A/N-And...Here's another one! Yay. Okay, continue on.
Disclaimer-Alright, I've said this before. Must you keep making me realize the hard truth that I try so hard to forget? I don't own any of this.
They walked into the isolation room to see the previously unconscious woman staring at them with evil, hazel eyes. Though she was actually quite beautiful, there was something about the way she looked that made her not only seem evil, but also a little scary. Ronon said that she had the demeanor of a warrior, and Teyla said she had the eyes of an assassin. John agreed wholeheartedly to both.
"Well, have you agreed?" John asked her, keeping his voice emotionless.
"Almost." She replied, her eyes narrowing. John in turn narrowed his own eyes in a questioning manner.
"I tell you everything you want to know, and in exchange, you send me to be imprisoned on my home world." She said, a gleam in her eyes. John turned away from her and looked quizzically at Col.'s Caldwell and Carter, Mr. Woolsey, Dr. Carson (Dr. Jennifer was staying with Rodney), Ronon, and Teyla. Mr. Woolsey and Col. Carter nodded. But Caldwell gave John a meaningful glance and then nodded. John nodded that he understood.
"Actually, how about this. You tell us everything we want to know, and in exchange, we won't let Ronon" He pointed at Ronon, "loose on you and let him kill you. Instead, we'll send you to one of the planets in this galaxy that seem to really want to see you." John said. He saw her starting to shake her head, and continued speaking. "Look, it's better than you being in an entirely different galaxy, isn't it?" When she hesitated, he knew he had her.
She nodded reluctantly, almost angrily. John nodded back as both of the other colonels stepped up to question her with him.
"Who are you, where are you from, and how and where did you find those devices that made you "invisible"?" Carter asked.
The woman breathed in deeply. "My name is Kelina. I am from Corash. I found the devices during one of my…jobs." She didn't have to specify what kind of jobs she did—they already knew. "I was working with him when we found them." She spat out the him as though it was a dirty word. John glanced at Carter who looked at him without turning her head. Kelina didn't seem to like her partner very much.
"We found them in what appeared to be a cave. But it was not. There were Great Ancient devices there. We were afraid to touch them. For all we knew, the Great Ancient's had built weapons there, and we would be destroyed the moment we touched them." John looked around at the others. Great Ancients? He mouthed to them. Carter and Caldwell just shook their heads, while Ronon smirked lightly. "But then he saw something that was shaped and colored like a palm-sized stone. He picked it up. He saw that one side was flat, and laid that side on his arm, placing it there with his left hand. Suddenly he disappeared. I could not see him. One moment he was standing in front of me, the next he was not. He then took off the stone, and I could see him again.
"We learned that these stones were invisibility devices. However, almost all of them were broken. We took as many as we could carry back to the place that we had been staying and then we tried to fix them. We used Nirvan Stick and Gaesha Cloth, but neither would hold it together for as long as we wished."
"Nirvan Stick and Gaesha Cloth?" John asked, not exactly at Kelina.
"Nirvan Stick is a sticky substance that will stick things together once dried. Gaesha Cloth is the sticky substance placed on a type of cloth. Both work very well for fixing broken things."
John nodded and turned back to the others. "So, like Duct Tape and glue." Sam nodded, almost sarcastically. John turned back to the woman.
"Then we heard that a team of four people carrying items that looked as though they were from the Great Ancient had entered the village and wished to trade. We went and saw them. Both of us immediately saw that they were much more advanced than we were, though none of them appeared to be particularly smart. We decided to go back through the Ancestral Ring with them, under the veil of the Great Ancient's device, to see if there was anyone on their home planet who could fix the devices."
"We came here and we were amazed that this was truly the city of the Great Ancients. We both hid here, away from the eyes of the peoples that had stayed here for so long. We learned where the science station was and went there. We found out who the leader of the science station was and we watched him. We caused problems all around the city by cutting what you call "wires" and damaging the box that held the power source the leader scientist called a "Zed PM". We watched as he fixed things, and then as he yelled at those under him. We decided we liked him. We thought that perhaps we could persuade him to join us willingly. Those thoughts were quickly destroyed, however, when one of our problems caused a great overload in a power area of the city, and a great many people were trapped inside the room that the overload would occur in, including the Dr. McKay. Instead of saving himself, like we would have done and like we thought he would have done, he saved them, waiting to get out until everyone else was safe.
"We decided that we would have to take him by force. It was he that stabbed your Dr. McKay. He tried to double cross me. But it was I who was flying the Great Ship. I dove it into the waters and near that underwater base that the Great Ancients had created. We fought. It was all I could do to land the Great Ship. Then we accidently hit the Great Crystals that controlled the Great Ship, locking us in the back area and Dr. McKay in the front. We fought it out. I believe that we both went down at the same time.
"That is what happened." She finished sarcastically.
John looked at her with steely eyes. The whole add-great-to-anything-Ancient was getting annoying.
"And who is this…him?"
She looked at him, her eyes showing the first small sign of fear that he had seen on her. It was quickly engulfed by anger and spite, but John was sure he had seen it.
"He is called Sal Black."
John heard Teyla gasp, and Ronon tensed beside him.
"Col. Sheppard, I wish to speak with you." Teyla said, surprise in her voice. John nodded and turned toward the doors. He asked no questions, knowing Teyla would tell him what was wrong when they were away from Kelina.
oOo
They entered the debriefing room and sat down. Teyla was fidgeting, and Ronon looked angry—well, angrier than before.
"What is it, Teyla?" John asked immediately.
Everyone else turned to her. She looked at them.
"Sal Black is known throughout the galaxy. His name is one that is feared. They say he will work for anyone, whether it is a person from a poor village, a leader of an entire world, or even a wraith. There are stories that tell of him working for a wraith queen." Teyla looked angry now.
"He will do almost anything for enough money, or for something that he wishes to acquire. He has killed, kidnapped, assassinated, stole, and burned down entire villages. He has been a spy amongst peoples, even in a wraith hive ship, if the stories are true. And even if those are not, what people have seen him do is bad enough that he sparks fear in both peaceful and warlike peoples alike."
"There are many different descriptions in many different areas of this galaxy. I do not believe anyone has ever truly seen him, even when he comes right out to talk with people." Teyla finished.
"He's dangerous." Ronon added.
John looked at them, and then at the two colonels and the two doctors (Jennifer had joined them). They looked back, Jennifer looking slightly afraid, the others looking grim.
"Well, I guess we'll just have to find him sooner rather than later"
oOo
He awoke to the white ceiling of the infirmary. It was quiet. That almost scared him. Almost, because he could hear a few things. Like quiet voices in the background. The squeak of a chair being pushed back. The sound of running water as nurses and doctors washed their hands. The quiet swoosh of a door opening and closing. The sounds of the Atlantean infirmary. He had been here several times before. He knew these sounds. They comforted him rather than scared him. It was a different kind of quiet. It was a good kind of quiet.
He heard footsteps coming towards him. There were quite a few people there. It sounded almost like they were running towards him. Why were they running? It was making a lot of unwanted noise that he didn't really want. Then, beneath the sounds of their footsteps, he heard something else. It was a beeping, and it was getting faster and louder by the second.
Then he became aware of the severe pain in his side. What was going on?
"Rodney? Can you hear me? I need you to take a deep breath. Rodney, a deep breath. Come on." That was Jennifer.
A deep breath? Well, alright then.
He breathed in deeply.
And then he proceeded to choke.
"That's good, Rodney. Good job. Just, keep breathing, alright?"
Keep breathing. Yes. Because breathing is important. It keeps people alive. Alive is good.
But it had been getting difficult to breathe. He found that it was actually much more comfortable, not to mention more restful, to just stop breathing. However, the doctors seemed to think that he needed to continue breathing. It was quite annoying, really.
They kept asking him to breathe, to move his head, to do this, and then that. He was just so tired. He just wanted to rest.
oOo
He had crashed. He had just stopped breathing. One minute he was looking her in the eye, the next he wasn't breathing anymore. They had had to shock him to restart his heart, though it was his lungs that were really affected.
It had scared her. They had thought he would be alright. The one time they leave, even if only for a few minutes, he crashes. Seriously. When they were with him, he was fine. When they left, he was not. The irony of it was horrible. It turned out that they during the major surgeries they had had to perform, as well as the fact that both of the main doctors were tired, dehydrated, and injured, they had missed some internal bleeding. This had spread into his lungs, causing him to stop breathing a few times, only to cough up the blood, breathe again, and start the cycle all over again, until his heart was taxed enough to send him into v-fib. It had happened so fast. Blood was pouring into his lung system, unchecked and uncontrolled.
They had sent him into surgery, stitched him up, and then thoroughly checked to see if there were any side effects or injuries that they hadn't seen. There were not.
Jennifer sat in her office, the door closed to give her some privacy. She cradled her head in her hands and closed her eyes. She was so tired. It had been days since she had slept properly, and then there was the whole kidnapping thing, the I'm-not-sure-if-this-is-a-failure-or-not rescue, the Jumper incident, and then the theres-a-galaxy-wide-known-assassin-and-mass-murderer-loose-somewhere-on-this-planet thing and the Rodney-almost-died-again thing. It had been a stressful week.
"Jennifer?" Jennifer looked up at her name being called. There was John, Teyla, and Ronon, probably there to check up on Rodney.
Jennifer breathed in deeply before planting a smile on her face and looking towards the closed door of her office.
There was a knock on the door, short and polite, yet almost eager sounding.
"Come in." Jennifer said.
The trio walked in, almost uncertainly. John smiled at Jennifer while Teyla came and put a comforting hand on her own.
"Hey guys!" Jennifer said, a little too excitedly. John looked at her strangely, then opened the blinds to the windows and looked out. The windows opened to the infirmary. Rodney was lying in a bed not too far away from the window, his monitors beeping steadily.
"How is he?" John asked, his face still looking toward Rodney.
"He's…He's doing okay. He's not out of the woods yet, but we're pretty sure he'll be fine." Jennifer said, trying to keep her voice steady.
Ronon nodded, his steady eyes on Jennifer. Teyla squeezed her hand reassuringly. John just kept looking out at Rodney.
"Dr. Keller, Col. Sheppard, you're needed in Isolation Room 2 immediately! We have a medical emergency!" Jennifer looked at John, both of them confused. Jennifer rose quickly from her seat and ran out the door, telling the nurses that there was a medical emergency.
John followed quickly behind her, both running towards the Isolation Room.
oOo
When they arrived, Carter quickly moved aside to show Jennifer Kelina, who wasn't breathing. Jennifer ran towards her and started performing CPR until the defibrillator arrived.
They shocked her several times, trying to bring her back to life. It didn't work, though.
Finally, Jennifer was forced to pull back, her eyes downcast for losing another life, even one spent so horribly.
She called it and then covered the body and sent it down for an autopsy.
"We need to talk." Jennifer told Mr. Woolsey and Col. Carter. The two nodded and called a debriefing in, coincidentally, the debriefing room for an hour and a half later.
oOo
Sam walked into the debriefing room and sat down next to Col. Caldwell and Col. Sheppard. A few moments afterwards, Jennifer and Carson walked in, both speaking in urgent, quiet tones.
"Doctors." Mr. Woolsey nods at them. They look at him and then at each other as they sit down.
"What is it, Jennifer?" Carter asks.
Jennifer looks at her, her eyes betraying the worry that she was hiding.
"The lab results came back on Kelina's body."
"That was fast." John interrupted.
"Yes, because I already knew what to look for. There was a small prick in her wrist that I accidentally saw." Jennifer said.
Everyone else looked at her expectantly.
"She was poisoned. It's not a poison I recognize, but it is very close to several found on earth. It caused her to go into cardiac arrest. We couldn't have saved her even if we had been there from the start." Jennifer looked down at this and then looked back up, her eyes sad.
"Well, what exactly, does this mean?" Mr. Woolsey asked, his eyes wide in alarm.
"It means," John said, "That someone murdered her." He looked over at the other two colonels. They both nodded at him.
"Who? You don't think…?" Mr. Woolsey continued, his eyes continuing to get bigger.
"Well, it is the only plausible explanation, Mr. Woolsey." Carter said, looking over at him.
"What is?" Mr. Woolsey said, although Carter could tell he already knew.
"Sal Black is in the city."
TBC.
A/N-Sooooooo, how did you like it? I'm sure there are many thoughts running through your head right now, maybe good, maybe bad, and you know how annoying it is to keep that all in there. I mean, thats a lot of excess information. Why don't you just write them down as a review? yes, what a good idea.