Chapter One: Wilderness Survival 101

When you become isolated or separated in a hostile area ... your evasion and survival skills will determine whether or not you return to friendly lines. ...
You can do without food for several days; water, however, is essential.
–U.S. Army Ranger Handbook

Cold, thirst, and an itch he couldn't scratch drove him out of darkness, to the sharp bite of a rock digging into his arm, to the rich smell of earth and growing things and the chill of a wind tugging at his hair. Wrong, all wrong. There shouldn't have been grass and dirt and sunlight stabbing into his eyes as he peeled them slowly open. There should have been soft fluorescent lights, the smell of metal and plastic, the murmur of the ocean on the edge of hearing.

Wrong. But he didn't know why he expected plastic rather than grass, any more than he knew his name.

He blinked his eyes, staring up at the pinpricks of two small suns -- one with hints of gold, the other pure white -- in a washed-out, pale blue sky. Thin wisps of clouds trailed their fingers across his field of vision -- his mind supplied the word contrails and something in him twisted in a sudden fierce joy and pain, a sudden urge to rise up and touch the sky. He tried to catch at that strange sensation, but it was gone.

He was still thirsty and cold, and as he tried to move, suddenly hurting as well: a sharp pain like a pitchfork stabbed him between the shoulder blades. He sucked in his breath, clenching his teeth, and closed his eyes until the pain subsided. Then he continued to roll slowly over, expecting it this time, bracing himself for it. A part of him insisted that he should lie still until he could determine what had hurt him and how badly. A more insistent part, however, demanded that he find out where he was and whether anything else was about to hurt him more.

The first rush of pain had been the worst, and though it still hurt abominably, he could sit up and look around. He was in an overgrown, apparently abandoned field, sloping gently down to a row of evergreen trees about a hundred yards away. The broken line of a wooden fence, moss-covered and falling down from neglect, wound through the tall grass and weeds to vanish at the edge of the woods. There was no other sign of human habitation. Tall mountains rose on the far side of the trees, and, turning his head with a grimace of pain, he found them on all sides -- a fence of soaring, snow-capped cliffs, some so near that he could see the silver threads of waterfalls down their sides, others blue and hazy with distance.

The only sign of life he could see was a wide-winged bird soaring against the distant peaks of the mountains. It resembled some sort of eagle, but it had to be huge, bigger even than the condors in the mountains of his childhood.

He tried to grab at that memory, but again, frustratingly, it skittered away. In its place, though, came a sense of desperate urgency. There was something he had to do. Someone he had to find. And he wasn't doing it by laying here in the grass.

With the urgent feeling came a rush of fear. He knew he wasn't safe. Someone had hurt him, and he knew deep down that they'd be back to hurt him again. He had to get out of the open, get to the shelter of the trees. And find water; his dry throat ached enough to give some serious competition to the stabbing pain at the top of his spine.

Shakily he got to his feet, wincing, trying not to pull at the wounded muscles in his back. He could tell from the feeling that it was a healing injury rather than a new one ... maybe a few days old? He didn't know why, but he realized that he was a man who knew wounds, knew what they felt like and how to deal them to others. If he met the people who had done this to him -- a flush of hatred ran through him, startling with its intensity. They had done more than just hurt him. He would kill them if he found them, with his bare hands if necessary.

His hand had gone instinctively to his leg at the thought, touching only the bare cloth of his pants leg. There should have been a gun strapped there. He felt naked without it, defenseless. All the more reason to get to the woods.

As he started to walk, he realized that the only tracks in the long grass were the ones he was making as he left the little nest where he'd awakened. Startled, he looked around. The grass should have shown a trail easily, but there was none. It was as if he'd fallen from the sky.

Limping at first, he found that it got easier to move as he warmed up and shook the bloodflow back into his cold, stiff extremities. His shirt caught on the wound on his back as he walked, making him flinch. It wasn't going to be easy, since he couldn't see it, but he had to figure out how badly he was hurt. First, though, he needed to get out of the open, and he needed to find water.

At least that last part, he figured, should be easy in this high country -- mountains, especially green mountains with trees, always had streams. And sure enough, he could hear the sound of rushing water as soon as he entered the trees. Stumbling occasionally, supporting himself on the craggy trunks of the evergreens, he found his way to a small brook twisting between moss-covered banks. Careful of his back, he lowered himself to his knees and dipped up water with his hands. It was so cold it numbed his fingers, and he closed his eyes, luxuriating briefly in the cool wetness that soothed away the burn in his dry throat.

Thirst slaked, he turned his attention to taking an inventory of himself -- his injuries, weapons and so forth. No gun, but he already knew that. He discovered himself to be wearing a set of gray military fatigues and a flak vest with pockets, somewhat dirty and bloodstained but basically intact. The pockets were mostly empty, but he did come up with a few things of varying degrees of usefulness: a clip of ammo for the gun he didn't have; a waterproof case of matches; an object similar to a fat laundry marker, naggingly familiar though he couldn't immediately figure out what it was; a compass; string; a simple first-aid kit; a peppermint candy; two powerbars. The sight of the sugar-rich food made his mouth water; now that he wasn't so desperately thirsty, he found that he was very hungry as well. He forced himself to put the nutrition bars away. No telling how long he'd have to survive on them.

He was pleased to discover that he had a boot sheath containing a knife -- a large, wicked-looking one. Another sudden flash of memory: someone with knives, someone with a LOT of knives, telling him always to have knives hidden on his body. His unknown enemies, whoever they were, had taken his gun and they'd taken the knife he always wore at his belt, but they had left the one in his boot. Whoever that person with the knives was, he might owe him his life in the days to come.

Feeling tenderly between his shoulder blades, he found that the material of his jacket and vest were intact on top of the injury. It had been made when he wasn't wearing these clothes. Now he was even more confused, as he was forced to rearrange his guesswork about the chain of events leading up to his awakening in the field. He'd assumed that he had escaped from someone and been injured while trying to get away. Apparently, the situation was a little more complicated than that.

The movements hurt like hell, but he managed to shrug out of his vest and then his jacket. Even the black T-shirt beneath was not slit in the back. He'd been stripped to the waist and -- what? Tortured?

He was lying on a table. Cold. Face pressed to a hard metal surface. Screaming, he was screaming, and someone else screamed his name, and he was --

... He was still in the forest, having nearly fallen, catching himself at the last minute with arms that shook from more than just cold and hunger.

The voice that had yelled his name ... what had it said?

Sheppard.

His first reaction was nothing more than relief -- because he knew who he was now. Or, at any rate, he knew his name, which was a vast improvement over having a hole where his name should go. Strange how it could mess a guy up, not knowing his own name.

But now, rather than a hole where his own name should be, there was a hole where that other person's name should be -- the person who has shouted "Sheppard!" in a voice laced through with terror and rage. The memory of that voice brought up a roiling mass of conflicted emotions: affection, exasperation, fear, anger, worry, and a pain so deep he didn't dare touch it. Something had happened to them both, something he needed very badly to sort out, but he knew that this was not the place to do it. Later, when he wasn't lost in a strange forest, starving and injured and armed only with a knife, he could sort through the tangled threads of memory and emotion to understand his past. Right now, the important thing was to figure out how badly he was hurt and then get himself somewhere safe and warm.

He skimmed out of the T-shirt, trembling with pain, with residual anger and fear, and, not inconsequentially, with cold. It wasn't freezing in the forest, but it wasn't warm either -- maybe somewhere in the fifties despite the bright sunlight slanting through the trees. As soon as he figured out that he wasn't going to keel over from shock and blood loss, he needed to get moving and warm up.

And it did not seem that imminent death was a danger. He ran his fingers lightly over the ragged edges of the injury between his shoulders. It felt as if it had been stitched up crudely, and he touched clotted blood, wincing. But it wasn't actively bleeding, and didn't seem to be terribly large or deep. He could feel tenderness and puffiness around the edges; most of the pain, presumably, was tenderness resulting from a mild infection, not at all surprising in an open wound that probably had not been well treated. This bothered him, since he had no antibiotics or any way to clean it, but the human body was perfectly capable of throwing off infections -- it did it all the time -- and he didn't feel feverish or lightheaded. He thought about splashing some water from the stream onto it, decided to leave well enough alone, and got dressed.

Okay. Plan and prioritize. Now that he had water, his remaining priorities were shelter, food, safety, and perhaps sending a message for help, not necessarily in that order. He tilted his head back, and looked up the twisting course of the stream. Since he was already on a hill, it made sense to try to get high and look down over the landscape. Clearly there had been people living here at one point; perhaps they still did. And even if those people were responsible for his current condition, they would still have food and blankets. He could steal something.

At the very least, he needed to get a feel for the lay of the land before he did anything else.

His decision made, the man called Sheppard climbed stiffly to his feet and began to follow the stream, ever upward.

Chapter Two: Staying Calm

Vanquish fear and panic. Value living. Remember your goal: getting out alive.
–U.S. Army Ranger Handbook

The summer that Rodney McKay was twelve, he'd gone to the Canadian north woods for a week as part of a summer biology camp. The kids were helping wildlife researchers capture animals and tag them with radio collars to study predator-prey relationships. He'd never been a particularly empathetic child, but he could still remember the terror in the eyes of the deer, the coyotes and foxes as they were drugged and tied down in order for the biologists to tag and release them.

Now he knew how they felt.

He woke up hurting, but that wasn't a big surprise, considering that he had a frickin' huge radio transmitter under the skin of his back. Just thinking about it made his skin itch and burn as he wondered what sort of potentially lethal trace metals were even now being accidentally released into his system. Oh, sure, Ronon had survived for seven years with one of the damn things, but Ronon had the constitution of a water buffalo. Not to mention that it felt as if someone had stuck a barbecue skewer between his shoulder blades and was twisting it.

He kept his eyes shut. If there were a ring of Wraith standing around him waiting to kill him, he'd really rather not see them, thanks.

But he didn't hear anything, and he was thirsty as hell and needed to pee and his back hurt abominably. Letting out a small, involuntary whimper, he opened his eyes.

He saw ... dirt. How very enlightening. He was lying on his stomach with his head turned to the side, his cheek pressed against -- well, against dirt, obviously. It appeared to be nearly dark, but in his peripheral vision, he could see a shaft of light.

Dust tickled his nose. He tried to suppress a sneeze, but couldn't help himself. His whole body jolted at the small explosion; he groaned at the pain, and gave up on trying to pretend to be asleep. Somewhat surprised to find his hands free rather than tied, he pushed himself cautiously upright, wincing. Ouch, had he said barbecue skewer? Try cattle prod. Or maybe a harpoon. Right through the back.

On hands and knees, afraid to move for fear of doing untold internal damage to himself, he looked around. He was kneeling on a dirt floor inside some kind of building -- or, more accurately, bunker. It was square, about the size of a large bedroom, and appeared to be made of featureless concrete or stone. An open doorway allowed pale sunlight to stream into the room. There were no windows and no furniture.

The air felt chilly -- not cold enough to show his breath, but not warm enough to be comfortable, either. Early spring, he thought, or a northern latitude, or a high altitude, or maybe just a cool world. Impossible to know without looking outside.

And he did not want to look outside. Getting up, looking around, would mean admitting that this was all real, that Sheppard was gone and he was stranded on an alien world with a Wraith transmitter in his back. Released to run and die.

Ronon had lasted seven years. Rodney couldn't convince himself that he'd last even a day, not by himself. He simply wasn't a fighter, not the kind of fighter who could go up against the Wraith bare-handed and live.

On the other hand, he didn't intend to simply lie down and wait to die, either. With that thought in mind, he dragged himself painfully to his feet and lurched over to the door, shaking out the pins-and-needles of the Wraith stun ray. He must have been naturally unconscious for a while after the stun beam wore off, since all that remained was the slight tingling and a throbbing ache at the base of his skull.

Flattening himself against the wall beside the open doorway, he peered out at the trunks of piney-looking trees marching away down a hill. He glimpsed flashes of water through the trunks of the trees, and could dimly hear the rushing sound from here, along with the even more distant roar of what must have been one monster waterfall. His throat constricted at the sound of running water and he realized that he was dreadfully thirsty.

Stay here and die of thirst and probably infection from the wound in his back; venture outside and die of Wraith. It's always nice to have options, Rodney thought, and suppressed a fit of hysterical laughter.

Death by thirst would be slow and painful. At least death by Wraith had the potential to get the whole mess over quickly. Rodney searched himself for weapons, emptying his pockets. They'd taken his gun, but handguns weren't that effective against the Wraith anyway, at least not handguns wielded by one Rodney McKay. It would almost be worse to have that shred of hope; at least he could be realistic about his chances if he went up against a Wraith with a stick.

Aside from the gun, though, they appeared to have left him everything else that he'd been carrying when they were culled. Scanner, tools, digital camera, emergency powerbars, pocket knife, Epi-Pen injectors in case of bee stings, even his laptop in a Velcro-sealed pouch on his back. The only thing that had been taken besides the gun was his canteen. The thought occurred to Rodney that he was being treated exactly like a lab animal: they'd stripped him of anything that could ensure his survival on a wilderness planet, but left him the technological stuff, and now they seemed to be stepping back to see what he'd do with it. See the little mammal run!

He began to feel a glimmer of anger overriding the fear. He'd almost rather have been killed outright. Well, no, on second thought, that was a total lie. But this ... toying with him really pissed him off. He felt like a mouse in the clutches of the world's largest cat. They thought they had him, huh? Well, Rodney McKay, genius extraordinaire, didn't play by anybody's rules.

Galvanized by anger, he crept out into the sunshine. It looked warm, but it wasn't really -- a stiff breeze ruffled his hair and made him shiver, then wince in pain when the movement wrenched at the injury between his shoulder blades. He stared down the hill with a sigh. This wasn't going to be much fun.

God, he hated being right. The hill was appallingly steep and carpeted in a dense bed of needles that kept trying to slip out from under his feet. He had to grab for tree trunks, limbs, saplings, whatever was handy. He ended up with one hand bristling with thorns from grabbing a sticker bush, and the other badly scraped after colliding with the trunk of one of the pseudo-pines -- not to mention a bruised knee, a rip in his pants, and a worrisome trickling feeling along his spine that made him think he might have broken the wound open again.

Forget the Wraith -- he'd be lucky to survive the trees!

But eventually he stumbled to the bottom of the hill and found himself on a wide gravel bar strewn with boulders and tangles of driftwood. The river sparkled in the sunlight, broad and flat and ruffled with white. Rodney picked his way through patches of ankle-grabbing rocks and what looked like quicksand to kneel stiffly at the water's edge, where he stared doubtfully into the silt-gray depths. Death by Wraith, or death by dysentery? Somewhere in one of his pockets, he knew that he had purification tablets. On the other hand, there were only a few, and lacking the canteen, he had no container to use for scooping up water.

Rodney drew a deep breath. If he did survive the day, then a few purification tablets weren't going to last him very long, and if he didn't survive, then he wouldn't have to worry about it, would he? He dipped his hands into the icy water, wincing as it stung his scrapes, and scooped up a double handful. Yummy. Tasted like mud. But he was thirsty enough that he almost didn't care, and when he'd had enough, he gently washed the scrapes on his hands and picked out the stickers, then doctored it with Neosporin from the little first aid kit in his vest. There were clearly enough ways to die on this world that he didn't need to go begging for an infection, especially not in his hands. He needed his hands.

Speaking of infection, his back was probably septic already. And he didn't have a clue how to treat the injury, considering that he couldn't reach it. He'd just have to hope that he didn't keel over of some Pegasus Galaxy bacteria before he could find people. Find help.

Find Sheppard.

Assuming Sheppard had been dropped on the same world as Rodney. Assuming Sheppard was even alive.

But he had to believe in Sheppard ... he had to. If he was alone on this world, he might as well lay down and die, because no matter how much confidence he had in his brains, you couldn't use brains alone to defeat a near-infinite enemy, who could track you anywhere, when you didn't even have a gun. Sheppard, on the other hand ...

Rodney didn't think he'd ever realized, consciously, the amount of faith he had in John Sheppard's ability to find his way out of a military situation. Anything involving thinking, well, obviously McKay had the edge by quite a large margin, but though he'd never dream of admitting it -- no need to give the man an even bigger swelled head -- Sheppard was some kind of virtuoso when it came to fighting. Didn't matter how many resources he had, either. Alone, with one gun, he'd taken out an entire Genii strike force. They were clearly in a military situation here, and right now Sheppard was probably building a giant spear gun and training it on the Wraith hive ship.

Rodney found himself grinning at the mental image. It was the first time he'd smiled since waking up in that hut on the hill. Trust Sheppard to make him grin even when the man wasn't here.

Sheppard was alive. Never mind that his last sight of the man had been writhing and cursing on a Wraith operating table, covered with blood, getting stunned and stunned and stunned again because he refused to stay down. Was there a lethal limit to Wraith stunners? The last shot, point-blank to the back of the skull, had been particularly nasty and had left Sheppard in a twitching heap. That was the last time Rodney had seen him; it had been his turn next, and all he remembered after that was more pain than he'd ever thought he could endure, and a stunner blast to the face, and then nothing.

The only thing worse than Sheppard being dead, he supposed, would be a brain-damaged, vegetative Sheppard. Luckily, if that was indeed the case, Rodney couldn't imagine death would be far behind in this place. No ... he'd see the Colonel alive and in top fighting form, or he'd see him not at all.

Stay alive. Find Sheppard, or find a way off this world, or, better yet, do both. He couldn't go to Atlantis with the tracker in his back, and he hated to give away the Alpha Site, but if he could only find a working Stargate, he could figure something out, send a message at least. Beckett could remove the tracker; he'd taken out Ronon's, hadn't he?

First, though, he needed to stay alive. And that meant avoiding the Wraith, because he sure as hell couldn't fight them. Suddenly the sunny riverbank seemed horribly exposed, and Rodney felt a cold chill ripple down his spine as he snapped his head up to stare into the blue sky overhead, sweeping his gaze down to the sharp jags of pine trees rising along both of the river's bluffs. High among the trees, something moved. He would have screamed if his throat hadn't seized up in terror. But it wasn't a Wraith -- squinting, he could make out a dark-colored shape with four legs and tall thin horns. A deer of some kind. Maybe an antelope. Maybe a flesh-eating antelope; this was another world, after all. Whatever it was, it turned its head and looked at him, then stepped unconcernedly back into the forest and vanished.

Tilting his head back into the sunshine, Rodney watched a few small birds -- or birdlike creatures; they seemed to have at least four wings each -- flitter across the sky and vanish into the trees as well. He was thinking back to watching nature specials as a kid, how they'd talk about the forest falling silent when lions were around. Or maybe it was lions on the plains and bears in the woods. Anyway, if the animals were out and doing their normal ... animal things, didn't that mean the Wraith weren't nearby? If Sheppard were here, that damned optimist would probably assume so. And Rodney would argue the realists' side: they had no way of knowing for sure, and only an idiot would assume they were safe based on a few twittering birds.

But Sheppard wasn't here, which left it up to him to decide which viewpoint benefited him more. Damn it, Rodney, you're a smart guy -- do you listen to Sheppard or to yourself? And the answer, in this case, he decided, was Sheppard. Freaking out like a panicked squirrel wasn't going to keep him alive or get him off this world.

There had been a time, Rodney supposed, when he would have immediately curled into the fetal position and started whimpering as soon as the reality of his situation sunk in, and stayed that way until the Wraith showed up to kill him. And it was possible that he just hadn't accepted reality yet, and that an all-expenses-paid trip to catatonia lay right around the corner. But he really didn't think so. Strange though it seemed, here he was on an alien planet, alone, with Wraith hunting for him, and he didn't feel panicked. Scared, sure. But not panicked.

I stayed calm in a sinking puddlejumper, he thought. Well ... mostly. I stayed calm in a virtual environment infested with Wraith on a ship that was about to get blown out of the sky. I kept my head while being held hostage by drug addicts and I got myself out. Sort of stupidly, but I still did it. I stayed calm while watching my team leader reenact Kafka's Metamorphosis, and by God, I can stay calm through this!

He straightened up with fists clenched in determination, and then staggered and and moaned as the pitchfork between his shoulder blades stabbed him once again.

I can do this.

Chapter Three: Getting Your Bearings

Remember where you are in relation to the location of enemy units and [enemy] controlled areas.
-U.S. Army Ranger Handbook

The man called Sheppard followed the stream's twisting course, clambering up a series of small waterfalls until he emerged on top of a ridge with a breathtaking view. Below him, the evergreens swept down into a valley nestled between the mountain peaks, their dark, almost bluish-green canopy giving way to the paler green of deciduous trees along the silver thread of a river half-hidden by steep bluffs. To his right, the river vanished into precipitous cliffs and more mountains; to his left, he caught glimpses of an ocean glittering in the light of the two suns.

From this vantage, he could see scattered signs of human habitation, but none recent -- just cleared patches that did not look natural, like the field below him, and down near the river he caught a glimpse of buildings just visible through the trees -- a town of some sort, surrounded by fields. Somewhere back in the hills at the head of the river, wisps of smoke or steam rose into the air. Campfires? A town? Hot springs? Overall, this place seemed to be mostly wild and sparsely inhabited, with no large cities, but there had certainly been people here once, and might still be.

He crouched down on his haunches, arms crossed over his knees, presenting a smaller target to the keening wind that buffeted his body and cut through his jacket as if it wasn't there. The deciduous trees in the valley appeared to be in full leaf, but around him he noted splashes of color in the low-lying plants under the pine trees -- blue and purple berries, yellow seed heads on the grasses, red and gold mottling on the leaves of unfamiliar bushes. Autumn seemed to be creeping upon the higher altitudes, and if this was what summer felt like around here, he didn't want to stick around to get a taste of winter.

Studying the terrain below him, he located the field where he'd awakened, traced the broken line of the fence appearing and vanishing in and out of the grass. From here, he could see a cluster of ramshackle buildings at the upper end of the fence, hidden behind the brow of the sloping hill which presumably had concealed them from him before. He could also make out the tracings of an overgrown road, wending off through the trees and down towards one of the larger clusters of buildings. It looked like four or five miles, at least, and it wouldn't be easy going; the road was blocked by trees in places, washed out by streams in others.

He wondered anew how he'd gotten to the field, but his brain was already suggesting an answer. He'd flown. He didn't know how, or where the vehicle had gone, or if he'd been the one actually flying it, but that was the only possible explanation.

The question was what to do now. Keep moving, said a deep, feral part of his brain, the part that had helped the human species survive through many centuries of being prey more than predator. The sense of being hunted tickled at the back of his neck. Someone had hurt him, and he expected that they would be back to try to finish the job. He didn't intend to be around for it.

Before he left the hilltop, he mapped out his route carefully in his head -- down the hill, through the trees, to the road -- taking a few moments to check avenues of escape and alternate routes, committing as much as possible of the terrain before him to memory. The thought occurred to him that he was good at this, and it seemed that he had been doing it all his life. He was a man accustomed to being hunted, and to hunting in turn. He had pursued fugitives across difficult terrain. He had dealt death.

He found himself wondering what sort of man he was, what sort of life he had led. He'd seen the scars on his pale arms when he removed his shirt by the stream, and suspected that he might not like the answer.

For now, however, he needed to get moving. The suns were starting to slant at a long angle between the mountain peaks. In this wild country, he had no doubt that predators would come out at night, even assuming that his mysterious enemies had not returned by that time.

His plan, then, was to make his way to the buildings, where he hoped to find people and food. While he supposed himself capable of living off the land if he absolutely had to, for a little while at least, he didn't recognize any of the plants around him and didn't have weapons capable of striking at a distance. Mere survival would probably take up most of his time. Better to find people and seek food and shelter. They might be enemies, but he had no intention of falling into their hands. He would trade for food if he could -- assuming he could come up with something they wanted in trade -- and take it if he could not.

Again, he kept running into this part of himself that he did not like. He wondered if he was a hard man, a cold man -- or merely a survivor. Or did it amount to the same thing?

He sighed, stood, and scrambled down the hill. Before leaving the stream, he took a long drink, wishing that he had some way to carry water. It didn't appear that water would be a precious commodity around here, though, so he'd have some time to figure it out.

Sheppard set himself a brisk walk-trot-walk pace through the woods, going faster where it was clearer and slowing down when he had to pick his way over rough ground. He came to the field sooner than he would have expected, and cut through the tall, damp grass in the direction where he'd seen the buildings from above. The sense of being watched, of being followed, was even stronger than before, and he hurried as fast as he could without twisting an ankle in the grass. The sense of danger was like a physical pressure, but he thought it would be foolish to leave the area without checking for anything useful in the abandoned barn. At this point, even a rusty pitchfork would come in handy.

The building that he mentally dubbed a barn -- though he had only the vaguest idea of what a barn was; images of cows and snatches of "Old MacDonald's Farm" flitted through his head -- was actually a large pole shed, open on one side, the roof caving in with a sapling growing up through it. Several other, smaller sheds stood around, even more tumbled down than the big one, along with various other structures so overgrown with grasses and brush that it was almost impossible to figure out what they'd once been. He recognized an ancient cistern by its glistening pool of brackish water, and scraped a hand over the waist-high rim, brushing away dead grass to reveal a coarse, gray material similar to concrete. A rusty, completely immobile water pump stood at one end like an odd kind of shrub. He stumbled over a ceramic pitcher in the grass next to it, cracked but capable of holding water; it would make a lousy canteen, but was better than nothing.

The sense of danger tickled the back of his neck more strongly. Not a good idea to hang around here, especially since there seemed to be nothing of particular use to him -- there might be other useful junk under the grass, but he had no way to find out other than by brute-force searching. He found that his belt contained numerous loops for fastening things to it, and hooked the pitcher through one of them; it bumped against his hip and he wouldn't be able to carry it that way if it was full of water, but he'd figure that out later.

Something drew his attention, by the pole barn: a squat, spreading tree. It took him a moment to figure out what had caught his eye about it -- aha, it wasn't a pine, that was it. Not an evergreen, the only tree anywhere around here that wasn't, and therefore, likely it had been planted by human beings. And trees planted by humans, on a farm, were probably there for a reason. Tilting his head back, he looked up into the gnarled branches and saw dozens of small, bluish fruits, shaped like tiny bananas as long as his finger. Some of the branches were low enough to reach. He snapped off a couple of them; they had an odd smell, sweetish and slightly antiseptic. Some had insects crawling on them, and after a moment's disgust he took this as a good sign -- if the local wildlife ate something, then maybe a human could too.

He realized that there was supposed to be a procedure for trying new foods in a survival situation, and that he actually remembered it. Breaking one of the fruits in half, he tested it on the soft skin inside his wrist. No reaction. Lightly touching it to his tongue produced no reaction either -- no tingling, numbness, weird heart effects. After waiting a few minutes, he tried a bite. It wasn't bad ... kind of like a mango with a very strange aftertaste. He finished eating that one, decided to see how it set in his stomach before eating more, and, in the hopes it would turn out to be a viable food source, picked enough of them to fill the pitcher about halfway.

A rustle in the woods made him jump. Instinctively, he flattened himself against the tree trunk, putting it between himself and the line of pine trees at the forest's edge. After a minute, he caught sight of something small and fast -- a fox maybe? Or the local equivalent? It vanished among the trees, but the crawling sense of danger didn't go away.

Time to go.

The pitcher bumped against his hip as he half-trotted, half-jogged through the open field, casting nervous glances at the sky. Automatically, he found himself assuming that danger would come from above. His enemy could fly. Didn't know how he knew that, but he did. Good to know. Hard to defend against.

He felt a little safer once he was back in the woods, following the overgrown road down towards the valley. But only a little bit safer. One of the suns had vanished behind the mountains and the other seemed likely to follow suit. Between the tall, vertical trunks of the pines, the air was chilly and the shadows growing long. A few insects came out, whining around his head in the dusk, and somewhere off in the woods, a twig snapped. Sheppard paused to draw his knife and cut off a sapling about as big around as three of his fingers together. While he alternated between walking and trotting, he whittled one end of it to a point. Lousy spear. But better than nothing. The thought occurred to him that he could make a far better spear by lashing his knife to the end of the pole, but he wasn't about to risk losing his knife that way.

A sudden sound made him freeze in place, his stomach clenching with an involuntary surge of fear and anger. It might have been the high-pitched whine of the insects, that penetrating sound ... but it wasn't. Like the vibrato of a drill bit, the sound quavered in his chest cavity and shivered his eardrums. And, above the trees, out of the north, they came: two needle-slim shapes in the darkening sky, whining swiftly overhead. One of them peeled away in the general direction of the river, while the other continued on a rapid downward trajectory and vanishing into the trees off to his right.

It appeared to be landing.

His mysterious enemy had come.

Chapter Four: Making Plans

Undue haste makes waste; don't be eager to move. Plan your moves.
–U.S. Army Ranger Handbook

The biggest surprise of all, to McKay, was that they hadn't been forced to give up Atlantis. They hadn't even been questioned. Rodney could only assume that many of the run-of-the-mill Wraith did not know about Atlantis, at least not enough to recognize Atlanteans among the many thousands of humans that they culled, any more than humans would recognize one goat in a flock of thousands. To them, no doubt, humans were largely interchangeable, not something that you thought about on an individual basis. And why should they try? Some of the queens might be concerned enough about Atlantis to have their minions on the lookout for Atlantean survivors, but clearly not all of them, maybe not even most of them. If Rodney had wanted proof that their ruse had worked, that the Wraith truly thought Atlantis had been destroyed and was no longer a threat, it'd now been received loud and clear.

So they had been mistaken for regular Pegasus Galaxy Wraith fodder, albeit well-armed ones who could fight, and that fighting ability -- well, he had to be honest here, Sheppard's fighting ability -- had apparently convinced the Wraith to keep these two humans alive as runners. In the past, Rodney had never been able to figure out from talking to either Teyla or Ronon what caused the Wraith to choose to keep some humans alive -- Ronon had thought it might be something unique to him, some quality that only certain humans possessed, but frankly, in this case, Rodney thought that this particular batch of Wraith just seemed bored. Feeding on cattle wasn't as interesting as matching wits against a live, running prey.

He thought about it as he knelt in front of the bunker where he'd first awakened on this world. A couple of hours had passed since his awakening and his trip to the river, and he now had his meager supplies spread out in front of him. In a way, this whole situation was like a logic puzzle, the sort of puzzle he would have aced when he was twelve ... but it was different when the consequence of failing to come up with a solution were losing your life and possibly that of your closest friend.

You are stranded on an alien world. You have the following list of equipment. By using these things, and nothing else except what you find along the way, you have to find your friend and find a way off this world in the time allotted.

Except he didn't know how much time he had -- obviously the Wraith gave runners a head start, but there was no telling how long -- and he had no idea where any of his goals were. Or even what his primary goal should be. Find a Stargate? Find Sheppard? Find food? A wave of dizziness made him decide that perhaps food should be bumped to the top of the list, for the time being. He unwrapped a powerbar, ate half of it in one bite, and, very reluctantly, wrapped the rest and tucked it away. He had six of them -- more than any other member of the Atlantis expedition carried, he had no doubt, but certainly not enough to sustain him in a cross-country hike.

Too bad they hadn't been planning a long trip on PX2-394, or they might have actually had decent survival gear with them, MREs and camping supplies and the like. It had only been a simple trading mission with friendly, hospitable people who were long-term allies of the Athosians.

And then the Wraith had come.

Rodney swallowed, the taste of the powerbar suddenly sickly sweet on his tongue, and forced the memories away, concentrating instead on his present situation. The dizziness had faded as the sugar hit his system, so he hoped that it was just from hunger and not infection. He channeled his inner Sheppard, the optimism that just might be a key part of Sheppard's ability to wriggle his way out of life-or-death situations, and decided to assume that he wasn't going to drop dead of flesh-eating bacteria in the near future. Even if the sharp pain between his shoulder blades did make it feel as if the little buggers were already chomping away.

Okay. His most valuable asset -- aside from his brain -- was his Ancient scanner. He picked it up, tested it. Undamaged, as far as he could tell, and working fine.

Obviously the Wraith didn't know how powerful the scanner was, or they would never have allowed him to keep it. Although usually Rodney simply used it to pick up energy signals, the thing could be recalibrated to scan for damn near anything. It could be used as a life signs detector ... not that it'd do him much good in a place teeming with life. It could read the chemical compositions of objects, if not as effectively as some of Beckett's equipment. It could be used as a rudimentary radio, assuming anyone else on this world had anything capable of receiving radio signals. Best of all, it could be used to detect Wraith transmissions, thus functioning as a crude Wraith detector.

The really tricky part -- the part that definitely required a touch of the genius Rodney knew he possessed -- was getting it to do more than one of these things at once. Right now he wasn't picking up any energy readings at all, which was disheartening, but he wasn't about to give up the slim hope of finding some sort of Ancient ruins or technological settlement. He had a pretty good idea that without one of those two things -- not to mention, without Sheppard -- he wasn't going to last very long on this world. Even leaving aside the small matter of man-hunting Wraith, wilderness survival wasn't his thing.

After about half an hour of ever-more-nervous fiddling, Rodney found the solution for his current needs. He turned the thing into a broad-spectrum radiation receiver and then rigged a control crystal that could be calibrated by hand, allowing him to tune it. Ugly, but functional, and it meant that he could pick up just about any kind of radiation -- microwaves, radio waves, gamma waves, infrared, whatever. Tuned to infrared, it worked as a slightly crappy life signs detector; and, on the Wraith radio frequencies, he was definitely getting some traffic. Not terribly close ... but present. His stomach fluttered nervously. The Wraith were around, all right. They were just waiting, letting the prey get on the move before swooping in to start the hunt in earnest. Or so he assumed.

He sat back on his heels and studied the rest of his equipment. What he really needed was a weapon. A bazooka would be nice, not that he knew how to fire one ... but he imagined that if he was staring down the business end of a Wraith stungun, he could damn well figure it out.

Come on, damn it, he told himself, staring at the meager array of objects on the ground: digital camera, pocket knife, laptop ... Come on, you're a genius. The Wraith are idiots. If you can't outsmart them, then you may as well just throw yourself off that cliff right now.

Staring at each item in turn, he memorized them before picking them up and putting them back in the pockets of his vest. In the days to come, his life might depend on being able to find the right object, the right pocket, in an instant. He didn't have much. His most valuable possession was, as always, his brain.

In the interests of keeping that possession intact, he swallowed the other half of the powerbar. His stomach rumbled; God, if he was this hungry now, what would it be like after he'd been on the planet for more than a few hours?

He took a deep breath and stood up, swaying at a surge of dizziness and pain; and looked around him, once again trying to memorize the scene. It was a technique he'd begun to teach himself, over the last year and a half, to keep his quick-moving mind from leaping from one worst-case scenario to another. The best and worst part about being a genius was being able to rapidly leapfrog from one thought to the next -- best, when it catapulted him into the insights that other people didn't have; worst, when he couldn't control it and it carried him on a roller-coaster ride through nightmares. Having other people around helped ground him, keep him anchored. Alone, he did the best he could, and he did it by looking at the trees, the ground, the sky, the gray building half-covered in branches and weeds.

The function of the building where he'd awakened was a mystery to him. "Bunker" seemed to cover the situation as well as anything else he could come up with. It was clearly old, abandoned and overgrown. The open doorway commanded a sweeping view of the river below, and Rodney guessed that it might be an old lookout post, perhaps for traders or built during some forgotten war.

The growing chill in the air, as the suns crept towards the mountains, raised the hairs on the back of his neck and galvanized him into moving. He didn't want to be out here after dark, not with Wraith and who knew what else roaming the woods.

He looked through the trees at the river, sparkling in the long rays of the lowering suns. In one direction, the silver thread of a waterfall cascaded down from what looked to Rodney like an impenetrable wall of mountains; in the other direction, the river looped back and forth, appearing and disappearing between bluffs similar to the one he'd scrambled down -- and back up -- earlier in the day. Mountains seemed to fence him in on all sides. Damn it, Canadian or not, he was a city boy. His natural habitat was the lab. Nature was so damned ... empty. Any direction seemed as good as any other. Finally he decided to strike out for the waterfall, if only because it was different from anything around here, and he didn't have a coin to flip.

Chapter Five: Getting Wet

The availability of ready-made bridges ... is highly unlikely. Therefore it is necessary to be able to negotiate expedient stream crossings.
–U.S. Army Ranger Handbook

The cessation of the vehicle's whine galvanized Sheppard into motion. It had landed, and that meant that whoever, or whatever, had been in it was now in the woods with him.

He turned, and began to move swiftly down the road, for the moment focused on putting as much distance as possible between himself and his enemies. It was nearly dark under the trees, though the sun still shone on the peaks of the mountains across the valley, and he could only manage a slow jog in order to avoid the risk of a twisted ankle or worse. As he trotted, he looked to both sides of the road for cover or for anything that might spark a plan.

He had no rational reason to believe himself hunted. He didn't remember a thing about his past at the moment; for all he knew, the ship could have carried his own friends who even now would be looking for him. But he didn't think so. His reaction to seeing that sleek, wicked-looking machine had been a visceral, stomach-clenching dread.

This part of the road wound through open pine woods cut by frequent ravines coming down off the mountains. Some of the ravines were still bridged by rotted wooden timbers; at others, the bridges had collapsed and he had to climb down into the brush-choked gully and up the other side. He clambered through two of these before coming to a wider, deeper ravine, almost a canyon, with its bridge still shakily spanning the gap: really just two large logs with crumbling boards crisscrossing between them.

If any place ever screamed "last stand", this was it ... with the sole exception that the bottom of the ravine was only about fifteen feet below. Not exactly a Butch and Sundance moment ... a fleeting thought that made him wonder just who exactly Butch and Sundance might be. Standing on the bridge in the growing dusk, he peered down into the thick green tangle of foliage beneath his feet. He could hear water rushing loudly, but couldn't see the stream itself. After crossing under the road, the ravine dropped away quickly between banks that grew ever steeper. Jumping from the bridge to the streambed was entirely possible, though his abused back twinged at the idea. Jumping too far, though, and falling over that edge wouldn't be good -- he doubted if he'd die, but he'd sure as heck get bruised, tumbling through the brush and rocks.

He tapped one of the cross-boards with his boot, then stomped on it and jerked his foot back quickly as the mossy wood fractured and the pieces tumbled into the gully, vanishing under the green canopy. He heard them clattering on rocks and one hit the stream with a splash. It really wasn't a long fall, nothing that would kill or even seriously injure a healthy person unless they landed wrong.

The trick would be making sure that they landed wrong.

Sheppard's head snapped up at a sound from among the trees, back the way he'd come. Somewhere a twig had broken; somewhere, branches swished against someone passing by. Maybe it was just wildlife emerging at dusk, but he doubted it.

His hunters were coming.

The idea occurred to him, as he clenched his knife in his teeth and swung himself under one of the crude bridge's support logs, that there had never been any doubt in his mind about standing his ground and fighting. Yet another tidbit of information about himself had dropped into his lap: he wasn't a man who ran from a fight, even if it was a fight he had little hope of winning. The concept of failure just wasn't in his personal lexicon.

The log was damp, slippery, covered with moss. The musty smell of decay filled his nostrils as he clung close to the decaying bark, keeping himself anchored with one arm and both legs while his free hand gripped the spear. He shifted himself carefully to the side, getting a cockeyed view of the road through a screen of brush.

Striding down the road towards the bridge came a ... Wraith, his mind supplied. In the dusk, all he could really see was long pale hair swirling about a lean dark body. Then, behind it, another pale glimmer: two of them.

Hatred made his breath come harsh, hissing past the knife clenched in his teeth. Strangely, he wasn't afraid. He was only angry.

As the Wraith approached the bridge, it paused, stopped. It turned to the other one and they spoke in harsh, sibilant whispers. Then the first one turned back and Sheppard saw the faint glimmer of its eyes in the darkness. Surely it should not be able to see him under the bridge; even if it could see in the dark -- a possibility he wasn't willing to rule out -- the brush should screen him from its view.

"You disappoint us, human," it called out to him in a distorted voice, as if its mouth and throat were ill-suited for speaking. "We expected better from you than hiding."

How the hell did it know he was under the bridge? Sense of smell? Then, as it stepped forward, he saw it reach up and touch its temple, where he could just make out the gleam of some kind of device half-hidden under its hair. Technology. They were using technology to track him. And another of those quick flashes of his forgotten past came and went -- a rough voice speaking: They operated on me – put some sort of tracking device in my back and released me. They hunted me.

Crap. Crappity double crap. No point in trying to hide any longer. He shifted the knife from his teeth to his hand and hollered, "Hey, I'm on vacation here, you can't blame a guy for doing some sightseeing! Don't suppose you have a Disneyland on this planet, huh?" Hm ... more memories, how interesting. He remembered visiting the theme park at the age of four and being scared to tears by Goofy and Mickey. Now if only his memory would offer up something useful, such as how he came to be on this planet and how he could get off it. A little information on Wraith-killing would be a nice start.

After a moment of confused silence, the Wraith laughed. "Don't be absurd, human."

"I like being absurd. I'm good at it." He tried to wriggle his way into a better position under the log. "Let me guess, you two are headed to Disneyland yourselves? That would explain the costumes."

The Wraith -- he decided to dub it Goofy -- just stared at him. "What? This is a training mission, human."

"Don't listen to him," hissed the other one, which must be Mickey by default. "He is trying to confuse us."

And successfully, I see, Sheppard thought. "Training, huh? This is like a Wraith obstacle course or something?"

The one he'd nicknamed Goofy sneered at him. "We are warriors in training and you have been given the honor of honing our hunting skills. You are not a true runner, only prey for us to practice upon."

Oh, great. He was being pursued by Wraith interns. He supposed he should be thankful -- they'd surely be easier to kill -- but somehow it was just ... embarrassing.

"Do not allow him to goad you into rash actions," Mickey Wraith hissed at Goofy Wraith. Goofy, however, was strolling forward. He saw that it carried a long pointed weapon at its side, which it had swung up to point in his general direction.

A bolt of blue light hummed past him, and he instinctively recoiled under the log. Far too nearby for comfort, he heard the Wraith laugh. But that wild shot had confirmed something he had begun to suspect: they could track him, but they couldn't pinpoint him too closely, and they couldn't use the tracking device to target their weapons -- at least, if they could, they hadn't yet.

Now Goofy was stepping out onto the bridge. Sheppard's eyebrows went up. Even Wraith couldn't possibly be that stupid, could they?

At least it was smart enough to stay off the rotting crosspieces of the bridge, balancing on the log opposite the one under which Sheppard clung -- probably intending to lean over and shoot him. Unfortunately for Goofy, but fortunately for Sheppard, it didn't know he had a weapon.

He swung himself around the log and thrust upward with the spear, as hard as he could, between the rotted boards of the bridge. He was aiming for the stomach but didn't quite have the leverage -- instead, the spear entered its thigh and carved an upward track through its body. The spear wasn't sharp at all; he could only rely on brute force, throwing his body's weight behind it and pushing for all he was worth. The Wraith let out a shrill scream and pitched backwards off the bridge, dragging the spear with it and nearly ripping Sheppard's arm out of the socket.

Apparently, they could indeed be that stupid. He listened the crashing as the Wraith plunged down the ravine. The fall probably wouldn't kill it, but with that spear sticking out of its side, maybe he'd be lucky --

WHOOMPH! A fireball lit up the woods; the shockwave nearly knocked Sheppard off the bridge. He squinted, staring in disbelief down the ravine at the cloud of rising smoke and fluttering, dislodged leaves.

They explode when they fall? What are they made out of, nitroglycerine? Well, that's lucky for me...

Wait a minute! Self-destruct!

He remembered now -- a button, on the chest. The Wraith formerly known as Goofy shouldn't have had time to trigger it intentionally, so he could only assume that it had accidentally hit the button as it flailed around in its tumble down the ravine.

They certainly weren't sending the best and brightest after him, were they?

Of course, there was still one ... He peeked over the edge of the log to see the remaining Wraith, Mickey, standing just off the end of the bridge, a slender shape in the gathering dark, watching him.

"Not as easy as you thought, huh?" Sheppard demanded with a savage grin, gripping the knife in one hand and clinging to the log with the other. He could feel a trickling sensation down his back -- he'd probably torn open the wound with all the acrobatics.

A blue energy bolt would have clipped his head if he hadn't drawn it back hastily.

"Nice shootin', Tex!" Sheppard hollered from under the log. Another energy bolt missed him by a mile.

He realized that Mickey the Wraith, after what had happened to its buddy, was too scared, or at least too cautious, to venture onto the bridge ... which was good, at least for the moment. Sheppard, on the other hand, couldn't keep hanging on indefinitely. The muscles of his shoulders and legs burned from the effort of clinging to the log, and his back was a white torch of pain.

The log shuddered. He leaned his head out cautiously to see if this meant the Wraith had overcome its fear and stepped out onto the bridge, but no such luck. Instead, it was rocking the log from the bank, trying to dislodge it.

A human wouldn't have been able to do it. The log was huge, big enough that Sheppard's arms didn't go anywhere near all the way around it, and it had been sunken into the side of the ravine since who knew how long. But as Sheppard watched in growing dismay, he saw the rocks and dirt around the end of the log begin to crumble as Mickey's powerful arms worked at it.

Well, hell. Time for Plan B. He didn't have a plan B, but then again, he hadn't really had a plan A either, and that had worked out pretty well.

He thought of simply charging Mickey and trying to overpower it and knock it off the edge, but he didn't think he'd make it -- the Wraith would have plenty of time to pick him off as he climbed onto the log and ran towards the bank. Besides, a 15-foot fall was more likely to damage him than Mickey, and then he'd be down in a ravine with a pissed-off Wraith.

Nope. Time to beat a hasty retreat. Sheppard doubled over at the waist to slide the knife back into its sheath, as the log shuddered again in a very ominous way. He heard a cascade of dirt let go and slide into the ravine. Gritting his teeth, bracing for the pain he knew would come, he let go and did likewise.

He tucked his body and tried to flip over to protect his injured back, but only managed to turn halfway, so he hit the canopy of shrubby trees on his side. The air exploded from his lungs and he saw stars. A shock of cold water brought him back to himself and he scrambled to his knees, gasping. He'd fallen through the brush into a small stream about two or three feet wide and a foot deep. Ice-cold water snarled about his legs as he stood unsteadily, teetering on the slippery rocks. His back hurt like hell and there were a few new bruises and scrapes to add to his complement of pain, but nothing seemed to be broken.

Without waiting to see how Mickey would react, he turned and started a mad dash down the ravine.

The ground dropped away sharply and he found himself sliding in a deliberate, controlled fall, grabbing at trees and bushes to slow himself as he stumbled and leaped from one rock to the next. Some of the trees were singed from the other Wraith's detonation and the air reeked of burned meat and hair -- a horribly familiar smell. Memory fragments flickered in the back of his mind (combat zone, desert, bodies being pulled from a crashed helicopter) but he wrenched himself back to the present. As nice as it would be to have a good long trip down memory lane, preferably with road signs, this wasn't the time or the place.

The sides of the ravine continued to get steeper, the bottom more choked with brush. The stream formed a tunnel down the center of the gully; Sheppard had to crouch almost double, splashing through the water in near-total darkness. He lost count of the number of times his feet slipped on wet rocks, sending him to his knees and gashing his hands on sharp edges of rock as he attempted to catch himself. Though the water was generally shallow, every now and then he'd plunge into a sudden deep hole, wetting himself to the knee or hip. Before too long he was soaked to the skin, cut and bruised and thoroughly ticked off. Luckily anger and exertion were keeping him warm.

He paused occasionally to listen for pursuit, but over the sounds of the rushing creek, he couldn't tell if Mickey was following him or not. No, stupid thought: he knew Mickey was following, just not how closely.

A flash of movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention and he spun around just in time to see Mickey the Wraith drop silently out of the canopy of trees overhead, landing in the stream with a splash.

Oh. Well, at least now he knew.

Sheppard flung himself from the streambed into the dense brush as the Wraith fired at him. The bolt missed him by inches. He landed face-first in what felt like rosebushes. Couldn't see a damn thing, but he could hear splashing coming closer and he wormed his way deeper into the brush, coming up against the steep side of the ravine.

Another flash of blue light brightened the night for an instant. "I can hear you breathing, human," the Wraith hissed. It was only a few feet away. "I can smell your fear."

Don't know what you're smelling, but it ain't fear, buddy. He'd never been less afraid in his life ... well, given that his life -- the part of it he could remember anyhow -- consisted of about five or six hours. Adrenaline had him so wired that everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. There was still some lingering brightness in the sky, and through the leaves he could see Mickey's white hair and flecks of white on the churning water. He pressed his hand against the moist dirt of the bluff, leaning back, looking up at the dark silhouettes of fallen trees criss-crossing the ravine.

Mickey had tried to drop the bridge on him. What if he could drop one of those trees on Mickey? He began to wriggle his way up the side of the ravine backwards, not daring to take his eyes off the Wraith in the streambed.

"Fly away, little human, fly into the night. We can find you wherever you go." Mickey paced his movements without leaving the stream. Though the Wraith seemed to have no trouble moving silently through open forest, Sheppard wondered if their long hair would be a liability in thick brush. Mickey did seem reluctant to follow him into the tangle, though maybe that was just because of what he'd done to its buddy.

He knocked his head against an unseen tree trunk and gritted his teeth against an exclamation of pain. Feeling above him, he touched rough bark and hanging strands of moss. The dead tree shifted as he tried to climb around it. Perfect. He shoved at it, felt it start to slide and then hang up on something else.

"Aha, there you are!" the Wraith hissed from below him. Sheppard threw himself under the dead tree just in time to avoid another energy bolt, starting to slide down the bank before grabbing a double handful of grass to arrest his fall. He couldn't remember whether the Wraith guns were lethal or not, but suspected that even a minor injury would be more than he could afford at this point.

Below him, the Wraith was laughing. Sheppard swore to himself. He was going to kill this bastard if it was the last thing he ever did.

Chapter Six: The Value of Stubbornness

Stubbornness, a refusal to give into problems and obstacles that face you, will give you the mental and physical strength to endure.
–U.S. Army Ranger Handbook

Rodney lasted about ten minutes hiking along the top of the bluff before deciding to try his luck on the flood plain by the river instead. The woods, which had looked so open at first glance, turned out to be filled with tangles of stickery brush, ankle-trapping holes, branches that slapped him in the face, and to add insult to injury, a yellow squirrel-like creature that pursued him in the trees high overhead, criticizing his hiking technique with a shrill, nonstop chattering that penetrated his eardrums like a dentist's drill.

So once again he underwent the torture of half-sliding, half-falling down the bluff to the open rock-strewn riverbank. Not only was the walking easier, but it was also warmer now that he was out of the shadows under the trees. Sometimes he had to climb over a tangle of boulders and driftwood, tangible evidence of the catastrophic floods that must sometimes visit this peaceful-looking valley. Now in addition to watching out for Wraith darts, he was scanning the sky for any signs of storm clouds, but it remained clear of all but a few high, wispy clouds.

As he followed the course of the river, he saw a few more open-fronted buildings similar to the one where he'd awakened, half-visible through the trees on top of the river bluff. Once he glimpsed what appeared to be a series of open fields high up on the foothills of the mountains, too square to be natural. Clearly, there had been people here once, but he saw nothing to indicate that anyone still lived here. A dead world, he thought; decimated by the Wraith, like so many others.

Why did they never seem to end up on tropical resort planets? Did any planets like that even exist in this galaxy?

The distant thunder of the waterfall grew stronger as he walked, and after about an hour or so, he reached the foot of a stupendous cliff. Damn thing must be five hundred meters tall, he thought, staring up at it. He could feel the spray from the waterfall stinging his face despite the distance. That was a helluva lot of water coming over that thing. He found himself calculating falling velocity and kilopascals, and decided that continuing to stay well away from the falls would be in his best interests.

The cliff itself was less featureless than it had seemed at first glance; in fact, studying it, Rodney could see a number of dark openings that probably led to caves. This could have promise, although the idea of being killed by Wraith in a maze of caves was possibly worse than being killed by Wraith in the open. Still ... what if he could lure a Wraith inside, trap it under a rockfall or something?

"I can't believe you're seriously considering it," he said to himself, aloud. "Rodney McKay, Wraith Killer. I mean, that's just stupid. You can't even go up against those guys with a P-90; what makes you think you can do it on a world with no technology, bare-handed?"

Something new struck him as he stood with his head tilted back, studying the cave. The second sun had finally vanished behind the mountains, and as he stood in the shadow and growing chill of the evening, he could see trails of vapor outlined against the brighter sky. They were coming from somewhere above and behind the cliff. He frowned, staring upwards. Smoke? Civilization? Sheppard?

Clearly there had been people living here once. He'd just assumed that they were all dead or gone, but perhaps there was still someone here. And while he had no idea if they'd be friendly to strangers, it had to be better than sitting out here alone with night coming on.

He started looking for a way up the cliff, when an awful thought occurred to him. The Wraith transmitter. "Oh, hell," he said aloud. He couldn't go looking for people; he'd lead the Wraith straight to them. He remembered Ronon talking about that -- how he couldn't stay in one place for long because he didn't want to betray people who helped him.

Rodney glowered at the cliff as if it was personally responsible for his problems. Damn it, he was starving and probably dying of sepsis and all he wanted was to find a nice group of people with big guns who could shoot the Wraith for him and point out the nearest Stargate.

What he'd probably find instead, from the look of this world, was a group of tribespeople armed with spears, or, if he was lucky, farmers with pitchforks. And the Wraith would follow him, and he'd get to watch them all getting culled ... again. Well, unless he was one of the first ones to be taken, of course. Which, the way his day had been going, seemed likely.

While he stood there, he became aware of a sound, over the roar of the waterfall. It wasn't a sound you heard so much as one you felt in your teeth and bones.

Wraith darts.

"Hell" didn't even begin to cover the situation, but that was what he said anyway, along with a number of other words he'd learned from a lifetime of working around soldiers. He looked around wildly like a mouse trapped in the open with hawks bearing down on it. Trees -- too far away. Caves -- too high. The base of the cliff, though, was a jumbled mess of fallen rocks and scrubby trees, so he made a dash for that instead, throwing himself down among the boulders just as two Wraith darts screamed by, high enough that they still glimmered in the light of the vanished suns.

Rodney crouched under a boulder and watched the darts bank in the sky and separate, one of them peeling off towards the mountains -- thank God -- and the other descending towards the river -- oh damn. He thought it was going to land right on top of him, but instead it disappeared between the river bluffs, a bend or two downstream.

Oh, runners ... right. Presumably the Wraith liked, well, running. Chasing. Hence the name. Maybe the meat was fresher when it was nicely seasoned with gut-wrenching terror.

Okay, think positive, think positive ... The whine of the Wraith dart had ceased, probably meaning it had landed and hungry Wraith were even now headed in his direction. "What would Sheppard do?" he whispered.

What would Sheppard do. Stupid question. He's dead and you're screwed, McKay.

But somehow, he just couldn't make himself believe that Sheppard was actually dead. The odds definitely pointed in that direction, true. But the Colonel had this way of ignoring the odds if they weren't in his favor, and damned if things didn't work out for him, somehow, every single time. McKay knew that rationally, the law of averages caught up with everybody eventually. And this could well be the time that it caught up with one cocky lieutenant colonel. But ... somehow he just couldn't quite believe that. Stupid? Unscientific? Optimistic? Rodney had never been any of those things before. He left that sort of thinking to a certain pilot with enough confidence and optimism for three people. But Sheppard wasn't here at the moment to represent the voice of idiotic over-confidence, so by God, McKay would just have to do it himself. Just to show that moron Sheppard ... well ... show him something, dammit!

Show him that Rodney McKay didn't lie down and die.

A plan, a plan. His kingdom for a plan. His brains were his weapon; who needed guns? "But guns sure help," Rodney whimpered, staring up at the cliff in the growing dusk.

And he noticed something he hadn't seen before. From farther away, it was invisible; you had to be right up close to the bottom of the cliff to see it. There was a path. Well, you could hardly call it a path; more of a mountain goat trail, really. But it zig-zagged back and forth up the cliff face, and it started very near to Rodney.

He got up and jogged over to get a closer look. He had to climb onto a pile of boulders to reach it, and he couldn't help thinking that this did not look safe at all -- the path was barely wide enough for his two feet, with no railing and lots of loose places that looked as if they wanted to slough off down the mountainside. But it looked like it would take him up the cliff fast, and right now, being above was better than being below.

He started climbing.

The early part was every bit as bad as he'd feared, but as he got higher, the path began to widen slightly, and parts of it took him through cracks in the rock that mercifully concealed the ever-growing drop below him. The one problem was that he wasn't climbing nearly as fast as he'd hoped, and he was barely a third of the way up the cliff when he heard a shout from below and the blue light of a Wraith stunner flared alarmingly close to him.

The flaw in his idea only then occurred to him: he was a sitting duck up here. "Damn, damn, damn," he mumbled, scurrying higher as fast as he could. The path rose swiftly here, rough and broken in a way that almost resembled stairs. In fact ... despite the danger, he bent over to look at it closely in the fading light. It was a set of very old, very weathered stairs, so crumbled that they could hardly be distinguished as human handiwork.

Another stun blast came much closer. The Wraith were figuring out how to compensate for the awkward angle. Looking down, Rodney saw that they had discovered the path and begun to climb. They were almost directly below him. And, holy crap, it was a long way down. He'd never been bothered by heights, but it was one thing to look down from a puddlejumper or the window of a tall building ... and quite another to be exposed on a cliff face with Wraith in pursuit.

Hmm. A plan occurred to him then -- a rather unsophisticated, very obvious plan, but one which presumably had not occurred to the Wraith, or they wouldn't be following him up the cliff.

All he needed now was a really big rock.

And, unfortunately, he needed to let them get higher. Much higher. Which meant exposing himself to their stunners. Which meant putting more distance between himself and them, if he could.

Which meant turning his back on the Wraith and climbing again, even knowing that they could shoot him at any moment, and he'd be paralyzed, and fall, and fall ...

This hero business sucked.

Up the cliff he went.

To make matters even worse, as he got higher the wind was starting to buffet at him, making it even harder to keep his balance on the narrow path. He clung to the rock, digging scraped, abused fingers into every crevice he could find. He'd broken several nails and his fingertips were bleeding.

But around another switchback, he came to a spot that seemed perfect for the ambush he'd devised. The path swung around and went into another crack in the rocks where a great sheet of the cliff face had begun to split off from the main bulk. The path climbed this crack and emerged on top. Rodney did likewise, and peered over the top of the crevice, looking for the Wraith. They were coming up much faster than he was; they'd closed half the distance already.

Well ... less time to dread what he'd have to do. Probably a good thing.

He looked around for rocks, and cursed when he realized that there weren't any -- at least none larger than his fist. Granted, even a small rock could make a pretty big impact if dropped from high enough -- assuming a gravity similar to Earth's, accelerating at 9.8m/sec means that by the time it ... shut up, brain -- but would it make enough impact to knock a Wraith off a cliff? And for that matter, could he come anywhere near hitting a Wraith with one? The answer to the first question might quite possibly be "yes", but he had a sinking sensation that the answer to the second was most definitely "no".

Though he only had little rocks to choose from, there were a lot of little rocks, along with a lot of gravel and sand and even a few scrubby bushes. Come on, you're a frikking genius, McKay. A man who believes he has nothing is a man who isn't using what he has.

So what could he do with sand, rocks and a cliff? Make an avalanche was the obvious answer. He didn't really have enough rocks to product a respectable enough avalanche to make a difference, though. Maybe the Wraith would laugh hard enough at his pathetic cloud of dust that they'd fall off the cliff on their own, but he wasn't going to sit around and hope for it.

Tipping his head back, he saw that he was close to the caves he'd seen earlier. Surrounded by them, in fact; he now saw that he'd passed a number of cave entrances, but had been too focused on the Wraith and on not falling off the path to notice. In the gathering darkness, the cave entrances loomed like pools of night. There was one just above him, but too far to reach up and grab -- he tried standing on his tiptoes, but couldn't quite reach it. The next nearest was closer to the path, but probably a five or ten-minute hike farther along. Clattering and rustling from below reminded him that he didn't have that kind of time.

Damn it. Damn it. Damn it!

He looked up the path. It was getting too dark to see the gaps and loose stones; he wasn't going to make it to the top tonight. How dumb could you get? If not for the Wraith, he could have stopped here and been relatively safe, aside from the risk of rolling off the cliff during the night, but he couldn't stop with the Wraith behind him, and he couldn't go forward without risking a fatal fall.

With shaking hands, Rodney started collecting rocks. This wasn't how he had planned to go out ... not that he really had made plans along those lines, and not that he could think of a good way to die, but dying alone on a cliff on an alien world while making a futile last stand against life-sucking monsters was, well ... not really something you wanted on your obituary. But it was heroic, he comforted himself as he gathered rocks. Yeah, it was even Sheppard-caliber heroic. One man, unarmed, against two well-armed Wraith. True, he'd been running away, but he'd stopped to face them, hadn't he? Of course, no one back home would know how his actual death had happened. Everyone in Atlantis probably already thought he was dead.

Thinking of Atlantis was like opening floodgates, and he hastily shoved the thoughts away, battening them down into a small box labeled TO BE OPENED LATER. So far, he had been too concerned with his immediate survival to spend much time dwelling on what must be happening back home. Surely Atlantis knew that he and Sheppard had been culled. Since he hadn't seen them on the hiveship, surely Teyla and Ronon were ... no, he was not thinking about that right now.

He peered over the edge and had a moment of near-total panic when he realized how dark it had gotten -- what if he couldn't see the Wraith? He imagined them coming upon him out of the darkness, one minute nothing, the next minute the hand fastening upon his chest -- oh, wait, there they were. Luckily their white hair showed up brightly against the dusk. And he could hear them faintly, talking to each other in sibilant voices. Rodney realized that this was the first time he'd ever observed Wraith closely enough to notice them talking to each other ... like people.

He thought briefly of Ellia. Freaky kid who'd tried to kill him -- but, a kid, scared and unsure, shy of strangers and affectionate with her human "father", defending Rodney and Beckett from another of her own people even when she was half-crazed from the retrovirus. Was it possible that all Wraith were -- dammit, what the hell was he thinking? He summoned his inner Sheppard for a metaphorical slap upside the head. While the enemy was closing on your position was no time to be contemplating their basic humanity. Contemplating how to kill them, yeah, that was the ticket.

He knew what he was doing, though. In desperate situations when he couldn't think of anything to do, his brain went into free-association mode, multi-tasking like crazy and leaping from one crazy thought to another. Sometimes it won him an unexpected way out of a bad situation. Other times, it just sent him on a fun-filled thrill ride through his subconscious. Looked like this was going to be one of those times. And the Wraith had just mounted another switchback, approaching his hideaway far too quickly. Maybe ten minutes, and they'd be on him.

Rodney looked back down at his pathetic pile of rocks, and then down the path to the point where the Wraith would appear. He couldn't effectively ambush them from behind the rock because he had that blasted tracking device in his back. He still hadn't figured out exactly how closely they could identify his position, but he was pretty sure they'd notice if the glowing dot was right behind the rock over their heads. However ... staring down the crevice in the dusk, a wild, crazy, desperate thought occurred to him. It couldn't possibly work. But, hell, what did he have to lose?

Scooping up an armload of rocks and gravel, he scrambled and slid down to the bottom of the crack in the cliffside, where the path turned its sharp corner. Working with feverish haste, he began to build a loose, fake step from rocks and sand. His hands were slippery with sweat, and at every moment he expected the Wraith to appear around the corner and stun him senseless. Occasionally he paused to listen to the all-too-close sounds of Wraith voices and footsteps below him. Backing up a few steps, he began crafting another one somewhat higher, and then ran to the top of the crack in the rocks and peered over the edge -- at a Wraith looking up at him from just below.

His heart nearly stopped.

The Wraith laughed a harsh, hissing laugh. "What's the matter, little human? Are you tired of running?" It swung up its stunner and Rodney ducked back wildly just in time to avoid taking a stun blast in the face. It'd been unpleasant enough when he'd experienced it in Atlantis, but if it happened to him here, it would be followed by a very long fall with a very unpleasant end.

Now this was the point when he should start shouting out taunts, Sheppard-style, to keep them off guard. But it was all he could do not to pass out from terror. His throat seemed to have constricted to the size of a pinhole; he had to struggle to breathe.

Behind the rock sheltering him, he heard shuffling footsteps, and the first Wraith appeared at the bottom of the path, leaning cautiously around the rock and then relaxing when it saw he wasn't close enough to be a threat. It raised its stunner and Rodney felt his heart seize up. This was the moment of truth. Would it shoot first, or take a step forward?

It took a step forward. And its foot came down on what appeared to be the same cracked stone as the rest of the path -- but was actually loose sand and gravel. It stumbled, momentarily losing its balance. And Rodney was in motion, flinging a double handful of sand into its face, followed by a barrage of poorly aimed rocks. It staggered backwards and went off the path.

It didn't scream. It just fell. Rodney stared over the edge with his eyes as huge as saucers. The other Wraith stared, too, following the trajectory of its vanished comrade until the fall ended in a very faint, very solid impact from below.

Rodney still wasn't sure exactly what it took to kill a Wraith, but he imagined that that had probably done it.

God, they were dumb.

Unfortunately, the other one didn't seem to be that stupid ... or at least it could learn from its companion's mistakes. It tilted its head back and looked up at him, its alien face unreadable. Then it tensed its legs and -- Rodney realized what it was doing a split second before it happened, and scrambled desperately backwards to fetch up flat against the cliffside as the Wraith leaped, several times its own height, straight up, and landed lithely on top of the rock slab he'd been hiding behind. Rodney, huddled against the cliff, stared in numb horror as it bent its legs to catch itself and then straightened up, maybe two meters away from him, staring at him down the length of its stunner.

Rodney realized that he still had a rock clutched in one white-knuckled hand. He threw it, and missed by a mile of course. The rock sailed past the Wraith's shoulder and vanished over the edge.

The Wraith bared its teeth in a smile.

Rodney's last, desperate thought was the cave, but looking up, he saw that not only was the cave mouth still out of his reach just as it had always been, but it was almost directly opposite the Wraith -- standing as he was on the top of the rock slab -- and therefore, even if he could somehow climb into it, he'd still be a sitting duck for stunner blasts.

And then the miracle occurred.

There was no warning. One minute he was sitting there, flat against the rock, waiting to die, and the next minute there was a whirling sound like a thousand eggbeaters all going at once, and the air over Rodney's head turned black, shutting out the sight of the lingering sunset in the sky. The Wraith let out a single harsh cry and tumbled backward, letting off a stunner bolt that shot through the roiling black cloud without making a mark. Then it, like its partner, had vanished over the edge of the cliff. And Rodney was left, frozen, watching the swirling cloud rise higher in the evening air until it began to break up and dissipate high over the trees.

There was a soft pittering sound around him and he dragged his eyes downward to see that several small dark bodies had hit the rocks near him. Very cautiously, he reached out to poke one with his finger. It was warm, furry and breathing, about the size of his thumb.

Holy mother of ... They were bats.

And it all came together. The caves were the home of bats, or this planet's local equivalent. They hadn't attacked the Wraith; they had just come out at dusk, in a swarm, as bats do. The Wraith was unlucky enough to be in front of them. It would have been fine, even so, if it hadn't been standing at the edge of a drop-off the height of the CN Tower.

The little bodies laying around him were bats that had been hit by the one stun shot the Wraith had managed to squeeze off before it fell.

Now that he concentrated, he noticed a faint, pungent smell drifting down from the cave -- probably bat guano.

Because he knew what it felt like to get hit with a Wraith stunner, and because the little buggers had just saved his life, he carefully gathered up the stunned bats -- those he could find -- and placed them in a sheltered spot in the rocks where they could sleep it off. They were as soft as cashmere, and each of them had six small wings. Rodney noticed as he did this that his hands were trembling. When he'd tucked the bats in, he leaned against the rock and pressed his forehead against it, breathing deeply.

He had been so sure he was going to die.

"I hate this," Rodney said aloud, not sure who or what he was talking to. The only audience he had at the moment was furry and unconscious. "I really, really hate this. I'm a scientist. I'm not ... I'm not Sheppard, for crying out loud. I don't fight Wraith on alien planets. I sit in a nice comfortable lab and figure out strange bits of technology." He tipped his head back and yelled at the sky, "I'm really, really BAD at this, you do understand that, right?"

As his shout died away under the darkening sky, a sudden, distant explosion and flash of light made him jump. He clutched at the rock under his fingers and stared out across the dark expanse of forest below him. It'd come from the hills, where the land rose from the river into the rifts and peaks of the mountains. It was not followed by another.

"Sheppard?" he whispered aloud, and stood there for a long time, staring out at the forest. A couple of times he thought he might have seen the blue flashes of a Wraith's stunner, but he couldn't tell if it was real or just his eyes playing tricks in the bad light.

He stared at the hills until his eyes burned, but nothing yielded a further clue.

What else could it have been but Sheppard? Farmers clearing trees ... with high explosives ... in the dark? Maybe this planet had randomly exploding owls. No -- it was Sheppard, it had to be. And Rodney grinned into the darkness, staring in the direction of the explosion and trying to fix it in his mind. Tomorrow, he'd head in that direction and find out. Assuming no more Wraith came tonight. Assuming he survived until morning.

He sat down with his back against the cliff, looking out over the forest, and got out his scanner, placing it on his knees to warn him of approaching Wraith. He was picking up some low-level Wraith transmissions, but nothing close. Taking small bites so as to make it last, he ate one of his remaining powerbars and licked the wrapper clean. He wondered what Sheppard was doing for food. Being Sheppard, he'd probably built himself a bow and arrows and gotten a nice little Robinson Crusoe camp going.

Of course, the explosion -- if it had really been Sheppard, and Rodney couldn't imagine what else it could have been -- would seem to indicate that the Colonel had more problems than just wilderness survival on his plate. As did they all.

Rodney finished his powerbar and squirmed a little, trying to get comfortable without disturbing the injury on his back. He was thirsty, but didn't dare try to move too far in the dark in order to get water. The steady thunder of the waterfall, and the cool dampness he could feel even from here, raised his thirst from annoyance to torment. And he was cold. And exhausted. And his back hurt; his scrapes and bruises hurt. Everything hurt.

All this after being a runner for less than a day. He closed his eyes, then opened them again. And yet ... he'd taken out two Wraith, hadn't he? True, one was dumb luck, but the other one ... he'd done that, himself, Rodney McKay. He'd killed a Wraith with no weapons or tools, nothing but his own mind. Rodney found himself grinning again. They'd never believe this back home!

And they'd probably never know about this back home. His grin fell away, slowly, one piece at a time. He wondered what they were doing now. Looking for him and Sheppard, probably ... but all they would know was that the two men had been picked up during a Wraith culling. They'd have no way of knowing what hive ship they'd been taken on, no reason to believe either of them were still alive. Surely they would search, but not knowing where to search, not having any logical reason to think he and Sheppard were still alive, they'd eventually give up and send a message to the SGC: two more men dead in the Pegasus Galaxy.

When Rodney closed his eyes again, he realized to his horror that he was fighting back tears. If only he wasn't so damned alone here. It was like being back in the sinking puddlejumper all over again. At least that time, he'd had his hallucinations for company. Here, there was just him, and for a guy who'd spent his whole life believing that he didn't need anybody, he couldn't believe how much it bothered him to be completely by himself.

Above him, on the rock face, something clattered. Rodney jolted forward as if he'd been shot, then tried to stifle a soft cry as the movement tore at the injury on his back. Clutching a rock in one hand and the Ancient scanner in the other, he glared up the path in the near-total darkness. There appeared to be no moons on this world, and he could hardly see the cliff six inches from his head. Someone could have been standing right next to him, and he wouldn't have known.

"Hello?"

There was no response. The sound didn't come again. Maybe it had just been rock contracting and cooling in the night's chill, he told himself.

Yeah. Right. He flicked a glance at the scanner. There were life sign readings above him, several of them. With everything he'd done to the controls lately, there was no way he could tell anything about them, other than their presence.

"Hello? I know you're there," he called into the dark.

But no one answered, and after a long while, he sat down again, facing toward the life signs, with a rock clutched in his free hand. Wishing he was braver, and that he wasn't so alone. Waiting.

Chapter Seven: Food Chain

Anything that creeps, crawls, swims or flies is a possible source of food.
–U.S. Army Ranger Handbook

In the darkness of the ravine, Sheppard found that his other four senses had gone into overdrive. He could smell the cool musk of the soil crumbling under his hands, and under that, a faint, strange, dry odor that he thought might be the smell of Mickey the Wraith itself. The rushing of the creek, the rasping of the tree bark under his hand, the splashing of the Wraith's feet in the water followed by crackling leaves as it stepped out -- all these things formed a three-dimensional picture in his head of the world around him.

He could still see, a little -- the dark shapes of leaves against a star-spattered sky, glimmerings of Mickey's white hair. But his eyes were increasingly useless. This world either didn't have moons, or none of them were up tonight.

After slipping a few inches, the tree resisted all his efforts to budge it. He remembered how easily Mickey had dislodged the much bigger log at the base of the bridge. In a few minutes, apparently, he was going to be involved in hand-to-hand combat against something that was capable of doing that. Christ, he was so screwed.

... And he'd done this before, hadn't he? Fighting a Wraith hand-to-hand. It was all so familiar. Desperately he tried to remember how he'd gotten out of that one, but all he could remember was someone distracting it -- someone standing up from behind a pile of rocks and emptying a gun into its chest.

Well, that wasn't going to happen this time. He was entirely on his own -- and damned if that realization didn't feel like a knife twisting in his chest, but there was no time to worry about it, not with Mickey closing in, no weapons and nowhere to go.

I've got responsibilities back home -- people I care about, who care about me.

He's spoken those words to someone, not all that long ago. He could almost see that place -- warm, grassy, sunlight on his skin, and he'd been talking to a woman, insisting that he had to get back ... somewhere.

People who care about me.

Somewhere, someone was worrying about him. Looking for him. Whatever kind of person he was in his normal life, he wasn't alone.

Sheppard! He could still hear the voice scream his name, ragged with terror. He still didn't know the name of the voice's owner -- but he did know that he had to find him. There was one thing Sheppard knew about himself, from some deep part of him that had not been erased by whatever trauma took his memory: he was a person who protected others. He didn't know what he was, or who he was, but he did know that much. He protected the people he cared about, and no Wraith was going to come between him and that responsibility.

"Gone to ground, little human?" the Wraith called tauntingly. "I don't hear you running!"

Of course, this Wraith had other ideas. It still seemed reluctant to follow him into the brush, and that, he imagined, was the only reason why he was still alive. He scrambled higher up the bank, his boot finding purchase on the mossy tree trunk, nearly slipping off before he found a secure toehold.

Hm. He was now standing on the tree trunk, up against the bank, looking down at the white glimmer of the Wraith's hair.

What he was about to try was stupid. He didn't remember much about the other time he'd gone up against one of the suckers hand-to-hand, but he did remember it hadn't gone well. On the other hand, he really didn't have much choice. Running like a hunted animal was not his style.

The Wraith 's hissing voice called to him out of the darkness. "Your life will be sweet. Those who run hard are all the tastier when caught."

He crouched down on the log and felt about in the leaves and sticks at its base until he got his hands on a good, solid chunk of wood, about as long and thick as his arm. Then he shuffled forward a few quick steps, and jumped.

His great fear was that they could see in the dark, and that it would be able to turn swiftly enough to fire as he plunged down on top of it. And it did see him coming, and spun around with the gun coming up to point between his eyes, but it was unable to get it in place fast enough to snap off a shot. They both sprawled in the shallow water of the creek, Sheppard driving the Wraith into the water under the weight of his body.

But his eyes were all for the gun. He had no intention of trying to outfight a Wraith barehanded. He'd been entirely focused on the gun, and as he struck he swung his club, dealing the hardest possible blow to the Wraith's weapon arm that he could manage. When they fell, Sheppard and the Wraith went in one direction while the gun skittered away into the dark water.

Sheppard hit water and Wraith, and was up again, lunging in the direction he was pretty sure the gun had gone. In the near-total darkness at the bottom of the ravine, he couldn't see a damn thing and he had a suspicion the Wraith had much better night vision than he did, if only because it would just figure with the way the rest of his day had gone. On his hands and knees, ice-cold water swirling around him, he swung his hands across the bottom of the creek. Sharp, slimy rocks tore at fingers which were rapidly going numb from the cold --

-- and stars exploded in his vision as something came down brutally on his injured back. Sheppard sprawled facedown in the water and came up gasping, rolling to partially deflect another blow from the Wraith that nearly flattened him and left his right arm stinging and numb. But finally, finally something had gone his way -- under the water, his left hand had closed over a smooth surface which was not a rock.

The Wraith loomed over him, a black shape against the last vestiges of light in the sky, and Sheppard brought up the gun. There was no room for conscious thought: he was shooting with his off hand, with a weapon he might have never used before, and he just let instinct take over. He'd spent many hours firing many different kinds of weapons, and he let his body do it. He had just an instant to worry that the Wraith guns might not work underwater, before the ravine lit up in a brief flare of blue light, and the Wraith let out a strangled cry of rage as it fell over backwards, half in the creek and half on the bank.

Sheppard could hear it thrashing as he scrambled upright -- apparently one shot wasn't enough for a Wraith -- and so he shot it again, and then one more time, until the noises stopped.

The guns weren't fatal. He remembered that now. The Wraith used them to hunt prey to feed upon ... and they liked their prey alive. He stumbled forward in the darkness, shaking his right arm until he started getting some feeling back -- he didn't think anything was broken, but damn, it hurt. He'd probably have a bruise from wrist to elbow. But there'd be time to worry about that later. He wrapped his unresponsive fingers around the hilt of his knife, and there in the darkness of the ravine, he made sure that Mickey the stunned Wraith would never bother him again.

When he had finished, and was positive beyond a reasonable doubt that even the most resilient Wraith couldn't get up from that, he knelt and washed in the water of the stream. Wraith blood was heavy, sticky and cold compared to human blood, and it had a weird, musty smell. Some part of him noted that he wasn't especially concerned about having killed a helpless enemy in (literally) cold blood. A human enemy might have been different -- he knew that he had killed people, but he also had a vague memory of standing over a man, a powerful man who had tried to kill him, and letting him live. He wasn't a pathological killer, at least he didn't think so -- just somebody who was willing to do what it took to survive. To protect himself, and those close to him.

It was amazing how good it felt to have a gun in his hands again. If there'd ever been any doubt in Sheppard's mind that he had been a career soldier, those doubts were gone. He felt ... whole. Safe. Hefting the gun, he looked up at the sky overhead -- now completely dark and spangled with stars. And he remembered that these things had come in a ship. If he could find it, then he could fly it -- he knew that in the same way that he knew everything else he couldn't quite remember. Could they have left it unguarded? Well, now that he was armed, he didn't mind going up against one or two more of these sons of bitches. In fact, he rather welcomed the idea.

He felt over the Wraith's body for anything else that might be of use to him, but they didn't seem to carry gear, at least nothing beyond a couple odd pieces of technology that he couldn't figure out. One of them was probably a tracker for the transmitter that he assumed he carried in his body, but it wasn't as if that did him any good whatsoever. There must be some way to get at its self-destruct device, but fumbling around with high explosives in the dark did not seem like a good recipe for a long and healthy life. In the end, he dragged the body into the bushes and then walked down the stream for a few minutes to hide his tracks -- it wasn't as if he could get any wetter, and the movement kept him warm -- before climbing out onto the bank and scrambling out of the ravine.

After the near-total darkness in the ravine, he found that the open pine woodland was ... well, not light exactly ... but he could see dimly through the trees, well enough to keep from tripping on roots, anyhow. The next problem occurred to him as he looked around and tried to figure out which way the Wraith ship had been going when it had flown over him. He wasn't sure which way was which. He'd been far too busy outrunning Wraith to pay much attention to the twists and turns in the ravine, and while normally the mountains would be a wonderful direction indicator, it was too dark and there were too many trees to even figure out which way the mountains were.

Compass! He dug it out of his pocket, and realized two things simultaneously.

One: A compass is only useful for finding your way if you've been taking readings all along and therefore know how the landmarks are oriented. It doesn't help to know where north is when you don't have any way of knowing if your destination is north, south, east or west of anything else in the landscape. For that matter, he didn't even know if this planet had a magnetic field at all.

Two: You can't read a compass in the dark.

He sighed and put it away. Fine. The old-fashioned way it was, then. The land sloped up in front of him, and while he didn't know if that meant that he was heading back up into the mountains or just up a ridge, it should at least take him to a high point where he might be able to get his bearings. With the gun slipping into a familiar position in his arms, he loped between the trees at a ground-eating trot.

The trees became more sparse and open, until he emerged on a bare, stony ridge and the valley spread out before him, an inky pool of night. The mountain peaks were discernible by faint light -- starlight and the light of the long-set suns -- glimmering from the snow on their upper peaks. Alpenglow. It was a weird, ghostly effect. Tearing his eyes away from the silver brows of the mountains, Sheppard located the river's twisting silver ribbon in the valley. He'd strayed quite far off his original course, and still couldn't identify exactly where the ship had come down, but at least he knew which way he was headed.

A shrill, ululating scream from the mountains behind him made him jump and spin around, gun at the ready. The scream trailed away into a low sound like a cough, then repeated itself. It was not remotely human, nor did it sound like anything he'd heard from the Wraith. Some kind of local animal, then. Perhaps a predator. Standing still on the ridge, Sheppard became aware that the night around him was not at all silent, but filled with rustlings and occasional small cries as the unseen wildlife of this world conducted their nightly affairs. It exhilarated him.

Throwing his head back, he looked up at a spectacular panorama of stars, glittering in clusters and sweeping constellations. He had rarely seen stars brighter than this, and only then from outer space -- memories spun in fragments through his mind, crystal-sharp memories of stars seemingly close enough to touch, separated from him by nothing more than a thin sheet of glass or plastic. And he ... he slipped among the stars in a spaceship, his ship, guiding it with delicate touches of hand and mind -- and he turned, laughing, to say something to the person in the seat next to him, who also turned to meet his gaze ... and --

-- and something dark darted across one of the brighter constellations. Sheppard flinched, realizing that it had been mere inches from his nose: some kind of small, batlike creature. Others appeared and vanished in the darkness about him. Drawing a deep breath, he reluctantly shook off the memory and the accompanying sense of warmth and peace that had descended upon him. In a weird, probably quite messed-up way, he liked it here on this wild world, pitting himself against nature and Wraith -- but in that memory he'd been ...

Home.

And he intended to get back to it.

But first ... this seemed like a good time to try to get some rest. The alternative was blundering around in the dark, looking for the Wraith ship and risking a broken leg at the very least. He was already beginning to shiver, standing on the ridge in his wet clothes, and he knew that fatigue and hunger were contributing to the problem. Yeah. Camping time.

Descending the other side of the ridge, he accidentally flushed a covey (flock? herd? fleet?) of little stripey critters, sort of like weasels with rabbit ears, and he got one of them with the stunner. It flipped end-over-end and landed in a furry heap. Dinner!

After about half an hour of gathering the dry lower branches of the pine trees, he had a small, nearly smokeless fire going under the leaning trunk of one of the bigger trees, and his rabbitoid was roasting nicely. He could feel himself falling back on training from the life he couldn't remember -- things that he had been taught, things that his hands knew even if his conscious mind didn't. He had known how to survive in the wilderness. Maybe he wasn't particularly good at it, but he was good enough to get by. Huddled up to the fire, he stripped off his wet socks and boots, and thus discovered that the pine needles carpeting the ground were much softer than the prickly Earth variety -- it was almost like burrowing his toes into a shag rug. Well, well! He spent a few minutes scraping together a good, big pile of needles, finding that they had a fragrance more like perfume than pine, and soon he'd peeled off most of his damp clothing and strung it up over the fire. Nestled down in a bed of needles, eating half-raw rabbitoid -- which tasted like chicken, of course -- he could almost believe that this might turn out okay. He had a knife; he had a gun; he apparently had not-too-shabby wilderness survival skills.

He also had a tracking device in his back and a bunch of Wraith hunting him. Sheppard sighed, burrowing deeper into the needles and feeling the weight of exhaustion pressing down on him. Sleep would be a really bad idea right now, considering that the Wraith could be searching for him at this moment, but he was so damn tired. What he wouldn't give for someone to watch his back while he slept, if only for a short while. Loneliness stabbed at him with a sudden, sharp pain, and he wished he could remember more about the people that he knew waited for him at home. His eyelids drifted lower, and a woman swam in his mind's eye, bright and sharp and strong; he parried words with her like swords. He fell forward, falling into her intense eyes, into his memories, and woke with a start when his cheek hit the cold ground.

Damn it! Sheppard shook himself awake. The fire had burned down to coals; he'd actually nodded off for a few minutes. This wasn't going to work. He needed sleep. And since he didn't have anyone to watch out for him, he'd just have to improvise. Forcing himself out of the pile of needles, half-naked in the cold night, he occupied himself for a half-hour or so with setting up various traps around his little hideaway: basic stuff, piles of crackly dry leaves and sticks balanced precariously on top of deadfalls, just enough to warn him if anything came close. Then he extinguished the fire and dug back into the pile of needles until he was, he hoped, concealed from a casual observer. One of his hands curled protectively over the Wraith gun, and he lay in the shadows of a strange world and stared out into the night until the darkness began to fill with faces and voices that he had once known ... faces he couldn't name, yet all of them precious to him, and he knew as he drifted into sleep that he'd give his life for any one of them.

Sheppard slept, and his sleep was filled with dreams of the life that a part of him still remembered.

Chapter Eight: Learning from the Locals

Act like the natives; watch their daily routines. When, where and how they get their food. Where they get their water.
–U.S. Army Ranger Handbook

Rodney didn't sleep, but sometimes he dozed, wedged in a crack in the rocks with his scanner propped in his lap. The one time that he actually fell into something approaching a true sleep, he was awakened with a jolt by a sudden thunder that he mistook at first for the vibration of a Wraith dart. He was already on his feet and staring blearily around when he noticed the rapid movement of alien bats above him, darting and swirling in an elaborate dance. Then he realized that he could see them; the night had lightened from black to gray, and a streak of pink had appeared in the sky above the mountains.

He was stiff, cold, damp. As the bats flew back into their cave, Rodney tried to shake the kinks out of his arms and legs, wincing at the now-familiar pain in his back and trying to ascertain if it had gotten worse. Actually, if anything, the pain seemed to be getting better, although maybe it was just drowned out by the screaming of sore muscles and scrapes from every other part of his body. Thirst had become a torment, made worse by the thunder of the waterfall just out of his reach. The rocks were damp with dew and with the waterfall's spray, and he actually tried touching his tongue to the cliffside before realizing how completely stupid that was. He'd have all the water he wanted once he reached the top of the cliff, and in the meantime, catching some sort of alien disease from bat-infested rocks wasn't a bright idea.

Looking over the cliff as the edge of the leading sun crept over the horizon, Rodney was struck by how far he had managed to climb last night. Those rocks were really, really far down there. He could spot both Wraith bodies still lying where they'd fallen. Raising his eyes to the winding river, the thought crossed his mind that there might be an abandoned Wraith dart down there somewhere ... but no way in hell was he climbing down to find out. Besides, even if he did find one, it was completely useless to him without Sheppard. Even to save his own life, he knew he couldn't fly a Wraith ship.

He looked up at the mountains where he'd seen the flash of light last night. By the light of a new day, it was much harder to convince himself that one small technological aberration meant Sheppard was alive ... difficult, even, to believe that he'd actually seen it. He had done a lot of drifting last night, and maybe he'd just imagined it, somewhere between sleeping and waking, afloat in a hypoglycemic haze.

Hypoglycemia ... Rodney realized that he wasn't hungry, and this seemed very bad considering that he'd had nothing but two powerbars in over twenty-four hours. Thirst probably explained at least part of it, but he got out a powerbar anyway and forced himself to choke it down through the gravelly dryness in his throat. As he ate, he looked down into the canyon, at the Wraith bodies and the river glimmering in the morning light.

Climb down and look for a dart? Or continue climbing upwards? He decided to refer to his inner Sheppard, who was rapidly becoming his survival manual. "So, Sheppard," he said aloud, balling up the powerbar wrapper and stuffing it into a pocket of his vest, "which way do we go?"

Never in a million years would he have thought that he'd ever make a conscious effort to think like John Sheppard, a man who thought that American football was the height of his nation's intellectual achievements. On the other hand, an intelligent man knew when to defer to the experts, and this was precisely the sort of situation at which Sheppard excelled. And his inner Sheppard thought they should go up. No point in trying to find a Wraith ship if you can't fly it, the Colonel would have said. And no sense in backtracking over ground you've already covered. You've come over halfway up the cliff, so don't climb back down. Keep going.

Sheppard was making sense, so Rodney went up.

Good God, Rodney thought as he climbed, I've gone beyond talking to myself. I'm now having complete conversations with myself ... again. If I start hallucinating Sheppard, I'll know I'm in trouble. And if I find myself kissing him, I'm jumping right off this cliff.

But no Sheppard materialized, amorous or otherwise. Besides, he was soon too distracted with thirst to think about anything but reaching the top of the cliff so he could get a drink. Well, that and the blister he could feel forming on his left heel. Both suns were high above the horizon by the time that he finally topped the final leg of the path, wheezing and gasping while grayness hovered around the edges of his vision. The first thing he did was half-limp, half-run to the river, throw himself down on the rocks and drink with his face in the water, like a dog. Thirst finally slaked, he laid his head down on his arms and wished he could just sleep for a month.

Hunger drove him upright. Now that he wasn't so thirsty, his stomach had made itself known with a vengeance, and he reeled woozily as he sat upright. Definitely experiencing severe blood sugar issues here. He tried to convince himself that it wasn't a good idea to eat another powerbar so soon ... but, honestly, no matter how carefully he doled them out, he was going to run out in a day or so anyway. All he was doing was buying himself a few more hours of time, and in return, possibly making himself so weak from hunger that he wouldn't be able to do anything useful.

So he sat on the riverbank, warming up in the sun and eating a honey peanut powerbar one small bite at a time. It tasted like heaven. He washed it down with a long drink of river water and sat for one moment longer, gazing up at a serenely blue sky. The Wraith hadn't come back yet, but they would. In force, no doubt.

He'd gotten lucky, very lucky, on the cliff. As proud of himself as he was for taking out two Wraith barehanded, he also knew that a lot of flukes had come together to keep him alive. He couldn't keep living on luck. More Wraith would come, many more. He couldn't hide from them, not with that tracker in his back.

His head snapped forward. Or could he?

You're the dumbest genius ever, Rodney. It's just a goddamn radio transmitter. If it sends a signal, you can block it.

With hands that trembled from excitement, as well as cold and hypoglycemia, he fumbled out his Ancient scanner and pried off the back. Why had he never thought of this before? All he had to do was identify the frequency that the transmitter was using to broadcast, and then modify the scanner so that rather than passively picking up signals, it would actively jam them. Of course, it would then be useless for its normal function, but in this case he figured the tradeoff was well worth it.

Finding the Wraith transmitter frequency was a piece of cake. All he had to do was use his makeshift tuning crystal to locate the right energy band. The jamming part turned out to be much harder, but after the better part of an hour, he was pretty sure that he had a functional jammer. He froze just as he was about to turn it on.

Stupid, stupid genius! Of course, the first thing that would happen when he activated it, thus disappearing from Wraith radar, was an immediate convergence of Wraith on his last known position. And they'd have darts, stunners and, no doubt, all kinds of scanners of their own. Being able to turn off the transmitter wasn't much good if he was immediately picked off by angry Wraith.

Okay. He'd solved the first challenge: deactivating the transmitter. At least, he was pretty sure he had. Now he had a new problem to solve: finding a way to rapidly conceal himself after turning the thing off.

He glanced down at the fast-moving river. Well, yes, granted, going over the waterfall would solve the hiding problem. Being crushed into Rodney jelly was the rather notable downside to that particular plan, however.

Could he possibly go over the waterfall without dying?

He sat and thought about this, becoming aware, as he did so, of how very quiet it was in this place. Distance muted the thunder of the waterfall to a hiss like the sound of traffic on a wet road, and the only other noises were the water rushing over rocks at his back, and the whisper of wind rustling in the trees. Somewhere came a distant birdcall like the ringing of bells.

And, somewhere nearer, he heard something rustle in the woods.

Maybe it was the wind. But it came again. Rodney turned his head slowly, trying very hard not to panic, and not entirely succeeding. He looked down at the scanner out of instinct, only to remember that he'd converted it to an entirely different function.

The trees looked perfectly innocent. The sound didn't come again. Somehow, this did not seem like proper Wraith behavior to him. Were they stalking him? Playing with him?

He had to get out of the open. However, the only place to go was into the trees. He realized then that he wasn't sure which direction the rustling had come from. Left? Right? This side of the river? The other side?

Judging by the fact that he hadn't been shot yet, maybe it really had been the wind. Would he bet his life on it? Hell, no.

He decided to move to the other side of the river, going by the reasoning that if something was truly stalking him, it would most likely be on his side rather than the other. The river was broad and shallow here; it only came up to his knees as he waded across, though it was bitterly cold. The belated thought occurred to him that taking off his boots would have been a good idea. Squelching with each step, he began to walk upriver, looking for someplace he might hide from the Wraith. Occasionally, when he paused for a rest, he could swear that he heard rustling sounds from the other side of the river, but they seemed to vanish when he stood still for any length of time.

He saw little wildlife, but there was some: small fluttery birds, and bigger ones with long, pointed wings. A lithe, fox-like creature darted through the underbrush, and Rodney's eyes followed it in fascination, until he was brought up short by a swarm of slim, yellow insects that looked alarmingly like wasps; Rodney froze, stricken, until they flew away. No idea if he'd be allergic to alien wasps, but anaphylaxis was not on his list of things to do today.

He topped a rise and looked back upon a rolling quilt of forest and river and stone. Had he really climbed so high? He could now see that the river ran down to an ocean; it was nothing more than a blue haze from this distance, but he'd seen enough of Atlantis's ocean from the puddlejumpers to know what bodies of water looked like, even from far away. Clouds were beginning to gather in the sky over the ocean, big fluffy ones with white tops and gray underbellies. While meteorology was one of the few things McKay didn't know much about, he thought those looked like storm clouds.

Following the river's meandering course with his eyes, he wondered if there was any way to fool the Wraith into thinking that he'd gone over the falls. That might be able to explain the sudden loss of the transmitter signal. But ... he just couldn't think of a way, not without sacrificing enough of his clothes and supplies to leave sufficient personal effects to fool them, and at this point, he needed everything he had. Especially the clothes -- he could barely keep warm enough on this chilly planet as it was.

He turned back around, and jumped.

A kid stood in front of him, half-concealed in the shadows of the forest. It looked about ten or eleven, or maybe thirteen, or eight -- he absolutely sucked at estimating children's ages. Or their genders: he thought it might be a boy, but he wouldn't swear to that in a court of law. The child appeared to subscribe to the Ronon Dex school of style, with long ratty hair and a ragged shirt that was more patch than original material. He gripped what appeared to be a rusty machete in both hands and glowered at Rodney with defiant terror.

"Hey there, uh, champ," Rodney offered weakly.

"Don't move." The kid tensed, spreading his legs and tightening his grip on the machete.

With a rustling of leaves, another one popped up beside the boy -- a slightly smaller girl, holding an axe nearly as long as her whole body. The boy took his eyes off Rodney for a minute to give the girl a look of exasperation and disbelief. "I told you to stay hidden, brat!"

The girl shook her head, tangled hair flying. "I don't have to do what you say," she retorted cheekily, and moved to stand beside the boy with her pathetic weapon held in front of her.

Rodney shook off a growing sense of deja vu. Oh please no. Not another kid planet.

"Who are you kids, and why are you out here without an adult?" he demanded.

The boy's eyes narrowed. "Because there aren't any. The Wraith got them all. Where do you come from? You're not from around here."

"I came to this world -- um, through a big metal ring." He had to assume there was a Stargate around here somewhere, because otherwise, he couldn't imagine how he and Sheppard were going to get home. The presence of people on this world would seem to indicate that there must be, unless Wraith used their hiveships to seed worlds with their own form of cattle. "You don't happen to have seen anything like that? Or heard of it?" he asked hopefully. "A big gray ring, probably sitting all by itself in a field or on a hill somewhere? Taller than me?"

The kids looked at each other. "He's crazy," the girl said.

The boy, who Rodney assumed must be her brother, nodded. "He must've been living alone all this time. Nuts."

Rodney dropped his hands to his sides and glared at the two urchins. Damn it, he was hungry, tired, scared, frustrated and he really didn't have time for this. "Show some respect for your elders, you little monsters. I came here from another planet, I don't want to be here, and I'd like nothing better than to go home."

"You're rude," the girl said.

"And mean," the boy added.

Rodney groaned. "I'm starving to death in the wilderness with Wraith trying to kill me. You'll pardon me if I'm a little testy --"

He broke off as the distinctive whine of a dart shivered the mid-morning air. Through the canopy of trees, Rodney could see the slim shape hurtle out of the north and bank overhead, then vanishing from his sight.

He turned back to see that the kids had vanished without a trace. A sudden, panicked thought occurred to him. "Hey!" he called in a loud whisper. "Hey! Kids! Come back!"

They hadn't gone far, for there was a scuffling and two small heads peered out of the underbrush at him. "Wraith are coming, crazy metal ring man. You'd better get out of here."

"I don't have anywhere to go," Rodney hissed back. "Do you kids know places to hide from the Wraith?"

The boy and girl looked at each other and then back at him with an expression that clearly said, in whatever local parlance, Duh.

"Can you show me?"

"Why should we?" the boy demanded.

What in the world did he have that he could offer a couple of kids -- Wraith orphans, from the sound of things? "Do you want to stay here? When I leave this world, I can take you with me." The look on their faces clearly indicated that they still thought he was crazy. "I can fix stuff, too. You got anything that's broken? You need me to build something for you? I can do that too." He was talking faster and faster. The whine of the Wraith dart had ceased, which meant that he had to get out of here now. "I can take things down off the top shelf for you, for crying out loud. Grown-ups are useful to have around. Just help me hide!"

"If we leave him out here, he'll probably die," the girl said to the boy.

The boy shifted his gaze back to Rodney. "How do we know we can trust you?"

"You don't," Rodney said, frustration shifting over slowly to terror as the seconds ticked by. "It's a crazy, messed-up world, as you both no doubt know first-hand. But if you leave me out here, I'm going to die, that's pretty much a given at this point. And for what it's worth, if you help me I do promise to do everything in my power to help you."

His hand hovered over the button on the scanner. If they wouldn't help him, he'd just have to hit the button and make a run for it, hoping that he could find a Wraith-proof place to hole up before they started an all-out search.

"Come on," the boy said, and Rodney let out a long, pent-up breath.

"The others won't like this," the girl muttered darkly.

Others?

"What can we do, Tekka, just leave him here to die?" The boy gestured impatiently at Rodney. "C'mon! Hurry!"

He hurried. "Are we close?" he asked, feeling huge and clumsy as he jogged through the woods after the lithe children. They slipped in and out of the trees' shadows like tiny wood spirits; he lumbered after them, tripping on roots and getting smacked in the face with branches.

"Very close," the boy called over his shoulder.

Rodney swallowed, and hit the button. He didn't want to do it too early and tip off the Wraith that he was planning something, but on the other hand, he didn't want to lead them straight to his (and the kids') hide-hole either. The thought came to him that if his jamming device failed, then he'd not only doomed himself but the kids who were helping him as well. Guilt stabbed at him. But the scanner's readout showed him that it was indeed jamming the signal, assuming he'd done everything correctly. He trusted himself. He had to; no one else was around to do it, except the kids, and they thought he was some kind of madman.

"Here," the girl whispered, and she appeared to vanish between one tree and the next.

Rodney halted, stared. The boy groaned and prodded him forward. "Hurry up!"

He had to kneel down to see where the girl had gone. What appeared to be a jumble of rocks, overgrown with brush, actually concealed some kind of opening. There were rotted timbers shoring it up -- an old mine entrance, maybe? Whatever it was, you couldn't see it unless you were standing right in front of it. Rodney had a moment of doubt that he could make it through the small space, but prodded again by the boy, and by the knowledge that the Wraith were no doubt closing in on him, he tucked the scanner away to keep it from getting damaged and then crawled forward. On the other side of the entrance, he found that there was enough space to stand up.

The girl was waiting for him inside. The boy crawled through after them and then pushed a rock to mostly block the entrance, cutting off much of the light as well.

"Thank you," he said. "Both of you."

The boy just shook his head sharply. "Don't talk here. Deeper."

Rodney jumped when small fingers slipped into his hand. It was the girl. "It's going to be dark," she whispered. "Follow me. We know the way. Just be careful of your feet."

"Where are we going?" Rodney whispered back, nervously, as they left the light behind and darkness fell around them. The girl didn't answer -- god, kids annoyed him, even kids who'd just saved his life. As the darkness became complete, claustrophobia surged up to fill the space, and he tried to swallow it down, focusing on the feeling of the small, slightly sticky fingers in his own. Echoes around him told him that the space had become larger, and he began to notice a familiar pungent smell, which he recognized after a moment as the pseudo-bat guano odor that he'd noticed on the cliff the night before.

"Are we in the caves?" Rodney asked in a piercing whisper.

"Yes," the girl whispered back, "and hush!"

He hushed. They walked in the darkness for what felt to Rodney like hours, but was probably only ten or fifteen minutes, before he realized that he could see the dim outlines of the kids. The light got brighter, and they reached a spot where sunbeams shafted through the ceiling of the cave. "Cavern" might be a better term, Rodney thought, looking around him -- it was huge, with all the usual things that he expected from a cave, stalactites and stalagmites and that sort of thing. Pool