Ad Noctum: Chapter 8

Cannibalistic, parasitic, alien snakes? Sure. What the heck.

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Violence. Injuries. Torture. Abduction. Anxiety. Panic. Purposefully insensitive discussion of mental health issues. Loss of agency. Thought control. Boundary problems. Manipulation. Gaslighting. References to suicide. Drug use. Death wishes. Indirect references to sexual assault. 

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: None.

Chapter 8

No.

Just—

No.

Not snakes.

Not cannibals.

Not parasites.

Not aliens.

But cannibalistic, parasitic, alien snakes?

Sure. What the heck.

He hated his life.

He hated his life so much right now. 

The darkness pressed on Volker like a collapsing wall as they moved deeper into the refinery, down into warm, damp air. Drops of what he hoped was water fell from an invisible ceiling and landed on his face and in his hair. 

Telford stopped and lifted a hand, creating a dark silhouette against the diffuse beam of his flashlight.

Volker suppressed a flinch of surprise as Rush stepped to his shoulder.

The down-sloping passage ahead was covered with a thin sheen of liquid. Rivulets trickled from paired dark culverts at the base of the walls. 

They stood, listening to the soft sounds of moving water.

Telford looked at Rush.

Rush flourished an after-you hand at the path ahead, then turned the motion into a courtly bow.

Telford glared at him, then turned to Volker. “Scan the water.”

Volker pulled out his A-corder and crouched down near the dark mouth of a culvert. Just inside its lip, he saw a grate, which made him feel a little better about the size of alien vermin that might pop out and bite him.

He started with what he knew, identifying traces of naquadah, two intermediate products, and naquadria.

No surprises there.

He navigated back to the home screen on the A-corder and tried to think about what he wanted. It would be nice to know if the water was radioactive.

An icon flashed at him. It was shaped like the nucleus of an atom surrounded by an f-orbital rendered in tropical-sunset red.

Ugh, he loved this little device. He simultaneously wanted to take it apart to see how it worked and murder anyone who tried it.

The A-corder rainbowed for him.

“Thanks buddy.” He tapped the icon. 

A new display popped up, showing color-coded symbols corresponding to alpha, beta, and gamma radiation in the corner of the screen. The rest of the display was dark with rare showers of green pixels. They increased as he moved the detector closer to the surface of the water.

The little guy was functioning as a visual, silent, Ancient, equivalent of a Geiger counter.

He adored this thing.

He did not so much adore ionizing radiation.

Volker brought the device close to a snaking rivulet. The showers of color on the screen increased in intensity and frequency. They were mostly green, with an occasional burst of blue. Ooh. Maybe a beta particle here and there? The range of the alpha particles was definitely limited. He was pretty sure that tracking through this water was NOT advisable.

With a whisper of leather, Rush dropped into a crouch beside him. The mathematician grabbed the A-corder by its rim and angled the display. At his touch, the screen exploded with annotated sidebars, all in Ancient. Its colors cycled brightly through the visible spectrum.

Rush smiled faintly. 

Volker felt unspeakably jealous.

Rush let the device go and surged to his feet. The screen simplified itself and faded to a mournful blue-gray.

“Oh, c’mon,” Volker whispered encouragingly, “I’m not so bad.” The A-corder brightened up, its blue turning the color of shallow sea under sun. “There ya go!”

“If you’re done talking to the tech,” Telford said, his eyes on the passage ahead, “you want to tell me what you found?”

“The water is radioactive,” Volker replied.

“It’s fine,” Rush said, pacing the line where the dusty corridor floor turned damp. 

Telford glowered at the pair of them, then decided glaring at Rush was more productive.

“It’s radioactive and fine,” Rush clarified. “Unless you plan on drinking the stuff or living here.” He stepped delicately into the dark liquid.

Telford hauled him back by the scruff of his jacket. “You,” he said through gritted teeth, “have our six.”

They started forward again, and the water went from a sheen over the floor to a few centimeters deep. The beams of their flashlights shone off its surface, which threw the sides of the passage and the ceiling into better relief. A patina of blue-gray rust coated every surface. 

As they went, Volker kept the A-corder in his hand and glanced down at it often.

//Please help me,// he thought. //Please. Whatever you can do, little guy. Please help.//

The little device glowed with the blue of spectra and the showering green of ambient particle counts. 

That counted as help.

Finally, they came to a door.

The tunnel split away to either side, forming a “Y” with branches to their left and right that sloped down at terrifyingly steep grades. The corners between walls and floors turned beveled, and that beveling increased as the tunnels dived. Shifting his flashlight beam between the two tunnels, Volker saw the planar surface of the corridor walls morph to rounded edges.

Like a pair of giant drains.

Probably, the door at the crux of the “Y” was a hatch. 

Volker caught Rush’s eye and gave the mathematician a significant look, tilting his head toward the door.

Rush nodded like he got it.

Did he get it? Maybe. 

“This,” Volker pointed at the paired, diverging drains, “is meant to be submerged.” He pointed at the door in front of them. “That’s an airlock. Water,” he continued, “floods this place.”

Rush took an instinctive step back the way they had come.

Telford swung to face Rush, and they stared one another down.

Volker cleared his throat. “Does that—mean something to you guys?”

“No.” Rush looked down the right passage, into darkness. He shook his hair out of his eyes. “It means nothing.”

With a what-the-hell grimace, Telford stepped up and turned the wheel mounted on the metal door. It opened with a well-oiled silence that unsettled even Rush.

Volker glanced down at the A-corder. It showed him a solo firework from an ambient beta particle. 

Telford directed his flashlight into the dark opening. It hit another door of dull gray metal less than five feet behind the first. The space was small.

So small.

Way too small.

“Nope,” Volker said, and the word echoed off metal walls. He shook his head. “No way. We don’t know where that thing leads. We don’t know what’s on the other side. Probably a flooded mineshaft. It’s not worth it. It’s not—”

Rush grabbed him by the front of his leather jacket and yanked him in, arranging a quick apposition of lips and ears. “It is,” the other man said so quietly Volker could barely hear him, “worth it.” Rush shoved him back. “Pull yourself together.”

“Keep it down.” Telford spoke quietly and swept his hand in a tight circle. “Sound carries in halls like these.” He stepped into the hatch.

“We have to know,” Rush mouthed at Volker.

“Why?” Volker replied, pointed and soundless.

“They never would have voluntarily abandoned a place such as this,” Rush whispered, the words tripping over one another. “Never. Do you understand? Please understand. When people are unwilling to stay—”

“The Alliance makes them stay.”

“Yes,” Rush said. “But not here. Not here.”

“There’s always a workaround,” Rush whispered. “Always. Even for coercive persuasion. There must be. We just have to find it. There’s one here t’find.”

Volker tried to force air into his lungs. He nodded.

“What are you guys talking about?” Telford called out of the small, dark space.

“Dr. Volker needs help with his iPhone.” Rush followed Telford into the confining dark. “Fear not, I’ve made him an appointment at the Genius Bar.”

“For the last time, asshole, we’re calling him Dale.”

Volker followed, stepping into the confined airlock with great difficulty. In the oblique light that came from Telford’s flashlight, he saw the other man working the wheel of the forward door.

“If this place is meant to protect against differential pressures,” Volker said, “then that side won’t open until this side is closed.”

Telford stopped struggling against the immovable wheel and stood, one hand braced on the thin rim of metal fixed to the door. “I know.”

With a clang that startled both of them, Rush pulled the rear door shut.

Volker squeezed his eyes shut in a long blink. The frantic pounding of his heart drove the air out of his lungs.

Along the walls, vertical panels of backlit hieroglyphs flared to life, glowing gold in the darkness.

Volker took a slow breath and tried to focus on the script that flowed down the walls. He picked out the words for “power,” some kind of variant of the word “time,” and “water,” right away. There were corresponding sets of numbers.

“Ah,” Rush said. “Propitious.”

“What is?” Telford scanned the panels.

“The time of our arrival,” Rush ran his gaze down the glowing script. “These tunnels are cyclically flooded.”

“Maybe they were,” Telford said, “back when this place was in operation, but that body we came across had been there for at least a few days.”

“It was close to the surface,” Rush said.

“You think this place might still be running?” Telford asked. “We picked up no life signs—either from orbit or on the surface.”

“If it’s automated and well-constructed,“ Rush said, “it’s a possibility. Clearly—” he made a pained sound, one hand coming to the side of his head.

Volker felt a warping pain deep in his ears that indicated a building pressure differential.

“Rush.” Telford had both hands at his ears, his head angled toward the too-close ceiling.

With a pop, the pressure on Volker's eardrums eased.

The need to get out of the enclosed space was overwhelming.

“How long—” Volker’s throat closed, “—do you think this might take?”

“You okay over there, Dale?” Telford asked.

“I might be a little claustrophobic.” Volker did his best not to hyperventilate.

Rush, a dark outline against the golden glow of the back wall, smacked the back of two fingers against the shining glyphs. “If you immediately know the candlelight is fire,” he said, “the meal was cooked a long time ago.”

“What?” Volker said.

“Relax, Dr. Volker.” Rush ran his hands fluidly over illuminated panels, as though he was playing an instrument. Two counterposed, rainbow-hued sweeps and—

The opposite door unlocked with a sound like a gunshot.

Telford and Volker jumped.

“Maybe a little warning next time?” Telford asked.

“I do try,” Rush replied, “but I confess warnings aren’t my strong suit.”

Telford swung the door wide, revealing a three-dimensional blackness that exerted its own metaphysical gravity. They trained their flashlights down a dark, dry hall, lined with sealed doors.

Rush stepped forward, skidding in the dust of the steep downslope.

“Hey.” Telford pulled him back. “Do you have a learning disability? You have our six.” Telford turned to Volker. “Take a look at the ALD.”

“Um,” Volker said, “I think we should go with ‘A-corder?’ Ancient-tricorder. Also, kind of like the word accord? Get it? It’s a pun.”

“Whatever,” Telford gestured at the dark hall. “Scan for lifesigns.”

“Okay,” Volker began, “but I—”

Rush yanked the device out of his hand.

“Or, sure,” Volker said. “That’ll be faster, I guess.”

Rush navigated the device one-handed, angling it in such a way that it made it impossible for Volker to see what he was doing. “We’re clear.” Rush shoved the device back at Volker. “There’s no one down here.”

“You’re sure,” Telford said.

“Positive.”

They started along the hall, stepping laterally down the steep grade.

Volker was relieved to be out of the airlock, but wasn’t fond of the idea that they’d have to go back through the thing to get out of this place. He tried to distract himself by sweeping his light along the walls, looking for Goa’uld words that he knew.

Power.

Personnel.

Paired symbols he guessed meant something like “resupply,” or “extra supplies,” or, huh. Maybe “enrichment?” Enrichment would make sense if this place really was a naquadah refinery.

“Stop,” Rush paused at a door that looked just like all the other doors. His flashlight swept over a set of symbols Volker didn’t recognize. “This one.”

“Why this one?” Telford asked.

Volker looked down at his A-corder. An icon was flashing.

“Well,” Rush replied, “being that it’s a monitoring station, and I find myself in the position of wanting to fuckin’ monitor a thing or two, it seems a logical choice.” He glanced between the gold-limned writing and Telford, all supercilious solicitude. “Can y’not read this?”

“I can read it, asshole. I’m a little busy making sure nothing kills us?”

Volker tapped the flashing icon and was presented with a mostly black screen. Faint gray lines formed a ghostly pattern.

Telford motioned Volker back against the wall.

On Volker’s A-corder, four clustered dots appeared. Two were blue, two were green. One green dot was a little offset. The other three were clustered pretty tightly.

Hmm.

Rush and Telford, flashlights and weapons aligned, stood in front of the door. Rush hit the door controls. An acrid smell wafted into the dry air of the corridor.

Volker looked back at the A-corder. Maybe it was showing him a map? Ghostly lines were walls, maybe?

//Neat,// he thought, studying the display. //Thanks, buddy.//

One of the blue dots was bigger than the other and positioned at the center of the map, giving off you-are-here shivers in its diameter. That must be the A-corder itself. Or. Actually, maybe that was Volker, since he was holding the A-corder?

Wait.

If dots were people, and it sure seemed like they were, there were four dots.

That couldn’t be right.

Rush had checked.

Rush had checked.

“Hey guys,” Volker whispered in growing horror. He glanced wildly around. “Wait—”

“I’m sure no one is interested in what you have to say, Volker.” Rush stepped ahead of Telford, a dark outline against the limited glow of his flashlight.

“Rush, how many times—” Telford hissed.

Rush was yanked off his feet. His light careened away.

Telford darted forward, swapping his zat for his gun.

Volker followed Telford into the room. He turned at the door, A-corder in one hand, groping along grooved and ornamented metal until his fingers found a panel with a familiar outline. He lifted a glide-bar. Ochre lights revealed Telford, Rush, and a third person struggling in a knot on the floor. 

Volker exchanged his A-corder for his zat. What would happen if he shot all three of them?

Probably a single charge would disperse over contiguous surfaces? Presuming zats operated in a manner that—

Never mind.

Too risky.

Volker squared his shoulders and tried to look tough and watchful.

Now that Telford could see, the fight sorted itself into a stalemate. Rush, as usual, was pinned by his assailant, who was frozen with Telford’s USAF sidearm digging into his temple.

The man was pale and emaciated; his eyes red-rimmed and wild. Sores crusted over the back and sides of his neck. He scanned them from beneath a fringe of sparse hair. He wasn’t old, but he looked sick.

Volker was pretty sure the fetid smell in the room came from their new friend.

“Get. Away. From him.” Telford applied more pressure with his weapon.

The man raised his hands and clambered off Rush. “So they finally sent someone.”

Around the edges of the room, dark display screens covered nearly every work surface.

“Who are you?” Telford asked.

“Cowan.” The man staggered to his feet. “Fourth House.” He coughed up a string of bloody mucus that looked black in the ochre light. He wiped it away with his disintegrating jacket cuff, leaving a dark smear behind. “You Fourths?”

“No,” Telford said. “Sixths.”

“Sixths.” Cowan’s eyes raked over Volker and Rush. “You have a ship?”

Telford said nothing.

“Why?” Rush asked with sepulchral politeness, cool and still. “D’you find yourself in need of transportation?”

“Quiet,” Telford snarled. “Get off the damn floor. Get behind me.”

Slowly, with the air of a guy granting a huge favor with poor grace, Rush rose from the floor. He didn’t shift his position. He looked at Cowan, studying the man at close range.

“Take me with you,” Cowan said. “I’m the last one left.”

Volker eased the A-corder from his pocket and scanned the map, alert for any other dots. He saw none. “I’m not picking up any other lifesigns.”

Telford gave him a short nod, then returned his attention to Cowan. “What happened here?”

“Everyone is dead,” Cowan whispered.

Telford fanned his fingers over his sidearm grip. “Did you kill them?”

Volker touched the blue circle dead-center on the screen of the A-corder.

“No,” Cowan said. “It was the Goa’uld.”

The A-corder presented him with a set of numbers he couldn’t read, and a fast wave that looked like a heartbeat. Surreptitiously, he pressed his fingers to his own wrist. His heart rate and the wave on the monitor were in sync.

“You expect me to believe you’re not a snakehead?” Telford asked. “We found your lunch upstairs, fucker.”

“Lunch?” Cowan coughed. “I’ve been locked in this room for days. There were ten Goa’uld here. The last wave of replacements.”

“Replacements?” Rush prompted.

“This place,” Cowan continued, “consumes workers.”

“What do you mean it ‘consumes’ them?” Telford demanded. 

“Before they die,” Cowan said, “before they got sick, they lost the will to work. The Goa’uld were meant to resist the effects of this place.”

“The Alliance doesn’t work with Goa’uld,” Telford said evenly.

“Perhaps Sixth House doesn’t.” Cowan coughed. “If that’s true, count yourselves fortunate.”

Volker glanced up. Cowan’s eyes were on him, baleful in his pale, sweaty face. He shuddered and focused on the A-corder. Volker zoomed in on the four lifesigns.

“Pardon me,” Rush said as though he were attending a nice science conference rather than locked in a hermetically sealed and faintly radioactive abandoned mine, “but I was under the impression that the Lucian Alliance has the means of preventing acts of open revolt, even by Goa’uld. No matter how deplorable the circumstances.”

Volker kept one eye on the interrogation and one eye on his A-corder. It was clear from the orientation that the other blue dot was Rush.

Telford and Cowan were green. 

Special genes were blue? Unspecial genes were green?

Volker shivered. How. How could a handheld device detect and localize genetic sequences over the air? The presence or absence of a specific gene? He’d never heard of anything like it.

“Something about this place,” Cowan whispered, “devours the veil of coercive persuasion.”

Volker tapped Cowan’s green dot on the A-corder. The first thing he noticed was a heart rate more than double his own, a staccato wave on the monitor.

“And what does the devouring?” Rush broke consonants like bones. “Do you know?” 

“Rush,” Telford hissed.

The A-corder flashed a little icon at him. A glowing teardrop. It probably had something to do with blood, though how the little device could tell anything about Cowan’s bloodstream across the room, Volker had no idea.

When a small window popped up, he found himself looking at a familiar emission spectrum.

Naquadah.

God. The guy must have ingested a truckload of the stuff.

No naquadria was registering, though. Nor were any intermediate products showing up. That was weird. They should be there too, if the guy was drinking the water. Or chewing on the walls.

Pure naquadah in the blood? How had that happened?

“Do you know?” Rush repeated his question.

Cowan coughed again. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I know.”

“Tell me,” Rush said, like hot metal plunged into cool water.

Volker angled the A-corder toward Telford, pointing with one finger at the flashing naquadah emission spectrum.

Telford looked at him, his eyes questioning.

“We’ll give you passage off this planet,” Rush continued, “if you tell me.”

“Naquadah,” Volker mouthed at Telford, “in his blood.”

Telford’s expression went from startled to bone-cold in the span of a heartbeat. His gaze flicked to Rush, then back to Volker.

“Give me passage first,” Cowan said, “then I’ll tell you.”

Telford’s hand clamped around Volker’s forearm.

“I don’t think so,” Rush replied.

Cowan coughed again, his eyes fixed on Rush.

“Hands free,” Telford mouthed with exaggerated precision. He passed behind Volker, stepping laterally in an arc, changing his position, putting himself further from Rush, his gun still trained on Cowan.

Hands free?

Volker did NOT like the sound of that.

Volker pocketed his A-corder.

Cowan straightened. His posture turned regal. “I will have passage off this poisoned world,” he snarled, like a decaying king.

“Not likely.” Rush’s outfit was shades of nightmare black under the ochre light. The rims of his glasses gleamed.

“I will have passage.” As Cowan spoke, his voice doubled, dropping a register. His eyes lit up, the whites blazing with unearthly gold.

Volker felt a surge of dread. His hands came up as though to ward Cowan off. His thoughts were a frozen block of incoherent terror. He looked to Telford.

Telford cocked his weapon. Aimed. Fired.

The close-range shot was deafening.

Volker flinched, already riding a wave of relief.

Before the relief could hit, it obliterated itself.

It wasn’t Cowan who’d gone down, it wasn’t Cowan who’d been hit, it wasn’t Cowan Telford had shot.

It was Rush.

It was Rush.

Telford had just shot—

Cowan’s mouth opened. His frame convulsed. His eyes shifted from Rush to Volker as—something, oh god, something horrible—wormed out of his mouth and launched into the air with a coiled spring, screeching as it came—

Volker tried to duck, but he was too slow.

Too slow.

The thing hit him in the shoulder. Membranes flapping, covered with blood and mucus, it dug into him with needle teeth, tearing leather and skin.

His shoulder burned like acid on fire. He screamed, grabbing at the snake’s midsection. It was burrowing inside him. He felt powerful muscular convulsions under desperate fingers. He fell to the floor.

With the clatter of a dropped sidearm, Telford was beside him. The colonel reinforced Volker’s grip, then started prying, his fingers digging into Volker’s shoulder, inside the injury, one knee braced against Volker’s ribcage. He gained ground inch by inch, wrapping the length of the snake’s muscular body around his palm, winding it up like yarn on a spool. Crushing its body as it came. Finally, the head emerged. It shrieked, its membranous hackles shaking furiously, then bit the back of Telford’s hand. Telford crushed it to the floor, boot on already closed fist, crushing it length by length and smearing it along the metal. The whole time it gnashed at his hand, leaving deep, bloody gashes with its teeth.

Telford kept crushing until all that was left was a streak on the floor.

Volker lay against the cool metal, his shoulder burning, his breath aching in his throat. Every muscle in his body was trembling.

A few feet away, what was left of Cowan slumped to the floor, blood sluicing from his mouth. 

Telford looked at Volker. “You okay?”

“Hands free?!” Volker shouted in his face, his voice high and terrified and nothing like himself. “HANDS FREE!?”

Telford shook out his bloody hand and wiped the gore on a clean patch of floor. He took a breath, then stood unsteadily, crossed the room, and kneeled next to Rush.

Volker sat, one hand clapped to his shoulder, trembling.

“Rush.” Telford probed the wound in Rush’s shoulder.

“Y’shot me?” Beneath Rush, narrow rivulets of blood were winding across the floor.

“You lied about the lifesigns,” Telford said.

Volker’s breath came in short, pained gasps as he struggled to process everything that had just happened. He was cold. He was hot. He wasn’t sure. His body shook. Was he poisoned? Some Earth snakes were venomous. What about parasitic, cannibalistic, alien snakes. Were they venomous?

Rush huffed. “Only by omission,” he breathed, pale under dim ochre lights. “Hardly counts.”

Telford turned to Volker. “Are you wearing a real shirt?”

“What?” Volker asked shakily.

“Are you wearing anything that isn’t leather?”

“Yeah,” Volker confirmed, lightheaded.

“Can you take it off?” Telford spoke slowly. “I need it.”

Volker gulped down air.

“Dale,” Telford said again. “I need your shirt.”

“Oh,” Volker said, his eyes watering. “Sure. Why not. I’d be happy to give you the shirt off my back in order to make an unsanitary bandage for the PSYCHO who LED US STRAIGHT TO THAT THING.”  He was screaming, somehow. He tried to dial it back. Breathe instead. He gestured at the dead Goa’uld on the floor and at poor Cowan, who was now a dead husk oozing blood.

“We’ll discuss that later,” Telford said. “Right now, I’d like to get out of here.”

Volker eased his jacket over his re-injured shoulder, which had, like, a bunch of gashes around a hole below his still-healing knife wound?

Ugh.

Volker pulled off his T-shirt and tossed it to Telford. “I don’t need a bandage? I have a hole in my shoulder too, you know.”

“It’ll heal quickly,” Telford replied. “They release a substance that stops bleeding and promotes tissue repair.”

“Oh,” Volker said weakly, “that’s nice.”

“You owe Dale a shirt,” Telford hissed at Rush. He pulled a knife from the lining of the mathematician’s coat and sliced up Volker’s shirt.

“Yes well, add it to my tab,” Rush said. “Ten more years of indentured servitude ought to cover it.”

“I’m sure that can be arranged.” Telford lifted Rush’s injured shoulder and slid folded square of fabric beneath the bloody exit wound.

Volker shivered in his undershirt. Gingerly, he pulled his leather jacket back on, easing it over his injured shoulder first.

“If I were Volker,” Rush said conversationally, “I’d be fair fuckin’ radge t’find myself the quo in a quid pro quo. Not sure he’s realized that’s where you were going with—”

Rush broke off with a strangled sound as Telford applied the other half of Volker’s shirt to the entry wound in his left shoulder and pressed both hands into the wound with crushing pressure.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Telford said with theatrical courtesy. “Is this painful for you?”

“Um,” Volker said, “is it too much to ask that you guys just—”

“No,” Rush replied, breathing shallowly. “By all means, David, do your fuckin’ worst.”

“I’d love to, thanks,” Telford replaced his hands with his knee and drove it into Rush’s injury, his full body weight behind it.

Rush blanched to an alarming shade of white.

“Maybe that’s not the best idea,” Volker said.

“Do not pass out, Rush.” Telford removed his belt. “This is your fucking mess. I’ll be damned if I’m dragging your ass out of here.”

“And you need your belt for what now?” Volker asked.

Telford wound the belt around the makeshift bandages on either side of Rush’s shoulder.

Okay, that was reasonable.

“I’d never dream of inconveniencing either of you in such a manner,” Rush replied.

Telford yanked the belt tight around Rush’s shoulder and buckled it to hold pressure on both sides of the injury. Rush choked back a sound deep in his throat as Telford dragged him to sit upright.

“How does it look?” Telford asked Volker.

“Uh, as bandages go, I’ve seen better.”

“I was talking about the detector,” Telford said.

“Right.” Numbly, Volker studied the A-corder. “Just us.”

“Let’s go.” Telford pulled Rush to his feet so quickly that Volker was suspicious that, despite his protestations to the contrary, Telford wouldn’t mind if the mathematician actually did pass out.

“Right after we download their database.” Rush snapped himself from Telford’s grip and headed for the nearest monitor. As he went, he pulled a hard-drive and a Goa’uld-to-Earthware adaptor out of his pocket.

“You have a gunshot wound,” Telford hissed.

“Yes well. I prefer to think of it less as an ‘injury’ and more as an investment,” Rush said, his right hand bracing to his left arm.

“An investment?” Volker echoed.

“On which I’d like a return,” Rush clarified.

Volker looked at Telford. “Can we please go?”

“How long will this take?” Telford asked.

“Depends upon the size of the database.” Rush arched a brow. “Y’realize it’s something we can, potentially, give to Kiva.”

“Fine,” Telford said.

Rush connected his adaptor and hard drive to a nearby monitor and set up the transfer.

Telford took a position near the door.

Volker stayed on the floor, his gaze fixed on the unchanging display of his A-corder.

He was claiming the thing for personal use. Forever. In compensation. For being offered as bait for a freaking flying, cannibalistic, parasitic, alien snake.

“So,” Rush said, drawing out the word in a slow pull that broke the silence. “I wasn’t aware it was possible to manually prevent a Goa’uld from reaching the nervous system once it had broken the skin.”

Volker looked up.

Telford kept his eyes on the corridor. “I’ve seen it attempted. I’ve never seen it done.”

“You’ve never seen it done?” Volker echoed. “Thanks, man. Thanks a lot.”

Telford stayed silent, his hands wrapped around his weapon.

“Get off the fuckin’ floor,” Rush said.

“The ‘fucking floor’ suits me just fine right now.” Volker rubbed his burning shoulder.

“Leave him alone, Rush.” Telford leaned into the doorframe, his flashlight pointed into the dark hall.

“Yes well, fine. If you’ve no interest in learning the subtleties of Goa’uld databases, by all means, continue to sit on the floor contemplating the smeared remains the thing that would have dug its way into your brainstem and enslaved you.”

Volker threw up Lucian Alliance field rations all over the floor.

“Sensitive, Rush,” Telford said. “Really. Fucking. Sensitive.”

“Sensitivity isn’t my forte.”

Volker spit, trying to rid his mouth of the taste of bile. It didn’t work. At all.

Not excited about sitting on the floor next to his own regurgitated lunch, he staggered to his feet, then wrapped his fingers around the edge of the monitor bank where Rush was working.

“Subtleties?” Volker rasped.

“Indeed,” the absolute psycho beside him replied. 

Volker looked at the monitor. It looked anything but subtle. He saw a string of hieroglyphics that ticked over, indicating percent completion.

Big freaking deal. 

Rush navigated to a new screen and opened a Goa’uld equivalent of a text editor. He typed out a short sequence of characters, the final one rotated ninety degrees to indicate a question.

Unbelievable.

Rush was trying to have a secret conversation with him. In Goa’uld. In front of Telford. In the creepy, flooded basement of a subterranean chemical refinery. While bleeding to death, probably.

Volker pulled out Jackson’s pocket dictionary. Sure. Why not. At least nothing was on fire.

He flipped through it, translating unfamiliar words. Finally, he had a string of guesses. 

The first word was “knowledge,” in a dative construction. Likely this was a “do you know?” situation. And then came the word for “here.” After that, it got harder. The best Volker could do was “incremental destruction” and “mind control.” The whole thing probably came together into something like, “Do you have any idea how this place erodes Lucian Alliance mind control?”

“No,” Volker said, hoarse and deeply annoyed. “Do we have to worry about this now?”

Telford glanced at them.

“It’s good practice to cover one’s tracks in alien systems,” Rush replied, as if double-speak came to him without effort. 

“Yeah,” Volker said dully. “Okay.” In terms of theories, he only had one. He pulled out his A-corder, switched back to his emission spectra, and pointed at the naquadria. He shrugged at Rush. 

Rush typed something out that didn’t look quite right to Volker, even with his limited experience with the language.

“Sometimes,” Rush said, “unusual words or words with foreign influence will be spelled phonetically.”

“Good to know,” Volker glanced at Telford as he mentally sounded out the Goa’uld word.

Radiation?

Volker nodded.

Rush tapped the word. “That’s your suggestion?”

Volker nodded again.

Rush cocked his head, considering. “Y’think ambient radiation contributes to the erosion of system-control architecture?”

As double-speak went, it was turning a little thin. “No idea.” Volker rubbed his shoulder. “Radiation breaks things, though. Computers. People. Their DNA. It’s kinda what it does. Little subatomic particles slamming tracks wherever they go.”

Rush gave him a speculative look that turned almost friendly the longer it went on.

“Uh,” Volker said. “Are you okay, man?”

This caught Telford’s attention. “How long?” he demanded.

“Not five minutes,” Rush said. “Their records are far from voluminous or meticulous.” He turned back to Volker. “I don’t think much about radiation,” Rush murmured. “As a concept. But you—that’s your whole field.”

“Well, I worked with the non-ionizing end of the EM spectrum,” Volker said. “But yeah, I guess you could think of it that way. When most people say ‘radiation’ they’re thinking of the breakdown products of unstable nuclei.”

“Which is what we have here,” Rush said. “All around. In the walls. In the air. In the water.”

Telford looked over at them. “Why are you guys talking about radiation?”

“The database is partially corrupted,” Rush said smoothly. “Probably a consequence of ionizing particles.”

For a long moment, no one said anything. And then—

“Radiation was what killed Jackson,” Telford murmured, looking into the dark.

“Was it, now?” Rush asked, specter-pale under ochre light.

“Wait.” Volker was suddenly and wholly upset, his eyes watering, his throat closing. “Wait. Wait. Tapes Guy is dead?”

Telford sighed. “No, he’s not dead. Well, he was. Spent some time as an incorporeal being of pure light, or whatever. He’s back on our plane now, though.”

“Uh,” Volker said, still pretty worried about Tapes Guy. “Okay?”

Rush sat, falling into the nearest seat as his knees gave out. He gripped the edge of the console with his good hand, as though he needed to hold himself up.

“Rush,” Telford said, subterranean threat seeping into his tone, “you faint and we leave you here.”

“Promises, promises.” Rush unhooked the hard drive and adaptor as the transfer finished. He tucked them back into his coat.

“Now can we go?” Volker asked. 

“Oh, if you insist,” Rush said.

They passed back into the corridor, their boots scraping quietly over the dusted floor as they climbed the inclined hallway back toward the airlock.

When Volker came face-to-face with the hatch for the second time, he felt another wave of nausea at the idea of reentering it. 

But there was no other choice. 

They stepped into the tomb-like opening, their flashlights cutting through the darkness.

Telford swung the door shut behind them, sealing them inside. 

The wall of glyphs lit up.

Volker waited, counting breaths, enduring the shaking of exhausted muscles.

Ten breaths.

Twenty.

Thirty.

“Rush?” Telford asked. “I’m not feeling any pressure change.”

“I noticed,” Rush replied, breathless. “I believe the, ah—”

“Rush,” Telford said sharply.

“I believe the area beyond this airlock may have flooded while we were otherwise engaged.”

“What?” Volker choked on the word.

At Volker’s back, Telford shifted, trying to turn the wheel on the door they’d come through. “Can you unflood it?” Despite the strain in Telford’s tone, the wheel wouldn’t budge.

“I—” Rush sounded alarmingly faint.

Volker felt a surge of rising panic.

“No,” Telford said, “Rush, don’t you dare—”

Rush fell in a space too confined to really permit any such thing. He slumped into Volker, who overbalanced into Telford, who hit the posterior wall with a dull clang.

Volker couldn’t move. He couldn’t straighten, pinned between Rush and Telford. He thrashed, overcome with panic, lost in a sense of confinement, buried under water, sealed in a metal coffin, unable to get out; he had to get out he couldn’t but he had to he had to, he—

“Dale!” Telford’s flashlight fell and bounced, their bodies were too close—

“DALE!!” Telford shouted. “We can get out. We can.”

Volker gasped, pressing himself against the glowing panel of glyphs as though he could morph through the wall.

“We can get out,” Telford dropped his volume, smoothed his tone. “It’s fine.”

Telford braced a foot against the wall for leverage and dragged Rush away from Volker, creating a small space.

“We can get out,” Telford repeated slowly.

“Yeah,” Volker managed, more breath than word. “Yeah.”

“And we will,” Telford said.

Volker nodded.

Telford braced his flashlight in a corner of the airlock, then hauled Rush away from Volker, propping him against the opposite wall.

Volker tried to breathe past the tightness in his throat.

“Why don’t you stand up and take a look at those glyphs,” Telford said carefully. “See if you can’t figure out to drain the space ahead.

It was hard to think over the roar of panic in his thoughts. “Rush would be better,” Volker said shakily.

Telford nodded. He threaded a hand behind Rush’s head, then slapped his cheek with careful deliberation.

Once. Twice, Three times.

No response. 

“I’m thinking maybe you want to give it a shot,” Telford said, his eyes never leaving Rush.

Volker took a breath and reached into his pocket for Daniel Jackson’s manual.