By Way Of The Stars, To The Sea
Part Two
Shocked speechless, Daniel tried to reason how that voice could possibly be here. Beyond confusion, his mouth opened of its own accord, the reply forming on his lips as it had done for the last ten years, in response to his name being called by his best friend.
“Jack?”
“Daniel!”
“Wha…what are you doing here?”
“What do you mean what am I doing here? What are you doing here?”
“I…we don’t even know where here is.” Daniel flung his hands out in exasperation. The growth over the hole in the wall had closed, muffling Jack’s words.
“There’s a Stargate in Washington?” Mitchell floundered, three steps behind.
“Jack’s not in Washington. He’s on a mission with Mr. Woolsey.” Daniel glanced at Sam and Teal'c, saw his understanding mirrored on their faces. Perplexed and elated, Daniel began tearing at the coral.
Another voice reached from beyond the barrier. “Doctor Jackson?”
Daniel laughed. “Hello, Elizabeth.”
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Several hours earlier.
Stargate Operations, Atlantis.
Elizabeth Weir wandered around the echoing Gate room. The first jumper full of her returning crew had arrived ten minutes ago. She relished the temporary peace and quiet. It wouldn’t last. Once her people were rounded up on Earth and returned they faced long days resettling, re-establishing equipment, resuming experiments and explorations. And there were a lot of piles of replicator bits to be swept up and disposed of.
Above her, one of the consoles beeped, insistent and urgent. She headed up the steps and nearly tripped over Rodney, stretched out beneath one of the consoles. “What’s going on?”
Rodney replied, rapidly and at length, heedless of the sandwich in his mouth.
She scowled. He swallowed and she cut him off before another attempt. “What is this?”
He scrambled to his feet. The alarm and its accompanying flashing light continued on. “It’s an alarm. Huh.”
“Well. Thank you, Rodney. And what is it alarming us about?”
“I have no idea. I’ve never seen this activate before.” He bent over the panel and typed furiously.
“It’s not something the replicators left behind?”
“No. The central computer is picking up some kind of energy discharge. Looks like the source is in the east pier.” The schematic Rodney brought up showed a warning light flashing down in the structure of the pier, far below the waterline.
“In the ballast tank? What kind of energy could possibly be down there?”
“There shouldn’t be any. There’s nothing down there except, well, ballast.” Rodney tapped the console. “This is very strange.”
“What’s strange?” Sheppard’s voice heralded his arrival. “I’ve finished my sweep. Looks like the city’s clear of nasty surprises.”
“Except one,” Elizabeth replied. “Something’s going on down in the east pier.”
John sighed. “We’ll go take a look. C’mon, Rodney.” He helped himself to the remains of Rodney’s sandwich and headed for the transporter.
Elizabeth considered. The city was secure, Daedalus was still in orbit, and here was a golden opportunity to explore the city. “Colonel, wait for me.”
At the door they ran into General O'Neill, packed and ready to return to Earth. A swift explanation brought a gleam to his eye. Elizabeth saw in him the pioneering explorer who had first walked through Earth’s Stargate and led the SGC’s premier first-contact team for eight long, hard years.
He eyed Sheppard’s P-90. “Got another one of those?”
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
They collected Teyla and Ronan between one transporter and the next. Despite occasional backtracking and only going off-course twice, Rodney led them across the city, out onto the east pier and then down increasingly steep sets of stairs. Elizabeth had lost track of how deep they had descended when they paused for another break.
The general glanced at the stairway rising up into the dimness above. “Oy. So, what do you think is down here?”
“Hard to say, general. It’s probably something left behind by the Ancients. We haven’t explored much of this pier yet.”
“You’ve been here, how long?” O'Neill asked incredulously.
“Ballast tanks haven’t been high on the list of places to go,” sniped Rodney.
The general’s lips twitched with amusement. “I’m just saying, it’s handy to know what’s in your own backyard.”
“I’ll put in a requisition for more personnel,” Elizabeth suggested brightly. “Lead on, Rodney.”
Several levels down, everyone jumped when a burst of static came over their radio headsets. Sheppard responded, but failed to raise a contact. Unsettled, they pressed on, down metal stairs, past anonymous corridors leading to undiscovered rooms. The décor became increasingly featureless. Elegant copper and green walls gave way to plain undecorated metal, watermarked by past flooding.
“You getting anything on the life sign detector?” Sheppard’s voice was hushed in the confined area.
“No,” Rodney whispered. “This is it. Final level. There’s nothing below us but the stabilization tanks and the sea. Actually, the sea is all around us too….”
Sheppard patted him on the back. Ronan pushed past them, annoyingly unaffected by the long climb down. General O'Neill joined him, both leading the group down the corridor. Their lights played over the walls and floor. Elizabeth followed, heart pounding. Fifty meters along, the hall ended in a rough-textured jumble. At first it looked like torn metal, but Elizabeth quickly reconsidered that. Was it rock, or some kind of growth? A glint of light showed from within and a scratching sound could be heard.
Ronan and the general both held up a clenched fist, halting their advance. Silence wrapped them close, but it was not complete. A voice reached out from the darkness, indistinct but recognizably human. Elizabeth exchanged a glance with the others. They inched closer, no one willing to break the hush.
General O'Neill suddenly straightened, brow creased in astonishment as he listened intently. He stepped forward, his hand, Elizabeth noted, slipped away from the P-90’s trigger. He planted his feet, and in a tone perfected over a career spent confronting the incredible, he called out: “Daniel?”
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“That some kind of Earth greeting?” Ronan drawled in the ensuing silence.
O'Neill deliberated, then shrugged. “It’s getting to be.”
“Jack?” The faint reply was unmistakably Doctor Jackson. Elizabeth let out a surprised laugh and everyone crowded closer while the general carried out a bizarre, half-accusatory conversation. She leaned forward, and yelled, “Doctor Jackson?”
“Hello, Elizabeth.”
That certainly was Daniel Jackson. “What are you doing in Atlantis’s ballast tanks?”
General O'Neill barked out, “Daniel, are you naked?”
“Wh—of course I’m not!” came the indignant reply.
“You sure? Every time you turn up somewhere unexpected, you’re—you know. Oma hasn’t been busy again?”
“No! Jack, I’m me, I’m alive. The others are here.” Daniel’s voice became even more muffled. “Don’t stare at me, say something.”
“Yo, general! Mitchell here. SG-1 is present and accounted for, sir.”
Teal'c, Colonel Carter and Vala added their voices to the roll call. Rodney pushed in to examine the barrier, and O'Neill stepped aside, looking relieved. Elizabeth gazed curiously at him. “Oma?”
He grimaced. “Ascended, glowy person. Has a habit of ascending Daniel out of trouble, and dropping him back in his birthday suit.”
“I see. Well, I’m glad that’s not the case, but how did SG-1 get here?”
“Oh, you can bet, whatever the answer is, it’ll be a doozy.”
“Give us a hand out of here and we’ll be glad to fill you in, general.” Mitchell’s voice rose over Rodney and Sheppard’s chatter.
“This substance is not like any we have previously encountered in the city,” commented Teyla. She peered closely, keeping her fingers away from the jagged edges.
Expectant looks were sent Rodney’s way but he deflected them with annoyance. “What do you expect me to do? We need a good old pick and shovel.”
“We tried breaking through it,” Colonel Carter called, “but it regrew.”
“How’s that?” Sheppard rapped the surface with the butt of his gun, and frowned unhappily at the scratched metal.
“We think it’s some kind of coral,” Mitchell added. There was a sharp crack and a hole appeared in the wall. A light from within danced around the edges, illuminating Mitchell’s face. “It grows back. Really fast!”
Elizabeth stepped back, astonished, as the hole began to shrink.
“Whoa. Give me a hand.” Sheppard grasped the edge and hauled. Ronan reached for the other side and fingers from the group inside joined in. The gap diminished, inexorably closing.
“This whole barrier is a living organism,” remarked Rodney, oblivious to the struggle. He fiddled with his scanner. O'Neill moved him to one side and used his knife on the wall.
With all eyes on the opening the bleat of terror from Rodney was completely unexpected. Elizabeth swung around and found herself staring at his feet. She looked up. McKay dangled in midair, a thick, crusted tentacle extending from the barrier was wrapped tightly around his middle, turning his face an interesting shade of purple.
“Rodney!” Sheppard released a burst of gunfire and she ducked a shower of coral chips. Ronan leapt forward, grabbed the tentacle and tried to prize it loose.
“Hey, what’s going on out there?” Daniel yelled. “We’ve got bullets coming through the wall!”
Elizabeth reached out to help Ronan, only to have the tentacle – and Rodney – whisked out of her grasp. O'Neill pulled her back. The tentacle absorbed into the wall, taking Rodney, and Ronan still clinging to him, with it.
“Uh….” Completely stumped, Sheppard fell back on military training and looked to the general.
O'Neill stared at the barrier, growth, creature…whatever it was. His eyes suddenly widened and by the time he uttered, “Aw, crap,” four new tentacles shot out of the growth, wrapped around each of them and sucked them straight into the wall.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Oh, this is just disgusting.” Rodney’s complaint assaulted Elizabeth’s ears as she tried to untangle herself from the general and John. Slime dripped down her face, getting in her mouth and stinging her eyes.
“I could not agree more.” Teyla eeled out from under the pile of bodies.
A large hand grasped Elizabeth’s arm. “Allow me to assist you, Doctor Weir.” Teal'c loomed over her and brought her to her feet. “O'Neill,” he announced with fond amusement. “It is good to see you again. You are looking…well.”
General O'Neill seemed content to lay where he’d been deposited. “Yeah, you know. Been working out; a little swimming, a few thousand stairs. Hey, kids!” He waved up at SG-1: bemused but keeping well clear of the slime.
Elizabeth looked at SG-1. Obviously dressed for a mission, they were wet but whole. Beyond them, what looked like a walkway liberally encrusted with the supposed coral stretched around a dark, very large room. “I…don’t even know where to begin.”
“What happened?” asked Colonel Carter.
Sheppard peered at the wall. “Seems like your coral is some kind of creature. It grabbed us and pulled us in, easy as pie.”
“What?” chorused SG-1.
“It’s got tentacles,” Elizabeth said. She grimaced in sympathy at Vala’s look of horror.
To prove the point, a thick appendage formed out of the wall, reached out to Rodney and brushed his cheek. Rodney yelped and stumbled back into Ronan. Fascinated, Elizabeth watched its orange shade dull and turn into the same color as Rodney’s shirt. The suckers retracted and it waved gently in the air, almost appearing to sniff him.
“What d’you know. It is the Creature from the Black Lagoon,” murmured Mitchell reverently.
The tentacle turned to him, then smoothly shaped itself into feelers and a snout, looking for all the world like a snail. Without pause the features changed into some type of fish then rapidly morphed through several species, ending with a patently un-aquatic visage.
“Is that McKay?” Sheppard sniggered.
“Yes? What?” Rodney turned and came face to…face with himself. “Oh.”
The appendage stared blankly at them for a long moment, then with casual effort turned into a large human hand. It reached out, grabbed Rodney by the throat and lifted him off the ground.
“Awk—help!”
The group leaped into action. Sheppard, Teyla and Mitchell grabbed for Rodney and hauled him back. Teal'c, Ronan and Carter attacked the tentacle with their knives and found their blades trapped by the outer surface which closed over with coral-like hardness. They persisted until it released its hold on Rodney and dropped him on top of his helpers.
“Everybody back up, now!” O'Neill shouted over the confusion.
More tentacles emerged. They thrashed through the air, groping for the intruders to its domain. On the now-crowded walkway, the Atlantis group slipped and skidded, banged into SG-1 and shoved themselves and whoever was next to them away from the wall. They fled down the walkway, away from the stinging slap of crusted appendages. A good distance along they halted, warily watching the writhing barrier. At their feet smaller lumps of coral clustered by the wall.
“I hope those aren’t its babies,” Vala said nervously.
“So, the wall is a creature and it has arms. Great,” Mitchell panted.
Sandwiched between Daniel and Teyla, O'Neill perused the array of colonels around him. “Report, one of you. Better yet, Daniel. Nice and fast.”
Daniel kept a wary eye and a wet gun on the waving arms. “Uh, we were on a recon mission, back in the Milky Way. We dialed home, ended up in a chamber next door, thirty feet underwater. Swam into this room, came up here, tried to get out. That’s where you guys came in.”
“Wait a minute!” Rodney blurted. “You dialed? You mean you came here through the Stargate? That’s impossible.”
“Not yours, McKay,” Mitchell said. “The one in your basement.”
“What?” Elizabeth joined the chorus of disbelief.
“There’s another Stargate, in a room adjacent to this one,” Colonel Carter said.
“Daniel misdialed,” Vala added pointedly.
“I did not misdial,” snapped Daniel. “As I was trying to say before the Third Cavalry here showed up, I think the DHD on P9H-506 had been programmed to send travelers, who have arrived from Earth, on to Atlantis.”
“Call forwarding?” Sheppard mumbled. He shook a lump of goop out of his hair.
“Something like that.”
“Huh. It must be a way-station. The planet you gated to,” Rodney elaborated, as if he’d known about it all along. “Probably designed to protect Earth and Atlantis’s addresses. Maybe even facilitate travel through the Gate system if a ZPM isn’t available.”
Daniel stared at him, suspicious of having Rodney on his side. “Yeah.”
“Sweet.” O'Neill stuck a finger in one ear to excavate the slime. “We’ll go dial out to somewhere, turn round, come back to Atlantis’s Gate room. I feel the need for a shower.”
“No can do, general,” Mitchell said.
“The DHD is just a blank face. There’s nothing to dial out with,” added Carter.
“Son of a bitch.”
“Well.” Elizabeth eyed the barrier doubtfully. “We’ll just have to go back the way we came in.”
“Can’t we pass on the whole ‘tentacle squeezing the life out of us thing’ again?” Rodney shuffled as far back as he could, tucking himself behind Teal'c and Ronan. “Radios! Call for help and get the Daedalus to beam us out of here.”
“I tried calling for help before,” Carter said. “Couldn’t get a reply.”
“Ah. That would be the static we heard.” Sheppard tried his own headset and got the same response.
Elizabeth leant over the railing. In the dark water marine life milled in bright schools or broke the surface in energetic leaps. “Incredible. I can’t believe this has been going on down here.”
Next to her, Teal'c straightened and called out, “O'Neill, the water level is rising.”
Ronan unshipped his weapon. “Time to leave.” He took aim at the creature blocking their exit. Before he could pull the trigger another tentacle streaked up from the lumps at their feet, and wrapped around the gun. Ronan hung on in a desperate tug of war.
“Look out!” Elizabeth ducked another which tried to grab her and suddenly the walkway was filled with flailing tentacles. People dodged, cursed, tripped over each other and battled the grasping, slimy attackers. She caught a brief flash of Sheppard in the grip of four tentacles, then he was yanked off his feet and hurled into the water.
“No!” Elizabeth’s cry was echoed by Teyla as she too was flung away.
“Daniel—” Vala shrieked as she was caught and tossed into the water.
“Vala – Rodney!” Daniel lunged for McKay, but lost his grip as his feet were pulled out from under him. He crashed to the metal grid and Elizabeth lost sight of him behind the struggling melee. Teal'c battled next to her, muscles straining as he tried to free her from the grasp of two tentacles. She choked out a warning at a cluster arcing behind him. They snatched Teal'c up and cast him over the side, the astonishment on his face the last thing she saw.
A grind of stressed metal heralded a shiver under their feet. Bolts and welds gave way and the walkway sagged away from the wall. Elizabeth slid into Mitchell and they both landed on Daniel. They clutched at each other, and suddenly the attacking arms let go. They snaked back into the base formations and disappeared.
“Uh, oh,” Daniel winced. “This is not good.”
Carter, clinging to the handrail behind him peered down into the water. “Oh, no. Look.”
Elizabeth leaned over Daniel and saw three splashing figures below. And something else, like an enormous electric-orange jellyfish. It rose over the frantic swimmers, and in one smooth movement swallowed them whole.
“No!”
O'Neill and Ronan braced themselves above her, guns aimed but unable to fire without hitting their people. The creatures were gone. Of the five thrown to their doom, there was no sign.
The shivering metal beneath them tilted. Clutching each other for a heart-stopping slide they rammed into the railing. Breathless, Elizabeth looked down into Daniel’s eyes. He and Carter dangled over the drop, Ronan, O'Neill and Mitchell desperately halting their fall. For the moment.
Beyond them, down in the weirdly lit chamber, the water steadily rose.
Part Two
Shocked speechless, Daniel tried to reason how that voice could possibly be here. Beyond confusion, his mouth opened of its own accord, the reply forming on his lips as it had done for the last ten years, in response to his name being called by his best friend.
“Jack?”
“Daniel!”
“Wha…what are you doing here?”
“What do you mean what am I doing here? What are you doing here?”
“I…we don’t even know where here is.” Daniel flung his hands out in exasperation. The growth over the hole in the wall had closed, muffling Jack’s words.
“There’s a Stargate in Washington?” Mitchell floundered, three steps behind.
“Jack’s not in Washington. He’s on a mission with Mr. Woolsey.” Daniel glanced at Sam and Teal'c, saw his understanding mirrored on their faces. Perplexed and elated, Daniel began tearing at the coral.
Another voice reached from beyond the barrier. “Doctor Jackson?”
Daniel laughed. “Hello, Elizabeth.”
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Several hours earlier.
Stargate Operations, Atlantis.
Elizabeth Weir wandered around the echoing Gate room. The first jumper full of her returning crew had arrived ten minutes ago. She relished the temporary peace and quiet. It wouldn’t last. Once her people were rounded up on Earth and returned they faced long days resettling, re-establishing equipment, resuming experiments and explorations. And there were a lot of piles of replicator bits to be swept up and disposed of.
Above her, one of the consoles beeped, insistent and urgent. She headed up the steps and nearly tripped over Rodney, stretched out beneath one of the consoles. “What’s going on?”
Rodney replied, rapidly and at length, heedless of the sandwich in his mouth.
She scowled. He swallowed and she cut him off before another attempt. “What is this?”
He scrambled to his feet. The alarm and its accompanying flashing light continued on. “It’s an alarm. Huh.”
“Well. Thank you, Rodney. And what is it alarming us about?”
“I have no idea. I’ve never seen this activate before.” He bent over the panel and typed furiously.
“It’s not something the replicators left behind?”
“No. The central computer is picking up some kind of energy discharge. Looks like the source is in the east pier.” The schematic Rodney brought up showed a warning light flashing down in the structure of the pier, far below the waterline.
“In the ballast tank? What kind of energy could possibly be down there?”
“There shouldn’t be any. There’s nothing down there except, well, ballast.” Rodney tapped the console. “This is very strange.”
“What’s strange?” Sheppard’s voice heralded his arrival. “I’ve finished my sweep. Looks like the city’s clear of nasty surprises.”
“Except one,” Elizabeth replied. “Something’s going on down in the east pier.”
John sighed. “We’ll go take a look. C’mon, Rodney.” He helped himself to the remains of Rodney’s sandwich and headed for the transporter.
Elizabeth considered. The city was secure, Daedalus was still in orbit, and here was a golden opportunity to explore the city. “Colonel, wait for me.”
At the door they ran into General O'Neill, packed and ready to return to Earth. A swift explanation brought a gleam to his eye. Elizabeth saw in him the pioneering explorer who had first walked through Earth’s Stargate and led the SGC’s premier first-contact team for eight long, hard years.
He eyed Sheppard’s P-90. “Got another one of those?”
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
They collected Teyla and Ronan between one transporter and the next. Despite occasional backtracking and only going off-course twice, Rodney led them across the city, out onto the east pier and then down increasingly steep sets of stairs. Elizabeth had lost track of how deep they had descended when they paused for another break.
The general glanced at the stairway rising up into the dimness above. “Oy. So, what do you think is down here?”
“Hard to say, general. It’s probably something left behind by the Ancients. We haven’t explored much of this pier yet.”
“You’ve been here, how long?” O'Neill asked incredulously.
“Ballast tanks haven’t been high on the list of places to go,” sniped Rodney.
The general’s lips twitched with amusement. “I’m just saying, it’s handy to know what’s in your own backyard.”
“I’ll put in a requisition for more personnel,” Elizabeth suggested brightly. “Lead on, Rodney.”
Several levels down, everyone jumped when a burst of static came over their radio headsets. Sheppard responded, but failed to raise a contact. Unsettled, they pressed on, down metal stairs, past anonymous corridors leading to undiscovered rooms. The décor became increasingly featureless. Elegant copper and green walls gave way to plain undecorated metal, watermarked by past flooding.
“You getting anything on the life sign detector?” Sheppard’s voice was hushed in the confined area.
“No,” Rodney whispered. “This is it. Final level. There’s nothing below us but the stabilization tanks and the sea. Actually, the sea is all around us too….”
Sheppard patted him on the back. Ronan pushed past them, annoyingly unaffected by the long climb down. General O'Neill joined him, both leading the group down the corridor. Their lights played over the walls and floor. Elizabeth followed, heart pounding. Fifty meters along, the hall ended in a rough-textured jumble. At first it looked like torn metal, but Elizabeth quickly reconsidered that. Was it rock, or some kind of growth? A glint of light showed from within and a scratching sound could be heard.
Ronan and the general both held up a clenched fist, halting their advance. Silence wrapped them close, but it was not complete. A voice reached out from the darkness, indistinct but recognizably human. Elizabeth exchanged a glance with the others. They inched closer, no one willing to break the hush.
General O'Neill suddenly straightened, brow creased in astonishment as he listened intently. He stepped forward, his hand, Elizabeth noted, slipped away from the P-90’s trigger. He planted his feet, and in a tone perfected over a career spent confronting the incredible, he called out: “Daniel?”
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“That some kind of Earth greeting?” Ronan drawled in the ensuing silence.
O'Neill deliberated, then shrugged. “It’s getting to be.”
“Jack?” The faint reply was unmistakably Doctor Jackson. Elizabeth let out a surprised laugh and everyone crowded closer while the general carried out a bizarre, half-accusatory conversation. She leaned forward, and yelled, “Doctor Jackson?”
“Hello, Elizabeth.”
That certainly was Daniel Jackson. “What are you doing in Atlantis’s ballast tanks?”
General O'Neill barked out, “Daniel, are you naked?”
“Wh—of course I’m not!” came the indignant reply.
“You sure? Every time you turn up somewhere unexpected, you’re—you know. Oma hasn’t been busy again?”
“No! Jack, I’m me, I’m alive. The others are here.” Daniel’s voice became even more muffled. “Don’t stare at me, say something.”
“Yo, general! Mitchell here. SG-1 is present and accounted for, sir.”
Teal'c, Colonel Carter and Vala added their voices to the roll call. Rodney pushed in to examine the barrier, and O'Neill stepped aside, looking relieved. Elizabeth gazed curiously at him. “Oma?”
He grimaced. “Ascended, glowy person. Has a habit of ascending Daniel out of trouble, and dropping him back in his birthday suit.”
“I see. Well, I’m glad that’s not the case, but how did SG-1 get here?”
“Oh, you can bet, whatever the answer is, it’ll be a doozy.”
“Give us a hand out of here and we’ll be glad to fill you in, general.” Mitchell’s voice rose over Rodney and Sheppard’s chatter.
“This substance is not like any we have previously encountered in the city,” commented Teyla. She peered closely, keeping her fingers away from the jagged edges.
Expectant looks were sent Rodney’s way but he deflected them with annoyance. “What do you expect me to do? We need a good old pick and shovel.”
“We tried breaking through it,” Colonel Carter called, “but it regrew.”
“How’s that?” Sheppard rapped the surface with the butt of his gun, and frowned unhappily at the scratched metal.
“We think it’s some kind of coral,” Mitchell added. There was a sharp crack and a hole appeared in the wall. A light from within danced around the edges, illuminating Mitchell’s face. “It grows back. Really fast!”
Elizabeth stepped back, astonished, as the hole began to shrink.
“Whoa. Give me a hand.” Sheppard grasped the edge and hauled. Ronan reached for the other side and fingers from the group inside joined in. The gap diminished, inexorably closing.
“This whole barrier is a living organism,” remarked Rodney, oblivious to the struggle. He fiddled with his scanner. O'Neill moved him to one side and used his knife on the wall.
With all eyes on the opening the bleat of terror from Rodney was completely unexpected. Elizabeth swung around and found herself staring at his feet. She looked up. McKay dangled in midair, a thick, crusted tentacle extending from the barrier was wrapped tightly around his middle, turning his face an interesting shade of purple.
“Rodney!” Sheppard released a burst of gunfire and she ducked a shower of coral chips. Ronan leapt forward, grabbed the tentacle and tried to prize it loose.
“Hey, what’s going on out there?” Daniel yelled. “We’ve got bullets coming through the wall!”
Elizabeth reached out to help Ronan, only to have the tentacle – and Rodney – whisked out of her grasp. O'Neill pulled her back. The tentacle absorbed into the wall, taking Rodney, and Ronan still clinging to him, with it.
“Uh….” Completely stumped, Sheppard fell back on military training and looked to the general.
O'Neill stared at the barrier, growth, creature…whatever it was. His eyes suddenly widened and by the time he uttered, “Aw, crap,” four new tentacles shot out of the growth, wrapped around each of them and sucked them straight into the wall.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Oh, this is just disgusting.” Rodney’s complaint assaulted Elizabeth’s ears as she tried to untangle herself from the general and John. Slime dripped down her face, getting in her mouth and stinging her eyes.
“I could not agree more.” Teyla eeled out from under the pile of bodies.
A large hand grasped Elizabeth’s arm. “Allow me to assist you, Doctor Weir.” Teal'c loomed over her and brought her to her feet. “O'Neill,” he announced with fond amusement. “It is good to see you again. You are looking…well.”
General O'Neill seemed content to lay where he’d been deposited. “Yeah, you know. Been working out; a little swimming, a few thousand stairs. Hey, kids!” He waved up at SG-1: bemused but keeping well clear of the slime.
Elizabeth looked at SG-1. Obviously dressed for a mission, they were wet but whole. Beyond them, what looked like a walkway liberally encrusted with the supposed coral stretched around a dark, very large room. “I…don’t even know where to begin.”
“What happened?” asked Colonel Carter.
Sheppard peered at the wall. “Seems like your coral is some kind of creature. It grabbed us and pulled us in, easy as pie.”
“What?” chorused SG-1.
“It’s got tentacles,” Elizabeth said. She grimaced in sympathy at Vala’s look of horror.
To prove the point, a thick appendage formed out of the wall, reached out to Rodney and brushed his cheek. Rodney yelped and stumbled back into Ronan. Fascinated, Elizabeth watched its orange shade dull and turn into the same color as Rodney’s shirt. The suckers retracted and it waved gently in the air, almost appearing to sniff him.
“What d’you know. It is the Creature from the Black Lagoon,” murmured Mitchell reverently.
The tentacle turned to him, then smoothly shaped itself into feelers and a snout, looking for all the world like a snail. Without pause the features changed into some type of fish then rapidly morphed through several species, ending with a patently un-aquatic visage.
“Is that McKay?” Sheppard sniggered.
“Yes? What?” Rodney turned and came face to…face with himself. “Oh.”
The appendage stared blankly at them for a long moment, then with casual effort turned into a large human hand. It reached out, grabbed Rodney by the throat and lifted him off the ground.
“Awk—help!”
The group leaped into action. Sheppard, Teyla and Mitchell grabbed for Rodney and hauled him back. Teal'c, Ronan and Carter attacked the tentacle with their knives and found their blades trapped by the outer surface which closed over with coral-like hardness. They persisted until it released its hold on Rodney and dropped him on top of his helpers.
“Everybody back up, now!” O'Neill shouted over the confusion.
More tentacles emerged. They thrashed through the air, groping for the intruders to its domain. On the now-crowded walkway, the Atlantis group slipped and skidded, banged into SG-1 and shoved themselves and whoever was next to them away from the wall. They fled down the walkway, away from the stinging slap of crusted appendages. A good distance along they halted, warily watching the writhing barrier. At their feet smaller lumps of coral clustered by the wall.
“I hope those aren’t its babies,” Vala said nervously.
“So, the wall is a creature and it has arms. Great,” Mitchell panted.
Sandwiched between Daniel and Teyla, O'Neill perused the array of colonels around him. “Report, one of you. Better yet, Daniel. Nice and fast.”
Daniel kept a wary eye and a wet gun on the waving arms. “Uh, we were on a recon mission, back in the Milky Way. We dialed home, ended up in a chamber next door, thirty feet underwater. Swam into this room, came up here, tried to get out. That’s where you guys came in.”
“Wait a minute!” Rodney blurted. “You dialed? You mean you came here through the Stargate? That’s impossible.”
“Not yours, McKay,” Mitchell said. “The one in your basement.”
“What?” Elizabeth joined the chorus of disbelief.
“There’s another Stargate, in a room adjacent to this one,” Colonel Carter said.
“Daniel misdialed,” Vala added pointedly.
“I did not misdial,” snapped Daniel. “As I was trying to say before the Third Cavalry here showed up, I think the DHD on P9H-506 had been programmed to send travelers, who have arrived from Earth, on to Atlantis.”
“Call forwarding?” Sheppard mumbled. He shook a lump of goop out of his hair.
“Something like that.”
“Huh. It must be a way-station. The planet you gated to,” Rodney elaborated, as if he’d known about it all along. “Probably designed to protect Earth and Atlantis’s addresses. Maybe even facilitate travel through the Gate system if a ZPM isn’t available.”
Daniel stared at him, suspicious of having Rodney on his side. “Yeah.”
“Sweet.” O'Neill stuck a finger in one ear to excavate the slime. “We’ll go dial out to somewhere, turn round, come back to Atlantis’s Gate room. I feel the need for a shower.”
“No can do, general,” Mitchell said.
“The DHD is just a blank face. There’s nothing to dial out with,” added Carter.
“Son of a bitch.”
“Well.” Elizabeth eyed the barrier doubtfully. “We’ll just have to go back the way we came in.”
“Can’t we pass on the whole ‘tentacle squeezing the life out of us thing’ again?” Rodney shuffled as far back as he could, tucking himself behind Teal'c and Ronan. “Radios! Call for help and get the Daedalus to beam us out of here.”
“I tried calling for help before,” Carter said. “Couldn’t get a reply.”
“Ah. That would be the static we heard.” Sheppard tried his own headset and got the same response.
Elizabeth leant over the railing. In the dark water marine life milled in bright schools or broke the surface in energetic leaps. “Incredible. I can’t believe this has been going on down here.”
Next to her, Teal'c straightened and called out, “O'Neill, the water level is rising.”
Ronan unshipped his weapon. “Time to leave.” He took aim at the creature blocking their exit. Before he could pull the trigger another tentacle streaked up from the lumps at their feet, and wrapped around the gun. Ronan hung on in a desperate tug of war.
“Look out!” Elizabeth ducked another which tried to grab her and suddenly the walkway was filled with flailing tentacles. People dodged, cursed, tripped over each other and battled the grasping, slimy attackers. She caught a brief flash of Sheppard in the grip of four tentacles, then he was yanked off his feet and hurled into the water.
“No!” Elizabeth’s cry was echoed by Teyla as she too was flung away.
“Daniel—” Vala shrieked as she was caught and tossed into the water.
“Vala – Rodney!” Daniel lunged for McKay, but lost his grip as his feet were pulled out from under him. He crashed to the metal grid and Elizabeth lost sight of him behind the struggling melee. Teal'c battled next to her, muscles straining as he tried to free her from the grasp of two tentacles. She choked out a warning at a cluster arcing behind him. They snatched Teal'c up and cast him over the side, the astonishment on his face the last thing she saw.
A grind of stressed metal heralded a shiver under their feet. Bolts and welds gave way and the walkway sagged away from the wall. Elizabeth slid into Mitchell and they both landed on Daniel. They clutched at each other, and suddenly the attacking arms let go. They snaked back into the base formations and disappeared.
“Uh, oh,” Daniel winced. “This is not good.”
Carter, clinging to the handrail behind him peered down into the water. “Oh, no. Look.”
Elizabeth leaned over Daniel and saw three splashing figures below. And something else, like an enormous electric-orange jellyfish. It rose over the frantic swimmers, and in one smooth movement swallowed them whole.
“No!”
O'Neill and Ronan braced themselves above her, guns aimed but unable to fire without hitting their people. The creatures were gone. Of the five thrown to their doom, there was no sign.
The shivering metal beneath them tilted. Clutching each other for a heart-stopping slide they rammed into the railing. Breathless, Elizabeth looked down into Daniel’s eyes. He and Carter dangled over the drop, Ronan, O'Neill and Mitchell desperately halting their fall. For the moment.
Beyond them, down in the weirdly lit chamber, the water steadily rose.
