A/N: Thank you so, so much for your feedback! It really means a lot to me!
oOo
I don't have the choice anymore. I have to play my role to the bitter end: the customer. I force myself to watch, to really watch.
McKay is standing in front of me.
Like the other 'Lots', he's half nude and he's wearing nothing but a light loincloth, tied around his waist and a sort of collar. Just like the others, the most surprising thing is the pallor of his skin. White, almost translucent under the spot lights used to light the stage. You can see the blue veins on his shaved chest.
In this part of the Pegasus Galaxy, white skin and blue eyes are, apparently, a rarity. It would be impossible to be more explicit than Cowan had been on the tastes of the people who live in this quadrant.
"And if my memory serves me correctly, Major," he'd said, his back firmly up against the back of the chair, just like the little tin-pot dictator he is. "Dr McKay fulfills all the prerequisites of beauty."
Since then, I have carried a bullet around in my pocket, a silver bullet, like the one you might use to get rid of demons and other evil creatures. It has the name of Cowen written on it.
"He's a superb specimen, isn't he?"
I nearly start with surprise. The horrible little man is there. I regain my composure and send him a glare which tells him clearly 'how dare you speak to me, you dog?' and he shuts up, but his face suddenly shows his glee and before I have a chance to do anything, he grabs McKay, who whines a little. I blink. It's weird to see him so silent. That's when I notice two things, his eyes and his throat.
His eyes are blue. OK, yes, I know he has blue eyes, but his eyes are really very blue. They've put something like kohl on him to show off his eyes, but that's not all. It looks as though his whole eye is blue. His pupils are practically non-existent and reduced to tiny pin-holes. And they aren't moving at all. Drugged. Where's Carson when you need him anyway? As for what I thought was a collar, it turns out to be marks, finger marks. My own fingers tighten their hold on my P-90.
The merchant makes Rodney turn around on the spot. He obeys like a puppet, but his body shakes all over every time the man puts a hand on him.
I keep my face blank. The anger which is deep-seated inside me is invisible, hidden under a mask of indifference. I've had plenty of practice in the army. Learning to hide your thoughts, whether fear or pain, can be very useful but McKay doesn't know how to lie. He says so himself – he's a terrible bluffer. His face reflects his thoughts too clearly. At the moment I can see his distress – it's so strong, so obvious that it's hard for me to hold back from calling him by his first name, just to reassure him.
It's so hard for me to keep up my disguise.
Flashback
Radek is sitting on his bed. He has dark circles under his eyes and drawn features. He is going to be held in Carson's infirmary for a dozen or so days yet, but he seems to be recovering.
He's alive after all.
All the members of the team that were sent to Glador are dead. Five men, one woman: four marines and two scientists.
Radek is tired, but he carries on speaking.
"…They arrived so suddenly, out of nowhere! The gate did not activate… I think… I believe that they must have ship somewhere. I do not understand how they were able to escape. We registered no energy signal apart from a signal from out-post. I do not understand…"
I interrupt him before he can get too deep into his self-recriminations.
"Radek, there was nothing you could have don, Ok? You were outnumbered and they were better prepared than you. They were obviously used to this kind of raid. There was really nothing you could have done and, anyway, you know MacKay, as soon as he spotted the energy reading, he couldn't have left without knowing where it was coming from."
I see him tremble at the mention of Rodney's name. Crap! Well done John.
He carries on before I have a chance to add anything helpful.
"They lined the four of us up against wall. Paula was terrorized and she could not stop crying, so Rodney…" He lets a little moan fall from his lips. "Rodney tried to comfort her. Rodney! Offering comfort! Shocking, no?"
No, not really.
McKay has a brusque manner on the outside… Ok, sometimes he's just awful, but he hates to see anyone suffer, or to cause suffering himself. Except for Kavanaugh maybe. Strange how, even though they have worked together for two years, Zelenka has never seen through to the real McKay.
"They killed her first. Her tears must have made them nervous."
Or they weren't looking for fabulous south-Africans to take home with them. Paula Jonston was from Johannesburg. Sanchez, the other scientist whose body is now lying in the morgue next to Paula's, was from Guatemala. None of them fit the criteria so generously spelled out to me by Cowen, but McKay and Radek did: white skin, blue eyes. Thank god Carson wasn't with them that day! He had gone back to Atlantis with one of the Galdorians, a boy with a heart murmur, if he hadn't, then Atlantis would be down another blue-eyed male.
"What he did was…"
"Stupid?"
Radek looks shocked that I could say such a thing, but that's what I think.
" No, božínku (AN)! It was… it was so courageous!"
Oh yes, whacking a guard over the head with a laptop and running wasn't the most intelligent thing to do, especially since the results weren't great.
"But one of them shot you, Radek."
He nods.
"Only because I was not fast enough. We had reached the front door and I worked on locking on the mechanism while Rodney worked on the communications link. It is my fault… I…I was not fast enough, they suddenly appear in the corridor and I get up to warn Rodney… and then…" He shivers.
And then he began to lose blood. I remember the state he was in when we brought him back to Atlantis.
"You are going to get him back, yes?"
You can see the guilt in his eyes, the shame of failure and the terrible outcome, the vicious circle of 'if' I had had this and 'if' that hadn't happened… And I know that at that moment, we are both looking exactly the same.
"Yes, I'm going to bring him home, but to do that I need some … help."
His eyes light up at the thought that he can help, that he has a chance at redemption.
"How?"
"I need to hack the Deadalus's on-board computer."
This time his eyes widen in astonishment. I shrug.
"It's just to correct a couple of things on the lists of explosives…"
TBC
AN – 'My God' in Czech.
