Ch014 - Story 09 - Stir
Title: Stir
Pairing: John/Rodney
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: 5x07 "Whispers".
Plot: A reworking of 5.07 "Whispers." John's world is three things: mist, hunger, voice.
Authors: perspi, sheafrotherdon, jadesfire2808 and aesc.
Artists: refche, nightingaledies, gblvr and beet.
Stir
"They're all empty."
"How many?"
"Eighteen, east wing."
"I count fourteen in this room."
"So, twelve in here, eighteen, fourteen, six in the...and eight over...Oh, this is not good, this is not good. Obviously somebody didn't read the stasis pods contain things you do not want to meet and therefore you SHOULD NOT OPEN THEM email; maybe if we could tattoo this shit on the backs of their hands--"
"McKay."
"What?"
"Breathe."
"I am bre--"
"Rodney, I have found a datapad--it looks like Carson downloaded the information from Michael's computer."
"Great, excellent, any chance you found Carson? Sheppard? The who what, the girl--"
"I am sorry, Rodney, there is no other sign of any of them."
"Perfect. Neither wind nor rain nor fog of who knows what can keep us from mounting a rescue but then they have to be idiots who don't stay where we can find them--"
"May I suggest we continue this discussion in the main lab area?"
"Right, yes, great idea, since I'm already here, I'll just--"
"Stay put, McKay, we're coming to you."
* * * * * * *
The fog is thick, cloying, with a heavy scent of wet dog and halitosis. It eddies and shifts, almost as if it's anticipating where he's going to go, where he wants to go, and it turns him around, opening more visibility in directions he'd avoided.
Once in a while his radio crackles with voices, but he tries not to listen. Mostly the voices are just as scared as he is, whimpering and begging in their terror. He doesn't respond, knows that if he opens his mouth he might never get it shut again, that if he says anything they will find him.
His gun is a comforting weight across his chest.
He finds a wide-trunked tree, settles next to its roots for just a moment's rest. A voice suddenly sounds clear and bright in his ear. "Colonel Sheppard, come in!" His hand rises halfway to his ear, so compelling is the urge to talk to that voice.
"Colonel Sheppard, please respond," comes another voice, a woman, all warmth and honey and worry.
"Sheppard, you have to listen to me," the first voice says again, and he finds himself listening intently while wondering if he knows the man the voice is addressing. "You need to get inside somewhere, you need to get out of the mist. It's not natural--the hybrids Michael created here, he created fucking zombies that he couldn't control and they make the mist so they can hunt. The mist is making you paranoid, it makes you not think straight, you need to get inside and clear your head and then we can rescue you and go ho--"
He turns the radio off, so he doesn't have to hear them anymore.
* * * * * * *
"Christ," Rodney swears, fumbling with the buckles on the antiquated breathing apparatus strapped to his face. "This is so not what i signed up for when I . . ." He swears again, yanks at the mask and gasps as it finally gives and sags to his chest, drags in a deep lungful of stagnant, tunnel air and reflects, bitterly, on the fact that nothing has ever smelled or tasted so sweet. "I am officially not enjoying myself," he yells, radio crackling in his ear. He hears Radek chuckle.
"You insisted that only you could possibly gather the critical data we need to . . ."
"Yes, yes," Rodney says waspishly, unfastening the mask's remaining tethers as he heads toward the central lab. "I am forced to sacrifice my genetically superior olfactory senses because none of you can probably run four pieces of software simultaneously. Very amusing."
"Did you find anything?"
Rodney shudders. "Two particularly fetching mutant experimentees who appeared to have decided to snack on each other for lunch." He swallows. "No sign of the Colonel, nor any of the rest of them. The data is - "
"We have it - your transmission was successful. Diagnostics are almost complete - I will interface with Carson's computer, and hopefully we can isolate that part of the brain most affected by . . ."
A faint scream twists through the hallways - Rodney freezes. "Did you hear that?" he whispers.
"Is that - was that human?"
"I have no idea." Rodney pulls his sidearm and looks into the darkness.
"Rodney, I do not wish to be an alarmist, but I think it best that you - "
"On my way," he agrees, and begins to run.
* * * * * * *
John's hungry, but it's hard to remember what he usually does when he needs to eat, where there's food in this place. He doesn't remember anything but this mist, this crawling sense of fear, so he must have eaten, must have satisfied this deep, twisting gut-ache with something, meat, here, close to where he sits. There's movement off to his left, disturbing the dry, listing bushes that obstruct his path when he walks, and he lets loose a volley of P-90 fire - these things hunt by sound, he's figured out as much by now, but he's also pretty sure he'd rather risk killing one at twenty paces than at close range, when its mouth is almost on his in a parody of a kiss.
He kicks at the dead thing at his feet and his stomach rolls as a ghastly hand twitches and opens at his touch, grasping, as if there were life to be pulled from the fog. John twists his mouth to keep it closed - at least he knows that he doesn't eat this, that he's not out here hunting for grey, cold flesh, that he's not likely to find himself gnawing on these reaching fingers. He stands, brushes leaves and dirt from his uniform, holds himself steady until the world falls into a pattern of low, reassuring sound, his sight a secondary gift.
Something's keening in the distance. He narrows his eyes, and slips into the rank, oppressive folds of the fog. He must kill.
* * * * * * *
"Oh no, no, no, no," Rodney mutters, figures scrolling up his screen. He squints at the calculations, at the rate of entropy, the inexorable chemical breakdown contained in lines of code, his fingers clenched around his plastic cup of MRE coffee.
"What?" Radek appears at his shoulder, a tablet in his hand.
Rodney spins the laptop, points to the screen. "The mist is the agent. It's - " he waves a hand " - reproduction for these things. Chemical warfare."
Radek pushes his glasses up his nose. "You calculated exposure at a rate of . . ."
"There's no standard, no way to begin to predict how long someone can be out there without change - it's like smoking in a bar; did you light up a Lucky Strike yourself, or are you the waitress taking orders and contracting some crippling lung condition because everyone around you is hell-bent on developing emphysema before the age of 50?"
"Which is worse?"
Rodney sighs and closes his eyes. "I don't know. I don't know and I . . ." He touches his radio. "Sheppard? Do you hear me? Come in, Sheppard."
"I will try to contact the others, we should . . ."
Rodney opens his eyes, stares fixedly at his laptop screen. "We'll need containment. They've all been out there for longer than's safe, and we've no idea how long . . ."
"I will tell Major Lorne. His men have the breathing apparatus and can safely work on some manner of, yes, yes, i will make sure that we. . ." Radek's voice quiets to an efficient mumble as he moves away.
Rodney nods absently, tapping his radio again. "John?" It's all he can think about now the idea's taken shape, gruesome mathematical poetry on his screen. "John, if you can hear me, you need to get inside. You need to be out of the mist, you need to . . ." He clears his throat. "Just get inside, okay? Get. Inside."
* * * * * * *
John doesn't know what he expected to find, but it isn't this. His gun is still clenched to his chest, finger on the trigger so he's ready for anything. The hunger is still gnawing low in his belly, and he almost growls as the figures loom out of the mist. One of them looks up sharply, while the other continues its keening, high and steady as though in constant pain.
He steps back as the first figure lumbers to its feet, eyes glazed as it turns to him.
"Who's there?"
The words are slurred, but he knows that voice, even more familiar when it speaks again.
"Who are you?"
He should answer. John thinks he should answer, but the mist is giving him at least some concealment and he needs to be sure. It's not one of the creatures, with their sightless eyes and gaping mouths, and he feels safe enough to lower his gun a little.
"I'm here," he says, flinching as the figure turns towards him. Its skin is pale, eyes seeming impossibly dark in the strange dimness. "Who are you?"
"What? Don't you..." The voice is coming back to him, gentle burr and normally soothing tones made harsh by fear. And the mist. "It's Carson. Colonel Sheppard, is that you?"
The words unlock memories, reminders of why they are here, who he was with, and John shakes his head, trying to clear it.
"Yeah. Maybe. I-" He breaks off, because looking down, he is transfixed by the sight of his own hand. The veins are standing out across the back of it, livid against his skin. He blinks, hoping that the white is just a trick of the mist, knowing that it isn't.
When something touches his arm, he jumps back instinctively, dropping into a crouch and bringing his gun to bear. The urge to kill is so strong that he has to make a conscious effort not to pull the trigger.
"Easy, lad," Carson says, holding up his hands, then turning as the figure on the ground wails again. He kneels and puts out a hand to muffle the cry.
"Quiet," he hisses, then pulls his hand back with a startled yelp.
When John looks more closely, Carson is gripping his finger and backing away slowly. John's head is wandering, he knows, and the mist seems to be affecting his vision as well as his mind, but he thinks he can see blood dripping from Carson's hand. Swallowing, he says, "Is that..."
"We need to get her help," Carson says shortly, pulling a bandage from his vest to wrap around his fingers. "We need to find them all and get them all to help."
"Yeah." John is transfixed by the single drop of blood still running down Carson's hand, leaving a dark stain on his wrist. The other man is pale, obviously terrified, but he doesn't bear the sickly pallidness that marks John and the woman still moaning on the ground. His belly growls, loud enough that Carson looks over.
"You alright there?"
Shaking his head, John holds out his hand. The words just aren't there anymore, as though something is closing his throat and his mind. When Carson touches him, turning his hand over and back, he feels so warm that John half-groans in the back of his throat.
"What's this, then?" Carson makes a gesture that John thinks he should recognize, but all it does is make him groan again, trying to pull the words from his memory but unable to force his mouth to say them.
"Dammit." Looking round, Carson's eyes settle on the side of John's face. "Colonel, I'm going to need to borrow your radio."
John pulls back as Carson reaches forwards, not out of fear but because it brings the hunger rising up in him again, making him nauseous. Carefully, he turns his head, letting Carson get at the radio without coming into his line of sight. Sight is becoming less important anyway. The forest is alive with sounds, distracting and intriguing all at once.
"This is Doctor Beckett. Can anyone hear me?"
When the radio clicks, John jumps again, his hands tightening on his gun. He can hear every nuance of the voice on the other end saying,
"Carson? Oh thank God. Where the hell are you? We've been calling you for-"
"I lost my radio, Rodney." Carson's voice is calm and firm, but John can hear the underlying tremor. "I've got Colonel Sheppard and Doctor Porter with me."
The sigh of relief is as loud as if Rodney had been there with them. "You need to get them to the decon units, right the hell now. That stuff is contagious."
"I know. I'm already observing its effects."
"Effects like what? Wait. Observing? You're not affected?"
There was a pause, then Carson said, "No. Not yet at any rate."
"Okay. Look, Major Lorne and his team are on their way to you. Just stay put and stay together. They're looking for three unmoving life signs and if you start getting all heroic about this-"
"We'll wait here for them, Rodney. Beckett out."
John stays crouched, gun still trained on the impenetrable mist around them. The hunger is lurking at the back of his mind still, making him feel hollow and restless. Behind him, he can hear Beckett moving gently, murmuring to Alison and John turns to glare at him. They need silence, because John isn't the only one out here who's hungry.
* * * * * * *
"Rodney, you cannot work based on just this."
Radek is trailing after him around the caves, carrying his tablet and pushing at his glasses, the way he always does when he's angry.
"Yeah, well it's better than anything else we've got to work on right now." He's pulling out cables and ducking under consoles, rewiring on the fly and hoping that he's read the notes even halfway right. "If Beckett's immune, then we should be able to extrapolate-"
"Nothing! Doctor Beckett's assumption that he is immune may be mistaken. And even if it is not, I do not think you have sufficient knowledge of biology to-"
"Yeah, well Carson can finish it off when he gets here." Rodney finishes with the console and turns to Radek. "If you want to just give up on our people, then that's fine."
"Slabomyslná osoba."
"But I intend to do everything I can to save them. So either help me or get out of my way."
He doesn't bother to look round as Radek carries on muttering in Czech. He has more important things to do, most of which keep him from worrying about Sheppard and Beckett and the others. While he's working, he can't afford the distraction, because this is going to work.
It has to.
* * * * * * *
There are dimensions to the mist, angles, depths, darker places he can pick out effortlessly now. When the man - Beckett - moves, the mist changes texture on John’s skin, shift of pressure, of warmth. Scent changes it too, silky when he moves away, spikier when he returns to Carson, the warm blade of a knife playing on John’s forearm. At Carson’s feet, the woman moans again, and the mist carries the rough vibration of her pain, and shuddering under its slow throb is like holding his entire body to the just-plucked string of a bass guitar.
Sensation fogs his mind; the cloudier his thoughts get (John, that's my - my name) the clearer the world becomes. The hunger sharpens, focusing in now on Carson and the swift current of his blood, and part of him wants to laugh about vampires, about how incredibly and seriously fucked up this all is, how he needs to get away.
"Colonel," Beckett says.
It starts as an attempt to shut him up, because there are fucking starving things out there, and John knows how they feel, how they would feel if they could have their hand pressed hard against mobile and vulnerable flesh, the clarity of hunger and knowing what can be done to slake it, all he needs to do is get his knife - his knife, at his belt - and hold the struggling thing hard against a tree.
"Carson! Carson, are you still - "
That voice. It hurts, bright as the sun, as mysterious, clear and sudden. He stumbles back. He shakes his head to clear it, recenters on the dark shape and its frightened eyes, the frantic racket of its heartbeat and the clumsy sound it makes as it fumbles for something.
Keening in the distance, hunting calls. The woman, the woman he's more than half-forgotten, shrills in reply, her mouth a void in the paleness of her face. Disturbances in the mist now, eddies, wavelets carrying particles of glass to sting him.
He shakes his head again, shudders as hunger twists in his stomach, a goad to drive him forward.
* * * * * * *
"Rodney," Radek says tensely, "Major says he believes he and his men are closing in on Colonel Sheppard and the others."
"Someone's doing something right today," Rodney growls. He wishes that physiology and genetics were more inherently interesting, if only because he would have paid attention to Carson's endless droning about it. He tries to pay more attention to making sure the dispersal system is hooked up properly, venting out into the forest instead of in. He doesn't think about what it is he's sending out there.
Only it's... it's Sheppard out there, and Dr. Porter, and Carson, and a chance that Lorne and the others have gone out with malfunctioning gas masks, and it's only him and his brain against - Rodney wants to laugh, because really - a horde of blood-sucking zombies.
"For all I could give them significant brain damage," Rodney says. His fingers race over the keyboard, too fast for his knowledge of what he's doing, not fast enough for how fast he needs to do it. "I could turn them into... into human slugs."
"You could," Radek agrees. "However, we would at least be able to escape from human slugs and go get help. We could throw salt at them; that would immobilize them long enough for us to perhaps get to the stargate."
"Not helping!" Code, McKay, code like you've never coded before. He hits a button; the ventilation system comes online with a whoosh, all signals green. The centerpiece of the lab they're in, a gigantic tank draped about with the tendon-like wires of Wraith technology, fills with churning clouds of gas of the palest, palest blue. Rodney stares at it, hypnotized.
"I really have no idea what I'm doing," Rodney admits.
"Neither do I," Radek says, his voice bare and empty of the teasing Rodney expects and almost wishes for. "But you should press the button."
"No... no." Rodney bites his lip, rubs his thumb across a knuckle. "We need them in close, first. We need to know where they are."
"I will get Major Lorne." And Radek, bless him, is already turning away to do it, explaining to Lorne what they need.
"Give me that," Rodney interrupts. He plucks Radek's radio from his ear. "Lorne? Lorne - no, it's not Zelenka." He takes one breath for patience, another for blood pressure. "How far away are you from the lab?" Lorne's answer: Probably a quarter-mile, but it's hard to tell; slow going makes it seem like ten. "I need you closer." He needs John practically in his lap, on the doorstep at least.
"Look, if the Colonel is still... the Colonel," Lorne whispers harshly, "he's not gonna like being herded."
Yeah, Sheppard wouldn't like that much, and he'd catch onto it fast. Blood chills around Rodney's heart, thinking that Lorne might have to get Sheppard's cooperation by shooting him.
"Get them as close as you can," is all he says, putting enough snap into his words to make it clear to Lorne that he'd better get it done. He cuts the connection and turns, and Radek is bent over the wires, clucking about Rodney's haste and carelessness.
"You wish," Rodney mutters, and stomps past him.
* * * * * * *
Sounds ahead, bloodsound, breathsound, heart's rhythm - three of them, three drums pound pound pounding.
"Colonel!" He doesn't know the word, but feels the syllables as two distinct pressures against his skin, like two fingers. "Colonel Sheppard!"
The old voice again, layered atop the new: "Carson! Beckett, dammit."
"What is it, Rodney?" The words are a weak rattle from the bundle of clothing at the base of the tree.
"What the hell?" Shock paints the bright voice that doesn't have a heartbeat to go with it; dimly, he wonders what such a thing might sound like. "Is - is Sheppard? Are you?"
"Yes, and no."
"Oh, thank God." A pause, almost permanent, enough for him to turn to search for it and distract him from the three new beings in the woods. "Can I... can I talk to him?"
"I don't think... no, Rodney."
They're coming closer, he thinks, slowly, stalking him like hunters - like he would stalk himself, if he could. Careful, near-silent, and only their hearts and breathing give them away, and the way they change the currents of the mist. He inhales, gritty-sharp scent he remembers, oil, gunpowder, steel.
"Carson!"
A crack, careless feet on branches, pressure of eyes on his back.
"Colonel Sheppard!"
He runs.
Three with guns against one is bad odds, the simple math of survival. Distantly, he thinks maybe he would have done the calculation differently, once, before, but this isn't then, it's living, it's escape to hunt again. Livelivelive pulses in him, carried in a hot flood along veins and nerves, and he doesn't stop running, doesn't slow, is exhilarated with it, each curve of shadow and half-light familiar to him, the contours of the ground under his boots.
Run and run, awkward skip-and-dance down a hillside made treacherous with roots and wet leaves. He loses grace for a moment and falls, catches his elbow on a rock. When he stands up, he realizes something runs hot down the back of his arm, salt, sharp; he licks it away, shudders, knows the others can track him.
A howl replies to his thought, still far-off, but he moves again.
* * * * * * *
"Okay, I'm getting... no, I am. Where the hell are they?" Rodney wheels around and glares at Radek. "And what the hell are you doing?"
"Trying to boost the radio gain in order to get around the mist's interference," Zelenka says peevishly. "What are you doing, besides yelling at me?"
"I..." Rodney pauses. "I am going to see what the hell is taking so long."
It's possible, he thinks, as he turns back around and trots down the hall from the laboratory, it's possible that he's crazy. These things hunt by sound, and he is emminently huntable prey, given that he can do nothing - nothing quietly. He even thinks loudly, he's sure, neural activity clearly audible across a room, so he's one of those people for whom the expression I can hear you thinking isn't an exaggeration.
"Rodney!" Radek's voice is a low-pitched, hissing shriek. "Rodney, get back here!"
He loses Radek's voice quickly enough, distracted by the sudden appearance of a dot on his LSD screen. It's close to what he's calculated the range of dispersal will be, not close enough. If it's Sheppard, great, if it's not... test subject, Rodney tells himself. Test subject.
The last corner's coming up, and he turns it, and then he's at the lip of the cave and the mist has spilled everywhere, thick, alive, knowing in how it curls tentacles around his ankles. Somewhere deep inside of it, a dark shape stirs - a shape, shapes, maybe, or maybe they're trees, or Rodney going crazy too, or nothing at all.
According to his calculations, he has about ten minutes before breathing the gas becomes an issue. Reluctantly, because he doesn't like to trust his calculations when it comes to his genetic code being zombified, he unbuckles his gas mask and pushes it away.
He takes a few steps away from the entrance, making a racket in the leaves and fallen branches. His breath sounds like a hurricane, and Rodney's throat goes dry when he opens his mouth to shout.
* * * * * * *
"Hey! HEY!"
Voice, familiar, voice because it is breath shaped to purpose other than life, familiar because... because... he knows it, knows it better than the mist and the night and their secrets. The breath he pulls rolls flintily across his tongue, sharp in his nostrils, John? John, is that you? and that has a taste, images that roll across the eyes he can keep shut now, salt, heat, a darkness filled with a hunger different than this one.
"John? Please... please come here."
The pleading catches him, pulls with an attraction independent of the inexorable rhythm of breath and heartbeat. He remembers pressing an ear to that vibration, stronger than anything the mist can tell him, an echo that filled up even the hollows between his bones.
He takes a step up the hill, slow, hypnotized; another.
* * * * * * *
"John? John, oh fuck."
He tries to make himself keep talking, wonders why it's suddenly so hard to find words other than John's name and oh fuck, oh fuck, because he's never been wordless before. He should call Radek, except he can't lift his hand to toggle his radio on.
"Jesus, John."
John materializes out of the mist, a slow resolution of spiky hair, long arms and legs, clatter of the P90 hanging forgotten at his side. He moves with a slow, terrible grace, feet silent and unerring on the carpet of leaves, careless of the blood that tattoos his right arm, and his head moves slowly, tracking, Rodney thinks, a weapon guidance system honing its focus.
John, Rodney thinks he says.
And worse, so much worse than death-pale skin, than blood, John's eyes are closed, dark fan of his lashes across his cheeks.
John's eyes are closed, but he's looking straight at Rodney, attention unwavering.
"John," Rodney tries again, tries to sound encouraging, familiar. "It's... it's Rodney."
An almost imperceptible shifting closer, but John doesn't look away. The mist laces around him, god, is it coming from him, is he that far gone? Rodney makes himself stay still and not run, despite every scrap of survival instinct in him screaming to get away. And he would run, except it would do no good, except it's John turned all alien who's standing in front of him, in desperate need of Rodney's help and most of him too far gone to know it.
"John," Rodney makes himself say, "I need you to come with me, okay?"
He takes a step back, crushes a fearful whimper when John takes three steps to his one, and avoids a root Rodney had nearly tripped over earlier. Almost all Rodney can see of him is the blood on his arm, his uniform, his hair, the awful tension in his body that suggests muscle on the verge of uncoiling in attack or flight.
"C'mon," he says cajolingly, lift your hand, radio for Radek to start the dispersal.
And even as he thinks it, he registers pale blue filtering through his peripheral vision, John's sudden confusion. John starts back, freezes only when Rodney shouts for him to please, please stand still, you have to stand still, John, please, for the love of God don't run, stay with me, and miracle of miracles, John does, trembling, confused, fighting it, but he stays and stays focused with those terrible, shut-tight eyes, at Rodney.
* * * * * * *
Once Keller gets her clutches into them, she doesn't let go. Porter goes to ICU, Carson stays because Rodney was right, Michael's experimentation had rendered him immune to the mindfuckery of the mist. Rodney escapes, but returns only to make sure Keller does a proper job of making sure the vaccine she and Carson have whipped up for John and Porter is doing what it's supposed to do.
It means John has nothing to do but lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, trying to ignore the whisper and stir of hunger deep beneath his gut. It comes from the same place that the Wraith virus had woken up, a place he can't quite localize, except that it lies deep down, too deep to dig out. He tries not to think about it, but the flat ceiling panels aren't enough to bore him into sleep, and his body still wants to think about the world in terms of texture and pulse, and how the air feels when a person speaks, or is silent.
"Hey."
He turns automatically, that voice, Rodney's voice, pulling his body along on its invisible strings. Another thing not to think of, how Rodney's voice brings with it the promise of life-saving brilliance, or aggravation, fun, kisses and touches that make John's body do six impossible things just because Rodney asked. When he tries to remember the events of only hours ago, all John can come up with is fog and moving through it, Rodney's voice bright punctuation in endless greyness, the anchor of it when he'd wanted to run.
"Did I wake you?" Rodney asks. He's shifting, anxious, awkward in the doorway, his tablet under one arm.
"Nah." John doesn't look away. "Too bored to sleep."
"Yeah," Rodney says, although he looks puzzled. "Can I come in?"
"Any time," John says, and is moderately terrified to realize he means it.
Rodney nods and walks in, his noisiness subdued for once. John blinks, briefly entranced by the mere fact of vision, light and dark, seeing the texture of Rodney's unshaven jaw instead of feeling it, the folds in the fabric of his shirt, the odd way the bedside light haloes his hair. He's familiar in all sorts of light, now, or in no light at all.
"So, you need help getting to sleep?" Rodney asks. The hesitant look on his face fades briefly into annoyance when he realizes that John's leering at him. "And not that kind of help, pervert."
"Read to me?" John asks, wondering if he'd stay awake to listen, or if he has enough trust in Rodney's voice to fall asleep.
"I, uh, don't have any books on this..." Rodney fumbles with his data tablet. "I could read my weekly staff reports, though. Those are pretty tedious."
"You could read the phone book," John says sleepily.
Rodney fumbles with his tablet some more, smile tugging his mouth to a shy crookedness. He sits down and begins to read, and even when he gets caught up in detailed lists of his staff's incompetence, his voice is soft and steady.
Click on thumb
Authors:
Artists:
R1: refche
R2: nightingaledies
R3: gblvr
R4: beet
Pairing: John/Rodney
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: 5x07 "Whispers".
Plot: A reworking of 5.07 "Whispers." John's world is three things: mist, hunger, voice.
Authors: perspi, sheafrotherdon, jadesfire2808 and aesc.
Artists: refche, nightingaledies, gblvr and beet.
Stir
"They're all empty."
"How many?"
"Eighteen, east wing."
"I count fourteen in this room."
"So, twelve in here, eighteen, fourteen, six in the...and eight over...Oh, this is not good, this is not good. Obviously somebody didn't read the stasis pods contain things you do not want to meet and therefore you SHOULD NOT OPEN THEM email; maybe if we could tattoo this shit on the backs of their hands--"
"McKay."
"What?"
"Breathe."
"I am bre--"
"Rodney, I have found a datapad--it looks like Carson downloaded the information from Michael's computer."
"Great, excellent, any chance you found Carson? Sheppard? The who what, the girl--"
"I am sorry, Rodney, there is no other sign of any of them."
"Perfect. Neither wind nor rain nor fog of who knows what can keep us from mounting a rescue but then they have to be idiots who don't stay where we can find them--"
"May I suggest we continue this discussion in the main lab area?"
"Right, yes, great idea, since I'm already here, I'll just--"
"Stay put, McKay, we're coming to you."
* * * * * * *
The fog is thick, cloying, with a heavy scent of wet dog and halitosis. It eddies and shifts, almost as if it's anticipating where he's going to go, where he wants to go, and it turns him around, opening more visibility in directions he'd avoided.
Once in a while his radio crackles with voices, but he tries not to listen. Mostly the voices are just as scared as he is, whimpering and begging in their terror. He doesn't respond, knows that if he opens his mouth he might never get it shut again, that if he says anything they will find him.
His gun is a comforting weight across his chest.
He finds a wide-trunked tree, settles next to its roots for just a moment's rest. A voice suddenly sounds clear and bright in his ear. "Colonel Sheppard, come in!" His hand rises halfway to his ear, so compelling is the urge to talk to that voice.
"Colonel Sheppard, please respond," comes another voice, a woman, all warmth and honey and worry.
"Sheppard, you have to listen to me," the first voice says again, and he finds himself listening intently while wondering if he knows the man the voice is addressing. "You need to get inside somewhere, you need to get out of the mist. It's not natural--the hybrids Michael created here, he created fucking zombies that he couldn't control and they make the mist so they can hunt. The mist is making you paranoid, it makes you not think straight, you need to get inside and clear your head and then we can rescue you and go ho--"
He turns the radio off, so he doesn't have to hear them anymore.
* * * * * * *
"Christ," Rodney swears, fumbling with the buckles on the antiquated breathing apparatus strapped to his face. "This is so not what i signed up for when I . . ." He swears again, yanks at the mask and gasps as it finally gives and sags to his chest, drags in a deep lungful of stagnant, tunnel air and reflects, bitterly, on the fact that nothing has ever smelled or tasted so sweet. "I am officially not enjoying myself," he yells, radio crackling in his ear. He hears Radek chuckle.
"You insisted that only you could possibly gather the critical data we need to . . ."
"Yes, yes," Rodney says waspishly, unfastening the mask's remaining tethers as he heads toward the central lab. "I am forced to sacrifice my genetically superior olfactory senses because none of you can probably run four pieces of software simultaneously. Very amusing."
"Did you find anything?"
Rodney shudders. "Two particularly fetching mutant experimentees who appeared to have decided to snack on each other for lunch." He swallows. "No sign of the Colonel, nor any of the rest of them. The data is - "
"We have it - your transmission was successful. Diagnostics are almost complete - I will interface with Carson's computer, and hopefully we can isolate that part of the brain most affected by . . ."
A faint scream twists through the hallways - Rodney freezes. "Did you hear that?" he whispers.
"Is that - was that human?"
"I have no idea." Rodney pulls his sidearm and looks into the darkness.
"Rodney, I do not wish to be an alarmist, but I think it best that you - "
"On my way," he agrees, and begins to run.
* * * * * * *
John's hungry, but it's hard to remember what he usually does when he needs to eat, where there's food in this place. He doesn't remember anything but this mist, this crawling sense of fear, so he must have eaten, must have satisfied this deep, twisting gut-ache with something, meat, here, close to where he sits. There's movement off to his left, disturbing the dry, listing bushes that obstruct his path when he walks, and he lets loose a volley of P-90 fire - these things hunt by sound, he's figured out as much by now, but he's also pretty sure he'd rather risk killing one at twenty paces than at close range, when its mouth is almost on his in a parody of a kiss.
He kicks at the dead thing at his feet and his stomach rolls as a ghastly hand twitches and opens at his touch, grasping, as if there were life to be pulled from the fog. John twists his mouth to keep it closed - at least he knows that he doesn't eat this, that he's not out here hunting for grey, cold flesh, that he's not likely to find himself gnawing on these reaching fingers. He stands, brushes leaves and dirt from his uniform, holds himself steady until the world falls into a pattern of low, reassuring sound, his sight a secondary gift.
Something's keening in the distance. He narrows his eyes, and slips into the rank, oppressive folds of the fog. He must kill.
* * * * * * *
"Oh no, no, no, no," Rodney mutters, figures scrolling up his screen. He squints at the calculations, at the rate of entropy, the inexorable chemical breakdown contained in lines of code, his fingers clenched around his plastic cup of MRE coffee.
"What?" Radek appears at his shoulder, a tablet in his hand.
Rodney spins the laptop, points to the screen. "The mist is the agent. It's - " he waves a hand " - reproduction for these things. Chemical warfare."
Radek pushes his glasses up his nose. "You calculated exposure at a rate of . . ."
"There's no standard, no way to begin to predict how long someone can be out there without change - it's like smoking in a bar; did you light up a Lucky Strike yourself, or are you the waitress taking orders and contracting some crippling lung condition because everyone around you is hell-bent on developing emphysema before the age of 50?"
"Which is worse?"
Rodney sighs and closes his eyes. "I don't know. I don't know and I . . ." He touches his radio. "Sheppard? Do you hear me? Come in, Sheppard."
"I will try to contact the others, we should . . ."
Rodney opens his eyes, stares fixedly at his laptop screen. "We'll need containment. They've all been out there for longer than's safe, and we've no idea how long . . ."
"I will tell Major Lorne. His men have the breathing apparatus and can safely work on some manner of, yes, yes, i will make sure that we. . ." Radek's voice quiets to an efficient mumble as he moves away.
Rodney nods absently, tapping his radio again. "John?" It's all he can think about now the idea's taken shape, gruesome mathematical poetry on his screen. "John, if you can hear me, you need to get inside. You need to be out of the mist, you need to . . ." He clears his throat. "Just get inside, okay? Get. Inside."
* * * * * * *
John doesn't know what he expected to find, but it isn't this. His gun is still clenched to his chest, finger on the trigger so he's ready for anything. The hunger is still gnawing low in his belly, and he almost growls as the figures loom out of the mist. One of them looks up sharply, while the other continues its keening, high and steady as though in constant pain.
He steps back as the first figure lumbers to its feet, eyes glazed as it turns to him.
"Who's there?"
The words are slurred, but he knows that voice, even more familiar when it speaks again.
"Who are you?"
He should answer. John thinks he should answer, but the mist is giving him at least some concealment and he needs to be sure. It's not one of the creatures, with their sightless eyes and gaping mouths, and he feels safe enough to lower his gun a little.
"I'm here," he says, flinching as the figure turns towards him. Its skin is pale, eyes seeming impossibly dark in the strange dimness. "Who are you?"
"What? Don't you..." The voice is coming back to him, gentle burr and normally soothing tones made harsh by fear. And the mist. "It's Carson. Colonel Sheppard, is that you?"
The words unlock memories, reminders of why they are here, who he was with, and John shakes his head, trying to clear it.
"Yeah. Maybe. I-" He breaks off, because looking down, he is transfixed by the sight of his own hand. The veins are standing out across the back of it, livid against his skin. He blinks, hoping that the white is just a trick of the mist, knowing that it isn't.
When something touches his arm, he jumps back instinctively, dropping into a crouch and bringing his gun to bear. The urge to kill is so strong that he has to make a conscious effort not to pull the trigger.
"Easy, lad," Carson says, holding up his hands, then turning as the figure on the ground wails again. He kneels and puts out a hand to muffle the cry.
"Quiet," he hisses, then pulls his hand back with a startled yelp.
When John looks more closely, Carson is gripping his finger and backing away slowly. John's head is wandering, he knows, and the mist seems to be affecting his vision as well as his mind, but he thinks he can see blood dripping from Carson's hand. Swallowing, he says, "Is that..."
"We need to get her help," Carson says shortly, pulling a bandage from his vest to wrap around his fingers. "We need to find them all and get them all to help."
"Yeah." John is transfixed by the single drop of blood still running down Carson's hand, leaving a dark stain on his wrist. The other man is pale, obviously terrified, but he doesn't bear the sickly pallidness that marks John and the woman still moaning on the ground. His belly growls, loud enough that Carson looks over.
"You alright there?"
Shaking his head, John holds out his hand. The words just aren't there anymore, as though something is closing his throat and his mind. When Carson touches him, turning his hand over and back, he feels so warm that John half-groans in the back of his throat.
"What's this, then?" Carson makes a gesture that John thinks he should recognize, but all it does is make him groan again, trying to pull the words from his memory but unable to force his mouth to say them.
"Dammit." Looking round, Carson's eyes settle on the side of John's face. "Colonel, I'm going to need to borrow your radio."
John pulls back as Carson reaches forwards, not out of fear but because it brings the hunger rising up in him again, making him nauseous. Carefully, he turns his head, letting Carson get at the radio without coming into his line of sight. Sight is becoming less important anyway. The forest is alive with sounds, distracting and intriguing all at once.
"This is Doctor Beckett. Can anyone hear me?"
When the radio clicks, John jumps again, his hands tightening on his gun. He can hear every nuance of the voice on the other end saying,
"Carson? Oh thank God. Where the hell are you? We've been calling you for-"
"I lost my radio, Rodney." Carson's voice is calm and firm, but John can hear the underlying tremor. "I've got Colonel Sheppard and Doctor Porter with me."
The sigh of relief is as loud as if Rodney had been there with them. "You need to get them to the decon units, right the hell now. That stuff is contagious."
"I know. I'm already observing its effects."
"Effects like what? Wait. Observing? You're not affected?"
There was a pause, then Carson said, "No. Not yet at any rate."
"Okay. Look, Major Lorne and his team are on their way to you. Just stay put and stay together. They're looking for three unmoving life signs and if you start getting all heroic about this-"
"We'll wait here for them, Rodney. Beckett out."
John stays crouched, gun still trained on the impenetrable mist around them. The hunger is lurking at the back of his mind still, making him feel hollow and restless. Behind him, he can hear Beckett moving gently, murmuring to Alison and John turns to glare at him. They need silence, because John isn't the only one out here who's hungry.
* * * * * * *
"Rodney, you cannot work based on just this."
Radek is trailing after him around the caves, carrying his tablet and pushing at his glasses, the way he always does when he's angry.
"Yeah, well it's better than anything else we've got to work on right now." He's pulling out cables and ducking under consoles, rewiring on the fly and hoping that he's read the notes even halfway right. "If Beckett's immune, then we should be able to extrapolate-"
"Nothing! Doctor Beckett's assumption that he is immune may be mistaken. And even if it is not, I do not think you have sufficient knowledge of biology to-"
"Yeah, well Carson can finish it off when he gets here." Rodney finishes with the console and turns to Radek. "If you want to just give up on our people, then that's fine."
"Slabomyslná osoba."
"But I intend to do everything I can to save them. So either help me or get out of my way."
He doesn't bother to look round as Radek carries on muttering in Czech. He has more important things to do, most of which keep him from worrying about Sheppard and Beckett and the others. While he's working, he can't afford the distraction, because this is going to work.
It has to.
* * * * * * *
There are dimensions to the mist, angles, depths, darker places he can pick out effortlessly now. When the man - Beckett - moves, the mist changes texture on John’s skin, shift of pressure, of warmth. Scent changes it too, silky when he moves away, spikier when he returns to Carson, the warm blade of a knife playing on John’s forearm. At Carson’s feet, the woman moans again, and the mist carries the rough vibration of her pain, and shuddering under its slow throb is like holding his entire body to the just-plucked string of a bass guitar.
Sensation fogs his mind; the cloudier his thoughts get (John, that's my - my name) the clearer the world becomes. The hunger sharpens, focusing in now on Carson and the swift current of his blood, and part of him wants to laugh about vampires, about how incredibly and seriously fucked up this all is, how he needs to get away.
"Colonel," Beckett says.
It starts as an attempt to shut him up, because there are fucking starving things out there, and John knows how they feel, how they would feel if they could have their hand pressed hard against mobile and vulnerable flesh, the clarity of hunger and knowing what can be done to slake it, all he needs to do is get his knife - his knife, at his belt - and hold the struggling thing hard against a tree.
"Carson! Carson, are you still - "
That voice. It hurts, bright as the sun, as mysterious, clear and sudden. He stumbles back. He shakes his head to clear it, recenters on the dark shape and its frightened eyes, the frantic racket of its heartbeat and the clumsy sound it makes as it fumbles for something.
Keening in the distance, hunting calls. The woman, the woman he's more than half-forgotten, shrills in reply, her mouth a void in the paleness of her face. Disturbances in the mist now, eddies, wavelets carrying particles of glass to sting him.
He shakes his head again, shudders as hunger twists in his stomach, a goad to drive him forward.
* * * * * * *
"Rodney," Radek says tensely, "Major says he believes he and his men are closing in on Colonel Sheppard and the others."
"Someone's doing something right today," Rodney growls. He wishes that physiology and genetics were more inherently interesting, if only because he would have paid attention to Carson's endless droning about it. He tries to pay more attention to making sure the dispersal system is hooked up properly, venting out into the forest instead of in. He doesn't think about what it is he's sending out there.
Only it's... it's Sheppard out there, and Dr. Porter, and Carson, and a chance that Lorne and the others have gone out with malfunctioning gas masks, and it's only him and his brain against - Rodney wants to laugh, because really - a horde of blood-sucking zombies.
"For all I could give them significant brain damage," Rodney says. His fingers race over the keyboard, too fast for his knowledge of what he's doing, not fast enough for how fast he needs to do it. "I could turn them into... into human slugs."
"You could," Radek agrees. "However, we would at least be able to escape from human slugs and go get help. We could throw salt at them; that would immobilize them long enough for us to perhaps get to the stargate."
"Not helping!" Code, McKay, code like you've never coded before. He hits a button; the ventilation system comes online with a whoosh, all signals green. The centerpiece of the lab they're in, a gigantic tank draped about with the tendon-like wires of Wraith technology, fills with churning clouds of gas of the palest, palest blue. Rodney stares at it, hypnotized.
"I really have no idea what I'm doing," Rodney admits.
"Neither do I," Radek says, his voice bare and empty of the teasing Rodney expects and almost wishes for. "But you should press the button."
"No... no." Rodney bites his lip, rubs his thumb across a knuckle. "We need them in close, first. We need to know where they are."
"I will get Major Lorne." And Radek, bless him, is already turning away to do it, explaining to Lorne what they need.
"Give me that," Rodney interrupts. He plucks Radek's radio from his ear. "Lorne? Lorne - no, it's not Zelenka." He takes one breath for patience, another for blood pressure. "How far away are you from the lab?" Lorne's answer: Probably a quarter-mile, but it's hard to tell; slow going makes it seem like ten. "I need you closer." He needs John practically in his lap, on the doorstep at least.
"Look, if the Colonel is still... the Colonel," Lorne whispers harshly, "he's not gonna like being herded."
Yeah, Sheppard wouldn't like that much, and he'd catch onto it fast. Blood chills around Rodney's heart, thinking that Lorne might have to get Sheppard's cooperation by shooting him.
"Get them as close as you can," is all he says, putting enough snap into his words to make it clear to Lorne that he'd better get it done. He cuts the connection and turns, and Radek is bent over the wires, clucking about Rodney's haste and carelessness.
"You wish," Rodney mutters, and stomps past him.
* * * * * * *
Sounds ahead, bloodsound, breathsound, heart's rhythm - three of them, three drums pound pound pounding.
"Colonel!" He doesn't know the word, but feels the syllables as two distinct pressures against his skin, like two fingers. "Colonel Sheppard!"
The old voice again, layered atop the new: "Carson! Beckett, dammit."
"What is it, Rodney?" The words are a weak rattle from the bundle of clothing at the base of the tree.
"What the hell?" Shock paints the bright voice that doesn't have a heartbeat to go with it; dimly, he wonders what such a thing might sound like. "Is - is Sheppard? Are you?"
"Yes, and no."
"Oh, thank God." A pause, almost permanent, enough for him to turn to search for it and distract him from the three new beings in the woods. "Can I... can I talk to him?"
"I don't think... no, Rodney."
They're coming closer, he thinks, slowly, stalking him like hunters - like he would stalk himself, if he could. Careful, near-silent, and only their hearts and breathing give them away, and the way they change the currents of the mist. He inhales, gritty-sharp scent he remembers, oil, gunpowder, steel.
"Carson!"
A crack, careless feet on branches, pressure of eyes on his back.
"Colonel Sheppard!"
He runs.
Three with guns against one is bad odds, the simple math of survival. Distantly, he thinks maybe he would have done the calculation differently, once, before, but this isn't then, it's living, it's escape to hunt again. Livelivelive pulses in him, carried in a hot flood along veins and nerves, and he doesn't stop running, doesn't slow, is exhilarated with it, each curve of shadow and half-light familiar to him, the contours of the ground under his boots.
Run and run, awkward skip-and-dance down a hillside made treacherous with roots and wet leaves. He loses grace for a moment and falls, catches his elbow on a rock. When he stands up, he realizes something runs hot down the back of his arm, salt, sharp; he licks it away, shudders, knows the others can track him.
A howl replies to his thought, still far-off, but he moves again.
* * * * * * *
"Okay, I'm getting... no, I am. Where the hell are they?" Rodney wheels around and glares at Radek. "And what the hell are you doing?"
"Trying to boost the radio gain in order to get around the mist's interference," Zelenka says peevishly. "What are you doing, besides yelling at me?"
"I..." Rodney pauses. "I am going to see what the hell is taking so long."
It's possible, he thinks, as he turns back around and trots down the hall from the laboratory, it's possible that he's crazy. These things hunt by sound, and he is emminently huntable prey, given that he can do nothing - nothing quietly. He even thinks loudly, he's sure, neural activity clearly audible across a room, so he's one of those people for whom the expression I can hear you thinking isn't an exaggeration.
"Rodney!" Radek's voice is a low-pitched, hissing shriek. "Rodney, get back here!"
He loses Radek's voice quickly enough, distracted by the sudden appearance of a dot on his LSD screen. It's close to what he's calculated the range of dispersal will be, not close enough. If it's Sheppard, great, if it's not... test subject, Rodney tells himself. Test subject.
The last corner's coming up, and he turns it, and then he's at the lip of the cave and the mist has spilled everywhere, thick, alive, knowing in how it curls tentacles around his ankles. Somewhere deep inside of it, a dark shape stirs - a shape, shapes, maybe, or maybe they're trees, or Rodney going crazy too, or nothing at all.
According to his calculations, he has about ten minutes before breathing the gas becomes an issue. Reluctantly, because he doesn't like to trust his calculations when it comes to his genetic code being zombified, he unbuckles his gas mask and pushes it away.
He takes a few steps away from the entrance, making a racket in the leaves and fallen branches. His breath sounds like a hurricane, and Rodney's throat goes dry when he opens his mouth to shout.
* * * * * * *
"Hey! HEY!"
Voice, familiar, voice because it is breath shaped to purpose other than life, familiar because... because... he knows it, knows it better than the mist and the night and their secrets. The breath he pulls rolls flintily across his tongue, sharp in his nostrils, John? John, is that you? and that has a taste, images that roll across the eyes he can keep shut now, salt, heat, a darkness filled with a hunger different than this one.
"John? Please... please come here."
The pleading catches him, pulls with an attraction independent of the inexorable rhythm of breath and heartbeat. He remembers pressing an ear to that vibration, stronger than anything the mist can tell him, an echo that filled up even the hollows between his bones.
He takes a step up the hill, slow, hypnotized; another.
* * * * * * *
"John? John, oh fuck."
He tries to make himself keep talking, wonders why it's suddenly so hard to find words other than John's name and oh fuck, oh fuck, because he's never been wordless before. He should call Radek, except he can't lift his hand to toggle his radio on.
"Jesus, John."
John materializes out of the mist, a slow resolution of spiky hair, long arms and legs, clatter of the P90 hanging forgotten at his side. He moves with a slow, terrible grace, feet silent and unerring on the carpet of leaves, careless of the blood that tattoos his right arm, and his head moves slowly, tracking, Rodney thinks, a weapon guidance system honing its focus.
John, Rodney thinks he says.
And worse, so much worse than death-pale skin, than blood, John's eyes are closed, dark fan of his lashes across his cheeks.
John's eyes are closed, but he's looking straight at Rodney, attention unwavering.
"John," Rodney tries again, tries to sound encouraging, familiar. "It's... it's Rodney."
An almost imperceptible shifting closer, but John doesn't look away. The mist laces around him, god, is it coming from him, is he that far gone? Rodney makes himself stay still and not run, despite every scrap of survival instinct in him screaming to get away. And he would run, except it would do no good, except it's John turned all alien who's standing in front of him, in desperate need of Rodney's help and most of him too far gone to know it.
"John," Rodney makes himself say, "I need you to come with me, okay?"
He takes a step back, crushes a fearful whimper when John takes three steps to his one, and avoids a root Rodney had nearly tripped over earlier. Almost all Rodney can see of him is the blood on his arm, his uniform, his hair, the awful tension in his body that suggests muscle on the verge of uncoiling in attack or flight.
"C'mon," he says cajolingly, lift your hand, radio for Radek to start the dispersal.
And even as he thinks it, he registers pale blue filtering through his peripheral vision, John's sudden confusion. John starts back, freezes only when Rodney shouts for him to please, please stand still, you have to stand still, John, please, for the love of God don't run, stay with me, and miracle of miracles, John does, trembling, confused, fighting it, but he stays and stays focused with those terrible, shut-tight eyes, at Rodney.
* * * * * * *
Once Keller gets her clutches into them, she doesn't let go. Porter goes to ICU, Carson stays because Rodney was right, Michael's experimentation had rendered him immune to the mindfuckery of the mist. Rodney escapes, but returns only to make sure Keller does a proper job of making sure the vaccine she and Carson have whipped up for John and Porter is doing what it's supposed to do.
It means John has nothing to do but lie in bed and stare at the ceiling, trying to ignore the whisper and stir of hunger deep beneath his gut. It comes from the same place that the Wraith virus had woken up, a place he can't quite localize, except that it lies deep down, too deep to dig out. He tries not to think about it, but the flat ceiling panels aren't enough to bore him into sleep, and his body still wants to think about the world in terms of texture and pulse, and how the air feels when a person speaks, or is silent.
"Hey."
He turns automatically, that voice, Rodney's voice, pulling his body along on its invisible strings. Another thing not to think of, how Rodney's voice brings with it the promise of life-saving brilliance, or aggravation, fun, kisses and touches that make John's body do six impossible things just because Rodney asked. When he tries to remember the events of only hours ago, all John can come up with is fog and moving through it, Rodney's voice bright punctuation in endless greyness, the anchor of it when he'd wanted to run.
"Did I wake you?" Rodney asks. He's shifting, anxious, awkward in the doorway, his tablet under one arm.
"Nah." John doesn't look away. "Too bored to sleep."
"Yeah," Rodney says, although he looks puzzled. "Can I come in?"
"Any time," John says, and is moderately terrified to realize he means it.
Rodney nods and walks in, his noisiness subdued for once. John blinks, briefly entranced by the mere fact of vision, light and dark, seeing the texture of Rodney's unshaven jaw instead of feeling it, the folds in the fabric of his shirt, the odd way the bedside light haloes his hair. He's familiar in all sorts of light, now, or in no light at all.
"So, you need help getting to sleep?" Rodney asks. The hesitant look on his face fades briefly into annoyance when he realizes that John's leering at him. "And not that kind of help, pervert."
"Read to me?" John asks, wondering if he'd stay awake to listen, or if he has enough trust in Rodney's voice to fall asleep.
"I, uh, don't have any books on this..." Rodney fumbles with his data tablet. "I could read my weekly staff reports, though. Those are pretty tedious."
"You could read the phone book," John says sleepily.
Rodney fumbles with his tablet some more, smile tugging his mouth to a shy crookedness. He sits down and begins to read, and even when he gets caught up in detailed lists of his staff's incompetence, his voice is soft and steady.
Click on thumb
Authors:
- Round 1 - perspi : "'They're all empty.' [...] to hear them anymore."
- Round 2 - sheafrotherdon : "'Christ,' Rodney swears, [...] Just get inside, okay? Get. Inside.""
- Round 3 - jadesfire2808 : "John doesn't know what he expected [...] It has to."
- Round 4 - aesc : "There are dimensions to the mist [...] his voice is soft and steady."
Artists:
R1: refche
R2: nightingaledies
R3: gblvr
R4: beet