Jo Graham: The Furies

John Sheppard woke in darkness, unable to move, held upright by the thick fibers of the Wraith bonds. He could see nothing. The corridor was dim, and the alcove he was held in stood in deep shadow. If he could have leaned forward, perhaps he could have glanced up and down the hallway, but the bonds across his chest and throat were so tight that the slightest forward movement threatened to cut off his breath.

There was no sound. Either he was alone, or the other humans imprisoned here must be beyond speech.

A faint vibration through the soles of his feet did tell him something. This was not a planetary base. He was on a ship, each moment traveling further and further from anywhere his team would look for him.

Because he was stupid, and possibly terminally stupid. He’d been so sure that the message that had lured him to Gaffen was from Rodney McKay, his friend held captive by the Wraith and the subject of a terrible transformation. He was so sure that somehow Rodney had slipped out of the programming his captors had used on him and sent a cry for help. John had walked into the trap open eyed, going to the gate address Rodney had specified, only to wind up in the middle of a culling.

Which shouldn’t have been a surprise. Teyla had said she thought it might be a trap. Were she and Ronon here too, perhaps bound a few meters away? Or…

“Teyla? Ronon?” His voice came out as a rough whisper.

There was no reply. Which meant either they weren’t here, or they were unconscious. Or they’d already been taken to be fed on, some horrible part of his brain said, readily supplying the pictures.

No. He wouldn’t believe that. They’d never go without a fight, and if there had been a fight in the corridor he would have known it.

Besides, John thought, conjuring up the scene on Gaffen just before he was taken, Ronon and Teyla hadn’t been anywhere near him. They’d been back in the market, a long way from the gate. They’d gone to ask the locals if anybody knew anything. John had thought that was unlikely. Rodney wasn’t just going to walk up to people and say hi, especially since he looked like a Wraith. It was more likely he was hiding in the woods behind the gatefield, keeping an eye on the Stargate and the DHD, knowing that was where the team from Atlantis would arrive. He’d been checking out the woods with a Marine team when the gate had opened again and three Darts come through. It was more likely that some of the Marines had been picked up than Ronon or Teyla.

“Simmons? Hernandez? Anybody there?”

Silence.

John swallowed hard. He’d wondered how the Wraith had done this to Rodney, how they’d messed with him so thoroughly. Now he was probably about to find out. If he was lucky he’d be experiment number two, and at least he’d find Rodney. Maybe together there was a chance one of them would remember who they were and plot an escape. If he wasn’t lucky… He’d be lunch, and that would be the end of that.

How long had it been since he was captured on Gaffen? He had no idea. Scooped up by the culling beam of a Wraith Dart, he could have remained in the pattern buffer for days. And there was no way to tell how long it had been since he was strapped here. Hours? Not more than eight or ten, probably. Unless the enzymes the Wraith used affected his metabolism significantly, he’d be hungry and thirsty. Well, he was hungry, but not starving. A dinnertime kind of hungry, not an imprisoned for days kind of hungry. There was an energy bar in one of his pants pockets, but he couldn’t get to it, couldn’t move his arms or bend enough.

And that was not good. This situation was going to get old really fast.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been in prison. It wasn’t even the worst. That had probably been Kolya’s prison, waiting for his time to run out before Todd drained the life out of him. What had he done then, other than lie against the wall and breathe each time after the Wraith ripped more years of life out of him?

There were things to do, mental tricks to keep yourself in one piece. Some of them weren’t very orthodox, but they worked. They were better than going crazy, getting yourself in such a lather that you couldn’t do something useful when an opportunity came.

Breathe, and let each breath take you somewhere, take you through the corridors of memory to other places and other times. There were paths he could walk in his sleep, in memory. Breathe, and one pattern took him across the flight lines at Al Kharj Prince Sultan Air Base, the tarmac laid out in concrete squares, across the blowing red gold dust of the areas around the buildings, nearly twenty years ago when he was young and wondered if he’d live through the first days of Operation Instant Thunder.

Breathe, and another memory took him elsewhere, through the underground corridors of Crystal City, when back from Afghanistan he’d spent his days wandering aimlessly, anything to get out of the tiny apartment he shared with Nancy, through mall and metro tunnels, under the glass skylights and potted rainforest trees.

Not a good time. Not a good memory to get lost in, not if he wanted to be ready when the Wraith showed up.

Atlantis, then. He could walk in his mind through the corridors of home, through light-washed streets with floors of burnished tile, stained glass making patterns of light across his skin like the city’s own brand. From chair room to mess hall, pier to gate room, he could walk the city in memory. Doors opened in front of him and slid softly closed behind him to the touch of his mind. Towers glittered with ice as he’d seen them last, and his favorite balcony stretched under the tropical sun of a world left behind a year ago. Power substations crackled with blue fire, as though storms swirled around them again, rain dashed in his face. Above it all in dreams the shield made a hemisphere of sky, tinted by dawn through bombardment. He looked down on space below from a terrace pressurized by its fragile skin, slid in his mind into the chair’s embrace and felt the stardrive flare beneath him, engines answering to his thought.

“This one.”

When words came he had almost stopped expecting them, drowsing in his bonds, his mind far away. John Sheppard looked up.

The Wraith was young, or at least he thought so, with long white hair held back in a bronze clasp, his face rounded and smooth beneath a swirling tattoo that curved from his hairline down the side of his face to his collar like tendrils of vine, and his eyes were dark and cruel. “This one,” he said, and he tangled his fingers in John’s hair, the claws of his other hand tearing the bindings away enough to expose throat and chest.

Not the transformation then, John thought. Not that. Just the other bit. Well, it shouldn’t take long. He steeled himself for the kiss of claws, for the pounding in his ears of his own heart as the feeding began…

But the Wraith was looking at him, turning his head toward the light, as though he wanted to see him better. He could lean forward a little now, and the light stabbed his eyes as the Wraith jerked his chin up.

“You,” the Wraith said, “What is your name?”

“Han Solo,” John said.

The Wraith snarled, tilting his head toward the light again as though trying to see the color of his eyes.

I’m nobody, John willed him to think. Nobody. Nobody worth trying to get intelligence out of, nobody worth taking to the queen. And at the same time a kernel of an idea sprouted inside him. This wasn’t Rodney’s doing if this guy had no idea who he was. If he did know, he wouldn’t waste time. But if he didn’t, if it was only that John looked familiar and he was trying to place him…