by Graham, Jo
John picked himself up, stick still held at the ready. Teyla’s opponent was rolling around on the floor groaning.
The other one, the one she’d hit over the head, was unconscious. Jitrine bent over him.
“Come on,” Teyla said. “We cannot stay here. Another group will be coming along behind.”
John gestured to the guy groaning on the floor. “What about him?” Armed as they were, with only sticks, they couldn’t take prisoners. But leaving this guy in their rear didn’t seem much of a plan.
Teyla looked down at him. “We must leave him. What else is there?”
John shrugged. “You mess with us again, we’re not so nice, ok?” He glanced at Teyla. “You’re lucky she likes you.”
He glanced up. There were two doors out, one opposite the entrance they’d come in, and the other in the same wall but off to the left of the door.
“Empty room, twenty by twenty. Two doors. Just what the game master ordered. Look around and see if you see anything useful,” John said. There were no furnishings or even the trunks he half expected.
“Up there,” Teyla said. At ceiling level on opposite sides were two cameras.
“Right,” John said. “Wonder how our betting odds just changed.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Jitrine said.
“Those things in the wall are cameras, doctor,” Teyla said. “They allow the Wraith—the High King and his soldiers—to see what happens here.”
“Using optical lenses and electricity,” John said, trying to think of the things her society might at least have words for. “Trust me, it’s complicated. I couldn’t even tell you exactly how a video camera works. But it’s so they can watch the games.”
Jitrine frowned. “It’s a machine?”
“Yes,” Teyla said.
“And these games are not a sacred rite, but merely entertainment for them? For these you call Wraith?”
“Yes,” Teyla said grimly. “And when we have entertained them, they will kill us. We do not intend to allow that to happen.”
Jitrine stood up. “What do you intend to do?”
Teyla looked at John.
“We’re going to shut this place down,” he said. “I don’t know how yet, but we will. No more death games.”
“You are one man,” Jitrine observed. “How do you think you can do such a thing?”
Frankly, he had no idea. But Jitrine and Teyla were both waiting for an answer. John shrugged. “Theseus was only one guy too, but he killed the Minotaur.”
Teyla’s mouth twitched, and he wondered if he were really putting anything over on her. “That is a story of your people I do not know,” she said.
“Yeah, I’ll have to tell you sometime,” John said. “I’ve got another book you could borrow, called The King Must Die. But first, let’s get out of here.”
Teyla looked around. “Which way?”
“Door in the same wall,” John said, looking at the less obvious one. “When the game master thinks they’re being clever.”
This passage was dark, and he poked ahead of them carefully with the butt of the torch. Jitrine was right behind him, and in the dark she almost ran up on him several times. It was a good thing he was feeling ahead, because a flight of stairs down began abruptly. How far he’d have fallen down if he’d missed the first step was a really good question.
“Stairs,” John said. Behind him he heard Teyla halt. He felt around. “There’s a rail on the left hand wall.”
Cautiously, they descended. Twenty two steps. Not quite two stories, maybe a story and a half. There was a faint glow ahead, as of another room torchlit.
Something moaned.
There was something lying at the foot of the stairs. No, someone. As John came closer he saw that it was the boy from the ship, the one who had been in the first group to enter the labyrinth. He was curled at the bottom of the stairs.
Before he could say anything, Jitrine pushed past him and knelt beside the boy. He was cradling his wrist, and there was an open cut down the side of his forehead back into his hair. “What happened?” Jitrine asked gently.
He looked up at them, his eyes wide and frightened. “The man in our group, the big one… He said he was going to win and he hit me with something. I don’t know… I turned around and ran, just trying to get somewhere he wasn’t.” His eyes flicked up to John and back down to Jitrine. “I didn’t see the stairs in the dark. I guess I fell all the way down.”
“We must get him into the light,” Jitrine said.
John hesitated.
“I am a doctor,” Jitrine said. “This boy has not harmed us, and I am bound to render aid. Now will you help me or not?”
“Yeah.” John bent down and helped her get the boy up, while Teyla checked ahead.
“It is another empty room,” she said. “Two cameras. But this time there is a table and two chairs.”
“Don’t touch anything,” John said. He got the kid and hauled him along, Jitrine hurrying after. There was blood all over her hands where she’d touched the kid’s head.
There were four torches, one on each wall. In the ceiling, hidden among the rough stones, were three or four recessed light fixtures, though they weren’t turned on.
“Set two,” John said. He put the boy down under one of the torches.
“Let me see,” Jitrine said, kneeling down.
“Am I going to die?” the kid asked. There was blood all over his hands too.
“No,” Jitrine said firmly. “Head wounds bleed a lot, but may not be very serious. Why, Sheppard there bled all over me when I stitched his head a few days ago, but he’s perfectly fine now!” She looked at John. “Show him your wound.”
John obligingly pushed his hair back. “See?” he said. “Not so bad.”
“It will give you a very manly scar,” Teyla said with a smile.
The boy stopped shaking quite so much, enough to let Jitrine examine it. To John it looked pretty dramatic, but Jitrine didn’t seem concerned.
“Long and shallow,” she said. “I should stitch it to make sure it doesn’t pull, but it is not as bad as it looks. When we get through this, I will want to tend to it, but it is already stopping bleeding. Let me see your wrist.” As she took his hand he groaned.
“What is your name?” Teyla asked by way of distraction as Jitrine felt it carefully.
“Nevin,” he said. “We’re not getting through it, are we?”
“Yes, we are,” Teyla said.
Jitrine met his eyes matter of factly. “Your wrist is broken. I will need to set it and splint it when we are done. I am sure it is painful, but I do not have anything to give you. They have taken my medical bag.”
Teyla fished in the pockets of her BDUs. “I have another bandage. Perhaps that would bind it for the time being?” She pulled out one of the long field dressings.
“That will do very well,” Jitrine said.
John paced back and forth. “We need to get a move on, people.”
“This will only take a moment,” Teyla said, and gave him what he was beginning to think of as her quelling look. He could say they were going on without the kid, but then Jitrine would insist on staying with him, and Teyla would insist on staying to guard Jitrine, and at that point…
It was easier just to shut up and not play that out.
John walked over and glanced up at one of the wall cameras. “Yeah,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Stargate whooshed open in a burst of blue fire, and the jumper leaped through, climbing into the morning sky. Carson Beckett eased back on the controls, mindful of the problem of altitude. They mustn’t get too close to the energy shield that protected the planet.
Major Lorne pointed to the map on his laptop, as Carson never could get the heads-up display working properly. “Cadman said they’d gotten as far as this.”
Rodney, leaning over the back of the copilot’s seat, snorted. “That’s not very useful. Half our flight path will be ov
er ocean that way.”
“And we’ve established that Ronon and Zelenka left the island in a boat,” Lorne said patiently. “Don’t you think it might be a good idea to look for them at sea?”
Rodney allowed that might be wise. The problem was that there were so many small boats at sea on a clear day. They made low approaches over a dozen small fishing boats and transport ships laboring over the clear blue waters, but the radio stayed ominously quiet. Even Rodney was beginning to find Lorne’s continual radio calls irksome.
“What the hell is that?” Carson asked. He must have answered his own question, because a moment later he put the controls over, diving sharply toward the sea and pulling up at what looked to Rodney like a dangerous few hundred feet, driving hard toward the coast.
“What?” Lorne looked up from his laptop, where the search grid was connected to the jumper’s sensors. “What?”
“A Wraith cruiser,” Carson said shortly. “Our sensors were picking it up at extreme range. It was almost masked because it was grounded and not powered up.”
“A Wraith cruiser?” Rodney said disbelievingly. “How could this mission get any worse? Oh, I know! There could be Wraith here!”
“Did it see us?” Lorne asked.
Carson’s hands moved nervously over the board. “I don’t see how. It was grounded with minimal systems using power. That would suggest to me that it was parked and that they didn’t plan on taking off anytime soon.”
“Great,” Lorne said.
“How about we engage the cloak instead of running like scared bunnies in the opposite direction?” Rodney asked. “You know, we don’t actually have to run away. The Wraith can’t detect us cloaked.”
“Oh. Right then.” Carson engaged the cloak. “Forgot that for a minute.”
Rodney rolled his eyes. “How long have you been flying this thing, Carson? A year?”
“I don’t fly it very often,” Carson retorted. He turned back, banking long and low over the sea.
“Keep flying the grid,” Lorne directed. “We want to make sure we don’t miss spots searching the sea. If Ronon and Zelenka took off in a boat, we need to make sure we don’t miss them. And cloak or no cloak, if we start transmitting right on top of that cruiser they’ll notice. It masks our ordinary electronic signature, not an outgoing signal. So let’s take this easy, one step at a time.”
For once Rodney wanted to swat Lorne for his methodical, calm style. Sheppard would just charge in and blow up the Wraith cruiser or something. But he had to admit that Lorne was more likely to find their missing people. Just not as quickly as Rodney would like.
Rodney checked the ordnance. Two drones. Two ought to take out the cruiser at most. Well, unless they were unlucky. Certainly even Carson ought to be able to hit a sitting duck, with the cruiser parked and powered down.
“One thing at a time,” Lorne said softly. “First we find our missing people. Then we deal with the Wraith. Remember what we’re here for.
***
“Two doors,” John said. “The old two doors, one to the left and one to the right.” They were more like openings, really, leading into another pair of torchlit corridors. No doubt they had the obligatory cameras too. Down the one to the left he could see another door thirty feet or so along.
“Left?” Teyla said.
Nevin was standing beside Jitrine, looking the worse for wear but a bit stronger since Teyla had given him one of her granola bars and told him how well he was taking his injury.
“Yeah,” John agreed. He led the way down the hall, poking the floor every few feet as he went, Jitrine and Nevin behind him. It seemed a little odd that none of the groups behind them had run up on them while they had paused, but maybe taking the door in the same wall a ways back had been an unpopular choice. It was fine by him if they went through the entire maze without running into anybody.
The floor seemed solid and good, and listening at the door produced nothing. John flung it open, then laid about on the non-hinged side with the stick, whacking the bare wall with great enthusiasm. Nothing. Jitrine looked at this little performance skeptically.
“Ok, then.” John sauntered into the room. “Just checking.”
Another made to order dungeon. Ten by ten, with two torches and two cameras.
“You’d think these guys could do better than this,” he said to Teyla as the others filed in. “Maybe a large chest to check for traps.”
Teyla crossed her arms across her tank top, her head to the side. “Because spandex can be dangerous?”
“Trunk!” John said quickly. “Chest like trunk! A trunk kind of chest.”
Teyla looked like she was going to laugh. “I do not see any trunks in here. Why would there be one?”
“They just…go in dungeons.” John shrugged. “To hold treasure. Or magic weapons. Or giant poisonous snakes.”
“Why would a giant poisonous snake be in a trunk?”
John blinked. She had a point. “You know, I’ve always kind of wondered that.”
Jitrine looked at Teyla curiously. “And you’re not his wife?”
“I have better taste than that,” Teyla said seriously, but the way she looked at him sideways took the sting out of it.
John looked up at the ceiling. “You know, this is pretty lame.” The cameras were right there where they ought to be. “No traps, no special effects, nothing more lethal than a stairway. This isn’t right. This isn’t legendary danger.”
“Perhaps we are not to the dangerous part yet,” Teyla said.
John nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe. Maybe they figure these first rooms are for the contestants to thin each other out a little bit. The obstacle is the other contestants. And then further along comes the good stuff. This is all totally straightforward. Nothing to it.”
“Empty rooms,” Teyla said.
“There’s only one way out,” Nevin said, looking at the door in the opposite wall.
“Then I guess we go that way.” John opened the door and half turned toward it when a fist connected with his face, spinning him around. The floor came up with amazing speed.
***
“Cameras,” Radek whispered.
“I see them.” Ronon crouched in a shadow just ahead of him.
“They are on both sides of this corridor,” Radek whispered, craning his neck to see. “I do not think there is a way to pass that is not in view of one camera or the other.”
“Backtrack again,” Ronon said.
Radek shook his head. “We cannot. There were only two converging corridors at the end, and we have tried them both. Unless we go back to the very beginning by the guard post, we must go through one or the other.”
Ronon’s brows twitched, and he moved back quietly to Radek’s side. “Any bright ideas?”
Radek looked up at the cable running camouflaged along the ceiling. “We could cut the electric cable. I cannot reach it, but if you lift me up I will be able to. We must be far ahead of the contestants, since we are working this back to front, so perhaps they will think it is a camera malfunction if they lose the visual on a corridor that no one has come to yet. I doubt they will send someone to fix it, with contestants in the maze.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Ronon said.
Radek looked at the cables again. “I have another thought.”
“What?”
“If we trace the cables we should be able to find the control room. It might be a remote routing center. They may have this running on automatic so that they can sit back somewhere and relax while they watch it.”
Ronon nodded. “Or it might be full of Wraith.”
“I thought that was your department, my friend,” Radek said with a smile.
Ronon loosened his energy pistol in its holster. “I’m beginning to like the way you think.”
***
Feet spun around him. Teyla’s feet. Teyla’s feet in her black boots were doing an elaborate dance, forward and backward, now advancing, now retreating. Other feet were dancing too, four
other feet in leather sandals. Some of them belonged to someone who said, “Ooof.”
That would be Teyla getting him in the stomach with a stick.
John reached out and grabbed the nearest foot and yanked as hard as he could. It slid out from under its owner, and the person attached to the foot came crashing down, landing hard on the floor with a crack. The other feet retreated.
“Sheppard?” It was Jitrine kneeling beside him, helping him to sit up. “Sheppard, can you speak?”
“Yeah,” he managed, turning over. His jaw hurt. A lot. He moved it experimentally. “That was not fun.”
“I should think not,” Jitrine said.
There was a flurry of blows behind him, and then a strangled noise. “Mercy,” a man’s voice groaned. “Mercy, please…”
John twisted around.
Teyla had the other man down, her foot on his back forcing his throat down on the stick. Much more pressure and he would surely black out. “Why should I do that?” she asked, tossing her hair back from her face. “You will just try to ambush us again.”
“No… I swear…” he croaked.
John got to his knees. “I’m ok,” he said to Jitrine. “I’m good.” Nevin watched, wide-eyed.
“I see no reason to trust you,” Teyla said, but she did ease the pressure of her foot enough to let him breathe.
“I just want to get through this thing,” the man mumbled. “That’s all.”
“As do we all,” Teyla said. “But we do not do it by ambushing others.” She jerked the stick from beneath his throat, letting him sag to the floor as she took a few steps away. “Get up.”
Jitrine’s hands were under John’s arms, but he shook her off to get to his feet himself. “I’m ok. Really.”
The other man got up rather more slowly and laboriously. The way he clutched his side suggested Teyla might have cracked some ribs too. John knew the feeling. But then, one of his friends seemed to be out cold on the floor.