Author's Chapter Notes: A hundred thousand apologies for taking so long on this one. I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself, but hopefully you'll forgive me, and show that forgiveness by leaving a review.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Chapter 9: Promises
John gave a slight, dark grin at Ronon’s words. That was exactly what he had been wanting to do for a while now. “You sure this is going to work, Rodney?” he asked.
McKay glared at him. “Of course I’m sure.”
“Good. Because we wouldn’t want to be stuck in the middle of a hallway and this thing quits working on us.”
“I’m sure it won’t,” said Elizabeth, her keen diplomat’s sense apparently anticipating the beginning of an argument. She tapped her finger on the ARG. “But that’s why we have these.” Her eyes suddenly took on the now familiar unfocused look, and when she returned to normal they held another layer of concern. “The field’s getting weaker. We don’t have much time left. We need to leave. *Right now*.”
John nodded. “Alright. Let’s go.” Elizabeth quickly walked across the room to retrieve the completed ARGs from her workstation. John grabbed the one she had lain on the table, stuffing it down the front of his tac vest where it would be within easy reach. Rodney picked up his creation and slid it into the empty pack they had brought from the store room, while Ronon marched over to the corner where Shanna had obediently crouched down, took her by the arm and lifted her to her feet.
“What...?” she asked, fear and confusion mixed equally in her voice. Up until now she had been mercifully and understandably quiet, doubtless overwhelmed by the situation she had found herself in. But now the strong personality John had first seen in the village was slowly beginning to creep back again. “Please, I may not have fully understood all that you have been talking about, but we can’t... we can’t go out there!” She looked frantically back and forth among the team, searching for support and not finding any.
Elizabeth walked up, a handful of ARGs in her arms. “But neither can we stay here,” she said gently. She handed Ronon and Rodney the completed weapons and moved to stand beside John, careful to keep her distance from the woman, clearly remembering the fearful reaction she had received from her before. Shanna’s eyes grew slightly bigger as Elizabeth spoke to her, and she quickly turned an alarmed glance in John’s direction.
“It’s okay,” he said calmly, suppressing his irritation at her fear of Elizabeth and forcing himself to ignore the ticking clock pounding away increasingly faster inside his head. *They needed to leave, they needed to leave...*
He locked eyes with Shanna and took a step closer to her. She looked at him, frightened, distressed, and yet trusting all at the same time. John felt a twinge. What had he done to deserve that? “Do you remember what I said to you before? About that promise I made to your husband? The one where I said I was going to make sure nothing happened to you?” She nodded. “Well I’m still going to do everything I can to keep that promise.”
Shanna looked at him searchingly for a moment, then nodded again, bending her head to stare at the floor. John took a deep breath and out of habit glanced at Elizabeth. She gave him a barely perceptible twitch of a smile, approval in her eyes, as well as an urgent reminder of their current predicament. Well, he didn’t need to be told again. “Everybody ready?” Receiving confirmation from the rest of his team, he moved to the door. “Rodney, get set to turn that thing on when we need it,” he ordered, and swiped his hand over the control panel.
The door slid open with a quiet hiss and John bolted into the hallway, stepping to the side to allow everyone else to exit the room. Ronon was out next, followed by Rodney, then Shanna, who took three steps into the corridor and froze. She gaped at the glowing blue forcefield that blocked the passage, staring in horror and taking a terrified step backwards as an oncoming Replicator dissolved into a shower of tiny silver pieces right in front of her.
Rodney went back to her and took her by the arm. “Look, we don’t have time to sightsee, let’s go!”
Still staring, she nodded weakly and allowed herself to be led down the hall. The way now clear, Elizabeth emerged from the lab and paused next to John. “Is she going to be alright?”
“She’ll have to be.” John laid his hand against her upper arm and gently ushered her forward. “Come on.”
Ronon stopped at the barrier beyond the right side of the door and looked over his shoulder back at John. The Replicators had followed the curve of the hallway around to this side of the forcefield as well, though they weren’t as thickly clustered here. John prepped his P-90 - he wasn’t going to use the ARG until it was absolutely necessary - and looked at Rodney and Ronon in turn.
“Okay, when we turn that thing on we’re going to have to make a run for it. Ronon, you clear on where to go?”
“Yes, John,” answered Rodney exasperatedly. “We know what to do.” John ignored him, waiting instead for Ronon to respond.
The Satedan nodded, his weapon at the ready. “Got it, Sheppard.”
“Alright.” He looked for a moment at the dozens of Asuran machines assembled beyond the forcefield, their human looking faces completely blank as they marched efficiently forward to their deaths. John allowed himself a half second of satisfaction. They deserved what they were getting. He adjusted his P-90 one last time and prepared himself to run.
Just as he opened his mouth to give the order, there was a surge in the air as the Replicators finally found their way around the shield. “Rodney, go!” cried Elizabeth and John simultaneously as the first successful Asuran rushed towards the group, unfortunately a completely solid, non-disintegrated threat. Ronon sprang forward, swinging his arm and knocking it over with a well placed punch. It hit the floor in a burst of pale metallic fragments as an electric blue pulse swept from the bag in Rodney’s arms.
Ronon looked over at him. “About time, let’s go!” he said, already beginning to run. Rodney carefully slung the now extremely important pack over his shoulders, and they immediately followed Ronon’s lead, taking care not to slip on the thick layer of Replicator cells that now covered almost every inch of the floor. They sped down the hallway, John continuing to take up the rear of the group, with Elizabeth staying close in front of him.
Rodney’s device worked as well as he said it would. The energy field extended outward from the machine in a twenty foot radius that surrounded them in a kind of protective bubble against any physical Replicator influence. John hoped that the range would be enough to prevent any guards with long distance stun weapons from becoming an issue. Doors opened further along the corridor as they ran, the full alarm having been raised by now. Apparently the Replicators had finally decided that they were enough of a problem to warrant it. They closed in, and the only thing that left those rooms were more piles of diamond colored metal ashes.
They turned off of the curved hallway onto a shorter passage that ended in a staircase mirroring the one on the opposite side of the level. Without hesitating for a second, Ronon leapt onto the stairs and began taking them two at a time. Halfway to the first landing, Shanna, still following on Rodney’s heels, tripped on the edge of a step and pitched forward as she tried to keep up, nearly taking him with her. Rodney staggered with a curse, throwing out his arms to catch himself against the wall. He looked angrily over his shoulder to see what had caused the near accident. His features softened somewhat when he realized what had happened, and he turned to help her up, but Elizabeth stopped him.
“I’ve got her, keep going,” she said as she assisted Shanna to her feet. There was a brief, instinctive flash of apprehension in the woman’s eyes, but nonetheless she quickly gripped Elizabeth’s arm and pulled herself upright. John even saw her give her a grateful look as she breathed a quick ‘thank you’ and hurried on up the stairs. ‘Good,’ he thought, ‘she’s finally coming to her senses.’ Elizabeth looked down at him and waited for him to jog up the four steps till he was even with her.
“Looks like we’re finally making progress with the locals,” he said, meeting her eyes.
She gave a slight smile. “Finally.” There wasn’t time for her to say more, but he could see the relief she felt at no longer being openly feared. One small weight, at least, that had been lifted from her shoulders. “Come on,” she said, resuming her move up the stairs. “Let’s not get left behind.”
oOo
They were now two levels above the holding cells they had been thrown in on their arrival. The core room and the main labs where the most important work was done were on this floor. This was where Kedan’s faction of Asurans were concentrating their efforts on creating undetectable power sources for their technology, and this was what they were going to have to destroy before they could get out. According to Elizabeth, the most volatile points to place the C-4 were around the central column in the core room and in the three surrounding laboratories that were directly connected to the flow of power from the generator.
Ronon paused briefly at the head of the stairs to get his bearings and give them an opportunity to catch their breath. “Alright, let’s...”
He suddenly broke off in mid-sentence and brought his gun up to fire in a flash of movement, aiming at the Replicator that had just appeared and walked straight past the field.
“Kedan,” said Elizabeth darkly, only the faintest traces of alarm in her voice. Ronon took his shot, but the blast traveled directly through the blond machine as if he wasn’t even there. Kedan looked at him for a moment, amusement written on his pale features, but then he turned away, as if such a rough creature was beneath his notice.
“Dr. Weir.” His voice was smooth like ice and just as frigid. “I am impressed. You and your band of friends have managed to avoid capture for far longer than I would have anticipated.”
“We’re a crafty bunch, what can we say?” retorted John, the cold hatred in his green eyes not matching the strained lightness of his tone. His fingers slowly slid towards the trigger of his P-90. “Now if you excuse us we have somewhere we need to be.”
He fired half a round at Kedan’s chest, enough ammo that would have made him at least stagger... if it hadn’t passed right through him. The hall rang with the sound of gunfire, the wall opposite now riddled with bullet holes. Ronon charged him, reaching for his neck to snap it. His hands slipped through the Replicator leader just as the bullets had. Kedan laughed.
“What the hell...?”
“He’s a hologram,” McKay realized, equal parts shock and puzzlement mixed on his face. “But Replicators have...”
“Never needed it?” Kedan finished, actually looking entertained by their mystification.
“We all know they don’t require extra machines to make people see things,” Elizabeth said, an edge to her voice that John was becoming very familiar with, one she had adopted only recently. Rodney looked at her and she shook her head. “No, I don’t know why they have it now, or what purpose it could serve.”
There was more frosty laughter. “Come now! Surely you cannot fail to see the advantages of this sort of technology! Admittedly in comparison it is only a simple piece of machinery, one which had already been mastered by our creators, but it has its uses. Just one of many of our projects here.”
John lowered his gun, the impatience that had been a constant undercurrent since they left the lab rising to the surface once again now that he had determined that the apparition wasn’t an immediate threat. “Enough with the chatter, let’s go.” He started down the left side of the hallway, the rest of the group following behind. Except one.
“Waitwaitwait,” jabbered Rodney. “What kind of projects?”
“McKay!”
Kedan turned his attention to the scientist. “Oh, many kinds. Some that would be of great interest to your people I am su...”
Elizabeth left John’s side and marched back down the hall, taking Rodney by the arm and pulling him away. “Don’t listen to him, he’s just trying to stall us.”
“And of especially great interest to you, Dr. Weir,” the hologram called after them as they walked further away. “Technologies that could return to you what you so unfathomably persist in wishing for.” Elizabeth ignored him and they kept going. “That could give you back your humanity.”
Elizabeth stopped dead in her tracks. John wheeled around and saw the uncertainty and confusion that entered her face as she fixed her gaze on the dark floor. Uncertainty, confusion, deep seated pain, mistrust, and, so quick he wouldn’t have noticed it if he didn’t know her so well, a small flicker of impossible hope.
“You could be restored to what you once were,” the false Kedan continued, “a pathetic, weak, and average human.”
John watched her very carefully. Her eyes still swam with conflicting desires. She hadn’t told him many of the details about what it was like for her, being only half human now, and if he were honest with himself he hadn’t thought about that aspect of the situation all that much since he had found her here. But now he suddenly realized how much pain the knowledge of her own existence caused her. The Elizabeth of seven months ago would never have given a moments consideration to such an obvious delaying tactic as Kedan’s promises, but now a small traitorous part of him feared that for the woman who stood before him, driven by desperation for her former life, they would be too much to resist.
He quickly squashed the sneaking voice that whispered such suspicions to him, ashamed of himself for doubting her for even that long. This was *Elizabeth*. And she had too much of that to handle already. And he knew her, better than anyone except maybe himself. He knew how strong she was.
“Elizabeth,” he said softly, calling her back to him. She looked up, her green eyes meeting and holding his. Instantly the indecision vanished and she nodded, resuming her walk forward, his Elizabeth once more. As she regained her place at his side, she once again caught his gaze, silently apologizing to him for her moment of weakness.
Kedan spoke again, but this time it wasn’t to deliver enticements. His voice betrayed no emotion, no anger or resentment. “You will not leave here alive, Dr. Weir.” It was almost more a statement of fact then a threat.
Elizabeth didn’t look back as she replied. “Well then, at least I’ll finally be out!”
“So be it.” Something in his voice made them turn around, just in time to see the hologram shimmer and disappear. Everything was still for few moments, and then the ceiling began to vibrate ever so slightly, filling their ears with a dull humming sound.
“Rodney, what’s that noise mean?” demanded John as he stared at the dark gray tile work in the ceiling.
“I don’t know, but probably nothing good for us,” he answered, gaping at the panels above him. The vibrating grew louder, and then...
“Look out!” screamed Shanna. Plunging lightning fast from the ceiling was a two foot thick sheet of metal the same color as the ceiling tiles. John had just enough time to grab Elizabeth around the shoulders and pull her out of the way towards him, backing up himself and screwing his eyes shut, before it slammed down onto the floor with a deafening clang and a cloud of dust.
A second later he opened his eyes. The brand new wall filled his vision, smooth, dark gray, and completely solid. Elizabeth lifted her head up from where she had hid it against his shoulder to look at it as well, and he slowly dropped his arms from their protective hold around her. He glanced around. The two of them were the only ones on this side. He walked up to the wall and began banging furiously on the metal with his fist, shouting. “Hey! Can you hear me? Is everybody okay?”
“Yeah!” a muffled voice yelled back. Ronon. “We’re all fine!”
Relief swept through him. He was about to shout a reply when Ronon’s voice came through again. “Sheppard! This thing goes straight through the floor! There’s no way to move it!”
John sighed. He had noticed that. “Yeah! Looks like we’re going to have to split up to do this! You guys take the two labs on your side, we’ll take the other one and the core room! Meet at the exit!”
Now Rodney’s voice joined in, sounding somewhat panicked. “But you won’t have the field generator...!” There was more, but it was too fast and too faint to make out. But knowing who was speaking, he got the general idea of what was being said though.
“I realize that Rodney!” he shouted in annoyance. “But we’re just gonna have to do the best we can! Got it?”
Ronon acknowledged the plan with a short ‘Got it!’, then there was silence on the other side of the barricade. John turned around to face Elizabeth.
“Is it just me,” he asked tiredly, “or does this Kedan guy seem like more of a vindictive bastard than your average Replicator?”
She closed her eyes momentarily and let out a small laugh that sounded equally exhausted. “Not arguing with you on that. I’ve thought for a while now that there must be something faulty in his programming. I think he got an extra dose of aggression when Oberoth created him. That’s what made him so independent and...”
“Evil?”
She smiled, a downplayed version of that fond, amused-in-spite-of-herself smile that his frequent attempts at humor had so often been met with in the past. “I was going to go for calculating.” The smile grew wider. “But evil works too.”
He smirked and they started walking briskly down the darkened corridor. “Yeah. That it does.” John held his P-90 at the ready, eyes constantly scanning their surroundings, the brief moment of lightness already vanishing from his face. As he shone the beam of his gun’s flashlight into the pools of shadows that filled every corner, he felt himself growing tense, like he had in the forest clearing when he had first suspected that there was a trap. His nerves grew more on edge with every step farther they went with no Replicators appearing to attack them. He didn’t expect their luck to hold out very long.
Suddenly Elizabeth grabbed the back of his tac vest and pulled him off into the shadows of an adjoining hallway, flattening herself against the wall. John copied her movements without hesitation, the smooth surface cold against the exposed skin at the back of his neck. Several seconds passed by, and just as he was beginning to wonder what exactly it was that had prompted Elizabeth’s behavior, a Replicator patrol passed by; four of them, armed to the teeth with stun pistols and energy rifles. They were headed in the opposite direction. If Elizabeth hadn’t sensed the group coming, the two of them would have met them head on. As it was, the guards simply marched past, leaving their makeshift hiding place unnoticed.
John glanced over at Elizabeth. She nodded, and they stepped away from the wall. “Nice job there.”
“Thanks,” she said, “I didn’t think you were interested in getting into another firefight just yet.”
He nodded in appreciation. “Yeah. Just... how about a little warning next time?”
She grimaced apologetically. “Sorry.”
She gave the all clear and they moved back into the larger hall, moving as quickly as their sense of caution would allow. The pair met with nearly half a dozen other patrols, but Elizabeth guided them around each one, leading John through a veritable maze of dimly lit side passages and minor hallways. Even he began to get turned around after a little while, but Elizabeth hardly ever paused or stopped to consider which way to go; every turn was made with complete certainty. John quickly recognized that without her he would have been hopelessly lost by now, or, a more likely scenario, long since captured once the ARG’s effectiveness had worn off.
John swiped at a glowing blue door panel and they stepped out into a short corridor, following it along its length until Elizabeth came to a halt at the end of it. Three other passageways converged on a small open space, the small blue lights that lined the bottom of their walls only visible for the first couple of feet into them before they were swallowed by the more dominant shadows that obscured the hallways and disguised their length.
John looked at her, his eyebrows knitting together in a concerned expression. The previous burning tension had faded somewhat since they had actually encountered Replicators- at least he knew they weren’t all lying in wait for them around a corner somewhere- but he was still keeping a very short distance between his finger and the trigger of his P-90.
“What is it?” he asked. “We’re not there yet.” Lost though he was, he still clearly remembered from the pictures Elizabeth had shown him in her mind that this wasn’t around the entrance to the first lab. And with her earlier confidence as far as direction went, what made her stop made him worry.
Ever since their first Replicator run-in her eyes had worn the same look- unseeing, focused not on what was in front of her but on something inward, something playing out inside her head. Now her gaze cleared, and she looked up at John with an expression of anxiety that was nearly identical to his own. “Three patrols,” she said rapidly, “coming up behind us and down two of the other hallways. There’s no way to go around them this time.”
Very faintly they could just hear the sound of marching boots coming closer. “Then we’re going to have to outrun them. Which way to the lab?” he demanded.
“This way.” She began running towards the passage opposite, John right on her heels. “It’s the only one that’s clear.” There was a shout from behind them and the marching grew louder. They sped down the hall, feet pounding against the hard floor, passing by door after door after door. As they neared a split in the hall, Elizabeth, her breath becoming slightly labored, glanced over at John. “Do you get the feeling we’re being... herded?”
“Like sheep. But we don’t really have any other options.” The noise had been inching ever closer, even as they ran as hard as they could. John could feel the first fringes of tiredness creeping up on him. He hadn’t really rested since his stint in solitary confinement at the beginning of his capture, and the near constant heightened state of alertness and stress that had followed was just starting to take its toll on his system.
A blast of electricity from an energy weapon hit the wall just above his head as they made the turn. John cursed and felt a new burst of adrenaline revive him, making him pick up his pace. As she ran, Elizabeth’s eyes were busily scanning the doorways lining the hall. Suddenly she pointed to one of them. “There!”
They dashed into the room, sealing the door behind them. “Woah!” The lab wasn’t empty. Instantaneously, John fired a round into the Replicator scientist that was the room’s sole occupant, then, in a seamless motion, let one hand go from the machine gun and grabbed his ARG from where he had stowed it beneath his tac vest, shooting a beam of electric blue energy at the approaching Asuran. Even before the last fragments of silver Replicator cells had hit the floor, Elizabeth was already moving. She hurried to the computer console in the center of the room, kneeling down beside it and wrenching off the casing with a small grunt of expended effort, revealing an intricate system of glowing power crystals.
John was already at her side and handing her the C-4 before she even opened her mouth to ask for it. She began rapidly placing the explosive around the major power conducting crystals as he impatiently watched the door. Five seconds later she pounded the detonator into the gray putty-like substance and stood up. “Done.”
“Good.” He looked over his shoulder at the entrance they had used, beyond which there were at least three known patrols searching for them, likely on the verge of discovering them at any minute. Well, at least he knew where he was now. “Other door.” John sprinted across the lab to the alternate exit, pausing with his hand hovering above the door’s control panel, and glanced questioningly at Elizabeth.
“It’s clear, go.” He opened the door into yet more familiar surroundings. He had to admit having directions directly uploaded into his head was extremely convenient.
The core room wasn’t far from there. Only two more corridors separated them from their destination, but as they got closer to the main power source, it grew increasingly more difficult to find a path that was free of Replicators. “I’m starting to wish that I had told Rodney and Ronon to take out the core,” muttered John as he and Elizabeth crouched down in an alcove they had ducked into to avoid yet another patrol.
“Yeah. That shield generator would be extremely helpful about now,” commented Elizabeth, shrinking farther back into the concealing darkness of the recess as the patrol’s shadows flashed across the patch of light spilling in from the other hall.
“Well,” said John jokingly, keeping his voice low, “if I have to be stuck in a cramped, dark, hole in the wall with somebody...” He caught her eye, and although his tone was still light, there was a seriousness in his eyes. “...I’m glad it’s you.”
She smiled and regarded him, an unreadable look in her eyes, then looked as if she were about to say something, but her attention was drawn elsewhere. “They’re gone.” They straightened up and left their hiding place. “It’s not far now.”
Elizabeth led the way, keeping close to the walls as they darted along the passageway, and opened a door into an unoccupied lab which they used to cut through to the next corridor. They stopped to look around a corner. John recognized the entrance to the core room the minute he saw it, the set of heavy double doors carved with geometric designs and the substantial security detail surrounding them exactly as he had been shown. He sighed inwardly. The security detail. He had been hoping that just maybe, just maybe, they might get lucky and that little particular might not be so accurate as all Elizabeth’s other facts had proved to be. Oh well. It had been a very small hope anyway. Once again he really wished McKay was here with that shield.
He ducked back around the corner, the wheels in his head spinning rapidly as he tried to think up a plan that would allow him to take out five Replicators at once with only a P-90 that did little good and made a lot of noise, and an ARG that might cease to be effective by the time he got through with them all. These were not the best odds in the world. As much as he respected and admired Elizabeth’s many skills, he knew combat and gun fighting had never been among them, even though she had taken the required basic training courses. Reluctant as she had been, he had made sure of that. But now they would just have to do the best they could.
He turned to Elizabeth to tell her what to do, and found her hastily fiddling with the ARG in her hands, the one she had kept back for herself. “What are you doing?” he mumbled anxiously.
“Fixing this.” She stopped fiddling and held the weapon still in her hands, closing her eyes. A look of intense concentration passed over her face for several seconds, then she looked up and handed him the weapon. “There. I expanded the range of fire. You should be able to get them all in one shot.”
He looked at her in astonishment. “How did you...?”
“Those are made with Replicator technology. It’s all connected.” The nanites again. John leaned around the corner again, took aim, and fired. A blue bolt of energy twice the size of a normal ARG discharge burst from the gun, and he swiftly hid himself behind the safety of the wall. There was a sound like sand falling through an hourglass, signaling that the security detail had been taken care of. He peeked around the corner. All of them.
“Perfect.” He couldn’t help a slight grin as he gave Elizabeth his own unmodified anti-Replicator gun to use.
She smiled back and took it. “Thanks.”
The way to the core now clear, they bolted down the hall, John’s boots crunching against the dormant Replicator cells strewn across the ground as they reached the door. He tightened his grip on the handle of his newly altered weapon and took a deep breath. This was the most important room in the entire complex. He guessed the chances of it being empty were zero to none. “How many?” he asked.
She shook her head in confusion. “I can’t tell for sure. The generator core is interfering; it’s masking everything in the room. I’m sorry. At best guess I’d say about a dozen.”
He took another breath. “Alright. Here goes nothing.” He nodded and Elizabeth placed her palm against the illuminated orange surface of the hand reader on the access panel. The doors opened with a hiss of escaping air and John ran in, taking out four rebel Asurans before they had even had time to look up from their stations. Every head turned in John’s direction, fixing their unfeeling eyes on the intruder in their midst. He didn’t waste any time. He disintegrated three scientists who were clustered at the same computer terminal. The group of seven that charged him seconds later met the same fate. Okay, so there were a little more than a dozen. He took cover behind a sizable worktable, its touch screen surface projecting a series of softly glowing holographic diagrams into the air. A blast from an energy weapon hit the other side of the table, the power surge making the diagrams momentarily flicker and short out. John could hear footsteps coming towards him. When he judged they were close enough he jumped up and sent the last two Replicators packing with a sweeping pulse of energy from the ARG. Yeah, definitely more than a dozen.
Slowly, he stepped out from behind the table and called the all clear to Elizabeth. He stuck his ARG back in its former place beneath his tac vest and moved towards the middle of the spacious circular room. The ceiling of the core chamber was twice if not three times as high as those in the hallways, spaced out accent pillars built into the muted aqua walls reaching up and meeting to form a point at its apex. Between each of the pillars were Ancient style computer consoles, and evenly dispersed around the room were worktables like the one John had used for cover, bright green and blue holograms hovering above each one of them. But the dominant feature of the room was the core itself, a massive column of dull gray metal that touched the ceiling, twice the diameter of a stargate, banded with alternate rows of glittering power crystals of countless different colors and clear conduit tubes that shimmered with a glowing amber tinted substance that flowed like liquid.
John walked over to the core and knelt down next to the base, pulling a block of C-4 out of one of his vest pockets. He was about to begin to attach it to the side of one of the transfer pipes that ran into the floor when footsteps came up behind him. Footsteps too heavy to belong to Elizabeth. His muscles tightened, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he stopped what he was doing, slowly reaching for the grip of the gun sticking out of the top of his tac vest. Then, lightning fast, he pivoted, stood up, there was a whining noise, and... a shower of silver fell at his feet.
He stared at the tiny fragments littering the floor, eyes wide, breathing fast, gun held loosely in his right hand. He looked up and saw Elizabeth standing just inside the closed doorway, one arm outstretched and holding the ARG he had swapped her. She lowered her arm and walked towards him, laying the weapon down on top of one of the worktables. He met her eyes, still looking slightly stunned. “Thanks.”
She gave a small smile, “You’re welcome,” and pulled the forgotten block of C-4 out of his left hand, going around to the other side of the structure to place it. John shook his head to clear it and fished another pack of the plastic explosive out of his pocket, bending down and resuming the task that the Replicator had interrupted. Five seconds later he got up and followed the side of the column to the second of the four pipes that lined the core, repeating the same process as before. After smacking the detonator in place, he circled around and came face to face with Elizabeth, who was just reaching her final pipe. He tossed her the last of the C-4, which she caught and placed, slamming the putty against the storm cloud gray pipe with more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary to get the job done.
Without wasting any time, she leapt up and flew towards another section along the base of the core. She got to her knees and ran the tips of her fingers over the smooth, seamless metal as if searching for something, which she found moments later. It had been practically invisible before, but now John could see the thin seam that ran across the rim of the base and down the sides, forming a rectangle. Elizabeth pried open the panel with her fingernails, yanking it out of place and heaving it off to the side, where it met the floor with a loud clang. She didn’t even glance at it, giving her full attention to the power crystals that it had concealed, considering them a moment before bending down and beginning to snatch the crystals out of their own slots and swap them out with the others in a seemingly random and completely haphazard order.
“There,” she said in satisfaction, unfolding herself from her crouched position and admiring her handiwork.
“What’s that going to do?” John questioned, offering her a hand.
She took it and pulled herself to her feet. “It scrambled the flow of power. There’s enough unchanneled energy running through the core now to give the C-4 a significant boost.”
“Very nice. I didn’t know you’d developed a taste for big explosions.”
She gave a slight smile. “Yeah, well...”
Their eyes met and he smiled back. “I get it. Come on. Let’s get out of here.” Her eyes brightened and she nodded eagerly. Without thinking about it he adjusted his grip on her hand, which he hadn’t even realized he was still holding. She gave his a small squeeze and side by side they began to run towards the exit.
They were passing the hologram tables when Elizabeth suddenly froze. John, still running, felt her hand slip out of his grasp. He instantly stopped and spun around, a question already forming on his lips. She stood next to the table, eyes fixed on the floor, her vision out of focus, fear and bewilderment flooding her features.
“What is it?” he demanded, worry filling his voice.
“I... I don’t know,” she said shakily, not looking at him. “Something’s not right. I...” Suddenly she cried out, her face twisting in pain.
Panic flooded his heart at the sound. “What?! What’s wrong?!”
“I don’t know!” she cried, bending double, raking fingers through her hair and pulling on it to try and alleviate the pain. His mind raced, frantically searching for something he could do, something to help her, he had to help her... And then as quickly as it had come it was over. She hesitantly straightened up, her face still bearing traces of the agony and her breathing heavy. She didn’t move, only stood there, still holding the sides of her head with her hands.
John took a step closer. “Elizabeth...” She looked up at him, confusion and dread written all over her face.
“John...” she whispered.
“What is it?”
“I can’t move my legs.”
“What?”
“I can’t move my legs!” She tried to walk, but her lower limbs were unresponsive and she pitched forwards, having to grab the edge of the table to keep from hitting the floor. Her gaze turned inward for a moment and sudden understanding and horror flashed into her eyes. “It’s the nanites... my nanites... I’m not... Kedan figured out a way to take control remotely...”
“You said he couldn’t do that!”
“I didn’t know he could! He’s always had to be in direct physical contact for it to work before. He shouldn’t be able to do it, but he did!” She met his eyes. “John...”
He knew that look. He had seen it before. “No. Don’t you dare say another word.” He marched the few steps back to her. “I’ll carry you if I have to.” He reached out for her. Elizabeth’s face suddenly twisted again.
“No! Don’t touch me!” she screamed at him, making him pause, the order irrationally making him feel like he had been slapped in the face. For a moment her eyes flew back and forth, as if she were reading an invisible text floating in the air in front of her, then she looked back at him. “The nanites are fully active, I can feel them. I’m not in control anymore! They’ll spread to you too!”
“I don’t care, it doesn’t matter!”
“*Yes*, it *does*!” She looked at him, anguished, and it seemed to take a colossal amount of effort for her to say the next sentence that left her mouth, like she had to force herself to say it. “You’re... You’re going to have to go without me. There’s no time...”
“Absolutely not. We can figure something out... get Rodney in here, he can fix it...”
“There’s not enough time!” she repeated. “This place is going to be swarming with patrols any minute!”
“We’re not leaving you!”
“You have to!”
“I made a promise to myself that I was going to get you out of here, and that’s...”
“You don’t have any other choice!”
“Dammit, Elizabeth!” His anger boiled inside him and he clenched his fists. Couldn’t she see that that wasn’t an option for him? That that had never been an option? “You can’t...” He broke off and looked at the floor, unable to continue. He took a deep breath and turned his head back up to her, his voice nearly shaking with rage and pain. “You *can’t* ask me leave you behind again. I can’t do it. Don’t... don’t ask me that.”
“John...”
He was near to shouting now, his emotions running high as the thought of what she was asking of him swept through him. Every fiber of his being repelled the idea. It was impossible! His nightmares flashed through his memory. “I can’t lose you a second time!”
“And I can’t watch you die again!” she shouted back with equal vehemence, every word aching with the force of her suffering. She was near tears.
Again? He was momentarily stunned into silence. “What... what are you talking about, again? I haven’t...”
“Do you remember... when I was inside your mind... do you remember what I told you, about the visions of me escaping?”
“Of course, but...”
“Do you remember when I told you that they weren’t the worst things they created for me? That there were much worse things?” He nodded. She looked at him, her voice beginning to shake with the effort of holding back the tears that were welling up in her eyes. “My worst fears made real. John, they showed me you. They showed me your death. Hundreds of times. Hundreds of ways. And...” The tears began to flow now, the drops streaming down her cheeks, but it was almost as if she didn’t even notice, trapped by the remembrances of her torture. “And each time there was nothing I could do to stop it. I had to watch as you died right in front of me. Over... and over... and over again. It was horrible... unbearable... and each time I saw it I hurt as much as the last. Please...” she begged, “I can’t be the reason that you die for real.”
Her face was wracked with pain, and damp from the tears, which she didn’t brush away. He now noticed how rigid her arms looked as she stood there, one hanging by her side and the other still grasping the table top. The paralysis was spreading. She *couldn’t* brush them off. He felt himself longing to walk up to her and wipe them away himself, but in a rush of helpless certainty he knew he couldn’t, no matter how much it tore at him. She wouldn’t let him. She was so close... *so* close... and yet she was completely out of his reach.
He stared at her, the pain in her eyes making his own heart give a sharp twist. She continued, her voice breaking as she spoke. “There are people who are depending on you, people who still have a chance, that need you...”
“Stop it! We need *you*.” Elizabeth’s eyes were still awash with tears and anguish, but he could tell she didn’t believe him. Damn it all, he couldn’t take this. “*I* need you.” He took another step closer. “Elizabeth, I can’t lose you again.”
She closed her eyes and bit her lip, as if absorbing all of the pain and torment that filled that one sentence. “You’re going to have to,” she whispered.
There was suddenly a loud crash- the sound of an explosion on the other side of the floor. They looked around frantically. The entire room shook, causing a shower of fine dust to rain down from the ceiling. Ronon and Rodney had set off their C-4. The lights briefly flickered, then grew steady again. For the moment.
Elizabeth turned back to him. “John, you have to go,” she urged.
“Not without you.”
“Yes, without...” She broke off, her eyes glazing over, and when she snapped out of it fear joined the myriad of other emotions that were flashing across her eyes. “Kedan’s coming himself. He’s coming here. You have to go, you have to go now!”
“Let me carry you...”
“No! The nanites...”
“Damn the nanites! You can fight them, you’ve done it before!”
“It’s different now!” He opened his mouth to argue with her some more, but she cut him off. “Listen to me,” she pleaded, “Listen... You have a responsibility to your team, to that woman that was captured with you, Shanna... you have to get her home to her husband. You promised her that you would.”
Another explosion, this one closer, that rocked the whole room. The lights stayed off this time, the bright glow of the core the only source of illumination until the dim emergency lighting blinked into life. Alarms began to blare. It might as well have been happening on another planet for all the attention John paid it. All he could see were Elizabeth’s brilliant green eyes, so full of agony and sorrow and regret, shining with unshed tears, begging him... begging him to leave her.
“You can’t give up like this,” he said. “You can’t let that bastard win!”
“Fine, I won’t give up,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’ll try to fight it, but you have to go! If I let you carry me, even if by some *miracle* you weren’t infected, we could both die because I was slowing you down. John, you *have* to get out.” The chamber shook again. “You told her you would bring her home.”
John saw Shanna’s frightened face as she huddled in the dark corner, saw her collapsing to the floor after being mind probed by Kedan. Then he saw the anxious face of her husband, Derlin, sitting on the opposite side of a fire, quietly asking him to keep his wife out of trouble. And he saw himself- nodding, accepting the responsibility for the woman’s safety. Elizabeth was right. He owed it to these people to make sure that she was returned home safely.
He took a step backwards, but his eyes remained glued to Elizabeth’s face. The two promises that he had made fought each other in his head. He knew his duty, but there was nothing on Earth, or any other planet he had been to, that could make him abandon her again. There was another tremor, the shrill alarms suddenly accompanied by a loud unholy screeching sound as the end of one of the metal pillars snapped off, tore itself loose from the ceiling and fell to the floor, crushing the computer console beneath it. Once again the air grew cloudy with dust.
Elizabeth turned her head back to John, shouting to make herself heard above the din. “You know which promise you have to keep, now GO!”
And he did know. With one last look at Elizabeth he turned and ran out of the core room. The hallway was near chaos. Steam spurted from splintered pipes, formerly carefully disguised, that ran along the ceiling; the only light source was the small, indomitable blue lights that lined the baseboards, and the flashing orange glare of the alarms. John wasn’t the only one running. Dozens of Replicators were dashing along the hallways, yet their faces remained as impassive as usual, even as their complex collapsed around their ears. John got out his ARG and took out any that made the mistake of getting in his way.
As he neared the designated rendezvous point, he began yelling for his team, disregarding stealth as useless at that point. The stairway that he had told everyone to meet in front of was just a turn away when Ronon and Rodney, with Shanna in tow, burst around the corner, running towards him in response to his shouts. “Sheppard!” shouted Ronon. They skidded to a stop in front of each other. “You okay?”
Before John could answer Rodney realized that something was wrong. “Where’s Elizabeth?”
John looked at each of his teammates in turn. “Oh no... not again,” breathed Rodney sorrowfully.
“No. Not again,” he said firmly. John locked eyes with Ronon. “Don’t wait for me. You know the way out. Up the stairs and down that hall till you get to the exit.” He glanced over Ronon’s shoulders at the dark haired woman standing behind them, then back at his Satedan friend. “Make sure she gets home.”
Ronon simply nodded, already realizing what he was planning to do and accepting it. He understood without needing to say anything that this was something he had to do.
“Wait, what’s going on?” Rodney looked back and forth between the two men. “Because it sounds like you’re about to...”
“I’m going back for her Rodney.” He caught the scientist’s eyes. “I’m not leaving her behind again.”
“And that’s all very well and noble, but, but... let us go with you! We’ve got the shield... at least take it with you!”
“No. You and Ronon have to get Shanna out of here, and I don’t need the extra weight.”
Farther down the hall another pipe burst, shooting steam out with a noisy hiss. “Good luck,” said Ronon. John nodded to both of them, then wheeled around and began to run back the way he had come. He hadn’t gotten very far when suddenly in the distance there was a deafening roar so loud that it rocked the entire complex. John staggered, bracing himself against a wall as the place shook. A crushing fear flooded through him. An explosion that big could only have been caused by...
“The core...” he gasped out. “No... Elizabeth!” With a surge of panic driven energy he pushed himself off of the wall and sprinted desperately towards the core room, not able to make his feet pound against the still shaking floor hard enough or fast enough to suit him. He was so focused that he didn’t hear the cracking, ripping noise that filled the air, and didn’t notice the extent of the structure’s instability until the ceiling gave in and collapsed only feet away from him in a riot of screeching tons of metal, crumbling tiles, and clouds of debris and dust... completely sealing off the rest of the passageway.
John gave a slight, dark grin at Ronon’s words. That was exactly what he had been wanting to do for a while now. “You sure this is going to work, Rodney?” he asked.
McKay glared at him. “Of course I’m sure.”
“Good. Because we wouldn’t want to be stuck in the middle of a hallway and this thing quits working on us.”
“I’m sure it won’t,” said Elizabeth, her keen diplomat’s sense apparently anticipating the beginning of an argument. She tapped her finger on the ARG. “But that’s why we have these.” Her eyes suddenly took on the now familiar unfocused look, and when she returned to normal they held another layer of concern. “The field’s getting weaker. We don’t have much time left. We need to leave. *Right now*.”
John nodded. “Alright. Let’s go.” Elizabeth quickly walked across the room to retrieve the completed ARGs from her workstation. John grabbed the one she had lain on the table, stuffing it down the front of his tac vest where it would be within easy reach. Rodney picked up his creation and slid it into the empty pack they had brought from the store room, while Ronon marched over to the corner where Shanna had obediently crouched down, took her by the arm and lifted her to her feet.
“What...?” she asked, fear and confusion mixed equally in her voice. Up until now she had been mercifully and understandably quiet, doubtless overwhelmed by the situation she had found herself in. But now the strong personality John had first seen in the village was slowly beginning to creep back again. “Please, I may not have fully understood all that you have been talking about, but we can’t... we can’t go out there!” She looked frantically back and forth among the team, searching for support and not finding any.
Elizabeth walked up, a handful of ARGs in her arms. “But neither can we stay here,” she said gently. She handed Ronon and Rodney the completed weapons and moved to stand beside John, careful to keep her distance from the woman, clearly remembering the fearful reaction she had received from her before. Shanna’s eyes grew slightly bigger as Elizabeth spoke to her, and she quickly turned an alarmed glance in John’s direction.
“It’s okay,” he said calmly, suppressing his irritation at her fear of Elizabeth and forcing himself to ignore the ticking clock pounding away increasingly faster inside his head. *They needed to leave, they needed to leave...*
He locked eyes with Shanna and took a step closer to her. She looked at him, frightened, distressed, and yet trusting all at the same time. John felt a twinge. What had he done to deserve that? “Do you remember what I said to you before? About that promise I made to your husband? The one where I said I was going to make sure nothing happened to you?” She nodded. “Well I’m still going to do everything I can to keep that promise.”
Shanna looked at him searchingly for a moment, then nodded again, bending her head to stare at the floor. John took a deep breath and out of habit glanced at Elizabeth. She gave him a barely perceptible twitch of a smile, approval in her eyes, as well as an urgent reminder of their current predicament. Well, he didn’t need to be told again. “Everybody ready?” Receiving confirmation from the rest of his team, he moved to the door. “Rodney, get set to turn that thing on when we need it,” he ordered, and swiped his hand over the control panel.
The door slid open with a quiet hiss and John bolted into the hallway, stepping to the side to allow everyone else to exit the room. Ronon was out next, followed by Rodney, then Shanna, who took three steps into the corridor and froze. She gaped at the glowing blue forcefield that blocked the passage, staring in horror and taking a terrified step backwards as an oncoming Replicator dissolved into a shower of tiny silver pieces right in front of her.
Rodney went back to her and took her by the arm. “Look, we don’t have time to sightsee, let’s go!”
Still staring, she nodded weakly and allowed herself to be led down the hall. The way now clear, Elizabeth emerged from the lab and paused next to John. “Is she going to be alright?”
“She’ll have to be.” John laid his hand against her upper arm and gently ushered her forward. “Come on.”
Ronon stopped at the barrier beyond the right side of the door and looked over his shoulder back at John. The Replicators had followed the curve of the hallway around to this side of the forcefield as well, though they weren’t as thickly clustered here. John prepped his P-90 - he wasn’t going to use the ARG until it was absolutely necessary - and looked at Rodney and Ronon in turn.
“Okay, when we turn that thing on we’re going to have to make a run for it. Ronon, you clear on where to go?”
“Yes, John,” answered Rodney exasperatedly. “We know what to do.” John ignored him, waiting instead for Ronon to respond.
The Satedan nodded, his weapon at the ready. “Got it, Sheppard.”
“Alright.” He looked for a moment at the dozens of Asuran machines assembled beyond the forcefield, their human looking faces completely blank as they marched efficiently forward to their deaths. John allowed himself a half second of satisfaction. They deserved what they were getting. He adjusted his P-90 one last time and prepared himself to run.
Just as he opened his mouth to give the order, there was a surge in the air as the Replicators finally found their way around the shield. “Rodney, go!” cried Elizabeth and John simultaneously as the first successful Asuran rushed towards the group, unfortunately a completely solid, non-disintegrated threat. Ronon sprang forward, swinging his arm and knocking it over with a well placed punch. It hit the floor in a burst of pale metallic fragments as an electric blue pulse swept from the bag in Rodney’s arms.
Ronon looked over at him. “About time, let’s go!” he said, already beginning to run. Rodney carefully slung the now extremely important pack over his shoulders, and they immediately followed Ronon’s lead, taking care not to slip on the thick layer of Replicator cells that now covered almost every inch of the floor. They sped down the hallway, John continuing to take up the rear of the group, with Elizabeth staying close in front of him.
Rodney’s device worked as well as he said it would. The energy field extended outward from the machine in a twenty foot radius that surrounded them in a kind of protective bubble against any physical Replicator influence. John hoped that the range would be enough to prevent any guards with long distance stun weapons from becoming an issue. Doors opened further along the corridor as they ran, the full alarm having been raised by now. Apparently the Replicators had finally decided that they were enough of a problem to warrant it. They closed in, and the only thing that left those rooms were more piles of diamond colored metal ashes.
They turned off of the curved hallway onto a shorter passage that ended in a staircase mirroring the one on the opposite side of the level. Without hesitating for a second, Ronon leapt onto the stairs and began taking them two at a time. Halfway to the first landing, Shanna, still following on Rodney’s heels, tripped on the edge of a step and pitched forward as she tried to keep up, nearly taking him with her. Rodney staggered with a curse, throwing out his arms to catch himself against the wall. He looked angrily over his shoulder to see what had caused the near accident. His features softened somewhat when he realized what had happened, and he turned to help her up, but Elizabeth stopped him.
“I’ve got her, keep going,” she said as she assisted Shanna to her feet. There was a brief, instinctive flash of apprehension in the woman’s eyes, but nonetheless she quickly gripped Elizabeth’s arm and pulled herself upright. John even saw her give her a grateful look as she breathed a quick ‘thank you’ and hurried on up the stairs. ‘Good,’ he thought, ‘she’s finally coming to her senses.’ Elizabeth looked down at him and waited for him to jog up the four steps till he was even with her.
“Looks like we’re finally making progress with the locals,” he said, meeting her eyes.
She gave a slight smile. “Finally.” There wasn’t time for her to say more, but he could see the relief she felt at no longer being openly feared. One small weight, at least, that had been lifted from her shoulders. “Come on,” she said, resuming her move up the stairs. “Let’s not get left behind.”
oOo
They were now two levels above the holding cells they had been thrown in on their arrival. The core room and the main labs where the most important work was done were on this floor. This was where Kedan’s faction of Asurans were concentrating their efforts on creating undetectable power sources for their technology, and this was what they were going to have to destroy before they could get out. According to Elizabeth, the most volatile points to place the C-4 were around the central column in the core room and in the three surrounding laboratories that were directly connected to the flow of power from the generator.
Ronon paused briefly at the head of the stairs to get his bearings and give them an opportunity to catch their breath. “Alright, let’s...”
He suddenly broke off in mid-sentence and brought his gun up to fire in a flash of movement, aiming at the Replicator that had just appeared and walked straight past the field.
“Kedan,” said Elizabeth darkly, only the faintest traces of alarm in her voice. Ronon took his shot, but the blast traveled directly through the blond machine as if he wasn’t even there. Kedan looked at him for a moment, amusement written on his pale features, but then he turned away, as if such a rough creature was beneath his notice.
“Dr. Weir.” His voice was smooth like ice and just as frigid. “I am impressed. You and your band of friends have managed to avoid capture for far longer than I would have anticipated.”
“We’re a crafty bunch, what can we say?” retorted John, the cold hatred in his green eyes not matching the strained lightness of his tone. His fingers slowly slid towards the trigger of his P-90. “Now if you excuse us we have somewhere we need to be.”
He fired half a round at Kedan’s chest, enough ammo that would have made him at least stagger... if it hadn’t passed right through him. The hall rang with the sound of gunfire, the wall opposite now riddled with bullet holes. Ronon charged him, reaching for his neck to snap it. His hands slipped through the Replicator leader just as the bullets had. Kedan laughed.
“What the hell...?”
“He’s a hologram,” McKay realized, equal parts shock and puzzlement mixed on his face. “But Replicators have...”
“Never needed it?” Kedan finished, actually looking entertained by their mystification.
“We all know they don’t require extra machines to make people see things,” Elizabeth said, an edge to her voice that John was becoming very familiar with, one she had adopted only recently. Rodney looked at her and she shook her head. “No, I don’t know why they have it now, or what purpose it could serve.”
There was more frosty laughter. “Come now! Surely you cannot fail to see the advantages of this sort of technology! Admittedly in comparison it is only a simple piece of machinery, one which had already been mastered by our creators, but it has its uses. Just one of many of our projects here.”
John lowered his gun, the impatience that had been a constant undercurrent since they left the lab rising to the surface once again now that he had determined that the apparition wasn’t an immediate threat. “Enough with the chatter, let’s go.” He started down the left side of the hallway, the rest of the group following behind. Except one.
“Waitwaitwait,” jabbered Rodney. “What kind of projects?”
“McKay!”
Kedan turned his attention to the scientist. “Oh, many kinds. Some that would be of great interest to your people I am su...”
Elizabeth left John’s side and marched back down the hall, taking Rodney by the arm and pulling him away. “Don’t listen to him, he’s just trying to stall us.”
“And of especially great interest to you, Dr. Weir,” the hologram called after them as they walked further away. “Technologies that could return to you what you so unfathomably persist in wishing for.” Elizabeth ignored him and they kept going. “That could give you back your humanity.”
Elizabeth stopped dead in her tracks. John wheeled around and saw the uncertainty and confusion that entered her face as she fixed her gaze on the dark floor. Uncertainty, confusion, deep seated pain, mistrust, and, so quick he wouldn’t have noticed it if he didn’t know her so well, a small flicker of impossible hope.
“You could be restored to what you once were,” the false Kedan continued, “a pathetic, weak, and average human.”
John watched her very carefully. Her eyes still swam with conflicting desires. She hadn’t told him many of the details about what it was like for her, being only half human now, and if he were honest with himself he hadn’t thought about that aspect of the situation all that much since he had found her here. But now he suddenly realized how much pain the knowledge of her own existence caused her. The Elizabeth of seven months ago would never have given a moments consideration to such an obvious delaying tactic as Kedan’s promises, but now a small traitorous part of him feared that for the woman who stood before him, driven by desperation for her former life, they would be too much to resist.
He quickly squashed the sneaking voice that whispered such suspicions to him, ashamed of himself for doubting her for even that long. This was *Elizabeth*. And she had too much of that to handle already. And he knew her, better than anyone except maybe himself. He knew how strong she was.
“Elizabeth,” he said softly, calling her back to him. She looked up, her green eyes meeting and holding his. Instantly the indecision vanished and she nodded, resuming her walk forward, his Elizabeth once more. As she regained her place at his side, she once again caught his gaze, silently apologizing to him for her moment of weakness.
Kedan spoke again, but this time it wasn’t to deliver enticements. His voice betrayed no emotion, no anger or resentment. “You will not leave here alive, Dr. Weir.” It was almost more a statement of fact then a threat.
Elizabeth didn’t look back as she replied. “Well then, at least I’ll finally be out!”
“So be it.” Something in his voice made them turn around, just in time to see the hologram shimmer and disappear. Everything was still for few moments, and then the ceiling began to vibrate ever so slightly, filling their ears with a dull humming sound.
“Rodney, what’s that noise mean?” demanded John as he stared at the dark gray tile work in the ceiling.
“I don’t know, but probably nothing good for us,” he answered, gaping at the panels above him. The vibrating grew louder, and then...
“Look out!” screamed Shanna. Plunging lightning fast from the ceiling was a two foot thick sheet of metal the same color as the ceiling tiles. John had just enough time to grab Elizabeth around the shoulders and pull her out of the way towards him, backing up himself and screwing his eyes shut, before it slammed down onto the floor with a deafening clang and a cloud of dust.
A second later he opened his eyes. The brand new wall filled his vision, smooth, dark gray, and completely solid. Elizabeth lifted her head up from where she had hid it against his shoulder to look at it as well, and he slowly dropped his arms from their protective hold around her. He glanced around. The two of them were the only ones on this side. He walked up to the wall and began banging furiously on the metal with his fist, shouting. “Hey! Can you hear me? Is everybody okay?”
“Yeah!” a muffled voice yelled back. Ronon. “We’re all fine!”
Relief swept through him. He was about to shout a reply when Ronon’s voice came through again. “Sheppard! This thing goes straight through the floor! There’s no way to move it!”
John sighed. He had noticed that. “Yeah! Looks like we’re going to have to split up to do this! You guys take the two labs on your side, we’ll take the other one and the core room! Meet at the exit!”
Now Rodney’s voice joined in, sounding somewhat panicked. “But you won’t have the field generator...!” There was more, but it was too fast and too faint to make out. But knowing who was speaking, he got the general idea of what was being said though.
“I realize that Rodney!” he shouted in annoyance. “But we’re just gonna have to do the best we can! Got it?”
Ronon acknowledged the plan with a short ‘Got it!’, then there was silence on the other side of the barricade. John turned around to face Elizabeth.
“Is it just me,” he asked tiredly, “or does this Kedan guy seem like more of a vindictive bastard than your average Replicator?”
She closed her eyes momentarily and let out a small laugh that sounded equally exhausted. “Not arguing with you on that. I’ve thought for a while now that there must be something faulty in his programming. I think he got an extra dose of aggression when Oberoth created him. That’s what made him so independent and...”
“Evil?”
She smiled, a downplayed version of that fond, amused-in-spite-of-herself smile that his frequent attempts at humor had so often been met with in the past. “I was going to go for calculating.” The smile grew wider. “But evil works too.”
He smirked and they started walking briskly down the darkened corridor. “Yeah. That it does.” John held his P-90 at the ready, eyes constantly scanning their surroundings, the brief moment of lightness already vanishing from his face. As he shone the beam of his gun’s flashlight into the pools of shadows that filled every corner, he felt himself growing tense, like he had in the forest clearing when he had first suspected that there was a trap. His nerves grew more on edge with every step farther they went with no Replicators appearing to attack them. He didn’t expect their luck to hold out very long.
Suddenly Elizabeth grabbed the back of his tac vest and pulled him off into the shadows of an adjoining hallway, flattening herself against the wall. John copied her movements without hesitation, the smooth surface cold against the exposed skin at the back of his neck. Several seconds passed by, and just as he was beginning to wonder what exactly it was that had prompted Elizabeth’s behavior, a Replicator patrol passed by; four of them, armed to the teeth with stun pistols and energy rifles. They were headed in the opposite direction. If Elizabeth hadn’t sensed the group coming, the two of them would have met them head on. As it was, the guards simply marched past, leaving their makeshift hiding place unnoticed.
John glanced over at Elizabeth. She nodded, and they stepped away from the wall. “Nice job there.”
“Thanks,” she said, “I didn’t think you were interested in getting into another firefight just yet.”
He nodded in appreciation. “Yeah. Just... how about a little warning next time?”
She grimaced apologetically. “Sorry.”
She gave the all clear and they moved back into the larger hall, moving as quickly as their sense of caution would allow. The pair met with nearly half a dozen other patrols, but Elizabeth guided them around each one, leading John through a veritable maze of dimly lit side passages and minor hallways. Even he began to get turned around after a little while, but Elizabeth hardly ever paused or stopped to consider which way to go; every turn was made with complete certainty. John quickly recognized that without her he would have been hopelessly lost by now, or, a more likely scenario, long since captured once the ARG’s effectiveness had worn off.
John swiped at a glowing blue door panel and they stepped out into a short corridor, following it along its length until Elizabeth came to a halt at the end of it. Three other passageways converged on a small open space, the small blue lights that lined the bottom of their walls only visible for the first couple of feet into them before they were swallowed by the more dominant shadows that obscured the hallways and disguised their length.
John looked at her, his eyebrows knitting together in a concerned expression. The previous burning tension had faded somewhat since they had actually encountered Replicators- at least he knew they weren’t all lying in wait for them around a corner somewhere- but he was still keeping a very short distance between his finger and the trigger of his P-90.
“What is it?” he asked. “We’re not there yet.” Lost though he was, he still clearly remembered from the pictures Elizabeth had shown him in her mind that this wasn’t around the entrance to the first lab. And with her earlier confidence as far as direction went, what made her stop made him worry.
Ever since their first Replicator run-in her eyes had worn the same look- unseeing, focused not on what was in front of her but on something inward, something playing out inside her head. Now her gaze cleared, and she looked up at John with an expression of anxiety that was nearly identical to his own. “Three patrols,” she said rapidly, “coming up behind us and down two of the other hallways. There’s no way to go around them this time.”
Very faintly they could just hear the sound of marching boots coming closer. “Then we’re going to have to outrun them. Which way to the lab?” he demanded.
“This way.” She began running towards the passage opposite, John right on her heels. “It’s the only one that’s clear.” There was a shout from behind them and the marching grew louder. They sped down the hall, feet pounding against the hard floor, passing by door after door after door. As they neared a split in the hall, Elizabeth, her breath becoming slightly labored, glanced over at John. “Do you get the feeling we’re being... herded?”
“Like sheep. But we don’t really have any other options.” The noise had been inching ever closer, even as they ran as hard as they could. John could feel the first fringes of tiredness creeping up on him. He hadn’t really rested since his stint in solitary confinement at the beginning of his capture, and the near constant heightened state of alertness and stress that had followed was just starting to take its toll on his system.
A blast of electricity from an energy weapon hit the wall just above his head as they made the turn. John cursed and felt a new burst of adrenaline revive him, making him pick up his pace. As she ran, Elizabeth’s eyes were busily scanning the doorways lining the hall. Suddenly she pointed to one of them. “There!”
They dashed into the room, sealing the door behind them. “Woah!” The lab wasn’t empty. Instantaneously, John fired a round into the Replicator scientist that was the room’s sole occupant, then, in a seamless motion, let one hand go from the machine gun and grabbed his ARG from where he had stowed it beneath his tac vest, shooting a beam of electric blue energy at the approaching Asuran. Even before the last fragments of silver Replicator cells had hit the floor, Elizabeth was already moving. She hurried to the computer console in the center of the room, kneeling down beside it and wrenching off the casing with a small grunt of expended effort, revealing an intricate system of glowing power crystals.
John was already at her side and handing her the C-4 before she even opened her mouth to ask for it. She began rapidly placing the explosive around the major power conducting crystals as he impatiently watched the door. Five seconds later she pounded the detonator into the gray putty-like substance and stood up. “Done.”
“Good.” He looked over his shoulder at the entrance they had used, beyond which there were at least three known patrols searching for them, likely on the verge of discovering them at any minute. Well, at least he knew where he was now. “Other door.” John sprinted across the lab to the alternate exit, pausing with his hand hovering above the door’s control panel, and glanced questioningly at Elizabeth.
“It’s clear, go.” He opened the door into yet more familiar surroundings. He had to admit having directions directly uploaded into his head was extremely convenient.
The core room wasn’t far from there. Only two more corridors separated them from their destination, but as they got closer to the main power source, it grew increasingly more difficult to find a path that was free of Replicators. “I’m starting to wish that I had told Rodney and Ronon to take out the core,” muttered John as he and Elizabeth crouched down in an alcove they had ducked into to avoid yet another patrol.
“Yeah. That shield generator would be extremely helpful about now,” commented Elizabeth, shrinking farther back into the concealing darkness of the recess as the patrol’s shadows flashed across the patch of light spilling in from the other hall.
“Well,” said John jokingly, keeping his voice low, “if I have to be stuck in a cramped, dark, hole in the wall with somebody...” He caught her eye, and although his tone was still light, there was a seriousness in his eyes. “...I’m glad it’s you.”
She smiled and regarded him, an unreadable look in her eyes, then looked as if she were about to say something, but her attention was drawn elsewhere. “They’re gone.” They straightened up and left their hiding place. “It’s not far now.”
Elizabeth led the way, keeping close to the walls as they darted along the passageway, and opened a door into an unoccupied lab which they used to cut through to the next corridor. They stopped to look around a corner. John recognized the entrance to the core room the minute he saw it, the set of heavy double doors carved with geometric designs and the substantial security detail surrounding them exactly as he had been shown. He sighed inwardly. The security detail. He had been hoping that just maybe, just maybe, they might get lucky and that little particular might not be so accurate as all Elizabeth’s other facts had proved to be. Oh well. It had been a very small hope anyway. Once again he really wished McKay was here with that shield.
He ducked back around the corner, the wheels in his head spinning rapidly as he tried to think up a plan that would allow him to take out five Replicators at once with only a P-90 that did little good and made a lot of noise, and an ARG that might cease to be effective by the time he got through with them all. These were not the best odds in the world. As much as he respected and admired Elizabeth’s many skills, he knew combat and gun fighting had never been among them, even though she had taken the required basic training courses. Reluctant as she had been, he had made sure of that. But now they would just have to do the best they could.
He turned to Elizabeth to tell her what to do, and found her hastily fiddling with the ARG in her hands, the one she had kept back for herself. “What are you doing?” he mumbled anxiously.
“Fixing this.” She stopped fiddling and held the weapon still in her hands, closing her eyes. A look of intense concentration passed over her face for several seconds, then she looked up and handed him the weapon. “There. I expanded the range of fire. You should be able to get them all in one shot.”
He looked at her in astonishment. “How did you...?”
“Those are made with Replicator technology. It’s all connected.” The nanites again. John leaned around the corner again, took aim, and fired. A blue bolt of energy twice the size of a normal ARG discharge burst from the gun, and he swiftly hid himself behind the safety of the wall. There was a sound like sand falling through an hourglass, signaling that the security detail had been taken care of. He peeked around the corner. All of them.
“Perfect.” He couldn’t help a slight grin as he gave Elizabeth his own unmodified anti-Replicator gun to use.
She smiled back and took it. “Thanks.”
The way to the core now clear, they bolted down the hall, John’s boots crunching against the dormant Replicator cells strewn across the ground as they reached the door. He tightened his grip on the handle of his newly altered weapon and took a deep breath. This was the most important room in the entire complex. He guessed the chances of it being empty were zero to none. “How many?” he asked.
She shook her head in confusion. “I can’t tell for sure. The generator core is interfering; it’s masking everything in the room. I’m sorry. At best guess I’d say about a dozen.”
He took another breath. “Alright. Here goes nothing.” He nodded and Elizabeth placed her palm against the illuminated orange surface of the hand reader on the access panel. The doors opened with a hiss of escaping air and John ran in, taking out four rebel Asurans before they had even had time to look up from their stations. Every head turned in John’s direction, fixing their unfeeling eyes on the intruder in their midst. He didn’t waste any time. He disintegrated three scientists who were clustered at the same computer terminal. The group of seven that charged him seconds later met the same fate. Okay, so there were a little more than a dozen. He took cover behind a sizable worktable, its touch screen surface projecting a series of softly glowing holographic diagrams into the air. A blast from an energy weapon hit the other side of the table, the power surge making the diagrams momentarily flicker and short out. John could hear footsteps coming towards him. When he judged they were close enough he jumped up and sent the last two Replicators packing with a sweeping pulse of energy from the ARG. Yeah, definitely more than a dozen.
Slowly, he stepped out from behind the table and called the all clear to Elizabeth. He stuck his ARG back in its former place beneath his tac vest and moved towards the middle of the spacious circular room. The ceiling of the core chamber was twice if not three times as high as those in the hallways, spaced out accent pillars built into the muted aqua walls reaching up and meeting to form a point at its apex. Between each of the pillars were Ancient style computer consoles, and evenly dispersed around the room were worktables like the one John had used for cover, bright green and blue holograms hovering above each one of them. But the dominant feature of the room was the core itself, a massive column of dull gray metal that touched the ceiling, twice the diameter of a stargate, banded with alternate rows of glittering power crystals of countless different colors and clear conduit tubes that shimmered with a glowing amber tinted substance that flowed like liquid.
John walked over to the core and knelt down next to the base, pulling a block of C-4 out of one of his vest pockets. He was about to begin to attach it to the side of one of the transfer pipes that ran into the floor when footsteps came up behind him. Footsteps too heavy to belong to Elizabeth. His muscles tightened, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and he stopped what he was doing, slowly reaching for the grip of the gun sticking out of the top of his tac vest. Then, lightning fast, he pivoted, stood up, there was a whining noise, and... a shower of silver fell at his feet.
He stared at the tiny fragments littering the floor, eyes wide, breathing fast, gun held loosely in his right hand. He looked up and saw Elizabeth standing just inside the closed doorway, one arm outstretched and holding the ARG he had swapped her. She lowered her arm and walked towards him, laying the weapon down on top of one of the worktables. He met her eyes, still looking slightly stunned. “Thanks.”
She gave a small smile, “You’re welcome,” and pulled the forgotten block of C-4 out of his left hand, going around to the other side of the structure to place it. John shook his head to clear it and fished another pack of the plastic explosive out of his pocket, bending down and resuming the task that the Replicator had interrupted. Five seconds later he got up and followed the side of the column to the second of the four pipes that lined the core, repeating the same process as before. After smacking the detonator in place, he circled around and came face to face with Elizabeth, who was just reaching her final pipe. He tossed her the last of the C-4, which she caught and placed, slamming the putty against the storm cloud gray pipe with more enthusiasm than was strictly necessary to get the job done.
Without wasting any time, she leapt up and flew towards another section along the base of the core. She got to her knees and ran the tips of her fingers over the smooth, seamless metal as if searching for something, which she found moments later. It had been practically invisible before, but now John could see the thin seam that ran across the rim of the base and down the sides, forming a rectangle. Elizabeth pried open the panel with her fingernails, yanking it out of place and heaving it off to the side, where it met the floor with a loud clang. She didn’t even glance at it, giving her full attention to the power crystals that it had concealed, considering them a moment before bending down and beginning to snatch the crystals out of their own slots and swap them out with the others in a seemingly random and completely haphazard order.
“There,” she said in satisfaction, unfolding herself from her crouched position and admiring her handiwork.
“What’s that going to do?” John questioned, offering her a hand.
She took it and pulled herself to her feet. “It scrambled the flow of power. There’s enough unchanneled energy running through the core now to give the C-4 a significant boost.”
“Very nice. I didn’t know you’d developed a taste for big explosions.”
She gave a slight smile. “Yeah, well...”
Their eyes met and he smiled back. “I get it. Come on. Let’s get out of here.” Her eyes brightened and she nodded eagerly. Without thinking about it he adjusted his grip on her hand, which he hadn’t even realized he was still holding. She gave his a small squeeze and side by side they began to run towards the exit.
They were passing the hologram tables when Elizabeth suddenly froze. John, still running, felt her hand slip out of his grasp. He instantly stopped and spun around, a question already forming on his lips. She stood next to the table, eyes fixed on the floor, her vision out of focus, fear and bewilderment flooding her features.
“What is it?” he demanded, worry filling his voice.
“I... I don’t know,” she said shakily, not looking at him. “Something’s not right. I...” Suddenly she cried out, her face twisting in pain.
Panic flooded his heart at the sound. “What?! What’s wrong?!”
“I don’t know!” she cried, bending double, raking fingers through her hair and pulling on it to try and alleviate the pain. His mind raced, frantically searching for something he could do, something to help her, he had to help her... And then as quickly as it had come it was over. She hesitantly straightened up, her face still bearing traces of the agony and her breathing heavy. She didn’t move, only stood there, still holding the sides of her head with her hands.
John took a step closer. “Elizabeth...” She looked up at him, confusion and dread written all over her face.
“John...” she whispered.
“What is it?”
“I can’t move my legs.”
“What?”
“I can’t move my legs!” She tried to walk, but her lower limbs were unresponsive and she pitched forwards, having to grab the edge of the table to keep from hitting the floor. Her gaze turned inward for a moment and sudden understanding and horror flashed into her eyes. “It’s the nanites... my nanites... I’m not... Kedan figured out a way to take control remotely...”
“You said he couldn’t do that!”
“I didn’t know he could! He’s always had to be in direct physical contact for it to work before. He shouldn’t be able to do it, but he did!” She met his eyes. “John...”
He knew that look. He had seen it before. “No. Don’t you dare say another word.” He marched the few steps back to her. “I’ll carry you if I have to.” He reached out for her. Elizabeth’s face suddenly twisted again.
“No! Don’t touch me!” she screamed at him, making him pause, the order irrationally making him feel like he had been slapped in the face. For a moment her eyes flew back and forth, as if she were reading an invisible text floating in the air in front of her, then she looked back at him. “The nanites are fully active, I can feel them. I’m not in control anymore! They’ll spread to you too!”
“I don’t care, it doesn’t matter!”
“*Yes*, it *does*!” She looked at him, anguished, and it seemed to take a colossal amount of effort for her to say the next sentence that left her mouth, like she had to force herself to say it. “You’re... You’re going to have to go without me. There’s no time...”
“Absolutely not. We can figure something out... get Rodney in here, he can fix it...”
“There’s not enough time!” she repeated. “This place is going to be swarming with patrols any minute!”
“We’re not leaving you!”
“You have to!”
“I made a promise to myself that I was going to get you out of here, and that’s...”
“You don’t have any other choice!”
“Dammit, Elizabeth!” His anger boiled inside him and he clenched his fists. Couldn’t she see that that wasn’t an option for him? That that had never been an option? “You can’t...” He broke off and looked at the floor, unable to continue. He took a deep breath and turned his head back up to her, his voice nearly shaking with rage and pain. “You *can’t* ask me leave you behind again. I can’t do it. Don’t... don’t ask me that.”
“John...”
He was near to shouting now, his emotions running high as the thought of what she was asking of him swept through him. Every fiber of his being repelled the idea. It was impossible! His nightmares flashed through his memory. “I can’t lose you a second time!”
“And I can’t watch you die again!” she shouted back with equal vehemence, every word aching with the force of her suffering. She was near tears.
Again? He was momentarily stunned into silence. “What... what are you talking about, again? I haven’t...”
“Do you remember... when I was inside your mind... do you remember what I told you, about the visions of me escaping?”
“Of course, but...”
“Do you remember when I told you that they weren’t the worst things they created for me? That there were much worse things?” He nodded. She looked at him, her voice beginning to shake with the effort of holding back the tears that were welling up in her eyes. “My worst fears made real. John, they showed me you. They showed me your death. Hundreds of times. Hundreds of ways. And...” The tears began to flow now, the drops streaming down her cheeks, but it was almost as if she didn’t even notice, trapped by the remembrances of her torture. “And each time there was nothing I could do to stop it. I had to watch as you died right in front of me. Over... and over... and over again. It was horrible... unbearable... and each time I saw it I hurt as much as the last. Please...” she begged, “I can’t be the reason that you die for real.”
Her face was wracked with pain, and damp from the tears, which she didn’t brush away. He now noticed how rigid her arms looked as she stood there, one hanging by her side and the other still grasping the table top. The paralysis was spreading. She *couldn’t* brush them off. He felt himself longing to walk up to her and wipe them away himself, but in a rush of helpless certainty he knew he couldn’t, no matter how much it tore at him. She wouldn’t let him. She was so close... *so* close... and yet she was completely out of his reach.
He stared at her, the pain in her eyes making his own heart give a sharp twist. She continued, her voice breaking as she spoke. “There are people who are depending on you, people who still have a chance, that need you...”
“Stop it! We need *you*.” Elizabeth’s eyes were still awash with tears and anguish, but he could tell she didn’t believe him. Damn it all, he couldn’t take this. “*I* need you.” He took another step closer. “Elizabeth, I can’t lose you again.”
She closed her eyes and bit her lip, as if absorbing all of the pain and torment that filled that one sentence. “You’re going to have to,” she whispered.
There was suddenly a loud crash- the sound of an explosion on the other side of the floor. They looked around frantically. The entire room shook, causing a shower of fine dust to rain down from the ceiling. Ronon and Rodney had set off their C-4. The lights briefly flickered, then grew steady again. For the moment.
Elizabeth turned back to him. “John, you have to go,” she urged.
“Not without you.”
“Yes, without...” She broke off, her eyes glazing over, and when she snapped out of it fear joined the myriad of other emotions that were flashing across her eyes. “Kedan’s coming himself. He’s coming here. You have to go, you have to go now!”
“Let me carry you...”
“No! The nanites...”
“Damn the nanites! You can fight them, you’ve done it before!”
“It’s different now!” He opened his mouth to argue with her some more, but she cut him off. “Listen to me,” she pleaded, “Listen... You have a responsibility to your team, to that woman that was captured with you, Shanna... you have to get her home to her husband. You promised her that you would.”
Another explosion, this one closer, that rocked the whole room. The lights stayed off this time, the bright glow of the core the only source of illumination until the dim emergency lighting blinked into life. Alarms began to blare. It might as well have been happening on another planet for all the attention John paid it. All he could see were Elizabeth’s brilliant green eyes, so full of agony and sorrow and regret, shining with unshed tears, begging him... begging him to leave her.
“You can’t give up like this,” he said. “You can’t let that bastard win!”
“Fine, I won’t give up,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’ll try to fight it, but you have to go! If I let you carry me, even if by some *miracle* you weren’t infected, we could both die because I was slowing you down. John, you *have* to get out.” The chamber shook again. “You told her you would bring her home.”
John saw Shanna’s frightened face as she huddled in the dark corner, saw her collapsing to the floor after being mind probed by Kedan. Then he saw the anxious face of her husband, Derlin, sitting on the opposite side of a fire, quietly asking him to keep his wife out of trouble. And he saw himself- nodding, accepting the responsibility for the woman’s safety. Elizabeth was right. He owed it to these people to make sure that she was returned home safely.
He took a step backwards, but his eyes remained glued to Elizabeth’s face. The two promises that he had made fought each other in his head. He knew his duty, but there was nothing on Earth, or any other planet he had been to, that could make him abandon her again. There was another tremor, the shrill alarms suddenly accompanied by a loud unholy screeching sound as the end of one of the metal pillars snapped off, tore itself loose from the ceiling and fell to the floor, crushing the computer console beneath it. Once again the air grew cloudy with dust.
Elizabeth turned her head back to John, shouting to make herself heard above the din. “You know which promise you have to keep, now GO!”
And he did know. With one last look at Elizabeth he turned and ran out of the core room. The hallway was near chaos. Steam spurted from splintered pipes, formerly carefully disguised, that ran along the ceiling; the only light source was the small, indomitable blue lights that lined the baseboards, and the flashing orange glare of the alarms. John wasn’t the only one running. Dozens of Replicators were dashing along the hallways, yet their faces remained as impassive as usual, even as their complex collapsed around their ears. John got out his ARG and took out any that made the mistake of getting in his way.
As he neared the designated rendezvous point, he began yelling for his team, disregarding stealth as useless at that point. The stairway that he had told everyone to meet in front of was just a turn away when Ronon and Rodney, with Shanna in tow, burst around the corner, running towards him in response to his shouts. “Sheppard!” shouted Ronon. They skidded to a stop in front of each other. “You okay?”
Before John could answer Rodney realized that something was wrong. “Where’s Elizabeth?”
John looked at each of his teammates in turn. “Oh no... not again,” breathed Rodney sorrowfully.
“No. Not again,” he said firmly. John locked eyes with Ronon. “Don’t wait for me. You know the way out. Up the stairs and down that hall till you get to the exit.” He glanced over Ronon’s shoulders at the dark haired woman standing behind them, then back at his Satedan friend. “Make sure she gets home.”
Ronon simply nodded, already realizing what he was planning to do and accepting it. He understood without needing to say anything that this was something he had to do.
“Wait, what’s going on?” Rodney looked back and forth between the two men. “Because it sounds like you’re about to...”
“I’m going back for her Rodney.” He caught the scientist’s eyes. “I’m not leaving her behind again.”
“And that’s all very well and noble, but, but... let us go with you! We’ve got the shield... at least take it with you!”
“No. You and Ronon have to get Shanna out of here, and I don’t need the extra weight.”
Farther down the hall another pipe burst, shooting steam out with a noisy hiss. “Good luck,” said Ronon. John nodded to both of them, then wheeled around and began to run back the way he had come. He hadn’t gotten very far when suddenly in the distance there was a deafening roar so loud that it rocked the entire complex. John staggered, bracing himself against a wall as the place shook. A crushing fear flooded through him. An explosion that big could only have been caused by...
“The core...” he gasped out. “No... Elizabeth!” With a surge of panic driven energy he pushed himself off of the wall and sprinted desperately towards the core room, not able to make his feet pound against the still shaking floor hard enough or fast enough to suit him. He was so focused that he didn’t hear the cracking, ripping noise that filled the air, and didn’t notice the extent of the structure’s instability until the ceiling gave in and collapsed only feet away from him in a riot of screeching tons of metal, crumbling tiles, and clouds of debris and dust... completely sealing off the rest of the passageway.