John stood in the doorway, inches from freedom, willing the woman doctor to take the final step he needed for her to be in the position he wanted. But she just stood, staring at his extended arm as if she'd never seen such a courtesy. Confused by her sudden fascination, he glanced involuntarily at his arm too. There were nothing but bruises and welts that he could see.
Snapping his gaze back to her face, he saw comprehension and a kind of stern fear flash across the narrow features. "Colonel Sheppard. You're playing us, aren't you?!"
To hell with good position.
With a sudden shove, he knocked the woman out of the door and into the hallway, sending her stumbling to the floor. Still using his forward momentum, he swung his belted fist at the cheekbone of the first guard, connecting with a solid punch and using the U of the buckle across his fingers like a brass knuckles. The man fell with a satisfying thud, instantly unconscious, and John was turning towards the second guard who had finally reacted and was rushing up to the doorframe from inside the cell.
Quickly thumbing the pin forward, John slammed his palm into the guard's shoulder, pushing him back into the cell and driving the point deep into the bulky, over-pumped muscles. The guard howled, and spun away from the prick. John snatched for the cell door and slammed it closed, locking the guard inside.
Panting heavily, John whirled one last time to see the woman just scrambling to her feet and trying to scuttle down the miraculously clear hallway. With a quick yank, John caught her up, spun her back into his chest and pressed the belt's pin into the side of her neck. She froze with tense terror, tugging futilely at his wrist that stayed firmly against her throat.
Snarling with his success, he breathed against her ear, "So, Mahala, what happened to 'John'?"
The woman didn't miss a beat, even as he began to hustle her down the hall, "John. You're sick. We've told you this before. Let me go, let me take you to your people. There's apparently nothing more I can do for you. Maybe your people have better treatments…"
John just snorted, "I'm not the one who's sick. You people and your ideologue terrorism are the ones who're sick. You can call me names all day long. I'm getting the hell out of here." John was hissing the words into her ear as he half pushed, half carried the doctor down the hallway towards a dimly lit stairwell at the hall's end. He blinked as he quickly assessed his immediate surroundings and peered quickly into each empty room and cell as he passed by.
Apparently this wing was otherwise empty. A large set of double doors blocked the hall from the rest of the building in the opposite direction John had taken. The bright light and murmurs of many voices coming from behind those doors moved John on further from them, lest some curious guard or doctor came through, wondering why he hadn't been brought out yet. The hall grew steadily darker as they got closer to the stairs, and he noticed the switches on the tired white walls flipped to "off". Perhaps they'd been holding him in secret? Hiding him from even the other terrorists? No matter. It didn't impact him now. His side started to ache again from the twisting and extending he'd had to do to take out the guards, and from the exertion of holding the woman as he walked.
He reached the end of the hall and paused at the threshold of the also darkened stairwell, thinking hard for a moment before deciding his next step. If he was going to make it to the 'gate, he needed to rely on speed and stealth. They were sure to start looking for him soon. Given enough of a lead, he could be well on his way and beyond the radius of any efficient search.
So that meant ditching the doctor. She was of no use to him particularly, and -- such was his boiling anger at her – he felt she might not be particularly safe with him. His hands against her throat trembled with an eagerness for revenge that he forced down with difficulty. Instead, he turned into the last room on the hall, dragging her through roughly and spitefully enjoying the sound of her fearful, rapid breathing. She wasn't so quite so smug now that the tables were turned!
Perhaps he could find a nice table of his own to tie her onto. Give her a little taste of what it feels like to be helplessly terrified. The uncharacteristically venomous thought surprised and disturbed him to such a degree that he shoved the doctor free to stumble further into the room and flipped the lights on, then stood in the doorway fiddling with the lock to regain his composure. He'd been within inches, already, of hurting her just for the pleasure of it. Was it the drugs? Some unintended side effect that was making him feel like he was hanging by his last thread of control, even sanity? Serves these bastards right, he allowed himself to think. If they've created a monster then now they'll have to deal with it.
The woman turned to watch him warily, standing with her arms crossed in defiant vulnerability. When he finished studying the mechanism, he looked around the room and began to untwist the belt from his wrist. This room was a small examination room with a table like the one John had been strapped to, minus the restraints, and a single small wall of cabinets and supplies. When the belt was free, John began to loop it back through his pants and fixed his gaze on the woman.
"How do I get to the Stargate?" he said without preamble.
"The Stargate is heavily guarded. You'll never even make it to the dialing device…"
"I didn't ask you tell me how to get through, I asked you to tell me where it is," John snarled, moving towards her and snatching at a chair along the way. He twitched when he passed the table.
The woman caught her breath, then answered bravely, "It's in the ministry courtyard, in the heart of the government sector. You have to go through the East wing of the hospital, then turn north down Ministry Corridor."
"Which building?"
"The only access to the Stargate courtyard is through the Security building, but…"
"Yeah, I know. It's heavily guarded." John pressed the woman down into the chair then began to ransack the cabinets and drawers. It took him only moments to find a long ball of gauze and a sharp pair of small scissors. Unwinding a long length, he pulled the woman's wrists together behind the chair and tied her hands securely. He then added a few loops of the gauze around her waist and through the chair's back for good measure.
Taking the gauze one last time, he cut off one more length of the stuff and doubled it over a couple of times to make a thick rope. He walked around to face the woman, tugging the gauze between his hands as he met her stern gaze. She had courage, he had to give her that.
"Colonel…John. Don't run. Don't hurt anyone else, please." The clipped, stern tone of her voice contrasted oddly with her pleading words.
"I should just turn myself in like a good little prisoner?"
"You're not a prisoner, you're a patient."
"Sure. Whatever."
"You're ill and confused…"
"Never felt better."
"And you'll only bring harm to yourself and others if you don't let someone help you."
John laughed, the manic harshness of it sounding edgy even to himself. "No thanks. You've done quite enough already. I don't plan to sit around waiting for your colleague Niklas to sell me to the highest weapons bidder, or use me against the Gellans in some freak hostage negotiation."
"We're not terrorists," Mahala's voice was soft with weary defeat, but John grew suddenly angry and shoved the guaze rope into her mouth, tying the ends tightly behind her head.
He stood back panting, and paced a few steps back and forth. "I know what I saw," he seethed at last between gritted teeth. "I saw your 'traders' casing the Gellan government's security setup. I saw them hand over the information to an agent on Gemman. I saw them pick up a delivery of weapons at the little village. Niklas was at the 'gate waiting for them when I made the mistake of coming through to this damnable planet."
Mahala's eyes grew wide at the tirade, then narrowed in steely disbelief.
John just chuffed with frustration and turned his back on her. She was in on it, so what was he wasting his time trying to convince her for? She was delaying him, trying to stall him. He cursed himself for letting her distract him and focused with difficulty on what he had to do next, pushing the woman out of his mind completely. It was safer for her that way.
John stalked to the door, flicked off the lights and paused in the doorway, listening. His heart suddenly hammered in fearful alertness as he realized he'd shut off the light not a moment too soon.
The doors at the far end of the hallway slammed open and a voice drifted down its length to John who stood frozen in the shadows of the examination room.
"Mahala?" The voice called towards his old cell. John recognized the deep timbre and stiffened with recognition. "Mahala? What's taking so long to move the offworlder?" Niklas called again.
John heard him suddenly gasp and take a few quick steps. John peeked around the edge to see the man kneeling by the unconscious guard, then ducked back quickly again as Niklas took a long look both ways down the hall.
The next sounds were of the double doors being slammed open again, this time from the inside, and Niklas bellowing for security. The hall was flooded for a moment with light from the bright rooms beyond, then darkened again as the doors swung shut. Niklas would be back, though. The hunt was on.
John quietly slipped out of the doorway and into the dim stairwell, tapping lightly down the steps towards the floors below…a shadow among the shadows.