Death Game

Chapter Twenty-Two

Teyla shrieked, struggling in pitch darkness with something that held her fast, gripping her shoulder and her wrist. She twisted, trying to get her weight behind it. She must fight it. She must get free.

“Hey! Hey, stop it!” It was John’s voice. “Teyla! It’s a dream!”

It was John, this thing she struggled against, one hand of his behind her head to keep it from banging against the stone wall.

“It’s ok,” he said. “It’s just a dream.”

“A dream.” They were surrounded by impenetrable darkness. The cell. A cell on the Holy Island. That’s where they were. There were no Wraith in Atlantis. She was no Wraith. It was nothing but the stuff of nightmare.

“It’s a dream,” John said again. “You were thrashing around. It’s a dream. Stuff like that happens.”

“I dreamed I returned to Atlantis and it was controlled by the Wraith,” Teyla said, her heart still pounding in her chest. “There were Wraith everywhere.” She could not bring herself to say more. It was so vivid before her still — John on his knees, her hand flashing with silver and gems as she reached for his chest to take the life from him.

She wondered if he looked concerned, for he stilled. “Have you had dreams like this before?”

Teyla started to shake her head. “ No. And yes.” Her pulse was slowing a little, no longer pounding in her ears. She took a deep breath. She had dreamed that she was Wraith before, seen her own face in the mirror and had it be that of a queen. “I dreamed about the Wraith often during the siege, before we knew what the Gift meant.” That was when she had a dream like this before. It was a warning.

“Yeah, but that time there was a Wraith commando loose in the city,” John said. “You weren’t imagining it. There really were Wraith close by.” He shifted heavily, letting go now that she was no longer flailing. “Are there Wraith close now?”

That coldness in the pit of her stomach, the overwhelming urge to flee rendered impossible by confining walls…

“Yes,” she said, trying to focus it, to control it rather than have it control her. “There are Wraith very close by. Several of them. They cannot be more than a few dozen yards. Upstairs, perhaps, in the rooms overhead. That is why I feel this so strongly.” She gripped his hand. It was a warning, but one she could not act upon. “John. It is hard not to react, when every bone in my body screams that we must flee.”

“I’d love to,” John said. “Only there’s the little problem of this cell…”

She laughed, as no doubt he meant for her to. Yes, easier to come down this way. It was a dream, like the ones before, a manifestation of her Gift. That was all. “It is like in this book you gave me, Watership Down. When the rabbits are not able to flee and freeze with terror instead, because what approaches is so terrible, and yet there is no way out.”

“We’re big rabbits,” John said. “Maybe the Wraith should be worried instead.”

“Only you would say that when we’re locked in a hole in the ground.”

“What? Because I’m the bravest guy you know?” He was teasing, but she appreciated it all the same.

“No. Because you are utterly insane,” she said, intending the same spirit.

“Probably,” he said quietly, and perhaps it was the darkness that caused him to say more than that. “My ex-wife thought I was. Some of the stuff when I got back from overseas… It wasn’t anything Nancy bargained on coping with. But you know. It comes and goes. You deal with it.”

“I do know,” Teyla said. His words were very offhanded, and yet she held her breath. She hardly knew what to make of honesty from him, of things that were so raw. He was not a man who spoke easily or often, and she felt as though the wrong word might silence him, might end this tentative trust.

“What do your people do? You know. After a Culling,” he said quietly.

Teyla took a breath. Talking about this was steadying, and perhaps he did indeed want to know. Perhaps he truly was curious, as eager to learn as to teach. “We sing. We cry. We remember.” There were Wraith just overhead. Many of them. “We mourn. Sometimes it is too soon to speak of the Lost, or the situation is too dangerous. We are still in peril, and there is no time for mourning. But when there is, we drink and we scream and we lament.” She stopped, wishing she needed to say no more, but honesty deserved an honest answer. “And then when that is done we suffer in silence.” She waited, but he did not speak. “And you?”

“I’ve never been through a Culling,” he said, and she thought of those she had met in his imagining of home, when they had been trapped in an alien mindgame rather than on Earth. When she had gone to visit a place of John’s that had never existed, drunk beer with men who were dead. Teyla had not met those friends. They were gone long before the Earthmen came to Athos. They lived now only in John Sheppard’s mind, at that illusory party by a swimming pool in a place he had never actually lived. Home was an imaginary apartment full of ghosts where the beer was always cold and the lost were found.

“No, I suppose not,” she said softly. “I am sure you do not in the least understand what I mean.”

There was the sound of footsteps outside, and the bar on the door rattled. Teyla jumped to her feet, managing not to run into John in the process, as he was doing the same.

The door opened. Four human guards stood outside. The first reached in with spear leveled. “Come on.”

Blinking into the light, John stepped forward. For a moment Teyla wondered if he were going to grab the spear shaft, but he did not. It was possible, but probably not the best plan. If they did fight their way clear of these four men, the spear would give them little against Wraith with energy weapons. Better to wait for an opportunity where they had more latitude, and more chance of success.

“Come out,” the guards said, gesturing again.

John walked out, his hands held well away from his body, and she followed. One of the guards eyed him suspiciously. “Special prisoners?”

The first guard looked John up and down. In his dirty BDUs, three days growth of beard on his face, a stitched up cut across his forehead, he did not look particularly formidable. Nor particularly alien. There was nothing about him, other than his basic style of dress, which made him stand out at all. Nothing that screamed “Take me to the Wraith!” Teyla fervently hoped her own appearance was equally unnoteworthy.

The first guard shrugged. “No, just send them out with the others.” He looked at John evenly. “Better for you if you don’t make trouble. After all, you might win the Games. You look like you can handle yourself.”

“Thanks,” John said. Some time in the night he’d removed the old bandage, and the dark stitches were clearly visible against his skin. Still, it seemed to be healing.

Teyla took a step toward him, hoping that the direction to send them with the others meant her as well. She could not help but worry that as strongly as she felt the Wraith they must be aware of her too.

The guard’s eyes fell on her, then flicked back to John. “Your wife?”

“No,” John said.

“Good. It’s everyone for themselves inside the maze. You hang back and wait for somebody, you lose.” He gestured for them to walk ahead of him down the corridor.

They did, spear points at their backs. At the end of the corridor was a courtyard full of people milling around. A couple of them might have been warriors, but most of them were a mix of ages and professions, men and women of different lands, the youngest a girl and boy of twelve or thirteen who stood together nervously, the oldest Jitrine, her white hair clearly visible in the sun.

John glanced at Teyla as they were herded in with the others, and his eyebrow quirked. “Everyone for themselves?”

“Of course,” Teyla said, glancing around. There were perhaps a dozen guards, and five archers on the wall above. “Otherwise a single rush would take them down.”

“But these people aren’t going to do that,” John said. “Look at them. A crowd of civilians. People don’t act like that. They don’t act together. They haven’t got the training to take the chance. If I yelled ‘get them!’ they’d all just stand there.”

Teyla nodded. “Most people are afraid of getting hurt. And so they will go to their deaths rather than risk pain. It is the first thing you must learn in stick fighting. You must learn how to be hurt. And once you have mastered the fear of being hurt, you realize it is only pain.” She looked at him sideways. “That is why you are a good student. You aren’t afraid of pain.”

“I’m good with pain, actually,” John said.

Teyla froze as a new figure appeared on the wall above.

His long white hair almost glittered, and the somberness of his black leathers were relieved by a cloak of silvery blue that snapped and waved against the clearing sky. He wore a circlet across his forehead set with heavy blue stones, and a fancy mesh of gold and jewels covered the back of his feeding hand. His face was proud and haughty, and he lifted his chin like a god or king.

The guards did not bow, but most of the people around John and Teyla threw themselves to their knees. “It is the High King!” someone whispered, tugging at Teyla’s sleeve.

She shook his hand off. She would not bow to any Wraith.

John remained standing too, as well as a handful of others, though it would have been wiser for him to blend in. “I’ve got a problem with my knees,” he said out of the corner of his mouth, and Teyla almost smiled.

She had not paid attention to the beginning of his speech, which seemed to be laying out the rules of the game. Contestants would enter the maze in small groups a few minutes apart. There, they would face challenges and obstacles. The person who exited first was the winner and would be set free with a fabulous prize in gold. There was no mention of what would happen to the rest of the contestants, though Teyla thought she could guess far too easily.

She could see John sizing up the other players. They fell into two groups, those who hoped to win and those who already despaired. Some, like Jitrine, knew they had little chance of beating out warriors in a trial of strength and endurance. Others eyed the contestants thoughtfully, as if deciding who to get out of the way. More than one pair of eyes lingered on John, though fewer did on her. She did not look as obviously prepossessing as he did. With three days growth of beard and the cut across his forehead, he looked like a ruffian to watch out for.

Those were the contestants angling their way toward the front. Obviously the first groups would have an advantage in getting through the maze. It did not seem that the contest was only one of skill, but also of speed.

John seemed in no hurry, content to hang back as the speech ended and the eager ones crowded forward, so she remained beside him.

At the Wraith Lord’s signal, two guards stepped forward with gold staves in hand. They stretched them over a section of pavement. With a grinding sound, the stones began to part smoothly, exposing a dark hole between them that might be deep as an abyss.

A moan rose from the crowd, except for the contestants who still pressed forward eagerly, intending to be the first. Unsurprisingly, there were six men at the fore, big men that Teyla had marked for warriors. Of course they would want to be first. The cordon of guards parted and three of the six were chosen out, matched with three random people from the crowd, two women and an old man.

Some pushed forward and some pushed back. In the milling around, Teyla saw that Jitrine had come to John’s elbow. “How is your head?” she asked.

“Better.” John put his head to the side. “Why are you here?”

“I told you,” Jitrine said simply. “I have enemies. And it seems they were more powerful than my friends. So I take my chances in the labyrinth.”

“Those chances are slim,” John said. He glanced over to the pit, where already a shout came from below. Some of the first group were losing no time in beginning to eliminate rivals.

“There will be those below who are injured,” Jitrine said, and her chin rose.

“Yes,” John said. His face looked serene. Teyla had seen that expression before when he flew, when he was judging to a nicety the distance from obstacles, avoiding shots by a hair. She had seen it fleeing the Wraith armada with Orin’s family aboard, dialing the gate with that look of concentration that was almost rapture. “Don’t worry,” he said to Jitrine. “Just stick with us.”

“That is not wise, Sheppard,” Jitrine said with dignity. “You know that only one can win. You, by yourself, might have a chance.”

“We’re not going there,” he said. “Teyla’s my team. We go together. You stick with us, and we’ll get you through.”

“People have tried that before,” Jitrine said. “It does not work. Those who make common cause are destroyed.”

“We’ll take our chances,” John said. He looked at Jitrine keenly. “Will you?”

“I am a doctor. I will go with you so far as I may, as much as the ethics of my profession allow.”

“Fair enough.”

The second group had gone down while they waited, and it was not lost on Teyla that the Wraith Lord had disappeared. Probably to join his fellows wherever they intended to watch the games from, for surely they meant to observe what happened underground! She shivered. If the Wraith had noticed her he had not acted. Probably he had not noticed her. She had not reached out with her mind, and when she did not she might seem as ordinary as any other human. Certainly when she had been captured by the Wraith before, in the Culling Sheppard and his men had interrupted, they had paid her no special attention. Perhaps they had not noticed anything at all.

The third group went down, and they moved forward, John carefully keeping her and Jitrine one to each side.

“Play it like it goes,” he said in a low voice. “Let’s not pick a fight. But if they jump you…”

“I will take care of myself quite adequately,” Teyla said.

He had the good sense to look abashed. “I know. I meant with your shoulder and all.”

“We will look after one another,” Teyla said, and gave him a small smile to indicate that she was not really angry.

“Yeah.”

There was no one in front of them. The guards gestured. Before their feet there was a steep stairway running down into darkness.

“Here goes nothing,” John said.