He remembered the great sacrifice he had made by flying into Earth's sun. It was his only choice to defeat the enemy, but he lost more than his time on Earth by doing so.

He lost his wife. He lost his sons. He lost the country and planet he had embraced as his own. He could never go back to them. If he did, nothing would ever be the same.

The people of Earth had believed he was just a man when he came to them, but by taking the enemy into the sun he had proven that he was more than a man. And the Ancients did not condone the worship of themselves — unlike the Goa'uld.

Janus encouraged him to return to Earth regardless — Atlantis and its orders be damned — but his duty was greater than the will of his uncle. And so he had mourned the loss of his family but knew that his sacrifice had ultimately saved them.

It was only years later when he joined forces with Janus that he became bitter. He succumbed to the rage and loneliness and became the warrior that Janus had always seen in him. In cold blood he slew so many of their enemies that he became feared among his own people and wiped from all trace of Ancient history. Utterly erased from existence as though they denied all he had sacrificed and done for them.

And so he and Janus decided that they had to take matters into their own hands. The enemy had to be defeated at all costs. The Ancients had grown soft.

And that was when his people decided that enough was enough. They used the power of Atlantis to banish Janus to the far reaches of the galaxy, beyond his reach.

When they asked how he should be punished, he looked at the sun above Atlantis and remembered the sun of Earth and the family he had left behind.

"They say on Earth that Icarus flew too close to the sun," he said. "So be it."

So they flew him to the sun. But this time he went alone.

He burned and fell from the sky.

And this time he did not rise again.

After rescuing Sheppard, the 'gate turned on several times a day from the same address with no IDC sent. With the iris closed and shield up, the staff in the 'gate room listened tensely as the sound of bodies impacting on the other side reverberated throughout the room. In all, they counted only ten impacts sent with each activation. But remembering the destruction the aliens had left behind made everyone grateful that the iris was holding.

It wasn't as though the aliens were trying to keep the 'gate open. It was as though they wanted Atlantis to know that they hadn't forgotten about Sheppard, or whatever their mission might have been. They wanted them to know that they were coming and that they didn't care how many they lost to make their point.

Days later, when they had reached four hundred impacts, the 'gate finally went quiet.

McKay theorized that the aliens initially didn't know Sheppard and the original team had survived until Teyla and Ronon had brought him back to their homeworld. This time they wanted to show that they would get him back at whatever cost necessary.

Ronon told Woolsey they needed to start watching the skies. Lorne agreed and started beefing up security around the city and sending out all the F-302's and puddlejumpers they had available for extra training. Without their usual contact with Stargate Command, they were unsure if the Odyssey would come for extra support.

Keller and McKay had begun work immediately on the equipment that Teyla had brought back. It took a few days for them to determine the makeup of the drug that was being fed into Sheppard's system, and a few more days to figure out what the dosage was.

"He seemed to experience a severe withdrawal last time and I want to avoid that — especially if we can't synthesize the drug and he needs more before we can wean him off of it," Keller explained to Woolsey. "Basically, if we don't figure this out … the withdrawal is so severe that he dies. I've never seen anything like this before. Whatever Janus was experimenting with isn't in any medical books I've ever read, nor is it in the Atlantis database."

"Do what you can," Woolsey nodded. "We need him back to himself as quickly as possible. He's been causing quite a ruckus in the cells and I think Ronon and the Marines are getting tired of stunning him."

Keller spared a tired glance at the monitor next to her. On the screen, Sheppard could be seen pacing in his tiny cell, occasionally throwing himself at the shielded bars.

"If the device hadn't given him a superhuman capability to metabolize any drugs I feed him, I would have put him into a medically induced coma days ago just to wait this out," she said. "At the moment, we don't have any reference as to how long the drug remains at full strength in his system, so we are fudging some numbers. We know he spent almost three months with the aliens, and he told us that at least twice they didn't recharge the device in time, causing withdrawal symptoms. My guess is that he needs a boost about every ten to twenty days if he isn't in battle or has been injured. We're going on a week now and he's still going strong, so I'm hoping we'll get some idea soon. Speaking of which —" she looked up at McKay. "We need another blood sample."

"He's not gonna be happy," McKay muttered.

"Nobody's happy about this," Keller responded. "But it's his own fault he's making it hard on us."

"He thinks we're the enemy."

"And we're trying to help him remember we are his friends. It has to be done."

Grudgingly, McKay pressed the radio. "Ronon, it's time for another blood draw."

There was no reply, but moments later, Ronon strode through the door, grabbed the kit Keller indicated, then left just a quickly.

On the monitor, they could see Ronon appear in the cell area moments later.

Sheppard never submitted. Every day Keller needed blood samples to try and track how the device was working, but he fought them tooth and nail every time someone entered the cell. It had become Ronon and Sheppard's grim ritual, aided only by McKay's hastily invented shackles.

The cuffs had to be fastened after Sheppard had been hit by multiple Wraith stunners, and so far, he hadn't been able to take them off. Using a remote, they could magnetize the cuffs to the cell bars, holding Sheppard in place so Ronon and the Marines could take blood samples.

It was the only way they could get what they needed, and it killed McKay every time he saw Sheppard fighting the restraints, pinned to the cell bars while Ronon gloved up and took the needed blood sample. It felt like he had failed his friend, knowing that every day they had to do this was another violation to the man. But they had to take what they wanted because Sheppard wouldn't willingly give it to them.

Sheppard seemed to relish the fight every day, his only time with any contact with another human being. McKay could only hope that Sheppard wouldn't remember anything when this was all over.

If it would ever all be over.

"It's a failsafe, Icarus," Janus told him. "I want to be sure that you will stop at nothing to complete your mission. You know you want this. If you were in your right mind you would be begging me for this. Just remember that everything I have done so far has been for you. It's to ensure the survival of our people, and the survival of your family."

And the fire spread through his body. He screamed, not sure if it was in pain, fear, or sorrow. Because he knew that one day he would not be able to fight against what Janus had done to him, and he would hurt his family on Atlantis.

Sheppard had come so close. Janus had ordered him to take Atlantis and he had failed. Not only had he failed, but now he had been taken prisoner. It had been days and not one of his brothers had appeared to rescue him. He knew the responsibility resting on his shoulders. He knew that the time had come to stop resisting and to start strategizing.

So when Ronon came back to the cell for the daily blood draw, Sheppard changed tactics.

Pinned to the cell bars as usual by the cuffs at his wrists, he relaxed instead of fought. The Marines bracing his shoulders against the bars looked at little surprised, but didn't relent with their grip.

"Back for more blood?" he asked the Satedan.

Ronon cocked an eyebrow. "You wanna talk instead of fight, Sheppard?"

"Nah. What's the point? You won't listen anyway. But I just wanted to let you know that I've been thinking."

Ronon snapped on the gloves and prepped the syringe. "About what?"

"What I'm going to do to you when I'm out of here."

Ronon pushed up Sheppard's sleeve and found a vein for the needle. The Marines flanking him raised their guns a little higher and the men holding Sheppard in place did not relent their grip.

"I've decided I'll leave you for last," Sheppard continued, slyly looking sideways at Ronon. "I'll lock you in here and start with the civilians. I'll bring them back one by one. Maybe I'll torture them. Maybe I won't. But I'll kill them in front of you. And you'll have to watch."

Ronon snarled, pulling the needle out and capping the tube of blood, but still refusing to answer Sheppard.

"Then I'll finish off the soldiers. And at the end … I'll bring in McKay and Teyla. I'll make them last for days. Especially Teyla."

And that was what did it. Ronon lashed out, slamming a powerful fist into Sheppard's ribs. The Marines did nothing to stop the Satedan, and Sheppard knew they were as angry as Ronon at his words.

Wheezing, Sheppard curled around the pain, embraced it, and felt the rush as the throbbing died away.

"She's strong," he continued, coughing slightly. "She'll last a long time. And then you'll just have to finish her off to put her out of her misery." He looked up at Ronon with dark eyes. "The icing on the cake."

Enraged, Ronon laid into Sheppard, barely noticing the Marines had holstered their guns and were pulling him off of the man, hauling him out of the cell. The four remaining Marines closed ranks around Sheppard.

But he had what he needed. Feeling new strength surge through his body, he pulled with all his might, and this time the restraints gave way. He could feel the bruises and cracked ribs and broken wrists healing, and his body flowed with power.

He reached out with one hand and grabbed the Marine on his left around the back of the head, simultaneously bringing up his leg and slamming the man's face into his knee. The Marine on the right he took out with a simple elbow strike to the nose before surging forward to attack the remaining two Marines in the cell with a series of quick kicks and a few moves he learned from his brothers in the past couple of months.

It took less than a minute for him to take out the four Marines in the cell with him, and another few seconds to take down Ronon and the Marines outside the open cell. He wasn't fast enough, however, to get to the main door, which closed with a solid click in his face. He tried overriding the door command codes, but knew that McKay had worked his magic and he was trapped.

As he looked at the unconscious Marines and Ronon lying in the cell room with him, Sheppard knew that McKay thought he was trapped. But he had made one grievous mistake.

Sheppard no longer cared about the lives of those in the cell with him.

Because they weren't his brothers.

McKay's heart was pounding in his chest as he slammed the controls home to close the cell door in Sheppard's face. His relief at catching the Colonel was short-lived, though. On the screen, he and Keller watched as the man calmly walked to the center of the room, looking up at the camera.

"If you don't let me out of here," Sheppard said evenly, "I'm going to kill every last one of these men."

McKay stabbed the intercom. "You wouldn't."

Sheppard smoothly knelt down next to the man lying unconscious at his feet, pulling him upright and into a headlock.

"Watch me."

"He's going to choke him to death," Keller breathed. "Rodney, you have to do something!"

McKay frantically scrolled his laptop for more commands as the Marine in Sheppard's arms began to struggle, his face turning red, then purple.

A hissing sound began to fill the cell room, and Sheppard laughed. "I'm going to outlast every man in here. You know it, McKay."

"He's right," Keller hissed. "His metabolism is going to compensate for any gas you throw at him at the moment. You need a different approach. That man has probably less than a minute."

McKay cursed, fingers flying on the fingerboard as he didn't even have time to consider a snappy reply.

"There," he said. "If that doesn't get him we're —"

A flash enveloped the room, whiting out the camera for a brief instant. Onscreen, Sheppard loosened his grip, twitching, then readjusted his angle.

"Are you kidding me?" McKay muttered. He punched the control again and another white flash enveloped the room. This time, Sheppard twitched, then slowly fell sideways, weakly grabbing at the man who had slipped from his arms.

Keller punched the intercom. "He's down — get in there now!"

On cue, the door slid open and a contingent of Marines poured into the room, armed to the teeth. They swarmed Sheppard, dragging him back into the cell while the rest pulled the other Marines out of the barred cage and then slammed the door shut behind them.

Sheppard stirred groggily on the floor, not quite conscious, but aware enough to slur curses at the armed Marines lining the cell bars outside.

"What did you hit him with?" Keller asked.

"Wraith stun blast. It's supposed to take out a room full of them. Took two to even knock him off his feet and he's still not unconscious. What the hell kind of drug is that? And is it my imagination or is he getting stronger?"

Keller shook her head. "If anything this little escapade has given me a lot of information. We now know why we have no idea how long the drug lasts."

"How?"

"I think he spiked the drug — or rather caused the dosage to spike. He got Ronon to hit him and the drug accelerated its normal dosage to heal him, which in turn gave him more strength than usual which aided in his escape."

"How do you know he healed so quickly?"

"A normal man would have broken his wrists — badly — when he broke through those cuffs," Keller pointed out. "He might have broken his, but he took down those men with no problem and his wrists looked fine to me. I'll have to examine him to be sure but I think the drug has super-healing capabilities when triggered correctly."

"So basically don't hurt him so the drug can't spike."

"Or we hurt him to try and use it all up faster."

McKay looked at Keller, incredulous. "Aren't you supposed to 'do no harm' as a doctor?"

Keller bit her lip. "In this case, it's doing him — and us — more harm by keeping it in his system. But before we do anything about it I need to know what's going to happen to him if we bring him off of it. The last time he nearly died. There has to be a more gradual way to do this that isn't such a shock to his system. The drug must have some sort of addictive properties and we just have to figure out the right dosage to bring him down without killing him."

"So let's get working on it. I don't want to deal with another escape anytime soon. Sheppard's freakin' scary on this stuff."

"Preaching to the choir, Rodney."