Hypoxia. Ten or twelve percent oxygen, just enough to die slowly. It meant gasping for breath, muddled thinking and inability to make decisions, fatigue, and other things that weren't going to matter because they were going to be fed on, they were going to die, very, very painfully and very, very soon.
He saw Sheppard shove at the pavement, trying to push himself up and falling back helplessly. He looked feral and desperate and furious, like a trapped predator. He met Rodney's gaze, and for a moment there was nothing there but wide-eyed despair, before Sheppard looked away. It's not fair, Rodney thought, feeling the odd detachment of incipient hysteria. It should have been quick, an explosion; Rodney had been mentally prepared for them all to die in an explosion, eventually. Not this, they didn't deserve this.
At least he had destroyed his tablet, with its information on the Mirror. Small consolation, he told himself bitterly.
A male Wraith stepped into Rodney's view, its long white hair and dead pale skin almost glowing against the dark stone. It had at least a dozen bullet holes in the dull silver armor on its chest, but it must have fully regenerated already. It wore something around its neck, a gray bulbous device with nodes clamped over the slits on its face. Some sort of breather unit, Rodney thought. It nudged the shattered tablet with a foot and hissed with displeasure. Then it paced toward them, standing over them, barring its teeth in a sneer. It said, "How did you get to this moon?"
Right, there's no Stargate here. Rodney groaned under his breath. There was just no good answer to that question.
Teyla tried to push herself up, shaking the hair out of her eyes, her face set in a snarl nearly as intimidating as the Wraith's. Sheppard looked up at it with narrowed eyes, sneering back. "We walked."
The Wraith hissed and leaned down toward him, lifting a hand. Rodney choked out, "No! Stop, God-" But the Wraith only slapped Sheppard, the open-handed blow slamming him back into the pavement. Rodney winced away.
Teyla made a strangled noise of rage, nearly shoving herself upright. Rodney didn't see the drone, not until it stepped in, swinging the butt of its stunner, striking her across the face. It knocked her flat; she twitched once and lay unmoving. Rodney shouted, "Dammit, we're stunned already, you didn't have to-" He ran out of air at that point and slumped, gasping.
Ignoring him, the male Wraith grabbed Sheppard by the shirt, dragging him up as if he weighed no more than a rag doll. It turned, slamming him down on his back on the nearest platform. Sheppard was moving slowly, dazed and weak, but he clawed at its hand, tried to kick it in the chest. "There is no Stargate on this moon," the Wraith said, apparently thinking that it had to spell out the problem. "You came here in a Lantian ship."
"What ship?" Sheppard managed to wheeze. The Wraith hit him again, snapping his head back against the stone.
It's going to kill him, Rodney thought, sick with the certainty. It's going to kill all of us. He found himself saying, "We were brought here-" He had to pause to gasp in another breath, wheezing out, "By Wraith. Other Wraith, not you, of course-We escaped, we were trapped here-"
The Wraith let go of Sheppard and he rolled off the platform, collapsing into a limp heap on the dusty stone. It stalked toward Rodney, saying, "You have Lantian devices. How did you get them?"
"We stole them. When we escaped." It was an incredibly ludicrous lie. Rodney didn't know if he was stalling, trying to put off the inevitable, or just trying to get the Wraith to take him first so he wouldn't have to watch it happen to Sheppard and Teyla. He wheezed, "I suppose they're holding out on you, maybe you'd better check into that."
The Wraith canted its head to stare down at him, as if it was seriously considering this. "The alien ship is Lantian. Where did it come from?"
Rodney said, "What alien ship?" In retrospect, not the best response.
It snarled, drew its hand stunner, and before Rodney could even flinch it shot him again.
Rodney fell back against the pavement, his body suddenly an inert slab of meat. Bastard, Rodney thought in outrage, barely managing to drag in another breath. Wait, what just happened? By alien ship, it must have meant Trishen's ship. Then these Wraith hadn't known about it before they arrived here, they weren't allied with her. And..that wasn't going to help because they were going to kill them all anyway.
The Wraith turned away, then froze, staring upward. A shadow fell over the roof, and Rodney heard a rushing blast of wind.
Then everything dissolved into white light.
Rodney hit a soft rubbery floor, unable to even tense at the impact. His ears popped from the sudden transition to a pressurized environment, and he gasped in a real breath. He was in a room with dark walls, dimly lit. He lay sprawled next to Sheppard, who was half-twisted on his side; Teyla was a few feet away, a fall of red-brown hair partially obscuring her face. Alive, still alive. For now.
Rodney tried desperately to move and couldn't even twitch; the second stun had completely immobilized him. Where the hell are we? he thought, sick terror settling in his stomach. He knew they had been picked up by a transport beam, but a Wraith culling beam should have left him completely unconscious. He couldn't see Teyla's face, but Sheppard's eyes were closed, his brow furrowed in pain. If he was out, it was probably from that last punch.
Then a figure moved into his narrow field of vision. White hair, a Wraith… Trishen.
This.. doesn 't make sense, Rodney thought, startled and incredulous. That noise he had heard right before the transport beam must have been her shuttle. She stole us from the other Wraith? That was more support for his theory that she was from a different reality, not working with these Wraith at all.
She hesitated, then slowly moved toward them. His heart pounding, Rodney concentrated on keeping his eyes slitted and his breathing even. They had always suspected that much of the pleasure Wraith took in feeding came from the terror of their victims, from attempts at resistance. He didn't think she would want to feed on them when she didn't believe they were conscious. This would be a very, very bad time to discover we're wrong about that.
Then she knelt next to Sheppard. Rodney went cold. He tried to make his throat work, tried to say something, to argue, distract her, stall, but the second stun blast had frozen his vocal cords. She reached out tentatively, cautiously, and lightly touched Sheppard's hair.
If she had been human, Rodney would have said her expression was caught between curiosity and wariness. She touched Sheppard's face, just above his right brow, then put the back of her hand against his cheek. She looked like someone daring to touch a sleeping tiger; frightened and aware this probably wasn't the best idea, but too overcome by curiosity to resist the opportunity.
Rodney felt a pain between his eyes that he was certain was an aneurism, then he remembered to take a shallow breath. She must have heard him because she started, jerking her hand back, looking around nervously. Then she pushed to her feet and hurriedly backed away.
Rodney shuddered inwardly with relief. He saw her glance around, lean down to pick something up. Then he realized some of their equipment had been beamed up with them. Oh fine, that's handy, he thought bitterly. Squinting, he could see the pile of their tac vests and SCBAs, at least one of the P-90s. She was gathering all of it, carrying it away. He heard a few thumps and bumping noises, then finally a low power hum.
He waited, tense and hyperaware of every sound, but she didn't come near them again. She said she had never seen a human before. If she was telling the truth, if her species really had been created by a band of refugee Ancients from this reality… We'd be like living artifacts, relics of an almost mythical past.