A/N: This chapter contains my favorite scene in the whole story ... John, meet the thing in the basement. :)
Chapter 16
Lorne exited the elevator on the lowermost level of Atlantis, alone. He really didn't blame Rodney for not coming along – hell, the last time the scientist was down on this level was when the power for the holding cells lost its integrity and the vampire got loose. It was the same night his immediate superior officer, Lt. Col. Sumner, and his entire team was killed by the damn thing, and it almost took out Rodney as a midnight snack when he showed up to fix the power grid. Not a good night at all. If Lorne and his team hadn't showed up when they did ….
Lorne shook his head and couldn't quite suppress a shudder. They had to burn Sumner and the others after that for fear they might come back, and he swore he could still smell the scorched flesh whenever he was in the room with the holding cells. At least this time his dread at visiting that room was overpowered by rage.
He rounded the corner and came to a halt – Kolya and his three men were coming back from the cells already. "Ah, Major," Kolya said flatly. "Can I help you with something?"
"With all due respect, sir," Lorne said through his teeth. "What the hell are you doing? You beat Dr. Beckett in front of his staff and dragged Sheppard off …."
"Major." Kolya's voice was soft and low and the tone made Lorne snap immediately to attention. "I don't much care for your tone of voice." He stepped closer to the major and looked down at him. "Are you questioning me?" he asked.
The muscles along Lorne's jaw bunched and he drew in a deep breath. "Yes, sir. I am." Just beyond Kolya he saw Ford, Bates, and Pedersen all tense and place hands on weapons.
Kolya drew his head back, clearly surprised that someone dared speak to back to him. Then he chuckled, but his eyes were hard. "You're overstepping your bounds, Major."
"It's about time I did, sir." Lorne met the colonel's eyes. "What did you do with Sheppard?"
"It is in a cage, where it belongs, and hopefully contemplating the error of its ways." Kolya stepped in even closer. "Which is something you need to be doing, Major. Your judgment has become clouded where it comes to these animals – it's affecting your ability to perform your duty to this facility. Perhaps I should replace you with someone who can follow orders." Lorne started to open his mouth but Kolya cut him off. "Consider your next words carefully, Major."
Lorne kept his gaze locked on Kolya's and he took several breaths before he spoke. "You are the one who's lost his sense of duty to Atlantis. Sir." And for the first time in months Lorne realized his stomach didn't ache, and his chest didn't feel tight.
Kolya's head snapped back, and for a second Lorne was certain he was going to get pistol whipped as well. "I'm disappointed in you, Major." He backed up a step and held out his hand. "You are relieved of duty and confined to your quarters until further notice. Hand over your weapon." Lorne unbuckled the thigh straps to his holster, his eyes never leaving Kolya, then undid the belt and handed it over. Kolya was smiling faintly as he glanced towards Ford. "Lieutenant, please make sure the Major makes it to his room."
"Yes, sir," Ford said and practically bounded forward. He gestured with his P90 for Lorne to move.
Lorne frowned but turned around and started walking, and as the passed one of the security cameras in the hall he glared at it and hoped Rodney saw the whole thing. And had the common sense to get the hell out of control and let Ronon or Carson know what the hell was going on. Damn, he wish he'd had a chance to check on Sheppard.
-oOo-
"Oh, crap," Rodney muttered as he chewed on a fingernail. He glanced at the men in the room and they all had matching expressions of horror and shock on their faces. "This is so not good," he repeated for the second time in the last fifteen minutes. They all nodded back at him. Then Rodney did an abrupt about face and left the room through the door that opened up in the small foyer by the elevators. He didn't want to be anywhere near control when Kolya returned.
He kept repeating crap over and over again under his breath as he rode the elevator up one level and hightailed it back to the infirmary. He got a lot of strange looks in the hall, but he didn't really notice, and when he got to his destination he just charged on back to the exam rooms. Carson was still there, and Keller was just finishing stitching up his cheek. They both took one look at him and their faces dropped.
"Oh, dear lord – what's happened now?" Carson asked and tried to sit up. Keller didn't even try to push him back down.
"There's been a complication," Rodney replied and grimaced crookedly.
-oOo-
John woke up with a killer headache, his cheek pressed against a cold concrete floor, and the smell of something very dead in his nose. He snapped his eyes open, and not quite two feet away was a pale face mirroring his position on the floor. It had spiky gray hair, washed-out, slightly greenish skin, milky eyes, and almost comically red lips. Those lips parted into an obscene parody of a smile. "Ah, little changeling, you are awake," it said, its voice a dry raspy thing that grated on the nerves worse than nails down a chalkboard. The dead eyes closed and it inhaled deeply, and John couldn't tell if it was having a shuddering orgasm or was channeling its own inner Hannibal Lector. "I can almost taste your blood," it sighed.
John was immediately on his ass and scooting backwards as fast as he could go. Only a wall of widely spaced heavy bars separated him from the vampire, which was now rising to its feet as if its skeleton was comprised of flexible cartilage instead of bone. John instantly knew that if the thing couldn't mesmerize him and it couldn't maintain an outwardly human appearance, then that only meant it hadn't fed in a long time. A very long time. Then all thought left him as his back hit a wall and there was a loud snap like the world's biggest bug zapper. He let out a painful yell then arched away and fell onto his side, his skin buzzing from the contact. He rolled over and looked at yet another wall of horizontal bars. Then he cautiously reached out, and this time the shock wasn't too horrible on his fingers from a very brief contact. As he shook his hand he watched in fascination as green energy flared outward from the contact point like tiny, self contained aurora borealis. "Holy shit," he muttered in awe. "They have force fields? Cool."
"Consider yourself lucky, little changeling," the vampire rasped. John turned his head and saw it was standing close to the bars, its nose probably no more than a hair's breadth from the force field separating them. "If it weren't for this …." He touched the field and it didn't seem to affect him. "… Your throat would be mine." He cocked his head and bared his teeth.
"Yeah, lucky me," John muttered. He held a hand to his forehead and felt a sizeable knot there, then he felt the back of his head and found another one, too. His hair was stiff, and when he pulled his hand back there was some thick, nearly dried blood on his fingers. The vampire hissed and John quickly wiped his hand on his leg.
John gave his new setting a quick once over. The cell was probably twenty-by-twenty feet and had a fairly high, solid ceiling. The floor was plain concrete, and the only other thing besides him in the cell was a small drain in the corner. Gee, nice of them to go all out with the luxuries, he thought as he carefully got to his feet. His vision swam and he started to tip, and without thinking he put a hand out to the bars for support. There was another loud snap and he damn near fell back down again. The vampire made an odd, wheezy sound and John realized it was laughing at him as he shook his tingling hand. John sneered at it and staggered over to the drain – after all the liquid they forced in him this morning trying to warm him up he pretty much had no choice in the matter. He turned his back to the vampire to take care of that business, and while he was doing that he could see a camera outside the cell in the darkened room beyond. He couldn't resist – he flipped it the bird after he tucked everything back into his thin scrubs.
And then because he couldn't stand the thought of keeping his back to the vampire, he turned around and found it was still standing there, watching him. It was dressed in scrubs, too, and it was obvious they hadn't been changed in a long time. John found the farthest point he could away from the thing and sat back down on the cold floor. Yeah, lucky me, he thought as he drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them.
-oOo-
Carson sat at his desk while Rodney, Zelenka, and Keller all hovered over his shoulders. Despite the fierce headache he had, he was pretty sure this was the clearest his thoughts had been in a very long time. They were currently checking the video feed from the holding cells, and when Sheppard flipped off the camera Carson couldn't help but smile faintly. Good, he was still feisty, he thought as he closed down the link Zelenka had set up. "He's still alive, and so is the woman. Good." Carson picked up his ice pack and held it back to his eye. "Now I wish we could find out about Elizabeth."
"Give me some time and I can get through that encryption Kolya set up," Rodney said as he rocked back and forth on his heels a few times. "Shouldn't take long, really."
"Just be careful," Carson added. "We can't afford having you confined to quarters like the major."
Rodney lifted a hand and grunted. "Oh, please – like that would stop me."
"I'm serious, Rodney." He glanced around the group and wondered how he suddenly became the leader of this little rebellion. He was a healer, not a guerrilla fighter. "We all have to be careful now. Kolya is not an idiot, and I think he proved this morning he's finally gone over the edge."
"You got that right," Keller murmured. She had her arms crossed and was scowling.
"He made very bad mistake hitting you," Zelenka said. "That will not set well, even among his followers, I think. I will keep an ear out today."
"Thank you. You two should be getting back to your labs – don't want to raise any suspicions right now." Carson sighed and readjusted his ice pack. "We should have never let things get this far."
"We didn't have much of a choice, Carson," Rodney said. "None of us really knew what was going on at first, and by the time Kavanagh and his infinite paranoia brought it to Elizabeth's attention it was already too late." Rodney's mouth settled into his disgusted grimace. "Huh. Who'd have thought the first time that spineless little weasel does something that could actually be considered brave and beneficial, he winds up getting killed."
"We don't know that for sure," Keller said. "He was discharged from the Project because of medical reasons."
Rodney's hand came up and he nodded spastically. "Yeah, 'death' is a medical reason." When Carson started to open his mouth, Rodney interrupted. "Oh, please – I think we can all safely assume his body is feeding the fish somewhere off the north end of the island. Unless you saw him leave by air or boat."
Carson shook his head sadly.
"Then there was Col. Sumner and his men," Zelenka added softly. "And the two from bio – Abrams and Gaul. We all know they were listed as casualties from 'lab accidents', when they were most likely fed to …." He let the sentence trail off as he pushed up his glasses. "Blbina. It is never good when those in control of the guns control the facts."
"Well, that will be changing. Soon." Carson said quietly.
They all jumped when Ronon came charging into the office. "You've heard?" he asked anxiously. When he got a bunch of quiet nods in return he punched the nearest wall. "Shit!" He ran his hands over his dreds and forced his breathing down to a normal level. "Kolya hasn't posted guards on him – yet – and I can tell you, it's pissed quite a few of the enlisted men off."
"This may work to our advantage," Rodney muttered, some of the excited gleam returning to his eyes.
"Yes," Carson said. "But I cannot stress enough the need for caution. Please, people – there's been enough death all ready. Right now I think we need to focus on saving a few lives." He looked at Ronon. "I hate to ask, but is there any way to keep an eye on Dr. Chaya without raising suspicion?"
Ronon slowly smiled. "Oh, yeah. I can arrange something, no problem."
"Good." Carson looked over his merry little band – and that was how he saw them right then, a bunch of rogues banded together to fight the evil sheriff – and smiled tiredly as he felt a little flutter of hope. "Now go. My noggin' is killing me and I have a feeling Dr. Keller is going to tell me to go rest."
"Yup," was all she said.
And as the group filed out, Carson could see hope in their eyes as well.
End Note: That pesky little insect is back. Where's my gorram shoe? Ah... WHAP WHAP WHAP WHAP. Crap, missed it.
