Chapter 3
John woke up coughing and gagging when a stream of lukewarm water hit him in the face. He moved his head to get out of the water's path, but it seemed to follow him. He coughed again as some of the water ran down his throat, squirming and then panicking when he realized he was pinned down to a hard, cold surface. He bucked his body against the restraints and felt them tighten around his arms and legs. Hands. Someone was holding him down.
And then the water was gone. Someone flipped him over onto his stomach like he weighed nothing, and he felt the jet of water hitting the back of his head, then his neck, then his back. He was being hosed down, he realized. Images of the truck, the yellow animals, and the tall, giant-sized aliens floated through his memory. He flailed his arms and legs again, remembering that they'd been tied together before but now were not.
His eyes flew open at the sensation of more hands pinning him down on the table. He had been flipped onto his back without noticing it, and now he panicked at the sight of four large aliens, one with a hose, leaning over him and keeping him as still as possible against the table. They all wore the same fur-covered clothing—if it was clothing and not just thick, furry skin—and long, twisted ropes of hair framed their faces. The one with the hose continued to spray him and they chattered to each other incomprehensibly.
John squirmed under their grasp. The alien with the hose disappeared, and John sucked in deep, water-free breaths. His chest and head were throbbing, and he shivered against the cool breeze hitting his skin. His shirt and pants were sodden with water, and he wondered why they'd bothered to hose him off with his clothes still on.
The sudden thought of being stripped naked by these strange aliens made him shudder, and the aliens gripped his arms and legs harder at the movement. "What the hell do you want with me?" he yelled.
The aliens turned their heads at the sound, peering down at him in curiosity. They chattered to each other some more and looked at the alien that had held the hose as it stepped up to the table again. John stared back, defiant. It almost had a feminine look, but he couldn't figure out what exactly made it feminine. He tried to put on his most intimidating look, but he was shaking with fear and adrenaline. The others had quieted down and seemed to be deferring to the female alien.
The leader pressed one of its large hands into John's stomach, and John bit his lip to keep from crying out in pain. The hand was big enough to cover almost his entire stomach. It pressed harder, and a sharp, stabbing pain shot through him. John whimpered against the pain. The alien moved its hand, pressing its long fingers into his gut at different points.
It hit a particularly sensitive spot and he screamed, arching his back as he struggled to get away from those probing fingers. The hand jerked away at his reaction, however, and John breathed heavily in relief as the pain died down a little, but his relief was short-lived. His stomach still throbbed in agonizing waves. The alien had moved to his legs, running its fingers down each limb and pressing into the muscles, knees, calves, ankles, and feet.
It's examining me for injuries, like Beckett might only much less gentle, he realized. He closed his eyes against the pounding headache in his temples, exhausted and stressed, and he hardly reacted to a sharp, momentary stab in his thigh. They shot me up with something. Some kind of sedative, he thought, and his eyes grew heavy almost immediately. The hands pinning him down loosened their grip as his muscles relaxed, and John thought this was his moment to escape, but he had no energy to move.
Suddenly, one of the aliens scooped him up in its arms. John's eyes flew open, but the rest of his body was dead weight. He saw the reddish-blond coat and realized it was the female doctor. The alien held him close to its chest, and John realized they were walking through a sterile-looking hallway. He tried to move his head to look around, but his heavy, lethargic muscles reacted only slightly. He caught a glimpse of two aliens walking toward him. One of them held its bandaged forearm close to its chest and glared back at John, and for a moment John thought he recognized the long, sallow face.
They passed through a wide doorway, and the alien holding John paused a moment to speak to someone sitting behind a glass desk. He felt childish almost, cradled in the alien's arms like a five year old. If he'd been standing, the top of his head probably would have barely reached the waists of all the aliens he'd seen so far.
They were moving again, and then the alien was ducking down and setting John on the ground. John opened heavy eyes to look around, and saw an open door, but he had no energy to move. He lay where he had been set, and watched the alien back out of the barred door. He jerked a little at the sound of it clanging shut and watched the alien fumble at the lock with a set of keys.
A cage. He was in a cage. The blanket underneath him—a strip of soft leather—was thin, offering little protection or cushion from the cold, cement floor. He spotted two bowls near the door and a small box in the corner. Not just a cage. He was in a kennel, like an animal. He shivered slightly against the cold seeping into him and prayed his team would find him soon.
At some point, he must have drifted off to sleep. The sound of keys in the metal door of the cage woke him up abruptly, and John jerked his head at the sound. Two aliens were opening the door, and ducking into the little cage. Their hair—one jet black, the other a dark brown—looked like thick braided ropes that swung around their shoulders as they moved. Their fur or coats matched the color of their hair. They were large enough that they could hardly move around in the cage, and they squatted down as they approached him.
John scooted back with a cry and slammed his back into the wall, grateful that the sedative he'd been given had obviously worn off. The aliens nearing him paused in their approach, their wide, unblinking eyes trained on John's quaking form. They held their hands open, and moved forward slowly. John inched back, squeezing himself into the corner and looking for something he could use to fight back with. Besides making him shaky, the drugs they had injected him with were making him nauseous, and his stomach churned and coiled against the acid.
The aliens were almost human looking—just too tall and thin. Relatively speaking, John was about the size of a small child. He could use that. Being smaller, he might be able to find places to hide that they wouldn't be able to reach. He tried to scoot along the side wall, but the aliens were blocking him from both sides.
Quicker than he would have guessed, one of them jumped at him and grabbed him by the foot. John screamed, lashing out with his arms as the other alien made a move for him. He felt a sharp pain in the toe of his free foot as it connected with one of the black-haired one's face. It dropped John's foot, and John spun around, kicking at both of them as much as he could. He connected a few times, enough to make them step back.
He was breathing heavily, and he knew he'd only managed to delay the inevitable, but he breathed a sigh of relief as the brown-haired alien backed out of the cage holding its nose. Black blood ran down its face and onto the weird, furry clothes. They almost looked like they were covered in small dreadlocks. John's breath hitched for a second at that thought. He'd give anything to see Ronon's dreadlocks right about now.
The aliens spoke to each other, the bizarre combination of clicks and sounds and guttural grunting he had heard before. He flashed on the alien whose arm he had slashed with his knife in the woods, and realized it was the same alien he'd seen last night with its arm all bandaged up. Probably testing it for rabies or something, John thought, grinning and feeling slightly hysterical.
The alien with the bloody nose disappeared for a second, only to return with a long metal bar. There was a two-pronged fork attached to one end of it, and John shrank back against the wall. His previous moment of giddiness was gone as the alien still in the cage grabbed the bar and began approaching its captive.
"Get the hell away from me you—"
The alien jabbed him with the forked end of the bar, cutting John off mid-sentence. Blinding pain sliced through John's side where the forked end had hit him. The pain was all-consuming, whiting out the cage and the aliens for a few seconds. When it finally abated, he found himself lying on the floor on his stomach, breathing heavily.
He turned his head toward the door. The black-haired alien with the metal bar hadn't moved, and was staring at him without expression. There was a glint of something in its eyes—malice or anger—and its hand tightened around the metal bar. John tried to move, but his body felt sluggish and unresponsive. He managed to push himself up on shaky arms, and caught a glimpse of the being swinging the bar at him again.
The forked end caught him in the middle of the back. John screamed, arching away from the tip of the bar, but the alien pressed the end of it harder into his skin. The pain increased, shooting like lightning bolts up and down his body.
John wasn't sure when it stopped. It couldn't have been long, but the next thing he was aware of was lying on the cold floor, shaking and twitching uncontrollably. The alien with the bar—an electric cattle prod, his brain belatedly filled in—was still squatting near the door, just out of reach, but he had handed the electric prod back to the brown-haired, bloody-nosed alien. He crawled forward slowly, as if afraid John would suddenly lash out at him, but John could do nothing more than watch him through half-closed eyes.
The alien must have decided that John was no longer a threat to him. It grabbed him roughly around the waist. John felt himself being dragged across the floor, then lifted up. It held him with one arm around the waist, and John's arms and legs dangled uselessly in front of him. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open and watch the tiled floor pass by him as they walked down the hallway. The alien's arm pressed painfully into his stomach.
They walked into a room, and John caught glimpses of counters and bare tabletops and instruments. The alien flipped him up onto the top of one of the tables, and John bounced slightly as he hit the surface. His head exploded in pain, and he curled into himself, groaning.
Above his head, he could hear the guttural grunting language again. It was rapid and loud, and John would have guessed that both parties were angry at one another, but about what, he couldn't even begin to guess. He squeezed his arms around his legs, curling into the smallest ball possible. If the pain could just abate a little bit, then maybe he could slide off the edge of the table, hide out while the two arguing aliens were distracted.
Move move move, he screamed at himself, but his body was locked up in a ball and he stayed frozen on the table, shaking against the pain still shooting sporadically through his limbs. The two aliens were still arguing. One of the voices was a little higher pitched, and John wondered if it was the female alien with the water hose from the day before.
His stomach picked that moment to rebel, spurring the movement to the edge of the table he'd been trying to talk himself into before. He gagged and retched over the side of the table, causing the argument over his head to stop abruptly as the two skittered back away from the table. The gagging didn't last long since there was very little in his stomach to bring up in the first place. He pressed a fist into his sore gut and rested his forehead against the cold metal of the table.
Warm hands were on his back and shoulders, pulling him back toward the center of the table, but John just shuddered. He felt washed out and achy, amazed he was still conscious considering what his body had been through during the last day or two. He realized the room was silent, and he was alone with one of the aliens.
It rolled him onto his back, and John was too tired to resist as it unfolded his arms and legs and stretched him out. He shivered as the cold metal of the table seeped through his back. He blinked and a slightly feminine alien face came into focus. It was the same alien he'd "met" the day before, and it once again ran its hands over his body, pressing into his chest and stomach, squeezing his arms and legs, running its fingers through his hair. It was gentler this time, maybe because John was so subdued. He whimpered when it hit a particularly tender spot but he had no energy to do more than that. The alien rolled him onto his side, pressing its hands into his back and neck before returning him to his back.
John was tired enough to fall asleep, but the lingering stabbing aches throughout his body kept him on the edge of consciousness. He lay there listlessly as the female alien manipulated his arms and legs, but when it pressed its fingers into a particularly tender point on the side of his stomach, he grunted in pain and tried to roll away.
"Leave me alone, you freaky-assed alien," he slurred. It grabbed him, rolling him gently and with ease back onto the center of the table. John blinked up at it, but then it disappeared to the far side of the room. A second later, the alien was rolling some equipment toward him, then manipulating him again into different positions before stepping back and staring at the side of the machine.
X-rays? he wondered. He stayed still while the being examined him. He still had on his t-shirt and pants, which he thought was a little strange, but he had no intention of saying anything. Unlike the aliens that had ripped him out of his cage, this one was gentle, almost caring.
The doctor finally seemed satisfied with the pictures or X-rays or whatever it was doing. John blinked, fighting to keep his eyes open as he watched it roll the machine back to the corner of the room. He willed himself to stay conscious and focus on his own aches and pains. His head hurt, but he couldn't tell if he had a concussion or not. His cheek felt hot and swollen, so he was pretty sure he had a nice, ugly bruise spreading across half of his face. His stomach hurt, especially the left side—something he would have to keep an eye on. His shoulder was stiff and bruised, as was his hip and one of his toes, but he didn't think he'd broken anything. His chest felt heavy as well, but there had been no sharp stabs of pain when he moved or breathed deeply. Maybe, just maybe, he'd get out of this with minimal injuries.
The alien doctor returned, staring down at him with something almost like compassion. Its long fingertips brushed his hair then the side of his face, passing lightly over the bruise on his cheek. John was torn between panicking and being soothed by its action, and finally decided that panicking required energy he just didn't have. His mouth was sour and nasty, and he swallowed, suddenly dying of thirst.
Jane, which seemed like a better name than "that alien woman doctor," gathered John up in her arms, and once again he was reduced to the status of a five year old. One of his arms hung loose and flopped as she walked, pulling painfully on the bruises around his shoulder, but he couldn't seem to pick his arm up and move it across his body.
He saw another alien moving out of the corner of his eye and tensed slightly, but Jane tightened her grip on him and held him closer to herself, almost protectively. Her actions pressed his face into her arm and he got a mouthful of the shaggy, reddish-blond fur-like clothing. He wondered again if it was a coat or cloak that they all wore or if it was actually fur. He had never seen anything like it. It could explain why they hadn't taken his clothes—maybe they didn't recognize them as clothes that could be removed in the first place.
He heard the sound of keys in a metal door and knew he was back at his cage. Jane stooped down, lowering John to the floor and onto the thin leather blanket. She didn't linger, but backed out quickly and locked the cage door.
John rolled to the side and watched her leave. The three walls around him were solid, but the wall at the front with the door was made entirely of bars, giving him a limited view of the room the cage was in. He looked around now from his position on the floor. The ceiling was high—he couldn't see the top from where he was now—and other cages lined the walls across from him. It was quiet at the moment, and he wondered if there was anyone else in here with him. He'd take either animal or human, just as long as he wasn't the only experimental specimen in this place.
Exhaustion dragged at him, but his body was screaming for water. He spotted the two bowls still sitting near the front of the cage. He pulled himself to his knees and crawled over. One of the bowls was filled with water, which he guzzled down. The other was filled with chunks of raw, fatty meat. The sight alone turned John's stomach and he looked away quickly, breathing through his mouth. The water sloshed uncomfortably in his stomach. He glanced once more around the room outside his cage, but he was alone for the moment. His eyes were starting to droop closed and it was getting harder and harder to focus on anything. He crawled back on shaky hands and knees to his blanket, collapsing in the corner and falling fast asleep.
TBC…