“What do you mean?” Teyla was feeling beneath the wooden bench.
“No matter what religion people follow, someone always figures out a way to bend the rules to fit whatever it is that they want to do.”
She stood and frowned at the bench. “How then can one discern what is truly right and what is indeed wrong?”
Shrugging, Aiden replied, “My grandparents always taught me that you know the difference in your own heart.” He looked up at the ceiling, thick with mold and something more rancid. If anything, this place actually reeked worse than the open sewers outside.
“You were fortunate to have had such people to care for you.”
He smiled in fond memory, and felt a stab of guilt for not being able to let them know where he was. “Yeah. Yeah, I was.”
A movement outside had Teyla snatching up her bonds and wrapping them loosely around her wrists. Aiden did the same. The next person to open their cell door would be in for a painful surprise.
“Aiden?” Lisera’s tearful face appeared around the corner of the cell.
Dropping the rope, Aiden grabbed the bars. “Lisera! How did you get here?”
The girl’s face was streaked with grime and blood from a cut on her cheek. Her eyes were filled with the same terror that Aiden had seen when he’d found her in the ditch. Most of the clothes she’d worn from Atlantis were now gone, replaced by rags even more filthy than her original rough burlap covering. She also sported a pair of oversized pants that covered the cast on her leg. “It is the only safe place to hide. Outside…” She swallowed and met Teyla’s eyes. Even in the dim light of the cell, he could see her face pale further. “Those elder Chosen who had taken up residence in their ancestral homes, the Stations, to protect us from the Wraith, were pulled out into the streets and…and quartered.”
“Yann’s group of rebels did this?” Teyla’s voice was stiff with shock.
“No.” Lisera shook her head vehemently. “Gat’s men, the ones who control the Citadel, first killed Kesun. Then many others took up the cry. Yann tried to stop them, for he knows that without the Chosen there will be no protection against the Wraith.”
“Where is your Shield?”
Eyes darting between them, Lisera replied, “I threw it aside. Any who are seen with a blue Shield are torn apart. The alleys of the Citadel run red with the blood of not only the Chosen, but those who are now accused of conspiring to become Chosen.”
“Oh, great,” Aiden muttered. “Sounds like everyone’s turning on one another.”
Tears silently fell down Lisera’s face, and she whispered, “It is as if the entire world has become stricken with a madness that sets brother against brother. I fear that if it does not soon cease, the Wraith need not bother with their culling, for none will be left alive.”
Aiden figured it probably wasn’t quite as bad as that, but, to a girl like Lisera, the sort of anarchy she was describing would seem that way. “Listen, see that sliding bar down there? Can you open it and let us out?”
Eyes wide with alarm, she vehemently shook her head. “If you go outside, you will be killed as they have slaughtered the Chosen, for others are seeking you, claiming that your presence will bring the Wraith down upon us.”
“If we remain here,” Teyla explained, “those who imprisoned us will return and kill us anyway.”
“No.” Lisera said determinedly. “Not you, for you are not of the Chosen.”
“Perhaps not, but they will kill Major Sheppard and Dr McKay.”
Torn with indecision, Lisera bit her lip. “But you will be spared. I am sorry for the others, but I do not want you to die, Aiden.”
He stared at her. “They’re our friends. If they die, we can’t help save your world from the Wraith.”
“In which case, we will all die,” Teyla added. The tone in her voice left no room for doubt. “I have seen what the Wraith do to worlds like yours. When they come — and in this both Gat and the Chosen are correct in stating that they most assuredly will come with their great ships — they will leave little behind.”
Still uncertain, Lisera cringed when the sounds of more fighting penetrated their confines.
“Do you know where Major Sheppard and Dr McKay are being held?” Aiden asked.
Lisera glanced over her shoulder. “Two levels below this one, in a cell near where some of your bags are being kept.”
“Which means someone will definitely be coming back,” Aiden said. He suspected it was more likely their packs than the case with the gene therapy. “Lisera, if you release us, and we can get our things back, we’ll be able to help you.” The desperate look in her eyes demanded an affirmation of his sincerity. “I ”I promise. Okay? Hey—” He offered her a grin. “I’m a warrior from Atlantis, right?”
“Lisera,” Teyla said when the girl continued to hesitate. “Releasing us is the only way we can help both you and your people.”
Something in the Athosian’s expression bothered Aiden. He shot her a questioning look, but she dismissed it. Lisera gave a jerky nod, and said to Aiden, “You promise.” Then she hobbled back and opened the locking mechanism to their cell.
The smell of burned timber and metallic compounds assaulted Rodney’s olfactory nerves. Less pungent than the eye-watering stench of the dungeon they’d until recently had the pleasure of inhabiting, the odor was terrifying familiar. He glanced back at Ford and Teyla, who were assisting Lisera up the last of the stone steps. “Do you think we should be rushing outside?”
Sheppard, who was ahead of him, suddenly let loose with a surprisingly colorful string of curses. Urged on by Teyla’s expression, Rodney followed the Major out into the square, and squinting against the late afternoon sunlight, looked around the streets.
Any momentary relief that Rodney had felt at their freedom was immediately overcome by shocked outrage. Staring up at the twisted, smoking ruin that had once been the Enclave, he burst out, “Are they insane?” The desperation in his voice was tinged with denial. Even the trees that had surrounded the once-elegant structure now looked like a bunch of spent match heads. “What would possess them to destroy the very thing that they most need?”
“They are driven by the madness of hatred.”
In the back of his mind, he recognized that Teyla’s words were the product of sorrow and not indifference. Nonetheless, her calm tone danced on his last nerve. Rodney whirled on her, snapping off a reply. “This isn’t what was supposed to happen! The Chosen might not have been responsible for the way these people were forced to live, but the fact remains that this entire situation would never have come about if they hadn’t regarded the gene as providing them with some sort of divine power!”
“How does that make any difference now?” Ford asked, staring up at the smoldering remains perched on top of the rocky hill.
“You agreed with me!” He loathed the way his voice betrayed his faltering control.
Teyla reached out to grasp his arm, her expression gentle but unyielding. “You are not to blame for what has come to pass,” she said firmly.
A nice sentiment, to be sure, but an empty one. And Teyla would know, because she’d vilified his stand from the outset. Rodney swallowed hard against a surge of nausea.
“If anyone’s at fault, Rodney, it’s me.” The bitter edge to Sheppard’s voice was unmistakable. “I should’ve seen this coming.”
Damn him. The man wasted no opportunity to martyr himself, justified or not.
“How?” Teyla said, turning to the Major. “You were not to know that Yann would be waiting in ambush for us, nor that he in turn would be betrayed by those who hunger for even greater power.”
“Because history has a bad habit of repeating itself. Here or Earth, seems it makes no damned difference.”