Act Two

This was not good. Very, very not good.

Rodney hunkered down behind the large, semi- unstable boulder as far as he could. Every few seconds, a blast from the Wraith's stunner went flying past him. He heard a few impacting on the other side of the rock as well. The blasts might as well have been a flare and by now, the Wraith on the other side of the ridge was probably heading this way to investigate.

Bottom line, Rodney needed to get the hell out of there and fast. But how the hell was he supposed to do that with the stunner fire? As soon as he moved, he was the Wraith's next meal, dammit!

A stunner blast flew past Rodney a little too closely for comfort. Startled, he flinched away from it, pressing himself further into the boulder.

The boulder shifted behind him. Fantastic. Just on the off-chance that he didn't quite understand the gravity of his situation, now he was going to lose his cover, too.

Wait. Gravity! Of course! What an idiot he was! Here he was, perched on top of an unstable rock pile and the Wraith was in the dell below him. And what was he doing? Panicking instead of thinking! His brain was the one resource he had in spades and here he was, not using it.

Rodney summed up every ounce of strength he had, kicked his legs out against the ground, and pressed his back into the boulder as hard as he could. The boulder rocked, teetering on the edge of whatever fragile structure was holding it up. Rodney shifted and tried again.

The boulder came free with a lurch, sending Rodney sprawling on to his back as it rolled away. He had to scramble to keep out of the way as the rest of the rocks around it also broke free and started tumbling down into the dell; a genuine rock-slide.

As the whole side of the rock formation broke free and dumped itself into the dell below, Rodney was sent tumbling down the near end of the rock formation. He crashed through brush and brambles as he rolled down the ridge, barely able to protect his face and head from the offending foliage. He felt several small rocks pelting him on the way down. He finally flopped to a halt amid a stand of bushes and a cascade of rocks and broken plant matter slid to a halt around him.

Slowly, feeling a number of new aches and pains in just about every part of his body, Rodney unfolded himself and pushed himself off the ground. The Wraith stunner fire had ceased and he didn't hear the sound of any other approaching hostile entities. He coughed dust out of his throat as he stood, carefully.

The dust was beginning to settle around the rock-slide. As visibility increased, Rodney made out a single hand reaching up out of the newly-formed pile in the middle of the dell, its clawed fingers limply pointing upward, unmoving.

That wouldn't kill the Wraith. He was probably unconscious, but there was no way that would have killed him.

Move your ass, McKay! Sheppard's voice sounded in Rodney's head again.

Pointedly ignoring how disturbing it was that Rodney had apparently spent so much time with Sheppard that the Lieutenant Colonel was ordering him around in absentia, McKay decided that it was sound advice. He took off at full speed in the direction opposite from the rock-slide. He had to get out of sight before the other Wraith got to the top of the ridge line or the one in the rocks woke up. And he still had to find some place to hole up for the night.

Up side; he had survived that particular encounter. Down side; he was still stuck on a planet with a small army of Wraith and no backup and now the damned things were going to be looking for him. And to make matters worse, he had the voice of the single most disaster-prone member of the United States Air Force in history ordering him around inside his brain.

God, this sucked.


John couldn't help but kick himself. There was an unspoken rule among all the Atlantis 'gate teams; the eggheads were protected at all costs. And now, his was alone on an alien world in hostile territory.

What kind of CO was he, anyway?

Teyla had made an attempt to cheer him up on their way down to the mission ready room; placating words like "it was not your fault" or "you could not have anticipated everything." To be honest, John hadn't bothered to listen. Now that the debate over whether or not to go back out and retrieve Rodney was decided, John was able to focus his entire anger on himself, where he knew in his heart the blame really belonged.

He packed his tac vest a little heavier than normal, stuffing some extra power bars an epi-pen, and some extra pain killers into its pockets. He told himself that it wasn't a matter of whether or not they were going to find Rodney. They were going to find him, no question. But given the physicist's myriad of health problems, John knew he needed to lay in some extra supplies. Rodney would probably be rabidly hungry by the time they found him.

Ronon and Teyla had already been and gone and were making their way to the Gate Room. So it was just John, wallowing in self recrimination, all by himself.

He should have stayed closer to McKay instead of trying to shoot down the dart. He should have pushed Rodney into the event horizon of the stargate instead of away from it. He should have come up with a better plan than just rushing down the street and dialing as fast as they could. He should have-

"Colonel Sheppard!"

Broken out of his self-imposed mental punishment, John turned to the voice near the door. Doctor Jennifer Keller was there, dressed in dark, utilitarian clothing, a heavy-leaden backpack slung over one shoulder.

"I'm coming with you," she said without preamble, making her way across the room to outfit a tac vest.

John stood there, somewhat stupefied, watching her prepare for an off-world mission with a very uncharacteristically reckless zeal. No doubt about it, Keller had cut her teeth on any number of missions through the stargate. But the way she was preparing for this particular excursion was nothing short of frightening. He could have been crazy, but he thought that maybe, just maybe, he had seen her eying the assault rifles.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" John asked as carefully as he could.

Keller didn't miss a beat, nor did she even turn around to look at John as she spoke. "Positive," she said, "Rodney has a number of health issues that can and will rear their ugly heads if he's left alone and unprepared in the wilderness for a day. I know his medical history better than anyone here. I need to be there."

"That's not really what I mean," John attempted, "we-"

"I've already cleared it with Mister Woolsey and Colonel Caldwell has agreed to bring me along as well."

"That's not it," John attempted again, hovering over her shoulder as she moved about the room, stuffing items into her tac vest. "Listen, Doc. We don't know what we're gonna find out there and-"

"I love him."

She had spun around, looked him in the eye, and said it with such a matter-of-fact tone that Sheppard practically flinched back.

"You can say that I'm needed here," she continued after letting the proclamation sink in for a moment, "you can say I'm not trained enough for this, you can say that you're trying to protect me from seeing something horrible, but you're not leaving me behind while you go off to rescue him." She paused again, as if letting that hang in the air for effect. "I love him. And I'm going to be there when you find him."

"Listen, Doc," said John after a breath, lowering his voice to sound as reasonable as possible. "Jennifer. It isn't just you I'm worried about. I've see what would happen to him if he were to lose you. If something were to happen to you during this mission... I'm not sure I'm willing to lose the both of you like that."

"And what about me, John?" she asked him. "Do you know what would happen to me if I were to lose him? The same thing. You lose one of us, you lose us both. So there's no point in making the distinction. Regardless of what he will have been through by the time we get out there and find him, he's going to be hypoglycemic and god knows what else. I mean, this is Rodney we're talking about. He's going to need immediate medical attention, so I'm going. And that's that."

John sputtered for a moment, his mouth flapping open and shut a couple times as he searched for the right thing to say. Finally, he settled for clamping his mouth shut in a frown, pursing his lips together as he held up a finger in Jennifer's face.

"Now I know why you two are dating," he said at last.

"Good," she said, clipping her tac vest closed, "just think of me as the requisite annoying scientist for this mission." She shouldered her pack and turned away, exiting the room. "See you at the gate room in fifteen, then."

As soon as she had left, John pulled one of the bottles of acetaminophen out of his tac vest. Opening the bottle, he shook one pill out and swallowed it dry.

"This must be why they say dating co-workers is bad for your health," he muttered, clipping his P-90 to his vest and following Atlantis' CMO out the door.


Rodney's head was swimming after his mad dash through the woods, away from the Wraith. Finally, he could run no further and came to a halt, bending over as he took deep gulps of air. His legs felt like rubber and the ground seemed to tilt under him a little. The sensation only got worse when he stood up again.

He knew that feeling. It felt like the beginning of a blood sugar crash. He held a hand up and watched it shake a little, which only confirmed it. He had no choice but to break open the first of his power bars or things were going to get worse, and fast.

Rodney couldn't stop moving, though; not while he was out in the open like this. As he pulled one of the precious comestibles out of his vest and unwrapped it, he forced his legs to continue onward through the woods.

The sun had now sunk low in the sky, hovering as a red orb half above the horizon and half below it. Rodney knew that if he wanted to find a shelter for the night, he would have to do it soon. Otherwise, it would be too dark to find any sort of safe harbor.

The Wraith would be looking for him, now, and that complicated matters. He would have to be more careful to avoid them. As he munched on the power bar with one hand, he pulled out the life signs detector with the other and turned it on. The two Wraith he had left behind at the rock-slide were a fair way off and weren't moving. As Rodney suspected, the rock-slide had not killed the one. Directly opposite those two in direction, two more were wandering at an angle which did not look like they were heading toward Rodney. Perhaps he would get a breather for a few minutes.

He looked up to get his bearings, finding that a new ridge line was in front of him, not far off. What remained of the sunlight was shining up the valley that was formed by the two ridges. Figuring that shelter was most likely to be found in a formation of hills, he started toward the area where the two ridges met.

Don't put yourself into the middle of a box canyon, Sheppard's voice pushed its way into his head again, getting back out again is a pain in the ass, trust me.

"Like I have a choice," Rodney muttered as he walked, absently stuffing the wrapper from his power bar into a pocket. He glanced at the life signs detector again to check on the progress of his adversaries.

What he saw made him halt. The Wraith he had left at the rock-slide still were not moving. But, the other two were now heading directly for him. It represented a nearly one-hundred degree change in course for them.

"What the hell?"

Possibilities moved through Rodney's brain quickly. Had the two at the rock-slide communicated with them and called for help? Did they receive a change in orders from someone else? Or...

"The power readings," he realized, "they're scanning for the power readings. But if the power readings were on a straight line from them, through me, then, being closer to it, I would be picking it up too. Which means, they can't be picking up the power readings. So... they're reading the life signs detector? Oh, come on! This is seriously not fair!"

He had no choice. He couldn't use the life signs detector or the Wraith would be on him in a moment. In retrospect, it was probably why the two from the rock-slide had been closing in on him. Rodney turned off the machine and tucked it back into his pocket before doubling his pace toward what he hoped would be shelter for the night.

Just as the sun disappeared behind the horizon, Rodney reached the point where the two ridges met. He had hiked for about a half an hour which had constituted most, if not all, of a kilometer. Without the life signs detector, he found himself in observational overdrive. The shuffle of his feet through the leafy underbrush sounded horribly loud. Every sound around him gave him a start. His eyes never stopped moving and the forest's long shadows made him jump. His very breath sounded like it was roaring. He felt like he was going to pop out of his skin.

It wasn't long before Rodney found what he was looking for. Hidden amongst the rock formation that was nestled into the corner where the two ridges met were several holes. Most of them weren't terribly deep and were filled with local flora; some kind of invasive thorn bush that reminded him of raspberries. It seemed to cling to whatever surface it could find. Rodney gave a tug at a few of the vines and found that it took quite a bit of force to dislodge them from the surface of the stone.

Finally, in the midst of poking around the rock face, he found a small cave that was suitable as a hiding place. The opening was large enough for him to slip through without too much grief, though the idea of doing so certainly wasn't pleasant. But, beyond the opening, the cave opened up into a fairly comfortable space; not huge, but big enough for a single person to hide inside for a long period of time without being cramped.

Rodney knew he had to conceal the opening. A hiding place was no good if someone could turn a corner and look right at you. The shadowy environment of the cave itself would be a start, but it wouldn't be enough; at least not for Rodney's comfort.

Comfort. That was a joke and a half.

He knew he had to camouflage the opening in a way that wouldn't be glaringly obvious. A camouflage job was no good if it stood out. The thorny raspberry things would probably do nicely, as long as he didn't shred his hands trying to do the job. It was a little like trying to work with barbed wire, but Rodney found that his pocket knife went through them easily enough. Eventually, he gathered enough to make a fairly substantial bundle. A couple of the tendrils he jammed into a crack in the rock just above the cave entrance so they dangled down over it. A few more he dug into the ground right next to the stone at one side of the hole. He tangled them together as if they had grown that way.

Now, came the really, really unpleasant part; getting into the cave.

"All right," he told himself, "nothing to it. It's not as small as it looks. Just a couple moments, twenty centimeters of length, and it opens back out into a nice, wide open space. A nice wide open space about half the size of a 'Jumper cockpit. Oh, god, that is tiny, isn't it."

A noise made him turn in terror, searching the growing darkness. It was somewhere in the trees above, a rustling of leaves. An animal's call split the silence, something that sounded like a nightmarish mix between a cockatiel from hell and a wolverine from out of some Lovecraft novel. And just then, it suddenly occurred to Rodney that Wraith might not have been the only danger in the woods.

He dove for the hole, slithering into it on his belly. As soon as he was all the way inside the cave, he reached an arm back out and pulled the bundle of thorns in after him, carefully arranging them to act as both cover and a spiky deterrent to anything that may want to share his little hiding hole. As soon as that was done, he crab-walked on his hands and feet to the rear of the cave and pressed himself up against the stone.

Rodney's heart was pounding in his chest. His deep breaths echoed off the walls of the enclosed space.

"Wide open fields," he whispered to himself, his voice high, "bright, sunshiny day, wide open fields, gentle breeze. Everything is fine. You're doing just fine."

A few more deep breaths and he began to calm down. The pounding in his chest was probably going to take just a little longer.

"Okay, sheltered for the night. Now what?" Rodney fumbled in his vest for his flashlight. He was having trouble getting his fingers to work properly and it took nearly a minute for him to get it out and find the switch to turn it on.

The light flickered as the hand holding it shook, almost uncontrollably. Rodney's vision seemed to dance at the edges and patches of subtle darkness moved across his sight in small waves. As his earlier panic now fully left him, he felt a hole begin to eat away at his stomach, sending a burning feeling up into his chest.

He was down to four power bars already and he had most of the next day ahead of him, still. But he again had no choice; eat one of them or turn into a mindless, dry-heaving mass of panic.

Sighing, Rodney set the flashlight to the side, opening its built-in tripod and pointing it to the ceiling. He dug around in his vest again and pulled out the first power bar that he found. It was slightly smashed, but the wrapper was in tact. He glanced briefly at the nutrition facts on the label before tearing it open and taking a bite.

"The calorie count in these things better be as high as they say it is," he muttered.

He needed a moment. He needed to stop. Dammit, he needed to think rather than move. He had been stumbling along at break-neck pace all evening, ever since he had watched the stargate tip forward; reacting instead of acting. Maybe that worked for Sheppard and Ronon. Teyla tended to act with slightly more grace than that, though she was also comfortable with living in the moment at need. Not Rodney. His mind was his best asset which meant that coming up with clever plans was how he preferred to roll. He had grudgingly gotten used to being dragged along by the rest of SGA-1 over the years, but he was the follower in those situations, not the decision-maker.

A hiding place was all well and good for holding out. But he was reasonably certain that hunkering down inside a cave all day was out of the question. For one thing, moving was better than staying in one place, even if you were well-hidden. Hiding places worked better at night, when the ones looking for you didn't have the aid of daylight. For another thing, Rodney was reasonably certain that his radio didn't have enough juice to receive transmissions from orbit through rock. The Daedalus would be coming; Sheppard would see to that. But it wouldn't do a lot of good if they couldn't find his sub-coetaneous transmitter or reach his radio. That meant he would have to leave his hiding place come daylight. Back out in the open, he would be back to dodging Wraith, all day. Not his strong suit. That was decidedly Ronon's department.

"Oh, god," Rodney mumbled, horrified, "I gotta start thinking like Ronon. This is gonna scar me for life."

What would Ronon do? Ronon would go charging at the first Wraith he came across in the woods, shoot it with his blaster, tackle it from behind, stab it with several hundred knives, and twist its head off with his bare hands.

Again, not Rodney's strong suit. But maybe... something along the same vein?

As he pushed the last bite of the power bar into his mouth and chewed, a particularly Ronon-ish thought came to him; take out the Wraith. Rodney knew he wasn't capable of taking them directly, but someone as clever as he was could certainly come up with something.

A trap! Yes! That was what he needed. Whenever humanity came across something they couldn't do for themselves, they invented a machine to do it for them; airplanes, the light bulb, particle accelerators as big as a city. In this case, it would need to be a trap. He was stuck in a cave all night and he sure as hell wasn't going to be getting any sleep, so he might as well build something. Then, all he would need to do is bait it and for that he had the life signs detector. Yes, that would do nicely.

And then what? So he planned to take out a couple. So what? There were how many Wraith on the planet, all of them looking for him? That was an awful lot of traps to set. Maybe he could do that, sure. He could take out one or two. But then what about the rest?

A trap to take out a couple of the Wraith was only half a plan. Rodney needed more. But what could he do after...

In the middle of that thought, Rodney suddenly heard a couple of large stones clatter to the ground just outside his cave. Quickly, he reached for his flashlight and flipped the switch, plunging the cave back into darkness. Careful not to make any noise, he got onto his belly and peered out of the narrow cave entrance, staying in the dark shadows cast in the moonlight by the barricade of thorns.

As he looked out, a couple more stones tumbled down, just off to the left. Everything else outside was otherwise silent and still. More than likely, it was some animal on the ridge above, moving about or hunting small rodents.

And then, that illusion was shattered when a pair of spiky, black boots thudded down in front of his cave entrance from above. A swish of black leather floated down into existence immediately after. Rodney nearly squeaked out in surprise, but managed to hold his exclamation to a short, sharp gasp and a jump.

As the boots slowly spun around and wandered off, Rodney couldn't help but start shaking. The silver moonlight shone down on a humanoid figure, white-hair, slender, and moving about like a mountain cat sniffing at the air as it stalked its prey.

Rodney's heart started pounding again. The Wraith were right outside his hiding place.