TEAM WORK: trick or treat, "absit omen (the We Gotta Get Out Of This Place edit)"
Title: absit omen (the We Gotta Get Out Of This Place edit)
Author: mirasol
Team: Work
Prompt: trick or treat
Pairing(s): McKay/Sheppard
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: (highlight to reveal) contains insects
Summary: “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” ought to be carved in letters thirty foot high on the outside of all the temples, cloisters, caves, mazes and markets that the Team visit.
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Prompt and Team (Genre) information in the header above.
More details about the voting procedure can be found here.
**
“Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” ought to be carved in letters thirty foot high on the outside of all the temples, cloisters, caves, mazes and markets that John and his team visit.
The briefing had been quick and succinct: no bad guys, no continents blowing up either, just a simple, everyday make friendly mission. Woolsey ought to have remembered there wasn’t any such thing as simple and everyday in the Pegasus galaxy.
oOo
Kagen was a short, thin man, dressed plainly, much like the other monks they’d seen in the cloister. So far the welcoming ceremony had been just the other side of tedious and John was seeing Rodney get increasingly restless. John wasn’t surprised. Lately life had slipped into a fairly predictable pattern and John himself was itching for something to happen.
As Kagen droned on John let his mind drift. They were getting ready for Halloween back in Atlantis: streamers, plastic pumpkins, fake cobwebs, cardboard skeletons. No bugs, though, which was something Rodney and Lorne had instigated and John highly approved. Tomorrow was a Monster Monster Movie Marathon with everything from King Kong to Thirteen Ghosts. John had gorged himself on horror DVDs in readiness - but he still wasn’t watching the one with the parasitic alien butt worm.
John had a half-full box of candy sat in his quarters waiting for the Athosian kids to come Trick or Treating - and more than a few adults as well. The box was half-full because Rodney kept dipping in; John had a sneaking suspicion that most of the candy was going straight into a matching box in Rodney’s quarters. Not that John wasn’t aware of exactly what Rodney would do for a bag of M&Ms.
“If you would kindly…” Kagen brushed his hand over a marking carved into one of the pillars and indicated that the others should do the same. Sure, thought John, touch the wall, make nice for another hour, say goodbye and get back to Atlantis. He was certain he still had a bag of M&Ms in the box….
John reached for the marking but, impatient as ever, Rodney’s fingers got there first. One second Rodney and John were standing by the pillar and the next, they weren’t. No flash, no explosion, just a soft murmur and empty space where Rodney and John had stood.
“What’s happened? What’ve you done with them?” Ronon reached for his gun but Teyla put her hand on his arm firmly, making him pause.
“We have done nothing.” Kagen backed away from Ronon and Teyla. “This has never happened before! It’s… it’s just a simple ceremony. You saw me do it before the Doctor and the Colonel. Look.”
Kagen reached out and brushed his fingers across the marking on the pillar once again, snatching them back far quicker this time around.
Teyla let go of Ronon’s arm and spoke. The coldness in her voice would have frozen boiling water. “Your simple ceremony has made two of our friends disappear. Where are they?”
“I… the lorekeepers have always told that this is the way to the Great Hall. Possibly they are there?” Kagen pushed a door open and began to lead them through the temple. As they passed through the pools of soft light they could hear voices chanting faintly inside.
“Please? If you could?” Kagen had stopped at a heavy, huge door; he looked at Ronon who nodded and set his shoulder to the door, pushing.
Kagen pointed upwards as the door slowly opened. “That is the Great Hall. Could your friends be there?”
Teyla looked up and her heart sank. On the road here they had all seen the structure perched up above, looking as if it had grown straight out of the mountainside. The high walls were pale, the colour of sun-bleached bones and she had thought it looked like a tremendous bird of prey waiting to swoop down on the unsuspecting below. John had called it Castle Dracula and, as usual, looked overly pleased at his joke. Rodney answered that at the first sign of bats he was so out of there.
If John and Rodney had been somehow transported to this Great Hall then Teyla feared they would have to come up with their own escape plan. The mountain face below the structure was a sheer drop straight down to the plain beneath.
Kagen’s next words chilled her. “There is no path to reach the Great Hall. No living creature abides there now.”
oOo
John’s fingers briefly touched the back of Rodney’s and then went through him - through him - to the marking carved into the pillar. That was when it all went to hell. One moment he was standing next to Rodney, thinking about anything other than this boring diplomatic “touch the magic doo-hickey” mission; the next, he was here. Wherever the hell here was.
“Okay. McKay, where are we?”
John stared into the darkness, waiting for an answer that didn’t come.
“McKay.” This wasn’t looking promising at all. “Ronon. Teyla.”
The darkness still didn’t answer.
“Fine. McKay, where are you?” By now John had found his flashlight and shone it around the room. The beam picked out dull walls, a doorway and what looked like workbenches from the labs back home in Atlantis, with bits and pieces of this and that spread across their surfaces. He could easily recognize crystals, screens and lots of buttons set into a panel amongst the detritus.
“Rodney, this is your last chance.” John moved to look closer at the panel. Part of it looked chipped off, but it didn’t seem like it would blow up. Not too much anyway. “You don’t want me to touch these buttons, you answer me, you hear?”
His radio stayed silent and John cursed softly. He wouldn’t let himself think too deeply about that and told himself that Rodney was just out of radio contact because he was too busy exploring and discovering cool new gadgets.
“Here goes nothing.” John pushed the largest button on the panel, figuring it was the most likely on switch.
The lights in the room flickered and stayed on. John gave himself a mental high five and pushed another button at random.
“What are you doing?”
John spun around, one hand going for his gun. There was a man standing almost where John had first appeared in the room. He was tall, with gray hair that gleamed silver, and was dressed in the drab colours of the Ancients. The man took a step forward and flickered exactly like the lights had done a few seconds earlier.
‘Huh,’ thought John, ‘an Ancient hologram. Cool.’
John threw his hands up in front of himself. “Sorry, sorry. I’m John… I guess I kinda got turned around somewhere. I’m just looking for my friend, Rodney. Soon as I find him, we’ll be skedaddling on home.”
“Skedaddle?” The hologram frowned.
“Yup.” John nodded. “Like mosey.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“You got no idea how often I hear that. I just need to find where Rodney’s got himself to, that’s all.”
“I think I can help.” The hologram smiled at John. He waved a hand over the screen on the bench, bringing up a map showing three dots: two flashing green, one a steady pale yellow. John was impressed; this hologram was giving the wrinkly old Rodneyogram he’d met in the future a run for its money. Rodney was going to have a cow when he saw it.
“This is you.” The hologram pointed to one dot. “Which must make this-” a long finger, freckled with age spots, hovered over another dot “-your friend.”
John felt the knot in his stomach relax for a moment. Team was team, simple as that, but Rodney had become more - so very much more.
“You must find him quickly, before the Sleeper awakens.” The hologram added grimly and John felt his insides twist up again. Unfortunately, nothing called the Sleeper was going to turn out to be as harmless as cotton candy.
John stared at the screen and fixed the route in his mind. A few turns here and there and he’d soon find Rodney - just so long as his dumb as a bunch of planks genius didn’t decide to go wandering off.
“Thanks. Hey, you don’t wanna, you know, show me the way?” John looked over his shoulder and saw that he was now talking to empty air. “Yeah… I’ll take that as a no.” He unclipped his P-90 and walked out of the room.
Behind him, on the screen, the pale yellow dot started slowly blinking.
oOo
Damn. This wasn’t where he wanted to be.
John had sprinted down the hallways, following the twists and turns of the map in his mind. The lights had cut out a few minutes in and the flashlight only made the dim hallways look spookier. He was now seriously regretting mainlining Supernatural.
Now he was at a dead end.
In front of him the hallway was blocked by what looked to be half a mountain that had crashed through the roof. If the map on the screen had been accurate and if Rodney hadn’t moved too far away then he was likely only on the other side of the rockfall.
He’d tried the radios again but still couldn’t reach Rodney. Digging deep, John bellowed out “McKay!”
“John?” The answer was faint but it was there and John heart soared. For the first time in over an hour he truly knew that Rodney was near and that he was alive. He fought back the impulse to start throwing rocks around with his bare hands. He couldn’t tell how far the rockfall went and how sound the remaining roof was.
“I’m coming for you. Gotta go around these rocks. Don’t move from there.” John shouted, hoping that Rodney could hear him.
“’kay…” came drifting back through, along with zpm and lab. John smiled - trust Rodney to have fallen on his feet - and turned around, looking for a doorway.
oOo
Back in the room where John had started from, the yellow dot was now flashing and moving.
oOo
There hadn’t been anything on the screen about a hallway filled with bugs.
“Bugs. Why’d it have to be bugs?” John whispered and wished real hard for an enormous flamethrower or an equally huge can of Raid. True to his current run of luck nothing dropped out of the sky in front of him.
He took a deep breath, bent down and tucked the legs of his pants into his boots. “You better be so very, very grateful, Rodney. Han Solo never had to put up with this shit.”
Aiming the flashlight above him, John started to creep ahead. He tried to ignore the crunch-crunch of each step he took and the sound like crackling static of hundreds of tiny legs scurrying away beneath him. He wet his dry lips, dread gently roiling his stomach.
A minute or so along the hallway, his foot slipped and he started to fall.
“Fuckfuckfuck.” John clamped his eyes tight shut, tried to roll and shoved his hands out to stop him falling face first into the heaving dark mass below him.
He hit the floor with a thud, knocking the air from his lungs. Winded, John put his hands on the floor to push himself up and felt something scurry over his hand. His stomach churned and he felt bile rise in his throat.
Swallowing it down, John stood and instantly brushed himself off, refusing to give in to the shivers that threatened to wrack his body. He switched his flashlight back on only to see that the beam revealed a figure standing at the end of the hallway. The hairs on the back of John’s neck rose as the dark figure moved closer in the dim hallway.
“Come.” John let out the breath he didn’t know that he’d been holding. The figure was the silver haired hologram he’d encountered earlier.
“Come.” The hologram repeated. “Your friend is in mortal danger. The Sleeper is awake.”
oOo
John had followed the hologram through the bug-infested hallway and a set of dark and musty smelling rooms. The hologram pointed at a door held fast by a metal pole and vanished as John pulled the pole away.
The door swung open silently and John went through. The room looked tidy and organized unlike the cluttered lab where John had appeared, even though there seemed to be just as much, if not more, equipment in this lab. One wall had disappeared, replaced with the other side of the rockfall. Sunlight fell down from high windows, illuminating Rodney who was completely engrossed by the papers in front of him.
John crept up behind him and covered Rodney’s eyes with his hands; growling “guess who?” and laughing as Rodney started with a yelp.
“Jesus, John. You scared the crap out of me.” Rodney turned, punched him on the shoulder and then caught him up in a fierce one-armed hug.
“Why, Doctor McKay, is that a ZPM in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?” John drawled.
“Idiot. Why wouldn’t I be pleased to see the handsome guy with the plan and the big gun? Where is Ronon, anyway? Ow!” Rodney rubbed the spot on the back of his head where he’d just been slapped, giving John the patented McKay bitch-eyes of death in return.
“Behave and I might just kiss it better.”
“You can kiss my ass better.” Rodney muttered darkly.
“Been there, done that… Might be I’m going to do it again soon.” John was pleased to see how Rodney’s cheeks briefly flushed pink. Nothing derailed Rodney quicker than sex or the promise of sex. Rodney swallowed nervously and stepped back.
“But, yes. ZPM in my pocket! Or, you know, hand. You can’t fit something that big into these pockets.” Rodney beamed and lifted a ZPM up to show John. “I can’t tell how depleted it is yet. These papers are interesting too. There’s a lot on Wraith physiology. Carson’s going to pitch a fit.”
“Wraith?” The day was just getting better. At least now John had a good idea who, or what, the Sleeper was. This had clearly been an Ancient facility of some kind and wherever you found Ancients, you found trouble.
“Hmmm? Yes.” Rodney answered, distracted by the papers he was gathering together.
“I think there might still be an experiment hanging around here somewhere.”
“Huh? Oh. That’s not good. That’s very not good.” The papers fluttered forgotten back onto the bench. “Soooo… plan?”
“The plan is running. And a lot of not dying.”
Rodney snorted. “That’s more a philosophy of life than a plan. Don’t worry, it’s a plan I can get behind. Lay on, MacDuff.” He glanced over John’s shoulder and his eyes widened. “Oh, shit.”
John spun round. If he was a gambling man, he knew he wouldn’t like the odds on guessing what he was going to see. “Guess you gotta be the Sleeper. Think I prefer Scott. What d’you think, Rodney? Look like a Scott to you?”
“What I am is hungry.” The Wraith advanced on them, his terrible face contorted. “And you’re going to feed me.”
Before John knew what was happening, Rodney - his face deathly pale- shot once, twice, emptying his gun but still the Wraith came, a dreadful need making it ignore the bullets.
John launched himself at the Wraith, knocking it against the wall and down to the floor. He hit the Wraith’s head hard against the wall and it let out a hideous sound. Somehow the Wraith freed a hand and grabbed John’s wrist, bending it back. John jerked back instinctually as pain lanced up his arm and he lost his grip on the desperate creature.
The Wraith threw him back and got to its feet as John scrambled away from those deadly outstretched hands. Rodney pulled him up, his fingers digging into John’s arm. All that was left was for them to empty their weapons into this unstoppable thing and hope that they would be the ones left standing.
As one, John and Rodney aimed their guns. The Wraith leant against the wall, triumph writ clean across its face.
“First you will die,” the Wraith sneered, “and then I-”
Suddenly, the wall - and the Wraith - disappeared in a blast of noise. John shook his head to try to clear the ringing in his ears from the unexpected explosion. He grabbed at Rodney who looked as shocked as he felt.
“Are you okay?” John mouthed, frowning until Rodney gave him a thumbs up. John framed Rodney’s face with his hands and dropped a quick, dry kiss on his lips, relief making him reckless.
He dropped his hands, brushing his thumb across the inside of Rodney’s wrist. “Later…” he mouthed, gratified by Rodney’s answering shiver.
The smoke and dust cleared slightly and through the huge hole in the wall John could see the rear of a Jumper hovering outside. Damn, but he really loved his team sometimes.
“Thought you could use a ride.” Ronon and Teyla stood on the ramp with their hands outstretched. John flashed a quick grin, grabbed on to Ronon’s hand and jumped across.
“Good timing, guys.” John dropped down to the bench and watched as Rodney stowed the ZPM carefully. “Hey, McKay, did you see the hologram as well? He was kinda neat…showed me where to find you.”
“What hologram?”
“I must have activated it when I powered up the lights. Tall, gray hair, real old. You’ve got to check it out - I think it’s got some kind of interactive A.I. Like I say, it took me to the lab you were in. Disappeared just outside the door.”
“Ronon, can you pass me the medkit please? Did you bang your head?” Rodney’s fingers carded through John’s hair, checking for bumps. “All systems went off-line soon as I pulled the ZPM. There couldn’t have been a hologram outside the door.”
**
Poll
Author: mirasol
Team: Work
Prompt: trick or treat
Pairing(s): McKay/Sheppard
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: (highlight to reveal) contains insects
Summary: “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” ought to be carved in letters thirty foot high on the outside of all the temples, cloisters, caves, mazes and markets that the Team visit.
Once you've read the story, please take a moment to vote in the poll below. Ratings go from 1 (low) to 9 (high), so all you need to do is enter a single number in that range into each text entry box. You'll be able to see the Prompt and Team (Genre) information in the header above.
More details about the voting procedure can be found here.
**
“Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here” ought to be carved in letters thirty foot high on the outside of all the temples, cloisters, caves, mazes and markets that John and his team visit.
The briefing had been quick and succinct: no bad guys, no continents blowing up either, just a simple, everyday make friendly mission. Woolsey ought to have remembered there wasn’t any such thing as simple and everyday in the Pegasus galaxy.
oOo
Kagen was a short, thin man, dressed plainly, much like the other monks they’d seen in the cloister. So far the welcoming ceremony had been just the other side of tedious and John was seeing Rodney get increasingly restless. John wasn’t surprised. Lately life had slipped into a fairly predictable pattern and John himself was itching for something to happen.
As Kagen droned on John let his mind drift. They were getting ready for Halloween back in Atlantis: streamers, plastic pumpkins, fake cobwebs, cardboard skeletons. No bugs, though, which was something Rodney and Lorne had instigated and John highly approved. Tomorrow was a Monster Monster Movie Marathon with everything from King Kong to Thirteen Ghosts. John had gorged himself on horror DVDs in readiness - but he still wasn’t watching the one with the parasitic alien butt worm.
John had a half-full box of candy sat in his quarters waiting for the Athosian kids to come Trick or Treating - and more than a few adults as well. The box was half-full because Rodney kept dipping in; John had a sneaking suspicion that most of the candy was going straight into a matching box in Rodney’s quarters. Not that John wasn’t aware of exactly what Rodney would do for a bag of M&Ms.
“If you would kindly…” Kagen brushed his hand over a marking carved into one of the pillars and indicated that the others should do the same. Sure, thought John, touch the wall, make nice for another hour, say goodbye and get back to Atlantis. He was certain he still had a bag of M&Ms in the box….
John reached for the marking but, impatient as ever, Rodney’s fingers got there first. One second Rodney and John were standing by the pillar and the next, they weren’t. No flash, no explosion, just a soft murmur and empty space where Rodney and John had stood.
“What’s happened? What’ve you done with them?” Ronon reached for his gun but Teyla put her hand on his arm firmly, making him pause.
“We have done nothing.” Kagen backed away from Ronon and Teyla. “This has never happened before! It’s… it’s just a simple ceremony. You saw me do it before the Doctor and the Colonel. Look.”
Kagen reached out and brushed his fingers across the marking on the pillar once again, snatching them back far quicker this time around.
Teyla let go of Ronon’s arm and spoke. The coldness in her voice would have frozen boiling water. “Your simple ceremony has made two of our friends disappear. Where are they?”
“I… the lorekeepers have always told that this is the way to the Great Hall. Possibly they are there?” Kagen pushed a door open and began to lead them through the temple. As they passed through the pools of soft light they could hear voices chanting faintly inside.
“Please? If you could?” Kagen had stopped at a heavy, huge door; he looked at Ronon who nodded and set his shoulder to the door, pushing.
Kagen pointed upwards as the door slowly opened. “That is the Great Hall. Could your friends be there?”
Teyla looked up and her heart sank. On the road here they had all seen the structure perched up above, looking as if it had grown straight out of the mountainside. The high walls were pale, the colour of sun-bleached bones and she had thought it looked like a tremendous bird of prey waiting to swoop down on the unsuspecting below. John had called it Castle Dracula and, as usual, looked overly pleased at his joke. Rodney answered that at the first sign of bats he was so out of there.
If John and Rodney had been somehow transported to this Great Hall then Teyla feared they would have to come up with their own escape plan. The mountain face below the structure was a sheer drop straight down to the plain beneath.
Kagen’s next words chilled her. “There is no path to reach the Great Hall. No living creature abides there now.”
oOo
John’s fingers briefly touched the back of Rodney’s and then went through him - through him - to the marking carved into the pillar. That was when it all went to hell. One moment he was standing next to Rodney, thinking about anything other than this boring diplomatic “touch the magic doo-hickey” mission; the next, he was here. Wherever the hell here was.
“Okay. McKay, where are we?”
John stared into the darkness, waiting for an answer that didn’t come.
“McKay.” This wasn’t looking promising at all. “Ronon. Teyla.”
The darkness still didn’t answer.
“Fine. McKay, where are you?” By now John had found his flashlight and shone it around the room. The beam picked out dull walls, a doorway and what looked like workbenches from the labs back home in Atlantis, with bits and pieces of this and that spread across their surfaces. He could easily recognize crystals, screens and lots of buttons set into a panel amongst the detritus.
“Rodney, this is your last chance.” John moved to look closer at the panel. Part of it looked chipped off, but it didn’t seem like it would blow up. Not too much anyway. “You don’t want me to touch these buttons, you answer me, you hear?”
His radio stayed silent and John cursed softly. He wouldn’t let himself think too deeply about that and told himself that Rodney was just out of radio contact because he was too busy exploring and discovering cool new gadgets.
“Here goes nothing.” John pushed the largest button on the panel, figuring it was the most likely on switch.
The lights in the room flickered and stayed on. John gave himself a mental high five and pushed another button at random.
“What are you doing?”
John spun around, one hand going for his gun. There was a man standing almost where John had first appeared in the room. He was tall, with gray hair that gleamed silver, and was dressed in the drab colours of the Ancients. The man took a step forward and flickered exactly like the lights had done a few seconds earlier.
‘Huh,’ thought John, ‘an Ancient hologram. Cool.’
John threw his hands up in front of himself. “Sorry, sorry. I’m John… I guess I kinda got turned around somewhere. I’m just looking for my friend, Rodney. Soon as I find him, we’ll be skedaddling on home.”
“Skedaddle?” The hologram frowned.
“Yup.” John nodded. “Like mosey.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“You got no idea how often I hear that. I just need to find where Rodney’s got himself to, that’s all.”
“I think I can help.” The hologram smiled at John. He waved a hand over the screen on the bench, bringing up a map showing three dots: two flashing green, one a steady pale yellow. John was impressed; this hologram was giving the wrinkly old Rodneyogram he’d met in the future a run for its money. Rodney was going to have a cow when he saw it.
“This is you.” The hologram pointed to one dot. “Which must make this-” a long finger, freckled with age spots, hovered over another dot “-your friend.”
John felt the knot in his stomach relax for a moment. Team was team, simple as that, but Rodney had become more - so very much more.
“You must find him quickly, before the Sleeper awakens.” The hologram added grimly and John felt his insides twist up again. Unfortunately, nothing called the Sleeper was going to turn out to be as harmless as cotton candy.
John stared at the screen and fixed the route in his mind. A few turns here and there and he’d soon find Rodney - just so long as his dumb as a bunch of planks genius didn’t decide to go wandering off.
“Thanks. Hey, you don’t wanna, you know, show me the way?” John looked over his shoulder and saw that he was now talking to empty air. “Yeah… I’ll take that as a no.” He unclipped his P-90 and walked out of the room.
Behind him, on the screen, the pale yellow dot started slowly blinking.
oOo
Damn. This wasn’t where he wanted to be.
John had sprinted down the hallways, following the twists and turns of the map in his mind. The lights had cut out a few minutes in and the flashlight only made the dim hallways look spookier. He was now seriously regretting mainlining Supernatural.
Now he was at a dead end.
In front of him the hallway was blocked by what looked to be half a mountain that had crashed through the roof. If the map on the screen had been accurate and if Rodney hadn’t moved too far away then he was likely only on the other side of the rockfall.
He’d tried the radios again but still couldn’t reach Rodney. Digging deep, John bellowed out “McKay!”
“John?” The answer was faint but it was there and John heart soared. For the first time in over an hour he truly knew that Rodney was near and that he was alive. He fought back the impulse to start throwing rocks around with his bare hands. He couldn’t tell how far the rockfall went and how sound the remaining roof was.
“I’m coming for you. Gotta go around these rocks. Don’t move from there.” John shouted, hoping that Rodney could hear him.
“’kay…” came drifting back through, along with zpm and lab. John smiled - trust Rodney to have fallen on his feet - and turned around, looking for a doorway.
oOo
Back in the room where John had started from, the yellow dot was now flashing and moving.
oOo
There hadn’t been anything on the screen about a hallway filled with bugs.
“Bugs. Why’d it have to be bugs?” John whispered and wished real hard for an enormous flamethrower or an equally huge can of Raid. True to his current run of luck nothing dropped out of the sky in front of him.
He took a deep breath, bent down and tucked the legs of his pants into his boots. “You better be so very, very grateful, Rodney. Han Solo never had to put up with this shit.”
Aiming the flashlight above him, John started to creep ahead. He tried to ignore the crunch-crunch of each step he took and the sound like crackling static of hundreds of tiny legs scurrying away beneath him. He wet his dry lips, dread gently roiling his stomach.
A minute or so along the hallway, his foot slipped and he started to fall.
“Fuckfuckfuck.” John clamped his eyes tight shut, tried to roll and shoved his hands out to stop him falling face first into the heaving dark mass below him.
He hit the floor with a thud, knocking the air from his lungs. Winded, John put his hands on the floor to push himself up and felt something scurry over his hand. His stomach churned and he felt bile rise in his throat.
Swallowing it down, John stood and instantly brushed himself off, refusing to give in to the shivers that threatened to wrack his body. He switched his flashlight back on only to see that the beam revealed a figure standing at the end of the hallway. The hairs on the back of John’s neck rose as the dark figure moved closer in the dim hallway.
“Come.” John let out the breath he didn’t know that he’d been holding. The figure was the silver haired hologram he’d encountered earlier.
“Come.” The hologram repeated. “Your friend is in mortal danger. The Sleeper is awake.”
oOo
John had followed the hologram through the bug-infested hallway and a set of dark and musty smelling rooms. The hologram pointed at a door held fast by a metal pole and vanished as John pulled the pole away.
The door swung open silently and John went through. The room looked tidy and organized unlike the cluttered lab where John had appeared, even though there seemed to be just as much, if not more, equipment in this lab. One wall had disappeared, replaced with the other side of the rockfall. Sunlight fell down from high windows, illuminating Rodney who was completely engrossed by the papers in front of him.
John crept up behind him and covered Rodney’s eyes with his hands; growling “guess who?” and laughing as Rodney started with a yelp.
“Jesus, John. You scared the crap out of me.” Rodney turned, punched him on the shoulder and then caught him up in a fierce one-armed hug.
“Why, Doctor McKay, is that a ZPM in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?” John drawled.
“Idiot. Why wouldn’t I be pleased to see the handsome guy with the plan and the big gun? Where is Ronon, anyway? Ow!” Rodney rubbed the spot on the back of his head where he’d just been slapped, giving John the patented McKay bitch-eyes of death in return.
“Behave and I might just kiss it better.”
“You can kiss my ass better.” Rodney muttered darkly.
“Been there, done that… Might be I’m going to do it again soon.” John was pleased to see how Rodney’s cheeks briefly flushed pink. Nothing derailed Rodney quicker than sex or the promise of sex. Rodney swallowed nervously and stepped back.
“But, yes. ZPM in my pocket! Or, you know, hand. You can’t fit something that big into these pockets.” Rodney beamed and lifted a ZPM up to show John. “I can’t tell how depleted it is yet. These papers are interesting too. There’s a lot on Wraith physiology. Carson’s going to pitch a fit.”
“Wraith?” The day was just getting better. At least now John had a good idea who, or what, the Sleeper was. This had clearly been an Ancient facility of some kind and wherever you found Ancients, you found trouble.
“Hmmm? Yes.” Rodney answered, distracted by the papers he was gathering together.
“I think there might still be an experiment hanging around here somewhere.”
“Huh? Oh. That’s not good. That’s very not good.” The papers fluttered forgotten back onto the bench. “Soooo… plan?”
“The plan is running. And a lot of not dying.”
Rodney snorted. “That’s more a philosophy of life than a plan. Don’t worry, it’s a plan I can get behind. Lay on, MacDuff.” He glanced over John’s shoulder and his eyes widened. “Oh, shit.”
John spun round. If he was a gambling man, he knew he wouldn’t like the odds on guessing what he was going to see. “Guess you gotta be the Sleeper. Think I prefer Scott. What d’you think, Rodney? Look like a Scott to you?”
“What I am is hungry.” The Wraith advanced on them, his terrible face contorted. “And you’re going to feed me.”
Before John knew what was happening, Rodney - his face deathly pale- shot once, twice, emptying his gun but still the Wraith came, a dreadful need making it ignore the bullets.
John launched himself at the Wraith, knocking it against the wall and down to the floor. He hit the Wraith’s head hard against the wall and it let out a hideous sound. Somehow the Wraith freed a hand and grabbed John’s wrist, bending it back. John jerked back instinctually as pain lanced up his arm and he lost his grip on the desperate creature.
The Wraith threw him back and got to its feet as John scrambled away from those deadly outstretched hands. Rodney pulled him up, his fingers digging into John’s arm. All that was left was for them to empty their weapons into this unstoppable thing and hope that they would be the ones left standing.
As one, John and Rodney aimed their guns. The Wraith leant against the wall, triumph writ clean across its face.
“First you will die,” the Wraith sneered, “and then I-”
Suddenly, the wall - and the Wraith - disappeared in a blast of noise. John shook his head to try to clear the ringing in his ears from the unexpected explosion. He grabbed at Rodney who looked as shocked as he felt.
“Are you okay?” John mouthed, frowning until Rodney gave him a thumbs up. John framed Rodney’s face with his hands and dropped a quick, dry kiss on his lips, relief making him reckless.
He dropped his hands, brushing his thumb across the inside of Rodney’s wrist. “Later…” he mouthed, gratified by Rodney’s answering shiver.
The smoke and dust cleared slightly and through the huge hole in the wall John could see the rear of a Jumper hovering outside. Damn, but he really loved his team sometimes.
“Thought you could use a ride.” Ronon and Teyla stood on the ramp with their hands outstretched. John flashed a quick grin, grabbed on to Ronon’s hand and jumped across.
“Good timing, guys.” John dropped down to the bench and watched as Rodney stowed the ZPM carefully. “Hey, McKay, did you see the hologram as well? He was kinda neat…showed me where to find you.”
“What hologram?”
“I must have activated it when I powered up the lights. Tall, gray hair, real old. You’ve got to check it out - I think it’s got some kind of interactive A.I. Like I say, it took me to the lab you were in. Disappeared just outside the door.”
“Ronon, can you pass me the medkit please? Did you bang your head?” Rodney’s fingers carded through John’s hair, checking for bumps. “All systems went off-line soon as I pulled the ZPM. There couldn’t have been a hologram outside the door.”
**
Poll