A/N: Happy Halloween people! Well, it is for anyone that lives in Australia. Moving on... As a treat I give you the next chapter, or maybe it's a trick? I guess you'll have to read to find out. Thank you to my amazing Beta' Ashvarden for her wonderful work on my story. Thank you to everyone who has been following. Enjoy.

Stale air threatened to choke him as John slowly came back to consciousness. His eyelids were sliding shut again, forcing him to succumb to the darkness peacefully. John fought the sleepiness that was trying to overwhelm him, trying not to give in to it.

Scanning the area, he couldn't see a thing. Maybe he never opened his eyes? Blinking, he came to the conclusion that it was either very dark, or he was dead. Pinching his arm, John gave a yelp of pain. Yep, he was alive.

John tried to move, but his legs refused to comply. Instead, they filled with a scorching pain that slowly crept up his body. He stopped moving and the pain slowly faded away, allowing the normal feeling in his body to return.

The solid ground beneath him was rough like sandpaper against the back of his head, the rough surface scraping it when he moved.

A drop of liquid ran down his face. He couldn't tell if it was sweat or blood. The room was almost impossible to see in. Only a faint strip of light ran across from around the corner through what appeared to be metal bars.

The light suddenly lengthened. Inside of it, a shadowy figure stepped forward.

"I'm so glad that you two have made yourself comfortable." Niam's eyes flickered to the other side of the room, where Rodney was lying, still unconscious.

"Let us go." His voice was raspy and dry, making it hurt to speak, but at the moment he didn't care.

"Oh, I don't think so." Niam pressed his face right up against the metal bars, looking down upon John.

"Why not?" was all he managed to get out before he began to cough violently.

John watched in horror and fascination as Niam walked straight through the bars, as if his body was made out of water and solidified again after he passed through.

Niam bared his teeth directly in John's face, curving his lips up into a smile. "Let's just say we've got some things planned for you while you stay."

Just the look in his eyes made John not want to know. "Like..."

"Information. That's all we want, to put it bluntly." Niam removed his face from his proximity and sat down on an old bed on the other side of the room, stepping over Rodney on the way.

"You've already got all the information you want, you've already probed our minds." Saliva was beginning to lubricate his throat, making it easier to talk.

"On the contrary, we didn't touch your minds. We simply knocked you out and brought you to this underground facility. And don't worry about your people trying to contact you, we're on a different planet so they won't be coming for quite some time, I'd imagine."

Impossible, they couldn't be on another planet. He couldn't possibly have been knocked out long enough to be carried back to the Stargate, then to the underground of another planet.

Rodney began to stir quietly on the other side of the room, his groans quite distinct even though John could only see the back of his head.

"Then why are we here!?" The only thing preventing him from punching Niam in the face was the fact that his legs hurt like hell.

Exhaling a sigh, Niam stroked his chin attentively as if trying to choose his words carefully. "As you're probably well aware, Replicators achieve information most effectively by mind probing. However, some of us prefer... other methods that have proved to be far more satisfying. But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy it."

"You mean torture." Even the word scared the hell out of him. He'd seen enough bloodshed and pain in his life and he didn't need to go through that again. Not ever. [

"If that's what you wish to call it, then yes." Niam picked himself up off the bed. The springs underneath creaked painfully to the ear. "But no matter how you put it," he whispered in John's ear as he bent down to the ground, "you'll never make it out of here alive."

John spat in Niam's face. "Go to hell."

He wiped the spit from his face and just smiled, as if he didn't even care, and spoke calmly. "I'm afraid that is quite impossible for me."

Niam's hand sprung out before John had time to react, and he received a blow to the jaw. His head rolled back to its original position on the floor dazed. "What do you want?"

"The new location of Atlantis would be a great place to start, don't you think?"

John winced in pain that exploded through his jaw as Niam threw another punch, the taste of blood lingering in his mouth.

"I would rather die than tell you."

Niam's face lightened up with a grin. "I'm afraid that's just not an option. It would be so much easier for you to comply."

There was a long moment of silence before John said anything. It wasn't going to matter if he told them or not. By now, they could have extracted the information from his mind at any given moment, so why were they holding back and resorting to torture? It didn't make any sense.

"Whe-where am I?" Rodney sat up, looking around the room.

John watched as Niam glanced at the figure of Rodney, and then back towards John with a crude grin. "Don't you fucking touch him," he forced out through clenched teeth.

It was no use; Niam got up from beside John and slowly made his way over to Rodney, who backed away against the hard stone wall of the cell.

"I said stay away from him!" John yelled.

Rodney's back was against the wall when Niam kicked him in the gut. He did it over and over again, occasionally grabbing Rodney's face and whispering in his ear. John was helpless, unable to do anything about

"Stop it! You're hurting him!" Tears of pain began to flow from his eyes as he unwillingly watched Rodney shake and moan in pain.

Niam stopped hitting Rodney and turned around to John. "I think that's enough for today. I'll give you two some time to think things over. Plus, I have your friends to interrogate now, and that will truly be an interesting experience."

"I'll get you, just you wait." He meant it, too; it was a promise, not just a threat. "And so help you god, when I do you will wish you'd never been created."

Willing himself to move, he managed to use his arms to pull himself backwards towards Rodney as Niam walked through the solid bars.

He looked over his right shoulder directly at John and just smiled. "We'll get to that when it comes to it, won't we?" And with that, he walked out of sight. The sound of a door closing could be heard, and the light became dimmer in an instant. Before long the room he had first woken up in had returned.

At least the darkness felt safe as the coldness swept over him, filling every gap in his body. It was almost suffocating, but it felt good. It meant he was alive.

Pulling himself closer to the wall, he finally reached Rodney, who was shaking in the corner, refusing to say a word. John tried to find something to say to comfort him, but what was there to say? Nothing he would possibly be able to come up with would do any good. At any moment, Niam could come back in and hurt them even worse. That was only a taster course; the Replicators were capable of so much more.

Instead, John placed his arm around Rodney's back and let him lay his head on his shoulder. John rested his own head against Rodney's and whispered softly, "I'll get us out of here."

"I know you will..." Rodney replied weakly.

Moving one hand slowly, John pushed Rodney aside. Removing the other hand from behind him, he slowly lifted up Rodney's shirt to see the damage Niam had done.

Rodney didn't object to his shirt being removed, lifting up his arms slowly. John pulled the last of the shirt over his head and placed it on the ground next to him.

John trailed his fingers lightly over Rodney's stomach. Rodney flinched when they accidentally brushed over his floating ribs. A large, abnormal bump was raised over the skin. "Does it hurt?"

"Of course not," he lied, even as he flinched in pain when John brushed his fingers over it again.

"Sure."

The light may have been poor, but it didn't stop John's eyes from wandering over the smooth curves of Rodney's waist.

'Woooh! Snap out of it, John,' he thought dazedly. The lack of light was making him tired.

"John..." Rodney started to say, his eyes looking into his for a second, but then he glanced away. "Don't worry about it."

"No, what?" John gave back Rodney's shirt and let him put it back on.

Rodney's head turned to the wall facing away from John. "I'm scared..." His voice was quiet, and full of fear.

"I am too," he admitted, managing to get to his feet; the pain wasn't even noticeable now.

Rodney got to his feet, trying not to move too much. It hurt John to see him like this. After all these years of fighting the Wraith and Replicators, he had managed to teach Rodney how to defend himself, to fight back. But what good had it done them? They were trapped, the cell door was deadlocked and sealed, and who knows how far underground they were.

Just a small sink in the top left hand corner in front of the bars, next to it stood with what probably used to be a ceramic white toilet standing next to it. The bottom half of it seemed to be smeared with a bright yellow fungus.

On his right stood a one-person bed. There wasn't even a pillow, just a thin sheet of material which was probably a blanket.

Wait... one bed?

"I'll sleep on the floor," John said immediately. He walked over to just below the bed and laid down on the concrete floor. The rough surface scratched like hell.

Rodney shook his head in disagreement. "Don't go out of the way just for me."

"McKay, just take the damn bed." His voice was a little bit louder than he would have liked.

"Fine, but don't expect me to get any sleep," he muttered, sounding rather pissed off.

John watched as Rodney stepped over him and lowered himself onto the bed, the rusty springs settling down once his entire body was lying flat on the mattress.

It was getting easier to see now; his eyesight had begun to adjust to the dark surroundings. Staring up at the ceiling, he began to dread what was to come, and also wondered how Teyla and Ronon were holding up. They were around here, probably in a cell right now being interrogated about god knows what, and all he could do was lie here on the floor praying for everything to be alright. [

John listened to the sound of Rodney's breathing. It had slowed down to a steady pace, the rhythmic pattern soothing his thoughts as he drowned in it.

"Rodney?"

"Mmm?" He sounded half asleep.

"I know I've never said this to you, and this probably isn't the best of time to tell you... but I just wanted to say that these past years, I'm glad I met you." A smile washed over his face. Rodney meant so much to him, and he wanted so badly to tell him, but he could never admit to himself the fact he had feelings for his best friend. It was stupid, and not the time to think about it.

"You too, Sheppard..." Rodney was either not listening or didn't care because he began snoring straight afterwards. So much for not sleeping.

John lost track how long he'd been awake; the water dripping from the tap echoed throughout the cell, keeping his eyes wide open.

To be continued...