A/N: I have so many things to say!
1) I got a replacement charger for my dead one, so I should be back to posting more regularly. (Actually, I got two so that I'll always have a backup.)
2) I was really not feeling this chapter at first, which is another reason it took me a while to get this posted, but I feel like I finally got into a groove with it and now I'm decently happy with where it ended up. I feel like one of my biggest strengths in writing is with dialogue and creating relationships/chemistry between people, plus I really enjoy writing dialogue, so this chapter was just one hell of a challenge for me.
3) The very end of this might veer into M territory for violence, which is very strange and off-brand for me. But I'll keep my overall rating for now at T because it is very short.
I hope you all enjoy! Please read and review. Let me know what you think! Like I said, this was a real writing exercise for me.
It had all happened so fast.
The cruiser was taking heavy fire from the Hammond, shaking the hull, threatening to tear a hole in its side that would expose them all – Wraith and human prisoners alike – to the harsh vacuum of outer space. The newly-implanted device in her back burned through her skin, through her muscles, up her neck and into the base of her skull. As the glowing heat intensified and her grip on reality in turn attenuated, there was a lurch in motion and all was quiet. Assault fire from the Hammond had ceased. The last thing she remembered was her knees collapsing beneath her and being dragged across the floor of the Cruiser as she lost consciousness.
She had awakened with sand in her eyes and up her nose, drenched in sweat, face down in the middle of a desert. Coughing up the tiny grains she had breathed in while passed out, she gingerly lifted her head and realized the burning in her back had stopped. She sat up quickly and felt for it, her stomach plummeting as her fingers grazed over the small, hard knot just at the base of her cervical spine.
So she was a runner now.
She looked around to take in her bleak surroundings and, much to her disbelief, beyond barren desert and dry air visibly waving with heat, laid eyes on a Stargate in the distance. She clambered to her feet, ran toward it and hoped with all of her being that it wasn't a mirage. It was farther away than it appeared, and her boots soon filled with sand, weighing her down, as she waded through the crests and vales of the desert. As she got closer, the gate grew in size until she stood below it, wheezing from her laborious sprint and dizzy from the sweltering heat. She approached it slowly, afraid that it would disappear the second she tried to touch it, reached out a tentative hand, and exhaled a sigh of relief when the skin of her fingers met solid, hot metal. It was really there. But that was only half a problem solved.
She glanced wildly about her in search of the dial home device. At first, she found nothing but sand. Her heart sank and her pulse began to race until, out of the corner of her eye, she captured a flash of sunlight reflecting off a blue gem, hidden beneath a modest dune. She rushed toward it and dug away the scorching sand with her bare hands until the entire interface of a Pegasus Galaxy DHD was exposed.
She pushed her hair out of her face, itchy grains of sand lodging uncomfortably into her scalp as she did, and quickly dialed. She punched in the first six symbols of the gate address for Atlantis but when she reached the last symbol, she hesitated. To complete the address, she needed a point of origin…and she had no idea where she was.
She looked to the sky and was immediately blinded by the light of twin suns. Shielding her eyes with her hand, she squinted up into the cloudless blue expanse but the midday heavens revealed no information about her place within the galaxy. She looked back down at the six lighted symbols on the DHD, glowing impatiently as they waited for their sequence to be finished. Soon the chevrons, along with her hope, dimmed until they were finally extinguished.
She had no water, no food, no shelter, no protection from the heat or the sun… Her life's priorities swam through her head as she tried to triage them but all she could latch onto was that she was forsaken, alone, and running from the Wraith. She was their prey and she didn't know when they would send their first hunter.
Her hands tingled until they were finally numb, her chest tightened like a clamshell, and she started to sweat precious water that she could not afford to lose. The arid expanse spun around her and she leaned against the DHD for support.
A staggering realization came to her as she tried to steady her breathing. Even with the point of origin, she couldn't simply dial the gate and waltz into the gate room back home. Atlantis had its shield. Meanwhile, she had no radio, no IDC transmitter, no way to let the people on the other side of the gate know that it was her. Even with her missing, they would never lower the shield for a wormhole from an unknown planet immediately following a Wraith attack on the city. They all knew better than that.
Same with the Alpha Site. It, too, had a shield on its gate.
And sure, Atlantis had allies all over the Pegasus Galaxy, but she couldn't risk bringing a whole Wraith Cruiser down on their settlements. Morality aside, she wasn't sure she knew any of their gate addresses, anyway.
Maybe she could dial addresses at random until a connection was established, but that was risky. It could take her to some other uninhabited planet…or it could spit her out onto a rock with an unbreathable atmosphere, or underwater, or into space. She remembered Dr. McKay once saying something like only three percent of planets in the galaxy were hospitable to humans. She didn't like those odds.
They were all bad options, and none of them viable until she could find the point of origin. And for that, she needed to wait for nightfall. But how was she to know how long the days were on this planet? Perhaps the suns would set in just a few hours, or maybe it would take the equivalent of days. All she knew was that the longer she waited, the more she risked a Wraith being sent to hunt her and if she was certain of one thing, it was that they would do that before she could make any real attempt at escape.
If she was going to survive an encounter with a hunter, there was one thing she needed more than anything in the moment: weapons. Everything else – even water – could wait. She knew she had lost one knife on the Cruiser, but as she patted at her vest, she was relieved to discover she still had two others concealed on her. If there were a forest or any sort of trees nearby, she could fashion herself some bantos rods or whittle some spears, but there was nothing. Not even a cactus in sight. How could she rely on just two small knives to defend herself?
As all-encompassing dread threatened to drown her, something the Wraith commander had said to her father echoed in the recesses of her mind.
"She's strong. You should be very proud."
The deranged laugh that escaped her mouth surprised her. How could she find the words of the beast that had put her into this situation inspiring? How had he been the one, and not her father, who truly recognized her strength…her potential?
But he had. She had been made a runner for a reason and if the Wraith on that Cruiser had wanted her dead, she would be dead. Why waste time, effort, and a perfectly good tracking device just to kill her several hours to a day later? Why would they have left her armed? And why would they have dropped her within eyesight of the gate?
Because they wanted a game.
They would start slow – send a single Wraith the first time and one most likely with less experience than others. Though Eva had never successfully taken her father down in a fight, she knew she was still a force to be reckoned with; she had brought down full-grown marines, unarmed, in hand-to-hand combat many times before. But this time she had a knife…two of them, to be exact. Eva plus two knives, and nothing else to lose against a young and inexperienced Wraith? Those odds, she would take.
And so, she tracked the path of the suns as they set, and waited for the advent of the stars.
The first sun set and the second followed not too long after. It had been many hours, some of which Eva had spent exploring her nearby surroundings to seek out water, but most of which she had spent resting in the shade of a particularly tall sand dune in an effort to conserve her energy should the need to defend herself against a Wraith arise. Her search for water was short, and though she had found a few large rocks that she could potentially use as weapons, it had ultimately proved unsuccessful. Her mouth was sticky with dehydration and her lips had begun to crack, but as the first evening stars twinkled across the purple and orange sky, teasing the promise of her return home, she hoped that wouldn't matter.
The sky grew darker and darker until myriad constellations dappled the heavens. She climbed to the top of the dune to get a better look. "Okay," she inhaled deeply, thinking back to the nights she had spent as a little girl stargazing on the mainland with her father, "the point of origin will be a constellation that is visible in both hemispheres. Constellations visible in both hemispheres are located along the celestial equator. Find the celestial equator," she whispered to herself. "Celestial equator always crosses the horizon at exactly East-West," she balled her hand into a fist, then extended her thumb and her pinky to trace the path of the suns with her hand, "like this." She then rotated ninety degrees so that she faced North-South, flipped her hand, and brought it down until it crossed with the horizon. She squinted hard.
There had to be millions of stars packed along the equator alone, but eventually one constellation whose stars were bigger, brighter, and closer drew her attention.
It had to be the point of origin.
To her it looked like an animal, but then again, she had started learning the gate constellations when she was six years old, and at that age, everything looked like animals. She always thought Subido looked like a scorpion; Avoniv an octopus; and Gilltin was very clearly a pack of birds in flight.
However, the constellation shining above her looked like a rabbit…or was it a mouse? Zeo… or Acjesis? She squinted hard and tilted her head, trying to figure out which one it was. She had always gotten those two confused. She stared at the constellation, deep in thought, until a dart zoomed across the ecliptic, released a conical beam of white light and brought her back down to earth.
"Shit," she hissed, sliding down the crest in a spray of sand before bolting toward the gate. She would have to decide which one to bet on once she reached the DHD.
Wraith stunner blasts whirred past her ears. She ran as fast as she could, but the sand was slowing her pace too much.
"You're prey," she thought, "so act like it."
It would take her longer to reach the gate if she didn't run in a straight line, but she was less likely to get stunned if she made her movements unpredictable, erratic.
After a winding chase, she reached the DHD but quickly realized she didn't know which address to dial. She stood there weighing her options, hands shaking, glancing over her shoulder, adrenaline pumping. Another stun blast narrowly missed her head. Spinning around to locate the source of it, her necklace sprung out from underneath her shirt, jostled by her momentum. Her heartbeat increasing, she took the silver pendant in between her thumb and her index finger and studied it. Small dots, all connected by thin lines, hand engraved by her father shortly after she was born.
Arami, Alura, Ecrumig, Salma, Roehi, Gilltin.
He had her memorize the six constellations from the time she was a child. He made her draw them on paper, in dirt, in sand; point them out on the ring of the ancestors until she knew them by heart.
Sateda.
If she could gate to Sateda, she could dial Atlantis from there. An anonymous dial from Sateda would be much more significant than one from some random backwater planet. They would be curious enough to send a MALP or the Hammond and then she could be rescued. Her heart leapt to her chest and her hands steadied as she turned back to the dialing device.
Arami.
A stun blast hit her foot and her leg gave out from under her. She hoisted herself back up, using the DHD for support.
Alura.
She glanced over her shoulder. The Wraith was getting too close.
Ecrumig.
She turned and hurled one of her rocks at the Wraith. Though it was not heavy enough to do any serious damage, it still hit the hunter square in the head and momentarily distracted it.
Salma. Roehi. Gilltin.
The Wraith closed the distance between them and aimed its stunner directly at her. She ducked as it shot and charged at it with her larger knife drawn. She sliced it across the stomach and it fell to its knees.
She raced back to the DHD, looking frantically down at the display, then up at the sky. Acjesis or Zeo? Mouse or rabbit? She couldn't tell the difference.
The Wraith ripped Eva's knife from its bleeding gut, threw it aside, and advanced upon her.
She needed to make a decision. Acjesis or Zeo? Mouse or rabbit?
"Can I have one, Dad?" She wanted one so badly. They were so small, so cute, so furry all huddled together in their forest nest with their fluffy cotton tails and long, floppy ears. "Can I at least hold one?"
She looked back down at the symbols in front of her.
Zeo.
The gate came to life as the event horizon stabilized. The Wraith grabbed her shoulder from behind, slammed her back against the DHD, and brought its hand over her chest to feed. Eva reached for her last knife and brought it to the Wraith's face. It had anticipated her move and closed its feeding hand around her wrist, squeezing, its nails digging into her flesh, drawing blood until she could hold the blade no longer. It fell to the sand without a sound.
Arms pinned, Eva curled her only working leg up and thrust it into the Wraith's wounded abdomen. It stumbled backward, giving her just enough time to duck, grab another rock, and swipe. Stone met skull and there was a crack. The Wraith swayed in front of her, frozen in motion. She drew her arm back once more and swung with all of her strength. It fell to the ground and she followed. She pinned it down and struck its face again…and again…and again, stopping only once the rock no longer encountered solid resistance.
She stood slowly and dropped her weapon, then wiped her hands on her pants, mixing together blood, sand, and brain matter alike. Trembling, heart hammering through her chest, Eva recovered both of her knives, took a deep breath and limped through the gate.
A/N: The names of the Pegasus glyphs are from a 2015 Twitter post from "The Cheyenne Project." I found it, thought it was pretty cool, and decided to use those names in this chapter. If I could link it here, I would.
The address for Sateda is seen on screen in the show in (I think) the "Sateda" episode.
And I'm sure my whole point of origin rigmarole has some errors in it, but oh well...I like it.