"Oh boy…" Passing out again seemed like a great idea, and he devoutly wished he could afford to. At least his head would stop hurting that way.
"Better?" His alternate was grinning, but right behind the smirk sat a whole heap of worry and impatience.
"No," John grunted, forced himself up from the cloak-whose? — he'd been lying on, and shuffled sideways so he could sit leaning against the rock at least until their present locale quit doing the loop-de-loop around him. Gradually the motion stopped and with it the worst of the nausea. His head still hurt, though.
The vista he'd gained didn't improve matters. They were belowground alright, in a high, narrow rock chamber claustrophobic with stalactites. Several of them-too many for comfort-had broken off during the tremors, their shards littering the floor of the cavern. Two tunnel mouths gaped at opposite ends of the chamber; the lower one was drooling water that rapidly advanced to where they were camping out. Pick an exit… Across from him guttered the torch, which someone had wedged into a crack in the rock. Shivering and smoking, its flame shed just enough light to make out the faces of Junior and the two Elizabeths, all of them ghostly pale under streaks of dirt, their eyes huge and dark. They looked like they'd been down here forever.
"Anybody care to fill me in on what I missed?" John asked. "You can leave out the glaringly obvious, like us getting drugged by Brother Love and his traveling freak show."
"He's scared, John," Elizabeth said. "When you arrived, he-"
"There's scared, and then there's dangerous. Those folks have started a goddamn cult, with Radek as their messiah!" John sucked in a breath, somehow managed to swallow his anger. It wasn't going to achieve anything other than making his headache worse. He squinted at Elizabeth. "What are you doing here?"
"I left the cult, so to speak. Quite some time ago, actually." She gave a wry smile. "When I realized that the flower was addictive, to be precise "
"The tea… You knew and you didn't stop us from drinking the stuff?" John figured he would have to revise that not-getting-angry decision, headache or no.
"The dosage you had wasn't enough. Otherwise… Look, you know me better than that, Colonel. I've never frivolously put you in harm's way, and that hasn't changed." Her voice had taken on an edge, but she seemed to notice, eased off. "You'd have to ingest the blossom extract regularly for several days to become addicted. Prepared properly it wouldn't even be strong enough to knock you out like it did. I swear I had no idea of what Radek had planned."
"So how does the addiction show?" asked Junior. "Paranoia and delusions of grandeur?"
`No. You simply won't be able to bring yourself to leave this place."
John blinked. "Good old Homer… the Greek one, not Simpson. It's the original island of the lotus-eaters, isn't it?"
"The Odyssey…" She shot him a brief smile. "Your choice of reading matter never ceases to amaze me."
"Actually, we watched the NBC series," Junior threw in.
"Speak for yourself." The absurdity of that only dawned on John when he clocked Junior's grin. He sighed. "So, what happened?"
"This is part of a huge cave system beneath what used to be Atlantis here," Elizabeth explained. "Star and a couple of his men discovered it last year when they were out hunting. One of the men slipped and fell into a sinkhole. After we'd rescued him, we started exploring-the usual, in other words. We were hoping that this might provide us with a refuge in case we ever came under attack, but it turned out that the caves were simply too dangerous. If it's raining hard enough flash floods submerge the tunnels, and they're completely unpredictable." She shrugged. "Well, you can imagine. One of the teams got caught in one of those. Two of the men never made it back. Besides, we couldn't find a second access to the caves. Without a backdoor to get out if you have to, no hiding place is any good."
Staring toward the pitch darkness of the upper tunnel, John asked, "I take it we're not hiding, then?"
"Not exactly," Elizabeth replied grimly. "Radek wanted to get you off-planet as quickly as possible. Once you were out cold he and his people piled you into the jumper and tried to send you back through the gate." Pausing for breath, she shook her head. "It was the weirdest thing I've ever seen. The wormhole engaged, but it wouldn't let the jumper pass through the event horizon. After that they decided the best way to make you disappear was to take you to the sinkhole and lower you down. I tried to prevent it, but Radek had told them it was the only way to appease Charybdis, so the others-"
"Figured they'd abandon common sense and take their chances with a bit of human sacrifice," John finished for her, grimacing. "Nice. Which brings me back to my initial question: what are you doing here?"
"Attempting to keep you alive. All three of you were out cold, which could have been a death sentence down here. I insisted on coming with you. Radek didn't seem to mind," she added dryly.
"Crazy. Crazy, but thanks."
"You're welcome."
So, if he recapped correctly, they were trapped underground with no known way out, and if they tried to return to sender they'd likely get tossed right back into the sinkhole by Zelenka and his disciples who were in the throes of some kind of superstitious frenzy. Even the fact that someone had been kind enough to leave them with a torch couldn't dispel John's certainty that in at least one timeline created by Charybdis today had to be Friday the thirteenth. His gaze drifted to the lower tunnel and the water pouring in from there. Was he imagining it, or had the volume increased? Even if it hadn't, their chamber definitely was flooding. At the bottom end of the cave a stalagmite that looked like the Hunchback of Notre Dame stood up to its knees in water. Last time he'd looked, the water had only reached mid-shin.
"Somebody please tell me that that's where we came from." John pointed at the lower tunnel.
Thankfully, Elizabeth nodded. "I don't really know the caves; I've only been down here a couple of times, but considering the hailstorm I decided it was best to keep moving uphill as soon as Major Sheppard and my alternate were awake and able to move."
Good point. "So how did I get here?" asked John.
Both Elizabeths stared at Junior who tried to look innocent. Did he always make such a bad job of it?
"He carried you," the original Elizabeth said.
"Sorry." John winced. He knew the state Junior's leg was in. "Like I said; crazy. Crazy, but thanks."
"Don't mention it. You're at least ten pounds underweight anyway." As if to demonstrate that his leg wasn't an issue, Junior rose and gimped over to a trickle of water gushing from a stalactite to refill the canteen he'd emptied into John's face. "Besides," he added, "Teyla seemed to think we need you."
Teyla's confidence was flattering, but John had no idea how to merit it, given that there were no Rodneys running around on this planet. Worse, given the vagaries of the Stargate system, there obviously was no way of gating elsewhere without an alternate willing to act as a conduit to his or her original's matrix. He doubted that Zelenka would volunteer. In other words, they'd have to do this the old-fashioned way.
"Where's the jumper now?"
"Where you left it. Why?"
"Because we're getting out of here." Clinging to a stalagmite for dear life, John maneuvered himself to a stand. That loop-de-loop thing happened again, and he held on until the rotation of the cave slowed down a little.
"Haven't you been listening, John'? There is no exit."
"You said you hadn't found one. Elizabeth, stay with me; Junior, you look after her double." With that, John groped his way toward the upper tunnel, hoping he'd be able to stay on course.
The wall ahead was real. No matter how often Ronon punched the controls on the wrist unit, the concrete remained solid.