Ignatius couldn't understand what had just happened. He had woken up, to find his mind filled with images. Memories he wasn't even sure were his, they were memories that gave him pain.
Pain that he didn't remember but felt to be his own, still he felt them close to mind like dreaming awake.
He couldn't explain it; Ignatius knew he was on a cell in the city of Atlantis. But his mind acted as if he was somewhere else, taking over completely.
He felt people around him, but he couldn't see. There was something covering his face, and some sort of recording on his ears. He was lying flat on a table, wrists and ankles tied. He felt incredible tired, but at the same time he was trying to ignore his surroundings. Ignatius was tired of hearing the recording, which was playing over and over again the same words. At the time he didn't care anymore about what it said, but he knew that it made him angry.
The recording stopped and heard a voice instead, "What is your name?"
He replied, name, rank and serial number. That must have been a wrong answer because in an instant he felt his body spasm out of control. There were certain spots that felt as if these people were stabbing him with knifes, very slowly.
Then it stopped and he heard the voice again, "Major Sheppard, you should stop resisting, one way or the other you will call yourself of the Genii."
He told the voice exactly where the Genii people could go. Not nice, they didn't respond too well to his outburst. He felt they loosened the restraints, but he was easily overcome. There were like five different people trying to control him. They took him off the table and carried him not far, where they placed him inside a tub. It was filled with ice-cold water.
His body was still tingling from the shock before, and the cold water made it worse. As he felt that every pore in his body was on fire, everything hurt. He felt his lungs fight against the cold that was making him feel as if he was suffocating. At some point, he didn't feel the cold anymore, only the pain, until they pushed his head under water, there he knew no more.
0-0-0-0
Yesterday had been truly a weird day for Elizabeth Weir. As she made her way to her office, she remembered how it had felt to wake up after being shot by a Wraith stunner. She had been released to her quarters after waking up, but still she felt like she hadn't slept in a week.
Elizabeth walked up the stairs when she heard Teyla's voice, "Dr. Weir! I must speak with you."
When Elizabeth turned to face the young Athosian woman, Lt. Ford appeared to their side carrying a laptop, "Dr. Weir, I have something to show you."
"Let's go to the briefing room," Elizabeth said quickly.
Just as they were about to enter the briefing room, Dr. Beckett appeared with Dr. Heightmeyer. Ford quickly informed Elizabeth he had called them up as he thought they might like to be kept in the loop about Major Sheppard's behavior.
Once everyone was settled in their chairs, Ford handed Elizabeth the laptop. She stared at it for a moment, while Ford started, "There is something weird going on with Major Sheppard."
Elizabeth's brow furrowed, "Weird?" As if things couldn't get any weirder, she thought, "He's already acting weird."
"No, I mean weirder," Ford stood up and walked to Elizabeth's side. He opened up the laptop, and set it up, "I need you to watch something.'
Elizabeth's attention turned to the laptop in front of her, as the screen came alive, Elizabeth could see John inside the cell, lying asleep in the cot. Then she noticed that John's eyes were open. She heard Ford's voice in the background talking to the sergeant, "Thanks Sergeant."
Seconds later John started to shake and trash around, then he screamed before finally waking up. After John screamed the threat to an invisible Kolya; Elizabeth saw what Lt. Ford meant by acting weird. For a brief moment, John seemed to be himself and not Ignatius.
Elizabeth realized that her mouth was hanging open and closed it quickly. "What just happened?"
Elizabeth stared at Carson expecting a full answer, but it was Teyla who answered instead, "You should see the other recording."
Elizabeth looked back at the computer and found the other recording Ford had prepared for her to see. This recording was from a different angle; John was in plain view, while Teyla could be seen in the background. John was lying on his cot, his eyes wide open. Teyla's voice could be heard, "I wish we could do more for you, Major."
Then John broke the silence, his voice was nothing more than a whisper, "I am from the Genii."
His face was blank, it didn't have the facial expression he had every time he said he was Ignatius. John looked to be in some sort of trance while he continued, "My name is Ignatius of the Genii… I am from the Genii… My name is…"
John stuttered for a moment, he sat on the cot and his face looked as if he was staring at an invisible person, "Kolya, you will regret this!" Then John gasped and fell back on the cot. Teyla moved closer to the cell, "Major!"
John stopped moving, he was now shaking, and when he opened his eyes they looked straight at Teyla, "Teyla… Is cold… too cold. Please tell them to stop."
"Who? What is too cold?"
Pain was spread across John's features, "It hurts…so much."
"What are they doing to you?"
John grabbed his head and started to breathe faster, and then he started to pull his hair. He stopped and then he looked at Teyla, "Teyla, kill them. Help me get out of here."
"Who do you want me to kill, Major?" Teyla asked trying to remain calm.
"The Genii, Kolya, every single one of them," John grabbed his head again, his face was screwed in pain, his eyes opened up again, and he stared at Teyla, "Why are you here? Came to remind me how good I was?"
Teyla seemed to conserve her calm, after a couple of seconds of silence she replied, "I came to help you realize that you are not of the Genii. That you are Major John Sheppard."
Ignatius chuckled, "You are so naïve; I came to this place and made you all believe I was one of your own. I have always been a spy."
Teyla moved closer to the cell, "I took your people to the Genii world. You were here before that. You have killed Genii soldiers during the big storm. How do you explain that?"
Ignatius stood up and started pacing around the cell, "I had to protect my cover."
"You are the one who is naïve… Ignatius; in your insistence to make us believe that you are part of the Genii."
Ignatius increased his pacing, clearly upset now, "I don't want to speak anymore, and I don't want to see anyone else trying to talk about me and my life on Earth. If you want to make me talk, get Elizabeth Weir, I won't speak to anyone else."
The video stopped and Elizabeth was too flabbergasted to speak for a minute, nothing coming to her mind anyway.
For a moment no one spoke and silence ruled the room. Eventually Elizabeth decided to clear her confusion, "He's acting like himself sometimes, how is that possible?"
Now it was Dr. Heighmeyer's time to talk, "From what I've seen, his mind is falling in some sort of trance. There, his subconscious seems to take over and he is able to be himself, the only thing is that Major Sheppard doesn't seem to be aware enough to understand what is going on."
Elizabeth was still confused, "He looked as if he has a split personality, and doesn't that make it all worse?"
"From what I was able to recognize, it looks like they used some tactics of Coercive Persuasion. They could have extended audio drills in which they made the Major listen to some sort of recording until he no longer rejected it, but believed it to be true."
Elizabeth stared at Kate, "Do you think that's how they turned him?"
Kate slowly shook her head, "No. It takes much more than that to turn a person, but the tactics they used could have included restriction of food and sleep. That could weaken the mind and use that to their advantage. Using certain punishments if he didn't react the way they wanted him to."
Now Carson interrupted, "And knowing Major Sheppard, he may have suffered hell before giving into their tactics."
Elizabeth's confusion only grew further instead of disappearing, "But that still doesn't explain why he's behaving like this now."
Carson shifted in his seat, "I'm not sure but I think that was developed after arriving here."
Ford stared at the doctor, "What do you mean?"
Carson continued, "He wasn't acting like that while he was in the infirmary. Maybe it's being here or that he's breaking from the brainwash. The brainwashing techniques they used are from another planet and maybe don't have a permanent effect or this is happening because he was stunned by four different stunners at the same time. It could be a combination of everything. Who knows? But after he tried to escape, something snapped."
Ford now turned to Weir, "I agree. But I think there was something in his subconscious the whole time."
Teyla stared at Ford, "I do not understand."
Ford took a moment to look at the group, and then replied. "Ever since he got here, he's been saying that he will kill us all. But when the moment appeared and he had the big chance of hurting us big time, he only did some minor damage. Yesterday he could have killed everyone in the infirmary. Why the threat to kill us while when the opportunity arrives he does nothing to really make it happen?"
Elizabeth closed the laptop in front of her and looked at everyone in the briefing room, "I agree. He wants to speak with me. Fine, I'll be there. If anyone detects some other change in his behavior, let me know," Elizabeth turned to Carson, "What about Rodney? How is he doing?"
"Fine, maybe I'll discharge him to his quarters tomorrow."
Elizabeth smiled, "Good. You're dismissed."
The group got up and Elizabeth watched them walk away from the room. There she wondered if she really was up to the task to confront the new Sheppard. Yes... and if that meant she had to treat him as a threat then so be it. She would do anything in her power to make him return to normal. If not, then Ignatius would have a long life behind bars.