02 - Reliquary (9 page)

Sounding more frustrated than anything else, Kavanagh said, “I don’t
understand why you two think there’s something wrong here. It’s an abandoned
wreck of an Ancient facility. That’s all.”

John didn’t understand either, which was what worried him. But Rodney was
right, they didn’t have a choice. And maybe it was just something to do with the
electromagnetic fields or damaged technology trying to broadcast to the Ancient
gene that was making his skin creep. Fooling his brain into thinking he could
smell rotting corpses when there was nothing left of the dead but dry bones. He
had a sudden image of trying to explain this to Elizabeth and Bates and Grodin
and the others, that he had had a weird feeling and so they had left a possible
ZPM cache behind after wasting a day and a half searching for it. He took a
breath to tell Rodney to open the door, when Rodney glanced at the detector
again, did a double-take and said, “Oh, no.”

John recognized that tone. “What?” He grabbed Rodney’s wrist, angling the
device so he could see the display. It was reading life signs, a bunch of them.
John did a quick mental calculation to translate the distance reading and
realized the blips were only about a hundred yards behind them, somewhere in the
maze of dark corridors they had just passed through. The blips were all in a
tight clump, and there were too many of them; it certainly wasn’t Boerne, Kinjo,
and Corrigan following them down here for some reason. And they were moving steadily closer.

Rodney said urgently, “Major, there’s a ravening horde of something
approaching.”

“Thank you, Rodney, I got that already.” John was already shining the P-90’s
light down the corridor, Ford and Teyla moving to flank him.

All their lights revealed was the slick blackness of the walls and conduits,
but Teyla said softly, “Listen. Can you hear them?”

John stilled his breathing and listened. After a moment he heard movement far
up the corridor. It was a weird soft sound, like a large group of people walking
barefoot.
Or shambling,
John thought, suddenly struck by a half-buried
memory of reading H.P. Lovecraft in college.
That’s definitely shambling.
He looked at Ford. Brow furrowed, listening hard, Ford shook his head. Keeping
his voice to a low whisper, he said, “That’s not people, sir. Not human people.
Animals?”

“Could be. It’s not Wraith, at least.” John glanced at Teyla for
confirmation. “Is it?”

“No, it is not the Wraith,” she said, shaking her head, baffled and worried.
“Something that lives underground, in these tunnels?”

“I vote we open the door,” Kolesnikova said uneasily.

John had to admit that the enigmatic door had started to look a lot more
friendly in the past minute. If they tried to go further up the corridor, they
might find themselves trapped in a dead end. A literal dead end. “Yeah. McKay?”

“I’m doing it,” Rodney snapped from somewhere behind him. John heard a muted
thump and a low power hum.

“Do you need help?” Kavanagh demanded.

“Of course not! If I can’t hotwire one stupid blast door—That’s probably
been sealed for ten thousand years—With intermittent power—”

“McKay, be nice and let Kavanagh help,” Kolesnikova told him, sounding
anxious.

“Rodney, what she said,” John ordered tensely. He could hear a soft murmur echoing down the corridor now, even over their voices.
There was something about it that made his skin crawl and his back teeth itch.
He caught movement in their lights, something with gray and silver mottled skin
that flicked hastily out of sight.

The low power hum from the door intensified. “Wait, wait!” McKay yelped.
“I’ve got it.”

John swung around to cover the door, gesturing sharply for Kolesnikova and
Kavanagh to move to the side. Teyla and Ford stayed in position, still watching
the corridor.

The blast door clunked again and a dark seam formed down the center,
splitting it into two sections. With a deep bass groan, it began to cycle open,
each section lifting up to reveal a large empty chamber lit by several white
globes suspended from the high ceiling. There were big round pillars, either
conduits for something or supports for the weight of stone and metal overhead.
It was quiet and nothing moved.

John eased forward, wary, checking the nearest shadows with the P-90’s light.
McKay moved up beside him, his eyes moving from the detector to the room around
them. “Power readings all over the place,” he said, keeping his voice low. “But
no life signs. From in here, that is,” he added urgently. “The ones outside are
holding steady.”

“Right, everybody inside.” John didn’t have to say it twice. From down the
corridor came a low hooting that was almost ape-like and a growl that made
John’s scalp prickle. Kolesnikova hurried in and Kavanagh followed, throwing an
eager look around the big room. Ford and Teyla took up positions on either side
of the door, and McKay was already prying open the control panel on this side.

McKay handed the detector off to Kavanagh so he could use both hands on the
cables and circuits inside the wall, saying, “Twenty-five yards and closing, and
in my opinion, that’s way too close.”

John agreed wholeheartedly with that. “You can get this door shut again,
right? You didn’t break it, did you?”

“Of course I didn’t break it!” McKay snapped, then muttered something under
his breath that John didn’t quite catch.

Before John could demand further information on the door front, Teyla asked,
“But why did the detector not show them before this?”

“There could have been some kind of shielding that blocked the detector.”
Rodney grimaced, digging a tool out of his vest pocket to tinker with the
panel’s insides. “Or they were too far away. But it’s always worked before.”

“Fifteen yards and closing,” Kavanagh reported grimly, his eyes on the
detector. “Some have broken off from the main group and are moving faster.”

Ford told McKay, “You were distracted. Maybe you didn’t notice them.”

John didn’t buy that. “He looks at that thing every two seconds, that’s why
we let him carry it. These guys, things, whatever, just appeared about a hundred
yards away down one of these tunnels, however they did it.” He threw a look
around the shadowy chamber, hoping for inspiration. “When we close this door,
they’ll have us trapped in here,” he added, thinking aloud.

“I don’t think we have a choice,” Ford said, keeping his eyes and his P-90 on
the corridor.

“Not so much,” John agreed. There was nothing in here to make a barrier
across the door, no cover.

“We should see what they are first,” Teyla added, stepping close to the
opening, narrowing her eyes. “We cannot fight them if they are just noises in
the dark.”

With a gasp of relief McKay shut the panel and tapped at the controls. Ford
and Teyla stepped back, and the big doors began to slide down and together. John
breathed out in relief. “Right. We need to—”

Something struck the door, scrabbling at the rapidly shrinking opening at the
center. McKay skipped back with a yelp, and John jerked up his weapon.

The light flashed off iridescent scales and white claws, just as the door
slid shut.

John took a deep breath, feeling his heart pound. “Okay. That wasn’t good.”
McKay backed away another few paces, and Ford shifted uneasily. Kolesnikova was
breathing hard and fanning herself. Only Kavanagh seemed unaffected. A muted
thumping sounded from the door, as first one something, then a lot of
somethings, pounded on it. After a few moments, the pounding died away.

“It was unpleasantly close,” Teyla commented, throwing John a worried glance.

McKay recaptured his detector from Kavanagh. “Fifteen yards? Thanks for the
warning!”

“I read exactly what the screen said.” Kavanagh looked around impatiently.
“We should spread out and search for the power source.”

“Not yet,” John told him sharply. “After we check this place out. We don’t
know what’s down here.”

“Yes,” Kolesnikova put in grimly. “As you may have just noticed, we have good
reason to be wary.”

“Whoa, whoa, we’ve got an abrupt increase in energy readings,” McKay said
suddenly, scanning the room with a worried grimace.

“Where, what? Nobody touched anything!” Kolesnikova stepped toward him,
alarmed.

“The door opening must have activated something. It’s this way.” McKay
started forward, face intent.

“Like activated as in turning all the lights on, or activated as in getting
ready to blow up?” Ford asked as John took long steps to catch up with McKay.

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m trying to find it!” McKay snapped back.

McKay led the way past the pillars, through a triangular arch, and out onto a
broad gallery opening into a darker space. A single overhead light emphasized
the crannies and shadows in the rocky walls. The gallery was empty, but a broad
metal stairway led down to an area with several open doorways that were more like
the entrances to caves. McKay hesitated, grimacing at the detector, then started
down.

John stopped halfway down the stairs, startled. He had just realized the odor
of rot had faded, as if they had left it behind in the corridor.
That’s
weird. Either good weird or bad weird.

Sounding concerned, Teyla asked, “Major, what is it?”

“Huh? Nothing.” John hurried to catch up to Rodney at the bottom of the
stairs. He saw lights flickering on in the room ahead, heard the low-power hum
of a large installation coming online.

They both stopped in the arched doorway. The walls of the room were lined
with panels and readouts and controls, but in the center there was a
coffin-sized transparent case, set on a platform with more humming equipment.
The inside was obscured by a white mist, but as John stared in consternation it
cleared, revealing the body of a human man. It was hard to see much detail,
except that he was dressed in a loose brown robe.

“What the hell?” John said, throwing a baffled look at Rodney.

“It’s a stasis container.” Rodney moved forward, staring as if uneasily
fascinated, studying the readouts as the others gathered around.

“I can see that. What—Who—” Realizing he sounded like an idiot, John shut
up. He just hadn’t been expecting this. He had no idea what he had been
expecting, but it wasn’t this.

“I have never seen anything like this before either, Major,” Teyla said,
regarding the stasis container warily. “Could he be a survivor of the attack?
Why did he not leave through the Stargate?”

Kavanagh moved forward impatiently, standing next to McKay to look at the
readouts. McKay flung a hand in the air, saying, “In another minute, you can ask
him personally. This chamber is cycling through an opening sequence.”

“Now we’ll get some answers,” Kavanagh muttered, staring intently at the
chamber.

“Ah, is that a good idea?” Kolesnikova looked worriedly from John to Rodney.
“We think this place is a hospital, at least partly.”

“Yeah,” Ford added. “What if he’s in there because there’s something wrong
with him, and opening it kills him?”

“I have no idea. What if he’s in there because there’s something wrong with
him and opening it kills us?” Rodney ducked around the side of the platform to
check the various panels.

“Can you stop it?” John demanded.

The platform clunked as bolts were released deep inside. Rodney hurried back
to John’s side. “I could, if I had half an hour and we weren’t concerned about
killing him.”

John swore under his breath. That wasn’t going to happen. “Everybody get away
from it,” he ordered, backing away.

Kolesnikova retreated hastily, Ford motioning for her to get behind him as he
and Teyla retreated back through the doorway. Kavanagh stayed where he was, and
John said sharply, “You too, Doctor.”

Kavanagh shook his head, as if barely listening. “He’s human, there’s no
danger. He could be an Ancient.” He gestured, his voice incredulous. “Do you
have any idea what that could mean? We could have all the answers to all the
questions we’ve ever had.”

“Yes, I understand that. But that man could be ill,” Rodney said urgently.
“He could be—”

White mist flushed through the clear part of the chamber and locks clicked;
the low-frequency hum got louder.

“Well, it’s little late now,” Rodney muttered.

John caught Kavanagh by the collar and swung him bodily away from the stasis
container, back toward Teyla. Kavanagh staggered, catching his balance against
the archway.

A whoosh from the stasis container made everyone flinch, then the glass split
smoothly in two, both sides rotating back and down into the platform. The occupant lay exposed on the opalescent
material of the bed, still as death. John had a moment to think the point was
moot and that the man was actually dead; his face was drawn and colorless in the
wan light. Then he twitched and took a hard gasping breath. His eyes opened and
he shook his head, gasped again, and suddenly sat up. He buried his face in his
hands, as if sick or dizzy.

Beside John, McKay hovered uncertainly. “Well?” he asked, keeping his voice
low. “If there was an airborne pathogen in that container with him, it could
already be too late. If not… What do we do?”

“I have no idea,” John admitted. The only thing he could think to do was ask.
He cleared his throat. “Uh, hello?”

The man’s head jerked up and he twisted to face them. He had a high
intelligent forehead, short gray hair matted flat, and his eyes were blue. His
gaze went to John, and he stared for a frozen moment. He said in amazement,
“You’re human.”

“That’s what we were about to say to you.” John eyed him uncertainly. “You
are human, right? Uh, who are you?”

The man lifted a shaky hand to his head. “I am called Dorane.” He was turning
paler by the moment. “I—It has been so long…”

John was starting to feel that using three P-90s to cover one frail unarmed
man in a bathrobe was overkill. “Are you all right?”