"The jumper," John said, smiling at the nurse. "The ship out there. Dr. Zelenka, I presume?"
Radek twisted around. "Colonel Sheppard!" Then his eyes grew even wider. "Dr. Weir! Thank God, I've found you!"
There probably was very little real benefit in debating the issue of who had found whom. John let it slide. "Good to see you too. You haven't… uh… founded a cult by any chance?"
"A cult?" Zelenka's expression mirrored that of the nurse a few seconds earlier. He seemed older, a good twenty years, if the lines in his face were anything to go by. And his hair was shorter, though he still managed to sustain that unkempt look. Otherwise, and discounting copious amounts of dirt, he looked himself, no wavy beard, no fanatical gleam in his eye, most of all no indication of protracted drug use.
"Give over, John." Elizabeth stepped beside him, and she, too, was smiling with relief. "Hello, Radek. We need to talk."
"Move, move, move!" Ronon felt a little like a cow herder, except the current situation wasn't exactly bucolic.
A hand wrapped around one arm of either, he had Teyla to his right, McKay to his left, and was bullying them up the stairs toward the guardroom at a run. Teyla wasn't the problem-she could have gone twice as fast, Ronon suspected-McKay was. Now that the adrenaline and the first buzz of the escape had worn off, the guy was seriously flagging. And, much to his dismay, Ronon couldn't even blame him; after three days in that cage, with hardly any sleep, no food, and plenty of exposure, it was a miracle Rodney was even conscious, and never mind his running a stair-a-thon. In consequence, Ronon considered himself honor-bound to bully as subtly as he knew how.
Of course, subtly didn't really work with McKay, who ground to a dead halt, sniffed the air, and yelped, "What is that?"
"Smoke," Teyla said pleasantly.
"They probably haven't made this discovery on Athos yet, but on Earth we've known for quite a while that where there's smoke, there's fire. Common sense suggests to run away from fire, not toward it."
"We're running past it," Ronon snapped, nipping the debate in the bud. "It's the only way out, so keep going"
Without waiting for the comeback, he yanked McKay another couple of steps up. McKay did have a point, of course, but there was little Ronon could do about it, except hope that the fire hadn't spread into the hallway-though, given the pace they were going at, chances were that the entire fortress would have burned down by the time they made it up there.
And he really, really shouldn't have thought that!
The smoke was getting thicker by the second, and if it was this bad down here, he didn't really want to imagine what the hallway would be like. The good news was that they were all still drenched from the downpour, which might just save them now. He ran faster, forcing Rodney to keep pace with him.
"It worked," Teyla whispered.
"Too well," he grunted back.
"What worked?" gasped McKay.
"Stop wasting your breath and run "
Finally they stumbled out into the hallway by the guardroom and into a wall of smoke. Black and all but impenetrable, it seemed to fill the corridor like a living thing, breathing malevolence. He pulled the collar of his shirt over his face and made sure that the others had similar makeshift masks-not that they'd be much good in the long run.
Then again, all they had to do was make it to the door, wasn't it?
Eyes streaming, Ronon squinted into the roiling smoke and realized that this might be taller order than he'd anticipated. From somewhere to his right came the whip-crack roar of flames, and he figured that they had to be near the guardroom door, meaning that they needed to carry straight on. That theory was refuted when he took two steps forward and hit a wall. For a second or two, blind panic constricted his throat, and it was all he could do not to start flailing and screaming like a madman. Then a hand caught his wrist and held on tight.
"It requires some practice," Teyla croaked, a hint of amusement coloring her smoke-roughened voice. "I've got Rodney, too. Come with me."
As soon as she started tugging him along, Ronon's disorientation increased. It wasn't the direction he would have taken, about ninety degrees to his intended course and followed in short order by a sharp right turn. Attempting to draw a mental map, he arrived at the conclusion that they inadvertently must have ended up in the guardroom itself and shuddered despite the stifling heat. If it weren't for Teyla, he might have killed them all.
Trying not to breathe and scrunching his eyes shut against the biting smoke, Ronon staggered along. Within minutes he tripped down a couple of steps into a sudden onslaught of cold air and driving rain, and he silently vowed never to complain about the local weather again.
They stumbled away from the building, coughing and choking and turning their faces up into the downpour to let it rinse off soot and grime. Behind them a series of window panes exploded in the heat, peppering them with shards and sending flames streaming into the night like banners. Across the courtyard people who'd run from other wings of the fortress were milling around in confusion, shouting for guards, servants, anyone they deemed qualified to fight the blaze. Someone spotted the bedraggled threesome fleeing the guard wing and pointed excitedly.
Several men broke from the group, led by a short, elderly guy whose pinched looks reminded Ronon of a prune. His robes-a pompous affair of silk and fur hardly suited to the weather-trailed in the ever rising lake that flooded the courtyard and forced him into a forward list as if he were fighting not to be yanked back by them.
"Oh no…" McKay seemed to contemplate an immediate return to the burning guard wing.
"What?" hissed Ronon.
"I know that guy. Worse, he knows me. He presided at my trial, so-called. I have to-"
"Stay put!" Ronon flung an arm around teenage Rodney's scrawny shoulder and pulled him close. With his other hand, he grabbed Teyla's arm. Happy families. "Let me pass!" he roared, breaking into a run, straight toward the overdressed prune, and doing his best to look as wild-eyed as the rest of the gathering in the courtyard. "My wife and son! I need to get them to safety!"
For a moment the man just gaped at them. When it finally sunk in that Ronon wasn't about to change course, he jumped back a couple of steps, bony hands helplessly waving in the air as if to flag up his outrage. "Your wife and son? Why did you bring them?" he asked incongruously, perhaps in an attempt to reestablish some kind of authority. "Women and children are not allowed here!"
A fountain of laughter bubbled up his throat, nearly choking Ronon, but instead of giving in to it, he grabbed his charges tighter and charged past the man and toward the archway and the portcullis.
"Stop them!" the prune squealed at no one in particular. His shrieks caused a brief stir among the other bureaucrats in the courtyard; then they seemed to decide that the fire in the fortress was a more immediate concern and ignored their colleague.
Ronon had the portcullis in his sights, those squeaked-out orders were sliding off his back together with the rain, and for a precious second or two he felt something akin to relief The rumble of bootfalls echoing from the archway convinced him of the error of his ways. A detachment of guards came thundering into the courtyard and gave McKay's friend a second wind.
"Apprehend these people!" the guy shouted again, this time with considerably more authority. Apparently he had regained his composure.
"You're hurting me!" Teyla hissed softly, and Ronon realized that he was clenching his fists in an effort not to succumb to instinct and freeze.
He let go of both her and McKay, wanting his hands free to be able to draw his sword. Whatever else happened, Ronon Dex wasn't going to go down without a fight. Besides, from what he'd seen of the soldiers here, he probably had a betterthan-average chance of taking out the entire detachment singlehandedly. He hoped. And-