"Major Sheppard! Major Sheppard, wake up! Quickly, we must hurry!"
John rubbed his face to wake himself up and stumbled out of the bed. "Teyla?" he called groggily.
"Yes! Please, open the door!"
He unlocked the door and pulled it open, coming face to face with a rather panicked-looking Teyla. That in itself made him nervous. "What's going on?"
"They have taken Dr. McKay," she said, coming straight to the point as always. "Guards came and dragged him right out of his bed and into the street! We did not know until it was too late. Lieutenant Ford has followed them."
"What! Why the hell would anyone..."
"I believe they said something about a murder."
"Murder!" John ran a hand through his hair as he tried to think. Then he dashed back into his room, grabbed his gear, and started strapping it on as he joined Teyla out in the hallway. "Let's go."
They didn't get very far, however, before they saw two men hauling Ford up the stairs towards them. Ford didn't look very happy about it.
"Get your hands off me!" he shouted, trying to break out of their grasp. "What the hell is this?"
"That's what I would like to know," John said, directing a steely gaze towards the bigger of the two men. "Where have you taken Dr. McKay? What the hell is going on here?"
"Your friend has committed a crime for which he must pay," a third man announced as he joined the others at the top of the stairs. He gestured towards John's room and added, "If you will go back inside, I will explain the situation to you."
"I don't give a damn about your explanations," John snapped. "I want you to release my teammate right now. Then we'll be on our way, no questions asked."
"I am afraid that is unacceptable," the man said. "We have a very strict justice system."
"Well, so do we. Trust me, if I believed Dr. McKay had committed some kind of crime, I'd be the first to beat the crap out of him and make sure he was good and sorry for what he'd done, but the fact is, Rodney McKay wouldn't do anything to deserve that. He's not a criminal."
"I appreciate that, Major Sheppard," the man said, his voice level and calm even though John's was almost frantic with his fear and anger. "However, we have evidence that he has committed a most cruel and calculated murder, and I am fairly sure that you will not be able to dispute it once you have heard me out."
John narrowed his eyes at the stranger. "How do you know my name?" he asked.
The man gave a slight smirk. "Everyone here knows who you are, Major," he said. "Come."
John wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to hear what this man had to say, but one look at the two men who had only just let go of Lt. Ford told him that he didn't have much of a chance at leaving before they wanted him to. He rolled his eyes, but nodded for Ford and Teyla to follow him back into his room.
As the stranger closed and locked the door behind them, it suddenly occurred to John that this entire situation was his own fault. He should never have come on this mission while he was unable to give one hundred percent towards the protection of his team. If anything happened to Rodney, it would be on his head for the rest of his life.
"But I didn't do anything!"
The crowd hushed as the man on the platform held up his hand to them and approached Rodney. "Are you able to prove that, Dr. McKay?" he asked.
Rodney looked out at the crowd once more, his eyes searching desperately for any sign of his teammates. Still nothing. "Prove it?" he repeated. "Prove what exactly? What is it that I'm supposed to have done?"
"You were talking to Jassin Tiya earlier today, were you not?"
"Who is Jassin Tiya?" Rodney yelled in exasperation. "I've never heard that name before!"
One of the men who'd dragged him onto the platform ran towards him then, driving his fist into Rodney's stomach. Rodney doubled over in pain, breathless.
"He is the man whose power conversion device you seemed so interested to own," the first man said.
Rodney coughed as he tried to catch his breath. "The scientist?" he said. "I barely talked to him for two minutes. I didn't kill him!"
"You tampered with his device so that it would kill him the next time he tried to activate it. That is the same thing as murder here, Dr. McKay, no matter what the laws are like on your world."
"I barely even touched it!"
This got him a slap across the face that left his cheek stinging and his ears ringing. He was getting sick of the rough treatment. He hadn't taken this many knocks since high school.
"We have witnesses," the man said. "Witnesses who saw you do something to the device while Jassin was not watching, after he told you he would not be selling it to you."
"He took it away as soon as he said that," Rodney argued. "There were people all around... someone must have seen what happened!"
"The only people who witnessed the incident gave the same story, that you lingered around his booth and waited for your opportunity to go into his tent and tamper with the device. You will find no one who will say otherwise."
Rodney stared at the man in stunned silence for a long moment before he found his voice to speak again. "That's what it was about, wasn't it? Everyone crowding around me like that... they were making sure I would be there long enough that this could have happened. I've been set up!"
He could have sworn the man smiled before he turned away and paced across the platform. When he turned back to him, he asked loud enough for his audience to hear, "Did your team leader not fear for others' lives when he saw you handling a weapon?"
Rodney blinked, "What?"
"I believe his words were, 'Are you sure you should be touching that? Don't kill anybody with it.'"
Those words sounded awfully familiar to Rodney. "Yeah... he said that. What about it?"
"He obviously believed you capable of taking lives."
"No!" Rodney cried. "He was... he was joking around! What, you people have never heard of sarcasm?"
Another fist to the stomach almost drove him to the ground. "I guess not," he gasped.
"I, Councillor Mackush, declare you guilty of the murder of citizen Jassin Tiya. For your crime, you will be sentenced to life imprisonment, having only yourself for company so you will have much time to think about what you have done."
Rodney's jaw dropped in horror. "What!"
Mackush nodded to the two men who were still standing by. "Take him to the prison."
Panic set in as they started to move towards Rodney. "Look," he said desperately, "I don't know what happened to that device, and I don't know why you're trying to pin whatever it was on me, but just know this... if something happens to me, my teammates will make you pay for it."
"Are you so sure about that?" Mackush pointed out to the audience, and Rodney followed his gaze to a spot at the back of the crowd. Major Sheppard, Lt. Ford and Teyla were skirting their way around the people, heading for the town limits and the Stargate.
They were leaving him behind.
"Major!" Rodney cried. "Help me!"
Sheppard turned to look over at him, but before Rodney could call out anymore, he felt a sharp pain at the back of his head. His legs turned to mush as stars exploded in front of his eyes, and he slumped to the ground, losing consciousness before he'd even finished falling.