It then occurred to Rodney that Yann had gone missing. So, for that matter, had most of their heavies, which meant that Teyla, Ford and Sheppard could conceivably take out this lot and—
A bunch of grubby rags and desperate, hungry faces suddenly spewed into the Sanctuary Hall from the nearby entrances. Before Rodney’s teammates could make a move, the Citadel’s desperate poor were climbing all over Gat and the other chiefs. Yann appeared from somewhere in the middle, and with the help of three or four wild-eyed cavemen types, wrested the syringe from Ford.
Yann’s wide, ruddy face was almost reverent as he thrust his hand high, holding the now empty syringe up for all to see. “Here is the end of our oppression!” he shouted. “Here is our salvation from the Wraith!”
A disorganized cheer went up. “Oh, brother,” Rodney said under his breath. Sure enough, just to keep things interesting, the transport doors opened, and Kesun began muscling his way through the crowds — with his warriors in tow. In addition, even more of the impoverished Citadel’s residents were pouring into the place from the other entrances, insane with desperation.
There were eighty doses of the gene therapy, and there were a lot more than eighty people here. Rodney jumped when hands grabbed at the pack, snatching it out of view.
“McKay! Let’s go.” Sheppard gripped him by the arm and started hauling him through the chaos in the direction of the closest exit.
“Kesun would steal your chance to become Chosen!” he heard Gat bellow. “Kill the Chosen. Kill them all!”
The mob seemed to change direction, but before Rodney could make out what was going on, Balzar’s voice added to the fray. “The Chosen from Atlantis are no better than the others. Let them be an example of the fate earned by all Chosen!”
There was no way that could go well. His heart rate spiking, Rodney stuck close to his team as they attempted to evade the subset of Dalerans who seemed to be on Balzar’s side. The Major started to reach into his pocket, only to be tackled from the side and shoved toward Teyla.
Rodney glanced around at the burly men moving to surround them. Just beyond them, someone cried out, “Warriors, defend the Chosen!” An axe swinging through the crowd resulted in a bloodcurdling cry from Gat. The other chiefs also began to fall beneath the avalanche of warriors. Surging against them, a sea of ragged humanity was howling for everyone’s heads.
Rough hands clamped down on Rodney’s biceps and dragged him out of a crowd too caught up in the frenzy to notice. Sheppard was pulled alongside him, while Ford and Teyla were yanked in the opposite direction. Maybe Yann and his army of destitutes hadn’t intended to hurt them, but Rodney didn’t feel nearly as confident about their prospects at the hands of Balzar and his crew.
A burst of P-90 fire prompted him to look back between the flailing arms and swinging axes. Kesun had somehow been separated from his warriors. In the brief moment before he vanished beneath the blades of the enraged horde, Kesun returned Rodney’s gaze. The full weight of the man’s desperate plight for his people struck an even more powerful blow than Rodney’s earlier realization of his flawed judgment.
Sheppard yelled something at him. Rodney could only stare in reply. He knew he was telegraphing his anguish loud and clear but couldn’t find the energy to give a damn. Never before had an action — okay, maybe not an action, but a statement — of his generated such catastrophic consequences. He filed away a mental memo: exhibiting any kind of humanity only ever ends badly.
Chapter Eleven
It hadn’t been a bad plan, but the execution had been somewhat lacking. Or maybe it had just been an unforeseen complication that had doomed him to fail, something he couldn’t possibly have predicted. Yeah, that had to be it: the Pegasus corollary to Murphy’s Law.
In any case, John’s theoretical jailbreak hadn’t gone so well. When he and Rodney had been dragged from the Sanctuary Hall and down a dank hallway lined with prison cells, he’d grabbed a hold of the rough iron bars that formed a cell’s door and swung it into one captor’s face, knocking the goon to the floor. He’d intended to fell the other with the pocketknife no one had noticed when he’d handed over his sidearm. Somehow he hadn’t factored in the possibility of a third goon showing up until a brick-hard arm stinking of fish had constricted around his throat.
When the spots cleared from John’s vision, Rodney was still standing there like a deer caught in headlights, and two irked-looking Dalerans were shoving them into the cell. Oh, and the pocketknife definitely got confiscated the second time around. John inwardly cursed himself out. He’d had that knife since survival training.
Unwilling to suffer any further antics, or maybe just out of spite, the goons had bound his wrists to the cell bars with a thick strap of leather. That wouldn’t have been so bad, but they’d done it beneath a set of crossbars, low enough that sitting was hell on the spine and standing was right out. Eventually he gave up and lay down on the cold, uneven stone floor, trying to tell himself that the unwashed urinal smell was coming from someplace other than the damp ground.
Rodney’s wrists were similarly bound, but since he hadn’t tried to beat anyone up lately, they’d allowed him the freedom to pace the cell…all twelve feet of it. John looked up at the scientist. He took seven measured steps, pivoted, and took seven steps back. The pattern repeated, and repeated again. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven-turn.
“I’ll give you this much,” John commented. “Your sense of rhythm’s flawless.”
“I did have that going for me, if nothing else.” Rodney’s focus didn’t waver. “Never needed a metronome. Standard andante at eighty beats per minute, allegro at one-twenty.”
“Um, okay.” John assumed that if he needed to understand that comment, it would be explained. “Meanwhile, could you knock that off? Watching you bounce back and forth from down here could give a trapeze artist vertigo.”
“So don’t watch.” The pacing continued for several seconds, until Rodney changed course and flopped down on a rough bench that presumably passed for a bed. “If you were going to try something as monumentally stupid as that escape attempt, you could have at least warned me.”
“Not without arousing suspicion.” John wriggled his arms experimentally. Shifting the strap might not be impossible, but his wrists would be shredded before he could get anywhere.
“You didn’t actually expect that maneuver with the cell door to work, right?” Rodney leaned his head back against the wall.
“I figured we had a better shot out there than we do in here.”
“I suppose, but only if, like Yann’s rebels, you’re going for that whole ‘better to die on one’s feet than live on one’s knees’ thing.”
John didn’t bother to mask his irritation. “Right now I’m thinking I might die flat on my ass, so let me know if there’s a cliché for that.”
“I’m working on it. And by ‘it,’ I mean a better plan for not dying, rather than an appropriate cliché for your predicament.” As he’d proved on numerous occasions, Rodney could think and talk at the same time. “I guess all this makes sense from their perspective. They’ve been led to believe that their mistreatment and marginalization has been the fault of the Chosen for so long that trusting us would be a tough sell.”
Rolling his eyes toward the ceiling, John muttered, “Ten minutes in here and already you’re going Patty Hearst on me.”
“Don’t be a jackass. I’m decidedly opposed to getting quartered, which I suspect is what awaits us if we hang around here. What I don’t understand is why they bothered to lock us up first rather than just get it over with.”