SGA-02: Reliquary by Martha Wells

Author:Martha Wells
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: stargate, stargate atlantis, teyla, rodney, john sheppard
Publisher: Martha Wells

Chapter Seven

The next time John drifted back to half-awareness, there was a ZPM next to the flashlight. Was that there before? he wondered vaguely. Maybe this was some sort of wish-fulfillment hallucination.

Then he was dreaming about being a kid again, about the time he had been attacked by fire ants. The little bastards crawled all over you, waiting to bite until they had swarmed over as much of your skin as they could reach. Then they sent a chemical signal and all bit at once, and the bites hurt like hell, like little pinpoints of acid in your flesh, and then itched and itched—

“Stop it, don’t scratch,” Rodney ordered, leaning over him and slapping at his hands.

“Don’t hit,” John told him, shoving his hands away and glaring. He was lying on the floor, in the little room he remembered, and there was the flashlight and the ZPM, apparently not a hallucination. The itching was real, too. He still felt too hot, but he was sweating now, as if the fever had broken. “What— what are—” He wiggled his fingers, surprised to see them in a pair of slightly oversized lab gloves from the medical kit. “Why am I wearing gloves?”

Rodney looked exhausted. “You were scratching at your skin, leaving marks, I was afraid you were going to hurt yourself,” he explained. He brandished a water bottle. “Here, you need this.”

John realized his throat was painfully dry. “Yeah.” He struggled to sit up, accepted the bottle and took a cautious sip, not letting himself drink as much as he wanted. “This isn’t all we have, is it?”

“We have enough for now.” McKay nodded toward the pitiful little cache of supplies arranged next to the ZPM. There were now two more bottles.

John handed the water back. He eyed the non-hallucinatory ZPM. “That’s a ZPM.”

“Very good, Major.” McKay was obviously too tired to give the sarcasm the usual bite. “When it was time for sunset on the surface, the Koan temporarily cleared out of Dorane’s lab area. I went up there and tried to find any of our supplies. There wasn’t much. I found Kolesnikova’s pack, but her pistol and ammunition were gone. So I took the opportunity to poke around through Dorane’s data storage, and take the ZPM. He had three! Three! But two were at maximum entropy, and that one is almost completely drained.” He gave the ZPM a disgusted look, as if it was at fault for being a disappointment.

John still felt distanced from reality. “You went back there alone?” It seemed like a bad idea, even with the detector.

McKay glared at him. “Hello? You were unconscious.”

“Okay, okay.” John let it drop. He knew McKay had gone for the water because he needed it to keep John’s fever down. “How long was I out?”

“About ten hours. It’s dark up on the surface now, and most of the Koan are up there, so there isn’t much we can do.” McKay hesitated, shifting uncomfortably. “At first light, if you feel up to it, we’ll have to get moving.

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