Fox in the Hen House
Standard Disclaimer Applies.
AN: Sorry about the gap in updates people but I moved and not just houses I moved countries and didn't have an internet access for ages, and I mean ages. I know lame excuse but it's the truth, the truth I tells ya! Anyhoo, here's your story, hope you enjoy it.
Chapter 25
In the dark Sara is screaming, twisting her body in the grasp of the man who holds onto her. The shot comes faster than Xander expects. There is no banter beforehand, no familiar witty repartee, and he feels the impact like a punch in his chest and drops to his knees. His hands dab at the growing blood stain on his chest, and he looks up at Sara and sends her a small sad smile. She bucks harder against the arms holding her and finally breaks free, running towards her son. The men let her go and walk away. The sound of trucks starting in the dead of night echoes in the moonlight. Their headlights bathe Xander in a wash of light that illuminates the glistening blood on his shirt as they drive past.
His head sways and the world tilts sideways as he falls against the dirt, his arms not moving fast enough to even break his fall. The grains of gravel are rough against his cheek. Coughing brings the bitter taste of copper to his mouth. Then Sara arrives besides him, her breathing harsh and panicked but her hands on his shoulder caring and gentle as she turns him over onto his back.
"Alex, oh God. Oh, Alex." She sobs, pressing her hands through the blood pool on his chest into the wound beneath. The blood spills red over the whites of her knuckles and oozes between her fingers.
"Are you all right?" Xander asks through clenched teeth, and Sara can only answer with a nod as tears spill down her cheeks. She glances around frantically at the departing trucks, at the emptying lot. Out into the night.
"Somebody help me!" She screams into the night. "Please God! Somebody help me!" There is only silence in return, and she pulls off her jacket and presses it against Xander's chest. Blood seeps through the material and glides over the wrinkled skin of the backs of her hands.
"You're going to be just fine, baby," she tells the grown man before her. Her voice hiccups as she notices how white Xander's face is now. How the blood has drained from his lips. How he can't focus with his eyes. They stare off into space and he works hard to focus his look. Works hard to keep Sarah in sight.
"I'm gla--glad I found you," Xander stammers breathlessly, and Sara shakes her head.
"Don't talk like that, help will come. Jack will come. You just hold on," Sara says sternly, and Xander smiles through gritted teeth. A light sheen of sweat has broken out on his forehead. His body shakes with small tremors.
"Somebody! Help!!" Sara screams again, her voice interrupted by her own sobs as she presses harder on the wound killing her son.
"I will not lose you again." Looking back down, she tells him seriously, "You will not die. You got it, Mister? You will not die."
Xander nods and coughs, a dribble of blood works it's way down his chin. He coughs, choking on some blood caught in his throat. And Sara screams again.
"Help!! I need Help!!" She looks down at Xander again, his eyes are now starting to drift shut and then snap open again.
"Tell--Tell him. Tell him, I'm sorry. You'll tell him?" He asks, and his eyes close again.
"Xander?" Sara calls, before removing a blood soaked hand to slap her son across the face. He doesn't respond, and she slaps him again, leaving a red imprint of her palm on the blanched white skin of his face.
"Wake up!" She demands, "Wake up. Don't. Please don't." She sobs, collapsing against Xander's chest. And in one terrifying moment of realization she can tell that her son has stopped breathing. Sara screams as she starts in vain to frantically thump at Xander's chest with a closed fist.
Xander woke with such a start that he found himself sitting upright in bed, his breathing forced, his bed sheet tangled. His breathing slows as he touches a hand to his bare chest just to confirm that the skin is in fact intact. Then he jumps, as a voice sounds inside the cavern-like room.
"Your future? Your destiny, to die?" Tinny and disembodied, it seems to mock him.
Xander stands up quickly from the bed and looks around on guard.
"Come out and say that to my face," Xander challenges, but the room has fallen silent, and after a moment Xander is left standing in the dark, wondering if there was even a voice at all. Wondering which side had come haunting his dreams. Wondering if there were in fact two sides, and if there were, then in what war did they stand opposed?
Sleeping had been a mistake, and Xander dresses and heads back towards the conference room, where several hours ago the Stargate team had been desperately trying to figure out the conundrum that had been life of late.
Obviously, something big was on the horizon, and Xander had warned them that if Glory was involved it was end-of-the-world big. To Xander, this was confirmed by the appearance of the Powers That Be, but Gabrielle's appearance as an Ancient confused and concerned him. Especially with the revelation that entire solar systems and cultures and people existed in space. No wonder he couldn't sleep. No wonder he was haunted by bad dreams.
The team seems to have abandoned the conference room, so Xander moves across the floor and stares out of the windows into the inactive gate room.
"Xander?" Daniel asks behind him, causing the young man to jump in surprise.
"God, Daniel, you trying to scare me into a cardiac event?" Xander demands in jest, and the archaeologist smiles.
"You're up late," he comments, moving to stand near Xander, who makes a pretense of looking at his watch.
"Really, it's late? It's kinda hard to get used to being under the ground, feels like time's been turned upside down," Xander explains.
"Hmm, yeah, well we can work some pretty strange hours. I think it's a bit like flying internationally: the airport's always open, but sometimes the passengers have gone home."
"Do you get stargate-lag?" Xander wonders out loud, and Daniel shrugs,
"Can do, sometimes. I think, more often than not, it's your common, garden-variety of exhaustion."
Xander nods absently, staring back down at the gate room. Thinking of aliens and of machines capable of destruction and replication.
Shaking his head free of the dark thoughts, he forced himself to muse satirically, "Kinda terrifying and comforting all at the same time, really, isn't it? I mean, there are aliens in spaceships out there, millions of them from two different galaxies. But in a way, the same little stone ring that means they could come and get us is what protects us, as well," Xander concludes, and Daniel moves to stand beside him.
"How do you mean?"
"Well, I hardly see an alien armada fitting in the gate room," Xander quips. "Or a spaceship fitting through the ring at all. Be a tight fit."
"You seem to be taking the news well, regardless," Daniel notices, and Xander turns his back on the window.
"I guess I'm easy-going."
"That's the understatement of the year," Daniel counters, but Xander shakes his head with a wry smile.
"God, you should see Oz, king of the two-word sentences, unfazed by literally anything life throws at him. Masterful, really. I mean, I've tried it, and it's very difficult. But then, I've always been more of a babbler." Xander smiles again and looks towards Jack's office. "He in?"
Daniel shakes his head and then stops, as if he had suddenly remembered he wasn't supposed to tell anyone that.
"Well, does he have quarters here, or something?" Xander asks.
"Ah, yeah, he has a room down on sublevel 30. It's quite nice, actually. I think it used to be an old holding cell from years ago, before the new ones were put in with the reinforcements."
"Right, 'cause the prison-chic look is so hot right now," Xander quips, heading for the door, leaving an amused Daniel behind him.
The corridors of Stargate Command are quiet, but not empty. Guards stand watch at the doorways to elevators and stairwells leading to the lower levels, and the news of who Xander is must have spread around, because each guard gives him an appraising look but lets him past unchallenged. The perks of being the boss's kid, Xander guesses.
On the level assigned to command quarters, however, the hallways are deserted. Little need for security down here, where there are no classified materials, no aliens in holding cells, and no portals to other worlds.
Jack's door is labeled, and Xander knocks for a while, but there's no response. After trying the handle and finding the room locked, he has no choice but to turn away. He's nearly back at the elevator when he feels it. All the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end and deep inside his mind the hyena starts to laugh.
Xander spins around, glaring back down the empty corridor he has just traversed. He's not stupid or brave enough to either call out a hello or investigate whatever it is that's making the strong hyena nervous. Instead, keeping his back to the metal wall, Xander starts to hit the elevator button repeatedly with one hand and uses the other to pat down his pockets looking for a weapon. Nothing.
A quick glance over his head tells him the elevator is a long way off, and the sound of hyena's barking laugh is starting to get to him. His heart pounds in his chest, and he looks down the hallway with a dry mouth. Wind starts to whip up the concrete tunnel towards him and he stops hitting the call button and brings a hand up to his neck, to circle a protection amulet set on leather thongs hung around his neck.
Something brushes past his back and Xander jumps, whirling around, hands up ready to lash out at any potential attackers but there's nothing there. Just static electricity in the air that bristles at his scalp.
"Okay, fine, I'll say it. Is there anybody there?" Xander demands, feeling irritated as the hyena cackles get louder.
There's no answer, but the wind increases in strength and the lights above him start to flicker. Another check, and the elevator is still ten floors away. Then, suddenly, the hyena falls silent and the wind dies.
For a moment, the only thing that happens is nothing. No sound, no wind, no laughter, no movement. Nothing. Then sound returns, as the hyena starts to growl.
The blow comes unexpectedly from behind him and sends him sprawling in an ungainly fashion, down the corridor along the concrete floor. Confusion and pain rule as Xander tries to pick himself up and identify the threat towards him at the same time, but glancing around, he can't see anything. Yet, despite this apparent lack of anything, another blow hits him in the ribs. Xander curls around the blow trying to protect himself from the pain and any subsequent attacks, but as he lies gasping on the concrete nothing else happens.
Finally, after the white spots of pain dancing across his vision clear and the pain in his chest switches from a sharp stab to a sharp throb, Xander pulls himself to his feet and stands, arm wrapped around his torso. He closes his eyes and listens.
Discarding the slight buzz of the overhead fluorescent lights and the groan of the ventilation system, Xander concentrates on the other slight sounds around him.
There! He hears it, the merest hint of something scraping concrete, and he dives to the left, something glancing off his flank as he does so. Behind him now the elevator doors ping open, and Xander scrambles upwards and towards them. The empty elevator is welcoming him towards safety, but something snatches at the back of his shirt and he is pulled from the air and slammed against the concrete. His head cracks against the hard floor and above him he thinks he sees a billowing white robe before the darkness consumes him.
TBC
AN: Read and Review cause basically I'm starved for attention.