Chapter One: Rift

There was a rift, and Teyla did not know how to mend it. She had gone away with everything intact, and come back to find it all broken, and she wanted desperately to fix it, but could not.

She knew, as few others did, how quickly life could change from one moment to the next. How many loved ones had she lost to the Wraith? How many were yet to be lost? And still, even after all the losses, she found herself walking away each morning expecting that nothing would change behind her, expecting that her loved ones would still be there when she came back, even while knowing that life very often did not work that way.

Perhaps humans could not live for very long with the expectation of continued loss. It wore away at you, ate your soul from the inside. It was much better, Teyla thought, to suffer today's new disappointment and pain no less powerfully than yesterday's -- each loss, each betrayal as fresh and sharp as a knife cut. A soul could heal from a small slash, just as the body could. A soul would not die from a thousand cuts ... at least, she hoped hers would not. The insidious poison of mistrust would rot the soul much, much faster, and leave nothing behind but a blackened husk.

So she walked away one morning with Ronon, knowing, as she always did, that her teammates would still be there when she came back -- knowing, also, in a deeper and more cynical part of herself, that they might not be, for that was the fortune of war. And so, it cut her, but not as deeply as it might have, to walk back through the gate into a charged atmosphere of suspicion and anger. Something had happened while she was gone. Teyla did not know what, and at that moment, so weary and heartsick was she from Ronon's ill-use of her friendship that she could not even summon the strength to find out. She smiled to the gateroom staff, bid a polite but formal farewell to Ronon, and retired to her own quarters for some much-needed meditation.

She did not find out the story of the Arcturus disaster until the next day. And even so, she didn't really understand the magnitude of it at first. Her first thought, in fact, was Good riddance! to the newly discovered Arcturus power supply. Even if it could have helped in the fight against the Wraith, the last thing this war-torn galaxy needed was some sort of superweapon. She did not say so to Elizabeth, but deep down, she was relieved.

But the weapon was only part of it.

Teyla was one of the last people to know what had happened on Arcturus. Elizabeth's very public diatribe at Rodney in the gateroom had spread like wildfire through the city, as any new gossip tended to do in such a small enclosed community with very little else for entertainment. It didn't help that Zelenka was still thoroughly annoyed (not that Teyla could blame him, from what she'd heard) and willing to give his side of the story to anybody who would listen. It was the talk of the mess hall when she came down for breakfast, though at least she'd debriefed with Elizabeth first (giving only the barest details of her trip with Ronon; she was still working through the emotional fallout in her head) so at least she knew the story. Still, the whispers surrounded her as she got a tray and quietly found a table. Destroyed a whole planet ... no, I heard it was a solar system ... weapon that could have stopped the Wraith, and now it's gone ... better than a ZPM ...

The whispers would fade and stop as she walked by, only to resurge after she was gone. Most people on Atlantis recognized her as McKay's teammate, and she could feel curious eyes on her. Well, they'd get through this, she thought. There was always some rumor or other circulating about the group of them. Why, just last week one of the soldiers she was training in hand-to-hand combat had told her there was a rumor that Ronon was a boyfriend she'd brought back from on of the worlds they had visited. Her lips quirked. Hardly, especially not at the moment. She felt a moment of pity for Rodney, forced to live out this particular failure under the watchful eyes of his colleagues. While the man could probably benefit from a blow to his healthy ego, it still must smart. At least she had been fortunate enough to be able to deal with her own problem in private.

Speaking of her problem, here it came, walking through the mess hall in a leather trench coat. She was not sure whether to try to catch Ronon's eye or to avoid him, but the decision was made for her when Sheppard appeared and made a beeline for the big guy, and soon the two of them had descended upon her.

"Mornin', Teyla!" Sheppard greeted her cheerfully. "And how are you on this fine day?"

Teyla raised her brows and dipped her spoon in the current mysterious Earth concoction on her plate. "I am well, John, thank you."

"Good trip?" he asked her, digging into his own food.

"We got the flax seed," Teyla said shortly.

Sheppard shrugged, grinned. "I'm happy for you," he said, and with that, he turned to Ronon and started telling the man a joke, some Earth joke about an Earthman and his mother-in-law. Teyla studied him curiously. She had not been sure what to expect from Sheppard this morning. In her debriefing, Elizabeth had given her the complete story, if slightly abridged, of the time she'd missed, including John's willingness to vouch for McKay's Arcturus plan, and how the two of them had subsequently come very close to dying because of it. She was relieved that Sheppard did not seem angry, but somewhat puzzled by his almost manic cheerfulness. For a moment, she had the crazy thought that he might actually be taking some kind of drug, but pushed the thought away impatiently; it was only her own foul mood that made others' cheerfulness seem suspect. There was no reason why John should not be happy this morning. He had come close to death, and now he was alive; what was not to enjoy?

As they completed their meal, Teyla realized that there was still one team member that she had yet to greet this morning. "Will Rodney be joining us, do you know?" she asked Sheppard.

He seemed almost to flinch. "Haven't got a clue," he said, and went back to his conversation with Ronon.

A little warning bell jingled in the back of Teyla's mind. She stood up and pushed away her tray. "Will I see you for sparring practice this afternoon?" she asked Sheppard.

He looked up at her, and before his eyes skittered away from her face, she knew that something was wrong, very wrong. "Sorry, I can't," he said. "I'm leading a team of new guys from the Daedalus on their first offworld mission. I won't be back until late."

Teyla forced a smile. "Then we will take, what do you call it, a rain check," she said, and in Sheppard's answering smile, she saw a falseness that frightened her -- the smile didn't reach his eyes. She walked away feeling as if she should have said something else, but not sure what. She couldn't even really understand what was wrong ... not yet.

After leaving the mess hall, she went straight to the labs, not even bothering to think up some kind of pretext. The scene she walked into was the typical controlled chaos of the Atlantean laboratory wing: white-coated scientists rushing about, people poking and prodding at odd glowing pieces of technology or lifting bits of alien flora out of Petri dishes with tweezers. In the midst of all of it, as usual, she found Rodney, snapping out orders and turning around to criticize somebody's lab technique.

It was just another day on Atlantis. Just as that morning had been just another morning in the cafeteria. Except that Rodney usually joined the rest of the team for breakfast, and this morning he had not. Except that, as she stood in the doorway and watched the scientists, nobody was meeting Rodney's eyes or coming very close to him ... or, as far as she could tell, really paying a whole lot of attention to anything he said, except to respond to a direct order, but even then he sometimes had to repeat himself. It was strange, as if he occupied his own little personal bubble of space, and no one wanted to enter into it.

He saw her standing in the doorway -- and she saw the oddest expression flit across his face; she would almost say that it was a breaking expression, as if something had shattered and just as quickly mended. And then he spun around and ordered one of the scientists to step away from her computer because she was going about her calculations all wrong. The scientist hesitated, and then stepped away -- and that was wrong too; usually all of Rodney's people, for all they resented his abruptness, would jump to do anything he said. Teyla was an observer by nature, and she had observed the labs often enough to recognize the subtle wrongness beneath the surface. She watched Rodney push a few keys and then stride away to check on somebody's experiment. Behind him, the woman shoved her glasses up onto her nose, muttered something under her breath and returned to her work.

After a few more minutes, it became clear that he was not going to acknowledge her, so Teyla stepped away from the door and made her way over to where he was hovering over a technician doing something to a large crystalline object -- Teyla had no idea what it might be.

"Nonononono," Rodney was saying. "You hook up the cables like that and it'll blow every circuit breaker in this part of the city when you turn it on. Were you born stupid or were you frequently dropped on your head as a child, hm? Good grief, give that to me," snatching a pair of cables away from the aggrieved-looking tech. "Here and here. Don't make me show you again."

And he was off, even more manic than Sheppard had been in the cafeteria. Not that manic was an unusual state with McKay, but this, Teyla thought, was truly ridiculous; she almost had to run to cut him off, intercepting him just as he swooped down on a frightened-looking botanist. "Good morning, Rodney!" she greeted him cheerfully.

He barely looked at her. "Morning, morning. Kind of busy here. My God, are you dissecting one of those venomous slugs from M2R-375? Where the hell is your containment field? If you let loose some kind of contagion into our atmosphere, we're leaving you here to deal with it, understand?"

"Rodney, may I speak with you?" Teyla persisted.

He turned to look at her, and she very nearly took a step backwards. There was a brittle brightness in his vivid blue eyes that she did not like at all. His eyes glittered as if he had a fever, and there were dark shadows under them. She thought he looked as if he hadn't slept in days. "Teyla, we don't have a field mission today and I have a lab full of morons who have almost killed us six times since breakfast. Can this wait?"

"Yes, of course it can wait." She backed down, and watched him berate his underlings for a moment longer before leaving. In the lab there were no whispers, at least not with McKay in hearing range, but she could feel people watching her as she left, and she could feel the pressure of their disdain, even knowing it was not directed at herself.

"Teyla!"

She turned back, surprised, to discover that Dr. Zelenka had followed her out of the lab and was now chasing her down the hall. "I wanted to apologize," he said, panting slightly, "for that arrogant bastard in the lab back there, and his behavior towards you."

This must be the peculiar Earth custom called "chivalry", which she still did not fully understand. "You do not have to apologize for Dr. McKay to me, Dr. Zelenka," she said, and forced a smile. "I believe that you and your fellow scientists are having a much worse time than I am."

Zelenka sighed. "You don't know the half of it," he said wearily. "Today already we have had one lab tech suddenly announce that she had earned a nursing degree in college and will be transfering to Dr. Beckett's division, and two more have requested that they are returning to Earth on the next trip of the Daedalus. At this rate, we will have no one left by lunchtime."

He fell into step with her, walking down the hall. Behind them, Teyla could faintly hear Rodney in another tirade. It faded out and then there was only silence until Zelenka spoke suddenly.

"I am apologizing for him," Zelenka said, "because at this rate, the stupid zkurvysyne will have no friends left at all, and he needs friends now, though he does not seem to realize this."

Worse and worse, Teyla thought. "What did happen, Radek?" she asked gently. "I have spoken to Dr. Weir, but I do not understand how it came to be so bad."

"That's right, you were gone." Zelenka rubbed his upper lip, thinking. "He made a mistake," he said finally. "He made a very bad mistake, but who among us has not done that?" He paused and then said, "He apologized to me yesterday, do you know? I believe it is the first time I have ever heard him say that he is sorry since I have known him. He had accused me of attempting to ... prevent his mistake due to professional jealousy. And other things were said. In any case, he did apologize for it."

"That sounds good," Teyla said cautiously.

"It is good," Zelenka said, nodding. "I understand that he went around the city, attempting to make amends to people he had wronged. Dr. Weir, the Colonel. That is all good. And then, he throws himself into his work, loses himself in his work. It is how he copes, you see?" He cast a glance over his shoulder at the lab. "It is now most likely close to two days since he has slept, and he is going a bit crazy. That is what you see."

"Is his health in danger?" Teyla asked, worried. "Should we speak to Dr. Beckett?"

"I would prefer not to involve the doctor unless we must, if only for his pride," Zelenka said. He stopped and leaned against the wall, staring at nothing. After a moment he looked over at Teyla. "Rodney is a man driven by pride," he said quietly. "He is determined to be the best at everything. I do not know why he is like this, but that is how it is. Making a mistake of this magnitude ... it is a failure for which he cannot easily forgive himself. He would not admit this, of course. And the greatest thing he would not admit is that he believes that he has not just failed himself, but the rest of us."

He took off his glasses and cleaned them on his lab coat as he spoke, not looking at her. "He is a complicated man, our Rodney McKay. He does not trust people easily, nor easily allow people to trust him. He has now hurt those who trusted him, and all he knows how to do is to be angry -- angry at himself, mostly." He gave a small laugh. "He already has my forgiveness, of course. I was never truly angry at him; I am not angry now. I understand what it is like to lose yourself in your work. I understand him, I think, better than most people here, even yourself."

He turned and looked at her. Without the glasses, his eyes looked strangely naked, as if his heart was now open to her. "I am a little bit afraid for him," he said quietly, and seeing her alarm, he added quickly, "Not physically, I mean. He is certainly in no danger of working himself to death. He is not sick. When he truly needs sleep, he'll sleep. No ... what worries me is that he is hurting, very much, and will not let anyone close enough to help him. And the one person whose forgiveness he needs the most, other than his own, is the one person who seems unwilling to give it."

"Sheppard," Teyla said softly, remembering Sheppard's manic cheerfulness at breakfast. He was hurting as well, she realized now. If anything, Sheppard had even more trouble letting his heart show than McKay did. Rodney, at least, wore his emotions on his sleeve. John, though ... Teyla remembered watching Sheppard, with a smile on his face, shoot the person he believed to be his dead friend, on that fake dream-Earth they had visited. Sheppard, she realized, would have done exactly what Ronon had done to the friend who betrayed him. He probably would not have used her, as Ronon had ... but yes, he would have done that.

It made her feel a little better about Ronon. Worse about John and Rodney, though.

"Is there anything we can do?" she asked.

Zelenka had put his glasses back on, and was looking away from her. "I do not know," he said. "I'm only a scientist." He looked back at her, and smiled. "But ... if I think of anything, I will let you know. Please, will you do the same?"

Teyla smiled. For all the hurt and harm in the universe, it was still a good universe, to contain such loyal friends. Rodney did not know how lucky he was. "I will," she said.

Over the next couple of days, it only grew worse. She made several attempts to corner both John and Rodney to talk to them, but they were always busy with something else. Rodney practically seemed to be living in the labs, and she wondered if John had given up sleeping as well, because it seemed that every time she passed the gateroom, he was preparing for some sort of offworld training mission, and every time she went by the exercise rooms, he was drilling recruits, frequently in the company of Ronon. His new best friend, she thought, and then was startled at herself for such a petty thought. Of course it was a good thing that John was taking an active interest in integrating Ronon into life in Atlantis. It was just ... it seemed as if he hadn't really been talking to anyone else. And talking to Ronon wasn't really talking, was it? If you wanted the company of other people but you didn't want any sort of awkward conversation along with it, Ronon was definitely your man.

John had not showed up for one of their sparring sessions since the incident on Duranda. Oh, he was polite about it, and he always had a good excuse. But she suspected that he was avoiding her because he knew she'd try to get him to talk about what was bothering him. And he is quite right, she thought as she worked out by herself, snapping the sticks back and forth with well-practiced moves.

She thought about perhaps approaching John through Ronon, but she still was not comfortable enough with Ronon to do that. He is no Ford, she thought, and then, once again, berated herself for the unworthy thought. But ... it was just so true.

We are coming apart. It was late evening and Teyla walked the halls, passing small knots of people. The whispering about McKay had stopped, as far as she could tell, and she wondered if Elizabeth had realized it had gone far enough and put a stop to it. Still, there seemed to be a subtle tension in the air ... or maybe it was only her own worries, leading her to see everything around her through a false lens.

We are coming apart. We were a team, a family. Then one of us was taken away, like sawing off a leg from a chair. We picked up the pieces, we learned how to balance our chair with only three legs. And the lynchpins of our team have always been John and Rodney anyway. She'd never quite realized that before, but it had the ring of truth. And we found another to join us, but now ... I do not trust Ronon, not as I once did, and John and Rodney do not trust each other, and we are falling apart.

She came around a corner, and, to her shock, saw the very people she'd been thinking about heading in her direction at a rapid clip -- well, two of them, anyway. It was also very obvious that Sheppard was trying to escape, with McKay in hot pursuit.

"Colonel -- Colonel, wait a minute, I have something to -- Colonel!"

They had not seen her, and she watched as Sheppard was suddenly balked by a group of gate technicians entering the hallway from one of the other halls. He swung around, arms crossed, as McKay skidded to a stop.

"What?" Sheppard demanded.

McKay stabbed a finger at him. "I need you in the lab, and don't think you're slipping away this time! I need to show you something one of the other exploratory teams brought back --"

"You mean you want me to activate something with my gene."

Teyla saw McKay draw back. "You're not the only person in the entire city with the gene, you know," he said haughtily.

"I'm aware of that. I'm also busy. If you're finished --"

McKay's voice dropped so that Teyla, at the end of the corridor, had trouble hearing him. She felt suddenly guilty for eavesdropping, but it was the first time she'd seen the two of them together since Duranda, and she hoped it was a good sign.

"... just wanted to get you to look at it, that's all," McKay was saying, and Teyla could see that he was looking at Sheppard hopefully. "It's a weapon, and you're the local expert on ... you know, alien armaments," he finished in a rush. "All you have to do is come and look at it."

"I'm busy at the moment, McKay."

Sheppard turned away, heading off down the hall, and Teyla saw McKay's shoulders slump slightly, then stiffen as he raised his head, the sorrow and regret draining out of him to be replaced by anger. "How the hell am I supposed to earn your trust back when you won't even talk to me, you goddamn asshole?" he demanded of Sheppard's back.

Sheppard might have hesitated a little at that, but at that moment he very nearly ran into Kate Heightmeyer as she rounded a turn. Teyla found herself suppressing an urge to duck behind a pillar so that Heightmeyer wouldn't see her. Although Teyla understood and appreciated the necessity of the woman's occupation, ever since her sessions with Heightmeyer she'd had to resist the impulse to hide whenever she saw her coming. She suspected that she was not the only one on Atlantis who felt that way.

"Colonel Sheppard!" Heightmeyer greeted him. "Are we still on for tomorrow's session?"

Sheppard snapped his fingers. "Sorry. I meant to send you an email. I've gotta cancel again. Got an offworld mission. Very last minute."

Heightmeyer's smile became somewhat fixed. "I see. How about Tuesday? Fourteen hundred hours?"

"Tuesday's great." Sheppard's false smile was back, and Teyla had to suppress a smile of her own, recognizing the same stalling maneuver he had been using on her lately. When Tuesday rolled around, she had no doubt that he'd have somewhere he would urgently need to be.

Looking around Sheppard, Heightmeyer fixated on McKay, who appeared to be making an effort to blend into the corridor. "Dr. McKay! Glad to see you, too. Our appointment on --"

"Sorry, can't, just got a shipment of new fuses from the Daedalus, and I'll be busy all day tomorrow overseeing the installation," McKay said in a single breath.

For an instant, Teyla saw him catch Sheppard's eye in a moment of shared annoyance. A smile had begun to flicker on Sheppard's lips, but it closed down almost immediately, and McKay looked away.

Heightmeyer heaved a sigh, looking back and forth between them. "You two do realize that Dr. Weir has ordered you to see me, you understand? It's not something you have an option about."

"I've been busy," Sheppard said. McKay simply waved his hand in the air, a dismissive gesture.

Heightmeyer pointed at Sheppard. "Tuesday," she said, and pointing at McKay, "Wednesday. And if I haven't seen both of you by then, I'm reporting it to Elizabeth."

She quite possibly reported it sooner, because the following day, Teyla was informed that the offworld trip Sheppard had mentioned to Heightmeyer -- a simple scouting mission to an uninhabited world -- was to include his regular team members as well as the newly-arrived scientists and soldiers from the Daedalus that he'd been planning on taking on a shakedown mission. The full group assembled in the gateroom without the usual pre-mission chatter. Teyla noticed that Rodney still had the same spaced-out, unslept look that she'd noticed in the lab. And he and John were both avoiding each other's eyes.

The most charitable thing that Teyla could say about that offworld mission was that it was ... uncomfortable. It should have been very simple, maybe even fun ... a vacation compared to some of what they'd been through lately. The Stargate was located on a pleasant-looking beach on some temperate ocean shore, near the ruins of an old village. No one had lived there in centuries. They poked around in the ruins and found a few curious sculptures to take back for the anthropology geeks to pore over. Rodney discovered some Ancient artifacts of unknown purpose that appeared to have been used as worship objects on a village shrine. There were odd little birds and rodents everywhere, and Teyla took pictures for the biologists while she walked the perimeter of the village and got a few rock samples for the geologists. One of the new scientists slipped on a rock and twisted her ankle, while another had a panic attack at the trip through the Stargate and had to be calmed down. All in all, it was just a standard exploratory trip, with no Wraith or hostile locals or dangerous wildlife ... a little boring, a little interesting, and an opportunity to visit a world where none of her people had ever been.

And it was one of the more painful experiences of her life. Sheppard and McKay started off by ignoring each other, which lasted until Sheppard accidentally dropped one of the artifacts he was helping the scientists load in a metal specimen case. It was completely unharmed -- it had lain in the weather for centuries, after all -- but Rodney whipped around like an attack dog and snapped out a comment about clumsy soldiers keeping their hands to themselves. Sheppard shot back a retort concerning useless scientists who can't handle their own specimens without help. At least they were talking for a change, Teyla thought, but over the next couple of hours, the bickering quickly became nonstop, and it was utterly lacking the friendly edge to their usual banter. Interspersed with the arguments would be several-minute interludes of stony silence during which they glared daggers at each other or else feigned to completely ignore one another; this would last until one of them couldn't contain himself and burst out with a cutting comment that led to another foray in what was rapidly becoming all-out verbal warfare.

By the time they returned to Atlantis, Teyla's nerves were worn to a frazzle. The only bright spot in the unrelenting gloom was that she and Ronon seemed to be getting along much better. At any rate, they kept sending each other long-suffering looks as the bickering faded in and out, and once she caught him with a little sympathetic smile curving his lips, and she smiled back. She wasn't sure if she quite trusted him enough to open her heart to him again, but things were improving.

John and Rodney, on the other hand...

As a leader, she had settled similar disputes among her own people, many times. But the Athosians were much more open about such things than her new, adopted clan. She had never met such closed-off, emotionally repressed people as the Atlanteans seemed to be. Perhaps for us, it comes of us Athosians being such a small people, she thought. Earth has many, many thousands. Perhaps they have to shut themselves up inside their skins in order to survive touching so many others.

She had thought, in her early days on Atlantis, that the Atlanteans viewed other people not as family and friends, but as fellow combatants in a great social game ... a game whose rules she did not understand or care to understand. She had thought it a very sad existence indeed. However, she had quickly come to understand that despite their outward behavior, these Earth people did indeed feel things as deeply as her own people -- maybe even more so, she sometimes thought, because for whatever reason, they felt as if they had to keep their emotions bottled up inside, rather than speaking to each other frankly as Athosians did.

She found herself searching her memory for all the different times that she had mediated disputes between brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, hunting partners, trading partners. The trouble was, most people on Athos had understood how distrust could poison a relationship and had sought her services before it got too bad. They all knew that a people divided could not stand against the Wraith. Other people, throughout the histories of different worlds, had not been so wise or fortunate, and they had fallen to internal strife and been taken easily by the Wraith. The Athosians were survivors. Teyla remembered how offended she had been, in her early days on Atlantis, at the Atlanteans' quick willingness to suspect her people of treachery and betrayal. Only later did she realize that they it was not just because her people were outsiders -- Earth people also feared and distrusted each other so very easily.

What a strange, frightening world Earth must be, to breed such suspicion in its children.

Still, the Athosians were human and fallible just as the Earth people were, and Teyla could remember a few times that her mediation had not solved the problem. As she went through her evening workout routine, her mind was as busy as a woodrat in a river, going over the details of those difficult cases. Unfortunately, most of those that she could remember ended in tragedy, with the injured parties bearing their grievances to their graves ... or, worse, one of them dead and the other left to carry their burden of guilt alone, a burden compounded a hundredfold because they would never be able to put right in death what they had failed to put right in life.

Alone in her exercise room, Teyla worked herself until her muscles burned and her skin felt slippery with sweat in the afternoon sun. She had invited John, yet again, for a workout session when they'd returned from the planet, but he'd just nodded and grunted before slamming a fist against the wall and going off who knew where. Probably to blow off steam by flying around in one of the jumpers. She'd heard secondhand from one of the gate techs that he'd been doing that a lot lately ... taking the jumpers up alone. Getting back his feel for aerial maneuvers, or so he claimed. Avoiding his problems back in Atlantis, Teyla thought grimly.

With the fighting sticks slippery in her wet palms, she went again and again through the forms that she had learned as a girl: the ones to kill and the ones to maim and the ones to disarm without killing. Conversation among the Atlanteans was, indeed, much like fighting, she thought, but a fight in which you hoped not to hurt the other person. You had to choose each move so very carefully, calculate the exact amount of force to score a light hit without doing any permanent harm. It was so much easier, so much simpler among her people.

Back, forth. Back, forth, up, down. She moved with practiced ease, her breathing harsh in the warm air, and she thought of John and Rodney, avoiding each other, their light verbal sparring turned to harsh blows meant to hurt and maim. She thought of people she had known who descended into that dark valley and came back out of it. She thought of those who had not.

And, suddenly, she remembered a success story that had happened entirely by accident. It involved a man and his brother back on Athos who had come to blows over a woman. Ultimately the woman jilted both and chose a third, but the damage was done. The brothers, once so close, had sworn to never speak again until their dying day. Their family had tried in vain to reconcile them before appealing to Teyla, who had also tried without success. They simply would not speak to each other. Until, quite by chance ...

Teyla realized that she had frozen in the middle of one of her katas. Frowning, and smiling a little, she laid her sticks down carefully on the floor and went to get a towel from the bench along the wall. Wiping her face, she thought over her plan. It might work. It could work. She would need Zelenka's help, of course. The trick would be getting Elizabeth to go along with it.

"I don't know if I can agree to this."

Still damp from her shower, Teyla sat in Elizabeth's office with her hands folded before her. She wanted to pace, to move, but she schooled herself into stillness with discipline born of a thousand trade-negotiating meetings. She kept her voice calm only with effort; like the rest of her, it wanted to spring forth from her roiling emotions.

"Dr. Weir, I know it is risky," she said. "I would not suggest it if I did not think it was necessary. You have surely seen yourself that we, as a team, cannot function properly in our current fashion."

"I hardly think that risking your lives is the way to fix it."

Teyla shook her head. "But if I am correct, there would be no risk, Doctor ... well, perhaps a little risk, but very little. That is the point."

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows. "And if you're not correct?"

"Then there is no point," Teyla said quietly. "And you may as well disband this team, and assign us to work with other people, because I do not think we can work with each other for very much longer."

"Teyla, are you blackmailing me?" Elizabeth inquired quietly.

"No," Teyla said, surprised. "I am merely stating the truth. I'm sure you can see it. I suppose the question, Dr. Weir..." She leaned forward in her chair. "The question is, do you trust us?"

She realized that this might not have been quite the thing to say when she saw the shutters slam down in Elizabeth's eyes. "I have trusted," the other woman said softly. "I have trusted, just recently, very deeply indeed. And now here we are. You will pardon me, Teyla, if I am finding it difficult to trust the same people again."

Teyla smiled. She was finding herself on surer ground now. "Dr. Weir, you are their leader. You must trust them. I am also a leader of my own people, and I know that no human being will give trust back to their leaders if it is not first given to them."

"And if they have betrayed that trust?" Elizabeth inquired. Her face was still.

Teyla felt a clutch at her heart and hoped that her face did not show it. She still found it difficult, sometimes, to look Ronon in the eyes without remembering the face of the man he had killed. But she was mending, she hoped. The knife wound in her soul was slowly closing. "Dr. Weir, I say again: you are their leader. Please pardon me for speaking plainly. Yes, you will sometimes be betrayed, but you do not have the luxury to sit about resenting it. You must only decide: do I trust this person again? Or do I not trust this person? And if you do not trust them, then you must send them back to Earth, because if you have people working under you that you do not trust, then they are a liability to you, and you to them." Teyla drew a deep breath and went on, seeing some undefined emotion (anger? understanding?) flicker in Elizabeth's eyes. "But if your choice is to trust them again, then you must give them your trust without reserve, as if it had never been tested. And if you truly do trust them, then your decision on this matter must be clear."

Elizabeth stared at her for a moment longer. Then she lowered her eyes, and laughed. There was a little bit of anger in that laugh, and a little awe. "Teyla," she said, "I hope I never have to sit opposite you at a negotiating table." Then she raised her eyes again, and there was a slight smile on her lips. "You have my permission. But I want you to do everything in your power to minimize the risk, and if there is even the slightest chance that things are not going the way you hope, I want all of you to pull out and come home immediately, do you understand?"

Teyla nodded, hope breaking in her heart like a summer sun cresting the mountains. "I understand, and I agree."

"You will need to talk to Ronon about this. If he doesn't agree, you cannot go forward. The last thing your team needs now is more mistrust and recriminations."

"I fully agree." Teyla hesitated, wondering if she was breaking a confidence, then said, "I have already spoken to one other person about this. I hope you do not feel that I was acting in poor faith, but I needed to have a well-formed plan before I spoke to you, and I could not make all the plans alone. If you had said no, we would not have done it."

"And just who exactly is the other half of this 'we'?" Elizabeth inquired, a smile quirking her mouth.

"Dr. Zelenka."

Elizabeth laughed; she couldn't help herself. "I might have known! It's always the quiet ones..." she mused. "Well, I suppose we should choose a planet for this."

"Actually," Teyla said, "Dr. Zelenka and I have found one that will do quite well for our needs."

"Afghanistan in the winter."

Teyla raised her head from a marker post that she was studying. The post, made of stone, was as high as her waist and covered in the Ancestors' writing. "I'm sorry?"

"Afghanistan." Sheppard stalked around her, studying the life signs detector in his hand. "This place. Reminds me of it."

"This ... Afgastan is on Earth?" Teyla guessed.

"Served a tour of duty there." John leaned against a boulder and stared out at the windswept wasteland beneath them. Behind him, he heard her start to say something, and then go back to her inspection of the marker.

God, but it did look like Afghanistan in January. When he'd first gone over there, it was a hundred and ten in the shade and he used to make bets with Mitch and Dex about whether the platoon commander was just pulling their leg about the winters -- it couldn't really get that cold in a place so goddawful hot, could it? Six months later, he wondered if he'd ever get warm again. That screaming wind, coming down out of the mountains, it just never stopped. He used to wonder whatever possessed people to live in such a hell-hole in the first place -- hot enough to melt lead half the year, cold enough to freeze your eyeballs the other half.

This place could have been Afghanistan's sister country ... only without the helicopters in the sky and the insurgents on the ground, of course. That, or a big, frozen gravel pit. Below him, the gray and tan rockscape fell away into a valley criss-crossed with jagged ravines, dipping to a great river at its central point and then, on the other side, rising into a series of high, pitiless mountains clawing at the oddly colorful sky. The Stargate had been located on the west side of the river valley, and a cold morning sun slanted over the mountains and into his eyes, offering little warmth. Beneath him, the ever-present wind stirred up small whorls of dust and dry, sandy snow.

He hadn't seen a place so utterly devoid of life since the world where he and Rodney had investigated the crashed Wraith ship. Where Rodney had saved his life ... he pushed that thought away, didn't want to think about it right now. The point was, the place was barren and desolate and didn't even have those little glowy bugs to add some interest to the nearly colorless landscape. The life signs detector confirmed it ... the place was empty.

The only odd thing about it was that crazy shifting sky. He'd seen auroras in Antarctica, but this was more than just those curtains of green and white light. And auroras were never bright enough to see in the daytime. The whole sky was alive with what resembled faintly multi-colored static. It wreaked havoc with their communications equipment, and they'd been unable to bring the jumper because of it -- hence the reason why they were currently on foot. As soon as they came through the gate, McKay had immediately started muttering about sunspots and the hazards of solar radiation. He'd hypothesized that the planet might have been abandoned due to increasing levels of radiation. At least, Sheppard thought that's what McKay had said; personally, he was too busy trying to tune out the whining about radiation and sunscreen. As if most people would be worried about sunburn and skin cancer on a winter day with the temperature in the thirties at best. McKay never shut up, and he never quit worrying about his own skin ... literally, in this case.

Some deep part of John informed him in no uncertain terms that he wasn't being fair to McKay. He told it to shut up and went back to surveying the valley.

"You said the abandoned village is on top of the hill?" Ronon asked Teyla.

She nodded. "But there are several different roads; this marker will show us the quickest one."

"Thought you'd been here before."

"I have, but I am used to having a guide. I came here many times as a small child, before this world was abandoned and the inhabitants went elsewhere."

"I wonder why they might have done that," McKay grumbled, swatting at his arms to keep himself warm as they started climbing again.

What Teyla had called a "road" was, in Sheppard's eyes, more of a goat path: narrow, uneven and strewn with rocks. The hill was not exactly a cliff face, but steep enough to make climbing difficult, and the road or path or whatever you wanted to call it followed the natural twists and turns of the land. After fifteen minutes or so of ligament-straining hiking (punctuated by McKay's complaints), the "road" turned sharply and entered a crevice in the rocks. Looking up, Sheppard could see the flat, crackling sky high above them, framed by gray rock faces. The wind still whistled high overhead, but down here in the crevice it was almost comfortable.

Teyla reached up a hand to touch the rock face at her side, and Sheppard noticed that the rocks were carved with swirling pictographs. He was still looking at them when he heard Teyla say, from somewhere up ahead, "Here it is."

Hurrying to catch up with his team, Sheppard emerged into a flat, clear amphitheater in the rough gray stone. He couldn't tell if the wide opening was natural or man-made -- it was hard to imagine what natural force could have taken such a great bite out of the rock, but he remembered the eerie rock spires and arches of the American Southwest, and supposed that it was possible.

The amphitheater was perhaps a quarter mile across. They stood at one end of a huge courtyard paved with flagstones and drifted with shallow patches of sandy snow, and ringed all about with squat stone buildings whose empty windows gaping darkly like the eyes of the dead. The buildings even climbed partway up the walls of the amphitheater, built against the cliff face like mushrooms, with steep, narrow streets winding between them. Sheppard thought it looked as if the place had had quite a sizeable population at some point in the past; hard to believe, considering how much of a wasteland it was, but then, there were a lot of people in Afghanistan too.

Now that they were out of the wind, Sheppard found himself becoming more comfortable -- actually, with a sweater under his uniform jacket and a hat and gloves covering the rest of his exposed skin, he was starting to sweat a little bit. He peeled off his gloves and took a look at the life signs detector.

"Hey, looks like it's working a little better in here," he said, starting to glance at McKay out of habit, and shifting to look at Teyla at the last minute. "I can see all of you guys on here. Before, I was only picking you up occasionally."

To his surprise, he caught a glimmer of unexpected emotion from Teyla at his announcement -- surprise and what appeared to be disappointment or nervousness.

"The rocks must be helping cut out the interference," McKay said. Sheppard, distracted from wondering about Teyla, glanced over to see the scientist waving his hand at the rocks. The familiar wrist-snapping gesture set off an unexpected twinge of pain in Sheppard's midsection -- like stepping down too suddenly on an injured ankle and feeling it twist under you.

"Maybe that's why they built here," McKay was saying, moving towards one of the abandoned buildings with scanner in hand. "Everything works better in here. No way you could have any kind of technological society if you can't use tech. Hey!" He spun around, his face animated and smiling; his eyes slid to Sheppard's face and slid immediately away again, the smile becoming fixed. Again, Sheppard felt that twinge deep down. He busied himself keeping an eye on the buildings, just in case something decided to come out of them.

"What did you find?" Teyla was peering over his shoulder at his detector, not that she could read it.

"There's some kind of energy source here. Very faint. Teyla, the people who lived here, were they advanced or not?"

"Advanced?" Teyla repeated.

"Yeah, advanced, you know, herding pigs and eating with their fingers, or watching TV and building ZPMs? More like your people or more like mine?"

Teyla's eyebrows shot up and Sheppard, suddenly intrigued, watched the barely-masked irritation uncoil on her face at McKay's casual dismissal of her people. The more surprising reaction, though, was McKay's. He looked up from his scanner, saw her face, and immediately his whole face, his whole body radiated shock and regret.

"Oh. Teyla, jeez, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to -- I -- you know I don't think you're -- I have a big fat mouth, Teyla."

Teyla relaxed and reached out to touch his arm briefly. "I know that you do," she said with a hint of a smile. "I am not offended. The people here, they were more like mine than yours, as far as their technology was concerned. But they did have a few Ancient devices in the village. Most were treated reverentially, as sacred artifacts rather than items of everyday use."

"Really? Where did they keep them?"

They turned away as she started pointing out landmarks to McKay, and Sheppard glanced over at Ronon to see if the runner had noticed that little byplay, but Ronon wasn't looking in their direction.

He couldn't ever remember seeing Rodney just ... back down like that. And picking up on Teyla's rather subtle body language, too. The thought occurred to him that since Arcturus, Rodney had been ... well, subdued wasn't really the right word, but -- cautious, maybe. Afraid of treading on his teammates' toes.

Afraid of being rejected?

Sheppard almost snorted aloud. Rodney McKay, the original sarcastic asshole, wilting like a flower at the idea of emotional rejection. That'd be the day.

But as he followed his team deeper into the village, rather than seeing the buildings around him, he found himself seeing a pair of wounded blue eyes -- Rodney's eyes, fixed on him in the hallway after Duranda ... Rodney, as John had turned away into the transporter, calling him back with a most un-McKaylike desperation in his voice. Rodney, trying in his clumsy way to patch over the growing chasm between them.

Rodney, thinking that a simple apology could heal everything ... thinking that he could use their friendship to serve his own ego trip and then expecting to patch it all up with a few words.

No, he wasn't anywhere near ready to forgive Rodney McKay yet.

Still, those eyes haunted him.

Sheppard caught up to the others in a small courtyard off the main one. "There are several temples in the town," Teyla was saying. "I do not know which one would be most likely to have what you are looking for."

McKay whacked the side of the scanner in frustration. "It's so hard to pinpoint anything with all this damned interference. I can't get a direction on the signal. Maybe if I walk around the place, triangulate it ..."

"We can split up, perhaps?" Teyla asked, looking to Sheppard for confirmation.

"We can cover more ground that way," Sheppard conceded. "But we go in pairs. Nobody goes anywhere alone. That means you, McKay."

Rodney shot him a quick, hard look and didn't say anything.

Teyla moved smoothly between them. "I will go with you, perhaps?" she offered to Sheppard. "Of us all, Rodney is the most likely to notice the sort of technology that is valuable to your people, but I know the village best. So I can be your eyes as we search, and Ronon can be Rodney's guard in case anything should attack us."

"I thought you said the planet was deserted," McKay said hastily. "Not even animals, you said."

"As far as I know," Teyla said. "But it is best to be prepared."

Sheppard thought about Teyla's partnering suggestions and found that it did make sense, at the very least, not to put their two strongest fighters together while leaving the other two less defended. Not that Teyla was a bad fighter by any means, but she still wasn't as good with guns as either Sheppard or Ronon, and she'd also be distracted by her role as guide. "All right, let's do it," he said. "We may have trouble staying in touch if the radios keep cutting out, so let's arrange to meet back here in an hour, whether or not we've found anything. At that point we can compare notes and follow up on anything that looks promising, or head back to the Stargate, whichever. And we'll have regular check-ins ... every fifteen minutes, assuming the radios keep working."

McKay rolled his eyes. "Yes, mother."

It had been just one sniping comment after another since they'd come through the gate, and for Sheppard, that one was the final insult. He lost his temper. "Excuse me, but it's your ass that I'm trying to keep in one piece, Doctor McKay. If you'd act like a goddamn adult instead of a kid in pursuit of the ice cream truck every time you see a shiny new piece of alien technology, then maybe I wouldn't have to keep a leash on you, but I'll just be damned if I'll go back and tell Elizabeth that her head scientist walked into a hole in the ground and broke his neck while staring at the pretty lights."

McKay had gone pale under the slight flush of windburn on his cheeks -- pale with anger. His blue eyes burned. "So you don't trust me. Nice of you to finally say it out loud."

"I've already said it! Of course I don't trust you! Why should I?" The two men circled each other like stray dogs preparing to leap, their bodies tense and bristling. "The last time I made that mistake, you almost got us both killed and cost us an extremely valuable weapon that could have ended the Wraith threat! Elizabeth is still giving me the third degree every time I go on an offworld mission. I wish I hadn't trusted you then!"

"I wish I'd never asked you to," McKay hissed. "Rest assured I won't make that mistake again!"

Teyla looked at Ronon, seeing her helplessness reflected in his eyes. The runner's shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. If it actually came to blows, he'd help her separate the two of them, but this was far outside his expertise.

"You'd better just remember who's in charge here," Sheppard snarled. "I'm your team leader and you --"

"Are what? I'm civilian, Colonel! You have no authority over me and you never have!"

"No authority, is that right? You sure as hell could have fooled me over the last year, taking orders right and left, McKay! Guess you're a better liar than you are a scientist, huh?"

McKay punctuated his words with a stabbing finger, so furious he nearly lost his grip on the scanner balled in his fist. "I followed you because I wanted to, Colonel, sir! And that's another mistake I won't make again! When we get back to Atlantis, the first thing I'm going to do is get a change of assignment from Elizabeth! This is the last time you'll ever have me in your damned team, so enjoy the hell out of it!"

Sheppard threw up his hands. "Thank God, it's about damn time! Maybe I'll get a scientist who actually follows orders this time! Maybe one who's got a little bit of common sense too!"

McKay's face had gone red and his eyes blazed so brightly that Sheppard half-expected to see blue sparks fly from them. "I should have left you on Duranda," he snapped, and spun on his heel, stalking away with great strides into the abandoned city.

Sheppard wasn't about to let him have the last word. "You should have left me? What the hell, McKay! Who dragged your suicidal ass off that planet? Who flew the jumper through an asteroid belt with a planet-sized gun shooting at us? You'd be dead a dozen times over if I hadn't been there!"

McKay swiveled back, half-swallowed by shadows in an alley between two buildings. "Oh, well, that changes everything, then! Excuse me for not worshipping the water you walk on, Colonel! Too bad that giant swollen head makes it so hard to get it out of your ass, hm?"

"--But you know what?" Sheppard charged on, relentless. "If I'd known you were going to react this way, I'd have left you there with no hesitation, Dr. McKay!"

"Whatever happened to 'the military doesn't leave a man behind', Colonel, sir?"

"You're the one who keeps telling me you're not military!" Sheppard crowed, triumphant. Score!

McKay appeared to have become, for perhaps the first time in his life, speechless with anger. He just stood there for a moment, opening and closing his mouth. If looks could kill, Sheppard would have been a small scorched spot on the snow-dusted flagstones. Then McKay whirled around and vanished into the alley.

Teyla jerked her head sharply at Ronon, but the runner was already halfway across the courtyard and vanished after McKay.

"And you'd better be back here at the rendezvous or I'm dragging your sorry ass back to the Stargate at gunpoint!" Sheppard hollered after him.

The echoes of his words rolled back to him from the walls of the amphitheater as he stood in the middle of the courtyard, his heart pounding in his ears, his breathing slowly returning to normal. At gunpoint ... at gunpoint ... at gunpoint ...

Was this how bad it had gotten -- that he had to threaten his head scientist with violence to get him to follow a simple order? There had been a time, not too long ago, when Rodney would have --

No, not Rodney, not any longer. Doctor McKay. He pronounced the words inside his head, four syllables that echoed hollowly into the emptiness inside his chest. Dr. McKay, and he'd better not forget it again. After this mission, of course, it really wouldn't matter.

Christ, he'd messed this one up, hadn't he?

"John?"

Teyla spoke his given name softly, almost shyly, and he looked down to see her hand hovering near his arm. Soft brown eyes looked up at him with compassion. John shut down quickly, hastily, throwing up barricades between his eyes and the world. At this moment, he didn't dare let anyone else inside him.

"I'm fine," he said, too abruptly. Teyla's hand hesitated with her fingertips almost touching his sleeve, then withdrew.

"So I can see," she said quietly, and gestured across the courtyard, opposite the direction that McKay and Ronon had gone. "Shall we go look in one of the temples?"

The absolute last thing Sheppard wanted to do right now was the extraterrestrial equivalent of a museum tour. He wanted to scream, punch things, empty a lot of ammo into something, scream some more and then get drunk. Instead, he started walking, with Teyla by his side. His boots rang on the flagstones.

They left the courtyard and climbed a narrow flight of stairs that opened into a crooked alley, barely wide enough for one person, let alone two. After a glance at John, Teyla took point, leading him through a virtual maze of tiny streets. The walls of the amphitheater kept him oriented; it was impossible to get lost with giant direction indicators towering above them on three sides. Still, Sheppard suspected that without Teyla, it might take him nearly the full hour just to find his way back to the rendezvous point.

This, normally, would have led into his usual wondering and worry about the state of the rest of his team. But not this time. He didn't think about them, couldn't think about them.

"So, you said you've been here before, with your people?" he asked, wanting to talk about something, anything to occupy his mind.

Teyla looked over her shoulder and nodded. "Yes, we used to come here to trade when I was a small girl. There were not very many people here, even then, but the city was not quite so empty as you see it now."

John waved a hand at the barren hills around them. "What in the world did they eat?"

"There are actually some good grazing lands down by the river." Teyla pointed into the valley. John followed her finger. They were very high up, and it still looked like a gravel pit to him. Looking back at her face, he saw that her lips were tilted in a small smile. "You must remember that it is this world's winter, John. The land is not quite this cold and barren in the summer."

"I'll take your word for it." He shivered, rubbed his hands together. "Ain't my idea of a vacation spot, that's all I'm gonna say." He looked around, and asked, "So if there were people living here that recently, what happened to them?"

Teyla shrugged. "The climate changed, grew drier. Their harvests were poor. Eventually they sought a better world through the gate. We have not traded with them in many years."

"Ah." After a moment he asked, searching for more conversation topics, "What was the name of this world? I mean, what did the locals call it?"

"It was called Cleta."

"Ah." Again, silence.

They entered another tiny courtyard overlooking the valley. They appeared to be nearly halfway up the side of the amphitheater by now, and the landscape spread before them, a vista of startling beauty for all its harshness.

"The temple," Teyla said, pointing, and Sheppard realized that the building on the far side of the courtyard was larger than the rest, with slender columns and statues around the front door. If she hadn't pointed it out, he'd probably have walked right by. John didn't notice buildings; he assessed them for danger, for possible cover and exits, but that was about it.

Out of habit, he glanced automatically at the life signs detector in his hand, but it wasn't reading anything but the two of them. They crossed the courtyard and paused for a moment by the small fountain at its center. The fountain was bone-dry and half full of snow. John snapped a dry stick from what might once have been ornamental topiary and poked half-heartedly at the snowdrifts around the fountain's base. This place was so dry that the texture of the snow was like sand, and there wasn't much of it; as elsewhere in the town, the wind had swept most parts of the courtyard clean. Thank goodness for small favors, he thought -- with worse luck, they could have been wading through knee-deep snow right now.

"Teyla," he said, and when she looked at him, he looked away, continuing to poke with the stick. "Sorry I've been such a dick lately," he said.

He paused automatically for the usual question about an unfamiliar figure of speech, but she must have understood that one, either by context or because of hanging around soldiers all day. "I do not feel that you have been a 'dick'," she said seriously. "I am not angry at you, John."

"I know I haven't been easy to be around lately, but I haven't meant to take it out on you."

"I know."

Poke, poke, at the snowdrifts. "I suck at this heart-to-heart stuff," John said. "Let's just assume that we're solid and go from there, okay?"

"John," Teyla said in a half-affectionate, half-exasperated tone, causing him to look over at her. The expression on her face matched the voice. "What on Athos would make you think I'm angry at you?"

"I don't know," he said shortly. Damn it, this was why he hated this sort of conversation. It always went off in strange, unexpected directions.

"Perhaps it is not me that you truly want to apologize to," Teyla said gently.

John had his mouth open to tell her that he had no idea what she was talking about, then shut it, and looked down into the valley. He wished to God this place didn't remind him so much of Afghanistan. It was hard not to think about what had happened in Afghanistan.

His two best friends had died in front of him.

"... militaristic son of a bitch. Got a problem? Great! Just blow it up! Oh, let's kill something too, that'll make things better! Everything has a military solution for Lieutenant Colonel Dickhead, so I guess we should all count our blessings in this particular case that there wasn't anything to kill directly in front of him, because otherwise he --"

Ronon let McKay's rambling roll off him. He was paying enough attention to notice if anything important was said, and the rest of it was of no more consequence than the buzzing of flies on some alien world. This world, he noted, had no flies, or insects of any kind. Interesting.

McKay had been talking nonstop for the last ten minutes. This wasn't particularly unusual, although he didn't usually go at it with this amount of vitriol. He'd even apparently picked up some Czechoslovakian insults from Zelenka, and had used them all on Sheppard, several times.

He was still working, though -- the whole time, he'd kept his eyes on his scanner, and occasionally would correct his course or go off in a different direction, tracking the elusive energy signature while calling John Sheppard every dirty word in the book, and some that probably weren't in any book.

"...and while we're on the subject of treachery, you thug, you can tell me what Teyla and Zelenka's master plan is. Hm?"

Ronon didn't break stride, but McKay had his attention now. "Plan?"

"Oh, please," McKay scoffed. "I know they've cooked up some kind of ridiculous conspiracy between them. It involves me and this planet and that military asshole back there. Somehow Teyla came up with the stupid idea that she can get us talking again--"

He broke off; Ronon, glancing sideways, caught a glimpse of a startling depth of pain flickering across the man's expressive face. "Anyway," McKay resumed after a moment in his usual manic tone, the mask back in place, "the problem is him, not me, and I know she put you up to something, so ..." His fingers clicked rapidly in front of Ronon's face ... or as close to Ronon's face as he could safely get, anyway. "Spill!"

"Don't know what you're talking about." Their ramblings had taken them outside the village proper, which was good -- Ronon recognized their surroundings from Teyla's descriptions, and he pointed up at a small temple framed against the sky, presenting a striking contrast to the shifting static behind it. If Teyla's childhood recollections were accurate, this was one of three access points that she knew of to reach the catacombs under the city. "That looks like one of those temples she was talking about. Go see what's in there, why don't we."

McKay stopped in his tracks and folded his arms. "Oh, I don't think so."

Ronon looked down at him. "Thought you wanted to look for that energy source."

"It's clearly a trap, Igor," McKay said sarcastically. "Teyla and Zelenka set this all up somehow, I have no idea how, but I do know that their plan is to separate me from Sheppard, and then ... do ... something. That's their plan, isn't it?"

"Don't know about any plan."

"Oh yeah, right. You people seem to be forgetting, I am a genius. I have figured out alien technology that nobody else can understand. I singlehandedly ... well, almost singlehandedly saved Atlantis from alien invasion. I have fixed everything from crashed spaceships to toaster ovens. And if two fr -- two people I work with are conspiring about me behind my back, I sure as hell am going to find out about it."

Ronon was well aware that he owed Teyla a favor, as she had pointed out repeatedly back on Atlantis when she talked him this. And he would have been happy to repay her by helping with this plan as she had asked of him. But it was starting to look like things weren't going to go the way she'd planned anyhow, and now he was curious. "How'd you find out?" he inquired.

McKay snapped his fingers, positively bouncing in place with glee. "I knew it! I knew it! There is a plan. How do you think? Pure chance," he admitted in a somewhat lower voice. "I walked in on Radek and Teyla late at night in the lab. They didn't see me. Thought at first that there was something, you know, that it was a little late-night tryst, not that I wouldn't be okay with that, just fine in fact," he added quickly. "Radek's a great guy and Teyla's a fantastic woman and ... anyway, like I was saying, they didn't see me, and I was just going to duck out when I realized what they were talking about. Me! And, incidentally, the Colonel. I only caught about one word in four, but between that and a little snooping around on Radek's latest database searches, I do know that Zelenka was helping her look for a deserted world where communications equipment doesn't work. And why might that be, do you suppose?"

"No idea," Ronon said.

"Oh, come on!"

Ronon shrugged.

"Look, I know what they're planning, in general anyway." McKay looked around, as if he expected Sheppard to pop out from behind a rock. "They're trying to fake my disappearance and have the Colonel show up to save my ass, aren't they?"

Ronon shrugged again. "Something like that."

McKay's face changed, darkened. "Well, Teyla must be about to flip her lid right now, then," he said. "At the moment, I doubt if the Colonel would spit on me to put me out if I was on fire." He wiped a hand across his face, dragging away the anger, leaving a sort of resigned weariness behind. "So they're expecting to play me for a fool and have a show," he said. "Well, let's give them a show. What's supposed to happen in the temple, big guy?" When Ronon merely considered this, he added, "Sometime this week, perhaps ..."

Ronon gestured at the temple. "There's some kind of maze under the city. The people who used to live here showed it to her when she was a kid. The temple's one of the places you can get in."

"And ...?" McKay prompted impatiently when he stopped talking again.

"You disappear in the maze. Sheppard comes and finds you, gets you out."

McKay stared, and finally said, "That is their plan? Are you SERIOUS?"

Shrug.

"And what if we get lost for real? Starve to death? Freeze to death? Die of thirst? Fall down a hole?" McKay stared up at Ronon, still incredulous. "Zelenka helped come up with this? I knew the man was pissed at me; I didn't know he was that vindictive, though."

After a long pause, Ronon decided that if he was going to spill the plan, he may as well go for broke. "Dr. Zelenka made a tracker that works in spite of the signal noise on this world. Teyla's got one; so do I. The two of us can find our way out of the maze anytime we want."

"While Colonel Asshole and myself starve to death in the catacombs. That's a wonderful plan, Chewie, with only one rather glaring flaw." McKay glowered at him. "Now guess what that flaw might be!"

"You wouldn't die," Ronon said, impassive. "Neither of you would be left alone; Teyla or myself would accompany you. Therefore, we would always have an emergency way out."

"It's still the stupidest plan I've ever heard in my life, and basically hinges upon the assumption that Sheppard and I have the collective I.Q. of an eggplant. This may be true of him, but I'm far too intelligent to be taken in so easily, as you can see."

Ronon just grunted.

McKay's soft-edged features set into lines of determination. "Fine. Let's give them a show and teach the conspirators a little lesson while they're at it. Come on, Lurch, move it. I have a job for you."

Ronon followed him up the steep path to the temple, wondering how he'd managed to get co-opted by the other side. If the goal of this trip (for him at least) was to get Teyla to stop being mad at him, it might not succeed when she found out about this...

The inside of the temple was no warmer than the outside, being open to the air on all sides, but it was somewhat sheltered from the wind. Rodney strode around the interior. Didn't look like much, just a roof and a ring of white columns, with free-standing pillars inside the columns -- about two dozen or so, squat and about waist-high, covered with carvings -- and a large altar at the center. The temple was located on one of the highest points of the amphitheater's lip, so it commanded a breathtaking view in all directions. Would've been a great sightseeing trip, McKay thought, if he hadn't been cold and out of breath from the climb, not to mention mad as hell.

How dare they do this to him, his so-called teammates. As if it wasn't enough that Sheppard had suddenly turned into a raging bastard (not without reason, whispered a small inner voice) but the rest of them had turned on him too! Well, if their goal was a humiliated and humbled Rodney McKay, he'd just show them.

"How do you get into the catacombs?"

Ronon swung around, his dreadlocks almost brushing the ceiling -- good grief, the man was big -- and then pointed at one of the pillars. "That one. Secret catch in the carvings. Gotta run your fingers over it to feel it."

Rodney crossed to the pillar in question. It was about as tall as his waist and covered with carvings -- Ancient writing mixed with much cruder pictographs, similar to the ones outside the town. Ronon indicated one area of the carvings. "Somewhere in there."

Rodney started to reach for it, then pulled his hand back. "What happens when we activate it?"

"Door opens."

"So I assumed, but where? We're pretty high up here. I don't want to fall down a twelve-story shaft, you get my drift?"

Ronon shrugged. "Didn't ask."

McKay gave him a very long, quizzical look. "She actually got you to go along with this. I don't get it. Is she blackmailing you, or what?"

Strangely, he almost thought he saw a reaction in the man's impassive face. "Teyla wouldn't do that," Ronon said.

Hm. Hit a nerve? He wondered at the runner's quick defense of their teammate. Wondered if Ronon could possibly have a little bit of a thing for Teyla. Wondered if he should press further. Decided it was not a good idea to tease or antagonize a man who probably knew 4,000 different ways to kill somebody. So he just said, "Fine," and backed away from the pillar, tapping the floor all over with his toes in search of a hollow sound, and then using his scanner. His eyebrows raised as soon as he got a good look at it, and for a moment his anger at Teyla and Sheppard was forgotten. "The energy source ... it's right under us," he said thoughtfully. "I mean, not necessarily close, but definitely beneath us somewhere. It's so faint, I can't tell how close it is..." He laughed. "Yeah, good old avacado-for-brains Rodney is going to get lost in the tunnels and come out with a ZedPM ... that should just show them!"

His readings indicated that there was a space under the temple, but were too uncertain to identify any features of it. Rodney sighed, completing a third circuit of the temple without coming any closer to understanding its subterranean layout.

"Ready?" Ronon asked, reaching for the pillar with the control switch.

"No!" Rodney barked at him. "Quit it!"

Ronon looked slightly confused. "Are we going down?"

"No, we're not going down, you moron. Teyla wants me to go down. As far as I'm concerned, that's a perfectly good reason not to go down."

Now the runner looked even more confused. "You said there's an energy source down there. Thought you'd want to--"

"AHA!" Rodney's stabbing finger brought him up short.

Ronon gave him a quizzical look.

"I'm onto her now, that little ... wench!" Rodney paced rapidly back and forth across the temple floor, rubbing his hands together. "Oh yeah, I've got her number. They planted that energy signature down there, Teyla and Zelenka. Knowing I'd go down to investigate! Ha ha ha, you sneaky Czechoslovakian number cruncher -- you're getting the graveyard shift from now until 2012! Very sneaky! But not nearly sneaky enough!"

Ronon leaned, rather cautiously, against the pillar and folded his arms. "When?" he said.

Rodney was brought up short in mid-rant. "Er, when what?"

"When did they plant it?"

"I don't know! I don't pay attention every time anybody comes and goes through the Stargate! Though I may have to start keeping track now that I know they're -- Oh, God, if they used the Stargate, that means Weir's in on it too. This is simply unfair. Completely unfair. I always used to think people were conspiring against me, but I never realized it was true!"

"Teyla never said anything to me about--"

"Oh, and I'm supposed to believe you now? The confessed conspirator? Isn't that like hiring a Wraith for a school crossing guard? Oh, hell!" Rodney smacked himself in the forehead. "Why didn't I see it before? You're a plant! I was supposed to figure out that you were in on it. Now I'm supposed to think that you're on my side so I'll believe every word that you tell me and you can feed me a steady stream of misinformation and lies. Lies! Well, I've got you now. I won't believe a single thing you say to me. In fact, I won't listen to a single thing you say to me. La la la la, not listening. Are you getting this, Mister Double Agent Man?"

Ronon watched him pace, impassive, arms folded. "You're over-thinking this a little bit," he said.

"Not listening!"

The runner heaved a sigh and decided that this was going to be a very long day indeed. "What now, then?"

"Not. Listening." Rodney bent over the top of the alter, using it as a work surface to pry the back off the Ancient scanner with one of the many small tools he kept tucked into various pockets of his flak vest. He tweaked some of the scanner's wires, switched two crystals, flipped it over and grinned. "Ah, much better. Boosting the power is helping a lot with the interference. Bet I can filter out some of the -- hey!" He pointed the scanner at Ronon. "You said you have an emergency beacon or something to get out of the maze. Lemme see it!"

Ronon raised an eyebrow. "You trust me now?"

"No farther than I can throw you, which is ... not very far, but I want to see what Zelenka built. If that ten-thumbed loon could build it, I can reverse engineer it in ten seconds flat."

Curious despite himself, Ronon handed over what appeared to be another small Ancient scanner. McKay turned it over in his hands, recognizing the type. There were a million of these in the labs on Atlantis. Similar to the life signs detectors, they were very specific but could be modified to scan for almost anything. This one was picking up a strong signal off to his left ... the direction of the Stargate, he confirmed, glancing out of the temple and down the hill -- he couldn't see the gate from here, but he remembered that it had been behind that distinctive tall rock formation. Holding the scanner up to the light, he saw scratches on the back indicating that the cover had been pried off. It was the work of a moment to follow suit.

"Planted a tracker next to the gate when we came through," Ronon volunteered. "Scanner points to it."

"Yes, yes, yes. A compass that always points to the Stargate. I get it, I get it. Shut up, I'm busy." Tinkering around in the guts of the machine, Rodney muttered, "Oh, very clever, very clever. Actually ... not bad at all. He's just found a frequency that isn't too badly affected by all the interference on this planet and is filtering out everything else. It's far too weak and restrictive to use for radio communication, but works great for picking up a beacon that's only sending out one ping every ... let's see ... fifteen seconds, from the look of things." Leaving the back cover off the modified scanner, Rodney detached some wires from the other one and hooked them together, then flipped the bigger scanner over to inspect its readings. "Ha, now we're filtering out the interference. Most of it, anyway. Of course, we're also filtering out almost everything else, including, ah, ZedPM signals I see, but we are getting ..." He snapped his fingers to check. "Sound waves! Perfect! Hey, Caveman Jim, stomp around a little."

"You talking to me?" Ronon said.

"No, I'm talking to my invisible friend. He's standing over there by the pillar to your left. Of course I'm talking to you. Make some noise. I need vibrations."

Ronon made no move, so Rodney groaned and did it himself -- stomping on the stone floor, checking his readings, stomping somewhere else. After a few minutes of this, he was grinning.

"And ladies and gentleman, we have a rather poor-quality image of what's under the floor! Looks like ... hm, a chamber nearly the size of the temple itself. Some sort of structure directly under the altar. Presumably that's our stairs. Couple of tunnels leading off from it. There's more underneath ... I think there is a shaft that goes farther down, directly below us, but I can't tell how far."

"Are you going down?"

Rodney gave him one of his "are you an idiot?" stares. "I'm sorry, I must have been talking to myself for the last ten minutes. I believe we have firmly established that I am far too intelligent to walk into a trap set by the likes of you."

"I didn't--"

"Plant an energy source in the catacombs, yes, you've said that. I don't believe you. Or, rather, I think it's possible that you may be telling the truth and Teyla is far, far sneakier than we ever gave her credit for." He was going to have to remember that about Teyla. Never trust a woman who could undoubtedly break both your legs with one hand tied behind her back. "In any case, I have no need to go below, at least not yet. I have time and equipment enough to establish the location of the energy source and, using my keen intellect, which luckily none of y--"

"Shh!" Ronon held up a hand.

"Oh, now wh--"

The runner was big, but he could move astonishingly fast when he wanted to. Before Rodney had completed the sentence, Ronon had crossed the temple floor and clapped a hand over his mouth. Rodney made an indignant, muffled squeak, but shut up when Ronon stooped over to whisper near his ear, "I believe we are being watched."

"You're just trying to shut me up," Rodney snapped, crossing his arms.

"No. I am quite sure someone is watching us."

Cold prickles scampered down Rodney's arms and legs. He felt suddenly exposed, standing under the temple roof with nothing around him for protection but a handful of slender columns. Sitting on top of the hill as it did, the temple was probably visible for miles around. "How do you know?"

"You been running as long as I have, you just know. Little things. Hard to describe. Mostly just a feeling."

Rodney's eyes narrowed. "Runner's intuition? Is that what you're basing this upon?"

The runner had drawn his gun and his eyes were in constant motion across the seemingly deserted rocks around them. "My people say that 'intuition' is the unconscious mind picking up signs too subtle for the conscious mind to notice."

"Your people," Rodney said, "are all dead. I don't think their no doubt highly developed intuition did them much good."

Ronon swung his head around to face the scientist, and Rodney realized that once again, his brain-mouth disconnect had gotten him in trouble; but the words were said, and while he was still trying to find a way to somehow backpedal and make up for it, he realized that Ronon was not looking at him, but at something behind him.

"Down!" the runner bellowed, and Rodney didn't have to be told twice; he hit the deck as the roar of Ronon's gun went off somewhere deafeningly close to his ear. While his ears were still ringing from the blast, something skittered across his cheek, leaving traces of dampness. He reached up his hand, took it away to see blood. But ... he hadn't felt a bullet hit him ... was deafness a symptom of being shot? He looked up just in time to see the small puff of dust and scattering of more rock fragments (one of which had grazed his cheek) as more bullets scattered across the altar above him -- and these bullets were most definitely not coming from Ronon's gun.

Someone ... shooting at them? Ronon's gun barked again, right next to his head; he flinched and scrabbled for his 9mm. His fingers had gone horribly clumsy. He couldn't get the strap unfastened.

Ronon said one word, the low harsh voice breaking through his near-deafness and growing panic: "Tunnels." He looked around to see the runner making a break for the pillar with the secret catch that supposedly opened the door to the catacombs. Gunfire followed him, the bullets striking sparks from the tiles around his feet. Their assailants appeared to be quite lousy shots, and from what Rodney could tell, they didn't possess automatic weapons -- the gunshots were single. Sheppard's training must be paying off. He didn't dare raise his head from the floor to figure out where the shots were coming from, though.

Ronon threw himself behind the pillar, then reached around it to fumble for the mechanism. Finally it sank into Rodney's head just what, exactly, his companion was doing.

"Ronon!" he hissed. "Don't be stupid! We don't know what's down there!"

"Beats getting shot," the runner retorted. "I trust Teyla." There was a soft click from the pillar.

Nothing else happened, for a moment. Another bullet pinged off the altar, much closer to Rodney's head than the last one. Just as he was thinking that there must be something wrong -- the mechanism had, after all, been sitting out in the weather for many years -- he heard a low rumbling ... felt it, too, through the floor that he lay upon. The ground was trembling slightly.

The rumbling was accompanied by a much closer grinding sound. It took him a moment to pinpoint it, and he had to crane his head back to see -- the top of the altar had begun to slide back. It moved a few inches, paused, shuddered a few inches more -- and stopped, leaving a crack no wider than a man's hand. Rodney wanted desperately to get up and take a peek inside ... but he had no intention of making a human bullseye out of himself. However, that was before the tiles under him began to crack and buckle in a most unsafe way. The rumbling had not stopped when the top of the altar stopped moving. In fact, it was getting louder.

"CRAP!" Death by gunshot, or death by mysteriously disintegrating temple -- it was a lousy choice, but the gunshots were, just at the moment, a slightly less pressing threat, considering that they seemed to have stopped. Rodney's hindbrain kicked in and he found himself scrabbling backward across the crumbling floor like a crab. "Ronon, get out of here!" he yelled, not even sure at the moment where Ronon was. He fell backwards off the temple floor onto the natural rock surrounding it, just in time to see the temple fold inward on itself with a great plume of dust and a tremendous, deafening cracking of stone. And it was taking the surrounding countryside with it. The ground under him began to dissolve, sand and rocks and boulders cascading into the hole. He had time to scream before he vanished into the growing avalanche.

After the last parts of the temple fell into the hole, the ground began to stabilize, leaving a yawning black gap about forty feet across. Dust sifted up from it, drifted on the cold air, and eventually dissipated into the shifting sky.

Sheppard and Teyla poked around the temple and found nothing interesting -- it appeared that everything not nailed down had been taken when the town's residents had left, and everything else was covered with a thick layer of gritty dust. Sheppard noticed a couple of times that Teyla appeared nervous; she kept glancing in the direction that McKay and Ronon had gone, and once he caught her surreptitiously trying to sneak a peek at his watch. He couldn't really blame her for being nervous about their teammates' well-being -- it was an unfamiliar planet, after all, and the continued silence was eerie -- but he hoped that there wasn't anything she knew about the world that the rest of them didn't, something which might give her cause for extra concern. He was jumpy, too. Teyla had said that this planet was deserted, but he could swear he felt as if he was being watched.

He was hunting for words as the two of them emerged into the wan sunlight -- because something just didn't feel right, something was off about this whole mission. Something about Teyla, the way she didn't quite seem to meet his eyes ... just, something ... wrong. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times. Words ... he could never do much with words.

And that was when the shooting started.

Sheppard, stepping down from the last step of the temple stairs, nearly lost his balance and scrambled to catch himself. The P-90 was in his hands before both his feet were on the ground. He knew that sound, knew it all too well.

Afghanistan. He was back in freakin' Afghanistan. And for a moment, the disorientation was so great that he half-expected to turn and see Mitch grinning that familiar sly grin, see Dex at his side covering his back ... standing in the cold sunlight, in a courtyard drifted with dry snow and sand, just like a dozen empty little towns they'd gone through on patrol, so many times.

"Colonel!"

Teyla's voice snapped him out of it. She'd started running, her own rifle drawn, and he cursed himself for his hesitation -- a few seconds, but sometimes that made all the difference. As he caught up with her, Sheppard hit his headset. "Ronon! McKay! Come in, dammit!"

No answer, only static. He cursed softly.

"Colonel!" Teyla beckoned. "It appears to be coming from outside the town. There is a temple on top of the ridge in that direction; perhaps Dr. McKay was looking for Ancestors' technology in it, as we were."

The shooting had stopped, trailing off in a rumble ... an explosion? It sounded like no ordinance that Sheppard was familiar with. As he followed Teyla, running side by side through the winding streets of the deserted town, he ran his mind back to what he'd heard, as in so many other combat situations, trying to build a picture in his mind of what had happened from the few fragments that he'd gathered.

Ronon had shot first -- or, at least, if there'd been other gunfire, it had been of such a small caliber that it hadn't carried into the town. The first sound he'd heard had been the unforgettable thunder of the runner's gun. After that --some kind of single-shot rifle, and what was probably a shotgun. Three or four shots each, which probably meant at least five or six shooters, because there had been little time to reload and the shots sounded like relatively primitive firearms, probably lacking large magazines. That would rule out the Genii, too ... not to mention the Wraith ... but it left them right back at square one.

Teyla ran swiftly, easily, and so fast that the hounds of Hell might have been on her heels. Sheppard could barely keep up with her.

"Teyla," he panted, drawing abreast with an extra burst of energy. "I thought you said the planet was deserted?"

"I thought it was." She glanced at him, but he saw worlds of anguish in that look, her usual barriers stripped away to leave the brown eyes bare and hurting. "I thought that nothing had lived beneath these skies for many years. Colonel, I am afraid that I have been a fool. I have made terrible mistakes."

"Not your fault," Sheppard retorted, between breaths. "Don't talk. Run."

She looked as if she wanted to say more, but nodded and put on another burst of speed. Sheppard immediately violated his own order by trying again to raise Ronon and McKay on the radio. Still no response.

At the edge of the town, Teyla and Sheppard each flattened themselves behind one of the last buildings before streets and cobblestones gave way to rocks and twisted, dead-looking bushes. No cover, Sheppard thought in frustration; Afghanistan, again. Above the hill, a cloud of -- dust? smoke? drifted against the alien sky, and from their position, a narrow path wended its way up the hill, more or less towards the smoke. Teyla pointed to the path, raised two fingers and murmured, "Tracks."

He'd take her word for it; just looked like rocks to him. "Rodney and Ronon?"

"Can't tell."

He drew a deep breath, looked up the hill. The cloud of smoke or dust or whatever was beginning to dissipate in the air. Aside from that, nothing moved, nothing appeared different; the landscape seemed just as deserted as it had been when they first arrived on this world. But clearly, appearances could be deceiving.

Teyla was looking at him, awaiting directions. The thought occurred to him how much easier it was to deal with Teyla in a combat situation than Rodney. Despite her lack of formal training, she was one of the best soldiers he'd worked with. Often she seemed to anticipate his thoughts -- he hardly had to give her any directions. Like now ... he raised his eyebrows at her and jerked his head up the hill, she smiled faintly and nodded, and the two of them left the shelter of the buildings, each darting for a nearby boulder.

They worked their way up the hill under what cover they could find. Sheppard hated the slow pace, knowing that two of his team were missing and possibly injured with hostiles in the area. But he had a heavy disadvantage of ground -- the shooters were up the hill, presumably with an excellent view of the valley, and he supposed they were also much more familiar with the area. Getting shot on the way to the rescue would make for a lousy cavalry scene.

Every once in a while, he glanced over at Teyla. She kept pace with him easily, using her smaller size to good advantage to find cover where he would have been exposed. When she noticed him watching her, she gave him what was probably meant to be a reassuring smile, but it didn't make it to her eyes. Her eyes were ... haunted. He'd never quite seen that look on Teyla's face before.

Teyla, meanwhile, was stewing in a morass of guilt. She could not imagine how she had been so horribly wrong. The planet Cleta had been abandoned for years. Everyone on the trading planets knew it. No one came here anymore. And she had seen no signs of recent habitation in the town below. Certainly it was possible for someone to have moved in after the Cletans left, but if so, where could they be living? It didn't make sense to live in the hills in this harsh climate when there was a perfectly good town just waiting to --

Oh. The tunnels. Of course, how could she have been so blind. She had assumed that no one could find the cleverly hidden entrances to the tunnels, but surely there were other people like herself, trusted trading partners of the Cletans who had been shown their secret before they left their world. Maybe the secret was not so much of a secret after all. And she ... she had sent Ronon and Rodney straight into their arms.

For a moment guilt so overwhelmed her that she had to stop moving. Sheppard gave her a worried glance; she tried to smile at him, but from the look on his face, the smile hadn't done much to reassure him. Focus, Teyla, she thought; focus. It wouldn't help their teammates if she and the Colonel were shot to death on this barren hillside.

As they resumed moving up the hill, Teyla realized that she had overlooked one thing: if people were living on this world, especially if they were living in the tunnels, what were they living on? Did they resupply themselves through the Stargate, and if so, how had they kept their existence a secret? Surely their food and other supplies had to come from somewhere. A small group of people might be able to hide without a trace in the tunnels, but surely they could not hide their grazing animals and crops -- assuming that crops could even still be grown on this world. She frowned. She was missing something here; she knew it.

Perhaps they had been followed through the Stargate by one of their enemies? But in this quiet world, they should have heard a gate activation if one had occurred after they'd come through.

She heard a sharp intake of breath from Sheppard, and snapped her gaze forward, again cursing herself for allowing her attention to be distracted inward at a time when she needed all her wits about her. Then she saw what he had seen -- and the ground seemed to jerk sideways under her feet, so great was her shock.

Oh, sweet Ancestors.

They'd come to the top of the ridge ... or what was left of it. Teyla stared in shock and horror at the gaping hole in the hilltop. The path led up to it and then vanished in the cracked and broken stone. There was no chance that this could not be recent; dust billowed up from the depths.

Teyla couldn't breathe. What had she done?

"McKay! Ronon!" Sheppard tried his radio, and then tried peering over the edge and hollering into the darkness beneath. He looked up at Teyla, but she could not meet his eyes, too frightened that he would see the guilt and terror lurking in them.

"That temple of yours ..." Sheppard said.

"Was here, yes. Upon this spot." Teyla's voice shook slightly. She approached the edge with great care, cautiously peering over as far as she could see. Clouds of dust obscured the bottom of the hole, but it looked as if it went a long way down. The sides were very unstable, little mini-avalanches of pebbles and rocks sliding loose at the slightest vibration.

"Think they're down there?"

"I -- I do not know." Her voice sounded faint and thin to her own ears. She still could not believe, could not understand. When she'd been on the world before, the entrance to the catacombs had been opened easily upon this very spot by their host, who wanted to show them the tunnels that the people of this world used to hide from Wraith attacks and other enemies. It had been a sign of great trust, indicating that their peoples were to be forever allies. She was not aware of any booby traps. And the people of this world had not left because of enemies; they had left because their world became no longer capable of supporting them. They would not have had any reason to leave traps ...

But clearly, this world had changed since she had been here. The evidence lay before her. And, trusting fool that she was, she had led -- no, manipulated her friends into a trap.

Sheppard had approached the edge of the hole so closely that she could see the ground start to fracture under his feet. Teyla tensed, ready to grab for him should he start to fall. He was leaning out as far as he dared, waving the life signs detector over the gap in the earth.

"I'm getting life signs," he said, and Teyla let out a long breath. "But there's so much static I can't tell how many. Could be one, could be a dozen. No way to know if it's Ronon and McKay." He frowned at the screen. "I'm getting some readings up here, too."

Teyla tensed, spun around with the P-90 and swung it slowly back and forth over the rocks. "Where?"

"I can't tell!" Frustration overwhelmed him; he smacked the scanner, stared at it again, sighed. "Maybe Rodney could make sense of this, but I can't. I just know we're not alone up here."

The two of them stared around them at the still, apparently deserted landscape. The wind keened in the rocks, and an occasional shower of destabilized pebbles cascaded into the hole, making Teyla flinch.

"Hey!" Sheppard bellowed at the landscape around them, and she jumped, her finger jerking on the trigger of the P-90; she barely managed to stop herself from peppering the nearest boulder with valuable ammunition. "I don't know who's up there, and I don't care! From what I heard earlier, we've got vastly better weapons than you do, and all we want is to take our people and go home. Help us or leave us alone, but either way, we're taking them and getting out of here. Get in our way and we'll kill you. Got it?"

"Colonel, perhaps I should handle the negotiating," Teyla offered.

"I'm not negotiating. I'm giving warning. Those bastards, whoever they are, tried to kill two members of my team."

Sickness rose in her throat, choking her. "You are very sure that they are still alive," she said, trying to keep her voice stable.

"No blood." Sheppard gestured around them with the P-90. "If Rodney and Ronon were up here, they were either taken prisoner without being shot, or they're down in that hole. Either way, there's something to rescue."

"True," she conceded.

Sheppard drew a deep breath and shouted at the rocks, "You guys getting this? We're armed and very dangerous. Shoot at us, and we'll kill some of you. Now, we're taking our people and going home."

With that, he muttered, "Cover me," and slung the P-90 over his shoulder. Teyla cast an incredulous look over her shoulder as he approached the edge of the hole.

"Colonel, what are you doing?"

"Climbing," he said, and stared down into the pit. "Damn it, wish I'd thought to bring rope! We haven't got time to go back to the Stargate -- it's a half-hour's jog at least, both ways, plus who knows how much time to get a rescue team together on the other side, and God knows if they're hurt down there." He studied the unstable sides of the hole, reached out a cautious toe and prodded at it, dislodging a cascade of sand and pebbles that vanished into the depths. "Maybe I could slide down, like on a sledding hill. Yeah. It's the only way. Gonna be a long damn way down..." He drew a deep breath, turned around and prepared to throw a leg over the edge of the hole, as Teyla stared in horror.

"Colonel! Wait!" One leap and she was at his side, releasing her trigger hand to seize his wrist. "Do not," she begged. "There may be another way. A better way."

"You got a plan? Let's hear it. And quick."

Teyla drew a deep breath. The time for dissembling was through. She'd promised Weir that if things started to turn bad, she'd give up the plan, and having two of their team members vanish in an avalanche of rocks while being shot at by unknown enemies definitely qualified as "bad" in anyone's lexicon. "There are tunnels under the town," she said. "This was one of the entrances. I know several other ways in. In the tunnels, we should be able to find our way back here much more safely and almost as quickly as we could climb down."

Both Sheppard's eyebrows raised nearly to his disheveled hairline. "Tunnels? Like, catacombs?"

"I do not know that word. The people of this world used them to shelter from the Wraith when the culling ships came. They are well hidden, and very extensive and deep."

Sheppard pulled his arm free of her grasp. "And you just now thought to mention this? Damn it, Teyla! Those energy readings of Rodney's must be coming from those tunnels of yours. If you'd just said something back in the village, Rodney and Ronon could've taken your safe way in, and they wouldn't be down in that hole right now."

Oh, he didn't know the half of it. "There is more," Teyla said, very quietly. "I do not think you will like this. You may give me whatever punishment you feel I deserve, for I am sure I have earned it."

"Punishment? What is this crap? Teyla, you've never done anything to deserve punishment! I mean, you made a mistake, but --"

"I believe I have done more than make a mistake." Her eyes roved from the rocks, to the distant mountains and the toy-sized houses of the town below them -- anywhere but Sheppard or the hole in the ground that she assumed had swallowed her friends. "Colonel, whose idea was it to come to this world, do you recall?"

"Damn it, is that what this is all about? You're blaming yourself because you suggested this world? That's just stupid, Teyla. We would have gotten here eventually in any case; you just sped up the process by suggesting we take a look at this place because you've been here before and you knew it might have Ancient tech."

"That is not why I wanted to come to this world," Teyla said, staring at the ground.

"Teyla." His voice was a bark of command. She risked a glance at him. "I don' t have time for games. Two of my team are down in that hole, maybe hurt, and every minute that goes by is a minute they could be bleeding to death or suffocating. We're standing here arguing in hostile country, which violates about fifteen of the rules that get drilled into you in basic training. If this is important, then tell it to me straight."

Teyla drew a deep breath. "I made sure that we came to this world because of a plan that I had devised ... well, Dr. Zelenka and myself had devised ... to repair the rift between yourself and Dr. McKay."

She risked another glance. He was staring at her. One hand moved to point at the hole. "You planned this?" His voice was low and dangerous.

"No!" she protested. "This was not part of my plan at all! I thought I had accounted for everything, but something has gone very wrong. I swear to you, I thought that there would be very little risk, or I would never have--"

Ka-click.

In a world with only natural sounds, the very man-made sound of a rifle bolt snapping into place seemed as loud as a gunshot.

He raised his head slowly, moving his arms and legs, testing for broken bones. There were some bruises and his legs were half-buried in sand, but all in all, he appeared to be remarkably intact.

Sand, he thought -- the sand had saved him. He'd been one of the last things to fall into the hole, and the cascade of sand that had carried him over the edge had also cushioned his landing.

He sat up slowly, waiting for a searing pain that did not come. Weren't really bad wounds supposed to not hurt? You'd just keep running on adrenaline and have no idea you were bleeding to death until you keeled over. The fact that he felt no pain probably meant that he was mortally injured somewhere. After a few frantic seconds of checking himself over with his hands and finding no injuries, reassured by the presence of all the usual limbs and most vitally, his all-important hands -- he decided that he wasn't going to die, and looked around.

High above him, sunlight shafted weakly through lingering clouds of dust, but it did not reach this far down; his surroundings were murky, a perpetual twilight. He could see boulders and broken columns jutting from the debris, and wondered again that he had survived. A rattling sound made him jump; he realized that small cascades of rocks were still falling from the rough edges of the giant hole they had made. Craning his head back, he tried to figure how far down they must be. Twenty meters? More?

With a sudden surge of guilt, he remembered that he hadn't been the only one to go over the edge. "Ronon?" he called, ashamed by the slight quaver in his voice.

Only silence answered him. Rodney shook his legs free of the sand and stood up, testing his limbs. There was a very painful bruise on his right thigh, and he seemed to have banged his elbow. He dragged a hand through his hair, shaking free dirt and sand. He wondered what he looked like at the moment -- the living dead, probably.

"Ronon?"

He took a few steps forward, limping, and nearly twisted his ankle when a large rock slipped away under him and vanished into a suddenly yawning gap. Rodney froze, terrified that after surviving the fall he was going to fall into a hole in the rubble and break both his legs. He couldn't see. If only he could see!

A flashlight would come in handy.

Luckily, he realized, he had one. Kicking himself for being the dumbest genius ever, Rodney fished the small penlight out of one of the pockets of his vest and flipped it on. The beam cut a shaft through the dust-laden air. Just looking at all the dust made Rodney cough. Probably full of allergens and crap, too. The only good thing about being down here, as far as he could see, was that no one was shooting at them.

"Ronon?"

Something clattered somewhere in the twilit world ahead of him. Maybe another falling rock. Maybe someone moving. Rodney froze, crouched. He drew his 9mm and offered a quiet thanks to ... well, to science, since he didn't really believe in anything else, that he hadn't drawn the gun when the shooting began. If he'd had it in his hand when he'd fallen, then he would have lost it, just as he'd lost his scanner and Ronon's Stargate compass. He refused to consider the implications of that yet.

"Ronon?" he called softly, gun in hand, trying to make his voice sound deep and commanding rather than thin and scared. "Is that you?"

"S'me," rumbled a deep voice, and Rodney heaved a sigh and lowered the gun.

Behind one of the broken columns, he found the big man shifting rocks to unbury himself. The column, Rodney could see, had sheltered Ronon from the worst of it -- if not for that, the ceiling of the temple would have crushed him; it lay in pieces all around them. But Ronon didn't look good at all. His face was a mask of blood, and he carried his left arm curled against his chest.

"You okay?" Rodney asked.

Ronon glanced at him, apparently decided not to dignify the question with a response. He got to his feet stiffly, leaning on the column, and tilted his head back to look up at the sky far, far above them.

Rodney followed suit. "There's no way we can climb out of here, is there?" he said.

"Most likely not." And if Ronon was admitting that, then he must be hurting pretty bad.

Rodney raised his hand to his radio. No matter how he might feel about Sheppard and Teyla these days, or vice versa, he couldn't say he'd object to a little bit of cavalry showing up right about now. Before he could activate it, though, iron-hard fingers grabbed his hand, crushing the feeling out of it.

"Ow!" he snapped, snatching back his throbbing hand. "Dammit, Ronon, I need my fingers for my job!"

The runner glowered at him through bloody hair. "They could have radios, too."

"Radios capable of receiving Earth-style analog transmissions, tuned to our frequency? What are the odds of that, pray tell?"

"Not odds I want to take," the runner said. "Not if they think we died in that fall."

Reluctantly, Rodney lowered his hand. It was true ... they had no idea what sort of technology their mysterious enemies might possess, and right now they could use every little edge they could get. Besides, this far underground and considering all the interference in the atmosphere, the radios probably weren't capable of reaching the surface anyway.

"Well," he said, shaking his hand, "any sort of idea you might have ... I'd listen to it. I know you all think I'm a genius, and you're right, but at the moment I'm drawing a blank."

Ronon moved his good shoulder in a slight shrug. "Find the tunnels and leave."

Well, that was a plan. And Rodney couldn't think of anything better. Not waiting to see if Ronon followed, he turned and began climbing over rubble to get a better look at the walls of their prison. If the temple had once been an entrance to a system of tunnels, then perhaps it would still be possible to get into the tunnels from this point, assuming they hadn't been blocked or collapsed when the temple fell.

Fell. Buildings didn't just ... fall. Either the ancient mechanism that opened the entrance had gotten jammed, causing some sort of cataclysmic chain reaction of failures in the machinery, or their trigger-happy little buddies on the surface had set up a booby trap. He didn't have enough evidence to determine which was the cause, and that frustrated him. Sheppard would have laughed at his burning need to know; Sheppard would have said that it didn't matter why the temple had fallen, only that it had, and the important thing now was to figure out a way to get out of the hole.

But Sheppard wasn't here, and it annoyed Rodney to no end that he couldn't seem to stop thinking in terms of Sheppard this and Sheppard that.

Playing the flashlight up the ragged walls of the shaft, he soon located what he was looking for: a tunnel opening a few feet off what currently passed for the ground. There were others higher up, but this was the nearest, the only one they could possibly reach. He ran the flashlight around its edges and saw that it was nearly square -- clearly manmade and not natural.

Ronon joined him and looked up at the tunnel mouth, speculatively. Its floor was just above Rodney's eye level, but Ronon, being taller, could probably see in. "Does it look safe to you?" Rodney asked.

Ronon grunted. That might mean "yes"; it might also mean "I'm in pain" or "Could you please repeat yourself" or "Shut up" or about a dozen other things.

Sometimes, he really missed Ford.

"Think you can climb to it?"

Another grunt. Great, he was stuck in a pit with Og the Caveman. Rodney gave the runner a long, critical look, noticing his pallor and the blood matting his hair. "If you give me a hand up, I can help you up afterwards." Maybe. Ronon looked like he weighed a ton.

The runner didn't answer (saving his breath for more grunting, no doubt) but he bent his knees and lowered his good hand like a step. Rodney put a foot in it, and suddenly he was flying, propelled by a great boost from below. He sprawled across the lip of the tunnel, gasping, and floundered for a moment with arms and legs flailing before he got his limbs under him and pulled himself the rest of the way into the tunnel. Somehow he managed not to let go of the flashlight through all this, though the beam danced wildly across the walls and ceiling of the tunnel.

Turning around, he winced to see how far down Ronon appeared to be. Rodney sighed and held out his hand. "C'mon up."

Ronon shook his head. "Stand back."

Bemused, Rodney backed up. Surely he wasn't going to try ... but there he went, taking a few steps backwards and then launching himself at the opening from a running start. Ronon's good hand smacked on the floor of the tunnel and his chest, with the bad arm held in front of it, landed hard on the tunnel's lip. A sharp hiss of breath escaped his teeth, and for a moment he just clung there, his forehead resting on the tunnel floor, shoulders rigid and legs dangling outside the tunnel. Rodney nerved himself and took a step forward to help drag the runner into the tunnel, but before he reached the other man, Ronon drew a deep breath and pulled himself all the way over the edge. He lay on the floor, breathing hard, then got to his knees and paused again.

"Are you ... er..." Okay? Clearly not. "Do you need a hand? You can, um, lean on me," he added, hoping that his utter reluctance didn't show in his voice.

Ronon raised his head a little, giving Rodney a look through his dreadlocks that appeared almost amused. He braced his good hand against his knee and hoisted himself to his feet, stood for a moment breathing hard, then produced his big gun from somewhere under his coat. How in the world, Rodney wondered, had he managed to keep hold of that when he fell? Presumably that was another thing that came of surviving as a runner for seven years -- never let go of your weapon.

"What does your psychic runner sense tell you about this hole?" Rodney asked him ... well aware that he sounded like a bit of a dick, but he really did mean it. "Anybody in here with us?"

"Can't tell," Ronon said, and after a pause he added, "Can't hear anybody. Doesn't mean nobody's there."

Great. Apparently it was that time again: time to take a deep breath, gird your loins (whatever the hell that meant), and sally boldly forth into danger. Rodney didn't do danger. Didn't like it, didn't want it. Too bad the Pegasus Galaxy hadn't gotten that memo. He sighed and raised the 9mm into what he seemed to recall was a combat-ready position. Noticing Ronon swaying beside him, he resigned himself to being the brawn as well as the brains of this particular partnership and -- gun in one hand, flashlight in the other -- he braced himself and pointed both down the tunnel. Unfortunately, this meant leaving his back uncovered; he tried to point the gun both ways at once, then realized that Ronon was watching him.

"Uh ... you cover the rear, okay?" he offered.

"Sure," Ronon said after a moment.

And so they moved on, deeper into the tunnel. It sloped gently downward, which Rodney considered a bad sign, but it wasn't as if they had much of a choice. He strained his ears for any sound other than their footsteps and the pounding of his own heart. The flashlight created ghostly shadows that danced on the walls and kept setting off his internal panic sensors.

"Man, this is creepy." He played the light over the ceiling, partly in search of a way out and partly just to assure himself that nothing alive was up there waiting to drop on their heads. "Is this place freaking you out, or is it just me?"

He didn't even get a grunt from Ronon this time. Apparently, it was just him. Rodney sighed. If he was choosing people with whom he'd want to be trapped in a cave-in , Ronon Dex wouldn't be at the top of the list. Actually ... come to think of it, who would he want to be trapped in a cave-in with? Definitely not Sheppard, not right now. Zelenka ... don't go there. Elizabeth ... oh God. Caldwell ... just shoot him now, please. Teyla? Maybe. Samantha Carter? Ah, much better.

He was distracted from this pleasant fantasy by a fork in the tunnel. Rodney ran his light over the two tunnels. One slanted up slightly; he chose that one, all other things being equal. Looking back to make sure Ronon was following, Rodney saw that the man's shoulders were hunched, his arm held tenderly to his chest. At least the bleeding from his scalp wound seemed to have stopped, though it left him looking like a refugee from a horror flick.

"How's your arm?" he asked.

"Broken," Ronon said shortly.

"Shouldn't we ... ah, set it or something?"

"You find a splint, you let me know."

Sarcasm, from Ronon? He must be in pain. "You want some aspirin?" Rodney asked.

"What is aspirin?"

"Er, a painkiller. Not very strong, doesn't mess up your mind. Just takes the edge off and keeps it from swelling."

After a silence, Ronon said, "I would appreciate that."

Even though Sheppard usually carried a first aid kit, Rodney made a point of never walking through the Stargate without some basic medical supplies tucked into his vest: aspirin, Band-Aids, antihistamines, Epi-pen in case of allergic reactions, snakebite kit because hey, you never knew. People who called it hypochondria had clearly never been in half the situations he found himself in on a daily basis. He poured a couple of aspirin into his palm -- then, taking in Ronon's size, added a few more and handed them over. Before putting the bottle away, he took a couple himself; as he walked, the bruise on his leg seemed to be working itself out a tad, but it still ached something awful. He washed down the pills with a swig of lukewarm water from his canteen.

Ronon dry-swallowed the handful of aspirin and leaned against the wall for a moment. "Look, are you sure we shouldn't, I don't know, clean it or wrap it or something?" Rodney asked.

The runner shook his head. "It's a clean break. No compounding. Had worse. I'll be fine."

He didn't look fine, but it wasn't as if you could wrestle down a man his size and hold him while applying first aid. Rodney was lousy at first aid anyway; he knew by heart the symptoms of everything from heart attacks to anaphylactic shock, but as far as actually making practical application of that knowledge, he was well aware that he tended to either panic and freeze up, or completely overdo it. Theoretically he knew CPR -- Sheppard had insisted on the whole team being certified -- but if he ever actually had to do it ... well, watching him work on the CPR dummy, Sheppard had commented that he'd probably break every bone in the hapless victim's chest and inflate them like a balloon.

Sheppard again! Aargh! He hadn't realized until the last few days how the man had become wrapped up in every aspect of his life. It seemed that he couldn't go anywhere on or off Atlantis without everything he saw triggering some memory of Sheppard. Here he was, trapped underground on an alien planet, and he couldn't turn around without stumbling over a memory. The 9mm gripped in his sweaty hand reminded him of long hours in the Atlantis's makeshift shooting range with Sheppard patiently (or, often, not so patiently) teaching him the gun's operation and drilling him until he could hit a target. The vest he wore -- even the damn vest made him think of Sheppard, because Sheppard was the one who had originally outfitted them for their offworld missions, and one of their first big arguments had been over the vest, with Rodney insisting that it was too hot and bulky, and Sheppard standing firm that no one on his team was going offworld without some form of light body armor.

But it hadn't been a real argument, had it? Not like today. On that other day, there had been a lot of yelling, and at the end Sheppard had got his way through sheer stubbornness, and then they went off to the mess hall to get something to eat, and that was the end of it.

Today ... today was different. The last few days had been different. Thinking about it twisted his stomach in knots.

He'd lived his life without paying much heed to other people. He craved recognition for his genius, of course; who wouldn't? But generally, what people thought about him ... it wasn't something he worried about, wasn't something to base a decision upon. But over the last year in Atlantis, something had been built, very slowly, one little piece at a time ... something he'd never thought he would experience. Family. Belonging. And, in typical McKay fashion, he'd simply charged forward in his usual rampaging, "bull in a china shop" sort of way, heedless of what he might break along the way, until finally he'd pushed too hard, shoved at something he shouldn't have touched, and brought the whole thing crashing down around his ears. And then, only then, did he have time to stop and think about what he'd had, and what he'd lost.

He liked these people, dammit. He wanted them to like him. The idea that they might not like him, might not trust him -- that Weir didn't, that Sheppard didn't -- it hurt in a deep, empty, lonely kind of way that he hadn't experienced since he was a small child, craving the affirmation from his parents that would never come.

It was easier to think about such things alone in the dark, without other people around him, their thoughts and emotions and damned feelings pushing at him. Well ... not really alone, of course. He glanced back at Ronon. The runner seemed to be walking a bit more easily after taking the aspirin, his eyes roving around the tunnel by the light of McKay's flashlight, never resting, never still.

There was something strangely peaceful about being around Ronon, Rodney thought -- strange, considering that the man lived his life by violence; but the comforting thing about Ronon was the sense of utter self-sufficiency that surrounded him like well-worn armor. Ronon didn't ask for anything from the people around him, didn't even want it. What McKay had always hated about interacting with other people was their sensitivity, the way you could hurt them with a casual, careless word -- and watching his words was something he'd never been able to remember to do. He used to have that comfort with Sheppard, the sense that no matter what he said, it didn't really matter; nothing could be so bad it would drive Sheppard away. Now that this had turned out to be false, he realized that he got the same feeling from Ronon, only more so. He had no idea if Ronon liked him or not -- and, he realized, it didn't really matter that much to him, not the way that Sheppard and Teyla's approval mattered to him -- but he was pretty sure that he wasn't going to change Ronon's opinion of him with a few thoughtless remarks.

For Rodney, that was about all you could hope for from other people -- and a lot more than you got from most.

Acceptance.

He wondered if he'd totally blown it with Sheppard. He also wondered if Sheppard and Teyla were looking for them. Had they heard the gunshots? Were they worried? Probably not worried about him, considering the terms on which they'd parted, but they would at least want to know what happened, wouldn't they? For that matter, he hoped they were okay. He knew from experience that they could both handle themselves in a firefight, but still ... once the bullets started flying, you only had to be slow or unlucky one time. Once was all it took.

A small, paranoid, dark part of his mind whispered to him: What if this is all actually still part of Teyla's plan? Could she actually have ... meant for this to happen to them? He couldn't believe that she would do such a thing, and yet ... you never really could know about people until they were under pressure, could you?

It just wasn't a good idea to trust people. Good things never came of it. He made himself a small promise to remember that, when he got out of this.

If he got out of this.

"Turn the light off," Ronon said suddenly.

Rodney jumped. "Why? Do you hear something? Are we being followed."

Ronon sighed. "Just ... turn it off. Think it's getting light in here."

"Really?" Rodney snapped off the flashlight. Pitch darkness rolled back in to swallow the walls of the tunnel, and he swallowed, fighting down claustrophobia. But, as his eyes began to adjust to the gloom, he began to make out details: Ronon's big shape next to him, his own hands.

Rodney turned to Ronon, starting to smile. Out ... they must be almost out! But the smile died as he realized that the light seemed to be coming from all around them. No ... above them. He tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling. It was glowing, very faintly, in a series of small panels.

Rodney switched the light on and played it across the ceiling. The panels were not reflective and blended with the stones so thoroughly that he could see how he might have missed them before, but ... he snapped the flashlight off, then back on. No doubt about it. They were glowing very faintly.

"I'll be damned," Rodney said under his breath. "Ancient technology. I think." He looked around him at the too-square edges of the tunnels, perfectly smooth even after all the years it must have been here. "I think we're in some kind of ... Ancient bunker."

The corridor continued to brighten as Rodney and Ronon proceeded. The lights were responding to them, Rodney realized -- brightening as they approached, fading into darkness behind them. Soon he was able to switch off the flashlight. The light was still not very bright, and flickered like an old fluorescent fixture about to go dead.

"Damaged?" Ronon asked, jerking his head at the lights.

"Maybe," Rodney conceded. "More likely just out of power." He glanced around, noticing conduits on the stone walls (electrical, maybe?) that had not been present earlier. "Judging from the other Ancient installations we've found, this thing is probably almost out of power and saving it for the core areas. I'd guess that means we're getting closer to the heart of the thing."

Ronon brought up his big gun into a ready position.

They began to pass doors occasionally -- wide, gray, institutional-looking doors. Rodney tried the first one that they came to; it was not locked and slid jerkily back into a slot in the stone wall, reminding him of the rolling doors in self-service storage units back on Earth. The room behind was dark, bare and empty. Rodney cautiously played his flashlight around the inside and noted Ancient-style power outlets on the walls. He crouched down next to one of them and got a Swiss army knife out of his vest, using the blade to pry open the cover of the outlet.

"Don't know that we got time for this," Ronon said from the doorway.

"Shush. I'm checking something." He'd lost his scanner, but he did still have a small voltmeter and he used this to test the current in the walls. Same voltage as the Ancient standard, on Atlantis and elsewhere -- but weak, with heavy power fluctuations. Rodney straightened with a satisfied smile. Ronon gave him a look that might have been curious, or just impatient.

"It's Ancient, or at least a culture that's had a lot of contact with them," Rodney said, and, out of habit, promptly launched into an explanation as he closed the door. "We figured out after only a few different off-world trips that the voltages an advanced culture uses for its technology are one of the best ways to tell which ones built which items." Actually, Zelenka had figured it out, but he wasn't about to admit that. He'd just been too busy actually doing the work of collecting offworld artifacts to sit around in a lab coming up with esoteric theories. Still, it had been a good idea. Unrelated cultures tended to have incompatible power systems just because of sheer random chance considering the many possible options. Earth -- where different countries still used different power systems -- proved the rule on a microcosmic scale. So they could crudely test cultural diffusion just using a simple voltmeter.

"Plus," Rodney added, pointing at the flickering lights, "I'm positive now that their ZedPM, or whatever they're using, is on its way out. I suppose it's possible that it's just powered down, waiting for somebody with the gene, but the fluctuations that I'm seeing make me think that it's on its last legs."

Ronon grunted. Rodney got the distinct impression that he wasn't interested, and couldn't figure that out. They were standing in a previously undiscovered, underground Ancient facility! What knowledge, what tools and weapons might be down here? Neanderthal ... he was dealing with a Neanderthal.

They passed more doors. Rodney insisted on opening the first couple of them, but when they proved to be as empty as the first room, he started spot-checking. One room was filled with powered-down equipment covered with Ancient dust-sheets, similar to the ones that had been all over Atlantis when they first arrived. Ronon practically had to drag him bodily out of there.

The lights were almost fully operational in this part of the facility. So far, they'd heard nothing, seen no signs of human beings.

It was too good to last.

There were about a dozen of them, actually -- but only one who seemed willing to talk to them. He stood on top of a boulder about fifty feet away from them, as Earth people measured distance. Teyla had not seen how he got there -- one minute the wasteland around them was deserted, and the next minute, it was full of Cletans, all of them pointing an array of rifles, shotguns and even a few energy weapons at the two visitors.

And they were Cletans, the same hospitable, gentle people who had welcomed her family's traders all those years ago. The same ... yet not the same. She recognized their distinctively braided hair, the cut and style of their clothing, the cultural ornaments that they wore on their arms to indicate marital status and number of children. All these things were Cletan things. But their eyes ... The eyes of the people she remembered had been warm and welcoming. These people's eyes were flat and cold. And their clothes were so covered with dust that they blended with the rocks, their hair matted and dirty. The Cletans she remembered had been meticulously clean -- it was one of their beliefs that an unclean body and an impure mind were an affront to the Ancestors.

"Drop your weapons," the Cletans' spokesman said.

"You first," Sheppard retorted. "Don't do it, Teyla."

She kept her eyes on the spokesman: a lean man, all jutting bones and muscle, with long brown hair under a wide-brimmed hat. His eyes were pale, as blue as Rodney's, and startling in his deeply tanned face. Of all the ragged bunch on the rocks around them, he was the only one who really seemed to belong here, among the stones and the snow. He had the look of an outdoorsman to him. The rest of them gripped their motley assortment of firearms with the white-knuckled clutch of desperation and fear, huddled in their ragged clothes. They looked more like refugees than soldiers.

Teyla sought for familiarity in the faces. Some of these people she thought she had met before, on her previous trips to their world. But she could remember no names.

"I said dro