"Why?" Jennifer ignored her pounding headache as she dragged herself to her feet and wobbled over to the door of her cell. So help her, no matter how badly she felt, she was going to meet Todd head on. "Where are the others? Where's John, Ronon, and Amelia? And the Marines?"
Todd heaved a sigh that seemed to echo through the cell. "The others should be safely on the world we were gating to," he said after a long moment. "The code I entered into your gate was designed only to transport you and I away. Unfortunately, I seem to have erred slightly."
Todd chuckled, but Jennifer failed to find humor in the situation. She admitted privately to herself that yes, she'd wanted an adventure, but this wasn't exactly what she'd had in mind.
"It doesn't seem like you erred to me," she finally retorted, folding her arms across her chest and giving him her best scowl. Even John had known better than to argue with her when she'd used it, but Todd only sported an amused smile.
Her irritation rose further.
"Ahh, yes," he purred. "I could see why you'd think that, given your current location." He nodded at the prison walls. "I have no intentions of keeping you in this cell forever, Jennifer."
"Doctor Keller," she corrected through gritted teeth, but she didn't know why she bothered. Todd always seemed to do as he pleased, anyway.
"Nor do I intend to keep Ronon and the other human in their cells permanently, either," he continued as if she hadn't spoken. "It is only a temporary—"
"Ronon's here?" she interrupted, ignoring Todd's momentary scowl as she felt relieved. If Ronon was here, then she had a chance of escape at some point. But who was the other human Todd referred to?
She closed her eyes for a moment, and remembered that Amelia had gone through the gate with Ronon. If Todd had truly made a mistake—and she had to admit, she was surprised that he would, much less that he'd admit to doing so—then chances were that it was probably Amelia.
She opened her eyes to find Todd so close he was almost pressing against the bars.
"It seems the effects of interrupted gating were worse than I'd anticipated," he growled, raking his eyes down her frame. "You are weaker than I'd anticipated."
It took her a moment to realize that he'd assumed that she'd closed her eyes because she'd felt dizzy. "I'm fine," she said, waving a hand. "I've been through worse, trust me."
She wasn't sure why she bothered to reassure him. Todd may have been apologetic about her state, but he wasn't apologetic for the reasons behind it. Whatever purpose he'd had in stealing them away from the base and the deal he'd made, he clearly had no intentions of going back or undoing his actions.
When she met Todd's yellow-green eyes again, she was surprised to see a hint of softness. "I see," he replied. He opened his mouth for a moment, and then shut it, evidently changing his mind about saying whatever he'd intended to say.
"Why?" she prompted again when he didn't speak up. She decided that since he'd stated Ronon and Amelia were safe for now—and he had no reason to lie, not when he didn't even have to tell her they'd been taken, too—that he had a reason for keeping them alive and on board his ship. Obviously, he could have escaped on his own, free and clear.
But he hadn't, and she wanted to know why.
"Why did I leave, or why did I take you with me?" His voice had taken on the purring quality again, but this time, it was deeper, and rougher, than she'd heard him use before.
She nodded, licking her dry lips. Suddenly, she was thirstier than she could ever remember being, but she couldn't get herself to ask him for water. Hell, she wasn't even sure if he drank water, let alone would have any he'd be willing to spare.
It was several long moments before Todd met her eyes again and answered her.
"With the poisoning of the food supply, and the fracturing of the Wraith, we stand in a precarious position," he finally replied. "It would be to our advantage to secure a way of feeding that would not bring us into conflict with other Wraith. Your proposal was . . . not unadvantageous, should it succeed."
"There's no reason we couldn't do that at the base Atlantis set up," she pointed out. "All of my medical equipment and samples are there, and my notes. I don't have access to the Atlantis database, either, and Carson's one of the best minds out there—he was the one who started the retrovirus in the first place! None of that's here!"
She waved her arms around the empty cell, suddenly acutely aware of her loss. There was nothing except the clothes on her back in the cell with her, and she'd never felt more naked. Without her gear, her tech, and her supplies, she wasn't Doctor Keller. She was simply Jennifer.
And back on Atlantis, they would see her not as Doctor Keller, but as Jennifer in need of rescue.
"I have already taken the necessary precautions." Todd exhaled slowly. "We will be provided with everything we need to complete a proper retrovirus, one that does not remove what makes us Wraith."
He left it unsaid that that was what Atlantis would have tried to do.
"Colonel Sheppard's not going to forget this, and neither will Woolsey," she pressed, ignoring the rest of his words for the time being. She'd read enough about Wraith labs to know he wasn't lying, if that's how he intended to set her up, but that, she decided, wasn't the problem. "If you take us back now, maybe we can fix the damage—"
"Back?" he hissed. "Back on that base I was nothing more than a possession! Tell me, Jennifer, would your people have allowed me to feed?" He paused just long enough to take in her horrified expression. "No, they would not offer someone up if I hungered. And, Jennifer, I hungered." He purred the word so deeply she barely registered it, but it seemed to vibrate through her body. "Out here, I am free. I am free to be Wraith. No matter what cure we develop, Jennifer, I will always be Wraith."
He turned away from her. "As soon as you are recovered, you will be moved to your new labs." He turned to look at her over his shoulder for just a moment, just enough for her to catch a hint of his starburst tattoo. "This is my hive; I will allow no harm to come to you while you work."
With that, before she could even think past what he'd said to open her mouth and protest, to make him see reason, he walked down the corridor and out of her sight.
.
Guide strode towards the control room of the ship, resisting the urge to go and find solace in his own labs, in his bed, or any of his other usual places.
This was his hive, and these were his Wraith. They belonged to him as surely as the humans he was keeping in his cells, and were just as much under his care.
He hadn't lied to John Sheppard when he'd told the colonel that every moment he spent away from the hives, he lost power. With the Wraith at war, queens were becoming harder and harder to come by—the easiest way for another hive to take power, after all, was to remove the current queen and install their own. With the constant in-fighting, many hives, like Guide's own, were left queenless.
Without a queen, leadership fell to those like Guide, but their hold was tenuous at best. A rival hive with a queen could move in at any time to facilitate a takeover, but there was also the risk of others defecting to bigger hives or hives with queens, and forging their own alliances.
As he'd told Sheppard once, the Wraith were not without their own honor, but that honor was owed first to the queen. Without a queen, it often fell to the elders, the ones with prestige and the skill necessary to lead a queenless hive. There was nothing more dangerous than a hive without a queen.
Guide had managed to solidify over twenty queenless hives under his authority, and bring them into his own alliance. Since his captivity with the Atlanteans, however, that number had dropped drastically, and he'd been forced to chart his escape to the one hive he knew would never falter—the hive that he himself had helped create hundreds of years ago. He was as true a leader to them as any queen would have been, and it was only on that hive that he could guarantee the work that he had to accomplish would be done successfully.
He would be forced to tread carefully in the next few months, in order to ensure that all of his planning came to fruition. He was too close to his end goals to allow himself to falter now.
He dropped into his chair with a grace that belied his great age, and reached out to his second with his instructions.
Wordless, his second in command turned and began redirecting the hive ship on the course Guide had indicated.
But as Guide closed his eyes to once again go through his plans, he was met instead with a very human pair of hazel eyes, meeting him with a challenging defiance he'd never before seen, and his plans fell to the side for a moment.
There was something peculiar about the doctor, and Guide allowed himself to revel in his curiosity. At this age, there was very little to be curious about, but somehow, the doctor had managed to pull both his instincts and his curiosity to the front.
He reached out and pulled one of the sweet, pink-skinned fruits that had been left out in the room for any to partake of. Absently, he rolled it around his feeding palm.
Just how else would Jennifer fit into his plans?
.
"I can't believe we're stuck on this hive ship with the Wraith." Amelia hissed the last word, and Ronon didn't have to look up to know she was scowling.
He didn't blame her. After all, Todd hadn't bothered to visit them after he'd unceremoniously had them dumped into the cell and informed them they would be waiting there for a short duration. By Ronon's count, that had been close to six hours ago, and there was no telling how long they'd been unconscious before that.
But six hours was more than enough time for Atlantis to discover what had happened, and Ronon had complete faith that Sheppard was already planning on how to rescue them—if Ronon didn't get them out first.
"Don't worry," Ronon spoke up from where he was currently sitting against the wall. He wished the bastard had left him with his blaster, or any of his knives, or, well . . . any of his hidden weapons, but he wasn't surprised Todd had removed them while both he and Amelia had been knocked unconscious by the gate. "I'll get us out of here."
Amelia turned from where she was pacing by the doorway. "Oh, and what am I, a useless limp noodle?" She tried to sound miffed, but her breath caught at the smirk he sent her.
"Nothing about you is useless." He got to his feet and walked over to her. When he reached her, he gently tugged her arm out until she offered her hand. "This hand beat me at arm wrestling." He traced his fingers along the contours of her palm, enjoying the feel of her callouses against his fingertips. She was a bold woman, a proud woman—a warrior spirit to match his own. "You're as great a warrior as any I have ever seen. We'll get out of here."
She met his eyes just as she twisted her hand and captured his. With one sharp pull, she brought him into her. "No," she breathed, tugging sharply so that he was off balance. She used the momentum to twist him into the wall, and then she pressed herself against him.
Surprise showed clearly on his face. "No?" he repeated, shifting against her.
He didn't dare move away from her. They'd been dancing around like this for weeks. Sometimes, he'd been the hunter, and sometimes, she'd done the hunting herself, but the ancestors be damned because Ronon had no intention of fleeing her, even if he could have right then.
"No." She moved closer, until their whole bodies were touching. "I'm going to be the one to get us out."
He knew a challenge when he heard one, and he accepted the dare for what it was, just as he accepted and then returned the hot kiss she pressed on him a moment later. As he slid his fingers into her hair and around her waist and felt her mimic his actions, it never occurred to him that, for the first time, when he looked into a woman's eyes—into Amelia's eyes—he never once thought of the woman he'd loved and lost on Sateda.
All he thought of then was how good her lips felt against his own.