He did not know why they had been put in there, just the two of them, but he sure as hell did not plan on sticking around. "Come on Rodney, the third patrol just walked by." He had learnt a thing or two from one of his friends about concealing blades when being captured. With two hidden blades the other man had forced the door control panel open and was now attempting to open the door.
"I'm working as fast as I can. They designed it to be tamper proof..." They heard a click and the door begun to slide open "but they didn't have me to help them."
"Good work Rodney, now shut it." Sheppard slid the blades back into their concealed sheaths. The corridor outside was as grey and boring as the tiny holding chamber they had just broken out of, like most thing on Tau'ri ships the walls and floors were designed without any sort of fancy design, instead they had been designed and built to be easy to replace, but above all else functional. "This way."
"But the rings are this way" McKay complained while pointing the other way.
"We're not taking the rings" Sheppard growled, dragging him down the hall. They had only taken a few steps down the hall when the alarm sounded and a symbiote voice shouted through the speakers mounted around the ship.
"This is bad, the internal sensors can track us everywhere we go."
"Then start running." Sheppard threw caution out the window and begun to sprint down the corridor. Further down the corridor two airmen came around the corner and looked up from their conversation just in time to see two men in black jackets and matching pants race towards them. The first of the airmen just had time to raise an arm to protect his face when Sheppard feinted a blow from the right before sending a kick into the man's jewels. The kick sent his enemy tumbling backwards onto the floor while holding his nuts in place.
For McKay things went very different. He had fallen several meters behind Sheppard, enough for the airman to have time to react and block the slow and crude left hook McKay tried to land on her. Then she countered him by driving a knee into his abdomen and following up by grabbing his head. Before she had the chance to drive his head into her rising knee Sheppard was back on his feet with a freshly looted Zat in his hand and shoot her in the back.
"Beaten by a girl, that must be a new low for you?" Sheppard asked as he threw the woman's Zat to McKay who fumbled to catch it.
"No, a girl in my class beat me up in fourth grade" McKay said while he gave the woman a kick for good measure.
"That's a low you'll never hear the end of" Sheppard promised as he continued down the hall.
"No no no, you can't tell anyone about that" McKay pleaded.
"Then shut up and don't get killed." Sheppard pressed himself against the wall right next to a door.
"This is the core room" McKay whispered in surprise. He pressed himself against the wall on the other side of the door.
"Good, you're catching up." He pulled the sprint from a grenade he had taken from the airmen. "Now open the door and close it when I throw this through."
A simple nod was all he got before the door opened and he rolled the grenade into the room. The door slammed shut. Moments later the grenade exploded. The door opened once again by technicians who came stumbling out of the room. With their Zat's they formed a nice pile of bodies before slipping into the room where the security systems had begun to drain the smoke. From the door on the other side of the room three airmen came into view as McKay pressed a big red panic button the Tau'ri had built into the Asgard consoles. In response the doors slammed shut with enough power to cleave a human in two while bulkheads dropped from the ceiling and others rose more slowly from the floor.
"That won't keep them occupied forever." He stepped up to the pinkish Asgard console.
"We won't need forever McKay, we just need to get of the ship and back to the city."
"And then what?" McKay turned around, anger boiling in his face. "They sent everyone home except for us."
"No, they must have taken all senior officers elsewhere, Lorne's out there too and he's sure as hell not going to give up just like that" Sheppard said calmly. "Now please Rodney, beam us out of here and make sure they can't follow us using this."
"Fine." A few seconds later a white cylinder was beamed into the room. The design did not show much of its function but the design was clearly Asgard and the two red streaks of running lights which circled the device did not need to be explained to Sheppard, it was a countdown. "It should knock out all Asgard systems on the ship, possibly all systems on the ship."
"That will do nicely Rodney. Now lets get off this rustbucket" he said and the white light enveloped them.
When the white light appeared again it was inside the city, three meters above the floor in one of the assembly halls. Without warning Sheppard fell hard onto the floor. "Rodney!" With a bleeding nose he pressed up from the floor and looked around for any sign of McKay, nothing, all he saw was the man's Zat and radio lying a short distance away, the later shattered into the hundreds of pieces from the fall.
Cursing in silence he pushed up from the floor and tried to get his bearings. This section of the city was not familiar to him though many of the sections seemed to look the same, still the thick layer of dust gathered on the floor told of many years of neglect. With one Zat in each hand he walked out of the hall and into the corridor. As he wandered down the halls he saw no signs of anything, except for many untouched years which had now been broken by his arrival. The whole section seemed to be unmoved by the events the rest of the city had been forced to endure, not even the storm which had damaged large parts of the city seemed to have been able to force its water inside.
After wandering through the corridors of the city for some time and still not finding anything but dust and doors which refused to open his radio begun to crackle. "Sheppard, can you hear me." The voice was Rodney's.
"I can hear you Rodney" Sheppard said as he ran into another closed door. "Where are you?"
"Thank god. I wasn't sure I had managed to fix it. I'm in the chair room. Where we should have ended up."
"Well whatever you plan was by beaming us there I suggest you do it, because I'm far from there. I think I'm in the lower sublevels of the city, there's no windows and the doors refuse to open." In front of him another of door denied him access.
"How the hell did you end up there?" Rodney asked. Over the radio he could hear the chair powering up in the background.
"I don't know Rodney, maybe someone messed up when they beamed us!" Sheppard snapped. He tried one of the stairs only to have his path blocked by a forcefield.
"I didn't do anything wrong, there has to be something wrong with the Asgard core. But I think I've managed to locate you."
"Well give me a way out of here then." The blue discharge from one of the Zats reflected of the forcefield into the wall behind him.
"We have guests too."
"We'll get me out of here and I'll deal with them. You're in the control chair, so just turn of the force field in front of the stairs" Sheppard snarled "I think I see a transporter just beyond the stairs on the floor above."
"Sheppard, listen to me. Zelenka might not be as smart as me but he's not a moron, he's tried to access that section for years and when he managed to get around one of the safeguards another locked in place long enough for the previous to reset." His voice seemed surprisingly calm considering their situation. "Still I'll see what I can do."
"Even Fort Nox can be broken by a large enough bomb."
"Yes of course it can! But the gold would be evaporated in the process!" McKay growled. A quick remark about military thinking ran over his lips.
"How hard could it be?" In front of him the forcefield rippled slightly and he could see its full extent. "See, that's a good start, now just shut it of."
"As much as I hate to admit it I'm having no clue about what you're talking about, whatever's happening it's not my doing. The chair lost power for a few seconds and I'm just getting back into the system."
"Well I just saw it shift and ripple, who's doing it if you're not?" He saw it ripple again.
"Not who but what. We have four guests down in the ZPM room. There's power spikes all over the city similar to when the replicators had taken…" McKay said as his voice trailed off. "They've must have brought at least two fully charged ZPMs."
"Make that three." The field rippled again and this time it stay visible, the light blue field waved lazy as his breath created small ripples which grew in size. "Whatever you're planning on doing I suggest you hurry."
"I'm working as fast as I can" McKay shouted
"Well work faster" Sheppard shouted back. He walked up to one of the ventilation shafts and kicked the cover inside. He had been in the same situation before where the only route through the city was through the ventilation but even after those times, because in truth there had been more than a few accidents were the city went into lockdown, he still did not favour the idea of climbing into the system.
"Great, so you're planning on jumping down onto the fan and get shredded" McKay's voice mocked him over the radio.
"We already know they stop if living tissue touches them so it's all good" Sheppard said while he climbed inside.
"That's only been tested once and I would not call Ronon throwing Dr. Porter's Corgi into the system a scientific experiment."
"More like doing a field goal with it" was the last thing Sheppard said before his radio was filled with static. Just like all the times they climbed inside the ventilation system their radios filled with too much interference for them to work.
The shaft itself was not that bad, it was just wide enough for a human to squeeze through when it was horizontal and when it reached the vertical main shaft it opened up to a platform where you could stand upright. From top to bottom in the main shaft a ladder ran.
Five floors above the hair on his head fizzled when it came into contact with another force field. Not feeling like getting electrified he climbed into one of the ducts and kicked out the lattice into the corridor outside. The corridor looked exactly the same as the one he had left below except for a window which sat in one of the walls. Through the window he could see the lower levels of the inner city. With one hand he opened the window and looked outside.
He was less than two stories above the ground floor, but above he saw a balcony. "Rodney, can you hear me?"
"I'd like you to hurry up and get up here, but the window's not a good idea."
"It's a good a plan as any." He climbed outside and the window closed automatically behind him.
"Nooo, that's a bad plan" Rodney said while Sheppard begun to look for slots where his hands could grip. "They're running power through damaged systems which shouldn't be activated. The whole city could explode at any moment."
"Unless you have a better way of getting up there you don't have a say in the matter." Slowly he began to climb upwards. "What systems are they powering? Any chance they'll blow me out of the sky with a couple of drones?"
"Unless they've brought more drones with them you're safe, we used them all protecting Atlantis against the Wraith." The whole tower shook slightly and Sheppard's left foot and right hand lost their grips.
"What's happening Rodney?" he asked after dragging himself onto a small ledge on the floor below the balcony.
"I don't know alright. They're powering up systems all over the city and the chair won't let me turn them of." Every word he uttered increased the panic growing in his voice. "The inertial dampeners were damaged, that's why the whole city trembled."
"Well do something" Sheppard said as he turned his attention back to the wall.
"I said I'm tr…." Before he could finish the sentence he was cut of by an electric hiss.
Before he got a chance to use his radio the city shook again and the shield rose up to envelope it. From below he could hear the roar of the stardrive and around the outside of the shield huge amounts of vapor rolled up towards the sky.
With a power he did not think he had he dragged himself along the wall up to the balcony. With a sweaty hand he grabbed the reeling and pulled himself up to it. Within the time of a heartbeat he heard the reeling buckle beneath his weight. Then it came clean of the balcony, still with him holding on to it for all he was worth.