Rating: PG-13 for scary critter
Characters: Sheppard, team
Spoilers: Season four up to Lifeline
Summary: Sheppard's lost in Atlantis and the team must pull together to find him before it's too late. For
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
coolbreeze1 who suggested using the venemous serpents, and ditraveler who mentioned on another post wanting Sheppard lost and alone in the city. A big, huge thanks to ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
karri_kln1671 for the quick beta help.A/N: Only two more prompts to go. However,
obsessed1, yours may take a while. I read your prompt twice and both times kept registering "deaf Sheppard" as "blind Sheppard". Don't ask me why, but it happens to me quite a bit (it's why I get lost so easy). This story was supposed to include your prompt, then I reread your prompt *slaps forehead. But I promise, you will get your prompt is story form!Lost and Found
“Is it my fault that those silver rocks absorb radiation? No. Is it my fault they absorb enough of it to make the energy readings go off the charts? No. Is it my fault the former king of the wild frontier didn't pay attention to where he was going? No!”
McKay was lucky that it took two marines to keep Ronon upright, or the physicist would have been pinned to a wall by his neck. Sheppard gave McKay a harder poke to the back, keeping him several steps ahead of a very pissed off and pained Satedan.
“Is it your fault we kept looking for that stupid energy source?” Ronon growled. “Yes!”
McKay kept trying to turn around and deliver his self-defense tirade face to face, but John's constant pushing and prodding wouldn't let him. “Better to find out the hard way that it was nothing then give up and pass by a potential new energy source!” Rodney spat.
Ronon sneered. “I really beg to differ, McKay.”
Rodney tossed up his hands in frustration. “Oh, it was a pothole! You stepped in a damn pothole and twisted your ankle. It's not like someone shot you. My gosh, one trip in the mud certainly turns you into a primadonna, doesn't it?”
Ronon's violent lunge toward McKay nearly brought the marines holding him up down with him. Finally having enough of it, John, for the third time that day, interposed himself between the former runner and the soon to be very dead physicist.
“All right, you two, that's enough! And I mean it this time.” He gave McKay a hard shove that sent him stumbling out the door. “Infirmary, now. And keep your mouth shut while you're at it.”
Which had Rodney immediately sputtering, “But I didn't -”
“I don't care who did or didn't whatever, be quiet and get moving. I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I've had it with you two. If you want to argue, duke it out, whatever, then do it when I'm not around. Right now, just do me a favor and shut the hell up.”
Rodney did the next best thing, which was to grumble and mutter under his breath about incompetent barbarians and soldiers with possible PMS issues. Ignoring the insults, John glanced over his shoulder to see Ronon glaring at him – him – as though stepping in that “pothole” had been just as much John's fault as Rodney's persistence in tracking down that energy mark.
Okay, so maybe John had given in a little to McKay's enthusiasm – it had been a massive and consistent energy spike. But he'd been just as persistent about McKay hurrying things up as Ronon, sans the threats.
John looked past Ronon to a harried and exhausted Teyla who could only give him a helpless shrug. It made John wince internally. Their first day of exploration having ended poorly gave their inarguable need to land on this planet a portentous feel. That exploration had started off with a three hour trek through a barren waste-land of silver rocks, because McKay feared they might over-shoot the energy source in the 'jumper, until he finally realized that the energy source was a large boulder absorbing the most UV rays. Then Ronon had stepped in that hole, and thanks to the energy-sucking rocks slowing McKay's tablet and other electronics up, it had taken them two hours just to find the 'jumper. Sheppard didn't recall their first exploration of the other mainland having been such an arduous pain in the butt.
As the belief went: first impressions were the most important. So far, Sheppard had no reason to like this particular world, and an irrational part of him couldn't stop wondering what tomorrow would bring.
Or maybe he was just tired. Between running from the Asuran super-weapon, drifting in space, dodging meteors, running again from Asurans and losing Elizabeth in the process, then finally touching down on a life-supporting planet, they were all pretty worn out. Although it had still come as a bit of a shock when Ronon had stepped into that man-sized pothole even a bat could have seen.
The team, marines and scientists hobbled and dragged themselves into the infirmary where Keller and her nurses awaited, blood pressure cuffs and stethoscopes at the ready. John didn't even say anything when McKay headed for the bed farthest from where Ronon sat, and by the sour look on the physicist's face, it wasn't because he was afraid the Satedan might make due on one of his many violent promises.
Keller went to the most scathed of the group, prodding Ronon's swollen ankle once she managed to yank the boot off. “So what happened here?”
Ronon turned his scorching gaze back on Rodney. “Ask McKay. He's the one who couldn't find a snelgak if it was sitting on him.”
Rodney stiffened and hunched like an enraged cat. “Yes, like it was so obvious that one rock out of a thousand others was giving off more energy. I just like wandering aimless for hours because I like having to help carry back big clumsy oafs who don't watch where their going.”
Ronon lurched forward only to be shoved back by the very petite Keller. So he settled for pointing a stiff finger at McKay. “When my ankle's better, it's you, me and bantos rods in the gym.”
McKay glared. “Like that's going to ever happen. I'm too important to be clobbered, if you haven't noticed, and I won't have time for your Highschool response to all things insulting. If you want to waste your energy being mad, then go right ahead, just stop aiming it at me. It's not like I pushed you into that stupid hole.”
“No, you just never know when to quit.”
“Well you never know when to think -”
“Enough!” John roared, making the nurse looking him over flinch. He darted a scowl back and forth between Rodney and Ronon. “What the hell did I say about arguing when I'm around?”
Rodney pouted, crossing his arms and thus increasing the frustration of the medic checking him. “Ronon started it.”
Ronon snorted. “Did not.”
“Did to.”
John sighed, feeling like someone had just dropped a bag of rocks onto his shoulders. “Don't care. Look, the both of you, stop talking. In fact, once you're out of here I suggest you both stay away from each other for the rest of the day, maybe even two days before I decide to stun you both for a few minutes of silence.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Ronon.
Rodney nodded. “I concur... with you, not the oaf.”
“Good.” John slouched deeper, the invisible bag of rocks on his back was as tenacious as a leech, already making his spine ache. He looked around for Teyla and spotted her distorted shadow behind a partition at the farthest end of the infirmary.
A listen to heart and lungs, the inflation of a blood pressure cuff, and a vial of removed blood later and they were released to their quarters, Ronon lingering to have his foot wrapped. They were all told to rest, John and Rodney especially what with their blood pressure being so high.
“So,” John said when they stepped out into the hall. “Dinner?”
Rodney brushed past him and hurried off. “Busy.”
Sighing, Teyla gave John a tired and apologetic smile. “I may turn in. I wish to visit with my people in the morning to check on them.”
John nodded in understanding. “Yeah cool.”
Teyla left in less of a hurry, while John lingered by the infirmary until Ronon finally hobbled out on crutches.
“Hungry, big guy?” John asked. Ronon replied with a rather negative sounding grunt, and without looking at John clacked away down the hall.
John could only stare after him, baffled. “Guess that's a no.” Although this was probably a good thing. Too much had occurred in too short of time, and that was bound to leave the most calm-natured individual hypersensitive and wanting to climb the walls. Sometimes down-time wasn't about just taking it easy, but recollecting oneself, which wasn't easy when there was an audience. Hopefully, a little moment of solitude would start cooling people off.
So after returning to his own quarters, showering, and changing into fresher clothes, John ate alone, then went back to his room and followed Teyla's example of turning in early.
Then he dreamed of Asurans, explosions, Elizabeth telling them to go, and snapped his eyes open to a clock that read two a.m. John's body hummed with irritation, this being the second night since landing that he'd gotten up hours before it was time. A second time meant a routine was forming, which meant the next night would result in him being up another hour early until he either wore himself out enough not to wake, or appealed to Keller for a little medical intervention until his sleep-cycle righted itself.
He tried to avoid the latter when he could, and sometimes managed it. In the meantime, since he was well aware there'd be no going back to sleep, he rolled his slightly stiff body out of bed and slipped into his running shoes. He was already dressed in a T-shirt and track pants, being the only clothes he could find to wear to bed. Laundry service was going to be a little slow for a while, being on the bottom of a long list of needed repairs, and that meant rationing clothes and having to put up with less-than-pleasant smells.
With shoes tied, John grabbed a half-full water bottle from his desk and started off in a light jog as he headed out into the halls. Being late, the corridors were softly lit in a twilight glow, just enough for John to see shapes and fuzzy details. The late evening patrol nodded to him when he passed, accustomed to his sporadic night time runs.
John took the long way through the living sector and the labs. He stopped before Teyla's door to stand in an unseen cloud of sandalwood. He didn't have to go in to know that she was meditating, or at least had been, probably for a while since the sandalwood scent managed to escape the room. John continued on, leaving her to her meditations or sleep or whatever she was doing. His next stop was Ronon's room. He didn't need to enter, either, just press his ear to the door and listen to the rough snores of a man knocked out cold by a sedative. Keller had threatened to drop by with a needle and use it if Ronon didn't take the pill. It was funny just how imposing the petite doctor could be when she had to, and Ronon was anything but stupid.
John's final stop was the labs and Rodney's personal domain. He opened the door while staying outside the threshold so as not to risk tripping over the wires running like vines from the laptops to the consoles and computers. This particular lab was the next best thing to the control room, like a back-up control room connected to more parts of the city than any other lab. Here McKay could affect repairs without having to go directly to the source unless absolutely necessary.
At the moment, Rodney had his head on the table-top, snoring to out-rumble Ronon. He was surrounded by a haphazard nest of coffee cups and wrappers while the laptops flickered and pulsed with simulations and diagnostics. John left Rodney to his poor excuse for sleeping. Any attempt at waking McKay would result in him picking up where he left off. Better a crick in his neck than no sleep at all.
It felt like forever since Atlantis had been so quiet and still, and it was surreal. Even more surreal was John missing the chaos that had kept his mind blissfully preoccupied. Without it, he was starting to think too much, and he didn't want to think. He didn't want to remember Elizabeth's order for him to leave her; the image of her shrinking away – alone with Oberoth – as John left her behind. He didn't want to think about how it felt like only yesterday since Carson had died. He didn't want think about near losses and actual losses and a new planet full of unknowns.
Crap, what if that hadn't been a pothole? What if it had been a nest of giant poisonous snakes? What if there'd been a cliff edge where Ronon had fallen? What if the radiation in the rocks had been at dangerous levels, high enough to burn McKay as soon as he was three feet form that boulder? What if those rocks had burned them all?
John increased his speed, pumping his legs until his muscles and lungs burned and his heart beat thick and fast. This was why he sometimes hated the quiet moments; his brain never did know when to shut up, and whatever it dwelt on now it would continue to dwell on when he slept, turning the what-if into dreams that felt sickeningly real. But if he could just exhaust himself, touching the edge of collapse without actually crossing the line, his sleep would be too deep for dreams.
Rounding the corner, John slowed on approach to the transporter. He needed a continuous circuit not interrupted by stairs, such as his usual route on the upper level taken when he jogged at sane hours. He reached out to the panel and opened the doors.
Something hissed, long and low like someone breathing out through their teeth, probably in annoyance. John turned to ask whoever it was if they were going up, and jerked away from transparent teeth and a gaping red maw spitting a wad of yellow slime into his face. He stumbled backward into the transporter, slamming his spine into the wall. There was a flash of white light, then nothing but darkness and excruciating pain that made John scream.
-------------------------------------------
Teyla scraped her fork through the puddle of syrup not yet been soaked up by the uneaten half of her pancake. Erratic sleep had made for a poor appetite, and the pancakes had been a little too much for her sensitive stomach. She hoped some of Kanan's aunt's ebelflower tea might help, and she might ask her for the zinel tea to aid her sleep tonight, even if it did leave a nasty taste in her mouth.
She had dreamed of Elizabeth last night, standing before the window as it exploded. Only in the dream, the glass shards had torn Elizabeth to pieces.
The hard slap of plastic hitting the table made Teyla start and look up. Ronon slid into the chair across from her, one hand on the back of the seat and the other trying to maneuver the crutch out of the way. She half expected Ronon to just up and throw the thing across the room. His annoyed gaze, however, was turned away from the crutch and focused on Rodney sitting at the table next to theirs.
Rodney's next bite of food paused halfway to his mouth when he realized he was being watched. He looked at Ronon, matching glare for glare. “I was here first so I'm not moving.”
Ronon snorted in response, making Teyla wonder if she should be the one to move. If this were a continuation of the events from yesterday, then there would be no hearing the end of it until some new interest or argument came along to distract the two men from it. Rolling her eyes, Teyla stabbed her fork into the pancake and didn't care when the utensil fell over into the syrup.
With a tight, warning smile she asked, “Please tell me in advance if you plan on tossing pieces of fruit at McKay that I may leave before you begin.”
Ronon, never taking his eyes off McKay, popped a beenon berry into his mouth. “I'll be good.”
“Please do. I am in no mood for your bickering today. How is your foot?”
“Still injured,” Ronon said, turning another of the blue marbled with violet berries in his fingers contemplatively. He was doing it to tease her, she knew. It did not matter, she would be leaving as soon as John arrived so she could tell him of her plan to extend her visit with her people to three days.
Speaking of the Colonel, Teyla had been certain he would have arrived by now. In fact, she had been expecting to see him as soon as she had stepped into the messhall, but it was not unusual for him to come last – just not this late.
“Have you seen Colonel Sheppard today?” Teyla asked.
Ronon, finally sticking the berry into his mouth, shrugged. “Nope. Probably running. He'll sleep in if I don't get him up for our runs.”
“Maybe he's still sleeping in,” Rodney said, shoveling food into his mouth between typing on his tablet.
“She didn't ask you, McKay.”
“She asked, loud enough to hear. That gives anyone within listening range the right to answer.”
Sighing, Teyla pressed the radio at her ear. “Colonel Sheppard? Do you copy?”
“Not if he's sleeping,” sing-songged McKay. “I doubt the man is so over-the-edge paranoid as to keep his comm in his ear when he's asleep.”
Teyla nodded. “And if he is sleeping, I would rather not disturb him. He seemed very exhausted yesterday.” As they all had been. So much happening in so short a time, with no moment to so much as collect ones thoughts, can wear a person down body and soul. If Sheppard was sleeping past his usual waking hour, then he was doing so because it was something he needed, not merely something he wanted to do. Teyla would just have to wait to talk with him when he finally arrived.
Twenty minutes later, the pancake soggy with syrup and both Ronon's and Rodney's trays picked clean, and Sheppard still had not arrived. The tables were almost empty, most of them cleaned off, and Teyla could see the cafeteria staff removing the bins of leftover food.
“Maybe he's not hungry,” Rodney reasoned, though he did not sound convinced. Sheppard rarely missed meals, breakfast especially,
“Or he is more tired than he realized,” Teyla said. She stood and grabbed her tray. “We should bring him something.”
Rodney glowered. “What do you mean bring him something? The guy's lazy, not sick.”
“She's not saying you have to McKay. She didn't even ask you,” said Ronon.
“Oh, again with the whole who asked who debate. She said 'we'. We usually constitutes whoever happened to take part in the conversation.”
Once again, Teyla sighed. “I will bring him something. I know you are busy, McKay.”
Rodney rose with his own tray in hand and followed Teyla to the counter. “I am a busy man. Probably busy for the rest of my life thanks to those Asurans and Sheppard's pathetic excuse for a 'gentle' landing.” And yet he followed Teyla all the same as she carried a loaded tray through the halls, Ronon clacking not far behind. When the reached Sheppard's quarters, it was McKay who activated the chime.
After two minutes and still no answer, he rang it again.
“Taking a shower?” Ronon suggested.
Rolling his eyes, Rodney palmed the door open, grabbed the tray and stepped inside, mumbling, “Why am I always the one who gets to be the human shield between you people and Sheppard's pasty, scrawny ass?” He stopped halfway in.
John's room was dark, the bed made, the bathroom empty, and there was clear spot on the night stand where John's comm should have been.
“He's not here,” Ronon said.
Teyla looked at Rodney, bewildered. “Perhaps he was not hungry.”
Rodney returned her gaze with his more troubled one. “Then why didn't he answer his radio?”
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John awoke to darkness, burning eyes and a band around his chest restricting the expansion of his ribcage. Each breath was a like a drop of water when he was dying of thirst – never satisfying enough and leaving him wanting more. The air rasped when it entered and rasped when it exited, always too soon, and it was making him light headed. He felt water lapping around his body, which explained why he was so damn cold, and vaguely wondered if it was giving him pneumonia.
Could cold water give you pneumonia? John was pretty sure there were other factors involved, like, maybe, inhaling cold water, which would also explain why it sounded like there was liquid in his lungs.
It was also dark and hazy like a foggy midnight. He could see the soft outline of shapes, all fused together, abstract and chaotic. John lifted his wet, shaking hands to rub his eyes and cried out when the burning became an inferno that ripped all the way to the back of his skull.
Then he remembered the fangs, the mouth, a glob of yellow hitting him in the face and the white flash of a transporter and, oh, how screwed he was. Whatever that stuff had been, it had smacked him square in the face, large enough to cover his mouth, nose and eyes. He could still feel it both cold and hot on his face, and when he sucked in more air could taste it, so bitter it burned his tongue. Gathering a wad of spit to clear it out only did to spread it around. He spit anyway, gagging a little. Then, when the inferno settled back to burning, he tried to reopen his eyes.
Only to slam them back shut when they stung.
This was bad. So very, very bad. There was some kind of... creature on the loose, he could barely breathe, barely see and, when he brought his hand to his comm, encountered only naked ear. He must have lost the thing when he fell back into the transporter.
So very, very, very bad.
Rolling slowly and painfully to his hands and knees made John what to both puke and rip his brain out to save his skull from the jack-hammer pounding. Both his arms and legs trembled trying to support him and his heart quivered, skipping a couple of beats.
“Relax... John. Relax,” he wheezed between breaths. “Relax.... think... not screwed... yet. Least... you're not off... world.” No, he was just lost in a city the size of Manhattan with half its systems down and his own radio missing. John would have laughed if he'd had the breath. “Not... screwed at... all.”
He groped through the water in search of his radio, the position of the transporter or, hell, he'd even take a wall to brace himself against. What his fingers found first was the wall. Pressing his hand against it, he followed it up until he was on his knees. Keeping one hand against it, he stretched to the right, then switched of to the left until he found the edge of an opening that could only be the transporter.
With a choked bark of triumphant laughter, John inched his way toward it, feeling it out until he was sure he was inside. He traced his fingers around the edge of the schematic, forming an image of it in his mind.
“Was... here...” he breathed, running his fingers lightly over the right side of the panel. “So...” He pressed, then pressed gain, then again until the doors hissed shut and bright white seared through his eyelids. John cried out and tumbled backward onto a cool, dry metal floor.
Everything was quiet and, when he forced his eyelids open with a grunt of pain and determination, completely dark.
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Ronon hated crutches, the way they slowed him down, turning halls, stairs and transporters into an obstacle course. Each clack of the stick made his legs itch with the desire to just drop the blasted thing and run, but he'd yet to ever get that stupidly desperate over anything.
The temptation to throw it, on the other hand, he might appease when he was safely in his quarters. Just for spite.
Ronon paused long enough to activate his radio. “Just checked the 'jumper bay. He's not there and all the 'jumpers are accounted for.”
“Good,” came McKay's reply. “Head back to the control room. I still can't get the stupid biometrics scanner up and Lorne thinks an on-foot search would produce better results. The man has no patience.”
“He has plenty patience, McKay. But even patient people don't like sitting around waiting for machines to get fixed.”
“The machines will help us find him faster. Besides, Sheppard's probably just lounging around on a pier somewhere, soaking up the rays...”
Ronon narrowed his eyes, not caring that Rodney couldn't see it. “McKay, it's raining outside.”
Silence, then. “It is? Oh, it is. Huh, totally missed that. Just get to the control room. McKay out.”
Shaking his head, Ronon clacked into the nearest transporter that would bring him closer to the control room. They were lucky the transporters still functioned. The attack, run, and rough landing had put everything – as McKay put it – on the fritz. If Sheppard had taken a puddlejumper out, control wouldn't have known it. If there was a wraith or some other non-human entity wandering around, the bioscanner wouldn't pick it up. And the ancestors forbid if someone had a dangerous illness... although maybe that wasn't much of a bad thing after the stories Ronon had heard about the city's last quarantine experience.
If Sheppard wasn't missing, just ignoring his radio, then Ronon was going to spar with the man until he was black and blue. This was the worst possible time to vanish off the grid, no matter the excuse, and no one should be forced to hobble around on a stupid stick.
Except Ronon couldn't buy, for a second, that Sheppard would shut off his radio for a moment of alone time. He wasn't stupid, and sure as hell wasn't even close to being that self-centered. He would have his radio with him, keep it on, respond to it when someone called, unless he'd lost it. And then he would grab another from the armory until he was able to find his own. The only time Sheppard ever cut himself off from everyone else was when he was sleeping. Even when in the infirmary, he either ordered information from his subordinates or had a radio slipped in so he could stay in the loop and never have to catch up.
Sheppard wasn't deliberately missing. Something had to be wrong.
Ronon clacked into the control room to see McKay moving around the scanner like an insect: circling, hovering, squatting then repeating the process. Teyla was there, and by the rather tight look on her face, she hadn't found Sheppard in the infirmary or the other four places she'd looked. Lorne was handing out LSDs to those who could activate them.
“Search in teams of three to five, and stay together at all times. Keep in constant radio contact. Update every two minutes on your current location and your destination. We'll have a med team standing by, just in case.”
Rodney snorted. “So help me, if Sheppard's just playing hooky -”
“He's not,” Ronon growled. “He wouldn't, not now.” Grabbing an LSD from the box on the console, he moved over to Rodney and thrust it into his hands. “So quit messing with the stupid machine and help us find him.”
Rodney, however, shoved it back. “I am helping by fixing said stupid machine. We'll have a better chance of finding him if it's up and running.”
Ronon shoved the LSD into Rodney's pocket. “But it's taking too long, and I can't use a life signs detector.”
Only to have Rodney pull it out and stick it in Ronon's coat pocket. “Then find someone else who can.”
Pinching the crutch beneath his armpit, Ronon grabbed Rodney's hand, pulled the LSD out and slapped it into his palm. “What if we run into a door, Sheppard's trapped on the other side, bleeding out, and we can't get in until you haul ass to where we are an fix it? Except we're ten minutes away and Sheppard doesn't have -”
Lifting both hands in surrender, McKay barked, “All right, all right! I'll come.” He then turned to the gate tech. “Get Zelenka up here to fix this thing.”
Ronon nodded in approval. “We'll check out where me and Sheppard go for our run.” He began leading the way before Lorne had a chance to dismiss the rest of the teams.
“Maybe you should be the one to stay behind,” Rodney said, eyes already glued to the LSD screen. “Wouldn't want you tripping over another pothole.”
“Rodney,” Teyla admonished.
Not that it mattered. At this point, Ronon didn't give a damn about anything except locating Sheppard. Something was wrong, and it was more than just Sheppard's radio silence telling him that.
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As long as John kept one shoulder against the wall, then the going wasn't so bad. The wall kept him upright, kept him oriented, and gave him direction. Now if he only had an invisible knife to cut the invisible band around his chest making it next to impossible to breathe, then the going would be a cake-walk. He always managed about five long steps before the dizziness hit, sending him stumbling to his knees, or hands and knees, sometimes even tripping him into a face-plant on the floor and shoving more air from his starved lungs. Then, after recapturing little more than drops of oxygen, he would climb back to his feet and stagger on.
Every so often, when he could, he would call out, “Anyone there?” Silence continued to answer him back.
It was an additional level of hell, not being able to open his eyes. Neither was the effort worth the fiery sting when all he got for it was darkness and blurred shapes.
And now his joints were beginning to ache and his skin burn even with all the sweat slicking every inch of it. The sweat and the cotton of his T-shirt were beginning to chafe, his chest especially. When he scratched an itch under his collarbone, it was like rubbing his flesh with coarse sandpaper, and he yelped, yanking his hand away. Then there was the increased hammering in his skull, making him want to puke just to get rid of the need to puke, except with nothing in his stomach to expunge.
The next time John stumbled, it took a lot more effort to get back to his feet, adding another layer of sweat and making his limbs tremble. They wouldn't stop trembling even after a minute of rest.
Cold slipped past his burning skin to his core, and now he was baking on the outside and freezing on the inside. John attempted to wrap his arms around himself to stop the shaking and the chills, but the pressure turned the tenderness of raw skin into an acidic burn, so he couldn't.
John pushed on with locked knees that were turning into jelly.
“Anyone there?” he called, more like gasped. “Any... anyone?” He coughed, light, then hard, so hard it brought him back to his knees, cramping the muscles of his ribs. The pain made him choke and then he was heaving up bile and spit, again and again, morphing the cramps into stabbing that made breathing impossible. Lights sparked in John's eyes and his head swam as though trying to detach itself from his body. Dropping onto his side, he arched in a perfect bow that pinched the individual vertebra of his spine together.
But the damn band wouldn't loosen. The air wouldn't get through. His heart spasmed and his hands thrashed, clawing the wall, the floor, and his own chest until – finally - he remembered how to exhale. The rush of air pushed another ripple of pain through his chest, but he now had more room to breathe, so he did, sucking in air until he hit another cramp.
It wasn't enough. He needed more. He inhaled again, hit another wall of cramps, and exhaled sharp. He was being forced to breathe shallow and it made him shake from more than just the chills. Tears of pain mixed with sweat running down his face to drip from his jaw and chin.
And the pain escalated: His chest, spreading through his body to his limbs. It now hurt to bend his elbows and knees, and was white hot agony when he tried to bend his neck. His eyes... damn it, they burned if they so much as twitched.
Then the pain began to ease, slowly creeping out of his body, starting from the tips of his fingers and toes that he could no longer feel.
John's heart stuttered hard. He knew this feeling, hated it, and feared it: the methodically creeping numb inching up his body toward his heart. Only this wasn't so gradual as last time, already engulfing his hands and feet as it climbed toward his elbows and knees. He couldn't move, couldn't even twitch.
John's breath tripped on a terrified whimper.
Somewhere in the darkness, something hissed, like someone sucking air in through their teeth.
TBC...
