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sga_flashficIV. Classification, bizarre
Sheppard had seen some crazy things since ‘gating to Atlantis. There were the life-sucking vampires and their pet bugs; human-sized robots with an AI that made Hal look friendly; he’d flown a nuke on a suicide run, played Indiana Jones on an alien world, and scoped intel in a virtual environment. So, you’d have to excuse him if, at times, he felt a little jaded by the things they saw.
Then again, there were always exceptions; MX9-113 was situated in a radiation belt. Overhead, brightly twisting multi-colored ribbons painted the sky. Next to this, the Aurora Borealis looked like a child’s finger painting.
“You sure the radiation levels are safe?” Sheppard asked.
Rodney dropped the scanner, revealing a “duh” expression. “Would I be here if it wasn’t?”
Sheppard cocked his head. “Point,” he said. He surveyed the area around the ‘gate. Ronon and Teyla were securing their CEMS – cumulative exposure metering system -- and scanning the area to their six. Vegetation around the immediate area consisted of ankle-high yellow grass with intermittent mangy patches of red dirt. The horizon looked fairly clear, except for some heavy shadows too far away in the distance for him to identify. Trees, maybe? He pulled his field glasses out and took a quick look.
“That looks like buildings,” he said, squinting through the lenses. “What are you getting as far as life signs?”
In the background, Sheppard heard the kawoosh of the ‘gate, followed by the snap of it shutting down.
“Nothing,” Rodney grumped. When Sheppard narrowed his eyes, Rodney frowned at the device in his hands. “There’s too much interference. All I’m getting is that there’s life; it’s lost the ability to distinguish between small and stupid, and large and probably sentient.” There was a worm crawling over Sheppard’s boot, and Rodney pointed at it. “See,” he flipped the screen for Sheppard to look at, “I’m getting two readings where you’re at. You and wormy.”
Sheppard reached down and picked the worm off his boot, staring at it suspiciously. “Wormy?” The black spots on the front end (or was that the back?) looked at him enigmatically; its fat, pale body wiggled in his palm. Sheppard made a face at the oozing sensation against his skin. “I think it just peed on me.” Making a face, he scooted it off his hand and back into the grass where it’d apparently came from. He rubbed his hand against his pants. Gross.
“Ah, yes, definitely then. There you are, back to just you.”
Ronon came up behind Sheppard. “It’s clear behind us.”
So, they had the possible buildings in the distance ahead of them – probably two to three hour march to get there. The energy and life-sign scans were useless. The only reason they’d gated to this world was because the Atlantis databanks had it placed on the same listing as Doranda. It wasn’t a guarantee that they’d find anything, but seeing how Doranda had had an outpost with a potential super weapon, they didn’t have the luxury of not checking this world out. Rodney had theorized after getting the initial MALP reports that perhaps the Ancients had mined the radiation belt for energy, possibly a missing link in building or recharging ZPM’s. It was worth looking into, he’d said, looking excited at the prospect.
The planet was affected by an EM field; it was now standard in pre-mission MALP scans to check for that potential hazard. That ruled out taking a Jumper; otherwise, Sheppard would’ve gone back and gotten a ship rather than spend a day hiking under a sky full of radiation. Somehow he doubted Banana Boat SPF 30 was going to do squat for protecting against what was up above, no matter how safe Rodney insisted it was.
Of course, Rodney had already applied his homemade brew of SPF 100 that did not smell like coconuts. More like sour milk.
“It should not take more than three hours to reach the buildings,” Teyla judged. “It is well within the window Radek said would be safe.”
Rodney swiveled to look at Teyla. “And isn’t that exactly what I said?”
She smiled sweetly.
Disgruntled, he tugged at the hanging badge clipped to his vest. “Besides, that’s what these are for. It’s about time Carson finally took my concerns seriously. At the rate we’re going, we’ll be human nightlights.”
“All right, we aren’t getting negative exposure time here, so let’s get going.” Sheppard adjusted his P90, looking down his side to make sure his 9 mm was where it should be.
They started walking.
One hour and forty-three minutes later, Rodney picked another worm from Teyla’s hair and swore, “What the hell is wrong with this place?”
If Sheppard hadn’t been so busy checking every sudden itch, he would’ve thought up some witty comeback. But as it were, they all had to focus on keeping their skin and clothing insect free. Those slug-like worms were everywhere, and like ants at a picnic, they just kept slithering up and onto Sheppard and his team, like they were just more blades of grass to be climbed on.
“Try to walk only in the bare patches,” Sheppard ordered. It was the grass – the worms were everywhere in the grass.
Ronon’s lips wrinkled in disgust. “The whole planet’s probably infested with these things.”
Sheppard tried to hide his reflexive shudder. Everyone on his team (and even quite a few that weren’t) knew he had bug issues. Just thinking about the chittering and slimy feel of the Iratus bug gave him hot flashes. Jesus. And here he’d spent the first thirty-plus years of his life thinking he’d made it relatively phobia-free. The only fear he’d ever had was of screwing up and costing one of his troops their life, and he’d faced that one a few times too many, anyway. But bugs – crap. At least the worms were small; it wasn’t like they were going to sneak up on him and take a big unsuspecting bite of his neck before he could brush them off.
“They seem harmless.” Teyla was handling it the best out of all of them. She picked another fat, wiggling worm from Sheppard’s neck.
He twisted, trying to see the spot. “It didn’t bite me, did it?”
Teyla’s smile was patient. “No, John.” She peered at the spot. “Although, it did secrete more of this…substance…”
He started wiping, and thinking maybe they should get entomology out here before they spent any more time on this wormhole of a planet.
“We are over halfway there,” Teyla murmured, as if she’d read his thoughts.
Rodney shook his head. “We have no idea what this stuff could be doing to us. We should go back.”
“It’s just piss, McKay.”
“And you would know that how?” Rodney demanded, glaring at Ronon. “It could be toxic, full of…of…”
“Toxins,” Ronon grinned. “Flesh-eating acid, mind-altering slime.”
Rodney’s face blanched. “Oh, har har, make fun of the cautious one. We’ll see how hard you laugh when you’re stumbling aimlessly through the grass seeing purple cows and flying fish.”
“Your mind is a weird place.” Ronon stepped nearer Rodney, who flinched back, moving to protect himself, when the runner grinned deeper and plucked a worm from behind Rodney’s ear.
“We’ll keep going,” Sheppard decided. At Rodney’s disbelieving look, he pointed out, “Teyla’s right, we’re almost there, another hour at the most; and Ronon’s said it, it’s probably just worm piss. I’m not seeing double or hearing voices in my head, so, we’re good.” He stared down at another fleshy sucker crawling upwards. He kicked it off and stepped forward. “Besides, standing still is just letting them get easy access.”
That’s when Sheppard was suddenly assaulted with a massive display of colors and his vision telescoped. He wasn’t in the field of grass and worms anymore; instead, he was surrounded by dark shapes. He was standing on a street, lined with tall buildings. Sheppard heard whispers -- hundreds of voices whispering -- but he couldn’t see anyone. What the hell? A sharp pain ice-picked in the middle of his forehead, and Sheppard raised a hand to push it away.
“Go home! It is not safe! There is nothing here for you except danger!”
“John?”
When Sheppard peeled his eyes open, not even remembering that he’d shut them, he found Teyla staring anxiously at him. “Did you just see anything unusual?”
“See,” Rodney declared. “Hallucinations. Oh, God, it’s started. We’re dead. Dead men walking.”
“No, no,” Sheppard said. “I think…I think there’s people in those buildings up ahead.” He stopped to think, going back over all the things he’d learned about the Ancients. “They could do telepathy, right?”
“Who could?” Teyla was sliding a confused look at him, and a worried one at Rodney. “What did you see?”
Sheppard’s headache throbbed. That was new and unpleasant. “When I stepped forward, I wasn’t here; I was there – standing in a street, buildings all around me. And there were people talking.” His eyebrows scrunched. “They were trying to say something, but I couldn’t understand. Then, I got this headache, and a voice said for us to go home, some kind of vague “it’s not safe” warning.” But what if something or someone was trying to keep them away from the people he’d heard whispering, maybe Ancients?
“Maybe McKay’s right.” Ronon shook off another worm. “I don’t like this.”
Aborting the mission was Sheppard’s decision, and it was one he hated to make, but the facts were pretty grim. Worm-infested planet. Ineffective scanning equipment because of atmospheric conditions. Definite life-signs, but it could be anything from the multitude of worms to a human being, maybe an Ancient. There were buildings up ahead. Jumpers were inoperable due to planetary conditions. They had been exposed to an unknown substance from the insect life. And he’d definitely just experienced something unusual, though he wasn’t prepared to label it “hallucination” yet.
He came to a decision and turned back toward the ‘gate. “I’m calling it off. Let’s get back. We’ll have Carson run some tests on these bugs and see if it’s nothing, and reschedule.” Whatever was going on, it was time to step back and assess from somewhere safe.
It was then that Rodney said, “Oh, no.”
Sheppard quickly saw why. Behind them, a wall had appeared out of nowhere. It looked like it’d been built out of obsidian, running horizontally as far as he could see, blocking their retreat. “This sucks.”
“I think whoever lives in the buildings does not wish us to leave,” Teyla guessed. “Perhaps this is why you were warned?”
“Your scanner show anything?” Sheppard glanced at the display.
Rodney shook his head, frustrated. “Nothing. According to this, nothing’s changed. But it also says that this,” he plucked another worm off Sheppard’s leg and held it up, “has the same biosignature as you. I don’t think we can trust our equipment.”
“Want me to shoot it? That’ll tell us if it’s real or not.” The whirring noise of Ronon’s pistol charging up filled the air.
“It’s not real! Just as the city is not. Leave, before it is too late!”
Sheppard flinched. “Did you hear that?”
Surprised expressions registered on the others. “Who said that?” Rodney looked around. “Someone just told us --”
“That it is not real,” finished Teyla, puzzled.
“We are the Kree’ni’ni. It took us too long to establish high enough levels of m’ris in your bodies so that we could communicate. They know of your existence. Time is of the essence; leave, before they arrive.”
Ronon spun around, looking for something he could attack. “Who are you?”
“We are all around you.”
Rodney’s jaw gaped. “You’re worms?”
“No, Rodney McKay. We have a symbiotic relationship with the ra-m’ris. The substance they’ve secreted is absorbed by your body, and enables us to communicate. We exist on a frequency you cannot see.”.
Sheppard fought against the creepy-crawly sensation burning under his skin. God, he fucking hatedbugs. “So, who’s coming for us?”
His team had their weapons ready, but they didn’t see anything except a big wall that wasn’t really there and the skyline of the city they’d almost reached.
“They are the Lost. Energy beings. They like to play with travelers who come to our world. Feed on them. My kind tries to warn away those that we can, but you wait too long!”
Images of people fallen in the grass punched into Sheppard. They had what looked like shadow shapes crouched down next to them.
Agony burned through his skull.
“Aaahhh, damn it!”
When Sheppard could see again, he found Rodney on the ground beside him. Ronon was partially upright, leaning heavily on his arms. Teyla was lying next to Ronon, a thin trickle of blood dripping from her nose.
“You must go!”
“What are you doing to us?” Sheppard’s head pounded to the beat of a different drummer. The one that screamed, “Die, die, die!” He tried to roll enough to check on Rodney, but found himself quickly shifting his target to an open area above in an attempt to avoid throwing up on his teammate. He spent precious seconds heaving and trying to regain control over his mutinous guts.
“It’s the m’ris; we’re sorry, in high doses it makes your kind sick. But you were not hearing us before! We had to keep giving you more and more in an attempt to save your lives.”
“We’re dead, Jim,” groaned Rodney.
“Not yet, we’re not.” Sheppard took a page out of Ronon’s “snarl for energy” book and shouted himself to his knees, panting from the sheer effort. By the time he had his feet flat on the ground and his head where it was supposed to be, Ronon had helped Teyla stand. Together, they helped Rodney.
His team was swaying precariously.
“Let’s go,” Sheppard gasped.
It wasn’t fast, and it wasn’t pretty, but they latched on to one another, and the four of them stumbled and staggered forward. No one mentioned that they’d been walking for almost two hours just to get to their current location. The trip back to the ‘gate, sick as they were from that worm substance, was going to be even longer.
Rodney’s nose had started to bleed by the time they got to the fake wall. Despite the fact that their eyes told them that it really was there, they walked right through it. Sheppard figured this might be a little hard to explain to Elizabeth when they made it back. He’d written some pretty bizarre mission reports, but somehow he knew this one was going to go down in the record books.
Beatthat, SG-1!
“Sheppard,” Rodney croaked.
“What?”
“You’re bleeding,” Rodney said, motioning at his own nose. He let go of Ronon and Teyla, and collapsed slowly to the ground. “And I’m gonna be sick.” Then he hunched and started throwing up his powerbar lunch and breakfast.
“They are almost here, John Sheppard! You must rise, and run, or it will be too late!”
Sheppard was beginning to hate telepathic higher frequency beings. All they did was nag, nag, nag. “We’re trying,” he gritted. “Can you give us a little help here? Preferably the kind that doesn’t make us throw up and bleed?”
“We can try to confuse them with false images, but be warned, you will see them as well.”
“Does it matter?” Rodney had stopped retching finally and was looking up at the sky. “If you don’t do it, they get us and we die. Stop being stupid and help!”
Teyla leaned over Rodney, wiped at her still-bleeding nose, and jerked him roughly to his feet. “Do not insult the beings trying to save our lives,” she hissed.
“They’re doing a terrible job – this is me, this is what I do, I berate people that screw up.”
Ronon shrugged Rodney’s arm over his shoulder and said, “Maybe you should wait on that.”
Rodney sucked air through his teeth, “Right, because we wouldn’t want them to make our brains explode and leak out our nose! Oh, wait, they DID! Remind me again why I’m supposed to be nice?”
“McKay,” Sheppard warned.
“Because, seriously, who needs enemies when you’ve got friends like this. We wereperfectly healthy before their legion of slugs peed on us!”
“We had them leave you alone after we established communication, and Rodney McKay, our “legion of slugs” is the only thing standing between you and certain death. We suggest you run. Now.”
Ouch. Now the invisible people were pissed. Still, they said run and Sheppard guessed they should run. His nose was bleeding; nothing seemed to stop it. His stomach felt like he’d been trapped on a dinghy in a hurricane, but the images of those people surrounded by shadows scared the heck out of him. They held onto one another and ran. It was ugly, and sometimes it wasn’t even technically running anymore, but they didn’t stop. Ronon gagged and bled and kept pulling them along.
Sheppard glanced behind and almost tripped. A sea of white worms was directly behind them, and directly overhead were the shadows. Ten, twenty maybe. “Holy crap,” he breathed. They were feeding on the worms.
“We are not paid near enough,” McKay shouted.
That’s when the purple cows and flying fish appeared, right where the worms were.
There are a lot of things that someone might be saying round about now, Sheppard figured. That maybe this was some kind of psychedelic dream, and they wanted off the fruit-wagon train, but Sheppard knew this had become the story of his life. This was too crazy not to be really happening. “You had to mention cows and fish earlier,” he snarled at Rodney.
They were breathing so hard that the sounds of four sets of overworking lungs almost drowned the soft screeches coming from the things behind them. Teyla tripped and they all went down like a domino train, rolling.
A tendril of cold caressed Sheppard’s ankle. “Up, get up!” he shouted, panicked.
They did, pulling and hauling each other in one massive jumble of desperate bodies.
“Run!”
They kept running.
By the time they collapsed at the DHD, their shirts were soaked with blood; their faces looked like pictures taken out of a horror movie, streaked, and dried, and fresh blood seeping over their lips and chins. Another line of worms had surged behind them, giving them enough time for Rodney to dial Atlantis and send the IDC.
“We are relieved. Go, and do not come back!.”
“We can do that,” Sheppard promised, feeling like a Night of the Living Dead survivor. And before he let Ronon haul him in after Teyla and Rodney, he snatched a worm for Carson.
“They’re radioactive?” Rodney spluttered. “Of course, why didn’t I think of that? It wasn’t bad enough that their pee was psychotropic, it had to be radioactive, too?”
Sheppard stared at the ceiling. At the IV. At his blanket. Then Rodney, and Teyla and Ronon. When Carson cleared his throat, he finally decided he couldn’t avoid it forever. “Doc, give it to me, how long of an infirmary stay this time?” He was getting tired of being stuck in this place.
Carson had his data pad tucked against his side and was sitting between Rodney and Sheppard. “I’ve got you all on a cocktail of pentetate calcium trisodium and filgrastim. The exposure was acute, but fortunately, not prolonged. You’ll be sick for a few days while your bodies recover and, I won’t lie, you’ll need long-term monitoring for delayed effects. But we’ve had this discussion before, haven’t we? A week, barring any complications.”
This had been a long and embarrassing afternoon. After they’d collapsed in the gateroom, they found themselves stuck in a quarantine field – thank you, Atlantis – because the city had detected radioactive residue on their bodies. After the medical teams responded, they were shoved into suits and then hauled to an isolation room where they were put through a decontamination procedure that would make a stripper blush.
Carson had gotten their nose bleeds stopped. He’d given them anti-nausea medication. Scrubs. Beds. Mostly, Sheppard wanted to kiss the guy.
The invisible people had pulled things from their minds, and the purple cows and flying fish had just been the appetizer. There had been dancing Iratus bugs – that was probably his fault -- naked men – please let that have been yanked from Teyla – some women, guns, cocoons and lots and lots of Wraith.
Sheppard didn’t know how or when it’d happened, but there was information in his brain that hadn’t been there before, including an explanation for the hallucinations they’d experienced. The energy beings fed upon memories, and the invisible beings had littered the ground with breadcrumb trails around their worms in an attempt to lead them away from the actual banquet trying to make an escape.
“Was that Carter I saw?” Sheppard finally asked. “I think she was only wearing a bra.”
“It might have been.” When Sheppard smirked weakly, Rodney looked completely unfazed. “As opposed to the man that dreams a dancing revue of bugs.”
Carson cleared his throat. “So, I gather you all experienced interesting hallucinations?”
“I’m not telling.” Ronon flopped his head into a different position and closed his eyes.
When Carson looked to Teyla next for an answer, she pursed her lips and shook her head.
Rodney grinned crookedly. “We never kiss and tell, Carson. Next time, you’ll just have to come with us.”
Sensing defeat, and judging that his patients needed rest, Carson stood. “I can think of a thousand things I’d rather do than go on a mission with you lot. You’re a danger to your own health. And I thought you might like to know, the worms were classified by entomology: TWRU.”
“TWRU?” echoed Rodney.
“Telepathic Worms with Radioactive Urine.” He smiled smugly. “I thought it had a rather catchy sound to it.”
Sheppard winced. “We are never living this one down, are we?”
Carson walked to the wall and dimmed the lights. “Not for many, many days to come. Good night.” He stepped a few more feet out the door before leaning in and, grinning cheekily at Sheppard, added, “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
V. Armageddon on a miniature scale.
From the moment they stepped through the wormhole, they smelled death. It mixed with smoke, and caused their eyes to water. Halfway to the town, they saw the first body. Ronon approached it carefully, nudging it with his boot until it rolled enough for them to see the scabbed lesions and ravaged skin.
Sheppard snapped, “Masks on!”
They’d been through the training. In the span of seconds, they got their head gear on.
“It might already be too late,” Rodney said heavily.
“Think we should turn around?” Sheppard asked.
Teyla looked at the body. “There may be survivors in need of help.”
“There might not be,” Ronon countered.
Without really coming to a consensus, they moved forward, not backward. Every few yards they found another body. Two males, one female, and one kid that looked about seven, maybe six. Sheppard knelt beside the little body and looked for any sign of life. Not breathing, no pulse. Nothing. When he stood back up, Teyla caught his eye.
“Colonel – I am sure it was fast.”
Normally, he would’ve appreciated her attempt at comfort, but right now he was too pissed. He wasn’t the one that needed comforting. The kid lying alone and dead on the side of the road was.
“Let’s go,” he ordered.
He did his damnedest from then on to not look beyond a brief check: alive or dead.
Rodney got zero energy readings. He also got zero life signs, aside from theirs. They still kept checking, almost neurotically, but by the time they reached the outskirts of town they had only confirmed what the scanner reported.
There, they found ashes that were still warm. Ronon kicked through the edges and found intact bones. “They tried to burn their dead.”
“It did not help.” Teyla’s muffled voice shook.
They searched the town, looking for any clues as to what caused this. In a building that was filled with dead people lying in beds, Rodney found a notebook. He opened it and flipped through.
Sheppard leaned over his shoulder. “Can you read it?”
“No. It’s not Ancient. I don’t recognize it.” When Teyla got near enough, he pushed it towards her. “Do you?”
She took the journal and nodded slowly. “Yes, I have seen this before. It’s a version of my people’s writing.” She flipped to the front. “This is the personal journal of Diameede Mont, healer.”
Sheppard scanned the room. There were signs that the people here had been cared for, at least in the beginning. Everywhere he looked, medical paraphernalia littered the floor and the tables. Where were the people that had cared for these victims? He couldn’t see anyone with a uniform, or anything that would separate them from the patients.
“Let’s take it outside, dial home,” he said finally. “There’s nothing for us to do here.”
They walked to the ‘gate; no one talked.
Once there, Rodney dialed Atlantis and Sheppard explained they needed a hazmat team and Carson. After the wormhole shut down, they found a spot to sit and wait, and Teyla began to read:
Here follows the final entry to my journal, made on the 75th day of the 174th year:
We have been tricked. The trader offered us medicine, and promised it would protect us from the Wraith. The price was high, but Mora thought it worthwhile. The trader showed proof that we could not find fault with: a moving picture on a screen of a Wraith trying to feed on a man; the man was released, healthy. I do not understand how it is possible, and I did not trust that this trader was being honest, but my concerns were overruled. Mora said our eyes could not be deceived by what was in front of us.
To prove it was safe, the trader took a dose while we watched. He was unaffected. I am not sure if he switched vials without us knowing. My people began to die twelve hours after taking the “cure”. First, it was the children. And the old, the few that we had left in our village. They cried and said their skin was on fire. Soon, lesions erupted, fat boils that burst and crusted, and before it dried, the victim was dead.
I soon learned the best I could give my people was peace, and ordered the other two healers that were training under me, to administer a heavy dose of sleep powder. It was mercy. For all of us. Watching the children cry, and suffer, it was too great to bear.
We are all soon to be dead. Only a few of us remain, and we are ill. We all took doses within a span of eight hours, and I and my two apprentices were the last to receive it. I should have said no. I should have refused, but I listened to Mora, and the stranger that said everyone must take it or we would be susceptible to the Wraith.
Whatever poison that trader gave us, it is too late to save ourselves. But it is not too late for other worlds. If any man or woman finds this account, I beg of you, please tell others. Spread this warning to as many worlds as possible. Do not trust any trader selling a cure against the Wraith. He swore it was not supposed to do this, that it had never caused this reaction before, but then he ran, and left us dying.
I sent my two healers to our closest neighboring worlds, but I am worried they will be killed on sight as their lesions are fully developed. This “cure” kills within one solar day; it is completely fatal. Perhaps if our population had been greater, one or more might have been immune, but we are only a small village; cullings have dropped our numbers to just under two hundred.
Please, if you read this, find the one who did this. The trader worked with machines we have never seen before. He said he was a survivor of a world destroyed by Wraith. He said they had been ruined because they were only one, and that if everyone became immune, the Wraith would lose. That they could not destroy all of us. But he was wrong. We are the ones that lost. He said his name was Druhin. He must be stopped. Do whatever you can to prevent this from happening to anyone else.
It is too late for us.
“Hoff.” Sheppard swallowed back bile. “Sonofabitch, that bastard survived, and now he’s trying to poison the rest of the galaxy. It wasn’t good enough that he killed half his people.”
“It must have been a difference in biology, or maybe it mutated.” Rodney stared horrified at Sheppard. “It only had a fifty-percent mortality rate before; people died, but not all of them. And not like…like this.”
“Carson would’ve known; if we had arrived sooner, he could have run tests, discovered that it wasn’t safe for them and prevented this.” Teyla shut the journal, shut her eyes, and thought back to the Hoffans: the ones they’d cared for on their deathbed, and the ones they had not. She remembered when they had left. John had told Druhin they would not stay and help, because the Hoffans were going to continue with the inoculations, despite the high mortality rate and the likelihood that the Wraith would still kill them. Druhin had believed the Wraith would be content to leave them alone, but John had known better. When a fruit goes bad in your basket, you do not leave it to spoil the rest.
Ronon didn’t say anything at all; he hadn’t been there.
The hazmat team arrived moments later. Carson took his samples and listened stonily as Sheppard explained what they’d found.
“Is there any way to stop him?” Carson asked angrily when he’d finished recounting the events in the journal.
“We can spread the word; probably dedicate a team for a week or two. But it’s a big galaxy.” He stared at Carson for a minute. “You gonna be okay?”
“No.” Carson savagely snapped his case shut.
“Doc --”
“We should gather the dead; burn the rest, just in case.”
Sheppard paused. He felt at least partially responsible. He’d been the one to volunteer Carson’s help.
Teyla touched his arm lightly and inclined her head toward the side of the road where Rodney and Ronon assembled stretchers to haul the dead from the road to the town. “John --”
“Yeah,” he said. “If you need anything --”
“You will be here; I know.” She smiled wistfully.
Sheppard left, glancing back once to see her murmuring softly to Carson. She’d try to make him believe this wasn’t his fault. No one had forced these people to accept what Druhin offered. Problem was, when the choice was possible death over certain death, free will becomes a fine line.
A few hours later, their bloodwork came back clean. The virus was only transmitted via direct exposure to the bloodstream. “But to be safe,” Carson said, “You’ll be spending the next 72 hours in isolation.”
An hour after that, they set fire to the buildings.
As they walked down the dusty road to the ‘gate, angry orange and red fingers of fire reached to the sky behind them. A village and its people, consumed to ashes, and destroyed by their hope and another’s stupidity. When the event horizon settled, they stepped into the wormhole and headed home.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-02-26 11:19 pm (UTC)