SGA FIC: THE WORLD YOU KNOW [PG]
Nov. 13th, 2010 09:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
x_erikah_xTitle: The World You Know 1/10
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
x_erikah_x
Word Count: 39,637
Rating: PG
Genre: Gen, Team, Adventure, Crossover
Characters: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex, Teyla Emmagan, Samantha Carter, Cameron Mitchell, Daniel Jackson, Vala Mal Doran, Teal'c and other cameos by SG1 secondary characters
Disclaimer: Stargate and related characters are a property of Metro-Goldwin-Mayer Studios Inc., no infringements of rights intended.
Spoilers: Season 5 of SGA and as far as The Ark of Truth in SG1
Summary: The team finds an Ancient lab and ends up in trouble in some strange place. Or isn't it? Crossover with SG1. Set shortly after season 5 of SGA after they somehow return to Pegasus.
Author Notes: Thanksdrewandian for cheerleading and first reading for me, even though I made you wait one year for the finished version. Thanks sherry57 for the beta. *hugs* Thanks so much girls!
I’ll post one chapter every couple of days, maybe one a day depending on my availability. The fic is finished, complete and edited already.
by ErikaHK
Chapter 1
Gabe placed the thick pair of glasses on the table before rubbing his tired eyes. The pieces of paper under his elbow had too many numbers and his head was spinning from looking at them for so long. He sat pressing his eyeballs for a few moments then put his glasses back on his face.
He looked at the clock.
He muffled a groan and decided it was past the time to close the store. Clutching the table, he rose to his feet and heard joints snapping, sending old aches through his bones.
"Hey, Timmy." He smiled as he petted the soft fur. "Hungry too?"
The small fluffy ball closed its eyes in contentment and purred.
"Sorry for the late dinner. I kind of forgot about the time," Gabe said as he walked around the counter. "Too many problems to worry about."
He limped through a few aisles then halted and sighed loudly. He shook his head as he contemplated the open box littering the floor. He closed his eyes briefly, not liking the idea of having to bend down to pick it up.
"Children, children, why do you make things so hard on me?"
He decided to pass right through the mess and worry about it in the morning. After he reached the transparent door, he flipped the 'closed' sign and retrieved the keys from his pocket. He locked the shop then started to head to his little bedroom.
He stopped midstride when the lamp flickered for a few moments. He looked up, seeing it shake slightly then start to brighten. The light increased in notches and, after a few seconds, he had to turn his head away and shade his eyes not to be blinded. He squeezed his eyes for several moments, the sounds of the metal shelves vibrating all around him. After a while, the redness behind his eyelids darkened announcing it was safe to open them again.
Adjusting to the darkness took him a few seconds. He gave a step forward, hearing the sound of crunching glass under his boots.
"Timmy?" Silence hovered by several moments. "Are you there?"
The screech made his heart jump. He snapped his head around at the sound then blinked at the new source of light. A small circle of white light hovered above the sidewalk outside, increasing in size. Gabe stepped towards the mesmerizing glow, slowly and steadily.
The sphere pulsed, each time making it shine more and more, forcing him to raise his arms to shade his eyes again. Suddenly, it exploded in electric energy and the last thing he saw were sparks from all the light bulbs and all the shelves dropping on top of him.
*****
Ronon didn't think anyone could be more bored than he was at that moment. He looked down, Rodney still going on about power or something else. Ronon looked back up, continuing with the activity he had been doing the whole day: standing around.
He grunted. There were a limited amount of perimeter checks a tiny Ancestral laboratory in a completely uninhabited planet could need.
"... then this could be a weapon or maybe a new energy source."
The voice had Ronon snapping his head around to tune Rodney back in.
"Did you say weapon?" Sheppard asked.
Rodney was in the center of a group of consoles and Sheppard stood in the gap between two panels. Screens hung from the ceiling, and other ones were on the walls.
"I still don't know for sure, but the energy generation charts are way above normal. Of course, this is only the test file, so it could be wrong." McKay smirked as he went to and fro.
"Maybe you could be wrong instead of the file."
Rodney seemed to ignore Sheppard's comment. "Look at this," McKay said while grinning from ear to ear. "If this is right, then we are close to ZedPM levels here!" He pointed at the screen. "The waves are oscillating, but the radiation level is steady. I think they were trying to fix the oscillating pattern, which explains the spike here."
McKay went on explaining how everything was deeply complicated and fascinating, but all Ronon got were a few loose words like gama, beta, pink wavy line and blue dots. None of which made any sense to him so he decided to go back to studying the ceiling and stop trying to pay attention to Rodney.
Ronon had already memorized every single curve on each wall of the laboratory. It was the same as every single one of them across the galaxy. Ronon grunted once more, expecting to gain some kind of reaction from at least Teyla, but she seemed genuinely interested on the scientific conversation.
He hated these scientific missions for the exact same reason McKay loved them: they did not involve killing wraith. Or killing anything for that matter.
Except time.
Ronon heard the sigh coming from near him and looked down at Teyla who now stood by him. She leaned against the wall, her hands resting on the weapon attached to her vest then directed her eyes to the two other men. He followed Teyla's gaze.
"Would you stop that!" Rodney snapped loudly.
"I'm not touching."
McKay stared. "Would you leave the casual not-touching-and-only-hovering-above-the-controls to the experts!"
Sheppard indicated the colorful chart on the screen. "Maybe you should check those readings before--"
"Who's the genius here, hmmm?" McKay walked around all the different panels, pressing many controls and generally making things light up.
"I'm just saying, that if you turn that thing on before knowing what it does..." Sheppard stepped forward.
McKay stopped briefly to look at Sheppard and waved his hands in one abrupt move. "I'm not turning it on. Besides, I can only find out the true purpose of this place if I stop guessing the charts and do some actual observation."
"Then why is that light blinking so red? As far as I know, red means bad." Sheppard was pointing the screen again.
McKay dismissed it with a flourish of his hands. "Nah, it's normal."
"How do you know that?"
Rodney turned. "Because it says here 'red blinking light means shut the hell up'!"
"I thought it said 'energy build up'," Sheppard sulked.
"Look, it stopped already. Like I said, completely normal."
Ronon observed how Rodney could always make his thoughts clear with a mere wave of hands. Right now they said 'I'm the genius here'.
"What about the orange one? It's bigger and looks like it flashes angrier than the red."
Rodney's glare made a few seconds pass before Sheppard spoke again.
"Are you sure this is a weapon?"
McKay turned to face Sheppard. "Oh, for Christ's sake! I don't know yet! Can you please stop the annoying questioning and let the genius mind work?" he said angrily. "Just go over there and make yourself invisible until I let you come back." He pointed in Ronon and Teyla's direction.
Sheppard looked at them and Ronon gave him the 'just come here and stop making him whine already' look. Ronon was not impressed by the 'it's not my fault' shrug Sheppard gave him back, especially after he continued to hover right behind the console trying to peek over Rodney's shoulder.
Ronon grunted and went back to staring above. Minutes turned to hours and Ronon was ready to break something. Sheppard and McKay had been bickering like an old couple when Ronon left for the tenth perimeter check of the day and hadn't finished by the time he had come back. He leaned over the same wall and grunted as a show of boredom. He received an apologetic look from Sheppard then turned his face to stare at the ceiling.
"What did you do?"
Something in Rodney's tone made Ronon jerk his head at Sheppard's direction.
"I didn't do anything!"
"Oh, crap!" Rodney's fingers suddenly became a blur on the panel. "Oh, crapcrapcrap!"
Whenever any of them said those Earth curse words, only bad things happened. Ronon approached the consoles and felt Teyla following.
"Nononono, don't do this!" Rodney stared at the screen, his eyes widening. Ronon imitated the motion, but got nothing from looking at it.
"What?" Sheppard asked just as an alarm started to blare.
"Oh, crap!" Rodney went back to working.
Sheppard raised his voice to be heard above the alarm. "We got that part! What's wrong?"
"I don't know why or how but the wave energy just started spiking!"
McKay cursed a few more times and let out his frustration in rapid taps on keys and buttons. "C'mon! What the hell is wrong with you? Just obey me, dammit!"
"Can't you stop it?" Sheppard walked around closer to McKay.
"I can't!" McKay looked at the screen, eyes darting madly around. "It's past the threshold! We have to get out of here..." He turned to face them.
"Let's move!"
They all turned at once and started for the door as the alarm increased. A loud bang was the last thing Ronon heard before they were blinded by light and crumbled down on the floor, unconscious.
*****
Something touched her shoulder. Teyla turned her head away from it, feeling too dazed to do anything else. The light hand squeezed when she heard a grave voice above her head. She slowly opened her eyes and saw a Ronon-like silhouette in the dim light.
"What happened?" she asked when her mind cleared.
"Don't know."
Ronon stepped back allowing Teyla to see her teammates waking up as well.
Her gaze traveled around their surroundings. Glass littered around the metal poles that had once illuminated the street. It was dark but the moon was full and cast eerie shadows on the pavement. Many buildings which appeared to be made of concrete covered both sides, none of them taller than two levels.
She narrowed her eyes. M4G-789 was completely uninhabited and covered by heavy vegetation. Where were they?
Rodney sat up on the hard pavement. "Oooowww, I'm all tingly," he complained.
"Where are we?" John asked as he rubbed the sides of his head.
Rodney looked around for a while. "Beats me..."
Teyla blinked a few times. The stun pulse had left an unpleasant sensation she had felt many times before. She flexed her fingers to ease the tingling.
"Well, you were the one messing with the lab. What went wrong?" John asked.
"I don't know, it wasn't my fault!"
"Oh, really!" John raised his voice slightly. "Remember when I told you to not turn on the regulators before we had the console checked out?"
Teyla's head spiked with pain, but the fact that Rodney and John were bickering at each other was only a sign that they were, in fact, all right.
Rodney stared. "I did check it. Who's the expert here, huh?"
"Then whose fault is it?"
"Maybe the Ancients that built that thing?"
Teyla sighed. "Maybe we should focus on where we are before pointing blame." She put on the diplomatic voice she had to use all too often with Rodney and John.
It was the same tone she had to use with Torren.
"Looks like a street," Ronon observed.
Rodney staggered as he got up. "Oh, zing! I think she meant what planet?"
Teyla shook her head and tried not to moan when pain pierced her skull again.
"Here."
Teyla opened her eyes and saw a smiling Ronon, his hand stretched before him.
John got to his feet as well. "It better be one with a gate," he said as he hobbled around with a limp on his right leg.
"One that is not in orbit too," Rodney added.
"Hey."
She turned and saw Ronon inside a building, kneeling next to a pile of boxes and cans. She followed Rodney and John through a big broken window. She lit up her lamp, only now noticing she was the only one carrying a P90. John had left his in the lab and only had his sidearm, and the same could be said about Rodney. She pointed the light at Ronon's direction and saw blood on the floor. She followed it with the lamp until she saw a hand raised in between all the contents of the shelves that had obviously fallen down.
She promptly moved to action, making her way towards the injured person by moving boxes around. She avoided the glass littering the floor and climbed on top of one of the racks. Standing on a piece of the floor in between two shelves, she started handing products to her teammates until they uncovered the body of an old man, bloodied and broken. John climbed over the metal and touched the neck, shaking his head when she eyed him questioningly.
"Hey, guys," Rodney called from a few meters away. "Look at this."
She walked towards him and saw the box he was holding. It was tall and narrow, with a colorful front and top.
"What the hell..." John said softly as his gaze fell on the hundreds of products around them.
She looked around, but still didn't understand what their reaction meant.
"Fruit loops," Rodney said, his voice sounding stunned.
She frowned. She looked at Ronon and received the same blank look. Rodney distractedly handled the box to her then walked outside. They all followed.
"It's the moon."
She followed his gaze. The night sky was cast but a few stars punctuated its blackness.
"And the stars..." Rodney continued.
She looked back down at him. "What about them, Rodney?"
"It's the Moon!" He looked at her. "Look at the stars!" He waved his hand up.
"We're on Earth?" John asked with the same surprised tone.
Teyla's eyes widened in surprise.
"How can that be?" Ronon voiced her thought.
"I don't know, but we are on Earth. I mean--" He indicated the sky again. "Look!"
"You said that thing was a weapon!" John said in an angry whisper that carried a lot of restrained growling.
"I said I didn't know!"
"Well, obviously it wasn't!" John narrowed his eyes.
"I think it was more like interplanetary transporter system," Rodney nervously corrected. "It's going to take weeks to get back!"
"That'll teach you to not turn strange machines on without knowing what they do."
"I didn't turn it on!" Rodney glared. "It just..."
"Came on by itself?"
"As a matter of fact, yes, it did. I just-- well..." Rodney waved his hand.
"Turned it on."
"Well, I just activated the interface, all right? I didn't know the Ancients were stupid enough to leave the power feedback on a loop."
Sheppard pursed lips. "Right. So, where are we? What city?"
Teyla looked at the horizon and saw it covered by small lights coming from very tall buildings. It seemed to stretch far into every direction.
"Must be a big city..."
She was about to add her own opinion when a long shrieking sound reached her ears. She recognized the sound from the movie nights the team usually shared. It was a police siren.
"Oh, crap!" John said as he looked at her, then at his sidearm.
Rodney's eyes widened. "Oh, God! We don't have IDs. We're armed and in full gear! They're going to think--"
"Let's get the hell out of here and contact the SGC."
"Can't we simply explain the situation to the police?" she asked.
"Explain what?" Rodney waved at the broken shop. "That a big bright light of energy brought us here from another galaxy and accidentally exploded a store and killed a man?" He barely kept his tone in a whisper.
"Come on!" John motioned them towards the street.
They ran ahead for several meters until John turned into a small alley. They continued down the dark passage as the sirens grew closer. Red light briefly reflected on the broken glass coming from the street they had left behind. She turned again and saw Rodney run into a can of trash, dumping it and its contents with a loud bang. Then, they ran into a wall.
"Crap!" Rodney complained "I'm not climbing this!"
"Come on, Rodney!" John motioned as he interlaced his fingers for Rodney to step on.
"Oh, God!"
Rodney climbed onto John's hand then held the top of the brick wall. John raised Rodney's body until he was halfway on the other side, then turned to Teyla and repeated the process. She landed with a thump and dusted her clothes, waiting until Ronon and John fell beside her only seconds afterwards.
The four resumed the running and she nearly bumped into another blocked passage. This time it was a fence.
"Oh, come on! Is a free path to run from the police too much to ask for?"
They ignored Rodney's inability to remain quiet and started to climb over the obstacle. She went first with Rodney, her body balancing as it wobbled back and forth. She jumped when she got to the other side, her hands red with the effort of holding tightly onto the metal wires.
The bright red lights had multiplied in the time it took for her teammates to get over the barrier and now circled all the nearby streets. They continued across the next path and into another alleyway.
A few minutes and several streets later, they complied with Rodney and slowed down. A few police cars remained, but they seemed to have decided on widening the search area thus making it easier for the team to see any one of them approaching before hiding.
Teyla carefully observed this world, which was very different from the sights she had usually seen on the few occasions she had visited. This time, the streets were dark and dirty, garbage littered the corners of the small passages between blocks and dark shadows loomed in hidden corners.
They stopped by a darkened alley which faced a busy street.
"There should be a phone around here." John said while peeking around the wall. "We can't walk around with these guns out in the open." He looked at his team. "I know this place is a little dodgy, so we need to be careful."
"Careful, huh?" Rodney complained. "The police are still looking for us!"
"Yes, and that's why I'm going alone and you guys are going to stay here." He removed his vest, sidearm and earpiece and gave them to Ronon. "If they see me, then at least you guys will be safe and could get me out of trouble." He looked at Ronon and Teyla. "You guys have to listen to Rodney while I'm gone. I'll be back in no time."
*****
The first thing John noticed when he stepped inside the bar was the smell of alcohol. The place had an orange glow and was packed full of people. It seemed like he had stepped into one of those dark movies with lots of bar brawls and smoking. Big guys played pool and cards, women in scanty clothing made themselves obvious, some sitting on men's laps and others either making out or moving to the back of the bar.
John carefully shouldered his way towards the counter, trying to ignore the loud shouts and yells coming from apparently everywhere. Some huge guy was thrown across his path, missing John by mere inches, then another ran past to continue the fight. John managed to escape the altercation and sat on a stool.
"What's it gonna be?" the bartender asked.
John leaned over the counter. "Is there a phone I can use?"
The man pointed towards the back.
John nodded and once again made his way through the crowd. He was turning his head away from an armpit that had appeared out of nowhere when he bumped against someone and tumbled back.
He was looking up at the bigger man when he felt a blow connect to the side of his face. His knees weakened and he nearly collapsed but was held upright by someone else. When his vision cleared, he saw two big red eyes staring at him.
"You're going to regret that, son," the man said as he moved to punch John again.
John instinctively moved his head away and succeeded in avoiding the blow due to the other man's slowed reflexes. The heavy fist hit the person that had been holding John up and the hand grasping his arm let go as the man toppled back. The first guy was already preparing another punch so John ducked and rolled. The drunk gave a couple of steps before realizing he had missed and turned abruptly, looking madly from side to side. The second one got up and, having spotted John as he rose to his feet, tackled him to the floor and locked him in a firm grip.
Both hands squeezed his neck as John jerked around trying to escape. The other attacker joined and held John's arms above his head while the man on top of him prevented any movements from his legs. Black spots started covering his vision, lungs desperately screaming for air to flow back. Just when John was beginning to feel the night claiming him, the pressure against his throat eased and a huge gulp of air filled his airway.
He turned to his side and was appreciating the pleasure of breathing again when he was suddenly hauled upright and cuffed.
"Ow!" John tried to look behind him. "Hey!"
That's when he saw all the cops around him.
*****
Chapter 2
Author:
x_erikah_xWord Count: 39,637
Rating: PG
Genre: Gen, Team, Adventure, Crossover
Characters: John Sheppard, Rodney McKay, Ronon Dex, Teyla Emmagan, Samantha Carter, Cameron Mitchell, Daniel Jackson, Vala Mal Doran, Teal'c and other cameos by SG1 secondary characters
Disclaimer: Stargate and related characters are a property of Metro-Goldwin-Mayer Studios Inc., no infringements of rights intended.
Spoilers: Season 5 of SGA and as far as The Ark of Truth in SG1
Summary: The team finds an Ancient lab and ends up in trouble in some strange place. Or isn't it? Crossover with SG1. Set shortly after season 5 of SGA after they somehow return to Pegasus.
Author Notes: Thanks
drewandian for cheerleading and first reading for me, even though I made you wait one year for the finished version. Thanks sherry57 for the beta. *hugs* Thanks so much girls!I’ll post one chapter every couple of days, maybe one a day depending on my availability. The fic is finished, complete and edited already.
THE WORLD YOU KNOW
by ErikaHKChapter 1
Gabe placed the thick pair of glasses on the table before rubbing his tired eyes. The pieces of paper under his elbow had too many numbers and his head was spinning from looking at them for so long. He sat pressing his eyeballs for a few moments then put his glasses back on his face.
He looked at the clock.
He muffled a groan and decided it was past the time to close the store. Clutching the table, he rose to his feet and heard joints snapping, sending old aches through his bones.
"Hey, Timmy." He smiled as he petted the soft fur. "Hungry too?"
The small fluffy ball closed its eyes in contentment and purred.
"Sorry for the late dinner. I kind of forgot about the time," Gabe said as he walked around the counter. "Too many problems to worry about."
He limped through a few aisles then halted and sighed loudly. He shook his head as he contemplated the open box littering the floor. He closed his eyes briefly, not liking the idea of having to bend down to pick it up.
"Children, children, why do you make things so hard on me?"
He decided to pass right through the mess and worry about it in the morning. After he reached the transparent door, he flipped the 'closed' sign and retrieved the keys from his pocket. He locked the shop then started to head to his little bedroom.
He stopped midstride when the lamp flickered for a few moments. He looked up, seeing it shake slightly then start to brighten. The light increased in notches and, after a few seconds, he had to turn his head away and shade his eyes not to be blinded. He squeezed his eyes for several moments, the sounds of the metal shelves vibrating all around him. After a while, the redness behind his eyelids darkened announcing it was safe to open them again.
Adjusting to the darkness took him a few seconds. He gave a step forward, hearing the sound of crunching glass under his boots.
"Timmy?" Silence hovered by several moments. "Are you there?"
The screech made his heart jump. He snapped his head around at the sound then blinked at the new source of light. A small circle of white light hovered above the sidewalk outside, increasing in size. Gabe stepped towards the mesmerizing glow, slowly and steadily.
The sphere pulsed, each time making it shine more and more, forcing him to raise his arms to shade his eyes again. Suddenly, it exploded in electric energy and the last thing he saw were sparks from all the light bulbs and all the shelves dropping on top of him.
Ronon didn't think anyone could be more bored than he was at that moment. He looked down, Rodney still going on about power or something else. Ronon looked back up, continuing with the activity he had been doing the whole day: standing around.
He grunted. There were a limited amount of perimeter checks a tiny Ancestral laboratory in a completely uninhabited planet could need.
"... then this could be a weapon or maybe a new energy source."
The voice had Ronon snapping his head around to tune Rodney back in.
"Did you say weapon?" Sheppard asked.
Rodney was in the center of a group of consoles and Sheppard stood in the gap between two panels. Screens hung from the ceiling, and other ones were on the walls.
"I still don't know for sure, but the energy generation charts are way above normal. Of course, this is only the test file, so it could be wrong." McKay smirked as he went to and fro.
"Maybe you could be wrong instead of the file."
Rodney seemed to ignore Sheppard's comment. "Look at this," McKay said while grinning from ear to ear. "If this is right, then we are close to ZedPM levels here!" He pointed at the screen. "The waves are oscillating, but the radiation level is steady. I think they were trying to fix the oscillating pattern, which explains the spike here."
McKay went on explaining how everything was deeply complicated and fascinating, but all Ronon got were a few loose words like gama, beta, pink wavy line and blue dots. None of which made any sense to him so he decided to go back to studying the ceiling and stop trying to pay attention to Rodney.
Ronon had already memorized every single curve on each wall of the laboratory. It was the same as every single one of them across the galaxy. Ronon grunted once more, expecting to gain some kind of reaction from at least Teyla, but she seemed genuinely interested on the scientific conversation.
He hated these scientific missions for the exact same reason McKay loved them: they did not involve killing wraith. Or killing anything for that matter.
Except time.
Ronon heard the sigh coming from near him and looked down at Teyla who now stood by him. She leaned against the wall, her hands resting on the weapon attached to her vest then directed her eyes to the two other men. He followed Teyla's gaze.
"Would you stop that!" Rodney snapped loudly.
"I'm not touching."
McKay stared. "Would you leave the casual not-touching-and-only-hovering-above-the-controls to the experts!"
Sheppard indicated the colorful chart on the screen. "Maybe you should check those readings before--"
"Who's the genius here, hmmm?" McKay walked around all the different panels, pressing many controls and generally making things light up.
"I'm just saying, that if you turn that thing on before knowing what it does..." Sheppard stepped forward.
McKay stopped briefly to look at Sheppard and waved his hands in one abrupt move. "I'm not turning it on. Besides, I can only find out the true purpose of this place if I stop guessing the charts and do some actual observation."
"Then why is that light blinking so red? As far as I know, red means bad." Sheppard was pointing the screen again.
McKay dismissed it with a flourish of his hands. "Nah, it's normal."
"How do you know that?"
Rodney turned. "Because it says here 'red blinking light means shut the hell up'!"
"I thought it said 'energy build up'," Sheppard sulked.
"Look, it stopped already. Like I said, completely normal."
Ronon observed how Rodney could always make his thoughts clear with a mere wave of hands. Right now they said 'I'm the genius here'.
"What about the orange one? It's bigger and looks like it flashes angrier than the red."
Rodney's glare made a few seconds pass before Sheppard spoke again.
"Are you sure this is a weapon?"
McKay turned to face Sheppard. "Oh, for Christ's sake! I don't know yet! Can you please stop the annoying questioning and let the genius mind work?" he said angrily. "Just go over there and make yourself invisible until I let you come back." He pointed in Ronon and Teyla's direction.
Sheppard looked at them and Ronon gave him the 'just come here and stop making him whine already' look. Ronon was not impressed by the 'it's not my fault' shrug Sheppard gave him back, especially after he continued to hover right behind the console trying to peek over Rodney's shoulder.
Ronon grunted and went back to staring above. Minutes turned to hours and Ronon was ready to break something. Sheppard and McKay had been bickering like an old couple when Ronon left for the tenth perimeter check of the day and hadn't finished by the time he had come back. He leaned over the same wall and grunted as a show of boredom. He received an apologetic look from Sheppard then turned his face to stare at the ceiling.
"What did you do?"
Something in Rodney's tone made Ronon jerk his head at Sheppard's direction.
"I didn't do anything!"
"Oh, crap!" Rodney's fingers suddenly became a blur on the panel. "Oh, crapcrapcrap!"
Whenever any of them said those Earth curse words, only bad things happened. Ronon approached the consoles and felt Teyla following.
"Nononono, don't do this!" Rodney stared at the screen, his eyes widening. Ronon imitated the motion, but got nothing from looking at it.
"What?" Sheppard asked just as an alarm started to blare.
"Oh, crap!" Rodney went back to working.
Sheppard raised his voice to be heard above the alarm. "We got that part! What's wrong?"
"I don't know why or how but the wave energy just started spiking!"
McKay cursed a few more times and let out his frustration in rapid taps on keys and buttons. "C'mon! What the hell is wrong with you? Just obey me, dammit!"
"Can't you stop it?" Sheppard walked around closer to McKay.
"I can't!" McKay looked at the screen, eyes darting madly around. "It's past the threshold! We have to get out of here..." He turned to face them.
"Let's move!"
They all turned at once and started for the door as the alarm increased. A loud bang was the last thing Ronon heard before they were blinded by light and crumbled down on the floor, unconscious.
Something touched her shoulder. Teyla turned her head away from it, feeling too dazed to do anything else. The light hand squeezed when she heard a grave voice above her head. She slowly opened her eyes and saw a Ronon-like silhouette in the dim light.
"What happened?" she asked when her mind cleared.
"Don't know."
Ronon stepped back allowing Teyla to see her teammates waking up as well.
Her gaze traveled around their surroundings. Glass littered around the metal poles that had once illuminated the street. It was dark but the moon was full and cast eerie shadows on the pavement. Many buildings which appeared to be made of concrete covered both sides, none of them taller than two levels.
She narrowed her eyes. M4G-789 was completely uninhabited and covered by heavy vegetation. Where were they?
Rodney sat up on the hard pavement. "Oooowww, I'm all tingly," he complained.
"Where are we?" John asked as he rubbed the sides of his head.
Rodney looked around for a while. "Beats me..."
Teyla blinked a few times. The stun pulse had left an unpleasant sensation she had felt many times before. She flexed her fingers to ease the tingling.
"Well, you were the one messing with the lab. What went wrong?" John asked.
"I don't know, it wasn't my fault!"
"Oh, really!" John raised his voice slightly. "Remember when I told you to not turn on the regulators before we had the console checked out?"
Teyla's head spiked with pain, but the fact that Rodney and John were bickering at each other was only a sign that they were, in fact, all right.
Rodney stared. "I did check it. Who's the expert here, huh?"
"Then whose fault is it?"
"Maybe the Ancients that built that thing?"
Teyla sighed. "Maybe we should focus on where we are before pointing blame." She put on the diplomatic voice she had to use all too often with Rodney and John.
It was the same tone she had to use with Torren.
"Looks like a street," Ronon observed.
Rodney staggered as he got up. "Oh, zing! I think she meant what planet?"
Teyla shook her head and tried not to moan when pain pierced her skull again.
"Here."
Teyla opened her eyes and saw a smiling Ronon, his hand stretched before him.
John got to his feet as well. "It better be one with a gate," he said as he hobbled around with a limp on his right leg.
"One that is not in orbit too," Rodney added.
"Hey."
She turned and saw Ronon inside a building, kneeling next to a pile of boxes and cans. She followed Rodney and John through a big broken window. She lit up her lamp, only now noticing she was the only one carrying a P90. John had left his in the lab and only had his sidearm, and the same could be said about Rodney. She pointed the light at Ronon's direction and saw blood on the floor. She followed it with the lamp until she saw a hand raised in between all the contents of the shelves that had obviously fallen down.
She promptly moved to action, making her way towards the injured person by moving boxes around. She avoided the glass littering the floor and climbed on top of one of the racks. Standing on a piece of the floor in between two shelves, she started handing products to her teammates until they uncovered the body of an old man, bloodied and broken. John climbed over the metal and touched the neck, shaking his head when she eyed him questioningly.
"Hey, guys," Rodney called from a few meters away. "Look at this."
She walked towards him and saw the box he was holding. It was tall and narrow, with a colorful front and top.
"What the hell..." John said softly as his gaze fell on the hundreds of products around them.
She looked around, but still didn't understand what their reaction meant.
"Fruit loops," Rodney said, his voice sounding stunned.
She frowned. She looked at Ronon and received the same blank look. Rodney distractedly handled the box to her then walked outside. They all followed.
"It's the moon."
She followed his gaze. The night sky was cast but a few stars punctuated its blackness.
"And the stars..." Rodney continued.
She looked back down at him. "What about them, Rodney?"
"It's the Moon!" He looked at her. "Look at the stars!" He waved his hand up.
"We're on Earth?" John asked with the same surprised tone.
Teyla's eyes widened in surprise.
"How can that be?" Ronon voiced her thought.
"I don't know, but we are on Earth. I mean--" He indicated the sky again. "Look!"
"You said that thing was a weapon!" John said in an angry whisper that carried a lot of restrained growling.
"I said I didn't know!"
"Well, obviously it wasn't!" John narrowed his eyes.
"I think it was more like interplanetary transporter system," Rodney nervously corrected. "It's going to take weeks to get back!"
"That'll teach you to not turn strange machines on without knowing what they do."
"I didn't turn it on!" Rodney glared. "It just..."
"Came on by itself?"
"As a matter of fact, yes, it did. I just-- well..." Rodney waved his hand.
"Turned it on."
"Well, I just activated the interface, all right? I didn't know the Ancients were stupid enough to leave the power feedback on a loop."
Sheppard pursed lips. "Right. So, where are we? What city?"
Teyla looked at the horizon and saw it covered by small lights coming from very tall buildings. It seemed to stretch far into every direction.
"Must be a big city..."
She was about to add her own opinion when a long shrieking sound reached her ears. She recognized the sound from the movie nights the team usually shared. It was a police siren.
"Oh, crap!" John said as he looked at her, then at his sidearm.
Rodney's eyes widened. "Oh, God! We don't have IDs. We're armed and in full gear! They're going to think--"
"Let's get the hell out of here and contact the SGC."
"Can't we simply explain the situation to the police?" she asked.
"Explain what?" Rodney waved at the broken shop. "That a big bright light of energy brought us here from another galaxy and accidentally exploded a store and killed a man?" He barely kept his tone in a whisper.
"Come on!" John motioned them towards the street.
They ran ahead for several meters until John turned into a small alley. They continued down the dark passage as the sirens grew closer. Red light briefly reflected on the broken glass coming from the street they had left behind. She turned again and saw Rodney run into a can of trash, dumping it and its contents with a loud bang. Then, they ran into a wall.
"Crap!" Rodney complained "I'm not climbing this!"
"Come on, Rodney!" John motioned as he interlaced his fingers for Rodney to step on.
"Oh, God!"
Rodney climbed onto John's hand then held the top of the brick wall. John raised Rodney's body until he was halfway on the other side, then turned to Teyla and repeated the process. She landed with a thump and dusted her clothes, waiting until Ronon and John fell beside her only seconds afterwards.
The four resumed the running and she nearly bumped into another blocked passage. This time it was a fence.
"Oh, come on! Is a free path to run from the police too much to ask for?"
They ignored Rodney's inability to remain quiet and started to climb over the obstacle. She went first with Rodney, her body balancing as it wobbled back and forth. She jumped when she got to the other side, her hands red with the effort of holding tightly onto the metal wires.
The bright red lights had multiplied in the time it took for her teammates to get over the barrier and now circled all the nearby streets. They continued across the next path and into another alleyway.
A few minutes and several streets later, they complied with Rodney and slowed down. A few police cars remained, but they seemed to have decided on widening the search area thus making it easier for the team to see any one of them approaching before hiding.
Teyla carefully observed this world, which was very different from the sights she had usually seen on the few occasions she had visited. This time, the streets were dark and dirty, garbage littered the corners of the small passages between blocks and dark shadows loomed in hidden corners.
They stopped by a darkened alley which faced a busy street.
"There should be a phone around here." John said while peeking around the wall. "We can't walk around with these guns out in the open." He looked at his team. "I know this place is a little dodgy, so we need to be careful."
"Careful, huh?" Rodney complained. "The police are still looking for us!"
"Yes, and that's why I'm going alone and you guys are going to stay here." He removed his vest, sidearm and earpiece and gave them to Ronon. "If they see me, then at least you guys will be safe and could get me out of trouble." He looked at Ronon and Teyla. "You guys have to listen to Rodney while I'm gone. I'll be back in no time."
The first thing John noticed when he stepped inside the bar was the smell of alcohol. The place had an orange glow and was packed full of people. It seemed like he had stepped into one of those dark movies with lots of bar brawls and smoking. Big guys played pool and cards, women in scanty clothing made themselves obvious, some sitting on men's laps and others either making out or moving to the back of the bar.
John carefully shouldered his way towards the counter, trying to ignore the loud shouts and yells coming from apparently everywhere. Some huge guy was thrown across his path, missing John by mere inches, then another ran past to continue the fight. John managed to escape the altercation and sat on a stool.
"What's it gonna be?" the bartender asked.
John leaned over the counter. "Is there a phone I can use?"
The man pointed towards the back.
John nodded and once again made his way through the crowd. He was turning his head away from an armpit that had appeared out of nowhere when he bumped against someone and tumbled back.
He was looking up at the bigger man when he felt a blow connect to the side of his face. His knees weakened and he nearly collapsed but was held upright by someone else. When his vision cleared, he saw two big red eyes staring at him.
"You're going to regret that, son," the man said as he moved to punch John again.
John instinctively moved his head away and succeeded in avoiding the blow due to the other man's slowed reflexes. The heavy fist hit the person that had been holding John up and the hand grasping his arm let go as the man toppled back. The first guy was already preparing another punch so John ducked and rolled. The drunk gave a couple of steps before realizing he had missed and turned abruptly, looking madly from side to side. The second one got up and, having spotted John as he rose to his feet, tackled him to the floor and locked him in a firm grip.
Both hands squeezed his neck as John jerked around trying to escape. The other attacker joined and held John's arms above his head while the man on top of him prevented any movements from his legs. Black spots started covering his vision, lungs desperately screaming for air to flow back. Just when John was beginning to feel the night claiming him, the pressure against his throat eased and a huge gulp of air filled his airway.
He turned to his side and was appreciating the pleasure of breathing again when he was suddenly hauled upright and cuffed.
"Ow!" John tried to look behind him. "Hey!"
That's when he saw all the cops around him.
Chapter 2
