They came for Blake not long after they took away Sara.
If these people had been easy on Sara, the gloves came off when the muscular Atlantian was dragged in. The room was large and airy, unlike all the other rooms Blake had noticed on his way past. And there were chains hanging from the ceiling.
'This can't be good,' he though, eyeing up the manacles that he was being dragged towards. The guards forced the burly young man's arms up above his head and clapped the shackles around his wrists, and then someone on the far side of the room hoisted on a chain and, to Blake's dismay, he saw raised about two inches off the floor.
The guards around him used their clubs when he struggled and cursed, and his cracked ribs flared in tremendous pain. One blow to the chest and he'd be crying like a baby, he knew, if not dead. Luckily, the guards were stopped before they managed to cause too much damage.
"Vell," a seedy voice sneered from the entrance way. Blake looked up to see the goofiest looking person he had ever seen in his life. "I zee u haf made acquaintances wit my guards, but ve ave yet to learn your name."
Blake watched in disbelief as the man twirled his cheesy moustache with a gloved finger and walked towards him with what could be described as an effeminate prance. It was all he could do to keep from laughing when he saw the riding crop the man had tucked beneath his elbow. It was too amusing to be true.
"You've got to be joshing me," he whispered with a quaver in his voice caused not by fear, as the man assumed, but by trying to keep from giggling like a little girl.
The cheesy man smacked the crop against his hand and waved it threateningly at Blake.
"Eef u do not co-operat, vu vill be punished," the man leered, motioning to one of the guards. The guard punched him just above his kidneys, producing a low groan from the suspend prisoner as he began to swing back and forth slightly.
"Zo, vaht vill eet be? Your name, or maybe ve vill remove one of zoes eyes of yours?"
Blake shuddered – what good was a blind scientist?
"Fine," telling them his name wouldn't hurt, he decided. "Warrant Officer 2nd Class Forrester, John Blake. 3430770."
The cheesy man smiled cheesily, "vell, I am Senoh Frohog."
This time Blake couldn't help but laugh, even though it earned him a punch to the lower back that made his feet go quite disconcertingly numb.
"Vaht ees zo funny, meester varrarnt-ovizer-zecond-claz-vorrestor-john-blak?"
"You're name is Senor Frog? That's fucking hilarious," he laughed.
Frohog stormed over, with that girly prance of his, and swatted the laughing man on the face. It didn't hurt, which made Blake laugh even harder since the man had swung with his full strength. Despite the pain he was causing himself, from the occasional jabs and punches from the guards and his cracked ribs, he laughed for the rest of the short-lived interview.
Finally Senor Frog walked out in a fit of fury and left the guards to beat the shit out of the sniggering prisoner.
When they were done, they left him hanging there, blood dripping down from various cuts and a broken nose to form a puddle on the floor beneath him.
The strain on his wrists was killing him, but he didn't have much of a choice as he had passed out halfway through the brutal beating.
There was still a slight grin on his face.
When Sara awoke, she was still in the dark cell she had fallen asleep in the night before, and the thing in the corner was still tied up.
She breathed a sigh of relief.
Slowly she stood, careful not to move too quickly, and stretched her cramped legs and arms. A hiss of pain escaped her clenched teeth as she realized that she had dislocated her arm sometime in the last boxing match with the thing. Leaning against the wall and throwing her weight at it like her brother had taught her, Sara tried to relocate the slipped joint, but it hurt too much to do herself. Finally she gave up and let herself slide down the wall to the floor.
For a long time she sat there in the quiet, every now and then hearing footsteps, the clinking of chains or the sound of a door scraping across the floor.
'You know what… I could really go for some of my mom's specialty chicken wings right now, the ones with that yummy sauce that goes really great on rice. And those bbq meatballs she makes,' Sara thought idly. 'Or those smoked pork chops Uncle Ron made for the family bbq that one year. Those were so good.
'I remember that was the same year that Shaun and Mayfe got engaged. I wonder what they named their latest baby. Probably something cute and Hispanic, like Juliana and Pepito… those were the sweetest babies I've ever seen. And little Neil – he was such a sweetie! Good God – he's got to be starting elementary school by now. If I ever get back home none of them will recognize me. Meagan, Erin, Thomas, Neil, Ruby, Holli-Marie, Juliana, Pepito, Wiley, Quentin… none of them will remember their cousin Sara. Oh God, oh God I want to go home! What if Brett and Michyla have had a baby – I'd be an auntie! But what good is an auntie that's in a different galaxy getting raped by a freak?'
Tears raced down her face, but she made not a sound.
'I always said that I wasn't going to have kids, I was going to be the world's best auntie. I even bugged Michyla that I wanted to have at least 12 nieces and nephews. Hell – in that fake eulogy we had to write for ourselves I said that I had lots of nieces and nephews… of course, I also said that I would be an officer by now, have an iguana named Ralph and be the first person on Mars. But then again… I was the first Canadian on Atlantis. That's got to count for something, eh?'
Lying her head back against the rough wall, she drifted off to sleep again thinking about what her life plans had been ten years ago, five years ago, hell, even a year ago. Never was 'going to another galaxy' on her list, even if Mars was…
They'd had a clue to where Forrester and Donovan were; Rivers had mentioned Daos'ha as a possible hit, so they had searched there. Nothing.
It was suggested that the twosome might have dialed an incorrect address, but the reaction wasn't one of hope.
"Rodney, how many variations will we have to go through until we find the one they accidentally dialed? For all we know," Weir sighed, "they might have gotten scooped up by the wraith! Sometime we'll have to accept that we're not going to find them."
"That's it, huh," Rodney couldn't believe what Weir was saying. He looked at the other faces sitting around the table and saw defeat on all their faces, even Sheppard had given up on finding them alive. "You're just giving up on them?"
Elizabeth bit her lip and closed her eyes tightly.
While it was a situation none wanted to end this way, she had thought that they would all agree that it was hopeless. Nearly two months strait of searching had brought no new leads, and not one single clue as to where they were had been found.
She'd never thought that Rodney would be the one to make such a strong protest to ending the search. It was something she would have expected from Sheppard.
"Rodney, they've been gone for two months," she said softly, wishing someone else would pipe up and help her out. "It isn't logical too keep wasting resources and power on searching – we need to get back to normal operation. The Wraith are still coming and we need to get back on track."
Finally someone backed her up, and surprisingly enough it was Shepard.
"They wouldn't want us to waste time on finding them when we could be fighting the wraith or looking for a ZPM – they'd want us to keep going, not to jeopardize everything for them."
The agitated and near to tears physicist felt like throwing that smug bastard Sheppard the bird. How could he know what they'd want them to do? How could any of them, including himself, make claim to knowing what they'd want when none of them had ever taken the time of day to do more that laugh at their pranks. He couldn't stand it anymore.
"So they're a waste of time? It's okay to loose people if we don't know what happened to them... just leave them for dead? They just some background characters in a sci-fi show that no one remembers after they die?"
Silence. Guilty silence.
McKay made a disgusted sound, stood up, and stormed out of the room.
If the door hadn't been the annoying sliding kind he would have slammed it shut behind him as he hurried out of the briefing room.
It was silent for a long time after Rodney left until Weir had had enough, stood, and nodded to the group around her.
"Call off the search – dismissed."