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Acid Shadows

Part Two

Major Lyons wasn't sure where, if he had to pinpoint a specific moment in time, the mission had gone wrong. But gone wrong it undeniably had. The natives – far from the easy-going folk from the last time SG-8 had been on the planet – had somehow transformed into ravening, raging creatures out for his team's blood. Not literally, though that could possibly have been less surprising. But the natives of P4X-182 had suddenly, for some reason beyond Lyons' comprehension, decided that SG-8 – with its one addition – was under no circumstances allowed to even view the Ancient device mounted in their local temple-fortress.

Maybe the mission had gone wrong about the time the elders wished to know why the team had returned, despite the fact Lyons had mentioned last time that they may be returning. Maybe it had been when it was discovered that there had been a "minor" political upheaval, only subtly alluded to, during the few days that SG-8 had been on Earth. And it had definitely gone wrong by the time the team were rounded up during their stroll down the main street, and the natives attempted to forcibly corral them into the castle.

By the time SG-8 resisted, with no intention of being forcibly corralled anywhere, and the natives drew weapons, the situation had definitely progressed beyond any repair. And when the team woke from unconsciousness, and found themselves chained to the walls of a large cell, there was quite clearly no immediate way out of the situation besides that which the natives decided.

Waking up, drifting out of the black hole of unconsciousness, every member of SG-8, whether permanent or temporary, had a headache. Whenever they moved, the thick metal chains attached to the arms and legs of each person clinked together, drawing immediate attention to the presence of the manacles locked securely around wrists and ankles. The strangely clear, transparent walls of their cell were the next thing to draw their attention; the walls and the bright light streaming through to hit their faces. Neither the light nor the noise of the chains helped with the headaches.

And there didn't look to be any getting out of either the chains or the cell. The guards standing directly on the other side of the door didn't look as though they'd be happy to let the prisoners escape, either. Those big, muscular guards that just couldn't compete in the immediate-attention-grabbing stakes with the headache pounding away within Lyons' head.

Oh, this isn't looking good. Oh, dammit. Why does this stuff happen...?

The five Tau'ri had been awake for what seemed a long time when they became aware of something happening – something happening beyond a slowly fading headache. The quiet conversation between the five – which, after touching on the current situation and all the ways that they could possibly think of to escape, none of which would help, passed on to all manner of pop culture trivia, being the least related subject that they could find on short notice – ceased when the two guards outside finally did something other than not move a single muscle while keeping an eye on the prisoners.

The pair of natives listened to someone – or more than one someone – probably deliberately standing out of sight of the prisoners. And then, responding to whatever orders they had just received, the guards opened the cell door, and entered the prisoners' domain.

SG-8, along with their addition, turned as one with a jingle of chains to face the guards as they came through the door. Even once the five had climbed to their feet, the better to be prepared for whatever came next, the natives still towered above them, both taller and bulkier. Captain Richards, manacled closest to the door and so also closest to the natives, shuffled her feet backwards, retreating a little, trying to keep her distance. But it didn't make any difference; maybe she had attracted their attention by moving, or maybe they had been planning to go after her all along.

Major Scott Lyons watched in dawning horror as, in slow-motion burnt into the back of his brain, the two big, burly natives forcibly stopped his 2IC's struggles. The pair stood on either side of Captain Diana Richards, holding her shoulders down, forcing her to kneel, and – ominously – holding her hands outstretched towards the middle of the room, palms facing upwards.

The chains holding her jingled faintly as she shifted her weight slightly, searching for a way to shift the weight of the two thugs who were practically standing on her. From Lyons' point of view, it seemed as though the pair of natives were far too experienced at restraining folks in this manner, almost as though the victims were supplicants.

And Lyons couldn't suppress the creeping – horrifying – thought that he might not be getting one of team back in one piece. If any of the team got back at all, including him and the teenager; this was beginning to look doubtful. He didn't know what the natives were planning, but it sure looked suspicious. And the Major couldn't see a way out of it just at the moment. This is happening too fast...don't we even get a trial?

Although, now, right at this moment, the situation seemed to be temporarily paused. On hold. Lyons frowned; he could hear something, just faintly.

Then, louder, he heard O'Neill say vehemently 'Crap.'

Lyons switched his focus from Richards to O'Neill, and, following his gaze, from the teenager to the clear walls of their prison. Or, more accurately, followed his gaze to the multitude of people that had gathered outside the walls, peering in.

Entertainment for the masses. He really should have guessed.

Lyons turned his head back to watch Richards again, only to be sidetracked by the entrance of an additional two people into their clear-walled prison. The appearance of the pair only heightened his paranoia; as did the sudden complete lack of sound, save for the jingling chains. The newcomers looked to be in charge, which could only be more bad news; chances were that whatever punishment was arranged would soon be beginning.

The taller of the two newcomers was male, wearing what seemed to be rather extreme amounts of whatever leather-substitute they had on this planet, and laden down with only a couple of visible hunting knives but undoubtedly a whole lot more weapons of the concealed variety. Lyons was sure he had seen the man somewhere at the back of the charge that had been led towards the – okay, the not entirely unsuspecting – SG team. That fact meant the man probably wasn't stupid enough to put himself into a position where chained prisoners could get the better of him; not if he was smart enough not to get himself cut down as an extra in the first few minutes of battle – no chivalric honour here.

The second newcomer, on the other hand, could easily have been either male or female, any way of telling being hidden beneath one of those long robe-and-hood things that shamans (or the local equivalent) seemed to favour on just about every planet in existence.

Either way, the let's-say-they're-a-shaman seemed to hold just as much power as the let's-call-him-the-leader did. And it was entirely possible, given that the shaman was accompanying the leader to the handing out of a (possibly – hopefully – mundane) punishment, that the shaman held more power than the leader did, in one of those not-easily-identifiable-ways that things always seemed to work offworld. Of course, that was unlikely to be of much use in any other than an academic manner. If knowing the flow of power could get them out of here, all the better, but the team were not likely to gain such a chance.

In this particular, spectacularly unwanted, chance to learn of the culture of those residing on P4X-182, the shaman-person appeared to be the keeper of the means of however whatever punishment they had unwittingly incurred was to be carried out. The shaman produced it, with some evident ceremony, from the depths of their robes, holding it carefully, as though with some inadvertent ill-advised movement it might shatter and destroy them all. Lyons fervently hoped that that wasn't actually the case.

The item in question was a small, delicate glass bottle, with swirling designs covering the sides; held inside the fragile vessel, filing it almost to the brim, was a dark liquid, pitch black in colour, that almost seemed to be moving of its own accord within the confines of its container. Lyons had no idea how exactly this mysterious, alien liquid would be used to carry out his team's punishment, let alone what that punishment would entail, but he had no doubts that that punishment was the purpose of the dark substance.

And, Lyons added to himself, when he saw how the leader moved slightly further away from the liquid once it was produced, it would probably be painful.

This was not looking good; SG-8 had been lucky to get home alive the previous – the first – time a situation of this type had occurred. Fire-fights, sure, those the team could survive with relative ease; even just the typical taken-prisoner situations, or the risky-diplomatic-negotiations-in-another-language-with-added-threatening-weaponry situations; but not mysterious-dangerous-punishment situations.

His team were hardly SG-1 – and Lyons wouldn't want them to be in any case – and they didn't have that team's penchant for getting into – and more importantly out of – trouble.

Oh, god. And for all that Lyons had officially decided to become an atheist after finding out about the Goa'uld, sometimes the old-fashioned, ingrained curses were best. Jesus Christ in Heaven. And taking His name in vain was okay if you didn't really believe, right?

And Lyons' thoughts were all over the place, and he was rambling, and he knew that, because there were some things your mind just spontaneously takes action against, because your mind just does not want to look at those things. Or remember them. Or think about, ever again, including right this very second.

Oh, hell. While in some cases calling on Him for assistance helped, Lyons himself had always – even when he actually went to church – believed something more along the lines of "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition", and besides, hell seemed a touch more appropriate at this point in time. Given the circumstances.

And she was still struggling, still moving, still resisting, although her bloodcurdling, piercing screams had died down to whimpers and now even those were fading, unable to be sustained... And it was an awful sight, it really was, but he had to watch, because anything less wouldn't be acceptable, wouldn't honour her – and he's already talking like she's dead, he notes in a far-off corner of his mind – and maybe no one would blame him for looking away, not even Diana – but he would.

So he watched, no expression showing on his face, because really, what expression would do the situation – do her, and her sacrifice, however unwilling, and unneeded, and oh-god-how-did-this-go-wrong – justice? And Major Lyons kept watching his 2IC, with the sight burning – etching, with acid, just like-shut up, shut up – eating its way into his mind. He kept watching, right up to the point when she stopped struggling, stopped moving, and the burly natives released her body, etched with acid from the inside, in patterns he might have even found amazing if not for where – what – they were, and the chains holding her clinked as they held her dead weight.

Then he blinked, looked down, swallowed hard, and tried not to lose his last meal. However bad the mess hall food tasted going down, he was sure it would taste worse coming back up.

It was far from the first dead body he'd seen – he was career military, and hardly some raw recruit – and nor was Captain Richards the first soldier he'd seen die while under his command. But the Captain had died in torment – Lord Almighty, but she had – and now it appeared as though they all would. And Major Lyons really wasn't sure if he was up to it.

Although, with the natives already forcing Cochrane to his knees, it did not appear as though he – or any of them, he or Chapman or O'Neill – had much choice in the matter.

There was no real reason to the sequence, they looked like they were just going around in the order that the SG team had been chained to the walls. That lack of reason really only made it worse. It's not personal.

But planned or not, it meant that Lyons would be last. It meant he would have to watch them all dying in agony (if he could bear it, if he didn't chicken out, if he could stand it), before doing so himself. Dammit, Landry was going to kill him. But that probably wasn't going to be much of a problem, was it?

The pair of native thugs were repeating their earlier movements, leaving the dead body of Lyons' teammate to lie in its chains while they moved onto the next live teammate – although in this case, the teammate in question was O'Neill, and Jack O'Neill – just like his namesake, it seemed – clearly had no intention of just simply submitting to his execution.

The teenager was instead slowly backing away from the advancing natives, which may have looked like cowardice to that pair of doubtful intelligence – although that assumption could just be the Major's subconscious stereotyping – but to Lyons it looked just like O'Neill was trying to get enough slack in the chains to make sure he'd actually be able to reach the natives without the chains stopping him, or at least not getting in his way overmuch.

Against two burly men, Lyons really didn't like the kid's chances, not in so many words, especially when the kid was chained to the wall, no matter how relatively loose those chains happened to be. And if Lyons hadn't liked watching this – this cold-blooded process – happen to two of his team, he wasn't gonna like watching it happen to a teenager. Not one bit.

And it didn't help his conscience in any way at all, knowing that this kid had chosen to be here. It wasn't as though a teenager would have been able to make an informed decision about the whole going-off-world thing; it was a wonder, really, that the kid had been allowed into the SGC in the first place. Okay, so maybe Lyons was being a little unjust calling him a kid. O'Neill would be – what? Seventeen? Eighteen, maybe? Old enough to already be in the military, anyway.

A green recruit, and there were enough of those going through the gate these days. The SGC ran through – ran out of – personnel like anything, and there seemed to be more and more new recruits, now, replacing those lost. There'd need to be a few more new recruits, after today...No. Shut up. Shutup, shutup, shutupshutup.

O'Neill had his back to the wall, now, and sure enough, the two natives weren't looking at all as though they suspected any ulterior motive beyond purely instinctive movement to get away. It was possible, Lyons admitted to himself, that that was part of it, the hindbrain just screaming to get out of reach, because that would certainly have been a significant part of his own, similar, movements had he been approached by the natives at this moment.

The natives, within striking distance, had not paused in their mission to get the kid kneeling on the ground, and his hands forcibly held outstretched in that attitude of pseudo-supplication. The one on the left hadn't expected a foot to connect solidly with his knee, and the one on the right plainly hadn't expected, a few short moments later, to receive a fist in his stomach.

O'Neill, on the other hand, appeared annoyed but not unduly surprised (or surprised at all, an attitude that was a touch suspicious, and suggested previous exposure to the oddities of alien physiology) when the natives were barely affected by the blows. Lyons was fairly certain that, had the natives been simply human, then – well, that kneecap would almost certainly have been in a great deal of trouble, and the other guy would definitely needed to at least get his breath back.

As it was, they didn't need to recover (Lyons didn't like to think about just how alien the natives might be, to be so unaffected; "from a different planet" didn't quite cover this level of difference) and they didn't have kneecap problems. And they didn't pause in their undertaking to force O'Neill onto the ground.

If the natives had been human, Lyons found himself thinking as he watched, O'Neill might have even won (and he tried not to think about whether the captain might have been able to win, had she not been taken by surprise).

But they weren't human, and he didn't win.

Lyons had never enjoyed feeling helpless and this sort of complete helplessness was worse than might otherwise be considered normal. It wasn't being unable to translate an alien language without needing to go through Cochrane, it wasn't being unable to watch more than three minutes of 'Wormhole Xtreme!' without collapsing in hysterics, it wasn't being unable to stomach the food served in the SGC's commissary.

This time, helplessness meant that someone was going to die. It meant that another person was going to die, and he couldn't do a single damn thing about it.

This time, helplessness didn't mean annoyance and mild irritation, and it sure as hell didn't mean amusement. It meant that he had failed.

This time, being helpless meant having to watch as a teenager had acid – or something that may as well be acid – dripped slowly onto the insides of his wrists. It meant Lyons would have to watch excruciating pain, again, and not be able to do anything.

It also meant, apparently, watching the shifting expressions upon the faces of the natives as something happened that they had not predicted.

Lyons wasn't complaining that the obstructive natives of P4X-whatever didn't seem to have any clue what was going on. Even if he wasn't sure what was happening himself, if the natives didn't know, then – well, surely it couldn't get much worse.

Except the expressions of the natives both inside and outside the clear-walled prison cell turned slowly from surprise to – was that fear? Awe? Lyons couldn't tell. He couldn't tell what was happening to the ceremony-or-whatever-it-was, but something had definitely gone wrong with the liquid's reaction to O'Neill. Or perhaps it was more O'Neill's reaction to the liquid.

Lyons shared a brief, panicky glance with Chapman. It was, of course, a good thing that O'Neill wasn't screaming until his voice grew hoarse and looking as though the chains and grip of the native guards were the only things preventing him from writhing in pain – stop thinking – but because he wasn't, Lyons wasn't sure what to think.

The kid wasn't having the same reaction as – don't think about it, just shut up, don't say their names. He was having a reaction, and Lyons didn't know what it was. It was painful, that much was obvious, even if O'Neill wasn't making much noise above the faintest of near-involuntary whimpers. Face a mask that wasn't quite managing to be emotionless, his lean frame all but vibrating with tension, O'Neill's agony emanated from him right along with the quiet sounds torn from the back of his throat.

And even if Lyons closed his eyes, he'd still be able to hear those noises, barely human, of a wounded animal in pain. He didn't close his eyes. He didn't think that Chapman did, either.

But for all that – and wasn't that enough? – the liquid-whatever wasn't acting the same. Just from watching, Lyons knew that much. But the liquid wasn't burning him – it was hurting, it was painful, it was making black, rippling lines all up and along his arms, covering his hands in twisting dark shadows – but it wasn't etching its way into his skin, wasn't leaving his skin blistered and sore and burnt in its path. It wasn't melting his flesh to the bone. And for all its swirling and spiralling, it was progressing slowly, wasn't making its way through him like wildfire, feral and untameable.

It wasn't killing him.

And Lyons didn't know what to think about that.

The sight was morbid, and he couldn't tear his gaze away. More disturbingly, the one expression common to each and every inhabitant of the cell when Lyons mustered the presence of mind to look was that of varying degrees of shock.

The tall leather-substitute-wearing man appeared to be having second thoughts about just how long this coup of his would remain successful. Lyons was no expert on matters of religion, let alone alien religion, but this event would not look to be a good omen in terms of the man's deity-ordained right to rule. The will of the gods overturning a ceremonial killing ordered by the current leader? Lyons just hoped that the political mess would have the good manners to begin after it was no longer the problem of his team.

The natives restraining O'Neill looked uneasy. This new occurrence was no doubt a large shock to their minds of limited intellect. Lyons realised he was being nasty, and then admitted that he didn't much care.

The shaman-person's expression was impossible to read, their face being hidden as it was beneath traditional coverings. Their body language, on the other hand, was nearly as uneasy as that of everyone else.

The natives outside the cell seemed to be unsure as to whether they remained permitted to watch the events. The contrast between not being allowed to view a holy event, and being authorised witnesses of it? The gaining of a story to tell their grandchildren?

Lyons didn't know. He didn't particularly care either, although he suspected that O'Neill might prefer less people seeing this whatever-it-was-and-whatever-it-signified.

Lyons couldn't have said how long the inhabitants of the cell were frozen, caught in an instant and all watching O'Neill. But after some indefinable period of time, there was a change as O'Neill slumped and went still and quiet. Lyons' breath caught. Chapman made an involuntary-sounding noise in the back of his throat.

It was a second before Lyons realised that O'Neill was still breathing, his chest rising and falling slowly. But then, he had been somewhat distracted by other aspects of the unfolding scene. The distraction resulted specifically from the disconcerting fact that the black lines of the liquid still twisted over O'Neill's hands and arms. The black lines didn't make Lyons feel any better about what might happen next, but – on the bright side – no one was making any moves towards Chapman to force him to undergo the same treatment. In fact, the natives were still all a little subdued.

The shaman-person moved smoothly forwards, having stored the vial that Lyons never wanted to see again somewhere in their robes. They were the only person to move, and command of the situation seemed to fall to them almost by default as the only person to know what was happening.

The shaman-person spoke up, in that babble the natives called a language that was entirely incomprehensible to Lyons. In fact, the only thing he gathered from the rapid series of words spoken was that – given the tone and pitch of the voice – the shaman-person was in fact a witch-lady. Female. Lyons didn't see what sort of difference that made.

Cochrane would of course have been able to tell him what she was – Lyons cut that thought off. It didn't matter, in the end, because the actions of the natives broadcasted fairly clearly what the witch-lady had been telling them. The two large men that had been holding O'Neill down let him go and stepped away, with a look of what might have even been relief on their inexpressive faces.

A few sentences later, keys were produced from the garments of one of the interchangeable guards. Within the next minute, every single member of SG-8, including O'Neill, including Richards, including Cochrane, had been unlocked from the chains.

Explanations were due (and more than explanations, but what Lyons wanted was something the natives couldn't give, couldn't return). Explanations were more than due, and Lyons was going to get them, no matter who objected (and those objectors included him, because he really just wanted to get drunk, now).

But it didn't look as though Lyons was going to get those explanations. Or if he was, he was going to get them second-hand, and majorly delayed. The witch-lady had proven to understand and speak at least rudimentary English when she had politely escorted the Lyons, Chapman and O'Neill out of the prison. But no one else appeared to share the common language, or if they did they weren't telling. And the witch-lady had disappeared, dragging O'Neill off somewhere to talk to him about matters she implied, in her broken English, to be urgent.

Lyons hadn't been able to do anything to stop her, loathe as he was to have one of his team be taken from his sight. And for all he knew, she was right in saying there were urgent matters to discuss with O'Neill. For one thing, she presumably was one of the only people who might have an idea what that stuff had done to him. Shaman-witch-people being keepers of mystical secrets and all that.

So Lyons and Chapman slumped lethargically in the room that had been provided for them, picking at but not eating the food that had been produced. With something that might have been irony, the room was of better quality than the room they had been offered the last time they had visited this world. If it was an apology for their treatment it wasn't working.

For one thing, being ignored had not been on Lyons' to-do list. And the sum total of everything he had been able to weasel out of the natives about their abruptly-halted punishment was the phrase "Dia'sangua," or sometimes "Daemon'sangua." Of equally little help was the occasional rambling, babbling monologues upon which the natives sometimes embarked in their attempts to fulfil his request for information.

But armed with a lengthy period of time filled with absolutely nothing else to do, Lyons managed to guess what was being talked about. Sangua was probably meant to be sanguine – a word coming from the Latin, from Ancient, meaning blood. He wasn't sure about dia, but daemon probably meant exactly the word it sounded most like. Demon. The natives had been ritually punishing them for infringement of their laws using demon's blood.

And so when one of the intended victims survived, the occurrence had been automatically linked with the divine. And the will of the gods was never something to ignore, whatever the planet in question.

The natives were happy enough, after some requisite period of time had passed, to let the remaining three Tau'ri leave with all their belongings replaced and intact. The only possible exception to this overwhelming turnaround of emotion was the leather-clad leader whose name Lyons had yet to commit to memory; the man seemed to have elected to go with the flow anyway.

The natives even – at the suggestion of the witch-lady who had been closeted with O'Neill for what had felt to Lyons like hours, and indeed it probably had been that long – provided an escort to the gate. Upon learning that their visitors wished to take their dead with them, the native people had, after some discussion, produced stretchers from somewhere with which to transport the bodies.

The lone favour the natives had been reluctant to carry out was that of letting the team investigate the Ancient artefact they possessed, that had been the start of everything. In fact, the otherwise fairly amiable people – amiable except, apparently, for when they were ogling dying aliens – had downright refused them access. In any way whatsoever, no matter how many villagers accompanied them.

Lyons wasn't too annoyed. Finishing the mission was all well and good, doing the job his people had died for, yadda, yadda, yadda. No. He wouldn't enjoy explaining the loss of even potential alien – Ancient, at that – technology, but right at this moment, Lyons didn't care. He did not want to spend any more time on this planet, any more time around these people, or ever have to have anything to do with them ever again. As it was he was having a hard time not taking extremely ill-advised vengeance for his team-mates.

The sooner he was away from here, the sooner he could – not forget, not that, but – the further away he was from this place, the better (better? He meant easier to live with, didn't he? Not better) the memories he would get, and the less likely it would be he would snap and attack someone.

Really, the natives kinda seemed to be in the habit of having village-wide mood-swings when it came to outsiders, and he didn't want to stick around long enough to see their temperament abruptly switch direction yet again. Sure, at the moment they were being nice and friendly, playing escort, but Lyons couldn't help being a little paranoid.

Unfortunately, such paranoia seemed to be almost a part of the job description.

Once at the gate, however, the tanned, lean natives didn't hang around and undergo potentially dangerous mood-swings, just disappeared from view, heading home without delay. Save for the witch-lady – now Lyons had thought up the moniker, his brain wouldn't let it go – who stayed temporarily to talk to O'Neill about something, the SG-team's escort seemed to almost vanish into thin air, such was their need to be gone from the vicinity of the gate.

When, with a smile and a stride faster than would be expected for someone her apparent age, the witch-lady – whose name he still didn't know, Lyons thought irritably – disappeared also, Lyons felt suddenly drained.

Up until this point, events had kept him too occupied for him to fully take in what had happened. But now he was back where they had so optimistically started out on their mission only that same morning. And back in a condition far removed from their last visit.

Two of the team were nearly entirely unmarked save for light bruises on their wrists; one had black markings – moving black markings – all over his arms and hands; two of them were dead.

And now the remaining three left alive had to go back home and explain just what exactly had happened on P4X-182 to cause this state of affairs. Lyons wasn't looking forward to the debriefing, or the oncoming mandatory sessions with shrinks. Nor, in fact, was he looking forward to trying to get on with life again with half his team gone, whether the surrounding circumstances had been his fault or not.

It was only when the gate opened with its usual fanfare that Lyons realised that he had entirely neglected to either order that it be dialled up, or to see it being dialled. It didn't matter, though.

They were going home regardless.

The living and the dead, they were all going home.

to be continued...