Authors Note: This hasn't been beta-read so I apologize if it has grammar/spelling errors in or if the characters sound a bit off. Please let me know what you think of this, complaints, suggestions; any feedback would be helpful as long as it is constructive.
Spoilers: For Season One episodes 1-14
Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to Stargate in any incarnations of course and I'm not making any money, this is just some harmless fanfic fun.
They'd been on Narda that day, a small commercial world. Green and blue, pretty in the usual way worlds with humans on were.
People rarely stayed on the planet long but it seemed to be a well known interplanetary marketplace according to Teyla, with traders from many worlds gathering there every week or so.
This was the second time they'd visited, all of them loaded up like donkeys with things Altantis could spare for barter and appropriately his pack was loaded with simple scientific instruments incase of any more technologically advanced societies visiting.
He scoffed at that idea, they'd hardly seen any planets which had technology that stretched into the 1900's by Earth standards.
Teyla was standing across the area with Ford and Sheppard and a dark haired trader.
She'd called those two over a while ago, the trader having expressed any interest in what the other two were carrying as far as he could tell.
So it left him standing bang in the middle of the crowd market square, hundreds bumbling around him, the sounds of the Stargate dialing in the distance barely audible over the crowd.
He felt bored, the trading would likely take ages so he sat down on the monument nearby that served as the marker for the market.
He felt an uneasiness in his stomach but shrugged it off as hunger and tucked into a energy bar.
Rodney always felt better after food, though this time eating didn't shake the feeling. It was odd, like his body revolting against his common sense.
Of course he knew he was being silly, the masses of strange people might have been what was spooking him. he wasn't too sure it was that but he ignored it anyway, settling down to give thought to what Elizabeth had asked him to organise shortly before the start of this mission.
Apparently Peter had suggested a 'quiz and chips' to boost morale and have a bit of fun and she had left him and peter in charge of organising the questions. Obviously the two of them couldn't think up a wide enough base of appropriate questions, their fields being science. Rodney was sure they could add some multicultural questions about England and Canada but still they needed more people, someone for films perhaps. Mostly he wondered where the hell they'd get the chips from for it. It wasn't like Atlantis was a cornucopia of snack food and they'd yet to find something resembling a replicator. Was a shame too, chocolate supplies were getting too low for his liking and he'd been craving doughnuts since they'd gotten there.
It was then he wished he'd taken his gut feeling more seriously. Teyla called out at the same time the sounds of the wraith darts met their ears.
The eery zooming noises of the gliders all around clashed with the screams and shouts of the scared masses.
He lost sight of the rest of the team, panicking he fumbled and dropped his radio, reaching down to pick it up and getting trampled on by a woman pushing through the crowd. She wasn't the only one desperate to get out he noticed, for behind her the beam of a dart approached with people scrambling to get out of the way. Some poor souls stumbled arms reaching out of the beam for help but not enough to save them. No one risked pulling them out incase they too would be sucked away with them.
He heard a shout over the mesmerising melody of the beams approach
"Rodney!" Sheppard called out. He traced the voice back to an opening to the caves, the only refuge and so full that there were people scrambling to get under the shelter. There were women and children and men alike only metres away but unable to escape to it and so taken by the wraith in a split second, despair frozen on the briefly lingering image of their face in the air before they were gone completely.
No one here had expected the Wraith to come and the market was now a throng of fearful people herded like cattle by the wraith shadows. He was in the dead centre of them , no way out except for the path infront being cleared by the shimmering beam, devoid of life and leading to death.
He had swallowed nervously, wishing he believed in some sort of deity to pray for a miracle to.
But there had been nothing left to do except stand and wait for it, he turned his head glancing to the team to say a silent goodbye. They all watched bitterly, unable to prevent it.
That had been two weeks ago.
The first week they had been kept in a large cell of a hundred or more people, he presumed them all taken from Narda too, some had goods on them still.
They had been fed which had been little comfort to him considering it felt like he was plumping himself up like a Christmas turkey for some hungry Wraith out there, he was as good as a walking happy meal.
So for once he'd lost his appetite, eating only enough to sustain himself and stop a hypoglycemic reaction. But then again even the hardiest of stomach might consider it difficult to keep an appetite when your cell mates disappeared a rate of one every few hours to be drained by life-sucking alien vampires. And why couldn't they just eat cows or something? Though they treated humans like their equivalent anyway.
By the second week there were maybe 40 of them left and that was when they'd moved them to a smaller cell so they could reuse the large cell he guessed, fill it up with more hapless human cattle.
There had been a boy, maybe about eight, who'd tried to escape as they'd escorted them to their new holding place.
He'd run between the long legs of the wraith guard, being so small he'd managed easily and he had smiled for a second in glee to be free but it was short lived, futile and the guards had simply made throaty sounds McKay thought were laughter and drained the poor boy right there in front of his weeping mother.
No one else had done a thing, walking on, beaten down and beyond caring for even themselves. The woman had just stood there watching her sons lifeless body. The guards had shifted, making noises at her whilst she stood ever transfixed by the scene.
So he had cradled her, his arm around her shoulder and pulled her along safely following as instructed down the dark corridors further into the alien ship.
After the first few hours she had stopped crying and spoken a little. Her name was Cinta and her sons name as he already knew had been Armesh. She had chanted the name over and over under her breath as she cried for those hours, not appearing to notice her words, simply her loss.
He had wondered her name since he had woken in the original cell. She was the first person he had noticed there. For a moment he had seen her from behind and his heart caught in both hope and fear because he had sworn she could have been Elizabeth, until she had turned around. Her face was still similar to his leaders but instead of green eyes shining out, grey ones leaked out with fear ever present.
A further week and he, Cinta and a few men had been the only ones spared. They just didn't know for how long, it was only a matter of time as to when they would be fed off from what he knew of their captors.
He remembered seeing his colleagues face on the desert planet, drained of life but for the bare minimum. It had been so bad the guy had taken his own life so not to be a burden. McKay hoped it wouldn't come to that here, not that he'd have such a luxury as to end his own life here.
It was then after two weeks he'd wondered, faltered in his optimism that they, Atlantis, would be coming to rescue him.
And for the first time since he'd been captured he'd let his emotions overcome him and he had cried in the corner trying to hide the very unmanly sniffling from the others. None had said anything, no one was about to judge a soon to be dead man when they were as dead as him.
Now however he was alone. They had taken the three men, Jontu, Kalesi and Farn, over the last day and then separated himself and Cinta a few hours ago.
More alarmingly he was strapped to a chair but he wasn't sure for whose safety.
Perhaps he wouldn't die straight away but interrogation didn't sound too pleasant either.
And what would they want out of him? The location of Atlantis, of Earth even?
He vowed not to break whatever they did.
Not like last time.
He still felt guilty even though everything had turned out fine, the stormed passed with everyone safe.
The pain in his arm had reminded him for a week or two of his cowardice.
He'd only been able to look Elizabeth and the others in the eye those weeks because he knew he had helped save them all, as well as damning them by giving Koyla what he'd wanted.
He'd held out for a little while, trying to be brave, but bravery could only go so far when faced with the imminent threat of amputation.
He'd given in because he'd rather normally wanted his arm, being quite attached to it like any sane person.
That was how Koyla had got to him, he'd known the price of his arm hadn't been worth withholding the information. He couldn't save the city when dying of blood loss, couldn't do his science too well with only one arm either.
But this time the Wraith wouldn't have anything to hold over him except his own life, which he already knew was doomed.
He'd trust a Wraith about as a far as he could walk strapped into this chair. Even if they offered him his life it wasn't worth condemning the others. It wasn't worth giving them all, and Elizabeth, over to the Wraith for.
Better he be dead than a traitor, no matter what the pain. And he repeated it over and over as he sat suspended in the chair in the dark waiting for them to start and get it all the sooner over with.