“You get used to it after a while,” said Ronon, laboring his breaths. He looked pale and drawn, and he sat in the shade, avoiding the shafts of orange sunlight coming down through the slatted ceiling.
She went to him and crouched by his side; in turn the Satedan looked away, irritated. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Bored,” he retorted listlessly, “Bored with you asking me how I feel.” He stifled a cough and glared at her, as if it were her fault he was unwell.
The doctor rolled her eyes. “Tough guys are always the worst patients. You do know that it doesn’t make you a wimp if you’re sick, right?”
“Of course I do,” Ronon snapped. “But I don’t have to like it.”
“How do you feel?” she asked again.
He blinked. “Light’s too bright. Headache. I just need to get out of this place, that’s all.”
“Tall order,” grumbled the lieutenant, looking around at all the dense wood surrounding them.. “I’d give my right arm for a hacksaw. They took all our weapons.”
“All yours,” noted Dex, palming two small spade-shaped throwing blades from a hidden pocket in the lining of his tunic. “Not all mine.”
“Great, a pair of fruit knives,” said Keller. “That’s really going to intimidate them.”
“Company coming,” called the lieutenant, as movement at the far end of the corridor signaled a new arrival. One of the elder’s guards, nervous and sweaty, hustled Laaro toward them; the boy had a barrow laden with clay bowls and a massive gourd the size of an oil drum filled with water. The youth moved from cage to cage, doling out bowlfuls of the brackish liquid. Allan took one and sniffed it.
“Safe to drink?” said Keller.
“The Wraith took all our gear, including our purification tabs.”
Laaro tapped the gourd. “The water is clean, I promise you.” To demonstrate, he took a deep draught himself.
Keller passed a bowl to Ronon and he sipped it gingerly. “What’s going on out there?” she asked the boy. The doctor kept her voice low so the guard would not hear them talking.
Laaro’s young eyes were fearful. “Everyone is very afraid,” he began. “The Queen has left many, many Wraith behind, here in the settlement, some out at the valley of the gateway. Kullid has been talking for them.”
“Collaborator,” spat the Satedan. “I wasn’t looking hard enough. Should have guessed…”
“None of us guessed,” said Keller. She could see that Laaro was more shocked than any of them by the healer’s secret allegiance. “What was he saying?”
“Kullid spoke of the old stories of the Wraith, and said that they were lies. He said that many people have known this, but they never spoke up for fear of incurring the wrath of the elders.” Laaro sighed. “He was right. Kullid is not the only one to have declared himself subject to the Queen.”
Keller considered this for a moment; the Atlanteans had encountered worlds before where the Wraith were feared and revered in equal measure, and reluctantly she realized that Heruun was no different. Even after all the horror the Wraith brought with them, there would always be some souls who saw such power over life or death as a thing to be venerated.
Laaro went on. “Kullid said that the Wraith have come back and freed us from the tyranny of the Aegis. He told the whole township that they must show the Queen the fealty she deserves…”
“And if they don’t?” said Allan. “I bet I can guess the alternative.”
“He said those with the sickness will be healed by the Wraith.”
Keller stopped. “They don’t heal. The Wraith kill.”
“Kullid promises otherwise.” There was a note of forlorn hope in Laaro’s voice that cut the doctor like a knife. “Many of those who did not go to the sick lodge have now ventured there on his assurance.”
“It’s a lie,” growled Ronon. “Never forget that.”
The boy’s hand trembled slightly as he passed Keller a bowl through the wooden spars. “My mother… Thinks differently.”
“Jaaya?” said Keller.
“She has gone to the lodge with my father.” He shot her a sudden, hard look, his eyes shining with barely-contained tears. “I told her the voyagers would save him, but she did not listen!”
“Laaro!” called the guard. “You are finished here. Come!” The burly man in robes came forward and tugged on the boy’s arm.
Keller gave him a rueful smile. “It’ll be okay,” she told him. “We’ll get through this, believe me.”
“Do not forsake us, voyager,” said the youth, as he pushed away the barrow.
At the entrance, the door banged open once more and new figures entered, pushing Laaro aside and tipping the dregs of the water-gourd over the floor. A cluster of men in the robes of high office were shoved forward; each of them were elders, with their characteristic clothing ripped and torn, and their gold circlets and bangles broken or missing. A pair of Wraith warriors marched them in at the tips of stunner rifles, slamming the weapons into their backs when they didn’t move quickly enough.
A trio of the elders were forced into the cage next to the one where Keller, Ronon and Allan had been placed. They fell to the floor and scuffled, desperate to plead for their freedom. Only one of them did not beg their new jailers for release; he sat on his haunches, staring at the floor.
“Takkol?” Keller recognized the man from the feast of the Returned, but he seemed a pale shadow of the proud and haughty chieftain who had looked down his nose at the contingent from Atlantis. He seemed smaller, lost in the dark pool of his tattered robes, his finery tainted. The elder raised his head slightly and saw her.
With sudden animation he scrambled over to the cage wall, reaching through the bars toward her. “Voyagers!” he implored. “Please, you must take me with you!”
“Take you where?” said Ronon. “We’re prisoners too.”
Takkol didn’t seem to hear him. “Please, take me with you through the Gateway, to your Atlantis! I cannot stay here… They will…” His voice fell to a whisper. “Cull me.”
“Nobody goes back to Atlantis,” said Ronon. They had all heard McKay’s use of the ‘condition black’ emergency code over the radio channel, and they all knew what it meant.
Takkol shook his head furiously. “No, no. You must understand, I have been cast out, and I will be murdered before the day is done! Aaren betrayed me, the filthy traitor!”
“How’d that happen?” said the lieutenant, with grim irony that went totally unnoticed by the fretting elder.
“He defected to the Wraith,” hissed Takkol. “I… I think he may have always harbored a secret admiration for them… Certain things he said, deeds he did… In the light of recent events, they take on new meaning.” He sighed. “Aaren is Senior Elder now, with the collusion of Kullid and the blessing of the predators.”
One of the other minor elders spun away from the bars and snarled at the Atlanteans. “You brought this upon us! You knew the Wraith were coming here, didn’t you? You knew it and you did not warn us! And now we will all perish!”
Keller said nothing.
The energy wash of the teleportation effect was so strong that Teyla was knocked off balance, and she found herself leaning against a metal console, blinking away the after-images seared on her retina. Her throat was dry and she swallowed, fearful that the first image she would see when her vision cleared was the arid landscape of Heruun or worse, the gloom of a Wraith vessel; but she quickly realized that she had not been transported with all the others.
She was still in the command chamber of the Aegis, still surrounded by the shambling Risar moving to and fro at their tasks, still before her the wide, low shape of Fenrir’s cryogenic capsule lying in a pool of white vapor.