Sheppard H/C fic
Title: A Lighter Stripe of Sky
Author: snarkydame
Characters: Team
Word Count: 4k +
Rating: PG-PG13
Summary: On a dead planet, Sheppard triggers an ancient trap.
Spoilers: Set sometime season 5 -- no particular spoilers, other than some background character names.
A/N: I don't own the characters of Stargate Atlantis, and no infringement is intended, nor profit being made.
This was written as part of the secret santa exchange for lauriel01 , who wanted Sheppard's Ancient gene to be central to the plot. Hopefully I managed to put together something she'll enjoy!
* * * *
The light on the other side of the gate was a solid thing, so bright he nearly staggered at the impact.
"Gah!" he heard behind him. "My eyes!"
He turned and, squinting, he could just make out the blurred shape that was Rodney McKay, ducking his head into his hands. The light caught John's lashes in halos, and he gave up, closing his eyes completely.
"Come on, McKay," he said, and felt for his arm, tugging him away from the gate as Ronon and Teyla stepped through.
He felt Ronon's big hand come down on his shoulder. "Here," Ronon said, and something almost like a heavy pair of glasses slid over his ears. Cautiously, he opened his eyes.
Ronon smirked at him, already wearing mirror tinted lenses of his own. John could see his reflection in them.
It was still too bright. Everything looked flat, depthless, and the glasses put a decidedly blue tint to the world, but at least his eyes weren't tearing up anymore.
Teyla was straightening a similar pair of glasses over McKay's eyes. "Radek ran up with these just after the two of you stepped through the Stargate," she explained. "Apparently, they finished them earlier than they thought they would."
Rodney snarled. "It shouldn't have mattered. Who looked over the specs for this planet? It's supposed to be night. As in dark. We should have been back in Atlantis before we would have needed these. It's the whole reason we came through now instead of tomorrow morning! When I find out who made such an elementary mistake I'll have him searching the database for information on the life cycles of those alien newts on M7K-972."
Normally, John would try to keep himself from smiling too broadly at the thought of McKay terrorizing the erring technician, but he still saw colored lights swimming through his vision, as if he'd tried to stare at the sun. So. He'd bring popcorn.
Still. Work to do. "Plot your vengeance later, McKay. Let's get moving."
"Sure, sure. Now that I'm in no danger of going blind."
They moved out, carefully. It was unpleasantly warm in their gear, since they'd dressed for the planet's cold night. But even under the triple suns, this planet never reached the sort of temperatures he'd have expected to find in a desert. The rock here didn't hold much heat, the geologists said. They were clamoring for samples.
The footing was oddly treacherous, as the powerful light flattened small outcroppings and hollows to a washed-out sameness. McKay met every stumble with additional embellishments for his plan. Ronon, amused, threw in a few suggestions.
"The mudflats on Harrhop are supposed to have healing properties."
"Are they unpleasant?" Teyla asked idly. "I've heard they can be quite soothing."
"They smell like rotting tharlni."
Teyla's nose wrinkled, and she shook her head.
"That bad, huh?" Rodney asked, intrigued. "So does rotting tharlni fall more on the rotten egg side of the spectrum, or the raw sewage?"
John rolled his eyes. "Guys. Obviously, we should send him to analyze the migration patterns of the humming bats on M3G-866."
Rodney snapped his fingers. "Oooh, that's good. Why didn't I think of that?"
"John," Teyla started, not quite smiling, but John stopped her with an upraised hand.
They'd come to the top of what he now saw was a long, gradual rise. The dry, blasted ground ended with an abrupt downward swoop at his feet, and far, far below was a plain. Maybe it was an ocean once. Maybe an ice flow, long ago. Now it was barren ground, sewn with what were probably enormous boulders and fantastically windswept rocks - it was hard to say how big they were, since the three suns glaring down on them had rid them of their shadows. They were large enough to impose on his view of the first loop of the planet's thin rings, which he could see peeking over the horizon, barely visible in the bleached-white sky.
But in the foreground, at the foot of the slope, was their objective.
"There it is," he said. "Look at that."
* * * *
It took an impressive structure to stand out against a backdrop like that plain (the half-buried bones of a dead world, Teyla had said, awe in her voice).
But once they saw the towers, the plain was insignificant.
They were nothing like the towers of Atlantis. Nothing so ordered, so balanced. The aesthetics of the Ancients were alien to them.
Where Ancient architecture rose in fragile, geometric harmony, this structure pulled itself up and clawed at the sky. The angles swooped and turned in a dizzying tangle, that nonetheless, and impossibly, held up towers that dwarfed any skyscraper John had ever seen.
The closer they came, carefully descending the steep, eroding slope, the more absorbing it was. He couldn't quit staring at it - following the lines of the structure deeper and deeper. It seemed at once to be a chaotic jumble, and also all of one piece, like a labyrinth, drawn by a madman. An alien madman.
It was built of metal, some alien alloy so pale it looked like ivory, that glowed in the light of the triple suns. John would have sworn it pulsed.
In the glow, the doors were hardly evident. A bare line, little more than a seam in the metal.
"Without these visors," Rodney said, oddly subdued, "we'd never have found that door, even with the sensors. It would just be . . . too bright." He ended with a shrug, acknowledging the utter inadequacy of the phrase.
"What's the matter?" John asked, firmly deciding not to be overwhelmed. "Haven't you ever seen an alien tower before?"
"Very funny, Sheppard," Rodney snapped, and rocked forward as Ronon slapped him on the shoulder.
"Let's go in," he said. "I'm getting hungry."
"You're getting hungry?" Rodney growled, incredulous. "You look at this, and think of food? How does that possibly connect in your brain?"
But he followed Ronon as he strode up to the doors, and pulled out his scanner as he walked.
The doors, up close, were even harder to see. John reached out and followed the seam with his fingers. The metal, he marveled, was cold. He'd expected it to burn. Instead, it felt like . . . water, maybe. If something so dry could feel like water.
He almost felt like he could run his fingers through the metal, and he found that he was pressing harder at the seam, enough so that his fingers ached.
Rodney slapped at his hands.
"Stop touching things, Sheppard. We don't know what kind of security systems are still running."
He shook his fingers out, vaguely disquieted.
Teyla stood back, craning her neck to look up at the snarl of towers.
"This place," she said, "has been abandoned for. . . untold centuries. Perhaps eons. Could there still be anything at all that is operational?"
Rodney shrugged. "The scanner's showing something powerful in there. It's not Ancient, so it won't give me much detail, but anything that could put out that much power for that long . . . We've got to get a look at it."
"Maybe it just turned back on when we showed up," John offered. "Like Atlantis, powering up for us." It had felt . . . not familiar, exactly. But, something similar.
"Why?" Rodney asked, not looking up from his scanner. "Like I said, it's not Ancient. It's not waiting for our genes to tell it what to do."
"Our genes," John mouthed at Ronon, who just looked back impassively. John rolled his eyes.
"No," Rodney was saying, "The database makes it sound like this structure was already here when the Ancients placed the gate."
Teyla frowned. "Who built it? As it is obviously not Ancient, and just as obviously not of Wraith design . . ."
Rodney paused. "I don't know. That's not in the database. Just that the Ancients put a gate here for 'the quick retrieval of reconnaissance teams.' Seems like they almost lost a couple of ships trying to navigate through the gravity wells of those suns, so the gate would be safer, even though it must have been difficult to get it here in the first place."
John didn't like the sound of that. "Seems like a lot of effort to get their people off of this planet. There anything else in the database?"
"Not really. The account is pretty sparse, actually."
"Yeah, I'm getting that." He started to caution him to be careful, but just then, Rodney snapped his fingers.
"There!" he exclaimed, and the seams of the doors slid suddenly wider, and the doors opened. Haltingly, and with protest, but they opened, revealing a blessedly shadowed interior.
"How . . ."
"They were keyed to a specific radio frequency. Pretty simple to figure out. They weren't really even locked."
"Huh." John found himself fingering his gun, and made himself stop. Sure, it looked like a trap. It probably was a trap, with their track record. Didn't mean the trap was still set after all this time. Or that if it was, a gun would do any good at all.
Ronon had gone ahead and drawn his own weapon. "Doesn't hurt," he said, shrugging, when he saw John looking at it.
"No, it doesn't." He drew his pistol. Teyla had drawn hers already.
"What?" Rodney asked, still intent on his scanner.
"We're going armed, Rodney."
"Oh, right. Good idea," he said. "My hands are full, so, you know, warn me if there's something I should be shooting at."
* * * *
The doors slid shut behind them, and for a moment, there was just darkness, and the sound of Rodney cursing.
Then, "Still not locked," Rodney announced in relief, and John slid the tinted glasses up onto his head.
The room was dim, but without the glasses, not really dark. The walls still seemed to glow faintly, as if the light from outside was seeping through. He frowned. The feeling of . . . recognition? It seemed stronger.
"You know," Rodney said, "even if it turns out we can't use the power source, if we could get a team here to study this material . . ."
"Yeah," John agreed, trying to work his head around his reaction to this place. "It's. . . interesting."
"It's beautiful," Teyla said. She sounded reluctant, and John knew why. It wasbeautiful, but more, it was unsettling. The curves of the interior walls echoed the mad angles of the exterior, leading the eye almost involuntarily deeper along the corridor that ran to the left away from the door.
The walls were featureless, bare and seamless. The floor, on the other hand, seemed etched with a wandering maze of lines that glowed more strongly than the walls. It was too easy to track the maze with his eyes, farther and farther . . . he shook himself.
Yeah. Unsettling.
And even more so when he caught Rodney staring, not at his scanner, but at those lines on the floor, with eyes that didn't quite focus.
"Rodney," he snapped, and Teyla and Ronon both looked around at his voice.
"What?" Rodney asked, jerking his head up, eyes wide.
He took a breath. "Where are we going?"
"Ah. Yes. The power source is . . . this way." And Rodney set his eyes again on the scanner, pointing the way. To the right.
"That way?" He felt oddly reluctant to go in that direction. The lights led to the left. Which was a stupid reason to want to follow them.
"Come on then," he said, to himself as much as to his team, and started walking.
Ronon fell in at his side, as Teyla did at Rodney's. Their easy strides ate up the corridor, the tread of their boots on the metal floor running together into a mind numbing sort of ambient sound.
"Something up?" Ronon asked him, quietly, and only then did John realize that he had turned his head (again) to look over his shoulder, at the maze of light he could still dimly see.
"No, nothing," he said. He would have felt more confident if he hadn't seen Rodney also peering backwards, or Teyla, frowning at them both.
* * * *
They stopped at what would have been about noon back on Atlantis, to rest. John leaned against the wall, determinedly ignoring the growing urge to get up and walk back towards the door, and the glowing maze of lines on the floor. It was like an itch on the soles of his feet - merely awkward at first, but growing more and more unbearable. He crossed his arms across his chest and drummed his fingers on his arms. Made himself stay seated until he counted to fifty. And then again.
Ronon and Teyla seemed calm enough. Almost bored, though they kept their eyes on the corridor, in both directions. He noticed though, that Rodney kept pausing, mid chew, as he went through his PowerBar, and that his eyes would slide back in that direction before he'd blink and take another bite.
Ronon, sitting on his heels, looked back and forth between them, a scowl growing on his face.
"Seriously, Sheppard, what's going on?"
John shook his head. "Just a feeling," he admitted, reluctantly. At this point, it would be stupid to deny that something wasn't . . . weird here. "Like we're going the wrong way."
Teyla's eyebrows quirked. "Should we turn around and go back?"
"No." They all looked over in surprise at Rodney's emphatic reply. He swallowed, and crinkled the PowerBar wrapper in his fist. "No, the power source is this way. Whatever's back there . . . it only seems to be affecting me and Sheppard, which probably means it's tied to the Ancient gene. And since this isn't an ancient facility, that can not be a good thing."
"The gene," John echoed, blinking. "Yeah, that might be it."
Ronon stood up. "Should we leave?"
John considered it. It seemed absurd to leave a potential asset like this power source behind without even running into any perceivable danger. Just a crawling, increasingly uncomfortable feeling. But it would be a pointless risk to stick around if this was a trap set for anyone with the Ancient gene. If it was just him . . . but it was Rodney, too. They could send another team, made up of people without the gene. They'd be safe enough. There were no enemies here, no risk of the building collapsing, not even any dangerous weather systems in the area. He started to say 'yes.'
But as he stood, to tell them to gather their packs and turn around, he found himself taking an unintentional step back towards the door, and a chilling thought crossed his mind.
"Actually," he said slowly, forcing himself to draw his foot back, "I think if we walk back that way I might not be able to stop at the door."
Rodney glared bleakly at the wrapper in his hands, smoothing it out against his knee.
"The compulsion is that strong?" Teyla asked, moving to stand between them and the far end of the corridor, as if she'd catch them if they were to make a break for it.
"It's getting that way."
Rodney tossed his head and stood abruptly. "Then lets hurry after that power source," he said, his voice harsh with strain. "If we pull it, whatever's drawing us back there might lose power, and then we can leave."
"Right. It's a plan." And John turned down the corridor, and took a step away from the maze.
Lightning cracked down his spine.
* * * *
Or, he cautiously decided once he could see and hear again, it just felt like it. He took a deep breath, and focused his tearing eyes on Ronon's boots, right in front of his face. And those were Ronon's fingers on his neck, checking his pulse. Teyla's hand on his back, Rodney's voice, high and edged with panic.
"We stopped for too long, the compulsion was growing stronger and stronger and we didn't really notice. And now I can't move that direction, not even far enough to check on Sheppard, and god, is he breathing? John!"
"I'm not dead," he managed to choke out. The cool metal against his face felt amazing. His skin felt too tight. Too hot.
"This isn't going to work," Ronon growled down at him. "We're going back. We'll stop you, if you try to keep going."
"Actually," he muttered, "I kinda just want to stay here for a minute."
"Very funny!" Rodney snapped at him. Strain cracked through his voice. "But no, that might be the best plan."
"What?"
"We'll just stay here. Not move. We'll keep each other from heading back that way and Ronon and Teyla will go after the power source."
"I do not think that we should leave you like this," Teyla said.
"What, do you think something's going to jump out and eat us while you're gone? There's nothing here. There's probably something back there. And it's going to be stronger by the door. I don't . . . " Rodney's breath caught. "I don't want to go back there."
For a moment, no one said anything, and John concentrated on counting the scuffs on Ronon's boots.
"If we disconnect this power source, will the compulsion be ended?" Teyla asked, her voice absolutely calm.
"I don't know." Rodney sounded miserable. "It's likely. It's the best chance we have. If it doesn't work we'll . . . think of something else."
Ronon stood up from his crouch. "How will we disconnect the power source when we find it?"
Rodney gave a sigh of relief. "I should be able to coach you through the radio, if it's not obvious."
"All right then. Don't move." And he took off running. After a moment, John heard Teyla follow him.
John pushed himself up on his elbows. His head felt heavy, but he held it up, and turned it to face Rodney. He stood rocking heel to toe, anxiously looking after Teyla and Ronon. His hand, flat on the wall, was pressed so tightly against it John could see the tendons twitching.
"Easy, Rodney. You heard the man."
Rodney made a sound, a little too hysterical to be called a laugh. "You don't get to talk," he said. "You're the one that collapsed like one of Kavanagh's theories. Just, poof, flat on the floor."
"Poof?"
"Yes, Sheppard, poof!" Rodney snarled at him. "You looked ridiculous."
"I did not."
"How would youknow?"
* * * *
Time crawled. John soon found it impossible to stay seated on the floor, and got to his feet, pacing back and forth across the width of the corridor. He could feel Rodney following him with sharp eyes, watching for the slightest drift back towards the maze. On his part, he checked Rodney's position at every turn.
His steps got faster, more erratic. It felt like there was a hook pulling at his gut, drawing tighter and tighter.
"Hurry up," he muttered, and paced. He thought he could see the light from the maze rising like a pale fog, down at the far end of the corridor.
"John," he heard, and again, "John!" Rodney sounded desperate, and John realized he'd been calling for awhile now. He looked up, and met his eyes.
"I'm sorry," Rodney said. "I can't . . . I think maybe I sent them both away so I could do this." And he turned around and started walking.
"Rodney!" Instinctively, John leaped after him.
"Well, that was a stupid thing to do!" Rodney yelled at him.
"I know!" he answered. They both walked on, leaving their packs behind them.
In a moment, they were running.
He tried, so hard, to slow down. To keep pace with Rodney, at the very least. And for a while, it worked. But not for a very long while.
And then he was glad, for outpacing his friend. Maybe, if he was lucky, he'd spring whatever trap lay in wait for them, and Rodney wouldn't be affected.
Maybe, if he was lucky.
* * * *
Finally, John reached the hidden door, and could see the maze again. The glowing lines seemed brighter now, and that strange feeling of familiarity more insistent. He slowed his step, but couldn't stop it, and deliberately set his foot down at the beginning of the maze.
The light surged upwards, into walls higher than his head. They seemed solid, the same pale metal as the exterior walls, but these walls he really could run his fingers through. They tingled, and the muscles in his arm twitched, like a current was coursing through them.
He walked the maze. Each step felt like a mile, each breath a trial, his mouth and throat as dry as the plains outside. The light grew brighter, and brighter. He thought once of the tinted glasses, now tangled helplessly in his hair, but couldn't make himself reach for them. He thought, briefly, that they probably wouldn't do him any good this time, anyway.
And then, between one step and the next, while his boot was in the air, the walls of light blinked out. He wavered, unbalanced, and set his foot down blind. Into nothing.
He fell, not even shouting, into the nothing at the heart of the maze. His own heart, throwing itself frantically against his ribs, made the only sound he heard.
For hours, for years, he fell. And when he landed, there was light. Not the blinding glare of the triple suns, or the all encompassing glow of the alien metal, but the cool shine of stars. He stood on the plain, under the massive bulk of a rock twisted by the wind into the shape of a dancer, coiled and fluid. In front of him, the alien towers massed black against the silver spread of the planet's rings in the night sky.
Far behind him, across the rock strewn plain (the half-buried bones of a dead world), something called. Not quite a howl, nor the coughing roar of a hunting cat. A call, intelligent, fitted to the mad angles of the alien towers. The voice of their builders.
John tried to turn around, to look back. But dread dragged at his joints and held him stiff, hiding on that stark plain that hid nothing at all.
There was something there, something so much bigger, and so much older than he was. Desperately, he tried to marshal a response - anything other than the bone deep instinct to freeze into insignificance, like a rabbit when the eagle's shadow wings over it.
And then the stars over the dancing rock were hidden behind the silhouette of something tall, and thin, and not human, not even bipedal, not like anything he'd ever encountered, not ever. It crouched on the rock and he could feel it watching him, its regard as heavy as the stone itself, and as implacable.
There was a voice, talking to him. Not in words, in nothing like words. A voice, and John felt his ears bleed and his heart labor to hear it. He thought, perhaps only as a desperate bid for comprehension, that he heard concepts of trespass, and scorn. He thought he babbled an answer, an apology, in words that felt tiny, too small, too young to make themselves heard.
He thought he screamed.
Abruptly, the night skies were bleeding into light, crazed lines that faded and flickered at eye level.
He lay again on the floor, curled in on himself like he'd been hit in the gut, sucking in air like he'd been suffocating. Gradually, achingly, he became aware that he was lying in the heart of the maze, and that the maze was breaking down. A sticky warmth spread slowly down his face, and he reached up, with an arm that felt like it should shatter, to find blood running from his ears.
He heard, as though he were under water, Teyla's voice, frantic, over his radio. And, at the disorienting echo, he realized he could hear Rodney's radio as well, and that he could feel him, curled at his back, not moving.
He thought he heard Ronon's blaster behind Teyla's voice, as the last of the light flickered out.
* * * *
He came awake slowly. His head felt like someone had opened it up and tossed in a grenade. His heartbeat tripped on itself, a fluttery, frightening feeling, which only worsened when he opened his eyes and saw stars, and the serene arc of the rings in the sky. There was the taste of blood in his mouth.
But there was no vast presence behind him. No overwhelming voice drumming in his head. There was just Teyla, warm and quiet at his side, and Rodney, talking. His voice was hoarse, rasping painfully, but he was terribly glad to hear it.
"You shot it?" he was asking, in what John suspected was meant to be an accusing tone. It failed miserably, landing on tired instead.
"You weren't answering the radio, and we couldn't figure out how to disconnect it. So I shot it."
"You shot it. You know you could have killed us all, don't you?"
"Didn't though. It worked."
"I guess it did," Rodney tone went vague, and John wanted to turn and look over, make sure he was really all right, but his bones felt heavy as stone. He couldn't manage more than a faint sound of distress.
"John," Teyla said, hearing it. "We are all all right. Rodney is recovering somewhat faster than you are, but you, too, will be fine. We are waiting here for another hour or so, until Atlantis makes her scheduled radio check. We will have Dr. Keller come with a jumper, and a medical team, to make sure."
"He's awake?" Ronon asked. "McKay's just drifted out again."
"Yes," she said. "He's awake."
Ronon grunted, and sat down between them. "McKay says he doesn't know what that place was supposed to be, exactly, but that the Ancients came exploring where they weren't welcome, and something set it up so they wouldn't ever come back. Guess you two were enough to set things off. Good thing not all of us are the closest things to Ancients around."
John took a deep, painful breath. "Yeah," he said, not shocked at how rough his own voice sounded. "Sounds about right."
On the horizon, opposite the rising rings, there was a lighter stripe of sky - all that was left of the end of the day. John watched it fade, until the jumper came over the rise.
fin
Author: snarkydame
Characters: Team
Word Count: 4k +
Rating: PG-PG13
Summary: On a dead planet, Sheppard triggers an ancient trap.
Spoilers: Set sometime season 5 -- no particular spoilers, other than some background character names.
A/N: I don't own the characters of Stargate Atlantis, and no infringement is intended, nor profit being made.
This was written as part of the secret santa exchange for lauriel01 , who wanted Sheppard's Ancient gene to be central to the plot. Hopefully I managed to put together something she'll enjoy!
* * * *
The light on the other side of the gate was a solid thing, so bright he nearly staggered at the impact.
"Gah!" he heard behind him. "My eyes!"
He turned and, squinting, he could just make out the blurred shape that was Rodney McKay, ducking his head into his hands. The light caught John's lashes in halos, and he gave up, closing his eyes completely.
"Come on, McKay," he said, and felt for his arm, tugging him away from the gate as Ronon and Teyla stepped through.
He felt Ronon's big hand come down on his shoulder. "Here," Ronon said, and something almost like a heavy pair of glasses slid over his ears. Cautiously, he opened his eyes.
Ronon smirked at him, already wearing mirror tinted lenses of his own. John could see his reflection in them.
It was still too bright. Everything looked flat, depthless, and the glasses put a decidedly blue tint to the world, but at least his eyes weren't tearing up anymore.
Teyla was straightening a similar pair of glasses over McKay's eyes. "Radek ran up with these just after the two of you stepped through the Stargate," she explained. "Apparently, they finished them earlier than they thought they would."
Rodney snarled. "It shouldn't have mattered. Who looked over the specs for this planet? It's supposed to be night. As in dark. We should have been back in Atlantis before we would have needed these. It's the whole reason we came through now instead of tomorrow morning! When I find out who made such an elementary mistake I'll have him searching the database for information on the life cycles of those alien newts on M7K-972."
Normally, John would try to keep himself from smiling too broadly at the thought of McKay terrorizing the erring technician, but he still saw colored lights swimming through his vision, as if he'd tried to stare at the sun. So. He'd bring popcorn.
Still. Work to do. "Plot your vengeance later, McKay. Let's get moving."
"Sure, sure. Now that I'm in no danger of going blind."
They moved out, carefully. It was unpleasantly warm in their gear, since they'd dressed for the planet's cold night. But even under the triple suns, this planet never reached the sort of temperatures he'd have expected to find in a desert. The rock here didn't hold much heat, the geologists said. They were clamoring for samples.
The footing was oddly treacherous, as the powerful light flattened small outcroppings and hollows to a washed-out sameness. McKay met every stumble with additional embellishments for his plan. Ronon, amused, threw in a few suggestions.
"The mudflats on Harrhop are supposed to have healing properties."
"Are they unpleasant?" Teyla asked idly. "I've heard they can be quite soothing."
"They smell like rotting tharlni."
Teyla's nose wrinkled, and she shook her head.
"That bad, huh?" Rodney asked, intrigued. "So does rotting tharlni fall more on the rotten egg side of the spectrum, or the raw sewage?"
John rolled his eyes. "Guys. Obviously, we should send him to analyze the migration patterns of the humming bats on M3G-866."
Rodney snapped his fingers. "Oooh, that's good. Why didn't I think of that?"
"John," Teyla started, not quite smiling, but John stopped her with an upraised hand.
They'd come to the top of what he now saw was a long, gradual rise. The dry, blasted ground ended with an abrupt downward swoop at his feet, and far, far below was a plain. Maybe it was an ocean once. Maybe an ice flow, long ago. Now it was barren ground, sewn with what were probably enormous boulders and fantastically windswept rocks - it was hard to say how big they were, since the three suns glaring down on them had rid them of their shadows. They were large enough to impose on his view of the first loop of the planet's thin rings, which he could see peeking over the horizon, barely visible in the bleached-white sky.
But in the foreground, at the foot of the slope, was their objective.
"There it is," he said. "Look at that."
* * * *
It took an impressive structure to stand out against a backdrop like that plain (the half-buried bones of a dead world, Teyla had said, awe in her voice).
But once they saw the towers, the plain was insignificant.
They were nothing like the towers of Atlantis. Nothing so ordered, so balanced. The aesthetics of the Ancients were alien to them.
Where Ancient architecture rose in fragile, geometric harmony, this structure pulled itself up and clawed at the sky. The angles swooped and turned in a dizzying tangle, that nonetheless, and impossibly, held up towers that dwarfed any skyscraper John had ever seen.
The closer they came, carefully descending the steep, eroding slope, the more absorbing it was. He couldn't quit staring at it - following the lines of the structure deeper and deeper. It seemed at once to be a chaotic jumble, and also all of one piece, like a labyrinth, drawn by a madman. An alien madman.
It was built of metal, some alien alloy so pale it looked like ivory, that glowed in the light of the triple suns. John would have sworn it pulsed.
In the glow, the doors were hardly evident. A bare line, little more than a seam in the metal.
"Without these visors," Rodney said, oddly subdued, "we'd never have found that door, even with the sensors. It would just be . . . too bright." He ended with a shrug, acknowledging the utter inadequacy of the phrase.
"What's the matter?" John asked, firmly deciding not to be overwhelmed. "Haven't you ever seen an alien tower before?"
"Very funny, Sheppard," Rodney snapped, and rocked forward as Ronon slapped him on the shoulder.
"Let's go in," he said. "I'm getting hungry."
"You're getting hungry?" Rodney growled, incredulous. "You look at this, and think of food? How does that possibly connect in your brain?"
But he followed Ronon as he strode up to the doors, and pulled out his scanner as he walked.
The doors, up close, were even harder to see. John reached out and followed the seam with his fingers. The metal, he marveled, was cold. He'd expected it to burn. Instead, it felt like . . . water, maybe. If something so dry could feel like water.
He almost felt like he could run his fingers through the metal, and he found that he was pressing harder at the seam, enough so that his fingers ached.
Rodney slapped at his hands.
"Stop touching things, Sheppard. We don't know what kind of security systems are still running."
He shook his fingers out, vaguely disquieted.
Teyla stood back, craning her neck to look up at the snarl of towers.
"This place," she said, "has been abandoned for. . . untold centuries. Perhaps eons. Could there still be anything at all that is operational?"
Rodney shrugged. "The scanner's showing something powerful in there. It's not Ancient, so it won't give me much detail, but anything that could put out that much power for that long . . . We've got to get a look at it."
"Maybe it just turned back on when we showed up," John offered. "Like Atlantis, powering up for us." It had felt . . . not familiar, exactly. But, something similar.
"Why?" Rodney asked, not looking up from his scanner. "Like I said, it's not Ancient. It's not waiting for our genes to tell it what to do."
"Our genes," John mouthed at Ronon, who just looked back impassively. John rolled his eyes.
"No," Rodney was saying, "The database makes it sound like this structure was already here when the Ancients placed the gate."
Teyla frowned. "Who built it? As it is obviously not Ancient, and just as obviously not of Wraith design . . ."
Rodney paused. "I don't know. That's not in the database. Just that the Ancients put a gate here for 'the quick retrieval of reconnaissance teams.' Seems like they almost lost a couple of ships trying to navigate through the gravity wells of those suns, so the gate would be safer, even though it must have been difficult to get it here in the first place."
John didn't like the sound of that. "Seems like a lot of effort to get their people off of this planet. There anything else in the database?"
"Not really. The account is pretty sparse, actually."
"Yeah, I'm getting that." He started to caution him to be careful, but just then, Rodney snapped his fingers.
"There!" he exclaimed, and the seams of the doors slid suddenly wider, and the doors opened. Haltingly, and with protest, but they opened, revealing a blessedly shadowed interior.
"How . . ."
"They were keyed to a specific radio frequency. Pretty simple to figure out. They weren't really even locked."
"Huh." John found himself fingering his gun, and made himself stop. Sure, it looked like a trap. It probably was a trap, with their track record. Didn't mean the trap was still set after all this time. Or that if it was, a gun would do any good at all.
Ronon had gone ahead and drawn his own weapon. "Doesn't hurt," he said, shrugging, when he saw John looking at it.
"No, it doesn't." He drew his pistol. Teyla had drawn hers already.
"What?" Rodney asked, still intent on his scanner.
"We're going armed, Rodney."
"Oh, right. Good idea," he said. "My hands are full, so, you know, warn me if there's something I should be shooting at."
* * * *
The doors slid shut behind them, and for a moment, there was just darkness, and the sound of Rodney cursing.
Then, "Still not locked," Rodney announced in relief, and John slid the tinted glasses up onto his head.
The room was dim, but without the glasses, not really dark. The walls still seemed to glow faintly, as if the light from outside was seeping through. He frowned. The feeling of . . . recognition? It seemed stronger.
"You know," Rodney said, "even if it turns out we can't use the power source, if we could get a team here to study this material . . ."
"Yeah," John agreed, trying to work his head around his reaction to this place. "It's. . . interesting."
"It's beautiful," Teyla said. She sounded reluctant, and John knew why. It wasbeautiful, but more, it was unsettling. The curves of the interior walls echoed the mad angles of the exterior, leading the eye almost involuntarily deeper along the corridor that ran to the left away from the door.
The walls were featureless, bare and seamless. The floor, on the other hand, seemed etched with a wandering maze of lines that glowed more strongly than the walls. It was too easy to track the maze with his eyes, farther and farther . . . he shook himself.
Yeah. Unsettling.
And even more so when he caught Rodney staring, not at his scanner, but at those lines on the floor, with eyes that didn't quite focus.
"Rodney," he snapped, and Teyla and Ronon both looked around at his voice.
"What?" Rodney asked, jerking his head up, eyes wide.
He took a breath. "Where are we going?"
"Ah. Yes. The power source is . . . this way." And Rodney set his eyes again on the scanner, pointing the way. To the right.
"That way?" He felt oddly reluctant to go in that direction. The lights led to the left. Which was a stupid reason to want to follow them.
"Come on then," he said, to himself as much as to his team, and started walking.
Ronon fell in at his side, as Teyla did at Rodney's. Their easy strides ate up the corridor, the tread of their boots on the metal floor running together into a mind numbing sort of ambient sound.
"Something up?" Ronon asked him, quietly, and only then did John realize that he had turned his head (again) to look over his shoulder, at the maze of light he could still dimly see.
"No, nothing," he said. He would have felt more confident if he hadn't seen Rodney also peering backwards, or Teyla, frowning at them both.
* * * *
They stopped at what would have been about noon back on Atlantis, to rest. John leaned against the wall, determinedly ignoring the growing urge to get up and walk back towards the door, and the glowing maze of lines on the floor. It was like an itch on the soles of his feet - merely awkward at first, but growing more and more unbearable. He crossed his arms across his chest and drummed his fingers on his arms. Made himself stay seated until he counted to fifty. And then again.
Ronon and Teyla seemed calm enough. Almost bored, though they kept their eyes on the corridor, in both directions. He noticed though, that Rodney kept pausing, mid chew, as he went through his PowerBar, and that his eyes would slide back in that direction before he'd blink and take another bite.
Ronon, sitting on his heels, looked back and forth between them, a scowl growing on his face.
"Seriously, Sheppard, what's going on?"
John shook his head. "Just a feeling," he admitted, reluctantly. At this point, it would be stupid to deny that something wasn't . . . weird here. "Like we're going the wrong way."
Teyla's eyebrows quirked. "Should we turn around and go back?"
"No." They all looked over in surprise at Rodney's emphatic reply. He swallowed, and crinkled the PowerBar wrapper in his fist. "No, the power source is this way. Whatever's back there . . . it only seems to be affecting me and Sheppard, which probably means it's tied to the Ancient gene. And since this isn't an ancient facility, that can not be a good thing."
"The gene," John echoed, blinking. "Yeah, that might be it."
Ronon stood up. "Should we leave?"
John considered it. It seemed absurd to leave a potential asset like this power source behind without even running into any perceivable danger. Just a crawling, increasingly uncomfortable feeling. But it would be a pointless risk to stick around if this was a trap set for anyone with the Ancient gene. If it was just him . . . but it was Rodney, too. They could send another team, made up of people without the gene. They'd be safe enough. There were no enemies here, no risk of the building collapsing, not even any dangerous weather systems in the area. He started to say 'yes.'
But as he stood, to tell them to gather their packs and turn around, he found himself taking an unintentional step back towards the door, and a chilling thought crossed his mind.
"Actually," he said slowly, forcing himself to draw his foot back, "I think if we walk back that way I might not be able to stop at the door."
Rodney glared bleakly at the wrapper in his hands, smoothing it out against his knee.
"The compulsion is that strong?" Teyla asked, moving to stand between them and the far end of the corridor, as if she'd catch them if they were to make a break for it.
"It's getting that way."
Rodney tossed his head and stood abruptly. "Then lets hurry after that power source," he said, his voice harsh with strain. "If we pull it, whatever's drawing us back there might lose power, and then we can leave."
"Right. It's a plan." And John turned down the corridor, and took a step away from the maze.
Lightning cracked down his spine.
* * * *
Or, he cautiously decided once he could see and hear again, it just felt like it. He took a deep breath, and focused his tearing eyes on Ronon's boots, right in front of his face. And those were Ronon's fingers on his neck, checking his pulse. Teyla's hand on his back, Rodney's voice, high and edged with panic.
"We stopped for too long, the compulsion was growing stronger and stronger and we didn't really notice. And now I can't move that direction, not even far enough to check on Sheppard, and god, is he breathing? John!"
"I'm not dead," he managed to choke out. The cool metal against his face felt amazing. His skin felt too tight. Too hot.
"This isn't going to work," Ronon growled down at him. "We're going back. We'll stop you, if you try to keep going."
"Actually," he muttered, "I kinda just want to stay here for a minute."
"Very funny!" Rodney snapped at him. Strain cracked through his voice. "But no, that might be the best plan."
"What?"
"We'll just stay here. Not move. We'll keep each other from heading back that way and Ronon and Teyla will go after the power source."
"I do not think that we should leave you like this," Teyla said.
"What, do you think something's going to jump out and eat us while you're gone? There's nothing here. There's probably something back there. And it's going to be stronger by the door. I don't . . . " Rodney's breath caught. "I don't want to go back there."
For a moment, no one said anything, and John concentrated on counting the scuffs on Ronon's boots.
"If we disconnect this power source, will the compulsion be ended?" Teyla asked, her voice absolutely calm.
"I don't know." Rodney sounded miserable. "It's likely. It's the best chance we have. If it doesn't work we'll . . . think of something else."
Ronon stood up from his crouch. "How will we disconnect the power source when we find it?"
Rodney gave a sigh of relief. "I should be able to coach you through the radio, if it's not obvious."
"All right then. Don't move." And he took off running. After a moment, John heard Teyla follow him.
John pushed himself up on his elbows. His head felt heavy, but he held it up, and turned it to face Rodney. He stood rocking heel to toe, anxiously looking after Teyla and Ronon. His hand, flat on the wall, was pressed so tightly against it John could see the tendons twitching.
"Easy, Rodney. You heard the man."
Rodney made a sound, a little too hysterical to be called a laugh. "You don't get to talk," he said. "You're the one that collapsed like one of Kavanagh's theories. Just, poof, flat on the floor."
"Poof?"
"Yes, Sheppard, poof!" Rodney snarled at him. "You looked ridiculous."
"I did not."
"How would youknow?"
* * * *
Time crawled. John soon found it impossible to stay seated on the floor, and got to his feet, pacing back and forth across the width of the corridor. He could feel Rodney following him with sharp eyes, watching for the slightest drift back towards the maze. On his part, he checked Rodney's position at every turn.
His steps got faster, more erratic. It felt like there was a hook pulling at his gut, drawing tighter and tighter.
"Hurry up," he muttered, and paced. He thought he could see the light from the maze rising like a pale fog, down at the far end of the corridor.
"John," he heard, and again, "John!" Rodney sounded desperate, and John realized he'd been calling for awhile now. He looked up, and met his eyes.
"I'm sorry," Rodney said. "I can't . . . I think maybe I sent them both away so I could do this." And he turned around and started walking.
"Rodney!" Instinctively, John leaped after him.
"Well, that was a stupid thing to do!" Rodney yelled at him.
"I know!" he answered. They both walked on, leaving their packs behind them.
In a moment, they were running.
He tried, so hard, to slow down. To keep pace with Rodney, at the very least. And for a while, it worked. But not for a very long while.
And then he was glad, for outpacing his friend. Maybe, if he was lucky, he'd spring whatever trap lay in wait for them, and Rodney wouldn't be affected.
Maybe, if he was lucky.
* * * *
Finally, John reached the hidden door, and could see the maze again. The glowing lines seemed brighter now, and that strange feeling of familiarity more insistent. He slowed his step, but couldn't stop it, and deliberately set his foot down at the beginning of the maze.
The light surged upwards, into walls higher than his head. They seemed solid, the same pale metal as the exterior walls, but these walls he really could run his fingers through. They tingled, and the muscles in his arm twitched, like a current was coursing through them.
He walked the maze. Each step felt like a mile, each breath a trial, his mouth and throat as dry as the plains outside. The light grew brighter, and brighter. He thought once of the tinted glasses, now tangled helplessly in his hair, but couldn't make himself reach for them. He thought, briefly, that they probably wouldn't do him any good this time, anyway.
And then, between one step and the next, while his boot was in the air, the walls of light blinked out. He wavered, unbalanced, and set his foot down blind. Into nothing.
He fell, not even shouting, into the nothing at the heart of the maze. His own heart, throwing itself frantically against his ribs, made the only sound he heard.
For hours, for years, he fell. And when he landed, there was light. Not the blinding glare of the triple suns, or the all encompassing glow of the alien metal, but the cool shine of stars. He stood on the plain, under the massive bulk of a rock twisted by the wind into the shape of a dancer, coiled and fluid. In front of him, the alien towers massed black against the silver spread of the planet's rings in the night sky.
Far behind him, across the rock strewn plain (the half-buried bones of a dead world), something called. Not quite a howl, nor the coughing roar of a hunting cat. A call, intelligent, fitted to the mad angles of the alien towers. The voice of their builders.
John tried to turn around, to look back. But dread dragged at his joints and held him stiff, hiding on that stark plain that hid nothing at all.
There was something there, something so much bigger, and so much older than he was. Desperately, he tried to marshal a response - anything other than the bone deep instinct to freeze into insignificance, like a rabbit when the eagle's shadow wings over it.
And then the stars over the dancing rock were hidden behind the silhouette of something tall, and thin, and not human, not even bipedal, not like anything he'd ever encountered, not ever. It crouched on the rock and he could feel it watching him, its regard as heavy as the stone itself, and as implacable.
There was a voice, talking to him. Not in words, in nothing like words. A voice, and John felt his ears bleed and his heart labor to hear it. He thought, perhaps only as a desperate bid for comprehension, that he heard concepts of trespass, and scorn. He thought he babbled an answer, an apology, in words that felt tiny, too small, too young to make themselves heard.
He thought he screamed.
Abruptly, the night skies were bleeding into light, crazed lines that faded and flickered at eye level.
He lay again on the floor, curled in on himself like he'd been hit in the gut, sucking in air like he'd been suffocating. Gradually, achingly, he became aware that he was lying in the heart of the maze, and that the maze was breaking down. A sticky warmth spread slowly down his face, and he reached up, with an arm that felt like it should shatter, to find blood running from his ears.
He heard, as though he were under water, Teyla's voice, frantic, over his radio. And, at the disorienting echo, he realized he could hear Rodney's radio as well, and that he could feel him, curled at his back, not moving.
He thought he heard Ronon's blaster behind Teyla's voice, as the last of the light flickered out.
* * * *
He came awake slowly. His head felt like someone had opened it up and tossed in a grenade. His heartbeat tripped on itself, a fluttery, frightening feeling, which only worsened when he opened his eyes and saw stars, and the serene arc of the rings in the sky. There was the taste of blood in his mouth.
But there was no vast presence behind him. No overwhelming voice drumming in his head. There was just Teyla, warm and quiet at his side, and Rodney, talking. His voice was hoarse, rasping painfully, but he was terribly glad to hear it.
"You shot it?" he was asking, in what John suspected was meant to be an accusing tone. It failed miserably, landing on tired instead.
"You weren't answering the radio, and we couldn't figure out how to disconnect it. So I shot it."
"You shot it. You know you could have killed us all, don't you?"
"Didn't though. It worked."
"I guess it did," Rodney tone went vague, and John wanted to turn and look over, make sure he was really all right, but his bones felt heavy as stone. He couldn't manage more than a faint sound of distress.
"John," Teyla said, hearing it. "We are all all right. Rodney is recovering somewhat faster than you are, but you, too, will be fine. We are waiting here for another hour or so, until Atlantis makes her scheduled radio check. We will have Dr. Keller come with a jumper, and a medical team, to make sure."
"He's awake?" Ronon asked. "McKay's just drifted out again."
"Yes," she said. "He's awake."
Ronon grunted, and sat down between them. "McKay says he doesn't know what that place was supposed to be, exactly, but that the Ancients came exploring where they weren't welcome, and something set it up so they wouldn't ever come back. Guess you two were enough to set things off. Good thing not all of us are the closest things to Ancients around."
John took a deep, painful breath. "Yeah," he said, not shocked at how rough his own voice sounded. "Sounds about right."
On the horizon, opposite the rising rings, there was a lighter stripe of sky - all that was left of the end of the day. John watched it fade, until the jumper came over the rise.
fin