Chapter 14

As his confusion began to clear, Sheppard woke to find his mouth full of rainwater and his back cold and clammy. The shadowy trees spun around in a crazy dance above him, spiralling like autumn leaves caught up in a breeze. He lay there, lost in his bubble-wrap world, aware only vaguely of shapes and sounds around him. Was he dreaming? Had he had too much to drink? No, he was wet, wet and sticky, and...choking!

He rolled onto his side and coughed out the water that had gathered in his throat as he'd laid unconscious, aware now of the mud clinging to his clothes and the aching sensation growing throughout his body. The muffled sounds around him became more distinct – it was a voice, a voice calling his name.

'Colonel Sheppard. Colonel Sheppard, Sir. Are you all right?'

Lifting his heavy head, he saw Garcia crawling across the few feet of ground separating them, pain etched into her features. He tried to sit up, but the dizziness was too much for his brain to cope with and he fell back in the mud again as she leaned in over him.

'Colonel, are you all right?' she repeated more urgently.

'Radio...help,' he ordered, his speech still odd to his buzzing eardrums. This was all too familiar, even though a year had passed since he'd last been hit with a sonic pulse, he recalled the effects only too well. Where the hell had Sarayah got herself one of those guns? Maybe she'd found a stash left somewhere on Medulsa by the Atrascans who had jumped him for her.

Remembering the others, he activated his radio, while Garcia made the call to Carter. 'Newman, Ronon, come in.'

The silence his call met with was worrying, but he tried to calm his nerves by thinking that if she'd shot them after hitting him and Garcia, they could still be coming round.

'Newman, Ronon, Come on, guys. Make some noise.'

A fuzzy grunt followed by a 'Here, Sir,' told him Newman was just regaining his senses. But there was still nothing from Ronon.

Experience told Sheppard Ronon took a lot of stunning and should be alert by now. 'Ronon?'

Nothing. The forest fell silent except for the sound of rain hitting the leaves and showering down onto the ground. 'Ronon, please respond!'

It was too long – Sheppard knew that, but just didn't want to admit what it more than likely meant. Garcia squatted beside him. 'Can't raise him, Sir?'

'We need to search for him. Newman, turn on the light on your P-90 so we can make your position.'

Off to their right a faint dot of light flicked on, denoting where Newman still lay on the sodden ground. They staggered and crawled their way over to him, the ground too slippery for their weakened limbs to deal with. The sergeant was just pushing up on his elbows, rubbing his temple and almost falling down again. Somehow, between them, he and Garcia found the strength to haul Newman to his feet and hold him until he was more stable.

'Colonel Carter wants us to return to the village, Sir,' Garcia told him. 'She doesn't think there are enough of us to take on Sarayah, and with Lorne's team ferrying medical supplies and the rest of them patrolling the village, she can't spare anyone to help.'

Much as he hated to admit it, he was beginning to agree that even three armed military people couldn't take her on. She was a natural at hunting and evasion, and although Ronon had spent seven years on the run from the Wraith, it seemed even the Satedan's skills didn't measure up to the challenge.

He scraped the rain and mud from his face, scouring their surroundings. 'I'm not giving up on Ronon just yet. If you guys want to go back, go ahead. I'll follow on once I know where he is.'

Their response was immediate, both of them agreeing to stick with him and continue the search, which now included tracking down one of the search team. He ordered them to head toward the tunnel entrance, hoping she was concealing the Satedan there.

Raising his weapon with aching shoulders once more, Sheppard struggled against the elements to stay on his feet and find his friend. From time to time he tried his radio, having to shout above the rumble of the thunder. But he never received a response.

They reached a bank, and the other two in his party couldn't find the strength or co-ordination to mount it when Sheppard's sheer determination helped drive him on.

At the top, he turned to survey the landscape ahead of him, a flash of lightning casting its brilliance across the ground that lay on the downward slope before him. There, at the bottom, he saw tracks...vehicle tracks. They were fresh and headed off into the distance until they met a wide stream, from where they simply disappeared.

She had a truck of some kind. The crazy bitch had gone and got herself some wheels.

'Ronon!' he yelled into his radio one last time in the futile hope his friend had been lying unconscious and undiscovered to this point.

This time, static announced an incoming message, but his momentary relief was short-lived when Sarayah's voice replied, 'I'm afraid, Ronon is unable to answer at this moment. Perhaps I can pass a message to him for you.'

Though he wanted to scream every expletive he'd ever learned at her, Sheppard swallowed deeply and told himself it wouldn't help. He had to stay calm...as calm as she sounded.

'Your argument is with me, Sarayah. Let Teyla and Ronon go and we'll talk about this.'

A pause followed and he thought he had lost contact. Her answer, when it came, made him wish he had.

'The time for talking has passed, John. Now it's time to atone.'

oooOOOooo

'Where the hell did she get a truck?' Rodney demanded, his voice shrill with anxiety.

Sheppard sat on his bed, head in his hands, water dripping onto the wooden floor surrounding his hunched form. 'I'm guessing the same place she got the sonic gun. To tell you the truth, I didn't ask; she wasn't exactly in the mood for a conversation.'

'And how the hell did she take down Ronon long enough to get him to her truck? Even Wraith stunners don't knock him out first time?'

Sheppard lifted his head wearily, sending a pleading look Sam's way. 'Again, we don't know yet, Rodney. And right now that's not our major concern. We just have to find him. We'll get our answers once we have Ronon and Teyla back.'

Dr Keller bustled in from the other room where she had been treating Garcia and Newman since their return to the village. 'Okay, Colonel. No more avoidance. I need to check you out.'

Sighing, Sheppard let her run through the necessary checks to ascertain there were no serious after effects from the sonic pulse gun Sarayah had used on them. He ached from head to foot, but the residual pain was already less than it had been during his miserable trudge back to the village.

Once the tests were completed, she stood back and folded her arms across her chest to regard him. 'Well, you haven't been seriously affected by the pulse, but you don't look well.'

Glancing down at his saturated clothing, filthy and torn from his exertions, he couldn't help but huff out a laugh. 'To be fair, Doc, you're not exactly seeing me at my best.'

'I'm not talking about the dirt, Colonel. You look exhausted. I'm ordering you to sit things out for the next twenty-four hours...at least.'

'What? You have to be kidding!'

'She's right, John. Sarayah's on the run now, so let us handle this,' Sam agreed.

'Sarayah on the run is when she's at her most dangerous. We need every available person –'

'You're injured and you're too close to the problem, John. I'm ordering you to step down.'

He stood now, rather too shakily to make his point in the way he needed to, so he tried to cover his lack of strength with an excess of attitude. 'You're...ordering me? Do I have to remind you that I am the person here who knows her better than anyone else?'

'No, John, you don't. And that's exactly why I'm insisting that you stay here in the village and leave the searching to us. Everything Sarayah does is done to affect you. If she sees it has no effect, maybe she'll...lose interest.'

Sheppard blinked at her, then flicked his eyes in Jennifer's direction. He saw the doubt in her expression. She knew as well as he did that ignoring Sarayah would not break her obsession with controlling him; if anything, it would more than likely make her craving worse.

'Tell her that won't work,' he said simply.

'He's right, Colonel. People with Sarayah's condition don't just...lose interest. This is her focus; she won't stop until she's completed what she set out to do.'

'Thanks...though I could have done without the part where you made her sound like the Terminator,' he grumbled.

'Even so, you've got a head injury, a fractured arm and lacerations. On top of that you've been poisoned and now shot with a sonic pulse weapon,' Sam listed for him. 'I'm sorry to say this, John , but I think you might be a liability in your current condition.'

'My current condition is just fine,' he said through gritted teeth. Then he looked down at himself. 'Although, admittedly, I could do with a little sprucing up.'

Sam couldn't help but smile. Then, shaking her head, she relented a little. 'All right, John. Take the next twenty-four hours to rest and I'll re-evaluate your role,' she offered.

'Twenty-four hours!'

'That's the least I expect from you...and it is most definitely an order, so quit while you're ahead,' she warned him. 'Now, I suggest you get cleaned up and we all get some sleep, so the rest of us can resume work on the search and the gate in the morning.'

'In the morning? She could be miles away by then!' Rodney whined.

'Not if Colonel Sheppard's still here she won't be,' Jennifer replied, then she looked apologetically at him. 'Sorry.'

Reluctantly, Sheppard agreed to Carter's terms. He hoped that by complying now she might change her mind by morning, especially if he got a good night and looked the part.

'Okay, twenty-four hours it is. So, Doc, any chance of getting my shirts back now?' he asked, pulling his dripping clothes away from his skin to emphasise his need.

'Of course. They're in my pack. I'll go get them for you.'

Rodney paced as Sheppard tried to wipe some of the moisture from where he'd been perched on his bed with a damp hand.

'We should have had the 'gate fixed by now. We need to get off this planet before she goes completely nuts on us.'

With difficulty, Sheppard yanked his soaking wet shirt off over his head and tossed it into a corner. 'No, what we need to do is fix the 'gate so we can bring every available marine through here, hunt Sarayah down, find Teyla and Ronon and then get all of us off this planet before she goes "nuts". I'm not leaving her here to take it out on the villagers again.'

'I agree,' Sam nodded. 'We can't leave her here. We'll need to ensure her capture before we can completely put Guedeseo behind us.'

Jennifer stepped back into the room, looking pale and shocked. Sheppard couldn't help but notice the lack of clothing in her hands. 'Changed you mind on the clothes, huh?' he ventured hopefully.

She swallowed hard before explaining. 'They're gone. I had them in my pack under my bed, and now they're gone.'

'Oh, now that's just creepy,' Rodney sneered. 'What is it with Sarayah and stealing your stuff?'

'That's not the worst of it,' Jennifer said, raising her voice above the ranting scientist's. 'Ten doses of the sedative I brought to keep her under control are gone, too. They were in the same pack.'

Her words hit Sheppard as hard as any right hook could. Sarayah and drugs were a bad mixture, a very bad mixture. 'Well, that's not the best news I've had today,' he quipped, his heart thundering against his ribs. He turned his back so they couldn't see how scared that thought had him, taking a moment to collect himself. Behind him, he heard Rodney suck in a breath through his teeth, and remembered the scarring on his back from his previous two encounters with his mad stalker. Self-conscious about the marks she'd left on him, he'd been pretty careful not to let others see them, but his momentary distraction had caused him to drop his guard.

He turned back again, catching Rodney's pained expression before he could mask it, as well as Carter's shock.

'Well, at least we know how she managed to over-power the big fella now,' McKay said quietly, trying to fill the awkward silence.

'Rodney, give John your jacket,' Sam instructed him.

'What? Oh...sure.'

McKay shrugged out of his coat and tossed it Sheppard's way. The fit wasn't great, but it was better than nothing.

'I'm gonna go see if I can rustle you up some dry clothes,' Jennifer offered, thumbing toward the door over her shoulder.

'We have more important things to do first,' Sheppard told her. 'If Sarayah is likely to hang around like you think she might, we need to make sure every access hatch to the tunnels in this village is blocked so she can't take anyone else. We know she has the means now. And we also need to secure the food and water supplies before she poisons or starves everyone here.'

'Agreed,' Sam nodded, standing and stretching out her limbs. 'Let's get to it.'

Sheppard stood back and let them exit before him, tugging the jacket down to cover his waist. Though he tried to stay focused on the here and now, his mind kept wandering to what Sarayah was doing with his friends. Taking Teyla was enough to get his attention, yet she's played innocent long enough to get Ronon, too. If she wanted to punish him, she could have just killed them and left them where he could find them. And if she still wanted to get her talons into him, why hadn't she dragged him away when she'd stunned him with the sonic pulse gun? This was all part of some kind of plan. He just hadn't quite figured out what that plan was yet.

oooOOOooo

After almost four hours of driving, with the stars and orbiting satellites the only light other than the insipid headlights illuminating the ground ahead of her, Sarayah slowed the vehicle and drew to a halt outside one of numerous wooden buildings forming one of the migratory stage points on Guedeseo.

The vehicle was one she'd stolen from Atrasca before heading for Guedeseo itself. During her sessions with Dr Heightmeyer, she had gleaned enough information to know the Wraith had attacked the planet, leaving the population decimated. So, she had taken her chances, knowing they had the technologies she needed, and hoping they would put up no resistance.

On arriving there, the scene before her had been truly shocking. The planet was ravaged, and the place where the villagers had once lived on the surface had been razed to the ground, leaving nothing but the scorched remnants of shelters and numerous dried up husks that had once been living souls. Forging on to the underground facility, she had found the lift shaft disabled and as such had been forced to climb down the hundreds of feet to reach the level where all the research and development of the Atrascan society had taken place, almost killing herself in the process. But the pain and the lacerations to her hands and inner arms, mostly from sliding down the cables that connected to the left car, had been a small price to pay when she had reached the bottom and found the weapons and supplies she'd needed to help set up her trap.

Ignoring the bodies lying strewn about her, she had headed on to the vehicle bay, at first considering taking the one she was most familiar with, the personnel transporter they had used on Karafus, but then selecting another model. That one, smaller and lighter, could reach and maintain greater speeds, and since she would not have the need to transport such large quantities of personnel and supplies as they had for the research post on Karafus, that one definitely seemed the better option.

Though a little different to the larger vehicle, it had been easy to get used to. Taking it through the 'gate to Guedeseo without first knowing what she might encounter had been a calculated risk, but it had paid off. It wasn't as if she could check the lay of the land first, then return for it. So, she had scanned the terrain of the planet with the onboard equipment, located several settlements, though only one with life signs, hidden the truck and then headed for it to make herself comfortable until someone from Atlantis came looking for her. She'd only taken three gate trips in total to buy her enough time to worm her way into people's trust; she knew it wouldn't take them too long to work it out. Dr Heightmeyer had explained a little of the process gone through to track her last time in their sessions, supposedly to make her understand the futility of running, but she wasn't that stupid. And the information, though intended to discourage her, had actually spurred her on.

This hadn't been her first plan, though. Initially, she'd planned to grab supplies from Atrasca and head to Atlantis to take her chances there and remove Sheppard forcibly, but when Balfor had refused to give her the gate address and codes she needed to get there, she'd been forced to come up with another scheme. Now this was it, she was stuck here on Guedeseo for the rest of her life, so she had to make it worth her while.

Admittedly, Sheppard himself arriving on Guedeseo had initially thrown her and made her rethink her plans. She'd expected other Atlantis personnel to hunt her down eventually, and had planned to take them hostage to force Sheppard to join her there. His arrival with his team had been an absolute gift. Who better to take hostage than the people he worked most closely with? Unfortunately, getting to McKay was most likely to prove impossible as he was almost never alone since the arrival of that Carter woman, but that didn't really matter; she only needed two of Sheppard's team to make her point.

Jumping out of the vehicle, she headed for the rear and flung open the door. Ronon lay motionless, still unconscious and restrained, exactly where she had dropped him all those hours ago. She rolled him onto his back, spinning him round so his head was toward the door then dragging him out and dropping him to the ground in an undignified heap. His left arm and cheekbone bore grazes from her clumsy attempts to hoist him into the vehicle quickly before Sheppard and his two little helpers had roused; the man was a dead weight, and a considerable one at that. It had taken all her will power not to go back to Sheppard and take him too, but that wasn't how she wanted this to work. If he wanted his friends back, he had to show her how much they were worth to him. He had to come to her, do all the running, all the begging, then, if he was very lucky, she might consider releasing them. If he was very, very lucky.

A low groan issued from Ronon's lips, warning her that he would soon surface from the effects of the sedative. Finding the drugs in Keller's bag, along with Sheppard's clothing, had been an unexpected boon; she'd recognised the name from the times she'd been injected with it herself back on Medulsa, at times when the Lantean doctors had deemed her too troublesome to reason with. There was no time to lose, she had to get him inside and restrained before he woke enough to put up a struggle. This one was feisty, though in a more primitive way than Sheppard himself. He was easy to anger, and let everyone see exactly how he felt...and she still owed him for the discomfort and humiliation of having him sit on her while transporting her back to imprisonment on Atlantis the last time they'd met. He would definitely pay for that.

Using every ounce of strength she had, she heaved the huge man toward the door of the nearest building, dropping him long enough to turn the handle and shoulder the door back before dragging him in across the wooden floorboards. She hauled him over to one of the support pillars and secured him to it with several lengths of rope. She couldn't take a chance of him escaping before she'd taught Sheppard a lesson in obedience.

Catching hold of the Satedan's face, she lifted it to study his features. Without the scowl he permanently wore when looking at her, he appeared far younger than she'd thought...much younger than Sheppard himself. He was a boy in comparison, but carried himself in a way that suggested his life had not been easy, and he knew how to fight for survival. His hair was odd...perhaps tribal. She'd never seen hair like it before and lifted the dreads to examine them, finding something concealed along one of the shafts. A knife...

After that, she set about a thorough search of his hair, pulling out fifteen more of the tiny but potentially lethal blades. Only when she was completely satisfied that her efforts had located them all did she stop and turn her attention to the more refined form trussed to the support behind her.

She smiled, sauntering over to Teyla and squatting before her, releasing the gag from her mouth. 'And how are you, Teyla?

'Why are you doing this?' Teyla demanded, her eyes blazing. 'You already have me, why did you feel the need to take Ronon, too.'

'Because I need at least two of you hostage for this to work,' she explained, releasing the flask of water from her belt and tipping some to Teyla's dry lips.

The woman drank, though she did not look grateful. Sarayah didn't mind that; Teyla's spirit was a good quality in a woman, but something to be squashed in a man.

'What are you planning? Why will you not leave Colonel Sheppard be?'

'Well, as you yourself said, all actions have consequences. He is about to find out just how serious the consequences can be.'

'You heard that...you were watching us talk?'

'I have been watching you all very closely since the moment you set foot into that village. You are all so...weak minded. Except Sheppard...but that can be remedied.'

'Colonel Sheppard does not want any trouble with you, Sarayah. He just wants to...help you. You are sick...you do not know what you are doing.'

Furious to be patronised in that way she lashed out, slapping Teyla hard across the cheek. 'I am not sick. I do not need his pity or his help. I need him to understand what he has cost me, and I will not stop until I am sure he fully understands that and is sorry.'

Teyla's eyes drilled into her with impressive defiance, despite her sickening condition and current situation. Why a woman such as her would have let any man make her pregnant defied understanding. She was strong, wilful, and now she was little more than a glorified incubator. A thought suddenly crossed her mind, and her eyes wandered down to the Athosian's swollen abdomen. 'The child – is it John's?'

'No...Colonel Sheppard and I are colleagues and friends, nothing more,' Teyla replied, but there was fear in her eyes now, the fear of a mother desperate to protect her child.

'You aren't lying to me, are you, Teyla?' Sarayah pressed, pulling a knife from her belt and pressing it to her throat. 'I really don't like to be lied to.'

Teyla swallowed audibly but held her gaze as if she felt sure Sarayah would read the truth in her eyes. 'The child is not John's. I swear it.'

Sarayah stared into her eyes a while longer, then nodded her acceptance. 'I believe you. Lucky for the child it is not. I hope you are bearing a girl child. I should hate to think a strong woman like you would spawn another wearisome male.'

Though she didn't answer, the fact Teyla could no longer look her in the eye had to be a clue and she knew that. 'You carry a male! I am disappointed in you, Teyla, I really am...but I suppose you had no choice.'

Though clearly angered to have her child criticised, Teyla held her peace to protect him. Sarayah stood, rolling her aching shoulders strained by the heavy lifting and dragging. 'Now, we must get you some food or you will perish before I have my fun.'

She strode away, smirking at the look of horror now registering on Teyla's pretty face. Oh, Sheppard would rue the day he'd walked into her life and turn it upside down. She would make certain of that.

A/N: Sorry for the cliffhanger yesterday, but you didn't have to wait too long. Don't worry; the promised whump is coming soon! Thanks to everyone for the reviews. :D