DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE - CHAPTER TWO
When John woke up he was in a room—one he wasn't used to viewing from the inside of the thick louvered bars—lying awkwardly on the floor, as if his body had simply been tossed in and allowed to fall as it landed. His whole body ached and his head was throbbing in time with his heart. After mentally assessing his body for other injuries—other than the encore presentation of Stomp that was running on a loop through his head and some fuzziness to his eyesight that confirmed his initial self-diagnosis of a concussion (he'd had enough to know the symptoms) there didn't seem to be any further injuries. No broken bones, sprains or strains, and none of his clothes were sticking uncomfortably to his skin the way they tended to when he was bleeding beneath the fabric. The concussion didn't seem too bad, he decided—no nausea so far, and, lying still, no dizziness.
As sure as he could be that he wasn't going to awaken other injuries by doing so, John let out a heavy sigh and struggled to sit up. That set off a whole new set of pains, not to mention the intense dizziness, and he knew, from the selection of symptoms he was experiencing at that moment, that his concussion was worse than he'd thought while lying flat on his back. He slid back along the floor until his back hit the bench where their prisoners—usually Wraith, but there was that Sora chick for a while, too—would sit in between interrogations. He didn't even consider attempting to stand—the bench was the only thing in the room that he could use for leverage that wasn't protected by a force field, which, if he was locked up, he assumed had been activated.
"What the fuck is going on around here?" John groaned, digging the heels of his hands into his eyes in an attempt to make the room stop spinning around him like a Tilt-A-Whirl on Acid.
"That's what I want to know," a bespeckled man said, his voice low and dangerous. "Who are you? How did you get Major Sheppard's IDC? And for that matter, how did you get his face?"
Physical discomfort pushed aside for the moment, John decided to turn his full attention to the man who was clearly in charge of the situation. He could deal with the concussion and everything else after he got some answers. "Who are you?" John demanded in return. "Where is Doctor Weir?" he asked, growing agitated. Glasses' left eye twitched, sometime that John filed away for later reference. John tried to sit up straighter and cringed at the residual pain from the weapon he had been blasted with. "And what the hell did you guys hit me with?"
After sharing a look with a burly Marine—one that John didn't recognize as one of his men—Glasses spoke. "My name is Doctor Daniel Jackson; I'm the leader of this facility. I've answered your first question, now answer mine."
"My first question was 'what the hell is going on here' but we're making progress, so I'll go with it," John said, getting to his feet using sheer frustration to power him—and a little fury that was slowly building up inside of him. "I'm Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard—I haven't been a Major for months. I used my IDC and this is my face." He took a step toward the thick bars of the cell he had awakened in. "Now, where is Doctor Elizabeth Weir?"
Jackson's left eye twitched again, but other than that he didn't react to John's question.
"Where is Doctor Elizabeth Weir?" John repeated, his tone indicating that, cell or no cell, force field or no force field, he was going to get an answer to his question.
"As far away from you as possible," Jackson said stonily. He turned to one of the guards. "I want no less than ten men here until the SGE gets back to us. No one in or out unless I say so."
"SGE?" John muttered, too thrown by the random vowel in the place of the familiar consonant to bother keeping his confusion with the growing number of discrepancies between the Atlantis he knew and the one that he was currently incarcerated in. He looked at the archaeologist, trying to sort through the thousands of thoughts and questions that were racing through his head. The most pressing of which was the next question he asked.
"Why is Elizabeth 'as far away from me as possible'?"
After the expected eye-twitch Jackson shot John a harsh look before turning and leaving the brig.
"I knew I wouldn't like that guy," John muttered darkly.
"I don't know what to tell you, Daniel. His DNA is an exact match. His scans all match the ones I have on file for Major Sheppard. Even his ATA strength is exactly the same, which, as you know, is as unique a reading as there gets. Every test that I've run confirms that the man in the brig is John Sheppard," Doctor Carolyn Mitchell, MD, said, handing a data pad to Daniel. She twisted her wedding ring around her finger nervously; hesitant to bring up what she knew was a sensitive subject for Daniel. "When do we tell Doctor Weir?"
"Why would we tell Elizabeth anything about this?" Daniel replied as he scanned the report Carolyn had prepared for him.
Carolyn stared at the archaeologist incredulously. "Because that's her husband, Daniel, and she deserves to know that he's alive!"
Daniel looked at Carolyn with a fierce look of anger. "No one is going to tell Elizabeth anything about this," he said, his voice low and dangerous. "Make sure that everyone understands that," he added as he moved to take a seat behind the glass table that served as a desk for the leader of the expedition.
Knowing that arguing would only make her life more difficult, Carolyn accepted the unvoiced dismissal. "I would like to run a few more tests on… the prisoner," she said carefully.
Nodding absently, Daniel activated his radio. "Major Lockmoore, Doctor Mitchell will be down shortly to examine the prisoner further."
The Major's response crackled through Daniel's headset. "Understood, sir."
"You're clear," Daniel said to Carolyn. "Be careful."
Carolyn nodded before leaving the office, cutting through the control room and making a beeline for the nearest transporter. After stopping by the Infirmary to pick up some equipment Carolyn headed to the brig.
"You want us to knock 'em out for ya, doc?" one of the Marines asked, taking, Carolyn thought, entirely too much pleasure in the thought of shooting the man who wore his former CO's face.
"No, Lieutenant. I need him conscious for this round of tests," Carolyn said as icily as possible. "Open the cell," she ordered. When the guard at the locking controls hesitated Carolyn called upon every memory of watching her father in command. "Now, Sergeant," she said firmly.
"You make one move and we'll open fire," Major Lockmoore, the senior officer on duty in the brig at the moment, growled at Sheppard who simply raised an eyebrow in response.
The Lieutenant unlocked the cell and immediately every weapon in the outer area of the brig was pointed at John who was sitting on the floor near the back of the large cell. Without hesitation Carolyn entered the cell and ordered for the door to be locked again.
That order was obeyed without hesitation.
"You obviously trust me more than everyone else here," John commented as Carolyn began setting up a piece of equipment that he didn't recognize. "Either that, or you don't care anymore and are willing to put your life on the line with the 'dangerous prisoner'."
Carolyn quirked a smile at John. "Little from Column A, little from Column B," she replied before turning on the device. A force shield spread out, protecting herself and John from the trigger-happy SF's. The SF's wouldn't think anything of the shield because Carolyn had always been very clear on maintaining doctor-patient confidentially, even with prisoners. "Do you know who I am?" she asked.
John frowned at Carolyn for a moment before he realized why she seemed so familiar. "You're… the doctor. General Landry's daughter. Right?" he said. Carolyn nodded, though she didn't like being known as the General's daughter. It was why, when she got married two years earlier, she had had no problem changing her name from Landry to her husbands surname. "I'm sorry, I can't remember your name," he added, genuinely apologetic.
"Carolyn Mitchell," she said, not at all offended. "You've always called me Carolyn." Though she didn't know for sure she suspected that there were some problems cropping up from the quite large gash on the back of John's skull, caused by the edge of the steps leading up to the 'Gate platform after being hit by a Zat'ni'katel blast. "What's the last thing you remember?" John glanced at the group of ten Marines—he only recognized two of them as his own people—and then looked at Carolyn questioningly. "The force shield I set up will keep their bullets out and our voices in," she said reassuringly. "One of Colonel Carter's supposedly simpler brilliant ideas."
"Cool," John commented. "Okay, the last thing I remember… I was on M7P-286 supervising an archaeological team. I went into a cave to check it out. It was clear. I tried to contact the rock-squad to tell them that the cave was secure, but I got nothing in response. I headed back out, figuring it was just the cave or something screwing with my radio, but when I got out there was no trace of my people ever having been there. I checked the area as thoroughly as possible without a Jumper but I came up empty so I came back to Atlantis and… next thing I know I'm locked up with Jackson telling me that Elizabeth is being kept as far away from me as possible and everything is screwed up… and I thought your name was Lam."
"Lam is my maiden name. Mitchell is my married name," Carolyn said softly.
"Mitchell… as in Cameron Mitchell?" John asked.
Carolyn nodded. "You were the best man at our wedding, John." Then, not wanting to break down (as she was still quite apt to do whenever thinking about Cam for extended periods of time) Carolyn moved on. "You said you were on M7P…?"
"286. Deserted forest planet. Lots of ruins and artefacts that mean absolutely nothing to me but had the people I was protecting practically salivating," John said.
Nodding as she made mental notes of everything that John said, Carolyn pulled on a pair of latex gloves. "Could you put your hands down, palms flat on the floor?" she requested. John looked up at her in confusion. "I want to check your head wound and, as much as I trust you, these guys don't and, for the moment, we've got to put on a bit of a show." John still didn't look all that convinced so Carolyn continued. "The only way I'll be able to help you sort this whole mess out is if I maintain access to you. And that won't happen if they don't think I'm safe in here—whether they think you're going to physically harm me or somehow turn me rogue or something, it doesn't matter. You need an ally here, John, and right now I'm the only one willing to listen."
"Fair enough," John said as he did as he was told, moving slow enough that the guards were reassured that he wasn't trying anything. "What did they hit me with, anyway? Felt like I'd stuck a fork in a light socket."
"That's pretty accurate, actually," Carolyn said as she began gently probing the wound. "The weapon's called a Zat'ni'katel—a Zat gun. It's Goa'uld design."
John frowned. "But Zat's don't work on the Wraith."
Pausing in her examination Carolyn's brow furrowed in confusion. "The Wraith?"
"Yeah. The Wraith. Tall. Long hair. Pasty complexion. Suck the life out of people with their hands. Not exactly on my Christmas card list," John said.
"No, I know what the Wraith are. But… John… the Wraith have been gone for over six months."
tbc...