This passage was dark, and he poked ahead of them carefully with the butt of the torch. Jitrine was right behind him, and in the dark she almost ran up on him several times. It was a good thing he was feeling ahead, because a flight of stairs down began abruptly. How far he have fallen down if he missed the first step was a really good question.
Stairs, John said. Behind him he heard Teyla halt. He felt around. There is a rail on the left hand wall.
Cautiously, they descended. Twenty two steps. Not quite two stories, maybe a story and a half. There was a faint glow ahead, as of another room torchlit.
Something moaned.
There was something lying at the foot of the stairs. No, someone. As John came closer he saw that it was the boy from the ship, the one who had been in the first group to enter the labyrinth. He was curled at the bottom of the stairs.
Before he could say anything, Jitrine pushed past him and knelt beside the boy. He was cradling his wrist, and there was an open cut down the side of his forehead back into his hair. That happened? Jitrine asked gently.
He looked up at them, his eyes wide and frightened. The man in our group, the big one… He said he was going to win and he hit me with something. I don't know! I turned around and ran, just trying to get somewhere he wasn't.His eyes flicked up to John and back down to Jitrine. I didn't see the stairs in the dark. I guess I fell all the way down.
We must get him into the light, Jitrine said.
John hesitated.
I am a doctor, Jitrine said. This boy has not harmed us, and I am bound to render aid. Now will you help me or not?”
“Yeah.” John bent down and helped her get the boy up, while Teyla checked ahead.
“It is another empty room,” she said. “Two cameras. But this time there is a table and two chairs.”
“Don’t touch anything,” John said. He got the kid and hauled him along, Jitrine hurrying after. There was blood all over her hands where she’d touched the kid’s head.
There were four torches, one on each wall. In the ceiling, hidden among the rough stones, were three or four recessed light fixtures, though they weren’t turned on.
“Set two,” John said. He put the boy down under one of the torches.
“Let me see,” Jitrine said, kneeling down.
“Am I going to die?” the kid asked. There was blood all over his hands too.
“No,” Jitrine said firmly. “Head wounds bleed a lot, but may not be very serious. Why, Sheppard there bled all over me when I stitched his head a few days ago, but he’s perfectly fine now!” She looked at John. “Show him your wound.”
John obligingly pushed his hair back. “See?” he said. “Not so bad.”
“It will give you a very manly scar,” Teyla said with a smile.
The boy stopped shaking quite so much, enough to let Jitrine examine it. To John it looked pretty dramatic, but Jitrine didn’t seem concerned.
“Long and shallow,” she said. “I should stitch it to make sure it doesn’t pull, but it is not as bad as it looks. When we get through this, I will want to tend to it, but it is already stopping bleeding. Let me see your wrist.” As she took his hand he groaned.
“What is your name?” Teyla asked by way of distraction as Jitrine felt it carefully.
“Nevin,” he said. “We’re not getting through it, are we?”
“Yes, we are,” Teyla said.
Jitrine met his eyes matter of factly. “Your wrist is broken. I will need to set it and splint it when we are done. I am sure it is painful, but I do not have anything to give you. They have taken my medical bag.”
Teyla fished in the pockets of her BDUs. “I have another bandage. Perhaps that would bind it for the time being?” She pulled out one of the long field dressings.
“That will do very well,” Jitrine said.
John paced back and forth. “We need to get a move on, people.”
“This will only take a moment,” Teyla said, and gave him what he was beginning to think of as her quelling look. He could say they were going on without the kid, but then Jitrine would insist on staying with him, and Teyla would insist on staying to guard Jitrine, and at that point…
It was easier just to shut up and not play that out.
John walked over and glanced up at one of the wall cameras. “Yeah,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The Stargate whooshed open in a burst of blue fire, and the jumper leaped through, climbing into the morning sky. Carson Beckett eased back on the controls, mindful of the problem of altitude. They mustn’t get too close to the energy shield that protected the planet.
Major Lorne pointed to the map on his laptop, as Carson never could get the heads-up display working properly. “Cadman said they’d gotten as far as this.”
Rodney, leaning over the back of the copilot’s seat, snorted. “That’s not very useful. Half our flight path will be over ocean that way.”
“And we’ve established that Ronon and Zelenka left the island in a boat,” Lorne said patiently. “Don’t you think it might be a good idea to look for them at sea?”
Rodney allowed that might be wise. The problem was that there were so many small boats at sea on a clear day. They made low approaches over a dozen small fishing boats and transport ships laboring over the clear blue waters, but the radio stayed ominously quiet. Even Rodney was beginning to find Lorne’s continual radio calls irksome.
“What the hell is that?” Carson asked. He must have answered his own question, because a moment later he put the controls over, diving sharply toward the sea and pulling up at what looked to Rodney like a dangerous few hundred feet, driving hard toward the coast.
“What?” Lorne looked up from his laptop, where the search grid was connected to the jumper’s sensors. “What?”
“A Wraith cruiser,” Carson said shortly. “Our sensors were picking it up at extreme range. It was almost masked because it was grounded and not powered up.”
“A Wraith cruiser?” Rodney said disbelievingly. “How could this mission get any worse? Oh, I know! There could be Wraith here!”
“Did it see us?” Lorne asked.
Carson’s hands moved nervously over the board. “I don’t see how. It was grounded with minimal systems using power. That would suggest to me that it was parked and that they didn’t plan on taking off anytime soon.”
“Great,” Lorne said.
“How about we engage the cloak instead of running like scared bunnies in the opposite direction?” Rodney asked. “You know, we don’t actually have to run away. The Wraith can’t detect us cloaked.”
“Oh. Right then.” Carson engaged the cloak. “Forgot that for a minute.”
Rodney rolled his eyes. “How long have you been flying this thing, Carson? A year?”
“I don’t fly it very often,” Carson retorted. He turned back, banking long and low over the sea.
“Keep flying the grid,” Lorne directed. “We want to make sure we don’t miss spots searching the sea. If Ronon and Zelenka took off in a boat, we need to make sure we don’t miss them. And cloak or no cloak, if we start transmitting right on top of that cruiser they’ll notice. It masks our ordinary electronic signature, not an outgoing signal. So let’s take this easy, one step at a time.”
For once Rodney wanted to swat Lorne for his methodical, calm style. Sheppard would just charge in and blow up the Wraith cruiser or something. But he had to admit that Lorne was more likely to find their missing people. Just not as quickly as Rodney would like.
Rodney checked the ordnance. Two drones. Two ought to take out the cruiser at most. Well, unless they were unlucky. Certainly even Carson ought to be able to hit a sitting duck, with the cruiser parked and powered down.