Mathématique: Chapter 13

“Believe it or not,” Vala said, “we’re here to rescue you.”

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

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: None.

Chapter 13

White-coated medical personnel materialized out of the linear dark of corridors and from behind closed office doors. Faces tense, they flitted from station to station around the SGC infirmary, logging into terminals, unlocking cabinets, and activating touchscreens in red emergency light.

No one spoke.

Rush wrapped his fingers around the edge of the gurney he was seated on and cleared his throat. “You’re certain I can’t leave?” he asked Lam. “Even though we heard General Landry,” he drew out the name in an attempt to remind her of the man’s rank, “give the order for nonessential personnel to evacuate?”

“I’m sure. You’re not going out there.” Lam’s low-heeled pumps clicked against the cement floor as she strode toward the door.

“I’m not essential.” Rush, still perched on the gurney he’d occupied for the better part of an hour, watched the pale silhouettes of medical personnel pass back and forth, bright against the dimness.

“You’re not joining the evacuating throng.”

“Throng.”

“Yes.” Lam replied. “If you were out there, you’d see. Topside, it’s a throng. Subside, it’s anyone’s guess. And you,” she placed a special emphasis on the word, “do not belong in a throng.”

“Perspicacious of you.”

“So I’ve been told.” She finished her check of the door and gave him a tense smile.

“Don’t you evacuate under these conditions?” he asked. “Can’t be sure, of course, but you seem like an intellectual resource not directly integral to a firefight?”

“I’m flattered.” She raised an eyebrow at him as she crossed the room, heading for a cabinet on the far wall, her shoes picking up the pale red sheen of the emergency light. “Medical personnel don’t evacuate unless there’s a general order,” Lam inserted a key into a locker, turned it authoritatively, and swung the door open to reveal a rack of identical alien devices. She handed one to Rush.

“And this is?” He examined the coiled metal. It was cool to the touch and lighter than it looked.

“A weapon.” Lam depressed a small button on the side of the device and it sprang open in her hand. “It’s called a Zat.”

How onomonopoetic.

“No thank you.” Rush placed the sinuous curl of dull metal next to him on the gurney.

Lam locked eyes with him. “I haven’t been working here long, but that’s the first time I’ve ever—”

The clang of metal on metal interrupted her, and the handful of medical staff whirled towards the sealed doors to the infirmary, Zats in hand.

Rush found the set of white-coated, weapons-wielding physicians to be a really fuckin’ bizarre set.

Resignedly, he picked up his alien handgun out of a sense of collective obligation.

The metallic clangs sounded again, but this time they were quieter, more akin to urgent knocking.

Lam strode to the door, held down a button, and spoke into an intercom. “Please identify yourselves.”

“Vala Mal Doran. And guest.”

“Colonel Everett Young.” The man sounded particularly out of sorts as he gave his authorization code.

Lam pressed a release to reveal the colonel leaning heavily on Vala, one hand braced against a wall.

Young locked eyes with Rush and initiated a silent eye conversation.

What the HELL are you doing in the infirmary, his glare asked.

None of your business, Rush’s over-the-glasses stare replied.

Young’s brow furrowed with, I TOLD YOU to stay on level nineteen.

Rush quirked an, And y’think I follow your orders? eyebrow.

“Colonel.” Lam stepped in to take some of Young’s weight. “What happened? Were you injured?”

“It’s nothing.” Young watched with grim approval as one of Lam’s medical staff sealed the doors. “I’m fine.”

“Believe it or not,” Vala said, “we’re here to rescue you.” She flashed a glittering smile at Lam.

Lam regarded her with appropriate skepticism.

“Well, not you, hot stuff,” Vala amended. “That one. Over there.” She pointed a manicured nail at Rush. “Hello, gorgeous.”

Rush gave her a cool nod.

“What’s happening?” Lam asked as she and Vala steered Young in the direction of Rush’s gurney. “No general advisory has gone out yet.”

Rush got out of their way.

“We’ve got an in-progress foothold situation downstairs,” Young said, managing to articulate through an impressively clenched jaw, “and so we’re not staying.” He made an effort to derail his own forward momentum.

Vala stopped with him, but Lam determinedly made for the gurney until the three of them came to an uncoordinated halt.

“Rush,” Young growled, “come on.”

Rush scanned him skeptically. “Y’can barely walk.”

“Excuse me,” Lam said, “but Dr. Rush isn’t going anywhere.”

(Oh no?)

“What?” Young replied, sounding exhausted and incredulous and like he had just about reached the end of his mental and physical resources.

“I won’t release him to you,” Lam replied crisply. “Not until I get clearance from General Landry.”

“He’s not a patient,” Young said. “He’s not yours to release.”

“Everyone on or affiliated with this base is my patient.” Lam pulled out her radio and stepped from beneath Young’s arm. “If we’re in the midst of a foothold situation I am not,” she paused, staring Young down, “releasing him until I am specifically cleared to do so.”

Young studied her, torn between what looked like approval and aggravation.

Rush tried not to find the entire situation patently ridiculous (but it was difficult).

Young wasn’t about t’fuckin’ abduct him.

(Probably.)

“Radio it in,” Young said grudgingly, “but make it quick.”

Rush stepped to the colonel’s shoulder and gave the man a dubious and obvious once-over. “Y’look terrible, you realize.”

The line of Young’s jaw loosened and shifted in a way that suggested he might be amused. “Coming from you, that means a lot.”

Rush shrugged, unimpressed.

Lam shifted the channel on her radio and the device crackled to life with the tail end of whatever Landry was saying. “—Siler to shut them down. Repeat: shut down the air circulators.”

“This is Lieutenant Scott. Visibility is less than meter on level twenty-eight. Sir, we can’t see what we’re doing.”

“Understood, lieutenant,” Landry replied.

Lam stood, shoulders tense, waiting for an opening in the chatter.

“This is Siler. Ventilation is sealed with respect to the surface. If we shut down internal recirculators anyone without a mask below level twenty-five will be at risk of suffocation. The gas is heavy. It will displace normal air on the lower levels if we don’t keep mixing.”

Vala caught Rush’s eye. With a subtle tilt of her head, she invited him to lend the colonel a bit more than a disdainful look.

“Difficult time breathing?” Rush closed a hand around Young’s elbow and pulled the man’s arm over his shoulders. Young was damp with sweat, and he leaned heavily into Rush’s support.

Lam’s eyebrows pressed together, listening intently.

“They’re pumping a dense gas through the gate.” Young leaned into Rush. “Flip to the priority channel and override,” he advised Lam. “You’re not gonna get a break.”

“I won’t override for—” Lam stopped, looking up at the ceiling.

They all followed her gaze.

A thin stream of whitish vapor cascaded from a vent. As they watched, it fell thicker and faster, hissing as it came.

The skin on the back of Rush’s neck prickled.

“Move away,” Lam directed brusquely. “Move away.”

Her medical personnel scattered, avoiding the waterfall of white as they made for the lockers in the walls.

“Well that’s not good,” Vala murmured.

“Agreed,” Rush said.

“The stuff’s gotten into the air re-circulators.” Young’s focus stayed on Lam. “Call it in. We gotta get him out of here.”

Lam depressed the button on her radio. “This is Dr. Lam for General Landry. Colonel Young and Vala are here to provide an escort for a patient? Please authorize.”

She waited.

“Carolyn.” Landry’s voice crackled over the radio. “Let them go. How’s the air on twenty-one?”

“We’ve got gas coming through vents.” Lam opened a wall-mounted cabinet.

Young and Vala started for the door. Rush matched their pace, shouldering as much of Young’s weight as he could.

“Masks,” Lam called after them. “Wait. We have masks.”

One of the medics came forward, masks in hand.

“Fantastic.” Vala pulled hers on.

Young followed suit.

Rush quirked an eyebrow at the thing. It had a face plate and a filter, but—“Y’realize if the gas is heavier than air and displaces breathable oxygen, filters won’t help if we’re trapped in a local sink?”

“Just put it on,” Young growled.

“The stuff could be toxic as well as dense,” Vala said, in a cheerfully doomed sing-song.

They both looked at her.

“What?” She flipped her hair. “Not just a pretty face, here. Now let’s go, gorgeous.”

Rush put on his mask. It compressed his glasses a bit more than was comfortable, but needs must, he supposed.

Lam pressed the Zat he’d abandoned back into his hand. “Good luck,” she whispered, and opened the door to the quiet corridor beyond.

The red emergency light reflected off surfaces and soaked into corners and the dark hollows of doorways.

This late in the evacuation, there was no one in sight.

They started forward. Young’s breath came a little too fast, and he pressed into Rush from shin to shoulder, dense and warm.

“This isn’t how we normally do things,” the colonel confessed.

“Surely you jest,” Rush replied, already short of breath.

They reached the stairwell to find the air full of faint haze, more pronounced near the floor.

“This looks worse than before.” Vala glanced at Young. “Is it coming from above us?”

“We’ll find out,” Young said. “But if this stuff is in the re-circulators it’s a good bet it’ll show up all over the base.”

“Let’s go.” Vala edged toward the stairs. “I don’t like this. I’ve got a bad feeling.”

“Agreed.” Young dug the barrel of his handgun into Rush’s shoulder to reseat his grip and took back some of his own weight.

They started up the stairs, taking the first flight at something approximating a normal speed. That wasn’t going to be sustainable. Not in a mask with filters strong enough to cause air resistance. Not with the colonel’s injuries.

In the infirmary, he’d heard Landry give an order to shut off the air re-circulators. That’d be a colossally stupid idea. Siler had pushed back; it’d seemed to penetrate.

And yet.

There didn’t seem to be any sign thus far that the base was filtering particulate out and pumping clean air in.

He hoped someone was working on it.

Carter.

Carter would realize. He’d studied her source code. She’d see it.

“Was Colonel Carter in the gate room?” Rush rasped.

“Yeah.” Young paused on the landing, fighting for air. “Why?”

“Simply curious.” Rush was just as breathless. Maybe because of the filters. Maybe because of the reduced oxygen content in the air. Maybe because it was fuckin’ difficult to drag a well-built Air Force colonel up endless flights of stairs.

He felt warm. Unnaturally so.

“Let’s pick up the pace,” Young said.

On they went, tearing through the haze as quickly as they were able.

He didn’t understand this mist. He didn’t understand its purpose.

Young’s arm tightened around his shoulders and his weapon dug into Rush’s upper arm as Vala took a misstep.

“Sorry,” Vala said, her voice high and breathy. “So sorry, handsome.”

“I’m fine,” Young gasped. “Keep going.”

He couldn’t understand why the LA would choose to hamper their own incursion by use of such a double-edged weapon. Surely it’d cause them the same amount of inconvenience and danger that it’d the base personnel?

The gas must have a purpose.

They made the next landing and paused, breathing hard. Vala’s hand pressed against the gleaming white silhouette of the number seventeen, emblazoned on the wall in reflective paint. Someone was trembling. Young or Vala, already exhausted from their rapid ascent from level twenty-seven.

Rush frowned at his shoes. The skin at his ankles tingled.

“Go,” Young rasped.

They started up the next flight of stairs.

If this gas conferred an advantage upon the LA, it’d likely derive from an intrinsic property. It was dense. It scattered light effectively. The heat at his ankles suggested a mild exothermic reaction on skin contact.

It—

“Aw shit,” Young said.

Rush looked up.

Ahead, pouring off the level sixteen landing, was an advancing wall of white. It came thick and fast and opaque.

Rush tensed. His breathing turned fast and shallow. He tightened his grip on Young’s sweat damp jacket. On the smooth curves of the Zat in his free hand.

“Deep breaths.” Young stood like he was carved from stone. Calm and strong and solid. “Hyperventilate and hold. We’ll go straight through. Past the landing. It’ll be clearer above seventeen.”

“Right.” Vala tipped her chin up, her tone a mix of dark determination and glossy cheer. “Course it will.”

Rush nodded, forcing himself to take a deep breath in the face of the rapidly advancing red-white wave.

He took a second breath.

A third.

And then it hit.

He lost his depth perception and his visual field in one disorienting swoop, but—

Right then. No more mystery about the utility of the gas.

Every centimeter of his exposed skin lit up, emitting at the red end of the visible spectrum and extending into the infrared, if the warmth was any indication.

Neither Young nor Vala were emitting electromagnetic radiation of any kind.

Rush held his free hand in front of his face, watching the pink/red light flicker over his fingers, his exposed forearm, glowing faintly through his white shirt—

“Go,” Young snarled, plowing through the mist.

What the fuck. (What the fuck?)

He was emitting EM radiation?

Why? Scratch that. How was more important. Probably it was an exothermic reaction between the mist and either 1) something he’d been coated with or 2) something he was.

How did Ancient genes work, anyway?

“We’re slowing down,” Vala said, high and breathless. “I think we’re slowing down?”

“Can’t tell,” Young rasped.

Rush couldn’t tell either.

It was so quiet.

And so featureless.

Except for the glow.

“Ignore it, gorgeous,” Vala panted. “Ignore it.”

The mist was a tag. It was one component in a two-component tag. The other component was him. (Wonderful.) He couldn’t see anything but a red-white glow.

“Don’t,” Young gasped, “don’t panic, hotshot. And don’t slow down.”

He wasn’t panicking.

He wasn’t remotely.

Fucking.

Panicking.

Not panicking. Emitting, yes, but not panicking.

“One,” Vala said.

Counting steps; not a bad plan.

“Two,” Vala said.

Young shook with fatigue as they pushed upward.

“Three,” Vala said.

He couldn’t breathe.

“Four,” Vala said.

He shouldn’t breathe.

“Five,” Vala said.

It was hard to orient.

“Six,” Vala said.

He couldn’t feel the press of gravity in a field of featureless white.

“Seven,” Vala said.

His lungs ached with the need to draw a breath.

“Eight,” Vala said.

His thighs burned, his calves burned.

“Nine,” Vala said.

Sweat poured down his back, soaking his dress shirt.

“Ten,” Vala said.

His vision began to dim. There was a roaring in his ears.

“Eleven,” Vala said.

Rush lost the battle to hold his breath and pulled in a gasping inhale.

“Twelve,” Vala said.

He was moving air, but it didn’t seem to help.

“Thirteen,” Vala said.

Young’s weight bore down on him.

“Fourteen,” Vala said.

He took the next step—but there was no step there.

Everyone made the same mistake.

The sensation of falling was hard to discern. The sensation of three people falling in a tangle against a hard surface was less difficult to pick out.

Rush spread his hands against featureless white. The surface in front of him was hard. It was the floor. (It was the wall?) It was the floor. He tried to feel gravity. He shut his eyes and tried to feel it.

This had to be the landing. (Didn’t it?)

He’d make it the landing.

No one spoke.

As unlikely as it seemed, it occurred to Rush that, of the three of them, he might be in the best shape. Most oriented. He closed his hand on the fabric of Young’s jacket. “Vala,” he rasped. “Vala.”

Her breaths came like sobs. She was a blurred shadow on Young’s opposite side, the inverse of his own reddish glow. She said nothing, but she was kneeling, dragging Young up. He bent to help her and they hauled Young up on the landing (it was definitely the landing).

There was very little oxygen in the air and no time for anything but bloody-minded accuracy.

“Left,” he decided, dragging Young toward where he willed the stairs to be. He tripped and fell. Against the ascending stair. (That was good. That was fantastic).

With a shut-jaw grunt of effort, Vala kept Young on his feet.

Rush scrambled back into position.

Zero.

No one had the energy left to count out loud.

One.

His blood roared in his ears.

One, zero.

The air began to clear.

One, one.

The pale void started to clear. Above, he saw the dim outline of the next landing.

One, zero, zero.

His chest ached with the need for oxygen.

One, zero, one.

He stopped counting. All conscious thought shunted to pure effort.

They reached the landing. He and Vala buckled at the same time, sending the three of them back to the floor beneath the white glare of the number fifteen. Vala’s hair swept over her shoulder in a dark curtain. Rush spread his hands, bracing himself against the cement floor of the landing, pulling haze and air into his lungs, trying to ignore the overwhelming impulse to pull off his mask.

He watched his hands, pressed to the floor through a few inches of mist, emit in the red and infrared.

It wasn’t much of a conceptual leap to make three assumptions:

One—the differential “glow effect” produced by the mist was visually tagging him. Not Vala. Not Young. Him.

Two—regardless of mechanism, the glow implied an EM signature that was probably remotely detectable. (Ah fuck.)

Three—

“Get up.” Young dragged Rush off the floor. “Get up, hotshot.”

Three—if his two-part glow-tag was detectable, it’d likely allow a transporter lock. (Again, fuck.)

“Stay out of that stuff,” Young growled, staring at him from behind the transparent plastic of his mask. “Don’t stick your god damned hands into it. I’ll bet you just lit up the hand-held sensors of every LA member on this base.”

“Yes,” Rush replied, “yes I think that’s quite likely.”

“No one likes an overachiever, gorgeous,” Vala breathed shakily.

“I’m sure they can still detect me.” Rush swept a hand through the translucent air, producing a red haze. “But why not beam me out when they had such a—” He couldn’t catch his breath. “Such a spectacular signal?”

“You can’t transport out of the SGC,” Young said, “because the base is stacked with signal scramblers. Won’t stop them all from converging on our position.”

“Boys.” Vala coughed. “The only way out is up, so let’s get going, please.” She peeled Young’s hand away from Rush’s shoulder and hauled him to his feet.

Again, they began their ascent.

Rush didn’t understand how Young was managing under these conditions. All indications were that the man was seriously injured. He was on medical leave, for god’s sake. He didn’t want to think about what kind of damage the colonel was doing to partially healed injuries.

“Great.” Young growled.

Rush looked up to see another wave of white mist advancing over the landing above.

“The distribution and density of these pockets doesn’t make sense,” Rush said. “We shouldn’t be running into concentrated blocks so frequently—”

Vala screamed something that wasn’t English and Rush hit the steps. The ridges of the stairs drove into his ribs and he was sliding, tumbling, Young on top of him. There was no sign of Vala; what happened to Vala—

The air split with weapons fire. Energy-based. Projectile based.

He tried to sit.

Young shoved him down.

How could anyone have gotten ahead of them? But blue energy rained from the level above and while Rush didn’t know much about tactics, he could certainly reason out that having the lower ground in an open stairwell was a bad strategic position.

Young started firing. Right next to Rush’s ear, again (but at least the man wasn’t dead).

Rush gripped the step he was lying on, levered himself up, and scanned for Vala.

She was pressed to the stairwell wall, dark against the red-white glow of the mist. She ascended slowly, firing a spread with her snake-like energy weapon.

“Fire,” Young shouted in his ear. “Fucking fire your weapon, Rush.” Young reached over, hit a button on the sinuous metal still gripped in Rush’s hand, and the thing sprang open.

Right then.

The weapon’s orientation was intuitive, but he couldn’t see anything in the crimson mist above. The odds of hitting an obscured target with an energy blast the diameter of a pencil beam were—

“It’s not a damn PhD, hotshot,” Young shouted over the deafening shots coming from his own gun. “Pull the trigger.”

Rush fired at the metal railing running along the wall and sent a burst of blue energy traveling up into the mist that obscured the landing of level fifteen. The glow illuminated two silhouettes crouched near the wall. Useful. He fired continuously, lighting up the railing as Vala took down one of the shadows with a Zat blast. Young eliminated the other with a single round.

The air smelled of energy and ozone.

“Okay.” Young looked grudgingly at Rush. “That was pretty smart.”

 

Rush started forward, but Young pulled him back. “You are not first, hotshot.”

“Oh yes,” Rush hissed, “and you’re in fantastic shape are you?”

Vala darted into the carnation cloud and turned over the person she’d either stunned or killed (Rush had no idea what the effect of that blue energy might be). In one quick motion, she pulled off the man’s self-contained breathing unit and passed the small canister of air and associated mask to Rush.

Rush passed it to Young, who shoved it back at him. Not about to engage in a childish display of petulant altruism, Rush swapped his filter mask for the breathing unit.

Vala plunged back into the mist, her sinuous weapon in hand.

“Vala—” Young started up the stair, but his bad knee buckled beneath him.

Rush staggered as Young’s weight landed heavily on his shoulders.

“Sorry hotshot,” Young hissed, breathing through the pain. “You don’t have the build for this.”

“Fuck right off.”

Young laughed, short and pained. “That’s the spirit.”

Somewhere in the swirling opacity above, Vala fired a shot with her energy weapon. The energy backlit her in dark silhouette. She reemerged from the thickest part of the mist with a second breathing unit and offered it to Young.

He shoved it back at her, and she put it on.

“We’re going down,” Young said. “Back to sixteen.”

“Wrong direction, handsome.”

“I know.” Young leaned into Rush. “C’mon.”

“I assume,” Rush said, reluctantly starting down the stairs, “that you’ve some kind of plan?”

“Level sixteen is a good level for us.” Young grunted as he, “if you’re the computational genius as everyone seems to think you are.”

“Meaning?” Rush asked dubiously.

“Level sixteen has a system-wide monitoring station. I’m hoping you can unlock a god damned elevator.”

“Substantial computational difficulties aside, it sounds risky. I was under the impression that elevators were taken offline in emergencies to prevent death via airless metal box?”

“This one’s got a way with words, doesn’t he?” Vala muttered.

“I’m not seeing a lot of risk-free options here.” Young coughed.

“My ability to unlock an elevator in a time-efficient manner will be contingent on the level of security clearance—”

“Yeah or whatever,” Young growled. “If you can’t do it, I have a back-up plan. It’s not ideal; let’s put it that way.”

“Y’know what else isn’t ideal?” Rush fired back, “Some fuckin’ offsite sysadmin mistaking me for a sloppy Lucian Alliance black hat and trapping us in an elevator to suffocate, so what’s your plan B?”

“Black hat?”

“Will you respond to the thrust of my argument please?”

“I would, if I knew what it was.”

“If Carter or Perry or someone equally competent has so much as looked at the computational security on this base then I’ll not fuck with it and magically recruit us an elevator. It doesn’t work like that, colonel. What’s your plan B?”

Young looked at Vala.

Vala shook her head. “They’re bound to be in there. How else could they have beaten us to fourteen?”

“In where?” Rush asked.

“In the walls,” Vala replied. “There’s an access shaft that goes to the surface.”

“Firefights on ladders in long narrow tubes are not a good time,” Young said. “You sure you don’t want to re-think the elevator plan?”

Rush sighed. “Does the monitoring station have external access? Or is the entire base on a closed network?”

“I think there’s external access,” Young replied. “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” Rush hissed. “Of course it matters. I’m not in the habit of carrying around security scanner applications on my person so I’ll need to bloody well obtain one.”

“Keep your shirt on,” Young growled.

Rush shot him a scathing look.

“At the very least,” Vala said, “we can get a better picture of what’s going on base-wide.”

“Let’s go,” Young said.

Together, they began the descent toward level sixteen.