Ten Forward Social Lounge

Of all the fool damn things he’s done over the years, Jack is pretty sure that diving into icy cold water is way, way up on the list. McKay needs him to drain the jumper bay and apparently the only way to do that is to dive down there, look around for some switch, and flip it. McKay seems to think it’s pretty obvious but apparently Jack’s having an obtuse day - none of these controls seem obvious in any sense of the word.

The cold seeps in almost down to his bones and his lungs are burning from lack of air. He can hold his breath for a decent amount of time but he’s got no idea which of these switches he’s supposed to be pushing or pulling. Nothing to do but go back up and bark at McKay until he can give him a better description of what is and isn’t obvious on Atlantis. Damn Ancients. Why couldn’t it have been one of those ATA activated things where he could just think “open” from up on the ground, dry, and skirt around this whole mess?

When he breaks the surface again, Woolsey is there looking all expectant-like and Jack wishes like hell he had something to tell him. Thing is, he doesn’t and Woolsey isn’t the one he needs to talk to anyway.

“Did you do it?” Jack shakes his head and holds out his palm. “Radio.” Woolsey hands it over with a minimum of fuss but he’s still hovering and Jack knows that he’ll have to feed him something just to keep him from panicking and revealing their position. First things first, he’s got to talk to McKay.

“McKay. You and I have very different definitions of the word obvious.” McKay squawks a little, out of his element, and Jack interrupts him. “There are dozens of controls down there and I wouldn’t even know how to describe.” Still, he and McKay come to some kind of consensus that the emergency switch should be toward the middle of the console and extremely prominent. Jack hopes, for everyone’s sake, that he’s right.

He’s not really fond of going back in the water but a little cold water’s hardly the worst thing he’s faced in twenty plus years of a decorated military career. If Sheppard and his team can pull off this rescue, it will have been more than worth it for Jack to get hypothermia and frostbite. More than worth it. He takes in a deep breath and goes back under, swimming to the center of the room and pushing at a likely switch.

It seems to be draining the room, so Jack releases it, only to see the water rush back in. Great. One more trip topside to inform McKay that he’s a complete idiot and he’s back in the water again, hopefully for the last time. He pushes at the switch and ignores the burn in his lungs, ignores the way his vision goes black around the edges. When everything starts feeling fuzzy and he feels light-headed, he keeps holding on, knowing that everyone’s fate pretty much depends on Sheppard and the rest of them getting into Atlantis to take it back from these damn replicators.

He focuses on that, the rescue, and it feels like time slows down and he’s suspended for a little while. The big difference is that he feels like he’s sprawled out on a flat surface and while he’s wet and cold, it doesn’t feel like he’s underwater anymore. He gasps in a deep breath, chokes on it, and spends the next few seconds coughing and sputtering and wondering where in the galaxy he’s wound up. Replicators. Of course. Like as not, he’s in a room somewhere with some alien’s hand in his head and none of this is even real. When he hears footsteps, he decides to go on the offensive.

“Look. You’re not getting anything from me. Hell, I don’t even know anything. You captured the wrong guy if you wanna know how to get from Pegasus to Milky Way because I don’t even know how the damn gate works, much less that bridge Carter and McKay dreamed up. Completely out of luck.”

There. That should satisfy them, right?

[[Jack is sprawled out in a hallway after having been winked aboard by Q. He is also soaking wet :)]]