The time came, as they expected it would, and Sara was the one they took first.
For hours she was questioned, each undesirable answer given merited some new torment. At first, she refused to speak. After awhile, she told them her name, rank and service number, the whole deal. Actually, despite the pain she was somewhat causing herself by not co-operating, Sara found the whole thing very amusing. After all, who would ever have guessed that she, Sara Lee Donovan, would be interrogated in a dark, dank old dungeon like the ones she studied in history class. Oh, if only those jerks in high school could see her now… not the getting the shit beat out of her part, but the whole on a mission in an entirely different fucking galaxy. That's totally hard-core shit!
Even her old buddies who were ever coming up with insane scenarios could never have seen this happening… although now that she thought about it there once had been something in their old stories they made up about being stranded or held prisoner on a different planet by freaky aliens. Well, these people weren't really freaky aliens, but the rest of it was close enough. The idea probably had come from Alex; he'd always loved watching Star Trek, especially the one where the Enterprise or whatever was sucked up by some janitor or something and thrown right across to the other side of the galaxy.
What was the name of the ship?
A sudden painful blow to the jaw knocked her out of her train of thought and the room seemed to swim around her.
"Ohhh, fuck!"
The interrogator laughed and said something or other about her finally saying something.
Sara looked over at him in disdain after she got the room back into a regular swaying motion instead of a frenzied shaking. This man was different than the others, he didn't have blonde or red hair like the rest of them; he appeared to look more like the Mediterraneans with his darker complexion and grey eyes. Interesting.
The man sighed and pulled a chair over and sat down facing her.
His grey eyes fixated Sara, and she studied them with interest as he spoke.
"Why won't you just answer my questions? It wouldn't hurt."
The men surrounding her laughed at his joke, but his eyes remained fixed on her face and she found herself compelled to say something.
"What's your name?"
He looked startled, and the others in the room went quiet.
"Why do you want to know it," he asked softly, his voice like a sharp blade coated with danger and mystery.
Sara shrugged and broke eye contact, "I figured that since you know mine that I should at least know yours. Otherwise I'll just give you a random name that I think is cool… how does Francisco sound?"
One of the guards actually laughed, though it was silenced swiftly after a dangerous glance from the interrogator. The tension in the air could be cut with a knife.
"My name, Petty-Officer-2nd-Class-Donovan-Sara-Lee, is Melancton Matthias."
Sara laughed, "no shit! That's a pretty presumptuous name you've got there."
That earned her a swat across the back of her neck with some sort of billy club and a confused look from the man sitting across from her.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, that name of yours, Matthias, has a meaning where I come from."
"As it does here, what does it mean? Where are you from?"
"Well, it means 'God's gift to women' in Greek, and it's from Greece," she started, pausing for a moment before grinning at him with a bloodstained smile. "Don't think you were sneaky about sneaking in the last part of the question."
And another blow, this time followed by a few more punches to the side and a club across her tender and quite bruised shoulders, causing her to bite her lip and make a high pitched whimpering noise. Unfortunately, that only seemed to annoy the guard behind her further and he gave her another smack for it.
"That's enough for now… sorry about that miss, that one hasn't any manners."
Sara looked up at this Matthias guy with a scowl, "you should send him to finishing school. Or maybe the zoo."
"I'm not sure what either of those things are. Tell me about your culture."
"Well, a finishing school is where you send girl to learn to be mindless drones that don't do anything but cook, clean, have babies and throw dinner parties, and a zoo is where you send their annoying, sloppy husbands," she explained to him, deadpan.
What she said seemed to go over his head, but he nodded and made a motion that seemed to mean 'go on.'
"What?" Sara shook her head, "listen mister, I'm tired, sore, and really need to brush my teeth. How about this, you figure out that I won't tell you anything and let me and my friend go, and I won't tell anyone what the meaning is of your first name. Sound good?"
This time it was Matthias himself that backhanded her.
He stood up and tossed the chair aside in anger, pacing back and forth in the little cell. He waved one of the guards over to himself and had a short discussion before nodding, then leaving the room with only one small smirk shot towards her.
Her bound arms were gripped painfully and pulled up off of her chair and out off the room. They shoved her down a hallway and down a flight of stairs.
That's funny, she could have been sure that she hadn't gone up any stairs on the way to the cell… but then she realized that she wasn't going back to the same cell she had been in before. Now she wouldn't be with Blake… they'd both be alone.
"Oh God, oh God, oh God," she whispered, tears beginning to form in her slightly swollen and blood shot eyes. Why on Earth did they not tell anyone where they were going before they snuck off for an impromptu camping trip? They didn't even tell their team where they were going; they just dialled up the gate and went through. Atlantis would never find them. A few people knew the address for Daos'ha, but no one knew that that's where they were planning on going.
Sara could kick herself right now, if she wasn't in so much pain. Why were they so stupid? For being among the planet's most bright and brilliant, they sure were dumb.
After what seamed like years of trudging through the maze-like dungeons, the guard holding her arm came to a short stop. Sara stumbled, and he used her momentum against her, tossing her through an open cell door and slamming it shut behind her.
"Have fun," he laughed through the small opening in the door, before sliding a latch shut and blocking out the light.
For a moment, she thought that the man was just being an ass by saying that to her, but the sound of rapid breathing and movement from the back corner of the cell made her wonder, fearfully, if he hadn't been talking to her at all.
"Well, well, well," a crackly voice leered.
Sara scuttled across the dirty floor away from the corner the voice came from.
In the dim light that filtered through cracks in the door, Sara could just barely see a pair of dark eyes that gleamed in the darkness like tiny candles.
Slowly a dirty, ragged form crept out like some kind of starved animal toward its wounded prey – her. She pushed herself back further away, wincing as her cut and bruised back touched against the rough wall, trying to get away from this predator.
It didn't take much imagination to guess what it was that this beast was hunting for, and it advanced upon her, rubbing bony, claw like hands together in some kind of sick excitement.
"I get a pretty new little bird to play with? A sweet little birdie," it crooned. "I wonder if she will sing for me while I play with her? Such a sweet thing it is to hear a nice, soft birdie sing when it's being played with… do you want to sing, pretty birdie?"
"Stay the hell away from me," she growled.
It seemed to chuckle and the dark eyes were alight with something like joy.
"Ah, so the pretty birdie is already singing! She'll sing real nice… it's playtime…"
Sara tensed andlashed outangrily as it lurched at her.
Unlike when she was in the cell with Matthias, she wasn't tied up and there weren't any guards here to protect him. Taking full advantage of her military self defence training and unarmed combat course, Sara kicked out at the thing and snarled as it dropped like a sack of potatoes to the dirt floor. It made a strangled sort of sound and scuttled around on the floor like a hound searching for a scent.
He found the scent and slowly crept back towards her.
"Bad, bad. Seems that I got a kitty this time instead of a sweet little birdie. This kitty scratches… but maybe she'll yowl when we play." The thing kept coming closer, kept talking in that perverted, gollum-esque voice.
"I warned you to stay the hell away from me, do you want me to tear your head off and shove it up your ass? Or maybe I'll just poke your eyes out and make you eat them," she threatened. "I swear I'll go completely Hannibal Lector on your ass!"
The thing actually had the audacity, and lack of intelligence, to giggle madly and shout at her, "I'll make this kitty purr!"
It didn't go overly well for it, unless its plan was to get a roundhouse to it's head and a swift kick in the groin. It dropped with a mad shriek, gripping its crotch and whimpering in agony.
"Bad kitty, bad kitty…" it muttered over and over, until she silenced it with a kick to the head.
If it were dead, she would shed no tears since she probably had done the twisted thing a favour, but her instincts had her check for a pulse first. It was still alive, so she propped it up in its corner, binding its hands and feet with some strips of clothe that were lying on the floor.
Moving back to her corner after double-checking her knots, Sara leaned lightly against the wall. It was rough, but it was cold too, and it numbed the pain.
She was so tired… but she just couldn't sleep. What if that thing got loose and attacked her again as she slept… the thought slipped through her mind as her body caught up with her and she drifted off into a deep slumber.
Voyager... that was the name of the ship.