Long Weekend

Cold. Dark. Pain in head and wrists and shoulders and leg.

Second Lieutenant Pat Yancy lifted her head and blinked. Light leaked into the room from somewhere, and she could make out the vague outline of a companion to her right, also shackled to the wall by the wrists.

She took a deep breath, and immediately regretted it. The stench in the room was appalling, and her head throbbed worse with the onslaught of the smell. She closed her eyes, trying to breathe more shallowly.

Her next thought was that old cliché, Where am I? She tried to think what she'd been doing, what mission they'd been on. But the last thing she remembered was falling into bed, exhausted, in a room at Stargate Command. The throbbing headache didn't make the effort of thinking any easier.

The pain in her shoulders and wrists started to rival that in her head, and when she shifted her weight to take some pressure off her arms--bound above her head to the wall--she realized that she'd hurt her left leg somehow, somewhen. Agony shot through her knee, and when she reeled aside to take her weight off that leg, she wrenched her shoulders still further.

At her involuntary gasp of pain, a feeble voice said, "Who's that?"

She closed her eyes and stayed completely still, trying to lull the pain in mind and body. She knew that voice, even when it spoke but two faint words. The other prisoner was Dr. Daniel Jackson.

Pat opened her eyes and turned her head. The light, coming from somewhere above, strengthened slightly, and she could discern the outline of Dr. Jackson's face. He hung limp from his shackles, his features unclear in the half-light.

"It's Pat--Lieutenant Yancy," she croaked. Her throat felt raw, abused.

"What? Wh-ere?" His voice was weak, and broke in the middle of the second word.

"Don't know."

He turned his head toward her, and she drew her breath in sharply. A fresh burn disfigured his left cheek. In the now considerably strengthened light, she could see that the edges of the burn were inflamed, and a clear fluid leaked from it.

She gulped and closed her eyes, nausea warring with wrenching horror in her gut. "What happened?" she whispered when she'd regained control of herself.

"Staff weapon?" It was a question, in that same thready, broken voice.

"Looks like it." He looked like he was in even worse shape than she felt. So she was the one who had to do something. Nobody else from SG-1 was here to help Dr. Jackson, just Pat Yancy, one of Stargate Command's newest personnel. How had they got here? Where was the rest of SG-1?

"Look, Dr. Jackson, I'll try to get free and help you. I've got first aid stuff in my pockets. . . ." She didn't even know if she was wearing her uniform, with its pockets well stocked with survival gear. She looked down, and was relieved to see woodland camouflage BDUs, a flak vest, and combat boots. Whatever had happened--and she still couldn't remember anything past falling asleep after a long day of making sure all the rifles in the SGC armory were in good working order--it had happened while they were equipped for a mission.

Dr. Jackson didn't answer, and Pat looked over to see that he hung limp, eyes closed. She caught her lip between her teeth. It'll be okay. I've got antibiotics and everything here. He'll be fine.

Ignoring the pain in her leg, she put her weight on her feet and stretched to get slack in the bonds around her wrists. "It had better be rope," she muttered under her breath. She didn't have any idea how she'd get out of metal shackles. Craning her neck and looking back and above her head, she squinted in the diffuse light. She couldn't feel anything but pain in her wrists--she'd been hanging there too long. Her bonds didn't look like chain and metal, though. Yes, rope, tied to rings pounded into the rough log walls. Sunlight coming between cracks in the walls now illuminated the bloodstained cords.

Pat gulped. The stench of the straw on the floor, combined with the sight of fresh blood--her blood--glistening on the ropes, made nausea rise in her throat again.

Something rustled in the straw, and Pat closed her eyes. Rats, of course, she thought. That would complete the melodrama of being hung from her wrists in a noisome dungeon. Do they even have rats on this planet? she wondered. Of course since she had no idea what planet she was on, she couldn't know that. A bubble of hysterical laughter rose in her throat, and she choked it down as she had the nausea. "In a cheap fantasy novel, the rats would smell the blood, climb the walls to get at it, and accidentally chew through the rope while they were trying to snack on my blood," she muttered.

A weak chuckle to her right told her Dr. Jackson had heard her. A wave of love and concern for him flooded through her, so strong that she gasped at its intensity. She took her bottom lip between her teeth, thinking, I'm losing it from the pain. She'd only worked with SG-1 on one mission. She hadn't been around them enough to become very friendly, or even call any of them by their given names--not that she would with her superior officers. She looked over at Dr. Jackson. His eyes were open again, and when he met her gaze his mouth firmed into a "we'll get through this" expression.

At a rustle from the floor he turned his head to look, and she had to glance away from the sight of the oozing burn on his cheek. "Got it in one," he whispered as a rat poked its head out of the filthy straw. It sat up on its haunches; the light was strong enough now that she could make out the creature's whiskers quivering as it sniffed.

The rat dropped back into the straw, which rustled as the creature ran through it to the wall. The walls, rough with bark left on the logs, were easy for the rat to climb. Pat had to swallow another fit of hysterical laughter as it began to gnaw at the blood-soaked rope at her right wrist. Good thing I don't mind rats, she thought, trying not to move even when its whiskers brushed her hand and its teeth scraped along raw flesh.

More rustling in the straw, and more rat heads appeared out of the filthy straw like swimmers coming up for air. Pat held perfectly still, every muscle screaming with tension, as they ran up the wall and joined the first.

To take her attention from rats gnawing at her wrists, she surveyed the room. Sunlight streaming between the logs of the walls illuminated a fairly large room, roughly square, with a heavy rough-hewn door in the wall opposite where she and Dr. Jackson hung. The hinges looked like standard hardware store types. If she had any of her usual tools still in her pockets, it should be easy to unscrew those hinges and get out of here. Other than the straw on the floor, the room was completely empty. A shed of some sort--maybe a stable, from the odor?

Pat winced as a sharp pain shot through her right wrist, but then she realized that her hand was free, and she dropped it away from the rats gnawing the rope with a shudder of relief. Moments later her left hand, too, was free. She sagged against the wall, pressing her bleeding wrists hard against her right thigh to stop the throbbing.

She pushed herself away from the wall, careful not to put any weight on her wounded left leg. Startled by her movement, the rats disappeared down the wall and into the straw on the floor.

Her belt knife's sheath was empty, but the multi-tool in her pants pocket had a knife blade. In moments, she'd staggered over to Dr. Jackson, cut his bonds, and eased him to the floor. When she disturbed the straw, it stank more than ever, but Pat was past caring. She lowered herself down beside the archaeologist and dug through her uniform pockets for the packets of antibiotics and antiseptic wipes.

"Are you hurt anyplace else?" she asked as she dabbed gingerly at the edges of the wound on Dr. Jackson's face.

He drew in his breath sharply when the alcohol touched the raw burn, but answered in a steady, if weak, voice. "Don't think so. My arms and back ache enough that it's hard to tell."

"Yeah, me too." She searched her memory for the buddy care lectures on burn treatment she'd sat through so many times. "I don't think I'm supposed to bandage a burn, but I'm going to put antibiotic ointment on the edges where it's all inflamed looking."

"Okay." He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth as she spread ointment around the edges of the burn. For good measure, she wiped his wrists, where the ropes had rubbed them raw, with the antiseptic. "Hey, warn me!" he whispered shakily.

"Sorry. I'm putting antibiotic on your wrists, too, and then I'll bandage them."

When she had finished tying gauze pads over the worst of the raw places on Dr. Jackson's wrists, she leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. She was starting to get dizzy with pain and stress, and she didn't want to pass out.

"Pat?" Dr. Jackson's voice sounded stronger. "You okay?"

"Yeah. Give me a minute." He called me Pat, she thought.

Straw rustled, and then she felt Dr. Jackson's warm presence beside her. "I'll do your wrists. This'll sting." The sound of packets tearing open, then the sting of alcohol on the open wounds on her wrists. "I think your rats nibbled more than just the ropes. Your wrists look like hamburger--sorry, hardly the thing to tell you."

"Not my rats," she said, fighting off blackness that threatened to overwhelm her.

The sound Dr. Jackson made was almost a laugh. She opened her eyes to see him staring intently at her. With the burned side of his face away from her, he looked almost normal. His mouth quirked as he looked at her. "Aren't we the pair?" He sank down beside her, his shoulder against hers.

To keep herself from sinking into darkness, Pat said, "We can probably take that door off its hinges. I've still got my multi-tool, and it has a good screwdriver in it."

"Shouldn't we wait until dark?"

"If someone comes to check on us, I don't think we're in any shape to overpower them and get away. Better to do it now, I think. I don't hear anything outside." She hadn't thought about that until she said it. In fact, she'd heard nothing but Dr. Jackson and the rustling of straw since she'd first awakened.

"Sounds good."

"Oh, another problem," Pat said. "I've hurt my leg."

Beside her, Dr. Jackson pushed himself up and knelt beside her. "Which one?"

"Left."

"I don't see any blood on the left--but there is some on the right."

"That's from my wrists."

Dr. Jackson ran his hands down her left leg. "Tell me where it hurts."

"Mostly the knee. Maybe I wrenched it. Ouch, yes, that's it."

"I don't want to cut your pants leg--who knows when we'll get more clothing. Here, lie down and I'll check it out." He undid her belt and eased her pants down.

She was in too much pain to protest. She gasped--more at the feel of those long, sensitive fingers running down the skin of her leg than the pain of her wounds.

"You've got a bruise roughly the size of Texas on your hip, and your knee's pretty swollen," Dr. Jackson reported. He helped her get her pants back up, and as she buckled her belt once more he said, "I should have a bandana in my back pocket. Yeah, here it is."

"Is there anything here to use for a splint--something to keep my knee immobilized?" Pat asked.

"A couple of pens in my pocket--but I don't think they're long enough. Maybe if I just tie my tee shirt around it?"

"Keep it on for now. It's still pretty cold in here. Just tie the bandana around my knee."

Daniel tried several ways of tying the bandana before he was satisfied that it might help keep her knee straight while not cutting off circulation. "Okay, now those hinges." He staggered to his feet, then reached down to help her up. By grasping the wall, she managed to stand.

They made it across the room, and she put her ear to the door to determine if she could hear anything outside. A faint, steady drone, but no talking or anything that sounded like people or vehicles.

"Can you hear that hum, or is it just my ears ringing?" she asked Dr. Jackson.

He put the good side of his head to the door, frowning in concentration. "Sounds like a generator."

"Right. Okay, so is this Earth, or another planet? I don't remember being on a mission. . . ."

Dr. Jackson's brow wrinkled as he thought. "Neither do I. I was studying those symbols we photographed on P3R-118--got so that my eyes were crossing, and I was making more errors than good guesses. I stayed on base to sleep."

"I was working late and stayed at the SGC, too. So how'd we get here--wherever here is?"

"I have no idea." Dr. Jackson stared at the filthy straw, plainly thinking.

Trying to figure this out hurt her head, so Pat instead turned her attention to the hinges. "Look! Even if we're on another planet, these hinges are from Earth. See the brand name? Stanley. And the screws are standard Phillips." She pulled the Phillips screwdriver head out of her multi-tool and started loosening screws. Putting pressure on the screwdriver made her already abused arms and shoulders blaze with pain, but she stuck with it doggedly.

She had two of the three hinges detached when Dr. Jackson said, "Here," and handed her an energy bar. "Rather hard on the throat, if yours is as dry as mine, but I'm sure you can use the boost."

"I'm glad you've got munchies in your pocket," she said, chewing carefully and wishing she had water.

"They've come in handy more than once." At the tone of his voice she glanced over at him, to see a still, bleak look on his face. Even she, one of the newest personnel at the SGC, knew the story of how he'd won his wife--and how she had died.

She choked down the last bite of the energy bar and tackled the third hinge. When she'd added its screws to the others she'd tucked into a pocket of her BDUs, she braced her body against the wall, got a rather awkward grip on the door, and pulled it toward her.

"Here, let me help." Dr. Jackson gripped one of the rough cross braces and heaved. The lock groaned and bent, and the door came rather abruptly open a good two feet. Sunlight streamed in, and she squinted, head pounding. Despite the sun, she shivered in the cold air coming in.

Dr. Jackson peered through the opening. "Nobody around that I can see--the place looks deserted," he said. "More crude log buildings, a few tents, muddy road, and lots of trees. I'd say a camp built by somebody from Earth. The tents look military. There've been vehicles on the road--probably trucks or jeeps, but I don't see any."

"Too bad. If we could get a truck--"

"We'd go where? We don't even know where we are, much less where we want to go."

"The Stargate?"

"Always assuming we're on a planet with a Stargate."

"There is that." Pat looked around. Except for the blood-stained ropes that had bound them, they'd left no indication of how they'd escaped. She had stowed the empty packets from the medication in one of her leg pockets, and now she added the wrappers from the energy bars. "Well, let's get out of here. I guess we can make a plan on the go."

She had to admire how smoothly Dr. Jackson eased around the doorframe, sweeping the landscape with his gaze. He'd certainly had enough practice checking out potentially dangerous situations. She, the newcomer at the SGC, hadn't been on enough missions to have that calm assurance. It still made her nervous just carrying a gun--not that she had one right now.

Still no one in sight. Whoever had tied them up in the shed had left them there without a guard. She edged around the doorframe after Dr. Jackson and surveyed the area, heart pounding. There was a long one-story building a couple of hundred feet away, straight across the road. Further on, to her right, another small log shed. Since the noise came from that direction, Pat guessed it housed the generator. The tents Dr. Jackson had mentioned were clustered at the other end of the long building, to her left.

"If there are trucks, they'll be back there." Dr. Jackson pointed to the right, where the rutted, muddy road disappeared out of sight behind the generator shed.

Pat tried to step away from the wall of the shed and her bad knee gave out, despite the bandana tied around it. Dr. Jackson caught her before she could fall. "Can't walk on it?" he asked.

She shook her head, nausea rising again at the pain that shot from knee to hip.

"Then there had better be a truck back there." Daniel's lips firmed in determination, then he winced as the expression pulled his burned cheek. He pulled her arm over his shoulders and helped her limp around the side of the shed. "I'll get you out of sight of anybody coming in on the road, then go reconnoiter."

He eased her down on the far side of the shed onto frost-covered gray-green grass. The trees in the forest were the wrong shapes and colors, and there was an orangish cast to the sky. Definitely another planet. "Be careful," she whispered. He gave a curt nod of his head, then winced again. With a quick survey of the area, he sped across the road and behind the long building.

Pat licked her cracked lips and wished for water. There should be a stream somewhere out in that forest. If Dr. Jackson didn't find a truck they could steal, they'd have to hide in the forest until her leg healed enough that they could travel--and until they could figure out what was going on. She wondered if the vegetation here was edible by humans. Most planets that had Stargates seemed to have some plants that wouldn't poison people if they ate them.

At the thought of food, another wave of nausea passed through her gut. She clutched both hands over her belly, and was taken aback by the very obvious bulge. No wonder it had been so difficult to get her pants off and on. When had she gained so much weight? She pressed her hands to her belly again, feeling the flutter of movement under the skin. No, not fat. Pregnant.

She knew she was not pregnant--or had not been when she went to bed, last thing she remembered. Did her lack of memory hide the horror of rape and captivity? Somehow, she couldn't--or didn't want to--believe that.

This was crazy. Crazy as waking up fairly certain she was chained to a cold, slimy concrete wall, only to find that she was tied with ropes to logs. Crazy as rats that appeared when she thought of them--no, when she mentioned them. She'd said something about rope, too, hadn't she? She cudgeled her aching head into yielding the memory of what she'd done in that stinking shed. Yes, she'd mentioned ropes. And she'd also stated that she had first aid supplies. Until then, she hadn't even thought of what she'd been wearing, but then she'd known it was her familiar BDUs and flak vest, pockets stuffed with survival gear.

She let out a deep breath. She couldn't remember anything past falling asleep at the SGC after a long day in the armory. Maybe this was some crazy, ultra-real dream? But since when could she influence her own dreams? Dreams were pretty slippery that way. Usually whatever she wanted to happen, especially if it was good or helpful, was just beyond her reach.

Besides that, when had a dream ever included pain like that which had just shot through her leg? Wasn't the cliché that the pain of pinching oneself would wake one up? Then that step down on her bad knee should have had her sitting straight upright in bed, gasping.

So, not a dream. Some kind of drugged hallucination? But it seemed far too real, too connected for that. Virtual reality? She remembered one of SG-1's mission reports. Some crazy guy had kept his people entertained with virtual reality for centuries, only letting them back out to real life when SG-1 had been trapped in their VR equipment but then refused to "play." Dr. Jackson and Major Carter had discussed it once over lunch, how he'd relived his parents' deaths over and over again, trying every time to change the circumstances, but without success. That had seemed real, too. He could feel things, see them, taste and smell them. There had been no easy way to tell that he wasn't living real life.

So if this was some remarkably detailed virtual reality, what was the point? Was something feeding off her pain and fear? But then why let Dr. Jackson and her get away so easily? Why let that absolutely silly ploy of having the rats gnaw through the ropes work?

She heard a rustle in the grass and froze, pushing herself back against the rough logs of the shed. "Pat," came Dr. Jackson's unvoiced call. She turned to see him crouching against the wall at the far corner of the shed. "There are three jeeps and a truck parked on past the generator shed. They've all got keys in the ignition. We just need to figure out which one has the most gas in the tank, and get out of here."

"I think I've--" she began as he helped her up, pulling her left arm across his shoulders again. But then she choked up, unable to speak, to breathe. She coughed, trying to keep it quiet while she cleared her throat. Moments later she was gasping in air while Dr. Jackson thumped her back. She tried to speak again, to tell him what she'd figured out, and again her throat closed up and she choked until spots swam before her eyes and the blood pounded in her ears. Finally, bent double with Dr. Jackson supporting her, she was able to take a breath. She gasped in the cold, forest-scented air and knew that whatever was making them live this nightmare would not let her tell Dr. Jackson what she'd guessed.