Nothing would have given Rodney more pleasure than shoving one of the needles deep into Balzar’s arm, preferably with a few embolism-triggering bubbles in the mix. But getting Teyla and Ford back might in some way mitigate this unbelievably disastrous turn of events.
Gat motioned to one of the thugs and said, “Bring the other two that you found. Then round up the priests’ warriors. Once we become Chosen, they must obey our orders.” A vengeful smile distorted his features. “When the Wraith come, we will transport the ‘warriors’ out to the villages, to stand in defense as they claim their ancestors once did. That will provide the Wraith a suitable diversion while we evacuate those loyal to us.”
“Well,” Sheppard said to Rodney as they were marched to the end of the Sanctuary Hall and shoved into a rank-smelling corner. “That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.”
“Me? I wasn’t the only one who assumed the Chosen were running things around here.” He wished his words didn’t carry such an obvious lack of conviction. “Kesun could’ve said something to clue us in!” Even as he spoke, he realized that was exactly what Kesun had done. The cycle continued as the priest had explained—but the power currently rested with the barbarians. The problem was that Rodney’s disgust at the idea of an advanced technology being regarded as a religion had instantly lured him into his assumptions about the Chosen. Teyla could now add ‘blind bigot’ to ‘hypocrite’.
Before he could further ponder the depth of his flawed judgment, he was surprised to see Teyla and Ford being led in their direction by a squad of goons. Sadly, two of these men also carried P-90s.
“Good to see you guys,” Sheppard told the rest of their team when they neared. “They treat you all right?”
Teyla glared at the smirking bully boys and then eyed the growing bruise on the Major’s cheek. “Better, I believe, than you. The Chosen are not the leaders of these people.”
“Yeah, we got that.”
Their guards motioned for Ford and Teyla to also sit on the floor. Rodney waited for the inevitable stream of recriminations from his Athosian teammate, but then Balzar tossed the box containing the gene therapy in his general direction.
“Careful!” Rodney just managed to catch it. “That stuff is fragile, and since our welfare would appear to be directly tied to to a positive outcome of this experiment—”
“Enough of your mindless chatter. The potion!” Gat’s eyes blazed. Unlike Kolya, the Daleran leader could never be reasoned with.
“All right, fine. Anyone ever tell you that patience is a virtue?” Rodney withdrew the requisite supplies, and handed them to Ford. The reaction was instantaneous. Gat, Balzar and what were presumably the other chiefs—or more accurately, extortionists—inched closer on all sides. As if he hadn’t had enough reminders lately that crowds weren’t really his thing.
With a glance at Sheppard, who reluctantly signaled his permission, Ford stood, and demonstrated the syringe. “Who’s going first?”
Balzar’s anticipatory smile vanished when Gat pointed at him. The village chief stared suspiciously at the Lieutenant when the needle was inserted into his arm. A moment’s silence followed before Balzar complained, “I feel nothing.”
“Well, what did you expect?” Rodney rolled his eyes and got to his feet. “It’s gene therapy, not a can of Popeye’s spinach! Besides, it takes several hours to come into effect, and not everyone will successfully receive it.”As he spoke, he noticed Sheppard and Teyla were also standing and exchanging brief looks with Ford.
It then occurred to Rodney that Yann had gone missing. So, for that matter, had most of their heavies, which meant that Teyla, Ford and Sheppard could conceivably take out this lot and—
A bunch of grubby rags and desperate, hungry faces suddenly spewed into the Sanctuary Hall from the nearby entrances. Before Rodney’s teammates could make a move, the Citadel’s desperate poor were climbing all over Gat and the other chiefs. Yann appeared from somewhere in the middle, and with the help of three or four wild-eyed cavemen types, wrested the syringe from Ford.
Yann’s wide, ruddy face was almost reverent as he thrust his hand high, holding the now empty syringe up for all to see. “Here is the end of our oppression!” he shouted. “Here is our salvation from the Wraith!”
A disorganized cheer went up. “Oh, brother,” Rodney said under his breath. Sure enough, just to keep things interesting, the transport doors opened, and Kesun began muscling his way through the crowds—with his warriors in tow. In addition, even more of the impoverished Citadel’s residents were pouring into the place from the other entrances, insane with desperation.
There were eighty doses of the gene therapy, and there were a lot more than eighty people here. Rodney jumped when hands grabbed at the pack, snatching it out of view.
“McKay! Let’s go.” Sheppard gripped him by the arm and started hauling him through the chaos in the direction of the closest exit.
“Kesun would steal your chance to become Chosen!” he heard Gat bellow. “Kill the Chosen. Kill them all!”
The mob seemed to change direction, but before Rodney could make out what was going on, Balzar’s voice added to the fray. “The Chosen from Atlantis are no better than the others. Let them be an example of the fate earned by all Chosen!”
There was no way that could go well. His heart rate spiking, Rodney stuck close to his team as they attempted to evade the subset of Dalerans who seemed to be on Balzar’s side. The Major started to reach into his pocket, only to be tackled from the side and shoved toward Teyla.
Rodney glanced around at the burly men moving to surround them. Just beyond them, someone cried out, “Warriors, defend the Chosen!” An axe swinging through the crowd resulted in a bloodcurdling cry from Gat. The other chiefs also began to fall beneath the avalanche of warriors. Surging against them, a sea of ragged humanity was howling for everyone’s heads.
Rough hands clamped down on Rodney’s biceps and dragged him out of a crowd too caught up in the frenzy to notice. Sheppard was pulled alongside him, while Ford and Teyla were yanked in the opposite direction. Maybe Yann and his army of destitutes hadn’t intended to hurt them, but Rodney didn’t feel nearly as confident about their prospects at the hands of Balzar and his crew.
A burst of P-90 fire prompted him to look back between the flailing arms and swinging axes. Kesun had somehow been separated from his warriors. In the brief moment before he vanished beneath the blades of the enraged horde, Kesun returned Rodney’s gaze. The full weight of the man’s desperate plight for his people struck an even more powerful blow than Rodney’s earlier realization of his flawed judgment.
Sheppard yelled something at him. Rodney could only stare in reply. He knew he was telegraphing his anguish loud and clear but couldn’t find the energy to give a damn. Never before had an action—okay, maybe not an action, but a statement—of his generated such catastrophic consequences. He filed away a mental memo: exhibiting any kind of humanity only ever ends badly.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
It hadn’t been a bad plan, but the execution had been somewhat lacking. Or maybe it had just been an unforeseen complication that had doomed him to fail, something he couldn’t possibly have predicted. Yeah, that had to be it: the Pegasus corollary to Murphy’s Law.
In any case, John’s theoretical jailbreak hadn’t gone so well. When he and Rodney had been dragged from the Sanctuary Hall and down a dank hallway lined with prison cells, he’d grabbed a hold of the rough iron bars that formed a cell’s door and swung it into one captor’s face, knocking the goon to the floor. He’d intended to fell the other with the pocketknife no one had noticed when he’d handed over his sidearm. Somehow he hadn’t factored in the possibility of a third goon showing up until a brick-hard arm stinking of fish had constricted around his throat.
When the spots cleared from John’s vision, Rodney was still standing there like a deer caught in headlights, and two irked-looking Dalerans were shoving them into the cell. Oh, and the pocketknife definitely got confis
cated the second time around. John inwardly cursed himself out. He’d had that knife since survival training.
Unwilling to suffer any further antics, or maybe just out of spite, the goons had bound his wrists to the cell bars with a thick strap of leather. That wouldn’t have been so bad, but they’d done it beneath a set of crossbars, low enough that sitting was hell on the spine and standing was right out. Eventually he gave up and lay down on the cold, uneven stone floor, trying to tell himself that the unwashed urinal smell was coming from someplace other than the damp ground.
Rodney’s wrists were similarly bound, but since he hadn’t tried to beat anyone up lately, they’d allowed him the freedom to pace the cell…all twelve feet of it. John looked up at the scientist. He took seven measured steps, pivoted, and took seven steps back. The pattern repeated, and repeated again. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-turn.
“I’ll give you this much,” John commented. “Your sense of rhythm’s flawless.”
“I did have that going for me, if nothing else.” Rodney’s focus didn’t waver. “Never needed a metronome. Standard andante at eighty beats per minute, allegro at one-twenty.”
“Um, okay.” John assumed that if he needed to understand that comment, it would be explained. “Meanwhile, could you knock that off? Watching you bounce back and forth from down here could give a trapeze artist vertigo.”
“So don’t watch.” The pacing continued for several seconds, until Rodney changed course and flopped down on a rough bench that presumably passed for a bed. “If you were going to try something as monumentally stupid as that escape attempt, you could have at least warned me.”
“Not without arousing suspicion.” John wriggled his arms experimentally. Shifting the strap might not be impossible, but his wrists would be shredded before he could get anywhere.
“You didn’t actually expect that maneuver with the cell door to work, right?” Rodney leaned his head back against the wall.
“I figured we had a better shot out there than we do in here.”
“I suppose, but only if, like Yann’s rebels, you’re going for that whole ‘better to die on one’s feet than live on one’s knees’ thing.”
John didn’t bother to mask his irritation. “Right now I’m thinking I might die flat on my ass, so let me know if there’s a cliché for that.”
“I’m working on it. And by ‘it,’ I mean a better plan for not dying, rather than an appropriate cliché for your predicament.” As he’d proved on numerous occasions, Rodney could think and talk at the same time. “I guess all this makes sense from their perspective. They’ve been led to believe that their mistreatment and marginalization has been the fault of the Chosen for so long that trusting us would be a tough sell.”
Rolling his eyes toward the ceiling, John muttered, “Ten minutes in here and already you’re going Patty Hearst on me.”
“Don’t be a jackass. I’m decidedly opposed to getting quartered, which I suspect is what awaits us if we hang around here. What I don’t understand is why they bothered to lock us up first rather than just get it over with.”
“Maybe their schedule was booked up for the day.” It was the best explanation John had, which wasn’t saying much. “That’s of course assuming that your ‘they’ is the same ‘they’ that I’m thinking put us in here.”
“It has become somewhat difficult to distinguish who’s who in the revolutionary scheme of things.” Rodney looked as though he saw some merit in John’s suggestion, though. “Everyone’s probably either fighting to get their hands on some of the gene therapy or fighting the ones who’ve already gotten it.”
As if to bear that theory out, scattered sounds reached them from some distance away. It all ran together, making it difficult to piece together what was happening, but it sure wasn’t anything orderly. “Not to mention killing the Chosen,” John added. Rodney winced at that. “Or the guys who were actually running this place.”
“Whom, if memory serves correctly, Kesun labeled as barbarians,” Rodney supplied. “In short, it’s complete and utter anarchy.” He snorted. “I’ve never been known to do anything by halves.”
John fixed his gaze on his teammate again. Rodney was staring off into space, but this didn’t appear to be a ‘solving the mysteries of the universe’ trance. It looked more like he was wondering how everything had fallen to pieces so damned fast. “I can hear the wheels in your head turning from here.”
Shaking himself, Rodney glanced down at him. “Devising a brilliant plan of escape will go a lot faster without interruptions.”
So he didn’t want to chat. That was new. “Whatever you say.”
After a moment, the scientist seemed to slump a little. “No, it won’t,” he admitted quietly. “It won’t go faster, because there’s nothing to work with and nowhere to go.”
“Hey, we’re still alive. I’ll take that for the moment.”
A guttural yell from somewhere far beyond the cell’s walls cut into the discussion, mixing in with other rising voices and the occasional clash of metal. It didn’t take an advanced degree to realize what was going on outside. Rodney had a few of those anyway and, from his expression, that hyper-critical brain of his was obviously cranking out some nasty answers. John sighed. “Look—”
“What?” The harsh tone surprised them both, and Rodney went back to staring at the wall, this time looking more sullen. “Excuse me if I’m having a little trouble accepting this whole mess. I’m just now learning that in dismantling the social construct of this world, something I championed rather enthusiastically based on a set of completely false assumptions, we may have gotten people killed. I have the right to take a moment, don’t I?”
John shook his head, a cold sensation creeping into his thoughts. “Join the club. I’m considering printing up T-shirts.”
That seemed to throw Rodney off. They looked at each other for a few seconds. At last, he asked hesitantly, “How do you—?”
“I woke the damn Wraith, Rodney. Responsibility doesn’t come much heavier than that.”
“It wasn’t just you. And it wasn’t…” He abandoned the sentiment, doubtless recognizing that they’d both heard it all before, and that it would always ring a little hollow. “What I meant was, knowing that, how do you manage to keep from losing it?”
“By repeatedly telling myself that having no way of knowing the consequences counts as a satisfactory excuse.”
“How’s that working out?” The interest on Rodney’s face contained a slightly desperate edge, as if he were hoping to glean some enlightening crumb from the reply.
“Not that great so far.” John forcibly shifted his thoughts into another direction. “Listen, there’s stuff we can control and stuff we can’t. All we can do is deal with what’s in front of us.”
“Yeah.” The scientist dropped his gaze to the floor, visibly deflated. “Good pep talk.”
“Now who’s being a jackass?”
Rodney ignored the comment. “Friday, huh? You couldn’t have suggested to Elizabeth that we’d be back, oh, maybe tonight?”
“I said we’d check in sooner, but to wait until dark on Friday before sending in the troops.”
“And by troops, you meant…?”
“Two jumpers and twelve Marines.”
“Comforting numbers, but the odds of these nouveaux Jacobins, or whoever ends up pulling the strings around here, waiting until Saturday morning to execute us are…well, not good.”
“I know. I’m hoping that this uprising burns itself out before Markham and Stackhouse show up.” His teammate looked skeptical, so John explained. “We weren’t sure how all this was going to go down, and I didn’t like the idea of our guys walking into the middle of a full-scale revolution, so I asked Dr Weir to give us some time. Now that things have gone pretty well south, there could be any number of newly invested Chosen running around outside the Citadel with Shields, and any one of them could disable our jumper or the others without too much trouble.”
�
��While that makes sense, it doesn’t provide us with a way to avoid our respective death sentences.”
“Not really, no. But if it comes to that, I’d rather the four of us die here than lose twelve more trying to bust us out.”
“Except, of course, that our failure to return will in fact prompt a rescue, in which case—”
“We’re back to trying to figure out how to save ourselves before that happens.”
Rodney said nothing, but picked up the tattered blanket lying on the bench, and stood. Fingers fumbling due to his bound wrists, he managed to fold the fabric and lay it on the floor beside his teammate. John looked up at him, not comprehending. The scientist gave an impatient tap of his foot. “The floor’s cold and wet. You do realize that the single most common form of death that resulted from prolonged incarceration in assorted species of dungeons was pneumonia? At least if you lay on that you won’t go hypothermic.”
Although he was hardly in any real danger, John couldn’t repress a small smile. “Thanks.” He awkwardly shuffled his way onto the blanket. “Did I mention that I feel ridiculous down here?”
“You don’t want to know how you look, then.”
Aiden let out a stream of invectives and, snatching up some loose pebbles in his bound hands, tossed them at the rat. He supposed it was a rat, although it was more the size of a small housecat, and there was green fur on its back and tail. The animal disappeared through the bars into the cell opposite theirs, where it began scratching around in some unidentifiable sludge that might once have been clothing.
“I would not be so hasty,” Teyla commented. “We might need the animal for food if we are incarcerated in here for any length of time.”
One thing about being stuck in prison with Teyla: she wasn’t exactly wimpish. He wondered how the Major was faring with Dr McKay as a cellmate. “Yeah. Maybe we could tame it or something. Get it to gnaw through these.” He lifted his hands and smiled ruefully.
“No need.” The Athosian had managed to loosen her bindings and now pulled her hands free.
Stargate Atlantis: The Chosen (Stargate Atlantis) Page 16
