put the ice pack back on her knee, wincing as she eased the joint straight out and then set her foot down again.

Ronon was taking a break, gulping from his canteen, sweat running down his face from exertion and heat. Teyla felt her senses still suddenly and, trusting her instincts, she listened. A trickle of falling grit, a slight shifting of rock against rock, somewhere... somewhere behind her. She rose smoothly, allowing the ice pack to fall, her P90 up, tracking from side to side. She could see nothing and hear nothing but the ruffle of the hot breeze against her ears. Ronon had noticed her unease and strode up the slope, leaping up the dent he had created in the ancient stonework.

"D'you hear something?"

She nodded, her narrowed eyes scanning the ruins.

"Maybe the sheep-things," said Ronon.

"I do not think they would approach. The noise will have scared them away."

"Yeah. Grenza?"

"That is my guess," she said.

"The noise'll scare them off, too."

"In ones and twos, perhaps. It may be that they are capable of organising themselves and will attack in force if they feel threatened by the noise."

"We don't have a choice." Ronon turned and made his way back down the slope. "I'll keep working. If we have to, we'll hold 'em off til Sheppard gets here."

"We will," she agreed.

Teyla reviewed her surroundings; she would require a better vantage point if she wanted to see the creatures coming and defend herself and her companions. She followed Ronon down the slope, her eye on the roof of the gatehouse.

oOo

The tunnel was full of dust and John ran, coughing and choking, sending up rolling clouds of the stuff where the rocky passage fell steeply away, and he had to sit down and slide. Light came from above and below, but the air was grey and thick and John, running and then sliding and then running again, became disoriented, the gradient seeming to shift, so that he couldn't tell if he was level or falling or even climbing. He pressed on, eyes streaming, dizzy and sick from coughing; and then he stepped into nothingness.

John had a split second to draw in his arms and legs, and tuck in his head before his feet hit, the surface so steep that he skidded, then rolled, head over heels, falling and tumbling, down and down, picking up speed until he bounced once, twice, and then, he burst into a glare of white light, skidded in a great, grey, plume; and then he stopped.

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't feel. His heart still raced and he panicked, kicking and thrashing and choking in a sea of soft greyness, his mouth and eyes and nose filled with the suffocating dust. One foot hit something solid, and he pushed away as hard as he could, up through the sea of grey and out, into the whiteness, his grit-clogged eyes blind. He reached out as he fell back into the dust and his grateful hands touched solid rock and grasped it, clawing and heaving until he felt air around him. John crawled forward, and hacked and spat and vomited until he could drag in great pained lungfuls of air; then he collapsed, exhausted, and lay, just breathing; a rapid rasping and wheezing, in and out, jerky and raw.

Time paused as John lay, until he realised that he was cold and trembling with shock. He rolled over weakly and pushed himself up on his arms; they collapsed beneath him, so he tried again, and made it to sitting, slumped over, feeling dizzy and sick, his eyes closed in vain against the penetrating dust. He patted around his body with a trembling hand and found his canteen, then rinsed his mouth, spat, drank, and tried to wash the grit out of his eyes. The water was cool and soothing and he blinked into the trickle, seeing brief flashes of startlingly blue sky. His eyes still felt gritty but he resisted the urge to rub them, and began to take stock of his situation. Through narrowed, streaming eyes, John looked back and saw the mouth of the tunnel from which had been spat out at high speed. Beneath it was a smooth, grey expanse, its surface appearing flat and undisturbed, its appearance benign. The dust that the creature had left behind had both saved him and nearly killed him; cocooned and insulated him from serious injury, but suffocated and nearly drowned him.

John took another sip of water, his mouth parched, grit between his teeth, knowing he should ration his supply until he reached the Jumper. Stiffly, limbs heavy with weariness and pain, he turned around to view the curve of the mountain as it continued south. The creature's path was clear; descending to the rock-strewn cratered plateau, it stretched away as far as John could see, pointing like an arrow to the serried rows of the mountain range and then beyond to the forest-farms of the Montareans.

oOo

Rodney was miserable with guilt and fear; fear both for the short and long-term, and, above all, fear for his friend, who'd gone charging down the mountain alone, full power running to his damned self-sacrifice circuits. And why John had to take such a load of guilt on himself, Rodney didn't understand, not when there was a perfectly good candidate for blame in the shape of his monumentally over-confident, ZPM-coveting idiot of a physicist.

Rodney had finished calibrating his laptop to track the strange energy signature of the escaped horror and now it had passed out of range, so that he didn't even have the dubious distraction of watching its ominously swift progress across his screen and was at his excruciating leisure to wallow in misery; an activity in which Rodney was indulging to the full.

"McKay! You done?"

"Yes. Done. For what it's worth." Even Ronon's interruption to his self-flagellation wasn't irritating enough to divert him.

"Come'n stamp this down, then!"

Scathing sarcasm: 'a good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over' would have been Rodney's normal response. He didn't have the heart, but simply huffed, set down his laptop and stamped where Ronon told him to stamp. He glanced up at Teyla, her head and shoulders projecting over the parapet of the gatehouse roof; when Ronon had boosted her up there, Rodney had thought about joining her, but as a place of safety it left much to be desired, not least the fact that the ceiling beneath was starting to give way.

"That might do it," said Ronon.

"Good thing we don't have an archaeologist on the team," said Rodney, regarding Ronon's one-man excavation of the ancient terracing. He'd brought down some areas and shored up others to create a very rough platform, big enough for John to land the Jumper.

"Yeah," Ronon agreed. "It'd be funny, though. That Jackson guy'd have a fit."

"Oh, well," said Rodney, dismissing the precious remains with a casual wave at the rest of the ruins. "There's plenty more where that came from!"

"Ronon!" Teyla's stage whisper hissed urgently down to them. Her eyes pointed to the domed building and for a moment, Rodney saw nothing. Then a black shaped flitted across the entrance; a grenza. For a while there was just silence and stillness and the still-burning heat of the westering sun. Ronon shifted and his boots crunched on the layer of hardcore as he began to move; but then the grenza called, and the cry reverberated round the dome, which seemed to encourage the creature to raise its voice to the sky, and it howled, a high, drifting, alien shriek that struck terror in Rodney's heart and mind.

The cry sustained and then faded slowly.

"We are so screwed!"

"Teyla! Can you see them?"

"No!"

"McKay, get your stuff, you need to be ready."

Rodney ran, skidding on the loose rock and stuffed his laptop back in his pack, feeling down between the layers of his sleeping bag to briefly touch the jagged outline of the ZPM.

"What should I...?"

"Bring it!" said Ronon. "And Sheppard's. We need to defend this area."

"There is one on the portico!"

Ronon spun round, blaster raised.

"Wait!" Teyla called. "It may not attack!"

Rodney dragged the packs up to the landing pad and leant them against each other. He drew his sidearm, and checked the magazine, surprised at the steadiness of his hands.

Ronon swung round suddenly; another had emerged from the shadows and Rodney spun the opposite way. He was right; he couldn't see it, but the distinctive, peculiar chittering came from behind the remains of the wall.

"I don't think they're here to parley!" he said, Beretta raised, both hands gripping the weapon firmly.

"We must not attack first!" said Teyla, urgently. "We need time!"

"We could retreat," said Rodney. "Defend the gatehouse!"

"No. We'd get trapped. Sheppard'll come," Ronon said, stoically. "You need to get down, Teyla."

"I can cover you from here. I will join you when I have to."

"There's another!" A second grenza strode out onto the portico and the two stood, chittering and clicking to each other. They could still retreat down the mountain, if they had to, Rodney thought. Maybe John could hover to pick them up. But then one of the creatures on the portico called and there was an answering cry; it came from behind him, below the gatehouse, and Teyla confirmed it.

"We are surrounded."

oOo

John had had to turn away from the escaped creature's trail; it had headed south, whereas the Jumper was approximately north east across the jagged, broken country that had made their trek so hard two days before. John tried to keep up a brisk pace; he had staggered at first as he set off from the edge of the treacherous dust bowl, his legs rubbery and unresponsive, his body feeling beaten and heavy. But he knew he had to persevere and, having eaten a power bar and had some more water as he stumbled along, he felt a little better and forced himself to pick up speed.

It was hard going, though, and the sun didn't help, even though it was well past its zenith. Sweat ran down his face, his hair was soaked and his feet were sore and blistered. The rocks shimmered with heat haze and the only sound was John's laboured breathing and the sound of his boots scraping and slipping on the uneven rock. The landscape stretched around him, bleak and heartless and he felt small and insignificant and alone.

He slipped and fell, landing on his outstretched hands, reopening the existing scrapes and creating more. Climbing to his feet, he set off again, willing himself to concentrate hard on the placing of each footfall, judging the shape and the aspect of each angular tooth of contorted rock. He managed for a while but his concentration waned and he fell again. This time only his tac vest saved him from serious injury, his chest impacting hard with a viciously sharp peak of rock. As it was, he got away with what, he was sure, would soon become a threatening black bruise.

John got to his feet again, wincing. He looked back at the mountain and squinted at the position of the sun to judge his course. He thought he was on the right track, but the Jumper was hidden in a crater and he wouldn't see it until he was on top of it. Taking another drink, he shook his canteen; only a couple of mouthfuls left. He set off again, muttering a particularly lewd song he remembered from his far-distant basic training days.

There was a crater to his left and John made his way to the lip and looked down into the wide bowl, just in case; no Jumper. He carried on, and thought about his team. Ronon would have made him somewhere to land, Rodney would be ready to track the creature, Teyla would have watched over them with her P90 ready; John had absolute faith that these things would have been done and knew his team would have absolute faith in him coming back for them. Stumbling to a halt, bent over, gasping, with his hands on his knees, he hoped their faith wasn't misplaced.

He looked again back toward the mountain and was convinced the view was the same as he'd seen, setting out in the dawn light over two days ago. He turned around, scanning the landscape, but could see no craters and the turning made him dizzy, so that when he started walking again he tripped and fell once more. And, yet again, pushed himself to his feet and continued. John knew he was exhausted; he needed rest, water and food. Water and food he hoped were ahead of him in the Jumper; rest might have to wait, and the urgency of his mission made him pick up his halting pace once more and push his unwilling frame to greater endurance.

John didn't realise he had reached the crater; he had been stumbling along in a daze and, when the ground disappeared beneath his feet he almost thought he was back in the tunnel, still endlessly falling. He pitched forward but managed to bring one foot under him so that he made a wild, madly running entrance down the steep side and into the shallow bowl. His momentum slammed him into the side of the Jumper and as he fell back to the ground and looked up at its familiar grey-green solidity, it seemed to shimmer and dance before his eyes and disappear, as if a cloud of the choking grey dust had suddenly descended.