Chapter 4 – The Drowned City
Rodney sat on the floor in the room for a long time after he fell through the portal. His senses were still reeling from the kiss he had just shared with Elizabeth in the other reality. He licked his lips unconsciously at the memory and felt sadness in his heart over her fate in his own reality. He rubbed his forehead wishing the touch could push away the painful thoughts going through his mind.
He needed a few minutes to recover from the emotional upheaval of the two realities he had just seen. Horror in anticipation of what he would find in this new one gripped him and he grimaced. He needed to find out and check whether the data on his computer was now intelligible.
However, his most pressing concern at that moment was the howling chasm of his painfully empty belly. Without the IV line he soon started to feel hunger creeping up on him. If he did not eat soon, he would fall into a coma and he did not want to think about what would happen to him after that.
The room was dimly lit as it had been in the other realities he had already passed through. He put the rucksack down between his outstretched legs and rummaged through the contents. He pulled out a power bar in triumph and tore off the wrapper.
Rodney eyed the bar for a fraction of a second like he was afraid of it and then cautiously nibbled a tiny amount from the end. He swallowed and waited for the nausea and sickness to follow and make him throw it back up again.
He held it out in front of himself and frowned in confusion as he stared at the innocent looking snack. He continued to wait and mumbled, "I'm sure it happened sooner in that other place."
He chewed off a lot more and had soon finished the whole bar, but the sickness did not follow. The food had become edible. He muttered sadly, "Well that's staved off the inevitable for a few more hours."
Rodney grabbed a torch out of the bag and pulled the new laptop out to study the data once more. He winced as he stretched his bruised knee out. Then he relaxed and settled his legs back onto the floor. His back was becoming stiff from sitting on the hard floor for so long, but he had to check the data before he even contemplated leaving the room.
He sighed in frustration when the same gibberish met his eyes as he struggled to make any sense of the data he had. He needed to find help, another set of eyes to check over the data would not go amiss, even if he was not back in his own reality. In all honesty, Rodney knew he would probably never get back now. With an infinite number of possible realities it was highly unlikely that he would ever find the exact one he had lost.
He felt loneliness clutching his heart and furrowed his brow sadly as he packed away his laptop and grabbed another power bar. He ate it in record time and flinched when he had finished. His reaction was unjustified though, as he managed to keep the second bar down with the first.
He smiled grimly as he held the torch aloft and stood up. His stomach was less painful, but he needed to find some proper food to sustain him if he was to survive and find his way home.
Rodney limped out of the lab as walking made his bruised knee ache and frowned when the lights in the corridor activated as he walked along. In the other realities, and his own, the whole section had been powered down and strictly monitored so that it did not waste precious energy.
He checked the gun strapped to his leg was still in place and could be drawn easily. He then stepped into the transporter, tapped the control for near the Gate Room and steeled himself for what he was about to find.
Rodney was met by eerie silence and darkness as he stepped out of the transporter. He clicked the torch on as he clutched it in his hand and walked along the corridor. As he reached the Gate Room, the Ancient systems noticed his gene and sluggishly activated.
The lights started to turn on around him and he frowned at the dead plants on the floor along the corridor. He muttered, "I don't even want to know what happened to me in this reality…" as he walked into the abandoned and darkened Gate Room.
For the expedition had never made it to Atlantis in this reality.
Rodney grimly wondered how he had died before he had even reached Atlantis and whether Earth still existed. He realised there was no way for him to know. He would never dare to try and dial the address for Earth to find out.
His eyes widened as he looked out of the window in the Gate Room at the deep water beyond. It was obvious that the shield was still holding back the sea, but he did not know how much time he had left to escape before the city flooded.
He stood in the centre of the Gate Room and suddenly there was a loud bang nearby and a rushing sound approached him. He spun around on the spot to face the source of the noise and said in a panicked whisper, "I have to get out of here!" He knew that any other reality would be better than remaining in this one as the city was drowned.
Freezing cold water spread out over the floor in the Gate Room as Rodney dashed back to the transporter. The water rose and soon he was wildly splashing in the liquid as his feet ploughed through it and it went above his ankles.
He was too filled with adrenaline at that moment to shiver at how cold the water was as it soaked through his clothes. He slowed down when he reached the transporter and stepped inside. His chest hitched as he drew in rapid breaths and he hammered the display for the transporter closest to the lab he needed to reach.
The screen stayed blank and beeped negatively at him. He frantically hit the image and shouted at it, "Come on! I'm going to drown if I don't get out of here!"
The wall remained blank as it taunted him. Rodney's breathing became ragged in panic as water sloshed around his legs and continued to rise. He gasped to the control panel, "Okay, if that's the way you want to play it!"
He lifted his feet out of the water as he ran as fast as he could back along the corridor towards the Gate Room. He nearly fell as the weight and drag of the rising water made movement difficult. He was panting for air by the time the water reached his waist. The sound of his rapid breaths was lost in the noise of the water as it splashed around him.
In no time at all the water was up to his chest and he trembled as he pushed himself forwards and reached the Gate Room. He looked up the steps where he needed to go.
He suddenly tripped and went under. When he surfaced, he coughed and choked out the water he had inhaled and grimaced. He realised that the water was now too deep for him to walk anymore. He shivered violently as numbness from the icy water spread through him and made breathing a lot harder. Rodney's heart pounded rapidly in fright while it tried to compensate for the shocking cold.
He rapidly lost all the feeling in arms and legs as he swam up towards the staircase to the Jumper Bay above. The fearful cold enveloped him until he saw darkness closing in around the edges of his vision. His breathing soon became too difficult for him to get enough air to remain conscious for very much longer. The ice spread through his chest and gripped his heart as it beat too fast inside him.
Rodney weakened as he lost all his strength trying to keep his head above the water. The rucksack still strapped to his shoulders felt like it was getting heavier as it dragged him under again. He spluttered and realised that if he were going to survive, he would need to lose the bag and all its contents. He had a far more urgent concern with staying alive and not drowning than eating and trying to get his soaked computer to work again so that he could look at the useless data.
He shrugged the straps off his shoulders as his head went below the surface again. The rucksack slipped away and he was then able to pull himself up again more easily.
He swam over to the stairs leading up to the Jumper Bay. He then placed his feet on the lowest step and staggered above the top of the rising water on his numb and shaky legs. They barely managed to support his weight and he tipped forwards to use his trembling hands to aid his climb.
The water was rising rapidly now and lapped around his feet as he tripped and landed heavily. He was too numb to feel any pain as he screwed his eyes tightly closed and the panic gripping him allowed him to stand and crawl up the stairs once again.
He staggered into the Jumper Bay and turned around and watched in fear as the water spilled over the top of the stairwell and flooded out over the floor in the Bay. He only had a matter of minutes before he succumb to hypothermia and then he would no longer be able to move as the water drowned him.
Rodney gritted his teeth while he moved as fast as he could. He could not stop the way his body was trembling as massive shudders passed through him in cold.
He walked into the rear compartment of one of the ships and the water began to flood inside the craft and reached his ankles. He collapsed heavily into the pilot's chair and forced his pain filled mind to focus on powering up the systems. Where the numbness ended, sharp knives of pain stabbed through him.
It took a massive effort to control himself sufficiently to activate the engines and close the rear hatch. The adrenaline and fear of death helped, but he still winced and continued to shake.
The water rose above the windscreen of the Jumper as Rodney watched and he nearly tipped out of his seat when his vision blacked out completely for a moment. He pried his eyes open and grasped the control sticks as firmly as he could, but he had no sensation in his hands and could not feel the controls properly. Instead, he used his frayed mind to mentally pilot the Jumper off the ground and up out of the bay.
Rodney had no way to drain the water from the craft and his feet felt like blocks of ice as they remained in the freezing water. He was unsure whether he would ever be able to use them again. He needed to leave this reality and get help.
He brought up the HUD as he circled the Jumper around in the water and guided it back towards Atlantis as the city lay silently on the ocean floor.
He noticed in horror and dread that his destination was also completely flooded. He checked the power left in the Jumper he was flying, but there was not enough power left to increase the size of the shield enough so that he could make his way to the lab.
His breaths were still coming in rapid and shuddering gasps as the cold crept up his legs and his soaked clothes clung to him. His eyes watered and made it difficult to concentrate and try to figure out how he was going to escape.
He flew down deeper and halted the Jumper to hover right next to the lab. He realised that it was right at the edge of the city and there was a very small window. He realised it would not be enough and at this depth he would be crushed flat and killed the moment he opened the rear hatch due to the pressure.
He shivered and said weakly, "Think, McKay!"
An idea suddenly came to him as he began to drift away. His eyes snapped open and he accessed the weapons systems. He sighed in relief when he saw a single drone in the Jumper ready for deployment. He locked onto his target and fired.
The drone impacted the wall to the left of the lab and the subsequent explosion punched a large hole in the metal. Rodney flew the Jumper over and turned it. He reversed it into the gap created and forced it through. There was only just enough power for him to expand the shield in order to plug the hole around the Jumper.
He accessed Atlantis' systems too and sealed all the doors around the lab so that the pressure would no longer be a problem unless one of the doors failed or was already too badly damaged to hold back the water.
He examined the HUD and realised he still had several metres to swim in order to get to the control panel in the lab. Once he had opened the rear hatch and was in the water; there would be no going back. He would only get one chance and he was going to die soon anyway as he had no food and the numbing cold had now reached his chest. The shivers were beginning to dissipate and he knew that that was very bad news.
Rodney fell out of his seat with a splash and created rippling waves in the water with his movements. He crawled along the deck of the Jumper with his forearms and lower legs in the water and furrowed his brow and blinked. His movements were slowing down and he urgently needed to find a power source to use on the control panel.
He curled his hands against the wall of the Jumper and pulled himself up with a cry in exertion and desperation. He yanked down the crystal tray and used his numb fingers to fumble and pull out some power crystals. He stuffed them into his pockets and kept hold of another one.
He then collapsed down heavily onto the deck with a large splash as his legs gave out. He pushed his face out of the water and spluttered and coughed where he had inhaled some of the water.
He could have warmed the water up, as he did before, but he needed all the spare power for the shield now. He could see that the crystals he had grabbed were virtually depleted. He prayed that one of them had enough power left to kickstart the archway to drag him out of the nightmare of freezing water and emptiness he had come across.
Rodney drew in a few deep breaths and then one massive lungful of air. He then pulled the emergency hatch opening lever and his entire world was drowned as the only air he had left was lost in the influx of icy water.
Rodney would have gasped and released his breath if he knew there was oxygen available to suck in afterwards. Instead his throat burned and ached as he waved his numb arms and legs and pulled himself through the water.
He opened his eyes and they stung and burned in the salty seawater. His only comfort was that he had not been immediately crushed and that the seal around the Jumper and the doors inside Atlantis were still holding back the water to allow his passage.
He swam under the inactive archway in the lab and reached the control console. He dropped the first power crystal on the floor as it slipped from his unfeeling fingers. He panicked and nearly drew in some water right then. He frantically pulled another one from his pocket and slotted it into place on the console.
Rodney felt his throat protesting and light-headedness from lack of oxygen as the display in front of him lit up. He closed his eyes as the most welcome and familiar snag grabbed him and he was pulled backwards and through the archway.
Rodney rolled over and over wetly when he landed on the other side. He coughed savagely to expel all the water that was choking him. He wheezed and gasped in laboured breaths, but the air he was receiving was not quite enough for him to recover.
Rodney saw rough hands grabbing his shoulders and brutally shaking him with his fading senses. His arms were pulled up above his head and he cracked his eyes open to see that he was being dragged out of the room across the floor. He could no longer feel anything though; no pain and no cold as he closed his eyes and let the numbness claim his mind as well as his body.
TBC