"John!"

Rodney had no doubt he was equally or even more panicked than the fear he heard in Teyla's shout. Snow was piled everywhere around them and nowhere was there any sign of Sheppard. "Where is he?" Rodney scrambled up on top of one of the rocks and shielded his eyes as he looked around.

"Sheppard!" Ronon shouted.

"Oh God," Rodney whispered as his eyes passed over the deep and uneven snow. "He could be anywhere…"

"He was there," Teyla pointed straight ahead of her, "when I last saw him. That gives us a place to start." She nimbly jumped down off the rock and started wading through the snow.

"He's not there anymore!" Rodney insisted as he slid down off his rock. "The snow had to have carried him further down the hill."

"But only downhill," Teyla insisted as she struggled over the uneven remains of the slide. "He would not have been swept across the hill. It at least gives us a starting place."

Ronon made his way across the snow and stopped next to Teyla. "Sheppard!" he called again.

"That slide extends for at least a half mile!" Rodney staggered but regained his footing as he navigated the uneven snow field. "Do the words 'needle in a haystack' mean anything to you?"

"We must try to find him, Rodney," Teyla turned and fixed him with a stern look.

Rodney stared back, un-cowed. "Of course we do! But, flailing around in the snow on a whim won't help Sheppard! We need to go about this in an organized way!"

"How?" Ronon demanded.

Rodney waved his hand. "I don't know. Just… just give me a minute here."

"Sheppard may not have a minute!" Ronon's reply was as forceful as his body language.

Rodney glared at him. "Don't you think I know that? Just…" his eyes widened. "Life Signs Detector…" he whispered before yanking his gloves off and plunging his hand into the interior pocket of his TAC vest."Life signs…"

"I thought the interference rendered the Ancient technology inoperable?" Teyla questioned.

"Yes!" Rodney snapped as he pulled the LSD free. "But Sheppard made me start work on a way to compensate for that! I just might…" his voice trailed off as he punched several keys. Without looking up, he heard Ronon growl in frustration.

"Sheppard!" Ronon shouted again.

"Do you want to bring the rest of the mountain down on us?" Rodney fixed Ronon with an icy stare, "because if you do, then by all means, keep shouting!" Rodney punched keys, trying to refocus his mind. Sheppard's life was measured in minutes, maybe an hour if he was lucky enough to have a decent air pocket. If not…. Rodney tried not to think about the 'if not' but it was a challenge for his pessimistic mind.

"McKay!" Ronon snapped.

"Working on it!" Rodney didn't even look up. "I'm going as fast as I can here!"

"Perhaps one of us should return to the gate and call for assistance," Teyla proposed as she looked around, her carefully controlled expression starting to show signs of worry.

"No!" This time Rodney did look up. He gave her an intent stare. "It'll take way too long to get to the gate, get help and get back! Sheppard doesn't have that kind of time, even under the best of circumstances. If he's got an air pocket, then it's still a race against hypothermia and slow hypoxia as he uses up his air! If he doesn't have an air pocket…" Rodney's voice trailed off as he glanced at his watch. He looked back up at Ronon and Teyla. "Then it's already too late." He took a deep breath. "Our best bet is to locate him quickly and dig!" Rodney's gaze fell once again to his LSD.

"Rodney, we have nothing to dig with," Teyla met his intense stare with one of her own. "One of us could go to the village for help."

"Without gear we'll need all three of us to dig!" Rodney insisted. "Once we find him, then we get help, but if we don't get him out of there fast, nothing else will matter." He could see the hesitation on Teyla's face and briefly wondered if it was for the idea of waiting for help… or leaving to find it.

"How can you be so sure?" Teyla questioned. "Surely there is some time…"

"No!" Rodney insisted. "Look, trust me on this. Canada has its fair share of snow, mountains and avalanches. I know what I'm talking about. He flipped the LSD in his hand and slid open the back panel. He glanced again at his watch. "We're already at ten minutes. If we find him within fifteen minutes, he has a ninety-three percent chance of surviving. At a half hour that drops to less than fifty percent and he has a less than twenty percent chance of survival by the time an hour goes by!" He took a second to wave his hand. "Don't ask me how I know that. Random trivia tends to stick in my head. Always has." Tinkering, he quickly re-routed several circuits satisfied that, from the silence, Teyla had accepted his answer.

"I don't care if I have to dig with my bare hands," Ronon's voice was frustrated but determined as he stomped across the snow, "just find him!"

"What the hell do you think I'm doing over here?" Rodney shot back. He snapped the back cover into place and quickly booted up the LSD. Come on… come on! He hadn't been lying when he'd told them that the fix to compensate for the planet's magnetic fields should be easy… okay maybe he'd omitted the 'should'… but damn it, how hard could it be? In spite of the situation, he smiled triumphantly. "Got it!"

"Where is he?" Teyla immediately responded before looking around.

"He's…" Rodney's eyes widened. "Oh no…"

"What?" Ronon demanded. He jumped down of the snow. "Didn't you fix it?"

"Yes!" Rodney snapped, "just too well."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Ronon descended on Rodney.

Rodney stared at the six life sign signals on the LSD's display. "He's not the only thing alive under there."

"Malneks." Teyla answered quietly.

"The LSD can only show life signs, not distinguish Sheppard from the Malneks. I can't tell which one is him," Rodney bowed his head, "if any of them are him," he added quietly.

"One is him," Ronon answered immediately. "I say we start digging. If we run into fur, we shoot it and go to the next one."

"Do you realize how long it will take to dig down to any of these life signs?" Rodney answered. "Sheppard doesn't have the time for us to be wrong even once!"

"It's better than standing here doing nothing!" Ronon growled.

Rodney rubbed his brow and paced… as well as he could in the deep snow anyway. "There has to be some way…" his mind raced, skimming through ideas and discarding them at lightning speed. Something… anything that the detector can use to distinguish him from the Malneks… His eyes widened before he punched keys on the detector. "That's it!"

"What?" Teyla jumped down off the snow and hurried over to him. "Rodney, what?"

"Sub-q transmitter. We figured out how to rig the Jumper scanners to pick up on them, the adaptation for the LSD shouldn't be too different…." His voice trailed off as he focused his concentration on the hand held device. What he didn't mention was that it'd taken days to figure out how to program the Jumper sensors to pick up on the transmitters correctly. Silently, he hoped he was past that learning curve because Sheppard's life sure as hell wasn't measured in days.

--------------------------

The snow above him was spinning and it took a long minute before John realized that he wasn't actually moving, even if his vision was deceiving him. He closed his eyes for a moment, fighting an instinctive panic that surged through him as his muddled thoughts focused.

He was buried alive.

He stared up at his crossed arms, several inches from his face, and took a shallow breath. His panic subsided slightly as cold but breathable air flowed into his body. In his last moment of daylight, he'd thrown his arms across his face for protection. Somehow, through the ordeal, he'd managed to keep them there and that had been his salvation for they acted as a barrier, creating a small, life saving air pocket in a pack of snow that immobilized the rest of his body. He inhaled again, pushing his chest against the heavy snow to pull in as much air as he could but his breath was shallow at best against the crushing weight. The snow molded around his elbows immobilizing his arms. He relaxed his muscles and let his hands dangle, but his arms were firmly wedged into the snow above his face.

John forced himself to think rationally and to keep a level head. His team would find him…

… his team….

He closed his eyes and squished out any doubt he had with steeled resolve. They'd made it to the rocks, to cover. They had to be okay and they'd find him. He just needed to survive until then.

That's your job, John. He reminded himself. Survive. Give your team the time to find you.

As his thoughts cleared more, he was struck with a weird sense of familiarity. It wasn't much unlike wiping out in a wave, and like a wave, disorientation could be deadly. He blinked and considered the snow right above his head. Was he really facing the surface, or did he just think he was? He moved his arm slightly and was rewarded with flecks of snow hitting his face. Leave it to gravity to be honest. He inhaled again and considered his situation as small bits of ice and snow melted on his skin, the water running down his chin and cheeks. He moved his arms again, squinting as pieces of snow and ice rained down on him. He was rewarded with a bit of movement, but he hesitated to push against the snow too much. Right now, he had a pocket of air to breathe in. If that collapsed….

John pushed the thought away as he tensed his legs and the trunk of his body. Abruptly a wave of searing pain surged through him and he struggled to stay calm. As his head cleared he knew, without a doubt, that his left leg was broken. Leaving it still, he tried to bend his right leg, but it was like being buried in wet sand; he couldn't move. He ceased his futile struggling and tried to relax his body. His breathing was coming faster and that alone alarmed him. He had no idea how much air he had, and wasn't all that anxious to expend it any faster than necessary. His teeth started chattering as the cold wetness of snow permeated even his winter clothes. Shifting his left hand slightly, he tried to reach for his radio headset. He had no idea if the signal could penetrate the snow, or even if it still worked, but it was worth a shot.

"Sheppard…" he managed, "read me…?"

-------------------------

Teyla's hand unconsciously flew to her headset in response to the crackling static she heard. Looking up, she saw surprised expressions on both Rodney and Ronon's faces as well and she knew she wasn't imagining it.

"Shep… read…"

She quickly pressed the call button on her headset. "John?"

"Oh thank god!" Rodney exclaimed as he paused for a moment, before returning to his work.

"Tey…"

Even through the badly garbled transmission, Teyla could hear the weakness in John's voice. She took a deep breath. "Are you all right?"

"....leg…ken…"

Teyla shook her head in frustration. She turned her attention to Rodney. "Can we use his radio signal to find him?"

Rodney looked up. "Possibly, but the signal is weak at best. We stand a better chance of finding him by his transmitter." He bowed his head and returned to configuring the detector.

Teyla sighed. "John, are you still there?"

"… here…"

"Rodney is configuring the Life Signs Detector to locate you." She paused for a moment and strengthened her voice. "Be still. We will find you."

"…not go…where…"

"John?" Teyla questioned, "John?" She bowed her head at the silence. Through her travels, she'd heard of incidents like this; people buried in great waves of snow. She had never seen it before today though. Teyla inhaled, trying not to give in to hopelessness, for one thing that was consistent amongst all of the stories she'd heard; very few people ever survived.

----------------------------

"Teyla…" John pressed his numb lips together, trying to get some feeling back. He knew his words were slurred, he could hear it, but his lips refused to cooperate. He took a shallow breath, his inhale hitching around his chattering teeth as he tried to stay awake and aware, but he knew he was fighting a losing battle. The air around him, while cold, was starting to feel… close. Like there were too many people in a room, even though he knew he was alone. Grimly he realized his tiny pocket of air was slowly but steadily being depleted… faster than he'd hoped. Life giving oxygen was being replaced with deadly carbon dioxide. Each warm breath he exhaled froze to his sleeves and the snow only inches from his face creating a deadly air tight ice cocoon. Or a coffin… John shook off the thought, forcing himself to stay hopeful. His team was okay, they were looking for him and they knew he was alive.

"Alive," he muttered.

He shook his head at the irony. He'd survived Wraith, Replicators, Iratus bugs and just about anything else Pegasus wanted to throw at him. But a deadly avalanche had never made it to his list of 'Things That Will Probably Kill Me.' He'd been a skier off and on all his life, but he'd never been one of those guys that flew into the back country to ski virgin snow. John blinked hard, fighting an ever increasing drowsiness. Strangely enough, the violent chattering of his teeth helped him stay awake, but in the back of his mind he knew that wouldn't last much longer. One bad thing about being career military, not to mention a long history of being a med evac pilot, was that he knew far more about field medicine than, right now, he wanted to. The snow was sucking the heat from his body and the close air around him was turning toxic. His body was his own worst enemy. Hypothermia and hypoxia… there are worse ways to die…

His mind drifted…

"You have to fight, you know…"

Rodney's voice had been as sympathetic as he'd ever heard it. That moment a year ago, he'd been comatose, fighting a retrovirus that ravaged his body, and yet somehow he'd heard the voices around him. Somehow, he had fought past the animal that was consuming him, to hear his friends and draw strength from them.

"You're a fighter. So fight."

If only at that moment he could've woken to tell Ronon that he was fighting…

"Be strong, John."

Teyla. Arguably one of the strongest people he'd ever meet.

John's eyelids drooped before he shook himself awake again. None of that!

"You have to fight, you know…"

"You're a fighter. So fight!"

"Be strong, John."

"You're a fighter, so fight!

"… so fight!"

"Fight…" he muttered. "Fight…"