stringertheory (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stringertheory) wrote2024-01-08 10:08 am
stringertheory) wrote2024-01-08 10:08 am
If At First You Don’t Succeed: Chapter 3
Title: If At First You Don’t Succeed
Rating: R
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters: Ronon Dex, Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagen, John Sheppard
Word Count: 3651
Categories: action, drama, angst, hurt/comfort, team as family
Spoilers: none
Warnings: graphic violence and injuries; temporary character death
Summary: In a far corner of the galaxy, Ronon watches Sheppard, Teyla, and McKay die over and over again. And he follows them, over and over again.
He’s the only one who can remember, the only one who can save them—if he can figure out how.
Time isn’t running out, but that might be the problem.
“What did you do?”
He was back in the first room, the cylinder warm under his fingers again.
Ronon could remember more this time—could remember everything, he thought—and his mouth went dry. Jerking away from the cylinder, he spun around to face McKay, who startled back a step at the sudden motion, surprise momentarily edging out the disapproving frown he wore. He quickly regained his composure, though, the frown returning as he crossed his arms over his chest and gave Ronon a challenging stare.
Beyond him, Teyla and Sheppard looked on with mild interest. Ronon’s eyes darted from one to another of them.
“We’ve done this before.”
“Déjà vu,” McKay replied with a sharp nod. “I get it all the time.” He waved a hand to encompass the room they were in, a shadow of weary disdain crossing his features. “No doubt due to everything looking the same. You’d think with all of their other advancements the Ancients would have developed more varied architectural tastes.”
“Not a fan of the Atlantis look, McKay?” Sheppard asked. Ronon wasn’t sure whether the hint of defensiveness in his tone was genuine or joking.
“It’s fine,” McKay sighed, “better than the places I was before this—you wouldn’t believe what passes for architectural design in Siberia—but would it have killed the Ancients to try something different now and then? I mean, when they found a style they liked, they really beat it into the ground.”
Ronon had been looking between Sheppard and McKay as they spoke, trying to track how they’d wound up talking about buildings. Frustrated, he stepped forward slightly, physically cutting into the conversation before he verbally did the same.
“I don’t mean that it looks the same, I mean that we have literally done this before. Twice.”
They’d done it before, and Ronon couldn’t let them do it again. He turned an intense, determined gaze on Sheppard, staring him down for a moment before he continued.
“We died.”
Ronon saw Sheppard’s expression shift slightly but McKay was the first to speak.
“What are you talking about?” he snapped, hints of disquiet threaded through the curtness.
Turning, Ronon locked eyes with him. “We died,” he repeated, watching emotions flicker rapid-fire across McKay’s face as he processed both the words and the way Ronon had delivered them.
“Ronon…”
Sheppard left his name hanging uncertainly, and Ronon turned to see Sheppard taking a few cautious steps in his direction, hands held in front of him as if Ronon were a wild animal whose behavior he didn’t understand and couldn’t predict. Sheppard’s brow was lowered in worry, but Ronon knew it was the wrong kind of worry. It was worry about Ronon, not worry for all of them.
“We died twice,” Ronon told him, sharply and firmly and leaving no room for any doubt.
They were all going to think he’d lost his mind—he could see it in their eyes—but he didn’t care. He knew what had happened, what he’d experienced, and it didn’t matter that none of the rest of them remembered. There was no way they were going back in that room again.
He couldn’t think about the fact that there’d been an ‘again,’ not yet. He’d deal with that later. When they stopped dying.
Sheppard had paused, his eyes moving over Ronon’s face as he studied him closely for a minute or so. Then his gaze moved to Teyla, and Ronon’s automatically followed in response.
It was obvious that she was concerned for Ronon, too, but he could also see a level of consideration in her gaze that McKay and Sheppard didn’t have. Maybe it was because she was better at reading people than either of them were, and therefore saw things in Ronon’s face that they couldn’t. Or maybe she was just more open to the unexplainable than they were. Either way, Ronon thought she might believe him.
Walking over, she looked up at him with a searching gaze. “What happened?”
Ronon took a breath—an easy, air-filled breath that didn’t hurt—and told her. “The next room down has two doors, sealing doors. We went in it and the doors shut behind us and the air was sucked out and we died. It happened twice, just the same.”
Not exactly the same, not when he’d tried to change things, but that didn’t matter. The important parts didn’t change. They went in the room and they died. That stayed the same.
McKay snorted derisively. “Are you saying you had a premonition? Because that’s highly improbable.”
Sheppard looked over at him in surprise. “Wait—are you saying that it’s possible to see the future?”
“Theoretically, no,” McKay replied. He looked faintly uncomfortable, like he wasn’t quite lying, but wasn’t fully telling the truth either. “But there was an alien at the SGC a few years back—Jonas Quinn, one of their more tolerable recruits—who was said to have been able to do it. For a little while at least,” he added with a dismissive wave.
“Why was he only able to do it for a short time?” Teyla curiously asked.
McKay rolled his eyes. “After one of the Goa’uld did some genetic experimentation on him, he supposedly was able to get glimpses of the future. At least until the changes to his brain almost killed him and he had to have emergency surgery, conveniently losing the alleged ability before it could be studied.” He huffed, but Ronon thought it was more with jealousy than disdain. “But I don’t know if I believe it. If we accept quantum mechanics as one of the guiding principles of the universe—which we do—then it precludes the possibility of being able to see the future. Calculate probabilities, sure. But not actually see it in high definition surround sound. Quinn probably just made a lot of lucky guesses.”
“I’ve gotta start reading the SG-1 mission reports again,” Sheppard drawled, looking impressed. “I’m way behind.”
“I’ll add it to your to do list,” McKay sarcastically snapped.
Teyla shook her head at them before turning back to Ronon. Looking into her eyes now he could tell that she’d fully accepted that he was telling the truth, whatever that truth might be.
“Is that what happened?” she asked him.
Ronon shook his head. “No. It wasn’t some vision, it actually happened. We died, and then we were right back in this room. Twice.”
It didn’t make Ronon feel any better that McKay suddenly seemed less dismissive and more unsettled. As Teyla and Sheppard exchanged uneasy looks, McKay leveled an assessing stare Ronon’s way.
“You’re saying time looped?” His tone was clipped and clinical, but there was anxiety in his eyes.
“If you mean we lived the same time again, then yeah.”
Behind the anxiety, McKay looked intrigued. “That’s… more probable.”
“Considering we’ve encountered more than one example of the Ancients building stuff that could mess around with time—including that actual time loop that put the SGC out of commission for months—I’d say it’s more than just probable, McKay,” Sheppard retorted, before he flashed a self-satisfied half smile Ronon’s way. “I did read those reports.”
McKay was nodding absentmindedly, gaze distant, but then he shook his head. “Yes, but in those cases there was a clear cause for what happened: a ship, or a device.” He waved a hand to encompass the room they were in. “There’s nothing in here that even remotely looks like it would be able to manipulate the flow of time.”
“Maybe it’s in the room with the double doors,” Sheppard suggested, turning expectantly to Ronon.
Ronon was already shaking his head, his skin prickling at the idea of going back in the room. “There was nothing in there but a few empty bottles.”
“You’re sure?” McKay pushed.
Ronon glowered at him. “Twice, McKay.”
McKay held up his hands. “Okay, okay, it’s not in that room.”
“Perhaps it is something else in the facility, or the facility itself,” Teyla said.
“Well, whatever it is, we’re going to have to keep exploring to find it,” Sheppard pointed out. As Ronon opened his mouth to argue, he added, “We won’t go back in that specific room, though.”
McKay’s gaze darted to Sheppard. “Why?”
“Ronon’s already said it’s empty, so we don’t need to waste time on it again.”
“I—” McKay started, before taking in the others’ resolute expressions and snapping his mouth closed again. “Fine.”
“There is no guarantee that we are still in a loop,” Teyla added as they emerged back in the hall, “if that’s what was happening in the first place. Therefore it makes the most sense for us to simply continue our search of the facility as planned and see what we find. It is possible that no additional loops will occur, especially if the looping was somehow tied to the one specific room that we aren’t going to go into again.”
“And if we do loop again?” Ronon could still feel the shaking in his hands, even though they were steady now.
Teyla gave him an understanding and supportive smile. “Then you will have to remember for the rest of us until we can figure it out.”
“And since you are the one who remembers, you’ll have to take point,” Sheppard told him, gesturing down the hall.
He wasn’t wrong and it did make sense, but Ronon still had to take a deep breath before he set off again. When they reached the hallway that led to the room that had killed them twice now, he paused and nodded to it.
“That’s the room.”
The others crowded around the hallway entrance and peered down it at the room’s open doors. It seemed so innocuous, just another part of the facility, but Ronon found himself glaring over their heads at it. He hoped Teyla was right and the loop or whatever it was was tied to the room, and them deciding to not go in there again would be the end of it. But there was a cold knot deep in the pit of his stomach, and he didn’t think hope alone was going to be enough.
With a final dark look, he moved past the room and continued down the hall. Glancing behind him, he saw Sheppard bustle McKay along in front of him, almost as if he didn’t trust McKay not to go into the room when their backs were turned. Ronon had no doubt McKay wanted to—it was obvious from the contemplation in his expression—and was prepared to have to sprint after him to pull him back if necessary. But McKay just gave Sheppard a disgruntled frown and kept going without any protest.
Not much further past the room, Ronon reached the short staircase that marked the end of the hallway they were in. The top landing of the staircase was still in deep shadow, but lights beyond it illuminated the length of the hallway the stairs led to. It was a little difficult to tell, but it looked like the hallway went on for another hundred yards or so, similar in length to the one behind Ronon. He couldn’t see whether it finished in a dead end or another turn, though.
Two hallways formed a cross intersection at the base of the stairs, and Ronon studied them in turn. The one to their left stayed on the same level, turning back to the right after about forty feet or so, from what Ronon could make out. To the right of the stairs, another short staircase headed down a few steps to a landing and then turned to the left. Ronon couldn’t see how far down the stairs continued after the turn, but light was shining up the stairwell from around the corner.
Deciding to keep to the left for now and from there work a path to the right across the facility, Ronon took the left-hand hallway first. There were no doors in the main branch, so he stalked all the way to the turn at the end without stopping.
While the main branch was fully lit, the one around the turn was almost entirely dark. Only three lights remained working—all dim, and one flickering—from the corner where he stood until about fifty feet or so along. Beyond that, the lights were still fully functional; the double doors at the far end of the corridor were practically in spotlight given the contrast between their brightly lit section and the darkened expanse leading to it.
Even in the gloom, Ronon could tell that the double doors were the only doors on the hall. If it had been any other situation, he might have just ignored them and turned back around. But he knew they had to check out every part of the facility they could get to, especially with the possibility that they’d triggered some kind of time machine. So he reluctantly started down the hall, telling himself that they’d either find something interesting at the end that would make the whole mission worth it, or they wouldn’t and they’d be able to write the entire hallway off and move on.
Because of the damaged lighting, Ronon hadn’t been able to make out the condition of the darkened part of the hallway until he was further in it. While the section at the end seemed to be in good shape, the same couldn’t be said for the first two-thirds. There was a damp, musty smell in the air, and the sound of trickling water—faint but unmistakable—was coming from somewhere.
Ronon didn’t have a flashlight, but he heard the others clicking theirs on behind him, and then three beams of light danced around the hall. His own shadow was thrown, long and indistinct and tripled, across the floor in front of him, bouncing with the rhythm of his teammates’ gaits. The light reflected in puddles covering the floor, and revealed the moss and mold growing on every surface.
“Ugh, this is not going to be good for my allergies,” McKay whined.
“Did you forget to take your antihistamines again, Rodney?” came Teyla’s voice.
“No, I did, but look at this.” One of the beams moving behind Ronon cut to a specific patch of wall to his left, highlighting a bright blue fuzzy growth there. “I’m pretty sure the strains my Earth-origin drugs are based on don’t cover whatever that is.”
“Are antihistamines supposed to cover mold?” asked Sheppard.
“Depends on the mold,” McKay muttered darkly.
Ronon reached the end of the unlit section, and he stopped just inside the light to turn back and check on the others. Teyla was a few meters behind him, with Sheppard and McKay walking nearly side by side a few meters behind her, McKay wearing a look of resigned suffering. Suddenly Teyla paused, cocking her head to the side curiously. She was turning to look back the way they had come when a loud crack echoed through the corridor.
A split second later, the ceiling at the entrance to the hall collapsed in a shower of mold and dust and water and debris.
Sheppard and McKay had both started to look behind them at the sound, but they’d barely made it halfway around before the crumbling ceiling reached them. Ronon was sure they hadn’t seen it coming; he hadn’t even managed to get out one of their names before they’d both completely disappeared beneath the fallen hallway structure.
The collapse moved across the ceiling like a wave, rolling toward where he stood, frozen to the spot, watching his friends die again. Teyla was trying to run for it, trying to run toward him, toward the light, but it was too late. Their eyes locked just before she was hit by falling debris and went down.
The dust cloud reached Ronon a split second later and he had to turn away and throw an arm over his face to protect it. As he held his breath and tried not to choke, the delirious thought skittered through his mind that this would be hell for McKay’s allergies. Half expecting at any moment to be buried along with the rest of his team, he braced against the rush of wind and waited for the end—maybe of the collapse, more likely of himself. But the rumbling receded and the ground stopped shaking and he was still standing.
Coughing, he turned back to survey the damage. The entire dark section of the hallway was filled with rubble, the collapse of the ceiling bringing the ground above the facility down with it. Numbly, Ronon stumbled toward the wall of debris and dirt, trying to figure out what to do. Digging didn’t seem like it would make any difference; he’d never get back out the way he’d come in, and there was no way he could get to his teammates before they were crushed or suffocated, if they weren’t already dead. But it felt wrong to just leave them there, to not even try to recover them. And so he just stood there, torn and heartsick and bitterly angry.
Then he heard something, like pebbles shifting against each other. Stepping closer to the rubble, he yelled out Teyla’s name. There was a moment of silence, and then faint but distinct noises coming from inside the debris.
Hope flared through his chest like a contact burn and Ronon leapt into action, frantically clawing away at rocks and stone and dirt and wiring. He didn’t stop to think or plan, he just dug as fast as he could, not noticing the cuts and scrapes appearing on his hands, the torn fingernails, the smears of blood he was leaving behind on shifted debris. Sweat was dripping in his eyes, but he felt cold and clammy as he burrowed deeper into the wall of rubble, afraid to pause even to try to hear Teyla’s signs of life again. He had to dig, and he had to dig fast.
After what felt like an eternity, his fingers hit something soft. A bit more shoveling revealed it to be Teyla’s side, and Ronon desperately followed its line toward her head, spitting out curses as the debris above him rolled down to cover his progress. Eventually, he was able to see the top of her shoulder, and was relieved when she weakly moved her arm.
Shoveling away like a man possessed, he cleared the side of her face. She’d stopped moving by that point, and he nearly collapsed with relief when he found her pulse still thumping away. It was too slow, though, and he redoubled his efforts, throwing chunks of wall that he might otherwise have struggled with over his shoulder with ease, adrenaline and desperation lending him strength.
Once he had Teyla’s head and part of her chest clear, he gently patted her cheek and called her name. She responded lethargically, turning her head toward him as if half asleep and staring up at him with unfocused eyes. Blood trickled down the side of her face from a wound Ronon couldn’t see, and his heart clenched.
“Teyla, can you hear me?” he asked, voice a gruff near-whisper.
“Ronon?” She blinked unevenly, one side of her face seeming to follow the other on delay. “What happened?”
“Ceiling collapsed,” he replied shortly, returning to clearing the debris around her, a bit more carefully now that she was partially exposed.
She made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat and shifted a little, letting out a low moan. “Hurts.”
Ronon flinched. “I know. I’m working on it.”
He’d managed to get one of her legs free—it was badly broken, but Teyla didn’t react as he worked around it—when the wheezing started. It was quiet enough at first that he missed it in the sounds of his work, and by the time he registered the noise it had picked up an added whistle. From there, Teyla rapidly got worse. With nothing else for it, he left behind any attempts at caution and returned to frantic digging. He had to get Teyla out as quickly as possible, regardless of the risk of triggering another collapse. If he didn’t get her out within the next few minutes, she’d be dead anyway.
He didn’t think about Sheppard and McKay. He couldn’t think about Sheppard and McKay. He just had to dig and not think and maybe he could save Teyla.
He was leaning across her when the last part of ceiling—the very edge of the damaged section, which had been hanging on by a single electrical conduit—fell on them both.
Something had gone into him, somewhere in his back, something that didn’t belong. It was sharp and intrusive and somehow it burned and cut at the same time. But it was the weight that hurt the most, the unbearable weight, like every part of his body was being compacted into somewhere too tight for it to fit.
He was pressed against Teyla, stomach to stomach, and for a few seconds he could still feel her breathing, their bodies pushing against one another in a fight for the space to draw breath. He tried to synchronize his movement with hers to help them both—breathing in when she breathed out, out when she breathed in—but they were so tightly squeezed together he could barely tell which one of them was moving. Then there was a muffled crunching, more felt than heard, as her body give way under his, and she didn’t move again.
Ronon wanted to struggle, wanted to rage, but the rubble was compressing him so tightly that he couldn’t even contract his muscles. He lay there in the oppressive darkness and waited to die, repeating to himself through the pain to remember the ceiling, remember the mold, remember the collapse, remember the ceiling.
Finally, after four excruciatingly long minutes, his body gave up.
Rating: R
Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Characters: Ronon Dex, Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagen, John Sheppard
Word Count: 3651
Categories: action, drama, angst, hurt/comfort, team as family
Spoilers: none
Warnings: graphic violence and injuries; temporary character death
Summary: In a far corner of the galaxy, Ronon watches Sheppard, Teyla, and McKay die over and over again. And he follows them, over and over again.
He’s the only one who can remember, the only one who can save them—if he can figure out how.
Time isn’t running out, but that might be the problem.
“What did you do?”
He was back in the first room, the cylinder warm under his fingers again.
Ronon could remember more this time—could remember everything, he thought—and his mouth went dry. Jerking away from the cylinder, he spun around to face McKay, who startled back a step at the sudden motion, surprise momentarily edging out the disapproving frown he wore. He quickly regained his composure, though, the frown returning as he crossed his arms over his chest and gave Ronon a challenging stare.
Beyond him, Teyla and Sheppard looked on with mild interest. Ronon’s eyes darted from one to another of them.
“We’ve done this before.”
“Déjà vu,” McKay replied with a sharp nod. “I get it all the time.” He waved a hand to encompass the room they were in, a shadow of weary disdain crossing his features. “No doubt due to everything looking the same. You’d think with all of their other advancements the Ancients would have developed more varied architectural tastes.”
“Not a fan of the Atlantis look, McKay?” Sheppard asked. Ronon wasn’t sure whether the hint of defensiveness in his tone was genuine or joking.
“It’s fine,” McKay sighed, “better than the places I was before this—you wouldn’t believe what passes for architectural design in Siberia—but would it have killed the Ancients to try something different now and then? I mean, when they found a style they liked, they really beat it into the ground.”
Ronon had been looking between Sheppard and McKay as they spoke, trying to track how they’d wound up talking about buildings. Frustrated, he stepped forward slightly, physically cutting into the conversation before he verbally did the same.
“I don’t mean that it looks the same, I mean that we have literally done this before. Twice.”
They’d done it before, and Ronon couldn’t let them do it again. He turned an intense, determined gaze on Sheppard, staring him down for a moment before he continued.
“We died.”
Ronon saw Sheppard’s expression shift slightly but McKay was the first to speak.
“What are you talking about?” he snapped, hints of disquiet threaded through the curtness.
Turning, Ronon locked eyes with him. “We died,” he repeated, watching emotions flicker rapid-fire across McKay’s face as he processed both the words and the way Ronon had delivered them.
“Ronon…”
Sheppard left his name hanging uncertainly, and Ronon turned to see Sheppard taking a few cautious steps in his direction, hands held in front of him as if Ronon were a wild animal whose behavior he didn’t understand and couldn’t predict. Sheppard’s brow was lowered in worry, but Ronon knew it was the wrong kind of worry. It was worry about Ronon, not worry for all of them.
“We died twice,” Ronon told him, sharply and firmly and leaving no room for any doubt.
They were all going to think he’d lost his mind—he could see it in their eyes—but he didn’t care. He knew what had happened, what he’d experienced, and it didn’t matter that none of the rest of them remembered. There was no way they were going back in that room again.
He couldn’t think about the fact that there’d been an ‘again,’ not yet. He’d deal with that later. When they stopped dying.
Sheppard had paused, his eyes moving over Ronon’s face as he studied him closely for a minute or so. Then his gaze moved to Teyla, and Ronon’s automatically followed in response.
It was obvious that she was concerned for Ronon, too, but he could also see a level of consideration in her gaze that McKay and Sheppard didn’t have. Maybe it was because she was better at reading people than either of them were, and therefore saw things in Ronon’s face that they couldn’t. Or maybe she was just more open to the unexplainable than they were. Either way, Ronon thought she might believe him.
Walking over, she looked up at him with a searching gaze. “What happened?”
Ronon took a breath—an easy, air-filled breath that didn’t hurt—and told her. “The next room down has two doors, sealing doors. We went in it and the doors shut behind us and the air was sucked out and we died. It happened twice, just the same.”
Not exactly the same, not when he’d tried to change things, but that didn’t matter. The important parts didn’t change. They went in the room and they died. That stayed the same.
McKay snorted derisively. “Are you saying you had a premonition? Because that’s highly improbable.”
Sheppard looked over at him in surprise. “Wait—are you saying that it’s possible to see the future?”
“Theoretically, no,” McKay replied. He looked faintly uncomfortable, like he wasn’t quite lying, but wasn’t fully telling the truth either. “But there was an alien at the SGC a few years back—Jonas Quinn, one of their more tolerable recruits—who was said to have been able to do it. For a little while at least,” he added with a dismissive wave.
“Why was he only able to do it for a short time?” Teyla curiously asked.
McKay rolled his eyes. “After one of the Goa’uld did some genetic experimentation on him, he supposedly was able to get glimpses of the future. At least until the changes to his brain almost killed him and he had to have emergency surgery, conveniently losing the alleged ability before it could be studied.” He huffed, but Ronon thought it was more with jealousy than disdain. “But I don’t know if I believe it. If we accept quantum mechanics as one of the guiding principles of the universe—which we do—then it precludes the possibility of being able to see the future. Calculate probabilities, sure. But not actually see it in high definition surround sound. Quinn probably just made a lot of lucky guesses.”
“I’ve gotta start reading the SG-1 mission reports again,” Sheppard drawled, looking impressed. “I’m way behind.”
“I’ll add it to your to do list,” McKay sarcastically snapped.
Teyla shook her head at them before turning back to Ronon. Looking into her eyes now he could tell that she’d fully accepted that he was telling the truth, whatever that truth might be.
“Is that what happened?” she asked him.
Ronon shook his head. “No. It wasn’t some vision, it actually happened. We died, and then we were right back in this room. Twice.”
It didn’t make Ronon feel any better that McKay suddenly seemed less dismissive and more unsettled. As Teyla and Sheppard exchanged uneasy looks, McKay leveled an assessing stare Ronon’s way.
“You’re saying time looped?” His tone was clipped and clinical, but there was anxiety in his eyes.
“If you mean we lived the same time again, then yeah.”
Behind the anxiety, McKay looked intrigued. “That’s… more probable.”
“Considering we’ve encountered more than one example of the Ancients building stuff that could mess around with time—including that actual time loop that put the SGC out of commission for months—I’d say it’s more than just probable, McKay,” Sheppard retorted, before he flashed a self-satisfied half smile Ronon’s way. “I did read those reports.”
McKay was nodding absentmindedly, gaze distant, but then he shook his head. “Yes, but in those cases there was a clear cause for what happened: a ship, or a device.” He waved a hand to encompass the room they were in. “There’s nothing in here that even remotely looks like it would be able to manipulate the flow of time.”
“Maybe it’s in the room with the double doors,” Sheppard suggested, turning expectantly to Ronon.
Ronon was already shaking his head, his skin prickling at the idea of going back in the room. “There was nothing in there but a few empty bottles.”
“You’re sure?” McKay pushed.
Ronon glowered at him. “Twice, McKay.”
McKay held up his hands. “Okay, okay, it’s not in that room.”
“Perhaps it is something else in the facility, or the facility itself,” Teyla said.
“Well, whatever it is, we’re going to have to keep exploring to find it,” Sheppard pointed out. As Ronon opened his mouth to argue, he added, “We won’t go back in that specific room, though.”
McKay’s gaze darted to Sheppard. “Why?”
“Ronon’s already said it’s empty, so we don’t need to waste time on it again.”
“I—” McKay started, before taking in the others’ resolute expressions and snapping his mouth closed again. “Fine.”
“There is no guarantee that we are still in a loop,” Teyla added as they emerged back in the hall, “if that’s what was happening in the first place. Therefore it makes the most sense for us to simply continue our search of the facility as planned and see what we find. It is possible that no additional loops will occur, especially if the looping was somehow tied to the one specific room that we aren’t going to go into again.”
“And if we do loop again?” Ronon could still feel the shaking in his hands, even though they were steady now.
Teyla gave him an understanding and supportive smile. “Then you will have to remember for the rest of us until we can figure it out.”
“And since you are the one who remembers, you’ll have to take point,” Sheppard told him, gesturing down the hall.
He wasn’t wrong and it did make sense, but Ronon still had to take a deep breath before he set off again. When they reached the hallway that led to the room that had killed them twice now, he paused and nodded to it.
“That’s the room.”
The others crowded around the hallway entrance and peered down it at the room’s open doors. It seemed so innocuous, just another part of the facility, but Ronon found himself glaring over their heads at it. He hoped Teyla was right and the loop or whatever it was was tied to the room, and them deciding to not go in there again would be the end of it. But there was a cold knot deep in the pit of his stomach, and he didn’t think hope alone was going to be enough.
With a final dark look, he moved past the room and continued down the hall. Glancing behind him, he saw Sheppard bustle McKay along in front of him, almost as if he didn’t trust McKay not to go into the room when their backs were turned. Ronon had no doubt McKay wanted to—it was obvious from the contemplation in his expression—and was prepared to have to sprint after him to pull him back if necessary. But McKay just gave Sheppard a disgruntled frown and kept going without any protest.
Not much further past the room, Ronon reached the short staircase that marked the end of the hallway they were in. The top landing of the staircase was still in deep shadow, but lights beyond it illuminated the length of the hallway the stairs led to. It was a little difficult to tell, but it looked like the hallway went on for another hundred yards or so, similar in length to the one behind Ronon. He couldn’t see whether it finished in a dead end or another turn, though.
Two hallways formed a cross intersection at the base of the stairs, and Ronon studied them in turn. The one to their left stayed on the same level, turning back to the right after about forty feet or so, from what Ronon could make out. To the right of the stairs, another short staircase headed down a few steps to a landing and then turned to the left. Ronon couldn’t see how far down the stairs continued after the turn, but light was shining up the stairwell from around the corner.
Deciding to keep to the left for now and from there work a path to the right across the facility, Ronon took the left-hand hallway first. There were no doors in the main branch, so he stalked all the way to the turn at the end without stopping.
While the main branch was fully lit, the one around the turn was almost entirely dark. Only three lights remained working—all dim, and one flickering—from the corner where he stood until about fifty feet or so along. Beyond that, the lights were still fully functional; the double doors at the far end of the corridor were practically in spotlight given the contrast between their brightly lit section and the darkened expanse leading to it.
Even in the gloom, Ronon could tell that the double doors were the only doors on the hall. If it had been any other situation, he might have just ignored them and turned back around. But he knew they had to check out every part of the facility they could get to, especially with the possibility that they’d triggered some kind of time machine. So he reluctantly started down the hall, telling himself that they’d either find something interesting at the end that would make the whole mission worth it, or they wouldn’t and they’d be able to write the entire hallway off and move on.
Because of the damaged lighting, Ronon hadn’t been able to make out the condition of the darkened part of the hallway until he was further in it. While the section at the end seemed to be in good shape, the same couldn’t be said for the first two-thirds. There was a damp, musty smell in the air, and the sound of trickling water—faint but unmistakable—was coming from somewhere.
Ronon didn’t have a flashlight, but he heard the others clicking theirs on behind him, and then three beams of light danced around the hall. His own shadow was thrown, long and indistinct and tripled, across the floor in front of him, bouncing with the rhythm of his teammates’ gaits. The light reflected in puddles covering the floor, and revealed the moss and mold growing on every surface.
“Ugh, this is not going to be good for my allergies,” McKay whined.
“Did you forget to take your antihistamines again, Rodney?” came Teyla’s voice.
“No, I did, but look at this.” One of the beams moving behind Ronon cut to a specific patch of wall to his left, highlighting a bright blue fuzzy growth there. “I’m pretty sure the strains my Earth-origin drugs are based on don’t cover whatever that is.”
“Are antihistamines supposed to cover mold?” asked Sheppard.
“Depends on the mold,” McKay muttered darkly.
Ronon reached the end of the unlit section, and he stopped just inside the light to turn back and check on the others. Teyla was a few meters behind him, with Sheppard and McKay walking nearly side by side a few meters behind her, McKay wearing a look of resigned suffering. Suddenly Teyla paused, cocking her head to the side curiously. She was turning to look back the way they had come when a loud crack echoed through the corridor.
A split second later, the ceiling at the entrance to the hall collapsed in a shower of mold and dust and water and debris.
Sheppard and McKay had both started to look behind them at the sound, but they’d barely made it halfway around before the crumbling ceiling reached them. Ronon was sure they hadn’t seen it coming; he hadn’t even managed to get out one of their names before they’d both completely disappeared beneath the fallen hallway structure.
The collapse moved across the ceiling like a wave, rolling toward where he stood, frozen to the spot, watching his friends die again. Teyla was trying to run for it, trying to run toward him, toward the light, but it was too late. Their eyes locked just before she was hit by falling debris and went down.
The dust cloud reached Ronon a split second later and he had to turn away and throw an arm over his face to protect it. As he held his breath and tried not to choke, the delirious thought skittered through his mind that this would be hell for McKay’s allergies. Half expecting at any moment to be buried along with the rest of his team, he braced against the rush of wind and waited for the end—maybe of the collapse, more likely of himself. But the rumbling receded and the ground stopped shaking and he was still standing.
Coughing, he turned back to survey the damage. The entire dark section of the hallway was filled with rubble, the collapse of the ceiling bringing the ground above the facility down with it. Numbly, Ronon stumbled toward the wall of debris and dirt, trying to figure out what to do. Digging didn’t seem like it would make any difference; he’d never get back out the way he’d come in, and there was no way he could get to his teammates before they were crushed or suffocated, if they weren’t already dead. But it felt wrong to just leave them there, to not even try to recover them. And so he just stood there, torn and heartsick and bitterly angry.
Then he heard something, like pebbles shifting against each other. Stepping closer to the rubble, he yelled out Teyla’s name. There was a moment of silence, and then faint but distinct noises coming from inside the debris.
Hope flared through his chest like a contact burn and Ronon leapt into action, frantically clawing away at rocks and stone and dirt and wiring. He didn’t stop to think or plan, he just dug as fast as he could, not noticing the cuts and scrapes appearing on his hands, the torn fingernails, the smears of blood he was leaving behind on shifted debris. Sweat was dripping in his eyes, but he felt cold and clammy as he burrowed deeper into the wall of rubble, afraid to pause even to try to hear Teyla’s signs of life again. He had to dig, and he had to dig fast.
After what felt like an eternity, his fingers hit something soft. A bit more shoveling revealed it to be Teyla’s side, and Ronon desperately followed its line toward her head, spitting out curses as the debris above him rolled down to cover his progress. Eventually, he was able to see the top of her shoulder, and was relieved when she weakly moved her arm.
Shoveling away like a man possessed, he cleared the side of her face. She’d stopped moving by that point, and he nearly collapsed with relief when he found her pulse still thumping away. It was too slow, though, and he redoubled his efforts, throwing chunks of wall that he might otherwise have struggled with over his shoulder with ease, adrenaline and desperation lending him strength.
Once he had Teyla’s head and part of her chest clear, he gently patted her cheek and called her name. She responded lethargically, turning her head toward him as if half asleep and staring up at him with unfocused eyes. Blood trickled down the side of her face from a wound Ronon couldn’t see, and his heart clenched.
“Teyla, can you hear me?” he asked, voice a gruff near-whisper.
“Ronon?” She blinked unevenly, one side of her face seeming to follow the other on delay. “What happened?”
“Ceiling collapsed,” he replied shortly, returning to clearing the debris around her, a bit more carefully now that she was partially exposed.
She made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat and shifted a little, letting out a low moan. “Hurts.”
Ronon flinched. “I know. I’m working on it.”
He’d managed to get one of her legs free—it was badly broken, but Teyla didn’t react as he worked around it—when the wheezing started. It was quiet enough at first that he missed it in the sounds of his work, and by the time he registered the noise it had picked up an added whistle. From there, Teyla rapidly got worse. With nothing else for it, he left behind any attempts at caution and returned to frantic digging. He had to get Teyla out as quickly as possible, regardless of the risk of triggering another collapse. If he didn’t get her out within the next few minutes, she’d be dead anyway.
He didn’t think about Sheppard and McKay. He couldn’t think about Sheppard and McKay. He just had to dig and not think and maybe he could save Teyla.
He was leaning across her when the last part of ceiling—the very edge of the damaged section, which had been hanging on by a single electrical conduit—fell on them both.
Something had gone into him, somewhere in his back, something that didn’t belong. It was sharp and intrusive and somehow it burned and cut at the same time. But it was the weight that hurt the most, the unbearable weight, like every part of his body was being compacted into somewhere too tight for it to fit.
He was pressed against Teyla, stomach to stomach, and for a few seconds he could still feel her breathing, their bodies pushing against one another in a fight for the space to draw breath. He tried to synchronize his movement with hers to help them both—breathing in when she breathed out, out when she breathed in—but they were so tightly squeezed together he could barely tell which one of them was moving. Then there was a muffled crunching, more felt than heard, as her body give way under his, and she didn’t move again.
Ronon wanted to struggle, wanted to rage, but the rubble was compressing him so tightly that he couldn’t even contract his muscles. He lay there in the oppressive darkness and waited to die, repeating to himself through the pain to remember the ceiling, remember the mold, remember the collapse, remember the ceiling.
Finally, after four excruciatingly long minutes, his body gave up.