Author's Note: I've only been watching SGA for nearly two months, so forgive me if anything seems out of character! This is just a random piece that came into my head after watching Thirty Eight Minutes about ten times. It's a bit scrappy because I was in a hurry to get it out of my head. :)

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters. I don't own anything SGA except seasons 1 to 4 on DVD. I don't even have the season 5 DVD yet!

WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS FOR Season 1 Episode 3!

Sheppard had no idea how long he'd been out, but he awoke to a headache and the constant pressure against the right side of his neck. The pain had eased slightly but he could still feel every movement the bug made sending bolts of agony across his chest and down his right side. He was still slumped against the rear door of the puddle jumper. He spotted Teyla sifting through the first aid kit. Trying to shift to a more comfortable position, Sheppard was alarmed to find his limbs refused to obey him. They felt strangely heavy and numb.

"Hi, Teyla."

Immediately Teyla moved to his side.

"Are you alright?" his voice came out strained.

Teyla nodded.

"I'm fine."

"Something tells me we haven't made it to Atlantis yet."

Teyla almost smiled, but it didn't cover the worry in her eyes.

"No."

Sheppard shifted his gaze from Teyla, and his eyes fell on McKay and Ford - or rather, what was just beyond them. Is that...? He frowned slightly, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.

"Ford?"

Ford came to crouch beside him and squeezed his shoulder.

"What is that?"

"We're stuck, sir."

No, that didn't make sense either.

"We're what?"

"In the gate."

He wanted to ask how that had happened, what were they doing to get him home... But he was tired, and all he could manage was a half-hearted joke.

"You mean my day just got worse."

There was a long moment of silence, before McKay spoke up. Sheppard was grateful that his unspoken "how" question was being answered.

"If you know some way of manually retracting the mechanism...?"

"Cockpit, on the left."

"The cockpit is regrettably demolecuralized at the moment, but how about somewhere back here?"

That statement hardly made sense to Sheppard, but he managed to decipher it enough to reply, "no." Time seemed to drift away for a while, until suddenly everything went dark. Sheppard pulled himself back to full consciousness in time to hear Ford trying to calm McKay down.

"I prefer apoxia to explosive decompression. It's a personal thing!"

"If the air is gonna get thin in here, you really do have to calm down."

"Wait till you see how thin it gets in 27 minutes!"

Ok, that was enough. If they were going to survive this they needed to stay focused and stay calm. And besides, McKay's ranting was making his headache worse.

"McKay..."

McKay heard him, although his voice was ridiculously weak.

"Vacuum! That's thin."

"Knock it off."

"Oh, I apologize for being the only person who truly comprehends how screwed we are!"

At that, Sheppard snapped.

"Don't talk to me..."

He realized he was nearly shouting back, and made an effort to lower his voice.

"...about screwed."

By the light of the flashlights he could see his team sharing looks.

"And let's not give up on Markham and Stackhouse either. There's plenty of time to solve this thing, but you've got to stop using your mouth and start using your brain."

McKay finally looked guilty.

"I'm sorry. I'm... I react to certain doom a certain way. It's a bad habit and... and... maybe there's a way to manually retract the mechanism."

"Yeah. Maybe there is."

The effort he'd used telling off McKay left him even more exhausted. Teyla folded her jacket and put it behind his head.

"You seem stronger."

"No, it's just the pain's not so bad now."

Ford returned to his side.

"That's good."

Ever the optimist, Ford. Sheppard was almost reluctant to dash the young man's hope.

"No, it isn't. I can't feel my legs. Hands and arms are numb. I can barely move them, and the feeling's creeping up. Lookit, Lieutenant..."

Here he paused, as the reality of his situation finally hit him.

"What I'm trying to say... is if you get this damn thing off me, I have even less time than you do."

Sheppard was trying hard to remain calm, but the growing paralysis of his body was scaring him. There was another long silence.

"Lieutenant, get your knife out and cut this damn thing off. It can't hurt as much as it did last time."

"The last time we almost lost you."

Teyla was trying to reason with him, but he was almost beyond caring.

"Well, you're gonna lose me anyway."

"Sir... we tried to get it off you when we were back on the planet. We tried everything."

Sheppard remembered that all too well - the gunshot, then the burning agony that consumed his entire body.

"Everything we did just hurt you more. The thing just heals itself."

"It feeds on your strength. Like a wraith."

Flashes of the last time he'd seen a wraith feed flashed into his mind, and he glanced at Teyla.

"You just had to say that."

"My father often told stories of creatures such as this. I always thought he was just trying to keep the children from straying far from our camp."

"Great. Did he tell you how to kill it?"

Ford piped up again, this time less optimistic.

"I don't know, sir. I'm not sure we can."

"Well, I could use a second opinion. Get Beckett on the radio."

Moments later he heard Beckett's Scottish clip in his ear.

"How do you feel about house calls, Doc?"

"Would if I could, Major Sheppard, but you'll have to settle for long distance. I'm told you have something of a cling-on."

Sheppard nearly cracked a wry smile, thankful for Beckett's attempt at lightening the mood.

"That's funny. It's like the ugliest damn tick you've ever seen."

"How did it attach itself?"

"Well, we were on our way back to the jumper with the Wraith shooting at us. I sent the others on ahead. It was in a web, like a spider, and I kind of... ran into it."

"Can you describe it to me?"

Ford took over.

"Yes, sir. It's about two feet in length, including the tail. That's wrapped down under his armpit. It's got two sharp, spiny things in his neck near the Major's carotid artery."

"I'll need more than that, son."

"It's got four legs - I guess you'd call them that - they're wrapped around the Major's throat. Uh, I can't see any eyes. It's got a real hard shell, but there's a soft, leechy part underneath."

"Major, what are your physical symptoms?"

Sheppard shook the growing panic off.

"Well, at first, it felt like a knife in the eye. Since then, I've lost all the feeling in my extremities. I can't move."

Beckett's response sounded more like he was thinking out loud than replying to Sheppard's statement.

"I need to be able to move around to help McKay with the mechanical problem. Markham and Stackhouse are dead if I don't."

"What have you tried?"

"I tried to cut it off. I tried to burn it off. I even tried to shoot it off - nine mil point-blank. Not much worse I can do without killing the Major along with it."

Teyla spoke up from Sheppard's side.

"I believe the creature is related in some way to the Wraith."

McKay stopped what he was doing and turned.

"Really?"

Beckett sounded equally confused.

"How so?"

"It healed itself after each attempt to remove it, by sapping life from Major Sheppard, just as a Wraith would."

"I suppose the Wraith had to evolve from something. It's probably some sort of, uh, prehistoric cousin."

Sheppard couldn't tell if McKay was being sarcastic or serious. Ford's voice now took a firm tone.

"Listen, Doc, the Major's getting worse. We gotta do something right now."

"You said the creature had an underside of exposed soft tissue, like a leech?"

"Yeah, I tried to cut into it. The thing practically strangled him to death."

Sheppard tried not to shudder at the memory, instead concentrating on Teyla's hand resting on his shoulder.

"Son, you don't cut leeches off. You pour salt on them."

Sheppard again drifted away, rousing when Ford and Teyla started scouting around for anything that could help him.

"Teyla found a portable defibrillator in the ship stores."

"Already thought of that. Major Sheppard would receive the same electric shock. It would likely kill him."

"Right."

"Try everything, one item at a time."

From what Rodney was talking about into his radio, it sounded like things were either gonna go really good, or really bad with the Jumper. But they were all going to die anyway, so what did it matter. Sheppard mentally berated himself for thinking that way. Snap out of it, John. You're starting to think like McKay.

"We're starting with iodine."

Sheppard couldn't help tensing as Ford put the substance on the bug, but apart from the bug buzzing loudly, nothing happened.

"Scratch iodine."

McKay asked for something to eat, complaining that he was on the brink of a hypoglycemic reaction. Ford threw him a power bar and then turned back to Sheppard.

"We're going to try alcohol now."

"Place a few drops on the soft tissue to see how it reacts."

"Save some for me..."

Sheppard was alarmed at how weak his voice had become.

"Wrong type of alcohol, sir."

"What's the good of that?"

Again the only response was that weird buzzing.

"Did the doctor not say to pour salt on the creature?"

"I think that was a metaphor. But it doesn't matter. Just try everything."

Ford put the salt on the bug, but still there was no response.

"Water. Give me water."

Teyla passed him a bottle, and he poured the water over the salt. For a moment, there was nothing. Then suddenly Sheppard felt the pressure increase, the legs around his throat tightening, pincers digging deeper into his neck, and all over his body was a terrible burning pain. He gasped in shock, his muscles tensing, tried not to scream but in the end he gave in. Even his numb legs and arms woke up enough for Sheppard to feel the agony, and Ford was shouting. Ford, what have you done?! It's killing me! In his pain-fogged mind he wasn't sure what Ford was doing, but it was still hurting. Stop! Stop, it hurts! But he couldn't speak, only scream. Finally Sheppard's arm obeyed his command to move, and wham! connected solidly with Ford's chest, sending him flying backwards. Slowly the pain eased to a more manageable level, and Sheppard fought to bring himself under control. You hit Ford, you idiot! Weir and Beckett were both asking what had happened. Ford was just getting back to his feet.

"It reacted to either the salt or the water."

"Or a combination of both. Did it loosen its hold on Major Sheppard?"

"Negative."

Ford and Teyla were on each side of him, hands gripping his shoulders.

"If anything, it dug in more."

Sheppard turned his attention to Ford, and struggled to speak through the pain.

"Please don't do that again."

"I won't, sir. I'm sorry."

He sounded mortified. McKay and Ford began talking, something about the event horizon and the drive pod. Weir's voice jolted him awake.

"How is Major Sheppard?"

"I'm still here."

"Hang in there, Major. We're working on the problem."

"I know you are. Listen, uh…I'd like to say something while I still can."

He couldn't move anymore, couldn't feel anything beyond the pain that still radiated from his neck and across his chest. And then there was Teyla's hand firmly on his shoulder, grounding him. He knew there wasn't much time for any of them, and he wondered briefly what the bug would do once he died.

"Don't! You're going to get through this."

He couldn't help smiling ruefully.

"If I was…he wouldn't have let me go."

"Who wouldn't have let you go?"

"The Wraith. I guess he just saw me as good as dead, 'cause he just walked away. So…what I wanted to say was-"

"Save your strength, John, and tell me in person."

He was getting frustrated. What strength? He was already paralysed pretty much from the chest down and he was so tired.

"This is important."

"I'm listening."

But he never got the chance to speak, because Ford interrupted.

"We should send him through the event horizon..."

Sheppard's thoughts wandered again. There had to be a way to get this thing off him. Teyla had said it was like a Wraith. What would stop a Wraith from feeding? All at once an idea flashed into his mind.

"Hit me with the defibrillator."

His team looked at him like he was crazy. Beckett's excited voice came through the radio.

"You may be onto something, Major!"

"You said that might kill him."

Ford sounded terrified. Sheppard ground out a response.

"That's the idea."

Ford and Beckett were talking rapidly back and forth. Weir spoke directly to Sheppard.

"John, are you sure you want to do this?"

No, no, he definitely to not want to be shocked while he was conscious, and he was shaking inside at the thought of it. But he replied firmly,

"I want this damn thing off me."

Then Teyla was cutting his shirt open, moving his tags out of the way, McKay had opened the door, and Ford was leaning over him with the paddles. The terror on the face of the young lieutenant was easy to see. Ford hesitated, and Sheppard almost told him to stop, but there was no going back now. He had to tell Ford to go ahead and shock him, before either of them changed his mind.

"Do it!"

He felt the cold paddles press against his bare chest, then the sharp agony caused his body to spasm upwards involuntarily. Darkness claimed him even before his body relaxed.

The End

Author's Note: sorry, ran out of motivation to write any more of this story. :/ So here we have a big cliffhanger! But we all know what happens next, right? Right? LOL