Time Immemorial
Chapter 19: Knee-jerk
July 17th
0245 Hours
John awoke with a sharp intake of air. Immediately he was assailed by a sense of vertigo. He tried to look around but his vision was blurry. A persistent ringing in his ears was all the he could hear. A bright light tried to break through the fog.
There - he heard a voice, muted, as if it was speaking through a foot of concrete. Male. John couldn't make out the words.
Sheppard watched the blurred shapes before him retard their swaying, like ships coming ahull in a tempestuous sea. The settled images were finally brought into focus. John saw Kyros kneeling before him, a concerned look on his face. He was mouthing a question. The ringing in his ears was still subsiding.
"...alright? Major, can you hear me?"
John groaned in response. "Yeah, I can hear you," he mumbled, still trying to get his bearings. He squinted against the room's overhead lights.
The young soldier's expression transformed into one of relief, but his tone was deflated, beaten. "Thank the gods. I am afraid you were hit in the head quite hard, sir."
You think? John wanted to say but he bit his tongue. His mouth felt dry. "Where am I?"
"In a small room adjacent to your mess hall."
Looking around, John recognized the place. It was often used as a private dining area or small meeting room. Currently just the two of them occupied the space. So I'm still in Atlantis, he thought to himself. The Lacedami are still here... and Elizabeth is still dead. This isn't a nightmare. This is real.
He wondered how long he'd been out cold. Long enough for his damp clothes to almost completely dry, he noted. It was only then that he realized he had been propped up in a chair in the center of the room, wrists bound to the armrests. He tugged at the restraints instinctively. They didn't give.
Kyros gave him an apologetic look. "A necessary step. To maintain the ruse."
"Right," John snorted disdainfully. He had had about enough of Kyros and his ruse. "Why are you here, anyway?"
Kyros frowned, not understanding. "To help you, of course. Why do you ask?"
"It's just that every time you show up, something bad happens. I don't know how much more of your 'help' I can take." John knew it was an unfair statement, but he didn't regret saying the words.
The boy's eyes dropped immediately to the floor, wounded. "Yes, sir."
"And stop calling me 'sir'. I'm not your commanding officer, and you're not part of my team."
That hurt Kyros more than anything, but he took the jab in stride. "I am sorry about Dr. Weir. I truly am, Major. I shall pay my respects."
John remained silent, not wanting to go down that path. But Kyros continued, needing to justify himself.
"I thought we had acted in time."
"You lied to us, right to our faces."
"If I had known sooner that-"
"That what?" John retorted, unable to restrain himself. "That your commander takes innocent people's lives without a second thought? That your people will stop at nothing to get what they want? That you murder civilians?"
"I am no murderer!" Kyros yelled, jumping to his feet. "I tried to help you save her!"
John stared at the riled young man, leery of what his next move might be. What Kyros said was true, there was no doubt. But I'll be damned if I ever thank any one of them, he thought.
Kyros took a few breaths to calm himself. "I only do what is necessary for our people, can you not see that? You would do the same, Major. Though I do not agree with Commander Antigonos's decision to... remove Dr. Weir from the situation, I support the Lacedami cause."
"Well I certainly hope the ends justify the means for you," John muttered bitterly.
Any further discussion was cut off by footfalls approaching the closed door. Kyros's eyes grew wide; he needed to think fast. As the two halves of the door parted, Kyros swung hard at the major, his fist connecting squarely with his jaw.
Commander Antigonos entered the small room just as the blow was delivered. He nodded approvingly at his subordinate, who stood shaking his smarting fist. "Hold, Lieutenant. Save some of him for later."
"For escaping my custody earlier, the fool," Kyros explained. How easily he had slipped back into the role of Lacedami soldier again.
John turned his head and spit out blood. Kyros may have been all of seventeen years old but he punched like a full-grown heavyweight boxer.
"Very well," Antigonos appraised haughtily. "But perhaps of the two, he who escaped is not the fool, but rather he who allowed the escape the occur is the first place. No?"
Kyros stood rigidly at attention but his eyes flickered to the floor for the briefest moment. "Yes, Commander."
"Now leave my sight."
"Yes, sir."
John watched the boy slink from the room, wondering what his later punishment would be. He suddenly felt a pang of pity for the kid. He supposed, however, that earning Antigonos' disappointment was far better than earning his suspicion.
John's attention turned to Antigonos once the doors shut. His eyes tracked the commander as he strode methodically about him, seemingly in thought. If the silent act was meant to intimidate John, it failed. What was he to be afraid of anymore? What did he possibly have left in the world to care about?
Still Antigonos paced, looking at the floor in contemplation. He had barely acknowledged the major since arriving. Apparently the captured leader of the Atlantis military took a backseat to whatever scheme he was hatching.
Keep on strolling around, asshole, Sheppard thought to himself. I can sit here all day.
"One would think that after conquering dozens of civilizations," Antigonos opened suddenly, "one would learn how to pass the time more easily. It is the idle time between incursion and victory that I most detest, would you not agree?"
Not knowing if the question was rhetorical or not, John elected to remain silent.
"It is for this reason I often long to be a mere foot soldier once again," the commander continued nostalgically. "A foot soldier has no idle time. He has not the time to think, to plan, to lay a course - only time to carry out orders. Rest assured, Major, my men are carrying out my orders as we speak and this insufferable wait will soon be over for the both of us. In the meantime, I have a more immediate goal."
"And what would that be?" John finally challenged.
"As I told you earlier, I simply wish to converse with you, Major."
John frowned. "I'm not really in a talking mood," he answered sourly.
Nevertheless, the commander pulled a chair from a nearby dining table and placed it opposite Sheppard. He looked sickly jovial, conversational, yet his ice-blue eyes were sharp and calculating. He took a seat. "How are you feeling?"
John arched an eyebrow. "You've got to me kidding me."
Antigonos looked offended. "Can I not take an interest in the people I am about to wipe from existence? How are you feeling?"
John cleared his throat, assessed the commander's tunic, and felt that familiar brash temperament well up inside him. "Well, my headache's back and I just got the overwhelming urge to hit someone in a skirt. Thanks for asking."
"Major, you have no one to blame but yourself for the predicament you are all currently in," Antigonos said matter-of-factly, mocking his captive's dour mood with a tsk tsk. "This could have all been much simpler. Your people put up quite a fight in these halls."
"Yeah, they do that."
"Still," the commander continued with a weary sigh, "all for naught. Five of your people killed, and for what? For their own privilege of knowing in their conscience that they steadfastly followed your incompetent orders to the very end?"
John looked up sharply at the mention of the deaths of the expedition members. Jesus Christ, five? One was still too raw of a wound to forget, but he hadn't known about the other four. Were they civilians, too? Or had they all heeded Elizabeth's warning and remained in their quarters? Hopefully the Lacedami had shown mercy to those who showed no resistance. Looking into the commander's cold, pitiless eyes, though, John knew that he couldn't hope for such an auspicious outcome.
And then, he recalled the two sergeants he had posted outside the Ladedami guest quarters, Elliot and Gragowski. They would have been first to meet the brunt of the invading force head-on. They wouldn't have stood a chance.
John thought of scientists being shot in the back as they tried to retreat into their quarters, pictured his Marines being cut to ribbons, and his lassitude burned away into a smoldering indignation.
"Yet at long last, here we are," Antigonos said, "and at long last we can speak - man to man, true leader to true leader, without any bothersome distractions."
John remained silent.
"I cannot believe for one moment, after all that has transpired, that there is nothing you want to ask of me," the commander prodded.
John glowered at him. "Just one thing," he said in mock-earnest. "Is it hard to sit in that cape?"
Antigonos frowned, unamused. He was baiting Sheppard, and Sheppard knew it. "Come, you must have something to say to me."
"Mom always said: if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
The idiom must have transcended the cultural divide because Antigonos laughed - actually laughed - a hideous, distorted sound. It sounded wrong. John suspected that the commander's vocal cords were out of practice articulating such a mirthful declaration.
"This expression of yours," the Lacedami said, "I like it-"
"You know," John stated, impatient, "this isn't my first rodeo. Why don't we get on to the part when you demand whatever it is you want and I think of clever ways to say no?"
Antigonos evaluated the man before him and nodded approvingly. He methodically unclasped his forearm greaves and placed them on the table beside them. "Soon, Major Sheppard. But I am very much enjoying learning about you and your character. You are more disruptive than I initially gave you credit for. Instead of a bothersome gnat I now see a clever jackal."
"I'm flattered."
"You actually came when summoned, and arrived with not a second to spare."
"You were going to kill my people - what did you expect me to do?"
"I am going to kill your people anyway. Your arrival only delayed that inevitability. Had you remained at large you could have inflicted more damage to my operation - well worth the lives I would have taken as punishment. The latest in a growing list of poor strategic moves of yours."
John knew he hadn't been thinking clearly, not at that moment in time. But he also knew he couldn't have sacrificed any of the expedition members for him, not while he had the power to stop it.
Antigonos's earlier words, though, still echoed in his head. You have no one to blame but yourself for the predicament you are all currently in.
Noting his silence, the commander pressed on. "I have been watching you, Major. Studying you, listening. You remind me of a man who was in this legion not that long ago."
Squeezing his eyes shut against the pounding in his head, John interrupted him. "If you're going to interrogate me, just do it already. Unless this conversation of yours is the torture."
"I know your type well," Antigonos continued, ignoring him. "No true home. No family of which to speak. Like me, you have nothing... except this extraordinary place, perhaps, if only for a short while longer. This City will soon become your second beloved wrenched from you this day."
Taking a deep breath, John tried to clear his mind, tried to block out the words being thrown at him. He recognized it for what it was: a tactic. He recalled Elizabeth's warning not to let the commander under his skin. It was Antigonos' goal, just as much as it was to secure the ascension device and reach Earth. The commander saw it as a challenge, and an enjoyable one at that.
"All of your life you have immersed yourself in your duties, running from a past you would soon forget if not for the permanent scars left on your soul." Antigonos leaned forward in his seat and looked into the major's eyes, inspecting. He found his answer there and sat back. "I venture one more scar was left today, one far more intimate than any of the others."
John found himself dodging Antigonos' interrogative gaze. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
"Yet for all your many faults, you still amuse me, Major Sheppard. Do you know what I like about you?"
Looking up after several beats of silence, John realized this question had not been rhetorical. He didn't particularly want to play along with Antigonos' riddles. "Nothing comes to mind."
"What I admire about you is the same trait you respect in me, I can tell."
John scoffed. "Well in that case I'm definitely stumped."
"You are afraid of the path it might lead you down - that is why you refuse to admit to the commonality between us."
"Sorry to disappoint you, but I don't have a toga collection."
"You have tenacity, Major - the likes of which I have only witnessed once before, in the Lacedami soldier you so remind me of."
"Yeah, I get it, the soldier was you when you were younger," John answered irritably. "So what happened to him? Did he get power-hungry? Betray his friends, stab his family in his back? Commit a little treason, a little murder...?"
The commander smiled. "Something happened that allowed him to finally see the world for what it really was. Despite what you may think, I was not so different from you once. Even now, we are more similar than not."
"I am nothing like you."
"No?" Antigonos pressed. "And how do you think I was able to describe your background so well? Do you believe that pitiful history was yours alone?"
"Don't pretend to know me-"
"I do know you, Major, because I am you!" the commander proclaimed. "I have been down your same path; I have seen what you are seeing, have felt what you are feeling! I know what you are going to do before you do it!"
Remembering back to his and Elizabeth's flight through the City, and how Antigonos had uncannily managed to stay one step ahead of them the entire time, John shuddered to think that there was some truth to the last statement. Antigonos had known how and when to stage the invasion to outwit John's defensive designs. He had known exactly how to threaten to bend him to his knew just what to say to play to his emotions. It's like he's in my head, John thought. It made his skin crawl.
Antigonos roughly wiped several drops of blood from Sheppard's chin and examined them. "If not for the light years separating our homeworlds, I would swear to the gods that Lacedami blood runs through your veins."
"Was that intended as a complement?"
"One of the highest caliber."
"Thanks, but I already have my very own dysfunctional family to worry about."
"You are better than them! You are stronger, smarter, more resilient. Do not waste your time on such weaklings. Devote your time in this life to a more worthy cause."
"Ha," John scoffed. "What, like yours? This may come as a shock, but I couldn't care less about you or your cause."
"Yet you are plaguing yourself about how you possibly could have stopped me and my cause."
John paused, searching for evidence to the contrary, before looking away in indignation. Right again.
"Take solace, Major. There is nothing you could have done to stop us. This operation has been generations in the making. No detail of the plan has been overlooked."
Curiosity got the better of Sheppard. "Did you somehow cause our power problems?"
Antigonos snuffed a laugh. "Do not be so foolish. You caused your own problems; we merely took advantage of exceptional timing and your decided inability to control this City."
John absorbed the barb. "Lucky you. Now what's your plan?
The commander looked disappointed that John had tried to play dumb. "I am sure Dr. Weir told you what our goal is in your short time together."
John tried his best to not think of those last painful moments with Elizabeth. "To fly this City to Earth and exact revenge upon the Ancients' descendants," he answered plainly. He saw no reason to hide that kernel of knowledge from Antigonos. He left out, however, that he now also knew of the Lacedami's desire to steal Rodney's ascension device - a fact that implicated Kyros.
Antigonos took note of his captive's visible discomfort at the mention of the late Dr. Weir."Indeed. And you will help me achieve that goal."
John snorted. "I really can't see myself doing that."
"You will not have a choice," Antigonos said cryptically. He stood, their conversation seemingly coming to a close, for now. "The Fates have not been kind to you. You ran to this galaxy to escape a past riddled with failure, yet history seems to be repeating itself. You try to protect your people yet cannot even manage that. You torture yourself far worse than I ever could. You are an interesting man, Major. You have my pity."
John didn't even bother with a witty retort. The commander's assessment hadn't been far off the mark. The major stared grimly ahead of him, thankful this session was over.
Before Antigonos could take his leave, though, the door parted, revealing for the briefest moment the hushed mess hall beyond. The view, however, was quickly blocked by the hulking figure of Straton. He strode in briskly with speed that belied his size and presented Antigonos with an expedition tablet computer.
On any other day alarm bells might have gone off in John's head at the urgency of Straton's entrance. He might have heard snippets of an increasingly fervent exchange, or noticed several glances thrown his way. But all he saw was the disfigured face of that monster - the bastard who had sprayed bullets at Elizabeth as a scare tactic, who had carved their symbol into her, who had closed the lab door on them both, who had tried to exact some sick pleasure from her before killing her - walk into the room and stand right in front of him.
His brain didn't process that what he was about to do was a bad idea. It was a knee-jerk reaction at best, an idiotic move at worst, but his emotions, not his head, were in control of his body.
Before the two Lacedami knew what was happening, the major planted his feet firmly on the floor and launched himself bodily - chair and all - at the pair.
TBC