by Karen Miller
Right now, all he could do was keep the three of them together. If they separated, lost sight of each other for a moment, they would all die. He knew that as certainly as he knew the beat of his heart.
“So,” he muttered, somewhat despairingly. “Are we having —
— fun yet?”
Dex grinned wolfishly, whirling the quarterstaff over in his hand. “Oh, this part’s always fun.”
Sheppard saw the Satedan break left, and had about half a second to decide whether it was a feint or not. He went with his instincts, ducked back and to the right, and felt the tip of Dex’s staff hum past his shoulder.
He grinned, bouncing on his toes. “Gotta be faster than that.”
“Okay,” said Dex, and jabbed the staff’s blunt tip into Sheppard’s gut.
He hadn’t even seen blow coming. It took the breath from him; distantly, he felt the gym whirling, quickly at first but then more slowly, as though he were tumbling through some thickening fluid. The lights faded as he went down, the walls darkening into featureless shadow.
Had Dex really hit him that hard? He felt as though he were dying.
The crash mat slammed painfully upwards into the back of his head.
Sheppard cursed, saw his own quarterstaff go skittering away. He rolled frantically, half-expecting another blow, but Dex was must have been more forgiving than usual. Sheppard scrambled back to his feet, scooping up his fallen staff as he did so.
Dex was smirking. “Let me know when you want to quit.”
“Just getting started.” Sheppard dropped into a defensive stance and brought his staff up, two-handed. A couple of breaths had his head clear again, his vision pin-sharp. That’s what he had needed, he thought grimly. A little adrenaline to clear away the alien city’s last shadows.
He watched Dex circling him, padding to the right. There was something odd about the way the Satedan was moving, a hesitancy, almost too slight to notice but impossible to miss now that he knew it was there. Dex probably didn’t realize it, but he was holding himself slightly askew, as if favoring his left side.
If it was a ruse, it was a convincing one. Sheppard launched himself forwards, aiming for the Satedan’s right, but as the inevitable block came for him he twisted, rolled under it , whipped the staff up to land two solid blows on Dex’s weak side.
Dex stepped back, jaw clamped down hard.
Sheppard straightened. “Okay, we’re done.”
“You got lucky.”
“Damn straight I did. No way should I have been able to get one up on you like that.” He nodded at Dex’s left arm. “That still giving you trouble?”
“It’s fine.” The man rolled his head around on his neck, wincing a little. “Too long wandering around that damn maze, that’s all.”
“The city?” Sheppard headed towards a bench on the far side of the gym. His towel and water bottle were there, and he suddenly felt very thirsty. The headache he had developed on the pier still hadn’t faded. “You want to know something weird? I keep calling that, but the more I think about it, I must have remembered it wrong. It really wasn’t a city at all.”
“What else do you want to call it?”
“Search me. All I know is, cities normally have buildings. Doors, at least.” Sheppard dropped onto the bench, opened the bottle and took a couple of long swigs. “Do you remember seeing any doors?”
“No.”
“It’s driving me crazy.” The headache was prodding at him again, as if in warning. “How did we get there? I don’t even remember what planet we were on.”
“I’m not sure what planet you’re on right now.”
“Ronon, this is important.”
“Not to me. I honestly don’t remember anything about it. And you know something?” Dex turned away. “That doesn’t bother me at all.”
With that, he was gone.
Sheppard turned the bottle over in his hand. Beads of condensation glittered on its surface, but the water inside it had been warm and flat, tasteless. It sat in his gut like lead, faint waves of nausea joining the drumbeat behind his eyes.
Disgusted, he went to set the bottle down, but it slipped from his fingers. He watched it tip, slap onto the mat, and roll mockingly under the bench.
He sighed, leaned down to fumble for it. As he did so a shadow crossed him. Someone else wanting to use the sparring area, he guessed. “Just give me a minute. I’ve got this.”
There was no answer. Sheppard glanced up, opening his mouth to speak again, but he was alone. The gym was empty, its lights turned down, the far corners already too dark to make out.
The bottle was in his hand. He rose, grabbed his towel and headed for the exit. He didn’t want to be among shadows any more.
The city changed almost without warning. In one heartbeat John Sheppard was trudging wearily along a channel no different any of the hundreds he had walked before, and in the next he was at the threshold of a space so vast, so open and vertiginous that it stopped him dead in his tracks.
After so much enclosure, the scale of it literally staggered him. He had to reach out to the channel wall for support, the hated black stone suddenly a welcome source of solidity. Behind him, Teyla had jolted to a halt, as stunned by the sight as he was.
Ronon was still a few paces behind. He hadn’t seen it yet.
Sheppard had no words. All he could do was take his hands from the channel wall — somewhat reluctantly — and step out into the void.
The space, as far as he could gauge, was circular, a great dish or bowl, its faceted floor so far below him that he could barely make out the countless shapes and structures that formed it. Towards the center of it the floor rose again, curving seamlessly upwards to form the base of a tower that must have been thousands of feet high. He could not see its top; just as it had in the channels the light here came from below, from the ocean of polyhedra seething beneath his feet. Sheppard could not tell if he was standing above an open dish or within the confines of an immense, hollow torus.
Ahead of him, the gray-lit floor of the channel opened into a broad highway suspended in the air, three lanes wide or more, its edges knife-sharp, its far end stretching so far away from him that perspective narrowed it to a thread long before it reached the tower. There, other paths sprawled outwards, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, rendered hair-fine by distance, a flat dimensionless spider web miles across.
The sight was impossible, insane. In the channels he had been an insect. Here, he was a mote, a mere speck of dust. Too small to exist.
“Oh man,” he whispered. “What have we walked into here?”
Ronon stopped at his side. “Okay, you got me. I’m impressed.”
“Not the word I’d use.”
Teyla was at the edge of the highway, peering over its razored edge without fear. “John,” she called. “Look down.”
“Thanks, I’ll pass.”
“The structures are moving.”
Carefully, Sheppard crossed the surface to join her. As he neared her he slowed, checking his stance, placing his boots carefully. The P90 was slung against his chest, weighing him slightly forwards, and he had no idea if the flooring under him would remain stable as he neared its margin. He didn’t want it to flex suddenly and pitch him off the side of the path. That would be too undignified an ending.
He stopped slightly further from the edge than Teyla — drawing a slightly amused look — and leaned out.
“Whoah.” Vertigo swooped up through his spine. He had flown high in his time, high and fast, but there was something about standing untethered above a sheer half-mile drop that made his balance rebel.
“You see?” Teyla breathed, her voice thick with wonder.
Sheppard nodded slowly, resisting the urge to pull back from the sight. If the drop was dizzying,
the complexities below him were worse; of the untold thousands of blocks and planes that formed the base of the cavern, not one was still. Every structure he saw, from the simplest cube to the most tangled mass of polyhedra was marching to its own rhythm, turning, rising to fall again, sliding over and under and through each other.
This was not a city, he realized. It was a machine, a device of unimaginable complexity, and in perpetual motion.
“Shame Rodney’s not here to see this,” he said.
“With us, or instead of us?”
Sheppard made a noncommittal noise. “Either or.” He stepped back, and gestured towards the tower. “You think that’s where we need to be?”
“I do not know.” She glanced briefly back over the edge. “I hope we do not need to be down there.”
“No kidding.” Negotiating a path through those restless forms would be impossible, he was sure. None of them looked likely to stop and wait for a human to pass safely by. “So I reckon two, maybe three miles?”
“It is hard to judge, but yes. No further than four.”
“Okay.” He squared his shoulders. “If we set off now, we should be there by-“
There was an electric snarl, a whiplash of energy. Light blazed past him, scoring a track of pain across his retinas. He ducked back, whirled. “Ronon, what the hell?”
Dex was aiming his blaster back towards the channels. “We’ve got company.”
Sheppard turned to follow his gaze. There was someone walking along the channel towards him, almost entirely obscured by shadow.
Teyla had been right. They were not alone. Sheppard brought the P90 up fast, centered it on the figure’s skull. “Hold it right there.”
Despite his words, the figure didn’t pause. Its pace was measured, unafraid, approaching step by unhurried step until it emerged from between the channel walls, and into the cavern’s meager light.
At that moment, Sheppard realized that warnings would be wasted on the new arrival.
He had been wrong about the figure being hidden by shadows. It was shadow, a walking, moving silhouette cast from smoky darkness. Its form was still definite — a slender humanoid somewhat smaller than himself — but the stuff of it was swirling, raging, edged on one side by twisting shreds of blackness guttering away as if blown by the constant, howling gale Sheppard could hear but still not feel.
It was close now. Within the smoke, he could see tatters of anatomy bob and swim, components of life disassociated, untethered, set seething and roiling like a shoal of terrified fish. Sheppard muttered a curse, braced for recoil and squeezed the P90’s trigger, stitching a line of holes across that terrible, gaseous head.
The bullets did exactly what he had feared, whined clear through the figure and away, not troubling it for a moment. In response, the shape simply walked up to him, reached one slim arm past the gun and brushed his hand.
Its touch was fire, ice, pure voltage. It ripped a howl from him. Sheppard stumbled back, every nerve fizzing, his skin spewing black wisps as if the shape’s hazy state was infectious. He tried to raise the gun again, more in a gesture of defiance than any hope of defending himself, but his strength was gone, ripped away by the inexplicable wash of alien sensation. All he could do was drag himself further away.
The shape had stopped. It stood motionless, only the ragged shreds of its outline whipping in the unfelt wind. Its head was tilted slightly, as if in confusion.
“John?” Teyla had darted close to him, past the creature, keeping her gun centered on its torso as she advanced. “Are you all right?”
“Don’t…” The words lodged, crackling and dry, in his throat. He tasted dust. “Don’t let it touch you.”
“Watch your back!” bellowed Dex.
Sheppard cursed, hauled his heavy body halfway around. A few meters further up the suspended path, the air was growing dark.
A second creature was there, moving towards him, knitting itself from threads of gluey smoke as it walked.
He turned back to Teyla. “Run,” he hissed.
“Not without you.”
“I’m done. Can’t even-” He looked past her, eyes wide. “Ronon!”
The Satedan was wreathed in smoke.
A third shape had appeared behind him, coalescing in moments, and its streaming hands were wrapped around Dex’s head. Sheppard saw the man convulse sickeningly, every muscle locked rigid, eyes screwed shut, mouth gaping in a rictus of horrific pain. His blaster fired, once, his finger jolting uncontrollably on the trigger, sending a lash of plasma into the floor.
Sheppard lurched towards him. He heard Teyla scream a warning, but before he could take another step the first shape was in his tracks.
Its hands were up, reaching for his eyes, and-
It is the hot season, and the warm, dry air is full of drifting spinetree seeds. Their perfume is intoxicating, the twisting tracks they carve through morning’s mist have a beauty that is almost sensual. Father brushes them away with his hand as he rides towards me, expertly bringing his stiltbeast to a halt at the edge of the gel lake.
Mother has woven crysgems into my hair, a gift for the journey. I turn to show him, wheeling on the spot. The light of the upper sun flicks blue sparks from the gems into the corners of my vision, stars in daylight.
I feel the stiltbeast’s cool breath on my skin. Father is smiling. He reaches down to me, and whispers my name.
“John.”
The voice came from darkness. It was faint, but insistent; a crackling whisper in his right ear. All Sheppard could do was lie like a loose sack of grain and listen. His body was not his own.
“Colonel Sheppard? John, can you hear me?”
He blinked. The shadows were beginning to recede. Edges were resolving themselves around him, surfaces reappearing, combining into furniture, books, pictures, a paneled metal door. The familiar landscape of his quarters.
He tried to mumble a reply, but his tongue had glued itself firmly to the roof of his mouth. “Bhr…”
“I’m sorry, say again?”
“Right here, Colonel.” Sheppard sat up, carefully, working his jaw loose, the bed creaking softly under him. He had meant to spend just a few minutes resting before getting to work on Carter’s report, to ease the dryness in his throat, the thudding pressure behind his eyes. His body, though, must have had other ideas. He hadn’t even managed to remove his headset before sleep took him.
Trying to rest had been a bad move, he thought sourly. Not only had he lost untold hours, but he felt worse than he had done back in the gym. The headache was grinding, now. The bones of his skull felt too small, too delicate to successfully contain what lay within.
“Glad to hear it,” Carter replied. “You’ve been offline for quite a while. I was beginning to worry.”
“You and me both.” He glanced at his wristwatch, wondering if he had somehow slept clear through until the early hours, but the digits made no sense to him. The watch had somehow been set to timer mode, and was steadily counting down towards zero.
A little more than six hours gone. Less than two to go.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Have the IOA been in touch again?”
“More than once. I don’t know what their interest is in that city, they’re keeping me out of the loop for some reason. But John, they keep asking me how you ended up there.”
“They’re trying to find it.”
“Looks that way.”
“Bad idea.” Sheppard swung his feet carefully down onto the floor. “Really bad idea. Colonel, my memory of that place is like Swiss cheese, but I can tell you this; nobody is going back there. Ever.”
“I’m inclined to agree. And trust me, any report I make to them will have that front and center. But I need something, John.”
; “I’ll do what I can.”
“Thank you. And in the meantime, get yourself back to the Infirmary. You sound awful.”
The headset clicked silent. Sheppard let out a long breath, let his heavy head fall forwards. For a few seconds he tried to remember if the room had been dark when he had lain down, but fixing the moment in his memory sent a new spike of pain flaring up through the base of his skull.
The alien city still had its claws in him. It had put a mark on him that hadn’t even started to fade. Yet another reason to make sure that the IOA never discovered how to find it. Sheppard reached over to the lamp he kept beside the bed, squinting as he readied himself for the inevitable stab of light, and then realized that someone was in the room with him.
He froze.
There had been no sound, no sense of motion. No physical indication that he was not alone. The feeling of being watched, though, was overpowering. There was someone very close, studying him with a frightening intensity.
He waited, every sense straining, listening for a breath, for the slight movement in the air that would tell him where the watcher stood.
For a dozen heartbeats, nothing. And then, at the far corner of his vision, a piece of the darkness shifted.
Sheppard launched himself forwards, off the bed, dropping and turning in one smooth motion. Pure reflex had taken over; without conscious intent he had his sidearm up and aimed, his other hand on the light switch, body tensed to leap up and back towards the door.
He hit the switch, finger tightening on the trigger.
There was no target.
Sheppard held his aim for a few moments, then rose slowly. Both hands were on the gun now, arms locked straight. His observer could only be hiding on the far side of the bed.
There was, of course, no-one there.