He woke with the fading echo of a scream in his ears. O'Neil blinked and sat up too quickly. He went to put his hands to the sides of his head, and found them bound together with thick shackles. The chain between them clanked loudly.
"Somebody's awake!" said a delighted and falsely childlike voice. "Should we see if he wants to play too?"
There was a fireplace on the far side of the cavernous room, but the glowing embers within it provided little light. He could see the outlines of ornate furniture, and a single figure coming slowly towards him. There was a sudden motion in the darkness, and blast of red energy reignited the dying fire. A tall woman in black robes and a skull mask stood before him. Her eyes were wide and jiggled slightly in their sockets. He stared back at her evenly. Seemingly disappointed, she waved her hand dismissively and turned her back on him. His hands curled into fists as he saw where she was going.
The kid was strung up on the opposite wall, his wrists chained over his head. His wounds had not been treated, but despite his grievous injuries, he was conscious. O'Neil saw the jacket he'd loaned to the boy lying on the floor a few feet away. The kid's glasses were gone, but he didn't seem to have any trouble focusing on the woman approaching him. No one could glare that hatefully without a whole lot of history.
The woman laughed and with no other warning, her hand darted out, catching a hand full of the boy's hair. She twisted his head around until the kid's neck popped.
"Hey!" O'Neil shouted.
The woman turned to look at him.
"Does the phrase 'pick on someone your own size' have any meaning to you?" he asked.
"Oh god no!" the kid whispered, squinting hard. O'Neil guest the kid hadn't known he was there, until he spoke.
"Oh yes!" the woman declared. "I was hoping to catch Alice and Frank's little boy with you, but I guess he'll do."
She pointed the stick she was carrying at O'Neil. The kid started shouting.
"You bitch! I'll kill you! Leave him alone! He's got nothing to do with this!"
She lowered the weapon for a moment to consider the kid. "You've replaced my dear cousin already? It's hardly been a month. I'm nearly offended on his behalf. Do you love this new one too?"
The woman turned towards O'Neil. "Do you hug him, and tuck him into bed at night?" she asked.
"Kind of a pervert, aren't you?" O'Neil said flatly.
The woman glared at him. "You dare speak that way to me?"
O'Neil was preparing a sarcastic comeback when the kid started shouting again, trying to regain the madwoman's attention.
"They'll know where you took me! Dumbledore always knows. They'll be here any minute and you'll be back in Azkaban where you belong!"
Apparently unimpressed, the woman pointed the stick at O'Neil.
"Crucio!"
Pain.
Pure, simple pain.
O'Neil clenched his jaw and curled up in a ball, but that did nothing to relieve it. It felt like he was dying, but not in any specific manner. After a moment the pain disappeared. He sat up and worked his fingers a bit to get the circulation going again. A little worse then electrocution, still not as bad as being burned to death with acid. Ah, the fun comparisons you can make after being captured by the Go 'auld.
"Ouch," he said, mildly.
The woman took several steps towards him, and raised the stick again.
"CRUCIO!" she shrieked in a cracking, nearly hysterical voice.
The pain returned. His limbs jerked a bit, and he barely avoided biting his tongue. It lasted longer the second time. When it stopped the woman was staring down at him.
"Ouch again," O'Neil said.
The woman howled. She tore off her mask and threw it down on the floor. Her face must have been stunning in her youth, but now it was wasted away, nearly as skull like as the mask she'd discarded. O'Neil watched her building up to a tantrum. "Why won't you scream?"
"Honestly? It's because I've had better."
"CRUCIO!" she howled at the top of her lungs.
It was a bit worse. Besides the pain, O'Neil lost feeling in legs and his head felt as if it was about to burst. When it stopped it took him a minute to remember where he was. He looked up at the woman standing over him. She was breathing heavily and her arms were shaking.
"You're still here?" O'Neil asked groggily.
She shrieked and for a whole minute seemed incapable of articulation.
"…teach you some respect…when the master comes…you'll learn…you'll beg for death…"
"Yeah, sure," O'Neil said, sitting up.
Across the room the kid suddenly started to struggle against his chains. His breath became quick and panicked.
"What's wrong?" O'Neil asked, ignoring the crazy woman muttering and pacing between them.
"He's coming," the kid whispered, "He's coming."
As if on queue the doors on the far side of the large room swung open. A towering figure in a gray hooded cloak entered. He seemed almost to glide across the floor. On either side of him, marched a black robed skull masked lackey, and following behind the odd group was the huge snake that had chased them in London. At least O'Neil thought it was the same snake. He wasn't an expert on giant snakes or anything. The woman rushed forward and threw herself at Gray Cloak's feet, touching the hem of his robes with obsessive reverence.
Gray Cloak ignored her, stepping around the prone woman, as he would an ill positioned footstool. He walked straight up to the kid, and put his hand under the boy's chin, tipping it up. The kid shuddered like he'd just been hit with 50,000 volts, and his eyes rolled back in his head. After a few seconds the kid slumped down, unconscious. Gray Cloak laughed softly, as if the kid had just done something endearing. He turned away from the kid and glided towards O'Neil.
His inhumanly long pale fingers came up to remove the hood that obscured his face.
O'Neil had seen uglier, but not many. He couldn't tell if the man before him was a human trying to look alien, or an alien trying to look human. Though the almost translucent skin and lipless mouth were notable, the glowing red eyes were what really stood out. He opened his mouth to speak and O'Neil saw a set of very snakelike fangs. O'Neil was expecting a low echoing Go 'auld voice, but instead the creature hissed.
"You are a muggle," he (or maybe it) said.
"Uh…thank?" O'Neil said.
"Who do you work for?" he asked.
"The United States of America."
The creature stared at him as he answered and there was a strange crawling sensation in his head. O'Neil's eyes drifted back to the kid, who was starting to come around. The creature held up his hand, palm up, and suddenly O'Neil's zat appeared in it.
"Who gave you this?"
"Santa Claus?"
Apparently that was not the response he was looking for. The creature suddenly had one of those stick weapons in its hand.
"Crucio!" he hissed.
This time it was a real challenge not to scream, but after a second his jaw was clenched so tight he couldn't have if he wanted to. It faded away slowly. He wanted to throw up, but he hadn't eaten anything recently. Nothing since the blood pudding, he thought, and the desire to empty his stomach became even stronger. Why don't they have any edible food? You'd think at an embassy they could scrounge up some descent pasta. I'd even prefer M.R.E.s. He realized his mind was wandering and tried to get it back on task. The red eyed creature was still staring at him.
"You don't happen to work for Anubis do you?" O'Neil asked.
The creature didn't respond.
"It's just that you have a very similar vibe. And fashion sense. Maybe you just buy from the same catalogue."
"Crucio!"
When O'Neil returned to his senses he found himself walking down a stone staircase, into an underground tunnel. He had no memory of how he got to be on the staircase, and there was a strange floating sensation in his head. He looked at the rough hewn rock walls and the two men in skull masks, marching on either side of him, and he could not imagine being any happier, which seemed strange to him, so he stopped walking.
"Keep walking muggle," one of them ordered.
He was mildly surprised that his feet obeyed, and then realized that he should be more then just mildly surprised. Oh, crap! Mind control. As that clear thought forced its way into his head, the foggy happy feeling faded away. He remembered then. After three more rounds of crucio failed to illicit relevant answers, Gray Cloak had said something like "imperious" and hit him with another blast from that stick weapon. His stomach clenched a bit as he recalled spilling secrets about the SGC. Fortunately the creature thought he'd gone bonkers. O'Neil thought it did seem rather unlikely that the zat had been given to him by the former first prime of Apophis. The zat vanished and Gray Cloak ordered his goons to take O'Neil to the dungeon. Jeez, what is it with evil guys and dungeons? As he was escorted out they'd said something about the kid. Something about making sure somebody heard the kid. What did they call him? Potter? That was it.
"You are certain the old man's spy will hear Potter? The potions lab is several floors below us."
"He will hear, Master."
O'Neil remembered the screaming then. He had to get back up to that room.
The great thing about goons is that they aren't very clever, hence the name goons. They arrived in the dungeon. O'Neil waited until they were about to shove him into a cell.
"Shoe's untied," he said to the goon on his left.
They were slightly smarter then average goons. Instead of looking down to check his laces, the goon on the left roughly shoved him forward, which gave O'Neil enough room for what he thought was a very well executed spin-kick. Left goon crashed into the wall, momentarily stunned. Right goon aimed a stick weapon at him, but O'Neil lunged forward and pushed the other man's hand away, towards Left goon, who ended up on fire. As Left goon flailed about, O'Neil finished off Right goon with a knee in the groin, followed by a kick in the head.
He quickly searched Right goon's pockets for keys to the shackles, but didn't find any. He thought about searching Left goon, but as he was still on fire, he put that plan aside. He took Right goon's stick weapon, but couldn't get it to do anything. He kept it, incase the kid could get it working. He carefully made his way back up the steps, ducking into the shadows whenever people in skull masks walked by. O'Neil was a bit surprised that he went so completely unnoticed, but he supposed skull masks and hoods didn't help one's peripheral vision. Though he was able to find sufficient hiding places, he could not locate the staircase that would lead him back up to the house. Somebody was bound to find Left and Right goon soon. He saw another mask wearing lackey, heading down a nicely isolated and dark hall. I hate asking directions, O'Neil thought as he crept up behind the man, and slammed his head into the wall.
It took him a quarter of an hour to extract the necessary information from his captive, but during that time O'Neil also came up with what he thought was a fairly good escape plan. The first thing he needed was his zat. His captive informed him that interesting but unidentified acquisitions were stored in a room across from the potions lab. After getting directions; three corridors down, two left turns, and then a right, O'Neil knocked the man out, and barrowed his robes and mask.
He passed several groups of men in masks, but thankfully none of them stopped to chat. The storage room that held his zat was not guarded, and when he picked it up off a shelf no alarm sounded. The room was cluttered with bits of junk, jewelry, and jars he didn't want to look at too closely. He found a bit of twisted wire and picked the lock on his shackles, kicking them under a cabinet after he got them off. The zat had only enough power for four or five more shots. O'Neil tucked it into his oversized sleeve, and quietly prepared for the next, more difficult step of his plan.
You've been listening to English people for almost a week straight. This shouldn't be too hard. The "a" is like the "a" in "maw", and then I've just got to sound like I've got a bad head cold. Alright, here goes nothing. He palmed the zat, and walked into the potions lab across the hall.
A man with a very prominent nose and shoulder length, greasy black hair was leaning over a large bubbling cauldron, throwing in handfuls of spiders, and muttering in Latin. O'Neil was rather glad no one could see his mouth drop open under the mask. Greasy measured out a cup full of gray sludge from a carved wooden bowl, and mixed that into the cauldron as well. He set down the cup and turned to O'Neil.
"What do you want?" Greasy said in a low sneering voice.
"The Maw-ster requires your presence upstairs," O'Neil said, thinking he'd sounded at least passably British.
Greasy narrowed his eyes. "I told him the potion would be ruined if these interruptions continued."
O'Neil shrugged.
Greasy took a stick weapon from one of his sleeves and pointed it at the cauldron. With a sharply muttered word the contents of the cauldron vanished in a puff of smoke and the fire underneath it went dead. Greasy swept silently past him, out into the hall. O'Neil followed.
"I can find my own way," Greasy said irritably, noticing his new shadow.
"Perhaps," O'Neil replied, trying to sound cryptic, British, and villainous all at once.
His plan required Greasy to go in first. Gray Cloak had said something about the man in the potions lab being a spy, and O'Neil thought the unexpected arrival of Greasy would cause enough of a distraction for him to hit all the major players with the zat, before they knew what was what. Then he'd untie the kid, and they'd run like hell. It could work. Greasy led him right back to the cavernous main room. The door was open and O'Neil saw the man palm his stick weapon before he entered. Not expecting good news I guess.
Luck actually decided to show at that point. Gray Cloak and his pet snake had wandered off somewhere, so only crazy woman and the kid were still there. Crazy woman stood between them and the kid, with her back to them. All O'Neil could see of the kid were his arms, which were twitching. The woman was giggling.
"What…?" Greasy said in surprise.
The crazy woman turned and shouted "You?"
She aimed her stick weapon at them, but O'Neil hit her in the face with a shot from the zat. She collapsed. Greasy tried to take a shot at O'Neil, but he kicked the weapon out of his hand. It sailed thorough the air and landed on the hearth. O'Neil aimed the zat in his face.
"Nothing stupid, or you'll end up like her," O'Neil said, nodding towards the crazy woman.
Greasy nodded, his eyes narrowed shrewdly. "Who are you?" he asked.
"If I told you, I'd have to kill you, though I might just do that anyway. Untie the kid," O'Neil ordered.
Greasy walked over to the kid, who was in very bad shape. While O'Neil was gone they'd carved a symbol into the skin of the kid's chest. He was bleeding too heavily for O'Neil to see exactly what it was, but it looked somewhat like a skull. How original. The kid's eyes were rolling around, but they came to a stop when he noticed Greasy standing in front of him.
"Dumbledore sent you?" he asked in a raspy voice.
"Not quite," Greasy answered, inspecting the chains that held the kid to the wall. "I need my wand," Greasy said after a moment, pointing to the stick that lay on the hearth. The kid watched them, but didn't seem to understand what was going on.
"Do with out," O'Neil replied.
"How am I supposed to unlock them?"
O'Neil rolled his eyes. "Keys maybe?"
Greasy gave him a scathing look. "What are you, a muggle?"
"Apparently," O'Neil said.
He waved Greasy out of the way, and used the bit of wire he'd found earlier to pick the lock on the kid's chains, which took all of thirty seconds. Once freed, the kid slumped to the ground and curled up in a ball. O'Neil bent down and shook his shoulder.
"Kid, you need to get up."
"Go 'way," the kid mumbled. "You're all trying to kill me," he added accusingly.
O'Neil pulled off the skull mask. "Look at me kid! I'm not trying to kill you. I'm trying to save your life. You need to get up. Can you get up?"
The kid groaned and struggled to sit up. "Oh it's you. He's gone to the dungeons to torture you."
"Good to know," O'Neil said.
He caught the kid under the arm and pulled him to his feet. The kid wobbled, but stayed upright. Greasy was trying to sneak over to the hearth and get his "wand", but he froze when O'Neil trained the zat on him again. O'Neil leaned the kid against a chair and collected Greasy and crazy woman's sticks, and added them to his collection. He picked up the woman's skull mask and pulled off her robes. The kid started babbling complaints as O'Neil put the woman's clothes on him, though he didn't see any particular gender bias in the cult member's uniform.
"You're going to get yourselves killed," Greasy said.
"You're going too," O'Neil said. "In fact, you're going first. Show us the quickest way out. Get moving."
O'Neil waved Greasy out the door and followed close behind. He had to keep a hand under the kids arm to keep him upright. Fortunately most of the attention from passing goons was focused on Greasy. After half an hour of wandering through convoluted passageways they cut through the kitchens and ended up outside. Dawn was just brightening the eastern edge of the sky. There was a small building a few yards away that O'Neil thought might have been servant's quarters. They breathed free air for all of six seconds before the alarm went off.
Whether they'd tripped some sensor, or somebody found the trail of unconscious goons, O'Neil never found out. The second the strange howling filled the air, he pulled the kid into a stumbling run. He looked back and was a bit surprised to see Greasy was running with them, when he could have slipped off unnoticed. Of course if he was some sort of spy, being seen in their company had probably blown his cover all to hell. Not that O'Neil cared all that much.
Greasy had picked a good door to exit through. They sprinted down a hill and came to an ivy covered fence. O'Neil immediately spotted a gap underneath where something had been digging. He shoved the kid through. There was a pop, and suddenly a man was standing in front of them. O'Neil shot him with the zat and slipped under the fence. Greasy followed a moment later.
They were standing in an old and overgrown graveyard. The kid was just sitting by the fence. O'Neil pulled him to his feet. The kid pointed at a group of head stones.
"Cedric died over there," the kid said in a flat voice.
O'Neil put a hand to the kid's back to push him along. He was sticky. O'Neil looked at his fingers, now coated in red liquid. The kid's robes had soaked through with blood. They hurried across the graveyard, towards a dry creek bed O'Neil had spotted when they were at the top of the hill. A robed figure popped into being in their path and O'Neil stunned him. Another appeared on their right and the zat took care of him as well. The air was filled with popping sounds as more and more robbed figures appeared.
O'Neil was a bit surprised when the zat produced six more shots before going dead with a sad little fizzle. He was even more surprised when Greasy whipped out a stick weapon, (probably from the man he'd stunned by the fence) and fired on the black robed men surrounding them. Greasy actually had decent aim. He took out five more of the masked men before a blue light struck him in the chest and the stick flew out of his hand. O'Neil pushed the kid behind him.
"You know this would be a really good time for the Asgard to show up," O'Neil said. He glanced at the sky for a moment, but the little gray aliens were apparently not listening. "Dang."
One of the masked men stepped forward. "Finally showing your true colors Snape? The Master has given me permission to flay you. If you survive Bellatrix gets to finish you off."
Greasy got a bit paler, but did not otherwise respond. The masked men moved in, stick weapons raised. O'Neil thought things were starting to look a little bad, when a familiar hum filled the air around them. O'Neil whirled and tackled the kid a second before a blast of orange light flew over their heads. It struck the man who'd threatened Greasy and he fell back with a smoking hole in his chest. The orange light came again, accompanied by a few indigo shots from zats, and lots of automatic weapons fire. The goons returned fire and the air filled with flashing lights and flying shrapnel.
SG1 had arrived.