Jo Graham - Death Game

John ducked his head ruefully. “Was it that obvious?”

“Not then.” Teyla’s eyes danced with mischief. “Then, I just thought that you were disturbed.”

“Disturbed?”

“Insane,” Teyla clarified. “Perhaps in a good way, but more than a little unbalanced.”

“Maybe I am,” John said. “Maybe I’ve just gotten better at covering it up.”

Her smile faded, but not the warmth in her eyes. “Maybe you are,” she said quietly. “But we all have our scars. What defines us in life is not what happens to us, but how we bear it.”

There was something in her face, in the tilt of her chin, that made him want to ask, want to know what she carried beneath her usually serene and unruffled surface. “Teyla…”

“You may come across!” the woman on the other side of the dry stream bed shouted. “If you leave us alone, we will not harm you or hinder you!”

John snapped around. “Ok, we’re in business! Suua, can you hold the ladder on this side and let me down? Then I’ll go up the other side, you get everybody down this side, throw me the ladder, I’ll get everybody up that side, and then you climb down this side and then up the ladder.”

Suua blinked. “You lost me.”

“Let me down this side,” John said patiently. “And then I’ll climb up the other side. Let’s start with that.”

“And hope that no one turns the water back on,” Teyla said darkly, looking at the dry stream bed where he had been swept away before.

“That is not possible,” Radek said patiently. “I told you. I have turned off the pump.”

“Might they not reach a manual override in the pump room?” Teyla asked.

John looked around at her, hoping he didn’t look alarmed. “We didn’t see one when we were down there, did we? If we had, we would have turned the water off.”

“I am sure that there is one somewhere,” Radek said sensibly. “But they will have to get to it, which will take them some amount of time.”

“No,” Teyla agreed. “We did not see one, so perhaps it is even deeper within the maze.”

“Or in a pump control room somewhere we have not discovered,” Radek said. “It is possible. I did not have time to examine all the systems from the central control room.”

“Great,” John said, and started to climb down. He was absolutely not thinking about a wave of cold water rushing down the dry stream bed. Absolutely not.

Besides, it wouldn’t start like that, would it? It would be more of a trickle as the pumps came back online. It was a long way down to the pump room. It would take a while to get going. Surely even if they turned it back on, it would take a long time for the water to recirculate. They’d have some warning.

John scrambled across the bottom of the stream bed. Ok. Now back up the other side. He’d climbed it soaking wet, with the stones slippery and shifting and the current dragging at him. It was, in fact, a lot easier to get up it dry. The side had a definite slope, so it was much easier than the wall yesterday.

John stood up on the other side. “Ok. Everybody down.”

With a glance back at the others to encourage them, Jitrine began descending the ladder. When she got to the bottom Ailan started down, and then her twin, Nevin, cautiously descending one handed. His broken wrist couldn’t take any weight at all.

That would be the bad, John thought. Not him down in the middle, but everybody else, while he watched safe above the water. That would be the really, really bad. His hands were sweating and he swung his arms, pacing back and forth. Got to breathe through this.

Across the stream bed, Teyla caught his eye, and he figured he wasn’t fooling her.

“I am ready,” Teyla said confidently, and she started down the ladder, holding on with her left hand, the Wraith stunner stuck in the back of her waistband.

Ronon waited above, his eyes on Suua. That was good. Ronon would keep an eye out. Ronon always did. He’d be the last one down, usually Teyla’s place, but with her bad shoulder she needed the ladder.

Ronon saw him watching and nodded. He’d be nervous too, if everyone were down in the middle except him. He probably was nervous.

Teyla. Then Zelenka. Then Suua. Ronon last, climbing down without the ladder.

“Catch, Sheppard!” He tossed it up and John caught it, tying it to the pillar the rope bridge had originally hung from. “Everybody up,” Ronon said. He boosted Ailan onto the ladder surprisingly gently.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, almost the first thing John had heard her say.

Ailan. Then Teyla. Nevin. Jitrine. Zelenka. Suua.

And then Ronon last, watching everybody’s backs, his eyes on John as he climbed. He knew how to do this, John thought. He was completely patient with the civilians. And then they all stood on the right side together.

“Piece of cake,” Radek said to Ronon.

“Yeah.” Ronon glanced at Radek in a way that seemed almost friendly. “It’s all good.” Which was a little baffling, since Radek was likely to be scared of climbing in and out of things, while Ronon didn’t seem like he was scared of anything, much less climbing through watercourses that might turn into raging streams at any moment.

“Let’s head for the surface,” John said. “Ronon, come up here with me. We need to check out what’s ahead of us.”

It wasn’t far to the surface. At the first chamber below, where John and Teyla had checked for traps a few hours earlier, they paused. It looked little different with the lights on, a boring ten by ten room.

“This is it,” John said. “Everybody, you stay with Teyla while Ronon and I check things out. Just stay here.”

Carefully, with Ronon on his heels, he slipped down the corridor toward the stairs. Everything was well lit. The stairs to the surface went steeply up, ending in the sliding doors set in the ceiling. There was a door panel on this side, but it was dark. Probably because Radek had cut the power.

“We’re going to need Zelenka up here,” John said quietly to Ronon. “He’s going to have to hotwire the panel.”

“Yeah.” Ronon crept up the stairs to the very top, and John knew better than to interrupt him while he had his ear to the door. After a few minutes he came back down. “There’s a couple of people up there. I hear two sets of footsteps. Can’t tell if they’re Wraith or Wraith worshippers. No big crowd or anything though. It’s quiet.”

“There was a big crowd this morning,” John said. “But they’ve probably gone down to the exit to catch people coming out. If this door is locked, they won’t see any reason for more than a couple of guards.”

“So we get Zelenka to open the door and we rush them?”

“That’s the plan,” John said. “And then head for the cruiser. If we take their ship, they can’t exactly follow.”

“Makes sense,” Ronon said. He looked at John skeptically. “You really think you can fly that thing?”

John was saved from answering. “Go ahead and zip her up, doc.” A voice crackled behind him, and it took John an incredulous moment to realize it was his radio, hooked on his belt on standby, useless for days.

“Closing the back then.”

“That’s Carson!” John grabbed for the radio. “What the hell?”

“Underground,” Ronon said. “We’ve been too far underground to pick up a radio signal for hours.”

John flipped the radio out of standby. “Beckett? This is Colonel Sheppard.”

“Bloody hell! Lorne, did you hear that?” Oh yeah. It was Carson all right.

“Colonel Sheppard?” Major Lorne’s voice was loud and clear. “What is your position, sir?”

“Give me that!” Rodney said. “Sheppard? Where are you? I want you to know that I’ve been looking all over this godforsaken planet for three days for you. You don’t even want to know what I’ve endured!”