A/N: Someone asked me how long this puppy's going to be. Right now, it's coming up on thirty or so chapters, but it's also almost complete so I can't say for certain.
Ch. 10
Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Sheppard?
" John. Jo-ohn."
John forced his eyelids apart. Menk's shadow-marred face grinned down at him.
" No time for rest, Master Sheppard. The eraks are hungry."
A shrieking howl ripped the perfect silence, shredding John's hearing, right at his head.
John snapped his eyes open, then snapped his body upright in the bed. White moonlight put every object into sharp black and white contrast like a Cubist's masterpiece. No faces hovering body-less and phantasmal, just shadow layering on shadow.
The shrieking howl lingered in John's memory so tangible his eyes went immediately to the window on his left. John flung back the knit blanket and crept in a crouch with spine curved to the diamond divided pane of glass. Outside it was more black and white with a clear sky and larger than average, blindingly white moon.
Being a second floor room of a two-story inn, John had an unobstructed view of the town, field, forest, and hills.
And me without a camera.
There wasn't much he couldn't see, and was quickly satisfied to find no small black shapes darting in and out of the woods or tearing across the field. The howl was gone, drifting back into John's memory where it belonged. Satisfied with his lack of finding anything, he moved back to the bed and let himself fall onto the down mattress. He didn't bother covering back up even with the cool air brushing his neck and making his flesh goose-up. Sleep had left the building, SOB that it always was.
Beckett was going to be pissed.
With a groaning sigh, John pushed himself up and back out of bed. The dreams weren't a constant, but when they came, they came with back-up in the form of adrenaline. He pulled on his socks, then his boots, jacket, vest, 9-mil holster around his thigh, and P-90 clipped onto the vest. He stepped out of the small room and into the hallway, only to stop at the next door down on hearing the tell-tale clacking of fingers on a lap-top keyboard.
John grinned, leaned against the frame, and softly knocked.
The typing stopped. A few seconds later, John heard grumbling, and the door was flung open. Rodney, stiff, suddenly sagged.
" Oh, you."
John lifted an eyebrow. " You? That how you greet everyone or is it something specially reserved for lil' old me?"
" You, obviously. What do you want?" Rodney then looked John over. " And why are you dressed? Armed? What the hell are you up to?"
John narrowed his eyes at McKay. " Crap, McKay, you're worse than Beckett. Can't sleep so I'm going for a walk."
" Uh-huh. Armed?"
John adjusted his P-90. Funny how it had taken on the role of security blanket, but like he was going to tell McKay that.
" Yes, armed, in case wraith decide to pop up for a little midnight snack. Besides, the way those kids were talking about that forest, I wouldn't go out weaponless even if I was wearing that personal shield that nearly killed you. Precaution, McKay," he tugged on the weapon, " never leave home without it."
" Precaution? Colonel, going out with one weapon is precaution. Going out armed to the teeth is paranoia. You really going for a walk, or going for a walk to check and maintain the perimeter?"
John leaned ever so slightly to the side to direct his gaze at the lap-top resting on the still-made bed. " McKay, you are so not one to talk."
" At least thinking doesn't require me being armed and liable to blow someone's head off. Maybe you should go bug Beckett until he shoves a sleeping pill down your throat."
John glanced down at his feet. " I'm sick of pills. Natural sleep or nothin', McKay. If a twenty minute stroll doesn't have me passing out on my own terms, then screw it. I'll just let my body suffer until it shuts down whether my brain likes it or not."
Rodney scowled at that. " Jeez, Colonel. Someone trying to steal your score for most infirmary visits?" Rodney pointed a stiff finger at John's face. " If Beckett finds out, he's going to lock you in the brig for the rest of your life... and take me down with you because for some odd reason you always feel you must involve me in your quests of self-destruction. And it's usually through me Beckett finds out, then I'm in the dog-house for having to be weaseled and threatened for information..."
John raised a hand and lightly patted the air. " Chill, McKay. It's a freakin' walk to remedy what Beckett's always hounding me about. Twenty minutes. If that doesn't work, I'll bash myself over the head with my own gun if it'll make you happy."
Rodney, rocking on his heels, sniffed. " It will, thank you."
" I was kidding."
" You get caught, I'll do the whacking for you."
John shook his head. " Whatever, McKay." He turned and headed down the hall.
" Twenty minutes!" McKay called.
" Twenty," John promised, raising two fingers in the air.
SGASGASGASGASGA
The sky was taking on a light indigo shade when John stepped outside and headed down the streets to the edge of town. A subtle breeze was blowing, caressing the back of John's neck, neither overly cool or warm. The stringed lamps were gone, but the space-bug cousins were still hovering over the grass and clustering around the street-lights.
Wet grass crunched under John's booted feet, putting a shine to his shoes with dew. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. The air felt good, really good, refreshing good, in his lungs, like a cool drink of water after having been thirsty for too long. The uncomfortable pulsating in his skull he'd forced himself to put up with mellowed into a forgettable throb. Being in this place, on this world, it was doing something... good. John wasn't about to call it a life-altering reversal of his state of mind. It was mostly just a breather, a change, alternating sea-tainted alien air with pine-scented alien air, and having more space for solitude.
He was too easily located on Atlantis. Not that he wanted to live the life of a recluse, but there was something claustrophobic about being in constant contact with just about half the population of Atlantis. Even ditching his ear piece didn't ensure a few hours of personal time. So went the life of a military commander. It made the quiet times in his life all that more potent, so much so that he internally shrank at the prospect of putting that ear piece back in his ear. He would do it, eventually, and think nothing of it afterward. Right now, he basked in its lack of presence and knowing that it wouldn't crackle on anytime soon.
Talk about having space. Even his brain was being given a break. He and the team were supposed to head back today, but John considered requesting an extra day, for himself. The rest could go back if they wanted, but he was leaning toward staying to see if he could reach a point where he didn't wake up with a pounding heart, and could leave his gun behind when he went for walks. Still nothing life changing, just breaking newly formed habits.
Really, there was no such thing as normalcy, but that didn't stop John from longing for it.
John wasn't paying attention to the time, or his direction. But direction existed on two planes, so even when one didn't have a destination at the front of their mind, the back routed out a destination all the same. When John finally came back into awareness of his surroundings, he found himself moving toward the packed, ill-used road.
He paused. There was a wagon on that road, being pulled by a Galamimus like creature with a coat of short copper fur rather than scales or leathery skin. A silver haired and silver bearded old man was handling the reins, and next to him was a much shorter person in a shimmering amber cloak. John knew that cloak.
He moved forward toward the road. His motion attracted the attention of the cloaked form, who turned her head to regard John with eyes far older than the face they belonged too. Those same melancholy eyes brimming with a finality no child of twelve should ever have to possess. She dipped her head in a small nod of acknowledgment at John, then turned her head to face the road and the black-hole darkness the wagon was trundling toward.
John immediately wanted to rush forward and shout warnings not to go in there, as though they were walking into an open mouth they didn't see, to be swallowed and joining the ranks of urban legend victim. Instead, he stepped onto the road to watch the wagon get swallowed.
The urban-legends of children were not fact, and it wasn't John's place to say whether or not people knew what they were doing when going into that forest. Unless the danger manifested as gun shots or monsters, John couldn't go tearing off into an alien wood shrieking like a psycho just because dark woods were scary and kids told good ghost stories.
He felt bad for the girl. Whatever her destination, her fate, it was going to be bad. Looks said it all.
John turned. Twenty minutes were up, past twenty more likely, and right now John was far less enthusiastic about what McKay would have to say than Beckett.
Cold struck John in the spine, spreading through him along his backbone frosty and fast. He couldn't even gasp when he fell to his knees, then his chest. He knew what was happening, but terror wasn't given the chance to strangle him when he blacked out.
SGASGASGASGA
Creak, creak, creak, thump. Creak, creak, creak, thump...
Shut up, shut up, shut up!
But it wouldn't. The noise, and jostling, was a constant. John's body ached down to his bone marrow, yet a far more familiar and uncomfortable pain clustered at the center of his spine. Now was the time to wake up, and his fear screamed at him to do so.
Open open open! Consciousness came too fast, like a slug to the face. His eyes snapped open to a wildly spinning world like green, brown, and white paint smearing together. His stomach back-flipped and he was forced to shut his eyes again with a groan.
The creak/thump stopped abruptly.
" He's awake." The voice was low, muffled, and nearly imperceptible to John's foggy brain.
" Right on time. I like that." That voice sounded female. " Shoot him again."
John's eyes snapped open, and his body bolted upright.
" No!"
The cold hit him even more painful than the first strike, and he was out before he fell.
Creak.
It was different this time. No rhythm, and a lot more low key. It was the first thing John became aware of, the second being his rapidly thumping heart. The pain in his back was so sharp that he arched, groaning with gritted teeth. His hands curled on something hard, rough, and gritty.
Oh gosh no! Not again!
He was pretty sure that if he just kept his eyes closed, he could buy himself a few more minutes of time in delusion-ville and pretend all this wasn't really happening. But John never could ignore his instincts, and for the sake of hoping to find a way out of his predicament, he opened his eyes.
His ceiling was a tangle of branches with a gray sky filling in the gaps. Gusting breezes made the leaves flutter and the branches sway, which explained the timid creaking.
John sucked in a deep breath of air tasting faintly wet. Oh thank goodness. He was outside, a difference, a start. Maybe he was overreacting.
Like hell. He tried to sit up only to have the world pinwheel and the pain drive the invisible knife deeper. He cried out and dropped back against the hard surface, writhing.
" Give it a moment," a deep voice growled. John forced his eyelids apart, hoping and praying it had been Ronon, and that the man just had a cold.
Luck had abandoned John. The face peering at him was hidden behind a thick black beard, and the pale and angular face framed by long black hair coming past the shoulder.
John's heart shot up another inhumanly impossible rate. He began panting, his muscles tightening until he quaked, and acidic liquid seared into his throat.
No! Not again!
He was panicked enough to ignore the pain and tried to scramble away only to have his back smack into some sort of hard, flat obstruction. The bearded man reached out indifferently and grabbed the front of John's vest.
" No time for this," the man grumbled. He yanked John from the wagon as though he were nothing more than a sack. John hit the ground and began struggling against the grip. He was dragged across the dirt and moss, and no matter how deep he dug his heels into the that dirt, he couldn't even get the guy to stumble. He was worse than Ronon in terms of excessive strength.
They didn't go far, just a few feet. The bearded man jerked John to his knees, keeping an iron grip on his vest, and shoving the barrel of a Cyladran stunner in his chest over his heart.
" You try anything, you get it to the heart. Never a good thing."
John was looking up at the face that was very two fangs away from being Dracula's visage. The man's clothes were more reminiscent of something Ronon might wear – a dingy longcoat either gray brown or just exceedingly dirty, dingy shirt, brown ragged trousers, and a belt full of weapons – mostly very wicked looking knives.
Someone cleared their throat, someone other than Vlad the Impaler towering over John. John snapped his head around and up into the wrinkled, glaring face of a woman of sixty going on seventy. A pony-tail of long silver hair was draped over a silver clad shoulder. In fact the whole woman's appearance was nothing but gray, say for her pasty white face. Her robe, shirt, pants, slippered feet, and belt sporting an array of blinking, electronic tools of the kind only Rodney would know how to use. Even her eyes were silver-gray. Were there a more clearer patch of sky, she would have vanished into it.
She gave John a tight, forced smile. " Hi, nice to see you finally awake." Her voice dripped so much sarcasm even Rodney would have drowned in it. She dropped her smile then grabbed John's jaw to force his head up higher.
" Looking a little pale," she said as though assessing a piece of furniture – or an animal. She released his jaw to squeeze down his arm. " Good muscle tone, I suppose." She pressed her fingers against his neck. " Pulse fast." She grabbed his hair and pulled his head back so that he was forced to look up. The tight smile was back.
" Scared?" Her tone was wheedling.
John didn't even know the woman's name and already he longed for his knife to slice her hand from her wrist.
" Try pissed," he growled. The woman's response was to start twisting John's head. His neck creaked, strained, and his hands shot up on their own accord to try and pull the woman's hands from him.
The woman's grip was immovable. She was viciously strong for a withering old broad.
" Shut up," she sneered, then released John's head with a jerk. John rubbed his neck tentatively and reacted the only way he could thus far – glare.
The woman began snapping her fingers in that annoying act of impatience Rodney sometimes utilizes. " Bring me his weapon, I want to take a look."
Another man appeared, this one square-face, beardless, with short spiky brown hair that made John's hair look tidy. He also wore a longcoat, plus a dirty jacket beneath that. Apparently, this woman hired only Mad Max rejects as goons.
Goon two handed the old bat John's P-90. She looked it over, and John flinched when her perusal had the gun pointed his way.
" Projectile weaponry," she said, then handed the weapon back to goon two. He then handed her the 9 mil and she repeated the process.
" Same." She tossed the gun back to goon two, then snapped her finger.
" Get him up."
Vlad yanked John to his feet. Damn, these guys were strong! John swayed when the world did another spin around his person. He probably would have fallen if it hadn't been for Vlad maintaining his hold. John shook his head clear, then returned to glaring at the old bat.
" Menk send you?" He asked. " Couldn't drop by himself so sent his grandma?"
The old woman held small palm-sized device and was tapping its screen. " I know no Menk. Stop babbling." She sighed. " Slight crack in the ribs, healing though. Other than that, relatively healthy." She then dropped her hand and blew out a sharp breath. " You really couldn't expend your efforts to bring me the big man?"
Vlad shrugged. " You said it didn't matter who we took as long as it wasn't the woman, the scientist, or the one that talked funny. He was outside, right by the woods. Easy snatch."
The woman gave John a disgusted once-over. " I guess he'll have to do, then. The big man would have been better. What's your name, alien?"
John smirked darkly. " Last name Dover, first name Ben."
The old lady smirked back, then leaned in toward John's face. " Your vest says Sheppard." Her hand suddenly shot out and cold, dry fingers wrapped around his throat, squeezing. John gagged and choked, trying to pry the woman's relentless fingers from his neck.
" Young man, I have no time for this filth. If you wish to be difficult, then be difficult, I don't care. Just... pay attention to what I have to say."
She released John and he gasped in a ragged breath, coughing. The woman turned and began pacing back and forth in front of him like a caged panther, robe billowing like the ripples of an activated stargate.
" You're in a bad position, young man," she said. " And if you wish to get out of it, then you'll have to do me a favor."
John rubbed his bruised throat but said nothing. Anything he had to say was bound to commit him to something unpleasant.
" If you wish to live, and see your friends again... and wish your friends to live, then you must comply."
John's heart skipped and his eyes rounded over. He attempted to jerk free from Vlad, only to be jerked back. " What did you do with my team!"
The woman snorted. " Nothing. Too many to deal with at the extreme moment. At a later time, perhaps. Here is the situation; to live, to keep your friends alive, then someone else must die. Simple as that. And you need to do it. No questions asked, just one shot, and then you're free to go. If not..." She stopped and smiled at him, the panther eying the meat. " Use your imagination."
John gaped and just stared at the woman for several surreal seconds. The woman cleared her throat impatiently.
" Those are the terms. Now I suggest..."
" What the hell!" he barked. " You zapped me and dragged me out to the middle of nowhere for an assassination job! You threaten me and my friends... What the crap! I mean come on! You've got two goons right here..." he glanced over his shoulder, at the wagon being pulled by another woolley-mammoth horse, and a third man sitting in the driver's seat. " Another one right there." He looked back, scathingly, at the old woman. " But you kidnap me to do your dirty work! Why, don't like the sight of blood? Or you just lazy?"
The woman regarded him with heavy-lidded eyes. " Young man, I have no intentions of explaining myself to you. Do this, you get to live. What's so hard to understand about that, huh? My reasons are my reasons – and none of your business. Life or death, young man, your choice."
John couldn't help another gape, and his only coherent thought was that if he survived this – whatever this was – he was never stepping off world again. Or at least never taking solitary walks.
The woman rolled here eyes. " We have no time for this! Just... take him to the spot. Get him to fire his weapon, I don't care how. Accident's as good as the real thing, I just want her dead! Now take him!" she shrieked, then turned with a twirl of her robe and strode stiffly away into the woods.
John opened his mouth to spit a nasty retort when something hard struck him over the head. Once again, he became guest of the black void.
SGASGASGASGA
A/N: Sucks to be him, doesn't it?
