Outside the Wall (1/2)
Title: Outside the Wall
Recipient: sgafan
Rating: PG-13/Gen
Word count: 15,400
Warnings: Nothing really. Some violence, brief language, no spoilers
Summary: An encounter with alien technology brings Sheppard’s fight for survival to a whole different level.
A/N: Huge thank you to my beta, everybetty!
Part 1
The first time John stepped through a Stargate, he remembered his stomach flipping and twisting in on itself in fear while adrenaline-induced euphoria pumped through his veins, the exact moment his skin hit the event horizon and began pulling him molecule by molecule to another galaxy, the rush of stepping onto an alien world. The second time had felt the same, and he’d stared at not-quite earthly trees under unfamiliar constellations thinking the air he was breathing was alien air, the mud in his boots alien mud. The training and protocols he’d had to learn between sitting in the chair in Antarctica and stepping through the gate with the rest of the expedition were all for missions to alien planets in a distant freakin’ galaxy.
It was sad, really, when alien became…routine. The 164th time-or thereabouts-that John stepped through the stargate stimulated no reaction whatsoever. No adrenaline, no rush, no thrill of discovery. It was just another planet in a galaxy full of planets, with grass, trees, oxygen-
“Whoa,” he breathed out, emerging from the stargate. He stutter-stepped, almost forgetting to keep moving out of the way.
“-was saying that if I don’t get back…for…uh…” Rodney emerged from the wormhole behind him with a soft plop, his voice trailing off as he walked up to John’s side. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” John agreed.
“I mean, this is really…”
“I know.”
Ronon had arrived ahead of them and stood a couple of dozen feet away, staring across a softly rippling lake to rushing waterfalls on the far side. John and Rodney stepped forward simultaneously, taking in their surroundings. Behind them, Teyla emerged, and John smiled at her sharp intake of breath as she saw this world for the first time.
Some worlds looked like Earth, so much so that the Marines had taken to naming them after states and countries they’d lived in or visited. Other worlds were blatantly, surreally alien. A lot of worlds made John feel like he’d traveled back in time, and there were plenty that looked hilariously cartoonish and scarier than any movie anyone had ever dreamed up.
This world was simply breathtaking.
“Nice view,” John breathed out. Waterfalls rose at least a hundred feet above them, strings of cascading white water that tumbled in twists and turns down the uneven cliff face. The gate sat in a small clearing facing the lake and waterfall, surrounded by steep hills and thick trees.
“The MALP footage really didn’t do this place justice,” Rodney said, digging into his vest. “I’m going to go with autumn as the current season.”
“Maybe the trees are always yellow,” Ronon piped up.
“And orange, and purple, and red,” John added. “Really, really red. Lorne would kill to see this.”
“Major Lorne?” Teyla asked.
John nodded his head, waving at a tree the color of fire. “The colors. He would dig the colors.”
Rodney pulled out his life-signs detector and tapped the side. “The ruins are supposed to be…hey, whoa.”
The change in tone squashed John’s sense of wonder, and he felt a familiar tension ripple across his back. “What?”
“Life signs, about half a klick that way,” he said, waving toward a path that followed the edge of the lake and disappeared around a steep curve.
“Alright, folks. Let’s get our game faces on.” John rolled his neck, working some of the tightness in his muscles out, and gripped his P90. Ronon took lead, striding forward and sweeping his head from side to side. Teyla dropped behind them, and John kept pace with Rodney in the middle.
“I thought this place was uninhabited,” he said, tearing his gaze away from the lake and shooting a frown at Rodney.
“It is! Or, was. There’s only about a dozen people, though, so maybe they’re just intergalactic explorers like ourselves.”
“Or Wraith,” Ronon offered.
John jerked and turned toward Teyla, but she was already shaking her head.
“I sense no Wraith here.”
The sound of the waterfalls died down as they left the lake’s edge and plunged deeper into the woods. The colors were almost overwhelming, made even more brilliant by late morning sunlight streaming through the canopy of leaves overhead. The dirt path they were on grew hard, shifting to worn but solid stone, and the first of the ruins appeared ahead of them-a crumbling wall made of black granite blocks.
“We know much about this place?” John asked, eyeing the remains of the wall. They kept moving, weaving their way around the side of the hill. They were at a higher level of elevation than John realized as they passed a break in the trees and he caught a glimpse of a distant rock cliff jutting up out of a painter’s pallet of trees across a sloping valley below him.
“Not much at all. There was no mention of a civilization on this world in the Ancient database, so the archeologists are tentatively assuming it developed sometime after they left Pegasus. Based on Stackhouse’s preliminary scan when they discovered this place, the design and layout don’t bear much resemblance to anything Ancient , so-”
“Sshhh!” Ronon hissed.
Rodney snapped his jaw shut and held his scanner up. Ronon had stopped at another short stone wall and was peering over the edge. John crept toward him, glancing over the wall before ducking down, out of sight. He caught a glimpse of an open clearing below them holding three wagons and a couple of large campfires.
“They look more like Old West pioneers than intergalactic explorers,” he whispered as Rodney and Teyla caught up to them.
“How are we playing this?” Ronon asked.
John paused, considering, then shrugged. “The usual-we keep quiet until we hit the edge of the clearing, then yell out to them while we’re still within the treeline. If they’re friendly, we join them for tinfoil dinners. If they’re not, we have the trees for cover and the gate at our backs.”
He heard grunts and murmurs of agreement from the others as they moved back onto the trail, and he led them along the path that took them downhill and away from the clearing before hitting a fast-moving river. The stone trail followed the river, sometimes swinging out toward the middle of the water then turning back to shore, sometimes crossing over it completely. At one point, it split, and they veered to the right, relying on Ronon’s keen sense of direction.
The temperature was crisp and cool, prickling the skin of John’s neck and face, and he was glad he’d worn the long sleeve shirt and jacket. He breathed in deeply, filling his lungs with the fresh air. It smelled of moisture and old leaves and brought back a slew of memories from childhood, running through the woods after school with Dave and making the most of the dwindling amounts of sunlight and warmth as they got closer to winter. Definitely autumn here.
Their concerns about unfriendly intergalactic explorers proved to be unfounded. For once, Rodney had hissed as they made their way to the camp. A dozen people greeted them ranging in age from infant to middle-aged. They were traders, scouring no-longer-inhabited worlds for relics and artifacts that they could sell at some of the larger Pegasus markets. Three of the men served John and his team a sweet, hot tea while the women-Wives? John wondered-kept younger children out of sight if not completely out of ear shot.
After several minutes of polite conversation, John stood, signaling to the rest of the team that it was time to go. The traders seemed nice enough but they weren’t the friendliest bunch, barely smiling and watching John and his team closely. It wasn’t alarming, exactly, but he was getting a paranoid vibe off these people.
Or he was just being paranoid.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” he said, facing the leader of the family of traders, Reshtiv. “We should be going.”
“We appreciate you introducing yourselves. You never know who you will encounter on worlds such as these,” Reshtiv answered. He was as tall as John, though broader through the shoulders. He was a big man and obviously well fed if his gut was anything to go by, but his movements were quick and graceful. His short hair was closer to gray than brown, and he was also clearly strong, moving like an athlete-not someone John wanted to underestimate.
A big hefty man collected their cups, giving each team member a quick nod. As they took a step back from the campfire, a woman ran up to Reshtiv, tugging on his arm and pulling him away from the group. John eyed them carefully, watching the woman’s frantic hand motions. Reshtiv’s face lost all expression, and John felt his stomach tighten in sudden apprehension. He sensed his team spreading out behind him and covering their path back to the trees and the gate.
“Is everything alright?” he called out, when Reshtiv turned back to him.
“I apologize,” the family leader said. “My youngest daughter has wandered off. She is…independent and tends to run off on her own despite the number of times my wife and I have forbidden her from doing so.”
“Can we help?” Teyla asked, stepping forward, and John nodded in agreement.
“I don’t know,” Reshtiv started, but his wife stepped forward, gripping his arm and cutting him off.
“Please, Resh.” She turned to John and his team, looking panicked. “She has barely passed her ninth cycle, still too young to be alone on a strange world.”
Reshtiv sighed, giving his wife a quick, reassuring hug. “If it would not pull you too much from your duties, we would appreciate any aid you could provide.”
“Happy to help,” John answered. He heard a stifled sigh from Rodney behind him and plastered a smile on his face. “Where should we start?”
They split into four teams, one Atlantean with one trader. John wasn’t thrilled with the setup, but the argument was that the missing girl might run from John or his teammates if they weren’t with anyone she recognized, and four teams allowed them to cover more territory. Ronon could handle himself, as could Teyla. It was Rodney that he didn’t like leaving alone, especially with the stocky, tea-serving brute Reshtiv had paired up with him.
Reshtiv himself had joined John, and together they’d headed away from the gate, across the clearing and into the trees. They eventually hit a path and began following it, hoping the girl would think to do the same thing. John walked behind the trade leader, holding the LSD close to his chest. In the last hour, the other search teams had disappeared off the screen’s grid, heading in different directions, and John and Reshtiv were the only two blips showing.
“What is that?”
John jerked up in surprise, finding Reshtiv staring intently at the scanner in his hand. “Scanner…thing,” he answered lamely. He waved it toward the thick woods on either side of him. “If we get close to your daughter, we should be able to pick her up on this.”
Reshtiv’s eyebrows rose in surprise and his eyes glittered. “May I see it?”
He’s a treasure hunter, John thought. Of course he’s going to want to see it, and probably figure out its trade value.
“Fine,” he said, handing it over. The scanner screen immediately blinked out.
“It is not working.”
John bit back a smile. “Sorry, it’s…uh…tuned only to respond to me specifically. It won’t work for anyone else.”
Reshtiv’s face fell and he handed the scanner back. Maybe it was unfair of John to assume the man was only interested in the trade value of the LSD, but better safe than sorry. Last thing he wanted was to get mugged by this guy. He would never live that down.
The path climbed up a short hill to a plateau filled with ruined walls and half-formed buildings. There were a thousand places for a kid to hide around here, but the scanner still showed nothing. He clicked his radio.
“This is Sheppard. Report.”
“Nothing,” Ronon answered first.
“We have seen no sign of the girl either,” Teyla chimed in.
John waited a moment, a small kernel of dread building in his gut. He was opening his mouth to yell for Rodney when the scientist finally answered.
“Nothing. Sorry,” he said, sounding breathless. “Are you guys walking straight up the face of a mountain, too? Because if you’re all moseying through grassy fields, I am going to be very, very pissed.”
John smiled, and the dread in his gut washed out. You’re getting suspicious in your old age, John, he thought. He clicked his radio again. “Grassy fields as far as the eye can see.”
“Really?” Rodney squawked.
A breeze picked up, ruffling his hair. The ruins on the plateau were surrounded by trees on three sides and what looked like a steep drop-off on the other. He took in a deep breath of the crisp air and stared at the bright reds and yellows of the trees against the vivid blue of the sky.
“No. Check in every 20 minutes.”
Reshtiv had stopped a few feet away and let his shoulder bag slide down his arm. As John turned toward him, he saw the bigger man swing the bag up in a high arc and pivot toward John like a discus thrower.
He reacted instinctively, twisting away, but Reshtiv’s swing was fast, and he still caught enough of the blow on the side of the head to spin and tumble to his hands and knees. He rolled as soon as he hit the ground, barely missing Reshtiv’s kick as the trader’s leg swung out. His P90 had flown from his hands on the first hit, but it was still strapped to his vest, and he scrambled to grip it again as he jumped to his feet.
Before he even had a chance to grab the weapon, Reshtiv tackled him and both men smacked hard into the grass and dirt. The P90 stayed pinned between them, but the trader seemed more interested in going straight for John’s throat anyway. John twisted his arm around and yanked on one of the trader’s elbows, shifting the larger man’s weight to one side. He toppled, and a second later John was on top, but Reshtiv was strong. Within moments, John ended up flat on his back again, staring up at the trader whose face was as red as the autumn trees.
With a grunt, Reshtiv leaned forward, pressing the palms of his hands against John’s windpipe. John’s eyes bugged out and he twisted his head against the relentless pressure. He caught a glimpse of Reshtiv’s bag lying open on the ground, and a smooth marble rock within reach. Black spots were already dancing across his vision. He closed his eyes, channeling all of his energy into grabbing the carved stone sphere.
As soon as he had it, he swung his arm up, clocking Reshtiv on the side of the head with a solid whack. Reshtiv went boneless and John shoved him to the side, crawling out from under the other man’s sprawling limbs. He gasped in oxygen, his throat raw from the effort.
The trader wasn’t unconscious and kept enough wits about him to push himself to his feet and wobble away. John was breathing heavily, willing his lungs to take their fill of oxygen already and let him get back to fighting Reshtiv. He leaned on a nearby crumbled wall and wiped a sleeve across his forehead. His skin felt clammy, his muscles shaking from adrenaline and sudden exertion.
“Why?” he choked out.
Reshtiv stood a dozen feet away, propping himself up on another crumbling wall. One hand was pressed against the side his head, and blood poured freely from a gash above his ear. He glared at John.
“Sheppard,” he answered. “From the posters. The reward money for you alone is more than I make in an entire cycle trading old relics.”
Damn Genii. How many worlds still had their wanted posters?
“Old news,” John rasped out. “We’re all buddy-buddy with the Genii now. You won’t get anything.” He straightened as his breathing finally slowed its frantic pace and squared up against the trader, but before he could say anything more, Reshtiv pointed at his hand.
“What did you do?”
John glanced down. The white and pink marble sphere looked brighter and the stone was growing warm in his hand. He held it out, wondering if it was just a trick of the light. All the colors on this world looked more intense.
“What is this thing?” The stone was definitely hot, and the glowing white of the marble was washing out the pink striations. He glanced up at the trader. “Where did you get this?”
Reshtiv took a tentative step forward, shaking his head. His gaze was fixed on the glowing rock. John cocked his arm back, suddenly wanting to get the thing as far away from him as possible, but the trader chose that moment to rush again. He tackled John, and John lost his grip on the sphere. He felt the morning breeze rush over his skin, smelled the relic hunter’s hair as they collided, heard the sphere hit the ground at their feet.
The seconds seemed to stretch into infinity. John swallowed against an aching bruise on his throat and felt cold fear wash through him, and then a flash of light exploded out of the marble sphere, enveloping his entire world.
He woke up on his side, seeing first a tuft of grass inches from his face, then his hands lying limp just beyond that. He breathed slowly, not daring to move. He was…on that planet with all of the colors, the one Lorne would like.
That’s right. Colors. Waterfalls.
People.
Wait. The people had been traders-scavengers, really. Missing… There’d been a missing... someone…
The memory slammed into him and he took a sharp breath. A girl had been missing and they’d been looking for her, and then Reshtiv had attacked John, intent on turning him over to the Genii for that reward money. Which meant they were probably after Rodney, too. Fueled by a sudden sense of urgency, John grit his teeth and tried to sit up.
And didn’t move at all.
“Whaa…?” he breathed out, the word coming out slurred. He closed his eyes, reaching out with this senses. He felt… weird. Not in pain, just odd.
He opened his eyes again and stared at his hands, then felt adrenaline surge through his gut. He couldn’t feel them, at all. This world had been sunny but cool, and his hands had been a little cold when they’d been walking through the woods. Now he felt nothing. He couldn’t even feel the grass that he clearly saw pressing against the sides of his fingers.
He bowed his head, managing to move it an inch or so, far enough to look down at the rest of his body. He saw his vest, his pants, his boots, but he only felt a vague pressure against the side of his body lying in the field. He looked like he’d curled up on the ground to take a nap.
“Ressshh…” he mumbled. The trader had tackled him and tried to choke him out, but John had picked up a smooth rock and knocked him over. The rock-the damn glowing, hot rock.
He groaned. After all his experience with weird alien technologies, he should have known better than to hold onto the thing. He should have thrown it as far away as possible as soon as he’d realized it wasn’t just a decorative paperweight. He shifted his head again, seeing another tuft of grass poke up as he moved his head away from it. He should have felt the blades of grass tickling against his skin. He licked his lips, feeling his tongue cool as soon as it was exposed to the fresh air. He had some feeling then, inside his mouth. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
This is messed up, he thought. It felt a little like he’d been hit with a Wraith stunner but… different. Less pins-and-needles tingly and more numb like when the dentist shoots you up before drilling into your teeth.
He heard a soft grunt behind him, and became aware of Reshtiv’s slow, steady breathing. The trader was still here then. John assumed he was either unconscious or also unable to move since he hadn’t resumed his attack. That was one small break, at least.
He stared at his hands again and saw the grass twitching slightly. Must be a breeze. He couldn’t feel a breeze. He needed to call his team, get some help, warn them of the traders’ plan. His thoughts drifted briefly to the lost girl, but then he shoved that worry aside. He supposed it was possible there was still a girl missing, but if he was a betting man, he’d put his money on the missing child being nothing more than a story to separate them all.
And it had worked. John swallowed against a vague sense of nausea deep in the back of his throat. How long had he been unconscious? More than twenty minutes? Had his team already tried to contact him? They would know something was wrong the second he didn’t check in with them, so maybe they were on their way right now.
He liked that thought, and he relaxed-mentally, at any rate-into the ground. As long as Reshtiv didn’t regain his ability to move before him, there was a good chance his teammates would be there to bail him out.
John drifted. He didn’t think he fell asleep, but when he opened his eyes the light had changed, shifting from a bright late morning to a more golden mid-afternoon. He sucked in a deep breath, concentrating on what he could feel. He thought he felt cool air in his chest, maybe his ribs expanding, but the lack of touch sensation everywhere was skewing his perceptions.
He stared at his hands, willing them to move, and was rewarded when his fingers jerked. He bowed his head toward his body and was relieved when it was a little easier to move as well. His legs were in the same position, but after a lot of concentration, he managed to get them to twitch and straighten.
“Come on,” he breathed out. His mouth felt like he was sucking on a potato, but the words came out clearly enough.
With a groan, he lifted his arms and twisted, relying on how he knew his body should move and not on how it felt. His limbs flailed and his weight shifted, and he rolled onto his back. The view above him-a string of white wispy clouds-immediately blurred and he snapped his eyes shut against the sense of swishing back and forth on the surface of a rough ocean. His stomach curled in on itself and his breathing sped up, drying out his mouth.
He rolled back onto his side instinctively, moving faster and easier than he had before. He swallowed desperately against the urge to throw up and just barely managed to hold it back. The last thing he wanted to do was start choking on vomit and not realize it until he was blacking out because he couldn’t feel anything.
His second attempt was more successful several minutes later, and he half crawled, half dragged himself over to a crumbling ruined wall a few feet away. He sat up and leaned against it, fighting back the dizziness and nausea again. Reshtiv lay on his back, but by the time John was settled against the wall, he was fidgeting and moaning on the ground.
John pawed at his ear, but without seeing what he was doing, he had no way to tell if he was touching the radio earpiece, or if the earpiece was even still there. He let his arm flop to his vest and focused on squeezing his hand around the buttons of the radio box. The light signaling that the radio was on had gone dark, despite the fact that he could see the dial was still turned to on. A few feet from where he’d woken up, he spotted the smooth marble sphere.
It was dark gray now, almost black. Now that he was staring at it without fighting for his life, he saw that it wasn’t perfectly round-more egg shaped with a thin black cap on one end. Reshtiv flailed and groaned, muttering incoherently and John rolled his head toward him. The trader was breathing fast, his chest rising and falling visibly as he appeared to struggle against the numbness and paralysis plaguing John. With a sudden scream, he rolled to his hands and knees, pushed himself to his feet, and staggered sideways for two seconds before going boneless and collapsing back to the ground. He lay still for a moment, then groaned again and started the struggle to get upright.
“Shhhi…’ttt,” John muttered. Reshtiv was moving a lot more and a lot faster than he was, and sooner or later, he’d spot his Genii fugitive.
John stared down at his lap, studying his hands. He could feel the weight of them against his legs. He could feel the pressure of the ground beneath his butt and the wall at his back. He could almost feel his vest pulling against his shoulders.
Pressure. He had no sensation in his skin-no pain, no hot, no cold-but he could feel pressure. That had to be useful to him somehow. He focused on a memory of standing up then flung his arms to his side, using the pressure of the ground and the wall to guide his movements. He stood up, swaying and breathing hard, and sucked in a deep breath.
Take that, bitch, he thought triumphantly. He was up, on his feet. The P90 swung from his vest, and he grabbed at it with thick, clumsy fingers.
A grunt of exertion sounded across the clearing and he jerked his head up, feeling his sense of victory wilt at the sight of Reshtiv standing in the middle of the ruins without support. He looked like he was about to pitch to the ground any second, but he was up and staring at John, his face cemented in a murderous scowl.
He also held the now gray relic “flashbang”-for lack of a better word-in one hand, raising it above his head for a few seconds. He was swaying hard enough that it was making John dizzy.
“Whaa’ didja do...t’me?” he slurred.
John shook his head, then closed his eyes when the waves in his head swelled to tropical storm levels. “I didn’t…”
“You…did…sawwit g-glu-glowinn’…”
John pushed away from the wall and inched along it, keeping a hand pressed against the rough surface to guide him. He moved slowly, but he didn’t fall, and he put a little more distance between himself and Reshtiv.
“We… need help,” he said, glad that his own voice didn’t sound as muddled as Reshtiv’s.
“No,” Reshtiv yelled. He took a step forward, then flailed his arms and took two steps back, lurching as he fought to maintain his balance. He groaned, dropping his head to his chest.
John had reached the end of one crumbling wall, and he used Reshtiv’s moment of distraction to stagger over to a post about waist high. He leaned on it, breathing deeply, feeling the cool air only when he kept his mouth slightly open.
Reshtiv swung around toward, leaning precariously to one side before righting himself. He raised the marble flashbang again and launched it at John, stumbling forward and dropping to his knees in the process. John watched the rock hurl toward him, but his body betrayed him, like it was moving through molasses in reaction.
The pitch was more lucky than anything, given both of their disorientation. John grunted as air suddenly whooshed out of him, and he felt the rock impact his chest with that same pain-free pressure. His hold on the stone post wasn’t strong enough for the sudden shift in weight, though, and he fell backward, wheezing as he hit the ground.
“Dammit,” he mumbled, because it had taken a lot of effort to get upright and now his head was swimming with dizziness again. He was breathing hard, feeling like too much air was being forced through his lungs, but after a moment, that pressure let up. He rolled to his stomach and pushed himself back up to his knees. Using the stone post, he pulled himself the rest of the way to his feet.
He heard Reshtiv coming behind him fast, the swish of his clothes, the padding of his feet against the grass, groans intermingling with labored breaths. John tensed, looking out across the plateau. The drop-off in front of him gave way to the low valley and canvas spread of autumn trees, reminding him of a Seurat painting.
Lorne really would love this place. The errant thought crossed his mind as Reshtiv’s shoulder caught him in the back. They flew forward, and the trader’s momentum carried them quickly toward the cliff edge. John saw a flash of yellow grass, then gray rock, then blue sky as they rolled, and then suddenly the pressure of Reshtiv’s arms around his body and the ground beneath him disappeared.
He had one brief, imagined moment of floating weightless in the air, and then the ground rolled into view below him, and he prayed that his inability to feel pain held on for just a little bit longer.
He woke up flat on his back, staring up at the same cobalt blue sky. He heard leaves rustling around him, smelled dirt and decomposing vegetation, and tasted blood in his mouth. He flit his eyes to his left and studied the short, rocky cliff jutting up into the sky.
He’d been lucky. The cliff was no more than ten feet high. He flit his eyes in the other direction trying to take in as much detail around him without actually moving. He may not have fallen far, but he’d still fallen, and he still had a severely limited sense of touch. What if he’d broken his neck or back? What if moving would finish him off, or paralyze him permanently? He swallowed the blood in his mouth and closed his eyes, forcing himself to breathe slowly and steadily.
Concentrate, John, he thought. One thing at a time. There was no sound of Reshtiv anywhere, so either he was dead at his feet, still unconscious, or gone. He reached out with his other senses, honing in on the sounds and focusing on the soft rustling of leaves. That sound was all around him, rising and falling in waves, so that meant it was probably caused by a breeze and not someone walking through the dead leaves on the ground.
With the leaves catalogued, he forced his hearing to move past them. There was another sound-a steady rushing sound like a river. It was not close, but not too far either. From somewhere behind him, he heard the occasional chirp of birds. What he didn’t hear was Reshtiv breathing or moving.
“Not here,” he whispered, opening his eyes. He wanted to sit up and look around, but he forced himself to concentrate on his next sense.
“Taste,” he murmured, lickin his lips. The air hit his tongue and instantly cooled. He had some feeling in his mouth then, and he felt no pain there. If he’d bitten his tongue he guessed he would feel that. Maybe he’d cut his lip or busted his nose. There was blood in his mouth, but not a lot, so whatever had caused it couldn’t be that serious.
He stared at the sky again. He’d been out for minutes, tops. The sky looked the same as it had when he’d been fighting Reshtiv in the clearing. He drew in a deep breath, smelling the decomposing leaves and dirt around him, and crossed broken nose off his list of possible injuries.
The next step was to look around, and he felt fear rush through him at the thought of moving and finishing off any back-breaking injuries the fall might have started. Or of trying to move and not moving at all.
“Buck up, John,” he said, the words a little slurred but coherent enough. He had no sense of pain or temperature, but he was feeling pressure. He could use the sense of pressure to his advantage. He swallowed, focusing on the ground beneath him. He felt a weight pushing into his shoulder blades and down his back, then his butt and calves. His arms were splayed at his sides, and he turned his wrists, digging his palms into the dirt and feeling the ground return a steady pressure.
He could feel, kind of, and it extended the length of his body. Did that mean no major back or neck injury? Before he could dwell too long on that question, he pushed his arms against the ground and sat up. He caught a glimpse of a wide dirt path and a hill to one side that sloped down into colorful trees, before everything blurred out of focus, going first white, then gray, then almost black. He breathed fast, feeling he was on the edge of passing out again. Nausea bubbled up in his stomach.
“Not…gonna happ’n…” he rasped. His head felt disconnected from the rest of his body, but the world settled back into focus a moment later.
He opened his eyes tentatively and looked around. The sounds had not changed, nor the smells, nor the sights. Reshtiv was nowhere to be seen, but John spotted dragging footsteps in the path a few feet away from him, leading around the cliff wall and down the hill toward the sound of the river. The pressure on the backs of his legs had increased now that he was sitting, and John took that as a good sign.
He ran his hands through his hair, and the fingertips of his right hand came back tinged in red. A quick check of the rest of his body, relying solely on his sight to spot blood, revealed no other gushing injuries. He looked around, wishing one of his teammates would show up. It took him a few minutes, but he managed to get to his feet and look up at the cliff, then decide it was too high to climb in his current condition. He staggered off down the path, following Reshtiv’s dragging footsteps into the forest.
The path curved through the trees and the sound of the river grew loud, blocking both John’s stumbling gait and any sound Reshtiv might make. He hoped to hell he wouldn’t run into the trader again but knew the chances of that were slim. He wouldn’t hear Reshtiv but Reshtiv wouldn’t hear him either. After several minutes, he noticed his P90 was gone, no longer swinging from his vest, and he shook his head.
“Get it together,” he mumbled. If he was going to survive, he needed to be sharp and on his game. He almost laughed at the thought. Sharp involved sensation, and while the lack of pain was nice, it would only make his present task of getting back to his team and the gate in one piece more difficult.
One second he was walking, reaching out from tree to tree to help with his balance, and the next he found himself face first in the dirt. He hadn’t even had time to realize he was falling and throw his hands out in front of him. He tasted mud and dead leaves, and he pushed himself to his hands and knees as he spit it out.
“Focus, focus, focus,” he said. The words came out clear and strong despite the numbness around his lips, and he smiled at the improvement. Or thought he’d smiled. Hard to tell without feeling anything.
As he moved to stand, one leg caught, and he glanced down to see his shoe tangled with a root. “That’ll do it,” he muttered, adding rocks, branches, and roots on the path in front of him to his growing list of things to watch for.
It was darker under the canopy of trees, but even so, John sensed time passing as he stumbled along the path. He fell three more times, grateful and freaked out that he felt nothing. The pressure against the bottom of his feet and his hands as he grabbed on to trees was the only sense he had of still being attached to the ground. When he pictured himself walking through the hallways of Atlantis, and then tried to mimic what he was seeing in his head, his steps came quicker and he plowed forward, back toward the gate.
It was late afternoon when he rounded the next bend in the trail and finally caught up to Reshtiv. The path had swung back toward the river, and the white water was a roar of sound next to him. He jerked back behind a tree and dropped to his knees, but Reshtiv’s focus was entirely on the water. He looked panicked as he dipped his hands into the river and splashed his face and arms, rubbing his skin almost violently.
Besides him lay John’s P90.
“Damn you, greedy bastard,” he murmured. Reshtiv was babbling to himself, but the rushing river washed out any intelligible words. He was freaked out though, and John allowed himself a small sigh of relief. He appeared to be as numb as John and not handling it very well at all. When splashing himself with water stopped working, he began pinching his arms, twisting and pulling at the skin in what should have been a painful manner.
Wait it out, he thought. Stay away from the crazy man. John wanted his P90 back, but if Reshtiv had figured out how to fire it, he didn’t think the trader would show much compunction about shooting him. After several minutes, Reshtiv sat back, slumping in exhaustion.
Come on, John urged. It was growing dark fast, and he didn’t want to trip through the forest in the middle of the night. Reshtiv made no move to stand up and keep moving. With a sigh, John decided to try to sneak past the man instead and leave him behind. He rolled to his knees and glanced down at his arms to give himself a visual anchor to push his body up to his feet.
“Aaarrgghhh!” he choked out, lurching forward and falling out into the path. He rolled, flinging his right arm. He caught a glimpse of large black eyes, pinchers digging into the flesh of his forearm, and a hooked tail snapping back and forth. The thing was the size of a small dog, but its body looked hard, like the shell of a reddish-brown insect.
He rolled again, hearing Reshtiv yelling behind him, but he had no time for the trader. He grabbed onto the tail of the insect creature and grimaced as he rolled into a patch of sunlight and saw the hard shell of the bug creature was covered in thin blond hairs. He yanked on it, screaming as he did so, and watched the pinchers rip through his flesh.
His arm jerked free as the bug lost its grip, and he heard it squeal. He staggered to his feet and pitched the insect into the water, sighing in relief when it disappeared beneath the white water. He lifted his arm and stared at the ragged bite mark. Blood flowed freely from the wound, bright red in the late afternoon sun.
“What didja…do?” the trader yelled.
John looked up, watching the other man square up against him. He had the P90 in one hand and his feet spread out wide to maintain his balance. John held up both hands, frowning at the thick blood on his arm. He needed to get a bandage on it soon.
“I didn’t do anything,” John answered.
Reshtiv swung the P90 around and pulled the trigger, but he hadn’t figured out the safety yet. When nothing happened, he looked down at the weapon. John used the moment of distraction to reach for his handgun with his left hand. He had to stare at his hand the entire time, but by the time he unholstered it, flipped the safety off, and pointed it at Reshtiv, the trader was still fiddling with the weapon, squeezing the trigger repeatedly to no avail.
“Not gonna work,” John said.
Reshtiv looked up, his face flushed red with anger. “Can’t feel anything. You did something.”
“Wasn’t me.”
Reshtiv growled. “I’ll kill you.”
“We need to stop fighting and get back to our people. Something’s wrong with us and they can help,” he answered. He hoped they could help. This was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. He’d been stunned too many times to count by Wraith stunners, and this was something else completely.
Oh, god, what if his sensation of touch never returned to normal?
He pushed the thought out of his mind. His handgun had dipped, and he raised it again, blinking hard. He was starting to feel sick to his stomach, but Reshtiv was fumbling with the P90 again and with sinking dread, John saw him inadvertently flip the safety off.
“Don’t move.”
The trader stopped and narrowed his eyes. He took another step forward and swung the automatic weapon toward John. Before John had time to think, he squeezed the trigger. The gun barked off a shot and hit Reshtiv in the shoulder, and the other man flew backward. The P90 sailed through the air, landing with a splash into the water and then disappearing beneath the rapids.
The trader groaned, writhing on the ground, and John walked toward him carefully. “Reshtiv, I don’t want to hurt you but I will defend myself.”
“Dead…you’re a dead man…” He rolled to his feet, faster than John expected, and launched himself forward.
No pain. The thought flew through his mind as he pulled the trigger again, but Reshtiv was too close and knocked his arm out of the way. The bullets sailed up and into the trees, and then the trader was plowing into John’s midsection.
He feels no pain, he won’t slow down. John grunted as they landed and swung his gun back toward Reshtiv, then stopped in surprise when he saw his hand was empty. He’d dropped the gun and not felt it. The trader screeched, clawing at John’s chest and face, fighting like an enraged animal. John kicked and punched, working his way out from under Reshtiv’s battering fists. There was no pain to slow him down either. He planted a foot in Reshtiv’s chest and flung him backward, but the man simply twisted and came at him again.
He jerked on John’s bleeding arm, and John felt a twinge of something deep in his arm. Pain! His mind sang out, almost joyfully. The distraction cost him, however, and next thing he knew he was flying through the air, heading face first for the water.
TBC...
Part 2
Recipient: sgafan
Rating: PG-13/Gen
Word count: 15,400
Warnings: Nothing really. Some violence, brief language, no spoilers
Summary: An encounter with alien technology brings Sheppard’s fight for survival to a whole different level.
A/N: Huge thank you to my beta, everybetty!
Part 1
The first time John stepped through a Stargate, he remembered his stomach flipping and twisting in on itself in fear while adrenaline-induced euphoria pumped through his veins, the exact moment his skin hit the event horizon and began pulling him molecule by molecule to another galaxy, the rush of stepping onto an alien world. The second time had felt the same, and he’d stared at not-quite earthly trees under unfamiliar constellations thinking the air he was breathing was alien air, the mud in his boots alien mud. The training and protocols he’d had to learn between sitting in the chair in Antarctica and stepping through the gate with the rest of the expedition were all for missions to alien planets in a distant freakin’ galaxy.
It was sad, really, when alien became…routine. The 164th time-or thereabouts-that John stepped through the stargate stimulated no reaction whatsoever. No adrenaline, no rush, no thrill of discovery. It was just another planet in a galaxy full of planets, with grass, trees, oxygen-
“Whoa,” he breathed out, emerging from the stargate. He stutter-stepped, almost forgetting to keep moving out of the way.
“-was saying that if I don’t get back…for…uh…” Rodney emerged from the wormhole behind him with a soft plop, his voice trailing off as he walked up to John’s side. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” John agreed.
“I mean, this is really…”
“I know.”
Ronon had arrived ahead of them and stood a couple of dozen feet away, staring across a softly rippling lake to rushing waterfalls on the far side. John and Rodney stepped forward simultaneously, taking in their surroundings. Behind them, Teyla emerged, and John smiled at her sharp intake of breath as she saw this world for the first time.
Some worlds looked like Earth, so much so that the Marines had taken to naming them after states and countries they’d lived in or visited. Other worlds were blatantly, surreally alien. A lot of worlds made John feel like he’d traveled back in time, and there were plenty that looked hilariously cartoonish and scarier than any movie anyone had ever dreamed up.
This world was simply breathtaking.
“Nice view,” John breathed out. Waterfalls rose at least a hundred feet above them, strings of cascading white water that tumbled in twists and turns down the uneven cliff face. The gate sat in a small clearing facing the lake and waterfall, surrounded by steep hills and thick trees.
“The MALP footage really didn’t do this place justice,” Rodney said, digging into his vest. “I’m going to go with autumn as the current season.”
“Maybe the trees are always yellow,” Ronon piped up.
“And orange, and purple, and red,” John added. “Really, really red. Lorne would kill to see this.”
“Major Lorne?” Teyla asked.
John nodded his head, waving at a tree the color of fire. “The colors. He would dig the colors.”
Rodney pulled out his life-signs detector and tapped the side. “The ruins are supposed to be…hey, whoa.”
The change in tone squashed John’s sense of wonder, and he felt a familiar tension ripple across his back. “What?”
“Life signs, about half a klick that way,” he said, waving toward a path that followed the edge of the lake and disappeared around a steep curve.
“Alright, folks. Let’s get our game faces on.” John rolled his neck, working some of the tightness in his muscles out, and gripped his P90. Ronon took lead, striding forward and sweeping his head from side to side. Teyla dropped behind them, and John kept pace with Rodney in the middle.
“I thought this place was uninhabited,” he said, tearing his gaze away from the lake and shooting a frown at Rodney.
“It is! Or, was. There’s only about a dozen people, though, so maybe they’re just intergalactic explorers like ourselves.”
“Or Wraith,” Ronon offered.
John jerked and turned toward Teyla, but she was already shaking her head.
“I sense no Wraith here.”
The sound of the waterfalls died down as they left the lake’s edge and plunged deeper into the woods. The colors were almost overwhelming, made even more brilliant by late morning sunlight streaming through the canopy of leaves overhead. The dirt path they were on grew hard, shifting to worn but solid stone, and the first of the ruins appeared ahead of them-a crumbling wall made of black granite blocks.
“We know much about this place?” John asked, eyeing the remains of the wall. They kept moving, weaving their way around the side of the hill. They were at a higher level of elevation than John realized as they passed a break in the trees and he caught a glimpse of a distant rock cliff jutting up out of a painter’s pallet of trees across a sloping valley below him.
“Not much at all. There was no mention of a civilization on this world in the Ancient database, so the archeologists are tentatively assuming it developed sometime after they left Pegasus. Based on Stackhouse’s preliminary scan when they discovered this place, the design and layout don’t bear much resemblance to anything Ancient , so-”
“Sshhh!” Ronon hissed.
Rodney snapped his jaw shut and held his scanner up. Ronon had stopped at another short stone wall and was peering over the edge. John crept toward him, glancing over the wall before ducking down, out of sight. He caught a glimpse of an open clearing below them holding three wagons and a couple of large campfires.
“They look more like Old West pioneers than intergalactic explorers,” he whispered as Rodney and Teyla caught up to them.
“How are we playing this?” Ronon asked.
John paused, considering, then shrugged. “The usual-we keep quiet until we hit the edge of the clearing, then yell out to them while we’re still within the treeline. If they’re friendly, we join them for tinfoil dinners. If they’re not, we have the trees for cover and the gate at our backs.”
He heard grunts and murmurs of agreement from the others as they moved back onto the trail, and he led them along the path that took them downhill and away from the clearing before hitting a fast-moving river. The stone trail followed the river, sometimes swinging out toward the middle of the water then turning back to shore, sometimes crossing over it completely. At one point, it split, and they veered to the right, relying on Ronon’s keen sense of direction.
The temperature was crisp and cool, prickling the skin of John’s neck and face, and he was glad he’d worn the long sleeve shirt and jacket. He breathed in deeply, filling his lungs with the fresh air. It smelled of moisture and old leaves and brought back a slew of memories from childhood, running through the woods after school with Dave and making the most of the dwindling amounts of sunlight and warmth as they got closer to winter. Definitely autumn here.
Their concerns about unfriendly intergalactic explorers proved to be unfounded. For once, Rodney had hissed as they made their way to the camp. A dozen people greeted them ranging in age from infant to middle-aged. They were traders, scouring no-longer-inhabited worlds for relics and artifacts that they could sell at some of the larger Pegasus markets. Three of the men served John and his team a sweet, hot tea while the women-Wives? John wondered-kept younger children out of sight if not completely out of ear shot.
After several minutes of polite conversation, John stood, signaling to the rest of the team that it was time to go. The traders seemed nice enough but they weren’t the friendliest bunch, barely smiling and watching John and his team closely. It wasn’t alarming, exactly, but he was getting a paranoid vibe off these people.
Or he was just being paranoid.
“Thank you for your hospitality,” he said, facing the leader of the family of traders, Reshtiv. “We should be going.”
“We appreciate you introducing yourselves. You never know who you will encounter on worlds such as these,” Reshtiv answered. He was as tall as John, though broader through the shoulders. He was a big man and obviously well fed if his gut was anything to go by, but his movements were quick and graceful. His short hair was closer to gray than brown, and he was also clearly strong, moving like an athlete-not someone John wanted to underestimate.
A big hefty man collected their cups, giving each team member a quick nod. As they took a step back from the campfire, a woman ran up to Reshtiv, tugging on his arm and pulling him away from the group. John eyed them carefully, watching the woman’s frantic hand motions. Reshtiv’s face lost all expression, and John felt his stomach tighten in sudden apprehension. He sensed his team spreading out behind him and covering their path back to the trees and the gate.
“Is everything alright?” he called out, when Reshtiv turned back to him.
“I apologize,” the family leader said. “My youngest daughter has wandered off. She is…independent and tends to run off on her own despite the number of times my wife and I have forbidden her from doing so.”
“Can we help?” Teyla asked, stepping forward, and John nodded in agreement.
“I don’t know,” Reshtiv started, but his wife stepped forward, gripping his arm and cutting him off.
“Please, Resh.” She turned to John and his team, looking panicked. “She has barely passed her ninth cycle, still too young to be alone on a strange world.”
Reshtiv sighed, giving his wife a quick, reassuring hug. “If it would not pull you too much from your duties, we would appreciate any aid you could provide.”
“Happy to help,” John answered. He heard a stifled sigh from Rodney behind him and plastered a smile on his face. “Where should we start?”
They split into four teams, one Atlantean with one trader. John wasn’t thrilled with the setup, but the argument was that the missing girl might run from John or his teammates if they weren’t with anyone she recognized, and four teams allowed them to cover more territory. Ronon could handle himself, as could Teyla. It was Rodney that he didn’t like leaving alone, especially with the stocky, tea-serving brute Reshtiv had paired up with him.
Reshtiv himself had joined John, and together they’d headed away from the gate, across the clearing and into the trees. They eventually hit a path and began following it, hoping the girl would think to do the same thing. John walked behind the trade leader, holding the LSD close to his chest. In the last hour, the other search teams had disappeared off the screen’s grid, heading in different directions, and John and Reshtiv were the only two blips showing.
“What is that?”
John jerked up in surprise, finding Reshtiv staring intently at the scanner in his hand. “Scanner…thing,” he answered lamely. He waved it toward the thick woods on either side of him. “If we get close to your daughter, we should be able to pick her up on this.”
Reshtiv’s eyebrows rose in surprise and his eyes glittered. “May I see it?”
He’s a treasure hunter, John thought. Of course he’s going to want to see it, and probably figure out its trade value.
“Fine,” he said, handing it over. The scanner screen immediately blinked out.
“It is not working.”
John bit back a smile. “Sorry, it’s…uh…tuned only to respond to me specifically. It won’t work for anyone else.”
Reshtiv’s face fell and he handed the scanner back. Maybe it was unfair of John to assume the man was only interested in the trade value of the LSD, but better safe than sorry. Last thing he wanted was to get mugged by this guy. He would never live that down.
The path climbed up a short hill to a plateau filled with ruined walls and half-formed buildings. There were a thousand places for a kid to hide around here, but the scanner still showed nothing. He clicked his radio.
“This is Sheppard. Report.”
“Nothing,” Ronon answered first.
“We have seen no sign of the girl either,” Teyla chimed in.
John waited a moment, a small kernel of dread building in his gut. He was opening his mouth to yell for Rodney when the scientist finally answered.
“Nothing. Sorry,” he said, sounding breathless. “Are you guys walking straight up the face of a mountain, too? Because if you’re all moseying through grassy fields, I am going to be very, very pissed.”
John smiled, and the dread in his gut washed out. You’re getting suspicious in your old age, John, he thought. He clicked his radio again. “Grassy fields as far as the eye can see.”
“Really?” Rodney squawked.
A breeze picked up, ruffling his hair. The ruins on the plateau were surrounded by trees on three sides and what looked like a steep drop-off on the other. He took in a deep breath of the crisp air and stared at the bright reds and yellows of the trees against the vivid blue of the sky.
“No. Check in every 20 minutes.”
Reshtiv had stopped a few feet away and let his shoulder bag slide down his arm. As John turned toward him, he saw the bigger man swing the bag up in a high arc and pivot toward John like a discus thrower.
He reacted instinctively, twisting away, but Reshtiv’s swing was fast, and he still caught enough of the blow on the side of the head to spin and tumble to his hands and knees. He rolled as soon as he hit the ground, barely missing Reshtiv’s kick as the trader’s leg swung out. His P90 had flown from his hands on the first hit, but it was still strapped to his vest, and he scrambled to grip it again as he jumped to his feet.
Before he even had a chance to grab the weapon, Reshtiv tackled him and both men smacked hard into the grass and dirt. The P90 stayed pinned between them, but the trader seemed more interested in going straight for John’s throat anyway. John twisted his arm around and yanked on one of the trader’s elbows, shifting the larger man’s weight to one side. He toppled, and a second later John was on top, but Reshtiv was strong. Within moments, John ended up flat on his back again, staring up at the trader whose face was as red as the autumn trees.
With a grunt, Reshtiv leaned forward, pressing the palms of his hands against John’s windpipe. John’s eyes bugged out and he twisted his head against the relentless pressure. He caught a glimpse of Reshtiv’s bag lying open on the ground, and a smooth marble rock within reach. Black spots were already dancing across his vision. He closed his eyes, channeling all of his energy into grabbing the carved stone sphere.
As soon as he had it, he swung his arm up, clocking Reshtiv on the side of the head with a solid whack. Reshtiv went boneless and John shoved him to the side, crawling out from under the other man’s sprawling limbs. He gasped in oxygen, his throat raw from the effort.
The trader wasn’t unconscious and kept enough wits about him to push himself to his feet and wobble away. John was breathing heavily, willing his lungs to take their fill of oxygen already and let him get back to fighting Reshtiv. He leaned on a nearby crumbled wall and wiped a sleeve across his forehead. His skin felt clammy, his muscles shaking from adrenaline and sudden exertion.
“Why?” he choked out.
Reshtiv stood a dozen feet away, propping himself up on another crumbling wall. One hand was pressed against the side his head, and blood poured freely from a gash above his ear. He glared at John.
“Sheppard,” he answered. “From the posters. The reward money for you alone is more than I make in an entire cycle trading old relics.”
Damn Genii. How many worlds still had their wanted posters?
“Old news,” John rasped out. “We’re all buddy-buddy with the Genii now. You won’t get anything.” He straightened as his breathing finally slowed its frantic pace and squared up against the trader, but before he could say anything more, Reshtiv pointed at his hand.
“What did you do?”
John glanced down. The white and pink marble sphere looked brighter and the stone was growing warm in his hand. He held it out, wondering if it was just a trick of the light. All the colors on this world looked more intense.
“What is this thing?” The stone was definitely hot, and the glowing white of the marble was washing out the pink striations. He glanced up at the trader. “Where did you get this?”
Reshtiv took a tentative step forward, shaking his head. His gaze was fixed on the glowing rock. John cocked his arm back, suddenly wanting to get the thing as far away from him as possible, but the trader chose that moment to rush again. He tackled John, and John lost his grip on the sphere. He felt the morning breeze rush over his skin, smelled the relic hunter’s hair as they collided, heard the sphere hit the ground at their feet.
The seconds seemed to stretch into infinity. John swallowed against an aching bruise on his throat and felt cold fear wash through him, and then a flash of light exploded out of the marble sphere, enveloping his entire world.
He woke up on his side, seeing first a tuft of grass inches from his face, then his hands lying limp just beyond that. He breathed slowly, not daring to move. He was…on that planet with all of the colors, the one Lorne would like.
That’s right. Colors. Waterfalls.
People.
Wait. The people had been traders-scavengers, really. Missing… There’d been a missing... someone…
The memory slammed into him and he took a sharp breath. A girl had been missing and they’d been looking for her, and then Reshtiv had attacked John, intent on turning him over to the Genii for that reward money. Which meant they were probably after Rodney, too. Fueled by a sudden sense of urgency, John grit his teeth and tried to sit up.
And didn’t move at all.
“Whaa…?” he breathed out, the word coming out slurred. He closed his eyes, reaching out with this senses. He felt… weird. Not in pain, just odd.
He opened his eyes again and stared at his hands, then felt adrenaline surge through his gut. He couldn’t feel them, at all. This world had been sunny but cool, and his hands had been a little cold when they’d been walking through the woods. Now he felt nothing. He couldn’t even feel the grass that he clearly saw pressing against the sides of his fingers.
He bowed his head, managing to move it an inch or so, far enough to look down at the rest of his body. He saw his vest, his pants, his boots, but he only felt a vague pressure against the side of his body lying in the field. He looked like he’d curled up on the ground to take a nap.
“Ressshh…” he mumbled. The trader had tackled him and tried to choke him out, but John had picked up a smooth rock and knocked him over. The rock-the damn glowing, hot rock.
He groaned. After all his experience with weird alien technologies, he should have known better than to hold onto the thing. He should have thrown it as far away as possible as soon as he’d realized it wasn’t just a decorative paperweight. He shifted his head again, seeing another tuft of grass poke up as he moved his head away from it. He should have felt the blades of grass tickling against his skin. He licked his lips, feeling his tongue cool as soon as it was exposed to the fresh air. He had some feeling then, inside his mouth. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
This is messed up, he thought. It felt a little like he’d been hit with a Wraith stunner but… different. Less pins-and-needles tingly and more numb like when the dentist shoots you up before drilling into your teeth.
He heard a soft grunt behind him, and became aware of Reshtiv’s slow, steady breathing. The trader was still here then. John assumed he was either unconscious or also unable to move since he hadn’t resumed his attack. That was one small break, at least.
He stared at his hands again and saw the grass twitching slightly. Must be a breeze. He couldn’t feel a breeze. He needed to call his team, get some help, warn them of the traders’ plan. His thoughts drifted briefly to the lost girl, but then he shoved that worry aside. He supposed it was possible there was still a girl missing, but if he was a betting man, he’d put his money on the missing child being nothing more than a story to separate them all.
And it had worked. John swallowed against a vague sense of nausea deep in the back of his throat. How long had he been unconscious? More than twenty minutes? Had his team already tried to contact him? They would know something was wrong the second he didn’t check in with them, so maybe they were on their way right now.
He liked that thought, and he relaxed-mentally, at any rate-into the ground. As long as Reshtiv didn’t regain his ability to move before him, there was a good chance his teammates would be there to bail him out.
John drifted. He didn’t think he fell asleep, but when he opened his eyes the light had changed, shifting from a bright late morning to a more golden mid-afternoon. He sucked in a deep breath, concentrating on what he could feel. He thought he felt cool air in his chest, maybe his ribs expanding, but the lack of touch sensation everywhere was skewing his perceptions.
He stared at his hands, willing them to move, and was rewarded when his fingers jerked. He bowed his head toward his body and was relieved when it was a little easier to move as well. His legs were in the same position, but after a lot of concentration, he managed to get them to twitch and straighten.
“Come on,” he breathed out. His mouth felt like he was sucking on a potato, but the words came out clearly enough.
With a groan, he lifted his arms and twisted, relying on how he knew his body should move and not on how it felt. His limbs flailed and his weight shifted, and he rolled onto his back. The view above him-a string of white wispy clouds-immediately blurred and he snapped his eyes shut against the sense of swishing back and forth on the surface of a rough ocean. His stomach curled in on itself and his breathing sped up, drying out his mouth.
He rolled back onto his side instinctively, moving faster and easier than he had before. He swallowed desperately against the urge to throw up and just barely managed to hold it back. The last thing he wanted to do was start choking on vomit and not realize it until he was blacking out because he couldn’t feel anything.
His second attempt was more successful several minutes later, and he half crawled, half dragged himself over to a crumbling ruined wall a few feet away. He sat up and leaned against it, fighting back the dizziness and nausea again. Reshtiv lay on his back, but by the time John was settled against the wall, he was fidgeting and moaning on the ground.
John pawed at his ear, but without seeing what he was doing, he had no way to tell if he was touching the radio earpiece, or if the earpiece was even still there. He let his arm flop to his vest and focused on squeezing his hand around the buttons of the radio box. The light signaling that the radio was on had gone dark, despite the fact that he could see the dial was still turned to on. A few feet from where he’d woken up, he spotted the smooth marble sphere.
It was dark gray now, almost black. Now that he was staring at it without fighting for his life, he saw that it wasn’t perfectly round-more egg shaped with a thin black cap on one end. Reshtiv flailed and groaned, muttering incoherently and John rolled his head toward him. The trader was breathing fast, his chest rising and falling visibly as he appeared to struggle against the numbness and paralysis plaguing John. With a sudden scream, he rolled to his hands and knees, pushed himself to his feet, and staggered sideways for two seconds before going boneless and collapsing back to the ground. He lay still for a moment, then groaned again and started the struggle to get upright.
“Shhhi…’ttt,” John muttered. Reshtiv was moving a lot more and a lot faster than he was, and sooner or later, he’d spot his Genii fugitive.
John stared down at his lap, studying his hands. He could feel the weight of them against his legs. He could feel the pressure of the ground beneath his butt and the wall at his back. He could almost feel his vest pulling against his shoulders.
Pressure. He had no sensation in his skin-no pain, no hot, no cold-but he could feel pressure. That had to be useful to him somehow. He focused on a memory of standing up then flung his arms to his side, using the pressure of the ground and the wall to guide his movements. He stood up, swaying and breathing hard, and sucked in a deep breath.
Take that, bitch, he thought triumphantly. He was up, on his feet. The P90 swung from his vest, and he grabbed at it with thick, clumsy fingers.
A grunt of exertion sounded across the clearing and he jerked his head up, feeling his sense of victory wilt at the sight of Reshtiv standing in the middle of the ruins without support. He looked like he was about to pitch to the ground any second, but he was up and staring at John, his face cemented in a murderous scowl.
He also held the now gray relic “flashbang”-for lack of a better word-in one hand, raising it above his head for a few seconds. He was swaying hard enough that it was making John dizzy.
“Whaa’ didja do...t’me?” he slurred.
John shook his head, then closed his eyes when the waves in his head swelled to tropical storm levels. “I didn’t…”
“You…did…sawwit g-glu-glowinn’…”
John pushed away from the wall and inched along it, keeping a hand pressed against the rough surface to guide him. He moved slowly, but he didn’t fall, and he put a little more distance between himself and Reshtiv.
“We… need help,” he said, glad that his own voice didn’t sound as muddled as Reshtiv’s.
“No,” Reshtiv yelled. He took a step forward, then flailed his arms and took two steps back, lurching as he fought to maintain his balance. He groaned, dropping his head to his chest.
John had reached the end of one crumbling wall, and he used Reshtiv’s moment of distraction to stagger over to a post about waist high. He leaned on it, breathing deeply, feeling the cool air only when he kept his mouth slightly open.
Reshtiv swung around toward, leaning precariously to one side before righting himself. He raised the marble flashbang again and launched it at John, stumbling forward and dropping to his knees in the process. John watched the rock hurl toward him, but his body betrayed him, like it was moving through molasses in reaction.
The pitch was more lucky than anything, given both of their disorientation. John grunted as air suddenly whooshed out of him, and he felt the rock impact his chest with that same pain-free pressure. His hold on the stone post wasn’t strong enough for the sudden shift in weight, though, and he fell backward, wheezing as he hit the ground.
“Dammit,” he mumbled, because it had taken a lot of effort to get upright and now his head was swimming with dizziness again. He was breathing hard, feeling like too much air was being forced through his lungs, but after a moment, that pressure let up. He rolled to his stomach and pushed himself back up to his knees. Using the stone post, he pulled himself the rest of the way to his feet.
He heard Reshtiv coming behind him fast, the swish of his clothes, the padding of his feet against the grass, groans intermingling with labored breaths. John tensed, looking out across the plateau. The drop-off in front of him gave way to the low valley and canvas spread of autumn trees, reminding him of a Seurat painting.
Lorne really would love this place. The errant thought crossed his mind as Reshtiv’s shoulder caught him in the back. They flew forward, and the trader’s momentum carried them quickly toward the cliff edge. John saw a flash of yellow grass, then gray rock, then blue sky as they rolled, and then suddenly the pressure of Reshtiv’s arms around his body and the ground beneath him disappeared.
He had one brief, imagined moment of floating weightless in the air, and then the ground rolled into view below him, and he prayed that his inability to feel pain held on for just a little bit longer.
He woke up flat on his back, staring up at the same cobalt blue sky. He heard leaves rustling around him, smelled dirt and decomposing vegetation, and tasted blood in his mouth. He flit his eyes to his left and studied the short, rocky cliff jutting up into the sky.
He’d been lucky. The cliff was no more than ten feet high. He flit his eyes in the other direction trying to take in as much detail around him without actually moving. He may not have fallen far, but he’d still fallen, and he still had a severely limited sense of touch. What if he’d broken his neck or back? What if moving would finish him off, or paralyze him permanently? He swallowed the blood in his mouth and closed his eyes, forcing himself to breathe slowly and steadily.
Concentrate, John, he thought. One thing at a time. There was no sound of Reshtiv anywhere, so either he was dead at his feet, still unconscious, or gone. He reached out with his other senses, honing in on the sounds and focusing on the soft rustling of leaves. That sound was all around him, rising and falling in waves, so that meant it was probably caused by a breeze and not someone walking through the dead leaves on the ground.
With the leaves catalogued, he forced his hearing to move past them. There was another sound-a steady rushing sound like a river. It was not close, but not too far either. From somewhere behind him, he heard the occasional chirp of birds. What he didn’t hear was Reshtiv breathing or moving.
“Not here,” he whispered, opening his eyes. He wanted to sit up and look around, but he forced himself to concentrate on his next sense.
“Taste,” he murmured, lickin his lips. The air hit his tongue and instantly cooled. He had some feeling in his mouth then, and he felt no pain there. If he’d bitten his tongue he guessed he would feel that. Maybe he’d cut his lip or busted his nose. There was blood in his mouth, but not a lot, so whatever had caused it couldn’t be that serious.
He stared at the sky again. He’d been out for minutes, tops. The sky looked the same as it had when he’d been fighting Reshtiv in the clearing. He drew in a deep breath, smelling the decomposing leaves and dirt around him, and crossed broken nose off his list of possible injuries.
The next step was to look around, and he felt fear rush through him at the thought of moving and finishing off any back-breaking injuries the fall might have started. Or of trying to move and not moving at all.
“Buck up, John,” he said, the words a little slurred but coherent enough. He had no sense of pain or temperature, but he was feeling pressure. He could use the sense of pressure to his advantage. He swallowed, focusing on the ground beneath him. He felt a weight pushing into his shoulder blades and down his back, then his butt and calves. His arms were splayed at his sides, and he turned his wrists, digging his palms into the dirt and feeling the ground return a steady pressure.
He could feel, kind of, and it extended the length of his body. Did that mean no major back or neck injury? Before he could dwell too long on that question, he pushed his arms against the ground and sat up. He caught a glimpse of a wide dirt path and a hill to one side that sloped down into colorful trees, before everything blurred out of focus, going first white, then gray, then almost black. He breathed fast, feeling he was on the edge of passing out again. Nausea bubbled up in his stomach.
“Not…gonna happ’n…” he rasped. His head felt disconnected from the rest of his body, but the world settled back into focus a moment later.
He opened his eyes tentatively and looked around. The sounds had not changed, nor the smells, nor the sights. Reshtiv was nowhere to be seen, but John spotted dragging footsteps in the path a few feet away from him, leading around the cliff wall and down the hill toward the sound of the river. The pressure on the backs of his legs had increased now that he was sitting, and John took that as a good sign.
He ran his hands through his hair, and the fingertips of his right hand came back tinged in red. A quick check of the rest of his body, relying solely on his sight to spot blood, revealed no other gushing injuries. He looked around, wishing one of his teammates would show up. It took him a few minutes, but he managed to get to his feet and look up at the cliff, then decide it was too high to climb in his current condition. He staggered off down the path, following Reshtiv’s dragging footsteps into the forest.
The path curved through the trees and the sound of the river grew loud, blocking both John’s stumbling gait and any sound Reshtiv might make. He hoped to hell he wouldn’t run into the trader again but knew the chances of that were slim. He wouldn’t hear Reshtiv but Reshtiv wouldn’t hear him either. After several minutes, he noticed his P90 was gone, no longer swinging from his vest, and he shook his head.
“Get it together,” he mumbled. If he was going to survive, he needed to be sharp and on his game. He almost laughed at the thought. Sharp involved sensation, and while the lack of pain was nice, it would only make his present task of getting back to his team and the gate in one piece more difficult.
One second he was walking, reaching out from tree to tree to help with his balance, and the next he found himself face first in the dirt. He hadn’t even had time to realize he was falling and throw his hands out in front of him. He tasted mud and dead leaves, and he pushed himself to his hands and knees as he spit it out.
“Focus, focus, focus,” he said. The words came out clear and strong despite the numbness around his lips, and he smiled at the improvement. Or thought he’d smiled. Hard to tell without feeling anything.
As he moved to stand, one leg caught, and he glanced down to see his shoe tangled with a root. “That’ll do it,” he muttered, adding rocks, branches, and roots on the path in front of him to his growing list of things to watch for.
It was darker under the canopy of trees, but even so, John sensed time passing as he stumbled along the path. He fell three more times, grateful and freaked out that he felt nothing. The pressure against the bottom of his feet and his hands as he grabbed on to trees was the only sense he had of still being attached to the ground. When he pictured himself walking through the hallways of Atlantis, and then tried to mimic what he was seeing in his head, his steps came quicker and he plowed forward, back toward the gate.
It was late afternoon when he rounded the next bend in the trail and finally caught up to Reshtiv. The path had swung back toward the river, and the white water was a roar of sound next to him. He jerked back behind a tree and dropped to his knees, but Reshtiv’s focus was entirely on the water. He looked panicked as he dipped his hands into the river and splashed his face and arms, rubbing his skin almost violently.
Besides him lay John’s P90.
“Damn you, greedy bastard,” he murmured. Reshtiv was babbling to himself, but the rushing river washed out any intelligible words. He was freaked out though, and John allowed himself a small sigh of relief. He appeared to be as numb as John and not handling it very well at all. When splashing himself with water stopped working, he began pinching his arms, twisting and pulling at the skin in what should have been a painful manner.
Wait it out, he thought. Stay away from the crazy man. John wanted his P90 back, but if Reshtiv had figured out how to fire it, he didn’t think the trader would show much compunction about shooting him. After several minutes, Reshtiv sat back, slumping in exhaustion.
Come on, John urged. It was growing dark fast, and he didn’t want to trip through the forest in the middle of the night. Reshtiv made no move to stand up and keep moving. With a sigh, John decided to try to sneak past the man instead and leave him behind. He rolled to his knees and glanced down at his arms to give himself a visual anchor to push his body up to his feet.
“Aaarrgghhh!” he choked out, lurching forward and falling out into the path. He rolled, flinging his right arm. He caught a glimpse of large black eyes, pinchers digging into the flesh of his forearm, and a hooked tail snapping back and forth. The thing was the size of a small dog, but its body looked hard, like the shell of a reddish-brown insect.
He rolled again, hearing Reshtiv yelling behind him, but he had no time for the trader. He grabbed onto the tail of the insect creature and grimaced as he rolled into a patch of sunlight and saw the hard shell of the bug creature was covered in thin blond hairs. He yanked on it, screaming as he did so, and watched the pinchers rip through his flesh.
His arm jerked free as the bug lost its grip, and he heard it squeal. He staggered to his feet and pitched the insect into the water, sighing in relief when it disappeared beneath the white water. He lifted his arm and stared at the ragged bite mark. Blood flowed freely from the wound, bright red in the late afternoon sun.
“What didja…do?” the trader yelled.
John looked up, watching the other man square up against him. He had the P90 in one hand and his feet spread out wide to maintain his balance. John held up both hands, frowning at the thick blood on his arm. He needed to get a bandage on it soon.
“I didn’t do anything,” John answered.
Reshtiv swung the P90 around and pulled the trigger, but he hadn’t figured out the safety yet. When nothing happened, he looked down at the weapon. John used the moment of distraction to reach for his handgun with his left hand. He had to stare at his hand the entire time, but by the time he unholstered it, flipped the safety off, and pointed it at Reshtiv, the trader was still fiddling with the weapon, squeezing the trigger repeatedly to no avail.
“Not gonna work,” John said.
Reshtiv looked up, his face flushed red with anger. “Can’t feel anything. You did something.”
“Wasn’t me.”
Reshtiv growled. “I’ll kill you.”
“We need to stop fighting and get back to our people. Something’s wrong with us and they can help,” he answered. He hoped they could help. This was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. He’d been stunned too many times to count by Wraith stunners, and this was something else completely.
Oh, god, what if his sensation of touch never returned to normal?
He pushed the thought out of his mind. His handgun had dipped, and he raised it again, blinking hard. He was starting to feel sick to his stomach, but Reshtiv was fumbling with the P90 again and with sinking dread, John saw him inadvertently flip the safety off.
“Don’t move.”
The trader stopped and narrowed his eyes. He took another step forward and swung the automatic weapon toward John. Before John had time to think, he squeezed the trigger. The gun barked off a shot and hit Reshtiv in the shoulder, and the other man flew backward. The P90 sailed through the air, landing with a splash into the water and then disappearing beneath the rapids.
The trader groaned, writhing on the ground, and John walked toward him carefully. “Reshtiv, I don’t want to hurt you but I will defend myself.”
“Dead…you’re a dead man…” He rolled to his feet, faster than John expected, and launched himself forward.
No pain. The thought flew through his mind as he pulled the trigger again, but Reshtiv was too close and knocked his arm out of the way. The bullets sailed up and into the trees, and then the trader was plowing into John’s midsection.
He feels no pain, he won’t slow down. John grunted as they landed and swung his gun back toward Reshtiv, then stopped in surprise when he saw his hand was empty. He’d dropped the gun and not felt it. The trader screeched, clawing at John’s chest and face, fighting like an enraged animal. John kicked and punched, working his way out from under Reshtiv’s battering fists. There was no pain to slow him down either. He planted a foot in Reshtiv’s chest and flung him backward, but the man simply twisted and came at him again.
He jerked on John’s bleeding arm, and John felt a twinge of something deep in his arm. Pain! His mind sang out, almost joyfully. The distraction cost him, however, and next thing he knew he was flying through the air, heading face first for the water.
TBC...
Part 2