Chapter 11: The Trust

He wasn't running.

Not quite.

Running implied something bad was going down on base.

No… he was just late to the meeting General O'Neill had set up – through no fault of his own. Dr. Lam had called him down to the infirmary for a check over. Apparently, the results of his scans and tests following the zat blast on Atlantis caused some sort of concern in his follow-up testing done in the SGC.

It felt like she had tried to drain him dry – and then just offered him a cup of juice and a few more painkillers, as if she knew that he still wasn't quite functioning on all levels.

What it meant though, was that he was late.

Airman Patrick was already standing guard outside the conference room door, so everyone else was already present. John just sighed and rapped on the door, before letting himself in.

Alex looked remarkably better and someone had dressed him up in BDUs. He almost looked like he could pass for a young-looking airman. Perhaps that was the point.

"Sorry," John slid into the empty seat next to General O'Neill, while trying to pat out the creases on his own BDUs. "Dr. Lam wanted another pint of my blood for testing." He grimaced, then ran a hand through his hair, trying to flatten it out just a little bit. He knew he didn't look the part of an officer half the time, but he tried. He sent Alex a rueful grin. "You're lucky you got out of there without all that." Though he suspected that if they had tried anything like that with Alex again, it would've only resulted in more injuries to the staff. As it was, at least one nurse had a broken nose.

A discomforted expression crossed Alex's face, before he stared back down at the table.

It felt more like they were in for some sort of reprimand, then to try to figure out what exactly had happened to Alex.

"Colonel Sheppard is also here because he may be able to fill in some of the gaps in our knowledge as to what happened here on base, regarding you." Byrne had a pad of paper in front of him and John could just barely catch already slight notes that had been made.

A timeline of events, where they were missing a good portion of them.

"It's been four days," Alex said, still staring down at the table.

And really, that was worrying.

Four days in which he had been missing without anyone having an inkling of where he had been.

"Let's start at the beginning then," Byrne said, running his pen along the pad. "Where were you on Sunday evening?"

Alex blew out a long breath, then let his shoulders slump. "Theo recommended I get out a little more."

Clearly, Theo was someone Byrne knew, because he nodded knowingly.

"Went for a run in Golden Gate Park, but stayed city side for the most part."

Which meant that Alex had been in California. Quite a distance away from Colorado – and quite a distance away from the Trust raid in Nevada.

"And Theo recommended this?"

"Not that park in particular. But to get out into some more crowded spaces." Alex nervously fiddled with his fingers, clearly uncomfortable with that particular line of questioning. "Help… normalize it all a bit more."

Right.

Because Alex was traumatized.

He had behaviors that were similar to other soldiers returning from war.

And John wasn't quite sure he would voluntarily go running in Golden Gate Park these days.

"Hmm… then what happened?"

"Someone was watching me." The words were bit out with absolute certainty. "So, I jumped the wall – lost my phone in the process – then tried to get back to the Center. I knew there would be someone on duty but…" He trailed off, clearly reliving just what had happened on that evening. "They shot me with something. That electric gun thingy—"

"Zat gun," John provided.

O'Neill cut an unimpressed look in his direction, but John didn't care. They had already exposed a bunch of secrets to Alex – and they were only planning to expose even more to try to keep him safe. Giving him the correct terminology wasn't going to hurt anything. Not at this point.

"Okay, zat gun." Alex made a face at the name, but seemed to accept it. "It's pretty hazy after that. There was a room with a guy, but he shot me pretty quickly again. And then I was alone there with all the snakes." He shuddered visibly.

Clearly, he had an aversion to snakes in much the same way John had an aversion to bugs.

O'Neill leaned forward, looking very interested all of a sudden. "What can you tell us about the snakes?"

Clearly, not giving the correct terminology this time.

"They were creepy as fuck?" Alex's expression was screwed up in distaste and unease. "When a certain alarm went off, the tanks just opened and the snakes came rushing out. Pretty sure they were trying to get to me. Or whatever heat source was in the room."

"There were some reports that you killed several of the snakes."

More like most of them.

Alex shrugged, looking a little less unnerved. "Made the mistake of running from the gun fire and straight into a room of snakes. Pretty much one shot at keeping them off of me, but… Not sure I would have succeeded in the end."

And death by snakes – even if you didn't know what the snakes actually were – sounded like a horrible way to go.

The swarming Alex was describing though didn't match any of the information John had come across about the goa'uld. Though to be fair, Atlantis had bigger problems to deal with most of the time.

"Wait, back up a second," Byrne said, "You ran into a room of snakes, so what did you do before that?"

"Woke up alone in a room, escaped just before the first set of snakes got to me, and I started looking for a way out. Once the shooting started up, I figured hunkering down in a room would be the better way out, but… that was a bad choice."

So, inadvertently, Stadler and his team had cornered Alex into a room with the symbiotes. He hadn't even been in the room because the Trust had left him there…

"And then Colonel Stadler and his team found you."

Alex nodded.

And what a letdown that must've been. He had been kidnapped, left alone with a bunch of sentient snakes that were out to get him, and the military that shows up just decides to shoot him once again. It all matched fairly well with what they had gotten out of Stadler's team.

"When you came around here, what was the first thing you noticed?"

"That I felt like shit?" There was a self-depreciating laugh and John felt for him. There was no way that he could have taken that many zats without feeling the effects of it. "I was handcuffed and in a cold room. Just assumed that I had traded one set of captors for another."

"And what did Colonel Stadler want from you?"

"He wanted answers." Alex traced a pattern on the table with his fingertip, clearly uncomfortable. "Wanted to know what I was doing there. Claimed that they all knew whatever I had planned had failed. There was a lot of… stuff that really didn't make any sense. Symbiotes, trust, master. He threw around a lot of words that he seemed to think I would know."

That was damning.

Even if someone decided that Stadler's team wasn't acting beyond their bounds, the fact that several had witnessed classified information being given to a prisoner would be career ending.

O'Neill's tense posture next to him all but confirmed that.

The SGC was probably going to have to replace the entirety of SG-4. Except for maybe the airman who had been blocked out by his team. They had probably saved his career.

"After a while, I figured the best plan would be to shut up and give him your number." Alex nodded in Byrne's direction. "He looked military. Then he seemed convinced that you were in on it all, as well. And well… he just stopped listening."

"And during this time, you received no medical attention, food, or water?" O'Neill asked.

Alex shook his head. "They did dim the lights when they left, but…" he trailed off, looking lost. "When Stadler got called out for some sort of emergency, I figured it was my best chance to get out. Slipped a cuff, got out the door, and ran into him." He nodded in John's direction.

John knew that slipping the cuff wasn't that simple. That Alex had sacrificed a lot just to be able to get that short glimpse of freedom.

"And after you ran into Colonel Sheppard?"

"He promised he would get help if I let him go." Alex shrugged. "We were already backed into a corner though. Stadler and his men were already there and they shot us. It's… pretty blurry after that. Was back in the cell, couldn't really move or anything. Someone was shouting about rights, then people came and dragged me up to the infirmary. You know the rest."

That was a serious understatement.

One of the marines had finally stood up to Colonel Stadler – too little, too late in John's opinion – and said that they had overstepped their boundaries. By then though, all the signs of PZS were more than obvious and it was clear that they weren't about to get any more answers out of him. The SFs sent by Dr. Lam had gotten there minutes later.

Byrne jotted down the last of his notes, before carefully regarding Alex. "Anything else you'd like to add?"

Alex shook his head.

"Well then, General, I'll turn it over to you."

O'Neill looked slightly discomforted to be put on the spot. "Right, well… We've had a lot of conflicting information from the people in this base. From what we can tell though, Stadler assumed that you were part of the organization that kidnapped you initially, and decided that following protocol was too dangerous because of the threat to the base."

John had glanced over the transcripts of O'Neill's interview with Stadler. There was something distinctly not right with the man. He had simultaneously implicated himself in a Trust plot, while also insinuating that Alex was obviously implanted and used to get into the heart of the SGC. A place he would've never gotten if Stadler hadn't brought him in himself.

"Unfortunately, the General in charge of this base was… off base."

Fun way of saying off-world.

"Colonel Stadler was the current ranking officer and had been cleared by medical to continue his duties. There were no checks and balances, and there was very obviously a security breach. You never should have been allowed on base, much less imprisoned without the okay from a superior officer. Security will be tightened."

"What about the ones that kidnapped me?" Alex's shoulders had drooped even further at that, not seeming reassured by the words.

"They're a group known as the Trust. They have… been working at infiltrating the highest levels of government here in the United States, as well in other countries. Colonel Stadler was tasked with raiding one of their research facilities we had recently discovered, however, most of it had been cleared out – except for you."

"So what, they kidnapped me and then forgot about me?" Alex shook his head. "Why me though?"

"Given your history with SCORPIA, and the Snakehead, and, well, others, we're assuming your name got out," Byrne said, "Piqued their interest, so to speak."

"Just another recruitment job, then?" Alex muttered, then folded his arms roughly against his chest. "And this is the part where you tell me that everything I've worked for in the past year is all for naught, because someone bigger and badder has me in their sights."

It was extremely cynical.

John had to hand it to him though, he merely seemed frustrated. Not scared. Not anxious that someone else wanted him. Though maybe it was a bit different, because this group didn't want him dead. Or so he thought.

"The Trust is not looking to meld you to their plans," O'Neill leaned forward, face serious. "They have the technology and resources to… hijack your brain and body. Had those snakes gotten to you, the outcome would have been far worse."

Alex grimaced at that. "Sounds very sci-fi to me. If they have that kind of technology."

"Oh, they do and much worse." General O'Neill leaned back in his chair. "And this is where my explanations stop, for now. We do have a… plan that could keep you safe from them, but… It would involve learning a lot more classified sci-fi information. And those explanations are not my wheelhouse."

Alex's eyes darted between each of them, before slumping fully in his seat. He definitely looked the picture of a teenager. A teenager whose world was crashing down around him again. "How bad can it be?"

John plastered on a sharp grin. "Oh, trust me, you're going to love this next bit."

A/N: Coming up, Alex's reaction. Is this filler? I don't know. Gotta move the plot forward somehow.