A/N: Don't know if I'll continue with this story(never written a chapter fic before) but if there's anyone who's interested then I will for sure. Not sure if I have John's voice downpat yet but practice right? If you have any tips I would be very happy to hear them.
Hook, Line, and Sinker
It was a feeling he'd experienced only once before and that had been when a time dilation field had been trying to eat him so as the pins and needles washed over his limbs and turned into sharp jabs of pain that he couldn't quite convince his mind where phantom pains, he knew he was in trouble. Big trouble.
The world of green grass and lush trees blanked out of view and his mind whited out for a moment.
There was a flash of grey walls and cold metal. A flurry of movement in white coats and strange clinical lights and John managed to catch a glimpse of some kind of lab before everything whited out for the second time, more tingling and residual stabs of pain and then blankness.
The feeling of heat was so intense and so different from any of the previous sensations that it made him open his eyes and gasp in a startled breath. Which turned out to be a bad idea because dry dust rushed into his lungs an instant later. He coughed violently and all he could see was yellow which made him think of neural damage and panic until he realized that he was staring at sand inches from his face. He gave himself a moment to gather his thoughts and prepare himself for what he was already guessing was going to be very bad news, before gingerly rising up into a sitting position and glancing around. His first thought was Afghanistan which was even more depressing then he needed but that assumption quickly flew out the window when his eyes fell across the ruins of what looked remarkably like a car but definitely wasn't.
Ok now he was officially allowed to panic. Barely five minutes ago he'd been walking through a simple green pasture with the rest of his team on their way to visit the peaceful natives to barter for fresh fruit, how much more different was there.
"Rodney? Teyla. Ronnon!" His voice echoed across the deserted buildings crowding around him. Nothing returned his calls except for the low howl of the wind through empty windows and for a moment he let himself be relieved that they hadn't been stranded here, where ever here was, with him. It was only for a moment though because he could really use McKay's brain right now.
He gave himself a once over, no injuries and he still had his tack vest and P-90 so in the grand scheme of things he wasn't totally screwed, just marginally so. He braced a hand against the stone wall behind him and slowly levered himself to his feet.
He didn't really want to leave this area because if there was a chance that his team would come looking for him or figured out how to get him back then here was the place to be. But looking around gave him the knowledge of exactly how exposed he was standing in the middle of this empty street and his instincts were screaming at him to find cover. The skin at the back of his neck prickled and his desire to leave kicked up in intensity. He quickly scanned the tall huddled buildings along the street and picked one before ducking through the half open door.
The room on the inside made him think of Earth and he had to remind himself that he was still in the Pegasus Galaxy, or had been the last time he checked.
Overturned tables and chairs of what was probably a dinning room of some kind cluttered the next room and he turned the corner, trying not to see the evidence of a hasty departure from a happy life. He found a set of stairs and after debating with himself about the wisdom of climbing onto the second story of an abandoned building, he made his way up; hoping for a better vantage point to assess his position.
The second floor of the house was much like the first with its sad reminders of the previous occupants. He walked past an Earthlike bathroom with no running water and a child's room with dusty toys strewn across the floor before finding what he really came here for.
The second stairwell, hidden behind a very loud door, was an access to the roof above. He climbed them carefully and pushed through the trap door at the top to burst back out into sunlight and hot dry air. The second he clambered onto the roof and did a three-sixty, his heart sank.
As far as the eye could see, flat yellow building tops all sandwiched together, straight lined and blocks huddled around a narrow maze of streets and back alleyways. The view went on forever and beyond it all, he caught a glimpse of flat simmering desert.
He walked to the edge of the roof and peered into the street he started in, and immediately threw himself onto his stomach, heat pounding in surprise.
Ok so maybe his first assumption of unoccupied hadn't been all that accurate.
Slowly he pulled himself over the lip of the edge, P90 held out before him.
The man below was scanning the place John had found himself waking up in only minutes earlier. He studied the man, taking in his dark clothing and the small handheld gun strapped against his thigh. The man was lean and athletic, his back turned to John so that all he could see was the spiked black hair and olive tanned skin.
The guy stepped back a pace and glanced down the street to the right. As if on queue, five figures materialized out of the shadows of the surrounding buildings, all dressed in black and all carrying guns that brought assault-rifles and semi-automatics to mind.
His mind supplied the 'oh shit' and his eyes skittered around as he tried to remember if he'd seen another way off the roof that didn't involve going back through the house or falling two stories to the ground.
Just then the man looked up and John found himself staring into deep brown eyes with a piercing intentness that made his skin crawl. Danger bells went off in his mind and John's day went from bad to really bad as he was spotted by the six guys below him. He scrambled to his feet and backed hurriedly away from the edge, glancing to the right and left and wondering if he could jump the distance to the next roof on the right before those guys stormed through the door on the left. It was a good six feet from the edge to the next roof but maybe …
The decision was made for him when he heard the sounds of boots hitting the stairs behind him, and so, counting on the hopeful possibility that they wanted him alive, he took off. Five steps to the edge and he was flying through the air, granted it wasn't his most preferred method of flying, a fact greatly enforced by the new bruises he collected as he rolled into a landing. He used the momentum and recovered from the roll to sprint across the roof. There were shouts behind him and he half expected the impact of a bullet but it never came. The next gap was hardly an obstacle at barely three feet of separation and he was on the next roof, his progress making him hopeful that he could use the tops of the buildings to put some distance between him and whoever those men were back there before he would have to return to the streets and find a place to hide.
But then all his half formed plans deteriorated as a line of people suddenly materialized in front of him, stepping out of thin air all at once and he skidded to a halt, weapon up.
The second group ranged around him in a loose semi-circle, blocking his path, all in black, all with hands casually resting on guns. He was trapped.
"Hi guys, that was a neat trick. You'll have to show me how you do that sometime." John scanned the men as they watched him with blank expressions.
The man in the middle stepped forward and addressed him calmly, "You are out numbered. Put down your weapon."
John eyed the man, knowing that surrender was good advice but far from comfortable with the idea. Ok, ya he was the intruder here, where ever here was, but these guys had shown up knowing exactly where to look and that was just a little bit creepy. Still he figured he'd give the guy the benefit of the doubt and slowly set his P90 on the ground before adding his berretta and knife to the pile.
The guy who had addressed him gave him a small nod of approval before motioning his men forwards. In seconds they'd padded him down, collected up his weapons and both radios and had his hands securely tied in front of him.
They ushered him down something like a fire escape behind their leader, fingers twitching and eyes calculating, sharp as hawks and just waiting for trouble.
John debated his options and found that he didn't have too many at this point. He needed information and these people were the ones who would most likely have the answers to his questions so he was just going to have to bide his time, learn what he could and maybe then find a way to escape.
They arrived at street level to be greeted by the first guy and the group that had discovered him.
"Catch of the day?" the first guy said, brown eyes raking across John from head to toe in one narrow eyed glance. John caught the fleeting impression of a dark anger floating somewhere underneath before the man's face blanked expertly.
"Slippery enough." agreed the leader of the party that had caught him. "Athos, radio the Captain. Ask where we should meet up." The man he addressed gave him a short crisp salute and walked off a ways to make the call in private. Then the leader turned his attention to one of the men of the previous party. "Did you get any readings off the residual?"
"Yeah," drawled the man in question, "but it's garbled beyond belief. It'll take some time to figure out where the window came from."
John's attention perked at that, knowing it was somehow vital to getting home. But the conversation was cut short when the man with the same name as the Athosian home world returned with the meeting location.
"Laurance." the leader jerked his head in John's direction; a silent command for 'you're in charge of making sure the prisoner doesn't do anything stupid' which John found mildly insulting. A guy, who reminded him a bit of Lorne, grabbed his arm and guided him forward as the platoon or whatever it was, began marching down the street to presumably 'meet their leader'.
The black haired man with the piercing brown eyes dropped back until he was hovering at John's back, and he didn't need to see the death glare to feel it drilling through a spot between his shoulder blades. Definitely no love lost there.
"I gather it's Laurance?" John asked to the man whose stern but nonbrutal grip on his arm was making sure he got to where ever they were going. He figured he'd try his luck in that direction because whatever he'd done to piss the other guy off, he was pretty sure would get him something equivalent to the finger if he tried to strike up a conversation.
The man gave him a sideways glance and a silent nod.
Ok so not talkative but hey, it was better than a punch to the mouth to shut him up, which he didn't need to be a mind reader to know the guy behind him was thinking.
"You, ah, lived here long?"
Laurance frowned in an obscure way that made John wonder what he'd said or hadn't said.
"Cause you see, I just got here and it kind of looked deserted, if you know what I mean."
"Shut him up." that from the man behind.
Laurance just kept up the pace like he didn't see a need to obey that order. And that made John wonder if perhaps the man who'd taken offense to him wasn't actually military like the rest of the people in the group obviously were.
"You know, I don't know what I did but I'm sure it's all just a big misunderstanding." thinking that if this man had a problem with him than it was better to get it out into the open now before the guy descided to take matters into his hands. He craned his neck trying to make eye contact. The fact that he couldn't see him was making him nervous.
"Stop speaking. He won't believe you and you'll only make things worse for yourself."
John turned back to stare at Laurance in surprise. "So you do talk." Laurance didn't respond. But still, if he'd managed to find an ally, than maybe this would work out somehow.
Another guard flanking them snorted in amusement, only to get shoved from behind into a brief stumble. "It's a lesson you still haven't learned." retorted the one who'd done the shoving, but he was grinning as he said it.
"Frack off."
"Ladies!" the leader turned around to walk backwards and gave each of his men a long glare.
The fact that John felt like he'd been captured by a bunch of marines was weirding him out. But then there was no time to consider anything else because apparently they'd arrived.
The leader turned down a half hidden set of stairs that lead below street level while the rest of his men took up defensive positions around the parameter. Laurance guided him down the steps and unfortunately the guy with the grudge came too.
They entered through a heavy metal door into a bunker of some kind. The whole place was lit by daylight fluorescent lights inset into the walls and ceilings and the entryway was built in such a fashion that anyone trying to storm this place would be bottlenecked and picked off without much of a fight. The small eddies in this hallway like room, were carved into the wall like straight-angle triangles to provide cover for the defenders while providing none for the attackers. It was an ingenious design and it was well used if the pockmarks and bullet scars John kept walking past were any indication.
The leader took a sharp right turn and they walked past the first security force men and the first few rooms that branched off from the hallway before they brought him into a room that was big, square, and empty.
Laurance walked him to the center of the room and let go of his arm before returning to stand just inside the door.
His buddy with the ever present death glare prowled into view, circling around him until they were staring eye to eye.
John decided he wasn't going to take any shit and glared right back.
Something darkened in the man's face.
"Hey, shove it back in its cage. We want to be able to talk to him." the leader barked.
The man didn't even twitch.
The leader marched over and slid a shoulder between them, glaring at the man. John got the impression that it was more to protect him than the other way around. "Jagger. Cut it out." it was soft but it was absolutely final and John watched as something in the man's face flinched before he fell back into the shadows around the edges of the room.
The leader held his position for a moment longer before walking away, apparently satisfied that Jagger wasn't going to pounce on their helpless prisoner.
John took the moment to look around; saw stone walls, stone floors, stone ceilings and minimal amounts of lights and decided it was a well wasted five seconds of his life. After that he took to examining the people in the room with him, Jagger he couldn't see; he was going to freak out about that later, and Laurance he could already recognize so he studied the leader of the platoon thingy. He was maybe only a little bit younger than John himself and the lines on his face said he was a man who smiled a lot. Lean athletic body like everyone else he'd seen so far and dark haired, which come to think of it, seemed to be the norm since John couldn't remember seeing anyone with blond hair in the group. The man was experienced, evident in the way he walked and saw everything at once and by the way he led which seemed to be as much by example as casual know-how. He liked the guy and apart from the fact that he was being held hostage, the only one to treat him with any kind of hostility was Jagger and he seemed to have his own reasons.
He was fairly confident that he could reason with these people which should have been good news. It wasn't.
He was starting to realize that he wasn't in the Pegasus galaxy anymore.
The door to the room clanged open and two more people walked in. The first was a woman with dark mahogany hair and a slight frame that reminded him enough of Teyla that he figured in all likely hood she could probably kick his ass, and the second was a man that John bet himself five bucks was a doctor because he was the only one not carrying a weapon of some kind.
The new man gave him another one of those head to toe scrutinizes while the woman's eyes scanned right past him and settled on the platoon leader. And there was the dynamic right there. The two stared at each other in silence for a moment, the unheard communication so easy and automatic that they probably had been fighting battles together for a long time.
Then the moment ended and the woman walked up to stand in front of John. This time she did look, eyes going from face to hands to clothes and back up to meet his gaze. Grey eyes telling him that she'd gained enough from her inspection that she wasn't going to take any bullshit because she had the evidence to refute it. It was a fierce look and she used it to stare him down, a whole head taller than her and she wasn't fazed a bit, knowing that she'd probably faced down guys bigger than him and some probably more than twice her size because he recognized he was staring at the leader of their people.
"Hi, I'm John. I'd shake your hand but I'm a bit tied up at the moment."
"Don't worry about it. I'm not one for ceremony." straight faced and casual like this really was just two strangers meeting on a Sunday stroll through the park.
"So ah, nice place you've got here. Cozy," because he could do this all day if they wanted.
She nodded seriously, "Especially with hundreds of people crammed down here because bioweapons make the surface unlivable for days at a time."
"Ya war's a bitch like that."
She smiled ruefully then, flipping his preconceptions and throwing him off balance as easily as if she'd physically reached out and knocked him on his ass. "You'd think they'd stop wasting the money after it didn't work the first few times. But that's what happens when bureaucracy overruns democracy, you concentrate so much on the paperwork that you end up forgetting that they're stupid decisions to begin with."
Ok so definitely a whole lot more going on here then he really wanted to know about.
Her face turned serious again, "We're under siege here John. Either you tell me something that convinces me you aren't an enemy of mine or I kill you." The last part was said so casually that anyone not paying attention would have missed it. But it wasn't an empty threat; she'd skillfully set it up so that when she said it he'd know she wasn't bluffing because she'd revealed just enough to paint a picture of how hard she fought for survival. Elizabeth would love her.
"Look, if you want the truth, I have no idea how I got here and I don't even know where here is."
She didn't react, waiting for him to continue.
"I'm part of a team of peaceful explorers who go through the 'gate; big round, built by the ancients, ancestral-ring thing." he waved around vaguely, "Stargates; you know stabilized wormholes that connect one planet to another. Look anyways, before I got here I was walking through a nice grassy green field on another planet with my team. I'm not even supposed to be here."
"And your 'peaceful' team is military?"
"No, just me and well, Ronnon but he doesn't count because um, long story."
"And the other members of your team?"
"Teyla and Mckay. You'd like Teyla. She's the leader of her people and can kick my ass. McKay's our genius."
She smiled briefly, maybe hearing the exasperated fondness in his voice. "Full name and rank." The way it rolled off her tongue gave it an unusual weight.
He hesitated; it was the make it or break it question, the somehow pivotal last one. He very carefully looked her in the eye and answered it with as much honesty as possible, "Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard of the United States Air Force."
Her eye brows rose in surprise. "That's a high rank for someone in the field."
"Where I come from it isn't all that impressive." which was the truth as far as Earth was concerned. Putting aside for now how the heck they even had the same ranking system.
"Well Colonel," she reached into a sheath at her thigh and pulled out a knife. He tensed.
"I still don't understand why you're here or how you got here but perhaps we'll get the answers to those questions soon enough. As things stand, I can't afford to keep hostages." she twirled the knife in her hand and it flashed menacingly in the puddle of light. She narrowed her eyes and before he could come to a conclusion as to how he was going to defend himself she sliced through his bonds.
He stared because what the heck? He rubbed his wrists subconsciously, trying to connect oh shit I'm dead to I'm free.
She was watching him and suddenly without warning and a speed that made him dizzy, she grabbed the front of his tack vest and yanked him down so that she was right in his face, knife against his throat. "You ever betray my trust and you'll be dead before I even have a chance to come kill you myself!" and she released him before sheathing her knife.
She let that point sink in for a moment before she smiled, "Captain Ren Shale, leader of the wildly unpopular contingent of rogue commandos and refugees. To my left I'm sure you've met Laurance your escort and Mavrek my second in command, also, Dr. Caspian Vandreth sadly our only actual doctor and behind me somewhere, Jagger Felin, my assassin partner."
She held out her hand.
He stared at her because still; what the heck? But then Teyla's voice piped up from somewhere in his head and reminded him to be diplomatic and not insult the nice people with weapons. He shook her hand, wondering where to go from there because frankly he had no place to go.
"Laurance if you wouldn't mind showing Colonel Sheppard around when you have a moment. Mavrek, have some quarters prepared. I have some things to attend to but if you'd like to join me for supper Colonel I would be honored. Dinner's at 1900." with that she gave a nod of satisfaction and left the room.
The platoon leader, Mavrek, stepped forwards with a smile, "Welcome to Hob. If you have any questions please feel free to ask. Laurance will remain your guide for the time being and I suspect Cas," he motioned to the doctor, "will want to complete a cursory exam but I'll leave that up to him. Just figured you'd appreciate some fair warning." he winked, and then excused himself with a lazy salute. John watched, still in a daze, as the doctor scowled before following the second in command out of the room.
He shook himself back to this strange reality that he'd somehow stumbled into and realized he was still standing stupidly in the center of the room that looked and felt like a cell while his appointed guide was patiently holding the door to his freedom. He followed the silent man's lead and tried not to make it look like he was racing for the hole in the prison he couldn't quite convince himself he wasn't in.
As he was leaving he felt the dagger sharp gaze of the assassin lurking in the shadows at his back. It made his hand tighten convulsively; wishing for the heavy weight of his P-90. The menacing presense served to drive the point home; he may not be a hostage but he wasn't free either and he might have skimmed by being called an enemy but he wasn't exactly trusted. He was a stranger in this strange world and that could easily prove fatal.