Chapter 10: Not enough time
Rodney felt at a loose end. Ronon had run off to attempt to rescue John and Teyla, and he'd had to tell Nerisha that Siric had already done the same which seemed to make everyone tetchy. Right now, he was feeling alone and outnumbered. He sat on a bench in the Whisper-Master's lair, watching Jasieen as she did... whatever it was she was up to. Nerisha was pacing like an irate cat.
"Are you sure it's him?" she demanded, pausing momentarily in her prowling to glare at Jasieen. The young spy was wearing what looked to Rodney like a cross between a crown and a pair of golden-wrought headphones.
"Yes, Nerisha. He did state his name quite clearly." This comment sent Nerisha into another pacing frenzy.
"I don't get it," Rodney whispered to Jasieen. "Why's it so bad that the guy's her uncle?"
"Because he's the bleeding commander of the Guards and hates the Guilds, that's why!" snarled Nerisha. Jasieen offered Rodney a friendly smile.
"It's complicated," she said soothingly.
"Too right it is."
"Nerisha," said Jasieen, exasperated, "perhaps your energies would be better used aiding Genik? After all, if his plan is to work, you will be needed to talk the other Guild houses into it."
The irate thief stalked out of the room with a growl in her throat. Rodney let out the breath he'd been holding. "So..."
"You had better go with Nerisha," Jasieen suggested, placing the strange device back on her head. "Then you might actually learn something. At the very least, you can attempt to keep her in order."
Rodney looked to the door and then back to Jasieen. She was smiling in a way that he though to be cruel and vindictive. Left with no alternative, McKay followed Nerisha.
***
Chan had been giving Teyla a crash-course in lock-picking Obviously the guards hadn't been as thorough in their searching as they could have been..So far Teyla was onto her seventh lock-pick as she tried once more to release Chan, with Sheppard watching the corridor. He motioned quickly that someone was coming, giving Teyla enough time to hide the broken picks and scoot over to the opposite wall as John hurried back to his seat beside Chan.
The guard captain surveyed the scene in the cell, shaking his head as if to tell them that he was onto their scheming. Hw nodded to two guards behind him as he unlocked the cell. The pair dragged in a broken figure, dumping him along the same wall as Teyla rested against. Sheppard felt sudden recognition as the guards left. A glance to Teyla told him the he wasn't the only one who recognized one of the guards. But what the hell was Ronon doing playing soldier?!
"Hope you don't mind the new cell-mate," said the guard captain, locking the door again."We're starting to run out of room." And with that, they were gone.
They all remained frozen in place for a minute or two after the guards departure. Sheppard was still trying to work out what Ronon was up to. Was he planning to spring them? Was he alone, or were there others working with him? He noticed Teyla moving cautiously over to the fallen figure near her.
"Be careful," he warned, still keeping an eye on their new room mate. Whoever he was, it looked like the guards had done a real number on him as he hadn't moved since he'd been dumped down. She nodded her acknowledgment as she edged closer. John heard her give a startled gasp as she turned the figure over.
"Teyla, what-"
She didn't need to answer as she pulled the figure into a sitting position against the wall. White matted hair slightly caked in dried dark blood, as was his skin, and the unmistakable scarring on the right hand side of his face.
"Siric?!"
The wraith turned one piercing yellow eye on him before closing it again wit ha hiss. He seemed to be in real agony. There was a low whistle from Chan.
"So this is the elusive Siric? I always thought you'd be older."
Siric growled at him; Sheppard looked at Chan, non-plused. "You mean to say you didn't know him?"
"I've heard enough tales to know better," answered Chan. "They couldn't all be fabrications and exaggerations. I didn't expect him to be quite so young though."
There was another snarl from the wraith and John looked at Siric again. Without the shadow of the hooded robe he wore, the scarring didn't look as bad as it first appeared. Looking past those injuries, tricky though that was, and you could see that Siric really did look young, even by normal ageless wraith standards. He just never came across as a kid the way he acted all the time.
"You okay?" he asked as Siric hissed again in pain.
"I will live."
"That doesn't exactly fill me with confidence."
The wraith attempted to snarl again but it was cut off by a yowl of pain as Teyla attempted to clean away some of the blood from his face. He lashed out at her, and Sheppard saw a rip in his shirt with a dark stain over his sternum. The sight sparked a pain in a scar on his own chest in the same spot.
"You were fed on?"
"Other way round," moaned Siric, settling back against the wall now Teyla was out of reach.
"You were given the Gift?" Sheppard saw Chan's eyes narrow in question and he merely mouthed 'long story' before asking, "So what's wrong?"
"You can't feed can you?" interjected Chan. "Of course that's it!"
"What is?" asked Teyla.
"The Government use some of their wraith to acquire information, with me so far?"
"You mean torture."
"Same difference. But the thing is, they can either use the wraith as the instrument of torture or to extend the punishment, give 'em more time to break a person."
Sheppard looked back to Siric. He was leaning back into the wall, eyes closed in obvious agony. John followed the flow of the wraith's scarring to his withered hand. His feeding hand. And then it clicked. Sometimes he wished Carson was around, because the Scottish doctor would probably have reached the right conclusion much quicker than he did. The wraith's injures prevented him from feeding so maybe his body had learned to cope without. The Gift of Life though must have triggered something in the wraith to switch his body's desired food requirements. A memory from his recent past floated to the surface of his mind.
"For wraith, hunger burns like a fire. Tell me Sheppard, if you found yourself burning alive would you settle for just one drop of water or would you take more?"
Right now, it looked like Siric would settle for Niagara Falls and anything else he could get his hands on. There'd be time enough to deal with that later though.
"Look," he said, "I know you're probably not feeling your best right now, but we need to get outta here. Can you pick locks?"
***
Rodney sifted uneasily standing by Nerisha's side. He was starting to feel like that guy in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, you know, the one that forgot the password out and ended up being killed when the thieves came back and found him in their lair? He'd read the book once when he was bored but hadn't finished it.
Right now, Nerisha was negotiating with members from the other Guilds in the city, trying to convince them to help in a joint attack on a part of the city. Each of the leaders wore a different coloured robe, which he supposed symbolised the different Guilds. Okay, he didn't think that, Jasieen had told him that, thanks to this strange telepathic amplification device that he'd been given. He'd have to take one back to Atlantis and find out how it worked. A man in a dark red robe to Nerisha's left suddenly spoke up.
"Nerisha, siht gninnalp uoy era yhw?"
Rodney didn't have time to be confused as Nerisha replied in an equally garbled tongue, "Noitcartsid a deen ew tub denosirpmi esoht eucser ot nalp a evah ew."
There was that familiar buzzing in the back of his head that told him Jasieen wanted to talk to him. What could she possible want now?
"I just thought you would appreciate an explanation. Nerisha and the others are merely attempting to keep the real reasoning behind the attack on the Lower city a secret," she informed Rodney politely. "It is unclear exactly how many or even who is in the pay of the Government and will report this back to them."
Now he was confused. He thought they wanted the government people to know about the attack so that the place where they were holding the prisoners wouldn't be so heavily guarded. Wasn't that the point of organizing a distraction?
"Yes, but we would rather that they did not know that this is a distraction. That defeats the purpose of a distraction."
Feeling slightly ridiculous that a nineteen year old girl was having to point out the basics in creating a distraction when he was far older and probably more experienced than her, (at least that's what he believed) , Rodney returned his attention to Nerisha's nonsensical conversation. He really hoped they could pull this off and rescue Sheppard and Teyla.
"We will, Dr McKay. We will…"
Please R&R, this story's nearly done!
Next chapter: Into the Lion's Den