Mathématique: Chapter 12

“Less talking,” Young said grimly, as the sound of gunfire approached their position, “more climbing.”

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Grief. Physical injuries. Mental health challenges.

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: None.

Chapter 12

Landry was running two hours late.

Young perched on a chair outside the general’s office, listening to the flow of the air circulators and watching the closed door. It didn’t do a lot to distract from the dull ache in his back, his hip, his femur. His quads were sore. He’d been tense on the car ride in. The math professor next door drove like he’d spent his twenties trying to qualify for Formula 1.

He wondered how the man would do behind the controls of an F-302.

Best not to think about it.

His thoughts wandered to John Sheppard. Now there was a pilot. Talked no game. Brought zero swagger. Riding in a car with the guy was indistinguishable from sitting in a stationary chair. After the inauguration of the McKay-Carter Intergalactic Gate Bridge, Young, Mitchell, Sheppard, and Telford had driven to Vegas for thirty-six hours to celebrate Cam finally losing his crutches. On long, empty stretches of road, behind the wheel of a red mustang, Sheppard had blown speed limits with so much subtlety that none of them had noticed what was happening until they hit the Vegas strip two and a half hours ahead of schedule.

God, he missed the guy.

Unfortunately, Sheppard rarely left Pegasus. He seemed to go out of his way to avoid trips home. With the war with the Ori and the LA insurgency problems, Young couldn’t blame him.

The solid wooden door to Landry’s office swung open. The general stood in the frame.

Young stood, trying to ignore the way his back gave him hell after hours of sitting. He saluted, leaning into his cane for support.

“Colonel.” Landry returned the salute with his usual jovial irritability. “Good to see you. Sorry about the wait. Come on in.”

Young entered the office to find General O’Neill in a chair in front of the desk.

“Sir.” Young snapped off another salute, this one crisp enough to ricochet from his lower back to his left heel.

“Everett.” O’Neill waved away Young’s salute and shook his hand with a brisk clap to the forearm. “How’s the back? And the hip? The knee? Eh, y’know. All of it.”

“Fine,” Young said. “Improving.”

“Advil?” O’Neill held up a Tic-Tac container full of orange pills. “You look like you could use some.”

“No thank you, sir. I’m fine.”

Things seemed to be shaping up as more informal than formal, if the Advil masquerading as Tic-Tacs was any indication. When dealing with O’Neill, however, it was best not to assume anything. This could be friendly banter, or it could be the camouflage tarp over a staked pit.

“Take a seat, colonel,” Landry said.

Unfortunately, sitting was no better than standing. Young made the best of it, lowering himself into the chair with a controlled slide. It was hard to take his time with two senior officers breathing down his neck. He drew in a long, subtle breath and tried not to betray any discomfort at the shift in position. The chair was hard. It didn’t help.

“What do you know,” Landry began, “about the Icarus Project?”

“Same things everyone knows,” Young replied. “That a nine chevron address was discovered on Atlantis. That once you dial the first five of the sequence, the lock on all of them is lost. That there’s an cypher system buried in the gate network keyed to each chevron. Milky Way gates have it, Lantean gates don’t. Even if dialing is successful the amount of energy required for event horizon formation is so vast that it’d require a planet’s worth of naquadria to power it.” Young shrugged. “That and my neighbor is the guy decrypting the chevrons.”

Landry flashed a smile, there and gone.

“You two are neighbors?” O’Neill squinted at him. “Seriously?”

“Yes sir,” Young replied.

“You can cut it out with the ‘sirs’ every two seconds,” O’Neill said. “This is a chat, Everett. Informal. Technically, you’re still on leave.”

Young did his best to veil his skepticism. The guy at the top of the LA wish list didn’t seem like the type to inspire casual conversation.

“So what’s he like?” O’Neill asked.

“Rush?” Young played for time, trying to get a read on the situation.

“Yeah,” O’Neill replied.

Young was sure O’Neill knew exactly what Rush was like—a troubled hypergenius who looked a little too good in a half-done dress shirt and had no business at the epicenter of the gathering shitstorm building around Cheyenne Mountain. “Oh, y’know.” Young shrugged. “Smart guy. Good in the kitchen.”

O’Neill and Landry exchanged a quick look. “Excuse me?” O’Neill said. “Did I hear you say ‘the kitchen’?”

“Yep.” Young gave them a tight smile. “He’s got a whole repertoire.”

“Fascinating as that is,” Landry began.

“Ah ah ah,” O’Neill said, forestalling Landry with a raised palm. “I’d like the list.”

“The list?” Young asked.

“You said ‘repertoire’,” O’Neill said expectantly.

“Oh. Uh. Sure. Well, there was an omelette in the French tradition. Crepes. Coq au vin I think it was, on Saturday night? He seems to be into French cuisine. Don’t know if that’s a phase or more of a long term thing. Maybe just inspired by what I have in my kitchen? I’ve only known the guy about four days.”

His two superior officers took a beat to stare him down.

“Can he make quiche though?” O’Neill asked. “You can’t find good a good quiche in this town to save your life.”

“I’m sure he can,” Young said.

“I love quiche,” O’Neill sighed. “They always make it too dense at that place on Crescent. What was it?” He stared at the ceiling.

“Madeline’s.” Landry eyed O’Neill, running out of patience at whatever tangent Young had led them down.

“That’s it. Madeline’s. The crust isn’t bad but—” O’Neill trailed off with an equivocal hand gesture. “Y’know.”

“Yes sir,” Young said, even though he’d never heard of Madeline’s and had no faith in his ability to judge a good quiche from a mediocre one.

“Jack, we gonna get this show on the road?” Landry rumbled.

“Yes.” O’Neill clapped his hands against his thighs. “Everett, that was a fun fact about your neighbor. Points for style. But we were after your assessment of his capability to go into the field.”

“Like I said,” Young held to neutral, “I’ve known him four days.”

“Yeah, during which he lived with you for a chunk of the time.” An edge came into O’Neill’s tone. “Cut the bullshit Everett. You’re hedging.”

“I am,” Young admitted, “but he’s a complex guy.”

“There are two people on this base who know him well enough to make an assessment,” O’Neill said. “Daniel and David.”

“Their opinions on his capabilities diverge,” Landry added, low and wry. “Wildly.”

“We want your take.” O’Neill said. “Quit stalling.”

“He’s a quick thinker.” Young shifted in the hard wooden chair. Winced at the pain in his back. “Witty. Lots of snap, lots of energy. Focus to burn. He kept his head in a crisis.” He paused there, marshaling the rest of his thoughts.

Landry gave O’Neill a pointed look. “Identical to Colonel Telford’s assessment,” he said, like he’d scored a point.

“Does he look finished to you?” O’Neill asked. He shifted his attention to Young. “Keep going.”

Young chose his words carefully, deciding that less was probably more here. “He gets lost in his work. Really lost. He’s passed out twice in the past week, once from dehydration and once from what looked like a panic attack. He’s sensitive. To sounds, to light—”

“Not so good for the field.” O’Neill eyed Landry, “which is what Daniel said.”

“I think it could be done,” Young said, “but he’d need the right team.”

“And I’m working on it,” Landry replied. “We need that nine-chevron address unlocked.”

No one spoke.

Young heard the subtle ticking of three watches in the heavy air.

Landry and O’Neill stared each other down across the broad mahogany desk.

“This isn’t about Rush going offworld to take apart a DHD,” Young asked. “Is it.”

“Nope.” O’Neill didn’t break eye contact with Landry.

Reluctantly, Landry nodded.

“There’s a base.” O’Neill switched his focus to Young. “It’s under construction. Going up on a planet so laced with naquadria it’s a miracle it hasn’t blown itself up. Scheduled to be completed in November. Code name Icarus.”

“Short timetable,” Young said.

Silence descended, thick and full.

“We may want to send your neighbor. We may need to send your neighbor,” O’Neill amended.

Young kept his expression neutral. “Why him?”

“Do you think,” O’Neill asked, ignoring his question, “that he could handle a prolonged, resource-poor, dangerous mission?”

“No,” Young said.

Landry and O’Neill eyed each other again, awarding more points in their silent debate.

“Jack,” Landry said.

“Hank.”

“You saw what Jackson found,” Landry rumbled.

“And I heard what ‘Jackson’ said,” O’Neill shot back. “Colonel, how’d you like command of the Icarus Base and its associated project, presuming we’re able to dial the gate.”

It hadn’t sounded like a question. “Excuse me?”

“The man is on medical leave,” Landry growled. “Dr. Lam isn’t sure he’ll ever be approved for anything other than light duty.”

“He can watch stuff happen from a control room,” O’Neill said mildly. “That’s why we have MALPs. I like him for this. The pentagon likes him for this. As far as I’m concerned, it’s done.”

“With respect,” Landry said, “Colonel Telford was the IOA’s choice—”

“Telford isn’t here.”

“He has six hours left on his window.”

“You arguing with me, Hank?” O’Neill asked.

“No, sir,” Landry said, slow and wry.

Young cleared his throat, trying to soft-shoe through the viper’s nest he’d landed in. “You want Rush on Icarus doing—what?”

“He’s the brains.” O’Neill sat back in his chair. “Goal of Icarus is to dial the nine-chevron address, see what’s behind it. And he’s got the cryptography chops to open the gate.”

“Seems like I’m missing something, here.” Young glanced between them. “He’s been doing just fine cracking cyphers from his bedroom. Why does he need to be on site?”

O’Neill inclined his head in Young’s direction, his eyes on Landry. “He’s sharp.”

Landry eyed Young warily, ignoring O’Neill. “He wasn’t recruited for the math.”

“Yeah, the fact he’s blown the Area 51 nerds out of the water when it comes to unlocking the gate is just a nice bonus,” O’Neill said.

“So why was he recruited?” Young asked.

“He was recruited for another project,” Landry said. “A project that took tissue samples from national banks to look for the ATA gene.”

“He’s a natural positive?” Young asked. “Like John Sheppard?”

“He is,” Landry confirmed. “Within the past year, over a dozen people in this country have been ID’d as having not one but two different Ancient genes. We’re sure there are more out there.”

“Two Ancient genes?” Young asked. “I thought there was just the one.”

“Turns out no,” O’Neill said dryly, “the Ancients had lots of genes.”

“Right.” Young resisted the urge to let his face turn even mildly insubordinate. “Where are the other people? Besides Rush.”

“Recruited or vanished,” O’Neill said.

“Vanished?” Young repeated.

“A seventeen year old Harvard freshman,” Landry said, the gravel grinding in his voice. “A a fifty-six year old doctor. Both turned up by the screen and vanished within a week. Presumably targeted by the LA. The other ten are in Colorado Springs with as much security as we can spare.”

“When Rush turned up,” O’Neill said, “within hours we had set up security for him. We also sent Daniel to give him the spiel.”

“I’m surprised he went along with a security detail,” Young said. “Rush, I mean.”

“He wasn’t gracious about it,” O’Neill replied wryly. “It was Telford who convinced him. Telford who coordinated security for him in San Francisco for two months before he finally moved down here.

“What changed his mind?” Young asked.

“That’s his business,” O’Neill replied.

Young nodded. O’Neill’s revelation explained why the LA was so keen to get their hands on a math genius who was also the next John Sheppard, but it didn’t explain the pall of wrongness that seemed have been cast over the entire situation from the moment that Jackson had deposited Rush on his couch four days ago.

“Jackson and Telford have been at odds about something,” Young began, knowing he was treading on dangerous ground. “Might that have anything to do with this project?”

“They’re fighting about wall carvings,” O’Neill drawled. “That’s all you’re getting until we know if you’re in or if you’re out.”

“I need some time to think this over,” Young replied.

They looked at him as if this were some kind of moral failing.

“Rush has clearance for none of this,” Landry said. “You’re not to discuss it with him.”

“Right,” Young said. “Can I talk to Jackson?”

“Yeah,” O’Neill said. “Go right ahead. Hopefully he’ll only tell you three classified pieces of information rather than ten.”

Landry sighed and looked down at his desk.

“We’ll need your decision soon. Within forty-eight hours,” O’Neill said.

“If Colonel Telford doesn’t make it back,” Landry clarified.

“Yeah.” O’Neill looked at his watch. “Of course. I’d never dream of upsetting the IOA.”

“You don’t think going over their heads to appoint Colonel Young to the post qualifies?” Landry asked.

“It’s within my authority to appoint Young as Telford’s executive officer, effective immediately. If it turns out that Telford’s window of opportunity closes—” O’Neill waved a hand and looked over at Young. “You’ll have the command if you want it.”

“Understood,” Young said.

“And if the window doesn’t close?” Landry growled. “If he makes it back, what then? Colonel Young isn’t suited to function as Telford’s number two. The man can barely walk, Jack.”

Young tried to keep a neutral facial expression.

O’Neill sighed. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Any materials I can look over before I decide?” Young asked.

O’Neill shook his head. “You’re in or out on this one, Everett.”

Young nodded.

A flash of a blue overhead drew their gazes and turned to a slow strobe. 

“Unscheduled offworld activation.” Harriman’s voice came over the sound system.

Young pushed off from his chair, letting his arms do as much of the work as possible. Landry was halfway across the room before Young got his weight centered. O’Neill waved him toward the door, telegraphing nonchalance. “How’s that physical therapy comin’?”

“Not as well as I’d like,” Young admitted.

“Don’t fall down the stairs,” O’Neill advised, as they crossed the conference room.

“Thanks.” Young gritted his teeth as they followed Landry down into the control room.

When Young laid eyes on the gate, it was already spinning around a reassuringly shut iris. He and O’Neill posted up next to Landry.

“They’ve locked on six, sir,” Harriman called back with a quick glance over his shoulder. “Sirs,” he amended.

“Hey Walter,” O’Neill said. “Long time, no see.”

“General.” Harriman gave O’Neill a small smile.

The gate flared to life with a pale blue flash against the back wall of the room. The trinium iris obscured most of the glare.

“We getting anything?” Landry asked.

“Not yet,” Harriman replied.

Streaming lines on monitors jumped, short and simultaneous.

“We just had an impact against the iris,” Harriman said grimly.

Young’s insides felt like he was starting a dive in an F-302, hollow and left behind. On the monitors, lines rose as two blips came in quick succession, sinusoidal waves bursting into high frequency flight and settling again.

“Two more,” Harriman said.

“Where’s Carter?” O’Neill braced his hands on the back of Harriman’s chair. “She still shows for these things, right?”

“I’m here.” Carter threaded her way through the personnel in the observation bay. “What have we got?”

“No codes,” Landry growled. “Three impacts.”

“Four,” Harriman said, as the monitors jumped again. “Four impacts.”

“Hi,” Carter whispered as she slipped past O’Neill.

“Hi yourself.” O’Neill watched her slide into position next to Harriman.

“Five,” Harriman said, with a terrible sort of finality.

SG-3 and Telford.

Without GDOs.

Without radios.

With nothing but hope and the knowledge that death was better than whatever hunted them. Whatever they’d escaped.

Young’s back ached, deep and raw and hot.

No one spoke.

Seconds ticked by.

“Six?” Harriman said, as the lines jumped again.

“The force of the impact indicates the iris is being hit with something with a mass between zero point two and two kilograms,” Carter said, swinging around.

“Meaning what?” Landry growled.

“Meaning someone’s throwing rocks, sir.” Carter’s eyebrows made a break for her hairline.

“Yeah, or grenades,” O’Neill muttered.

Carter tipped her head in acknowledgement. “True.”

There were three impacts in quick succession.

“Morse code?” Young suggested.

There were three more impacts, separated by long pauses.

“Still no GDO code.” Carter looked up at Landry, her eyes the color of the stargate. “If we’re gonna open it, now’s the time.”

“Deploy a security team,” Landry rumbled.

“Security team to the gate room,” Harriman said over the base-wide sound system.

“The LA has so much intel on us they’re mounting covert ops in Colorado Springs apartment buildings,” Young said quietly, trying not to picture David on the other side of that event horizon. “You think they don’t know Morse code?”

Carter looked up at him, uneasy. Landry shook his head once, his expression tight and unhappy.

“For what it’s worth,” Carter said, her eyes on the gate telemetry, “this seems like David. Practical. Inventive.”

“Brave,” Young said.

“Stupid,” O’Neill offered, like an alternative.

“Hey.” Mitchell posted up at Young’s shoulder, out of breath. “What’ve we got?”

“Morse code with rocks,” Young said. “Maybe.”

“David?” Mitchell asked.

Young caught Mitchell’s eye. “That’s the question,” he said softly.

“Why not dial the alpha site?” O’Neill asked. “That’s where they should be going if they’re coming in without GDOs.”

Carter looked up at O’Neill. “Maybe not. They don’t have radios. We’re getting no EM signals. He tries this stunt at the alpha site and no one will break protocol, because they don’t have high-enough ranking officers to override. Telford might be gambling that the upper level command staff here will be more likely to deviate and open the iris.”

“Or it’s the LA,” O’Neill snapped. “The Ori. Anyone with brains and a grudge.”

“With respect,” Mitchell said, eyes forward, “Morse code rocks and a ballsy Hail Mary? This has David Telford written all over it.”

“Agreed,” Young added.

Landry looked to Carter.

“Agreed,” Carter said.

“Open the iris,” Landry growled.

Young clenched his jaw as the iris dilated. The light shone into the observation bay and put blue highlights in Carter’s hair. Mitchell stood next to him, his arms crossed, his feet set apart.

A rock the size of Young’s fist sailed through the gate and clattered on the ramp. It was followed by another.

“Well, that’s a good sign,” O’Neill said, and some of the tension bled from the room.

For a moment, nothing happened. Young watched the event horizon. At the base of the gate, he saw a few faint tendrils of mist.

Then—

Reynolds.

The man crashed into materialization, hitting the ramp in a high velocity bloody fall. He shouted something, coughing on blood, dragging himself down the ramp, toward the gateroom security team. One of the women along the rear wall broke formation, but the lieutenant in command ordered her back.

“What’s he saying?” Landry leaned forward.

Reynolds’s hands were bound behind him. He was trying to speak and cough at the same time—

“Oh god,” Carter breathed, half out of her seat. “No. He’s saying no. He’s saying no.”

There was a heartbeat of silence.

And then.

The room exploded into noise. Carter dropped back into her chair, her fingers already flying over the consoles.

“SHUT IT DOWN!” Landry roared.

“Iris is not responding.” Harriman palmed the iris controls again and again.

“SHUT IT DOWN NOW,” Landry shouted again.

“What the hell is that stuff coming through behind him?” Mitchell pointed at a thick white substance flowing through the bottom of the open gate. It was the mist Young had noticed earlier.

“I’m trying and I don’t know,” Carter replied. “We don’t have the equipment for an on-the-fly analysis. But it’s continually in transit.”

“Shut the iris,” O’Neill snapped. “Focus on the iris, Carter.”

“Yes sir,” Carter said, “I’m trying.”

Landry shouldered past Harriman and dived for base-wide speakers. “Defensive teams to the gate room, he said, broadcasting base-wide. “Defensive teams to the gate room.”

Telford came through, stumbling as if he’d been shoved, covered with blood, his shirt half-torn away.

“Aw shit,” Mitchell said.

“Shut it down!” Telford looked up at them, his face bloodied, his hands bound behind his back. “Shut it down, shut it down SHUT IT DOWN SHUT IT—” Telford’s warning cut off as Ramirez pitched through the gate and slammed into him. The pair of them fell in a tangle of limbs and skidded down the ramp.

Young stepped forward to stand behind Carter, his thoughts racing, trying to pin down a purpose to whatever the LA was doing—because there was no doubt in his mind that it was the LA.

Why send their own people back to them?

Unless.

Unless their personnel had been meant as a human incentive of the right mass and chemical composition to get the SGC to open the iris. Maybe they’d been meant to provide convincing sensor signatures if the rocks hadn’t done the trick.

“Where’s that iris, Carter?” O’Neill shouted.

“Sergeant Siler, do you copy? We need you to prep the vents,” Harriman shouted into his radio to be heard over sounding alarms.

“Matter is in transit,” Carter snarled, her eyes blazing. “The iris won’t close when material is in transit—it’s built into the safety protocol.”

Behind Telford, white vapor streamed through the gate, settling along the floor, dense and thick.

“That shit? Are you kidding me?” Mitchell snapped. “Air doesn’t transmit, water doesn’t transmit, what the hell is that stuff?”

“It’s denser than air.” Carter kept her eyes on the monitors. “Just look at it, Cam, it’s denser than air.  It’s being pumped through. It has momentum.The stargate transmits discrete units moving with intent, meaning sufficient momentum, which apparently this—”

“Pull the team out of the room,” Landry roared over Carter’s explanation. “Pull them out of there and vent this garbage through the filters.”

“We can’t vent it,” Carter shouted. “Not until we know what it is. It might be a placeholder so they can keep the gate open, or it might be a neurotoxin.”

“Well this is a shitshow,” O’Neill said, as the event horizon rippled.

Four people appeared, leather clad, weapons at their shoulders, standing in the white swirl of gas. They were wearing self-contained breathing units.

“Put the base on alert,” Landry snapped. “Give the order to evacuate all nonessential personnel. This is a foothold.”

The overhead lights dimmed to a pulsing red. The doors to the gateroom opened and the defense teams moved into the white opacity of the air. The sound of gunfire began, muted on the other side of the thick glass.

Young watched Telford come from the side and drag one of the incoming LA party down into the smoke that had begun to rise like water in the room.

Four more LA members appeared.

And then another four.

And then another four.

Young lost track of them in the thick white smoke that poured through the gate. The mist filled the room, chest high in places, and poured into the open corridor beyond, fluidly passing around and past the rearguard silhouetted in the doorway.

“We need more manpower down there,” Landry growled. He looked down at Harriman. “Who’s planetside, combat ready, and on base?”

“SGs one, five, nine, eleven, twelve, fifteen, and twenty-two.”

“Get them down here, along with base security.”

“I’m goin’ in.” Mitchell pulled out his radio as Walter began calling for backup. “Teal’c, this is Mitchell, what’s your location?”

Teal’c voice came over the radio. “The level twenty-eight armory.”

“Pick me up a mask; I’ll meet you outside the gateroom.” Mitchell looked to Carter. “I assume we’re doing the manual-power-cut thing?”

Young ached with the desire to accompany him.

“Yes.” Carter’s expression was pained. “I don’t know how easy it’ll be.” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the escalating gunfire in the gateroom. “They’re still coming through.”

“Rush is here,” Young said, a flash of realization that flowed into a quiet patch in the surrounding conversation.

“What?” Landry rounded on him. “What do you mean ‘here’.”

“I mean on the base,” Young clarified. “Level nineteen.”

“Well, get him out of here,” Landry said. “Either do it yourself, or find someone else, but get it done.”

“Yes sir.” Young was already heading for the door.

“Everett,” Mitchell fell in next to him. “He’s on twenty-one. The infirmary.”

“What? He was supposed to—never mind.”

“Yeah.” Mitchell gave him a significant look. “We can talk about your neighbor later. He—”

Jackson and Vala plowed into Mitchell as he preceded Young into the misted the corridor. They steadied themselves, and before Jackson could get his first question out, “Jackson,” Mitchell said, “with me. Vala, you’re with Young.”

“But—” Vala lifted an arm like she was hailing a cab as Jackson and Mitchell peeled away, heading for the armory.

“With. Young,” Cam shouted as he rounded a corner.

Young’s eyes stung and teared. Already, the whitish haze had spread this far, obscuring their boots at the the ankles.

“Well, handsome,” Vala said, punctuated by a mostly muffled cough. “Where to?”

“Level twenty-one,” Young replied, the acrid air irritating his lungs as well. “We’re on Nick Rush escort duty.”

“Your neighbor?” Vala asked. “He’s here? Talk about bad timing.”

“Maybe,” Young said grimly.

Vala shot him a significant look. “So I’m hoping this white stuff isn’t going to kill us.” She fanned the air in front of her face.

“C’mon.” Young started forward, trying to put the ache in his back and hip out of his mind. “It’ll get better as we go up.”

“Right.” Vala was barely audible over the approaching gunfire. “Well, no time like the present.” She pulled her Zat.

Young pulled his own sidearm and together they advanced back toward the periphery of the level.

“The elevators are shut down,” Vala said, as they rounded a corner, “so my question for you, handsome, is: are we doing this the hard way, or the very hard way?”

With an effort, he refocused. “Meaning?”

“The stairs,” Vala said, “or the ladder in the wall?”

“Stairs,” Young said. “We gotta be fast.”

“Well, if speed is what you want,” Vala said, “perhaps you should let me go.”

She had a point, but he didn’t know her well enough to trust her with a tinder and tissue-paper math professor who was worth a small fortune to the Lucian Alliance.

“Let’s stick together.” He coughed, trying to muffle the sound. “It’s only six flights of stairs and we’ve got a lead on the LA, presuming they manage to hold them off at the gate room.

“And presuming they have no one on the inside,” Vala said. “And presuming that your neighbor is still where we think he is. And presuming you can make it up six flights of stairs in a timely fashion.”

“Yes,” Young replied. “Presuming all those things.”

“And presuming this white stuff,” Vala swished a boot in a delicate arc, “doesn’t kill us after half an hour or so? That’s more presuming than I’m comfortable with.”

“Yeah,” Young said grimly, trying to muffle a cough. “I think if this stuff were going to kill us, it already would have. It’s probably a means to an end.”

“What end?” Vala shot him an anxious look.

“Keeping the gate open,” Young said, “and maybe—maybe something else.”

“I don’t like it,” Vala said, as they reached the base of the stairs.

He looked up. The ascending concrete tunnel of the stairs angled away from them and out of sight at linear intervals. The emergency lighting gleamed off the concrete, stark and unfriendly. “Less talking,” Young said grimly, as the sound of gunfire approached their position, “more climbing.”

“Whatever you say, handsome,” Vala whispered.