Three Days in Limbo

Alli Snow

"We cut these numerous windings in our destinies daily with our own hands, while we imagine that we are pursuing a track on the royal high road of respectability and duty, and then complain of those ways being so intricate and so dark. We stand bewildered before the mystery of our own making, and the riddles of life that we will not solve, and then accuse the great Sphinx of devouring us." -H. P. Blavatsky

Day Four

It helped that the rain stopped several hours before sunrise. It also helped that the rubble blocking the third level shifted during the night, so that the water level dropped instead of rising and they were able to sit on the damp floor rather than worry about treading water.

They passed the night in the room where Sheppard, Ronon and Rodney had been chained to the wall, where John had kissed her and she had passed him the knife. Which he still had, incidentally, and had not yet found a way to use. Maybe she should not have bothered.

The Wraith were still on the surface; she could feel them in her bones and in the back of her mind, but she tried not to focus on any one thread of thought for fear that it would lead the enemy to them. In truth it was passing strange that none of the multitude she had seen arriving had bothered to check the prisons, but perhaps they had not considered having to look.

Teyla tried not to think about what was happening, too, and she was less successful at that.

They were all wet and hungry, armed only with a biscuit knife and Ronon’s hands and Rodney’s brains and her own flagging strength, and yet now that she was in the company of her teammates she felt a terrible knot begin to loosen, a knot that had existed since she had first awoken in Colum’s bedroom. She remembered that she had not slept well in three nights, and that she had been holding herself tight and tense for almost three full days, and now all she truly wished to do was lean her head against the nearest shoulder. And if she cried it would only be from sheer exhaustion.

But all of the men seemed disinclined to enter her personal space, all just a little wary and standoffish, and she wondered what they had been told.

It did not matter. Not now, at least.

She watched the small window up near the ceiling, noting as the clouds overhead lightened from steel to ash. She closed her eyes, dozed for a few minutes, and looked up again when she realized that the cold chasm inside her heart had closed over again. “The Wraith are gone,” she said hoarsely.

John frowned. Teyla had the uncomfortable feeling that the frown was not merely one of concentration or concern about their plight, that he was actually unhappy with her. “What about the Rnaerans?”

She was tired. So tired.

* * *

The first thing John saw was the sun beginning to emerge from behind a thick carpet of clouds.

The second thing he saw was Nyri Vius, dead on the ground with a bullet in her head.

They all stared at her for a few seconds, and then at the shattered drainpipe not far away, and then at the P90 still tangled in her hands, and then back at the disturbingly-neat bullet hole.

“Ricochet,” said Ronon, sounding almost amused.

Nyri looked surprised.

* * *

“What if we run into more of those guys with stunners?” Rodney asked apprehensively, as they entered the Hall of Arthere to retrieve their gear.

“Then we take their stunners away and shoot them,” Ronon explained.

Teyla shook her head. The men with the stunners were gone.

The Hall was empty, and their packs, radios and weapons were indeed in Nyri’s study. The Wraith had either overlooked them or, more probably, not bothered looking for them at all.

John picked up the life signs detector but did not turn it on. “They’re all taken, aren’t they?” he asked her, unexpectedly somber.

She hated the emotion that constricted her throat, pricked at her eyes. She was not sorry, not sad, not feeling that there was somehow something she could have done to save them. After all, when the Wraith horde descended and began to feed, surely the Rnaerans had been delighted.

None of them had stopped to look at the mural of delighted victims, but they had seen it all the same.

“They got what they deserved,” declared Rodney, as though he had read her mind.

Except for those who, perhaps, had changed their minds at the last moment. Too late.

“Where is he?” asked Ronon darkly, checking his weapon for any signs of tampering.

Teyla looked at him blankly.

“You know who,” he said.

* * *

Teyla did not want to return to the hillside community, and frankly John couldn’t imagine how loitering around Rnaer was in any way a good idea. But to say Ronon looked determined would have been an understatement; John didn’t have the heart to order him to return to the jumper with the rest of the team, and he wasn’t entirely sure that Ronon would follow the order if given. And they couldn’t exactly leave him behind.

With Ronon, you had to pick your battles.

Although she was visibly unhappy about it, Teyla dutifully led them to the building in question. They saw no signs of life as they climbed the switchback trail and entered the abandoned neighborhood, and they saw no bodies. Apparently the Wraith force that had come here had just been picking up food for the folks at home, not indulging on an all-out binge.

Teyla refused to go inside the house. Despite her assurance that the Wraith were all gone, despite – or perhaps because of – the eerie ghost town quality of the whole settlement, John was loathe to split up, but Rodney volunteered to remain outside.

“We won’t be long,” John promised both of them. Rodney babbled something inconsequential, and Teyla looked back at him stonily. She was wearing her jacket, which had been among the confiscated goods, but she still looked cold and unhappy.

He let Ronon take point. They went through the modest building room by room, locating the kitchen, wash rooms, parlor, and one disgusting hallway seemingly devoted to romantic paintings of the Wraith not very different in style from the mural in the Hall of Arthere. There were a couple of cramped, windowless bedrooms, and something that proved to be an armory once Ronon broke the lock, and then there was what on Earth would have been called the master suite.

John halted in the doorway and let Ronon approach the thing on the bed. Even at such a distance, however, he could tell that had once been a human male. A naked human male.

He didn’t naively believe that the Wraith were such fans or critics of Rnaeran fashion that they had stripped their victim down either before or after sucking him dry. They had found him like this, and Colum had either been in no position to fight back… or he had not fought back at all.

The corpse’s arms and legs were sprawled akimbo, the skeletal remains of his face half-hidden by a flounced pillow. Ronon scowled down at it, as though Colum had done him an intentional insult by being dead already.

“Looks like the Wraith beat us to it,” John heard himself mumble.

The other man redirected his ire. “You think this is funny?”

“I think,” said John, “this is one of the most unfunny moments in my life.”

* * *

They walked back to the jumper in silence.

“He was already dead,” was all that Ronon had mumbled, not meeting her eyes, as he and Sheppard had returned. Teyla had not had the courage to ask how Colum had died. All she knew was that Ronon appeared distinctly disappointed, and John had looked… unsettled.

“Was there anyone else in the house?” she had asked, thinking of Miarpia, but the men shook their heads.

After that, nobody said anything. Not even Rodney, which was a testament to the strangeness of it all.

The jumper was where they had left it, still cloaked, untouched. She watched John take his seat the controls stiffly and with an expression of puzzlement, as though he was surprised to find that the chair still fit and the jumper still responded to him. But it did; the hatch closed and the engines hummed to life and the craft lifted into the atmosphere.

She was going home.

* * *

“Another jumper.”

“I see it.”

He’d lifted off straight up into orbit above the city, eager to get away from the taint of Rnaer, and he saw the cylindrical silver craft arcing towards them even as Rodney helpfully pointed it out. No doubt this was their rescue party.

“Jumper Five to Jumper Three,” came Major Lorne’s voice. “Colonel Sheppard, is that you?”

“Last time I checked,” John responded, too tired to come up with anything more inspired. “Elizabeth has quite the sense of timing.”

“Actually, we’d meant to be here a couple hours ago, but we had some… technical difficulties,” said Lorne. “Don’t worry, Rodney,” he added, forestalling Rodney’s indignant yelp, “nothing serious, just some wires that got crossed during a diagnostic; we couldn’t open the jumper bay doors and, well, that part’s kind of necessary.”

“Crossed wires,” Rodney echoed, not to be denied. “That sounds like Zelenka. I swear, I’m just not going to let him touch anything when I’m not there. He can’t be trusted.”

“How much stuff have you broken, McKay?” asked Ronon.

“Shut up.”

“Zelenka probably did us all a favor,” said John, glancing at Teyla. She stared straight ahead, unmoved by their levity. “If you come through any sooner you would had a close encounter of the Wraith foraging party kind.”

“Never like to miss an opportunity to blow a few darts out of the sky,” said Lorne lightly. “Do the folks on the surface need any help? We brought Dr. Saito with us… just in case.”

The other jumper was close enough now that John could see Lorne through the windshield, Amy Saito in the seat next to them, and the rest of the team as indistinct shapes in the background. “No need. The Wraith did a clean sweep,” he said, trying not to sound unduly happy. “There’s no one left to help.”

There was no immediate response, and John assumed Lorne intended it as a moment of respectful silence for another group of people wiped from existence – a nice sentiment, although misplaced – until the Major’s voice came back, sounding confused. “Sir, maybe my HUD’s malfunctioning, but I’m picking up a good fifty or sixty life signs down there.”

Immediately the display appeared in front of John, the map showing the basic outlines of Rnaer, and… Lorne was right. There were still signs down there. There were still people alive.

For the first time Teyla was taking interest in the conversation. She peered at the glowing dots, which seemed clustered between the residential neighborhood and the public buildings. It was an area they had crossed twice this same day, an expanse where there was only a road and trees.

“Underground,” said Teyla suddenly. “The crèches.”

John frowned, turned to meet Ronon’s eyes, and looked at the display again. And made his decision. “Major, check it out. Scan for some kind of… underground entrance. Just be careful. These people weren’t exactly what we were expecting.”

“Yes, sir…” Lorne’s tone was questioning, but John didn’t want to go into it now. It would be enough for Lorne to know to be on alert.

Meanwhile, he needed to get his people back to Atlantis.