Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate.
Excitement—not his own—tingled at the back of his mind. He did not concentrate on the feeling—it would have fled if he had tried—but allowed it to urge him to his feet, to prompt him to stand before the wall of the cell that had so effectively imprisoned him for so long. He struggled to think through the madness of his hunger, to make sense of what it was he felt.
Something was about to happen. He needed to be ready. He needed…
He needed to escape.
He was ready when the power went out, the electrified locks loosening with a click as the lights cut off. Necessity lent him strength and it was only a matter of seconds to rip the door off of its hinges. He was halfway across the room before the emergency generators came to life with a squeal of alarms and a flood of dim light, and by the time the door opened and the first guard stepped through he was ready and waiting.
Hunger drove him, rendered him savage, and though his strength was much reduced from his long starvation it was little effort to bat away the guard's half-raised weapon, pin the man to the wall, and slam down his feeding hand. Energy filled him, a delicious, sizzling heat that calmed his mind for the first time in months and steadied his trembling limbs.
The second guard entered when he had only drained twenty or thirty percent of the first guard's life force—barely enough to take the edge off of his hunger. Growling, he released his grip on his prey, the man's insensate body dropping with a thump to the floor, and faced the newcomer.
The second guard was more prepared than the first and managed to squeeze off three shots into his chest before he jerked the P-90 from the man's grip, tossed it carelessly over his shoulder, and dragged the man further into the room, slamming the door behind them.
It was barely a minute later that the door flew open again, but when he emerged he was much changed. His pallor had taken on a bluer tinge and his eyes no longer darted, unable to focus on any one thing. His wild thoughts, too, had calmed somewhat, enough to identify the feeling that had teased him before.
One of his kind was here. Close, very close.
He flung out his mind until he felt it brush against the Other's. Surprise greeted him, and welcome. Come, the Other whispered, and bombarded his mind with images of a plan—a plan to bring a hive to Earth.
By then he was already moving in the Other's direction, running at a speed no human could hope to match, the energy of two strong men coursing through him. Three more soldiers attempted to impede his progress—most of the people on the base, it seemed, were closeted in their conference room, no doubt attempting to stop the Other's plan from coming to fruition—and each of them quickly added their own life force to his.
He burst outside, a hiss of pleasure escaping his lips as dry heat enveloped him. Now that he was free of the constraints of the human's inorganic structure, the Other's call was stronger, a beacon in his mind. He set out at a lope across the desert.
He had crossed perhaps half of the distance between them, at a speed that left even him winded, when he felt a jolt of surprise from the Other. For a moment he could see through the Other's eyes: a battered vehicle, an expanse of sand, a man. His mind latched onto the image, supplied the Other with a name: John Sheppard. The Other disregarded the information immediately, uncaring, fury at being interrupted the only emotion that filtered across their connection, leaving him with an odd feeling of disappointment.
Unfortunate that John Sheppard should be there. From the moment he had seen the man standing outside of his cell he had known that Sheppard was somehow important. Unexpected. Sheppard shone in his senses as only the Lanteans ever had, but with brightness edged in shadow. In that moment he had seen a thousand futures, each of them different, many of them terrible, and in every one his destiny was inextricably entwined with John Sheppard's.
John Sheppard, he thought—and let the Other hear him think it—was what the humans would refer to as a wild card. Sheppard's presence had the potential to change everything.
The Other responded with contempt. You have been corrupted, he heard, and felt more than saw Sheppard, weak and human and armed only with a sidearm, confront the Other, who bore a submachine gun and had recently fed besides.
The encounter did not end well for Sheppard. He felt the impact of each bullet into the man's body, tearing skin and muscle and organs, as an echo of pain in his own being.
Do you see? the Other exulted, and did not understand the fury he could not help but broadcast in return.
By now he was close, close enough to sense the human's fading presence, a weak flickering on the far edges of his consciousness. Close enough to hear the whine of fighter pilots overhead.
Close enough, certainly, to feel the Other's presence torn from his mind, defianceterrorshamerage, all condensed in that instant before death. To feel the ground tremble beneath his feet, to hear the explosion, to see the plume of smoke that rose from the crater where the Other had stood.
He staggered and almost fell, disoriented by the sudden absence of the Other. He intuited from the Other's shame that the signal had not gone out, that no hives had been given the coordinates to Earth. No rescue was coming. It would fall to him, then, to find a way to return to his own galaxy. And he would have to do so pursued by humans, on this alien planet, alone.
The flickering in his mind strengthened for a moment before fading again. Inexplicably, hope kindled within him. John Sheppard was not yet dead.
He climbed a ridge and looked down at the scene of the battle. The Other's trailer was all but obliterated. Sheppard lay on the ground a short distance from the car, body riddled with bullets, blood slowly saturating the dry sand.
As he approached, he could hear the man gasping for breath, his lungs bubbling where bullets had pierced them. Left on his own, Sheppard would die within minutes. Long before any human aid would arrive.
He reached the man's prone body and stopped, looking down, his head tilted as he considered his options. Sheppard's eyes stared blankly up at him and for a moment he thought that perhaps the human's mind was already gone. Then Sheppard's eyes narrowed and his lips formed a word that his lungs had no breath to speak.
You.
He knelt beside the man, smiling in the way that always made Richard Woolsey draw back in fear. Sheppard's shirt gaped open at the throat and it was a simple matter to draw it farther apart, a button popping away to land in the dust, exposing the man's chest. Sheppard made a strangled sound, tried to inch away, but the fear that should have been present in his eyes was not there.
Oh, yes. In this time and place, John Sheppard knew next to nothing about him and his kind. How delicious.
"And so we meet again, John Sheppard," he said, his voice as close to a singsong as a Wraith voice could get, and rested his feeding hand gently on the man's sternum. "Meet again, meet again. In every world I regret how we meet, but I never regret that meet we do." He leaned in close, his mouth inches from Sheppard's ear. "They tasted good to me, but I was hungry. How will they taste to you?"
Sheppard's eyebrows drew together even as his breathing became more labored. Before the man could try to speak again, he pressed his palm down until his feeding mouth broke the man's skin, and with his eyes locked on Sheppard's face he injected him with the Gift of Life.
The others were celebrating, patting themselves on the back, filled with the joy of having saved Earth yet again. Rodney and Radek stood unmoving in the sea of people, their shoulders hunched, their feelings for once in perfect accord.
Yes, John Sheppard had saved the world. Yes, the Wraith would have no way of finding Earth now. But no one else seemed to realize the magnitude of what had happened—the danger facing at least one, and possibly as many as twenty, alternate, unsuspecting Earths. They had failed those alternate Earths, and it was only John Sheppard—a man who hadn't even known aliens existed twenty-four hours ago—who had saved them from failing their own planet as well.
"Cheer up, you two," Woolsey said, clapping them both on the back. He sobered a bit when neither was willing to smile. "I'm sure those other Earths will find a way to defend themselves."
"Sure," Rodney said sourly. "Let's hope they all have John Sheppards hiding in the wood works too. Will somebody shut off those damn alarms!"
The alarms had been blaring ever since the Wraith had turned on his device, drawing on all of the power in the area including their own. The emergency generators had kicked in almost immediately, but turning off the obnoxious sirens hadn't been anyone's priority in the last thirty minutes.
"I've got it," someone said—Rodney hadn't bothered to learn the names of most of the people at the facility—and hurried away.
"What's the status on the ambulance we sent for Sheppard?" Rodney demanded.
"They should be nearly there," Woolsey said. He paused. "I'm sure he's fine, Rodney."
"You didn't meet the other Sheppard," Rodney said shortly. "I've met two of them now, and from what I can tell they were both trying to find ways to kill themselves heroically."
The technician who had gone to turn off the alarm dashed back in, pale-faced.
"I don't think you solved the problem," Rodney snapped, glaring pointedly at the still flashing lights on the wall.
"Sirs, you need to see this."
Woolsey closed his eyes. "What's happened now?"
The technician swallowed. "The Wraith has escaped."
Rodney groaned. "Oh, this day keeps getting better and better."
"Hovno," Radek said with feeling.
Woolsey was already calling for the Marines.
Rodney sagged against the wall as Captain Drum organized his Marines into teams of four to scour the base for the Wraith. This was not happening. This could not be happening. They couldn't possibly have just taken out one Wraith only to inadvertently release another—and their "pet" Wraith, at over ten thousand years old from what Beckett had been able to tell, was almost certainly more of a threat than a simple downed pilot had been.
Woolsey, who was looking increasingly frazzled, tapped his headset. "Well?" he barked. "Nothing! How can you have nothing! Look again!"
"You know that by now the Wraith could have reached Las Vegas," Radek said, combing his hand through his unkempt hair.
"We've been starving it for months," Woolsey said. "Surely it's too weak to get far."
Rodney rolled his eyes. "It just ate five Marines. I think it's got as much strength as it could possibly need."
"Uh, Mr. Woolsey?" one of the technicians said, looking queasy. "The General is coming."
Woolsey flinched. Though there were a number of generals affiliated with the SGC, there was only one who was always referred to simply as the General.
Everyone in the room just had time to straighten and take a deep breath and then there was a flash of light and two figures appeared. One was General O'Neill, his uniform perfectly pressed, still in trim fighting form despite his gray hair. His brown eyes were hooded, his lips tight, and the scar high on his right cheekbone made him look dangerous—though not nearly as dangerous as he actually was.
Beside O'Neill was a young man of exactly the same height. Lean as a wolf, eyes perpetually covered by a pair of sunglasses, Jon Carver was maybe twenty-one years old and no one knew anything about him. There were plenty of rumors, though.
They said that Carver went everywhere with O'Neill, his silent shadow.
They said Carver's resemblance to the General was no coincidence. He was his nephew, some said. Those who thought that Carver might be O'Neill's son clearly did not know O'Neill's history.
They said that Carver knew things, had talents, that no one his age should.
They said that Carver was a killer.
The only thing everyone knew for sure was that Carver had appeared three years ago, wearing his customary jeans and white button down shirt—untucked, of course—and standing to O'Neill's right at a meeting at the Pentagon. O'Neill had introduced him as "my assistant, Jon," and that had been that.
"Sitrep," O'Neill barked the moment the Asgard beam disappeared, his lip curled as he surveyed the panicked room.
"Captain Drum reports that the Wraith has fled into the desert, General," Woolsey said, wilting a little under O'Neill's stare.
They said that O'Neill had been a nice guy before his divorce. Rodney had a hard time believing it.
"The rescue team has just reached the site of the bombing," a technician reported. He muttered into his headset, grimaced, and said, "Detective Sheppard and his car are gone, but they found a sizable bloodstain. They confirm that the Wraith and its equipment were destroyed."
O'Neill and Carver exchanged a long look. If Rodney didn't know better he'd think they were speaking telepathically. Eventually Carver gave a curt nod.
"Who here drives a motorcycle?" O'Neill said.
Radek tentatively raised his hand.
"Keys," O'Neill ordered.
Flustered, Radek fished through his pockets, fumbled the keys and almost dropped them, and finally tossed them underhand to O'Neill. The General gave them to Carver, who spun on his heel and disappeared at a fast walk.
For a moment there was silence. Then, his curiosity getting the better of him, Rodney demanded, "Where is he going?"
Suddenly he found himself pinned beneath O'Neill's steady gaze. This was the last thing dozens of Goa'uld system lords had seen before they died, Rodney realized, his thoughts verging on the hysterical.
Finally O'Neill released him from that stare, making him stagger with relief.
"He's gone to clean up your mess," the General said.
Samantha Carter was several crystals short of a ZedPM, to be head over heels in love with that man, Rodney thought, and decided that he was relieved that she had rejected him, belittled him, and ultimately sent him to Siberia rather than give in to his advances.
Finding Zelenka's motorcycle was easy. It was the only one in the parking lot, a huge chrome monstrosity with an Atlantis Expedition bumper sticker plastered just above the tail pipe. Straddling it, Jack could feel the heat the metal had absorbed over the long afternoon, burning through his jeans and the palms of his hands.
He tapped his earpiece. "Where am I going?"
The Original repeated the question and replied a moment later with, "Head northeast. Follow the smoke."
Jack rolled his eyes. "Advice like that, no wonder you're the one who gets paid the big bucks."
He gunned the engine and peeled away from the parking lot, kicking up huge plumes of dust in his wake. Zelenka's bike roared powerfully beneath him; his respect for the scientist went up a few notches.
It took him about twenty minutes to reach ground zero. The smoke hadn't yet begun to thin and the hazmat suit-clad members of the emergency team were busy taking samples from the still smoldering trailer.
Jack cut the motorcycle's engine and slid off, his keen eyes taking in every detail of the scene. Thirty feet from the trailer the dust was rough and disturbed. There were two sets of tire tracks, both from the same vehicle—it had left in a different direction than it had come. The SGC's people had pretty well disturbed the scene, but enough was intact for Jack to figure out the basics of what had gone down.
Puny human versus super-strong Wraith. Handgun versus AK-47. It didn't take a genius to solve that equation. The pool of blood, which had already begun to fade into the dryer dirt around it, was proof enough that Sheppard hadn't somehow pulled a miracle out of his ass.
He tapped his earpiece again. "The amount of blood he lost, Sheppard didn't drive out of here, at least not without help," he said, crouching to prod at a few loose shell casings. Sheppard had put up a fight, he'd give him that. Not bad for a pilot-turned-detective-turned-nobody.
"Bad news," the Original replied grimly. "McKay tells me there was a bag of money in Sheppard's car. Enough for a Wraith to lay low for weeks. What I don't get is why he took Sheppard with him."
"Well, it wasn't as a food supply," Jack said. "Sheppard must have been pretty close to death."
"Hang on," the Original said. He raised his voice as he spoke to someone in the room. "What? Why? Why didn't you tell me that an hour ago?" His voice lower, he said, "Sounds like Sheppard met the Wraith earlier today and the Wraith seemed weirdly fascinated by him."
"Great. A Wraith with a crush." Jack stood and wiped his hands on his jeans. "I'm going to try to track the car. Put out an APB on the license plate. Maybe we'll get lucky."
"And if you catch Sheppard—"
"And if I catch Sheppard—"
They cut off. They'd tried to break themselves of the habit of speaking in unison, but it wasn't easy.
"Yeah," Jack said softly. "I'm on it."
That was one of the few nice things about working with the guy he'd been cloned from, he thought, adjusting his sunglasses as he headed back to the motorcycle. They lived on the same wavelength.
John woke to hunger. His stomach twisted and ached, his head was pounding, his mouth tasted funny, and…wait, how the hell was he even alive?
He cracked open one eye, an involuntary moan escaping him as the bright Nevada sunlight stabbed directly into his brain. He tried to think of why he felt like he'd just been on an all night bender, but the last thing he could remember was being shot multiple times and having the pleasure of watching that Wraith thing blow up, then passing out. Although—now that he thought about it—hadn't there been another Wraith? Everything was so muddled.
He tried to sit up, only to grunt when something yanked painfully against his right wrist. Slumping back down on the bed—bed?—he forced his eye open again and blearily examined the handcuff that stretched from his wrist to the overly ornate headboard.
"What the—"
"A safety precaution," a low, rough, worrisomely familiar voice said. "To prevent you from damaging yourself."
This was not good. Not good. Way to go, John. You could have been scot free. You could have reached California by now with enough cash to make a new life for yourself. You just had to stick your nose where it didn't belong.
He pried open his other eye, wincing again as the light exacerbated his migraine, and looked around. He was in a surprisingly luxurious hotel room with a widescreen TV, couch, Wraith, two queen size beds—including the one he was lying on—and a huge window overlooking the Las Vegas strip.
And now I've been kidnapped as a sex slave. My life is complete.
He used his free hand to rub his chest, his fingers finding the bullet holes in his shirt and jacket with ease. The skin underneath was unblemished, except for a cut of some sort right below his sternum.
"Do you remember what happened?" the Wraith said—and oh shit, there really was a Wraith in the room with him.
John's forehead furrowed. "I was dying, and you—" Memories hit him suddenly, of lying on the ground and blinking up at the Wraith as it loomed over him, a piercing sensation in his chest, and then… "What the hell did you do to me?"
The Wraith was sitting at a small round dining table, its spine very straight, its legs crossed at the knee, a folded newspaper in its lap, watching him through those strange, split-pupil eyes. On the table was a black bag, which John had last seen sitting on the passenger seat of his car.
"I saved your life," the Wraith said calmly.
It took John a moment to realize it was answering his question. "How?" he demanded. "Why?"
The Wraith didn't answer, and before John could press the point another seizing cramp in his stomach made him jerk his knees up to his chest. He waited it out, panting, writhing—god, he had never felt hunger like this before—until finally it subsided—still present, but not quite as urgent—and he slumped down on the bed.
He took a moment to catch his breath, and then he wearily lifted his head to squint suspiciously at the Wraith. "I don't suppose there's anything to eat here."
The Wraith's lips turned up at the corners. "None that would satisfy you," it said, and its words seemed to hold a wealth of hidden implications that made John shudder. Then the Wraith shook its head and added, "It is not food for which you hunger."
He didn't like the sound of that. "Then what, exactly?"
The Wraith turned over its own hand and idly examined it. "When my kind feed, we release an enzyme into our victim's system. It is highly addictive."
"You fed on me?" It fit with what McKay had said about the Wraith, but John didn't feel like he'd had his life sucked out of his chest. Actually, other than the cramps, he felt good. Which was all kinds of wrong, given the day he'd had.
"The opposite. I gave you the Gift of Life."
The opposite. The Wraith hadn't drained his life, it had given him life? But… "Again, why?"
"I require your help to escape this planet."
John barked a laugh, which set his head to spinning again. "You're kidding, right?" He sobered when the Wraith didn't seem amused. "Listen, pal, I wouldn't have the first idea how to get you off the planet—and anyway, I wouldn't help you even if I could."
"You will," the Wraith said ominously—John had a weird moment imagining it as Yoda—and stood more smoothly and quickly than a human could. He blinked and it was standing over him, the light splitting and forming a halo around it, and then it was reaching down to splay its hand against his chest. "For unless you agree to help me, I will give you the Gift of Life again and again, until you are a slave broken to my will or you beg me to let you help to keep yourself from reaching that stage."
The Wraith pressed down. John jerked as a needle stabbed into his skin, injecting him with heat that spread across his chest and up his neck. His headache and the cramps fled instantly as the world filled with bright, beautiful color.
Distantly, he heard the Wraith say, "I have no desire to hurt you, John Sheppard, but I will do what I must."
And then it pulled its hand away and John flew.
It took most of the morning, but eventually Jack tracked Sheppard's Chevy Camaro to a Motel 6 in a tiny strip mall in the middle of nowhere. On either side of the motel were a decrepit casino—little better than a saloon, really—and a McDonalds. Other than the Camaro there were seven cars in the strip mall's parking lot.
Something wasn't right.
The desk clerk at the motel was a guy a year or so younger than Jack's physical age. The smell of pot hung heavily in the air.
"I'm looking for two men," Jack said, flashing his FBI badge. It wasn't fake but it wasn't real either; the Original had pulled some strings and gotten tacit permission from the FBI for Jack to impersonate a federal agent, including a badge that was entirely legitimate except for its number. "The ones with the Camaro."
The kid stared blankly at him.
Jack sighed. "One would be about my height, white, with dark, spiky hair. The other is tall, kind of funny looking—"
"Oh, the drunk and the Spock impersonator!"
"Spock," Jack repeated. He thought back to the pictures he'd seen of the Wraith. He supposed, in a certain light, if you looked at it at the right angle…
No. It still looked nothing like Spock.
"Well, he wasn't a very good impersonator," the clerk said defensively, "but he said he's new to it."
Jack decided not to touch that one. "Where are they?"
The kid's instinctive obedience at the sight of Jack's FBI badge had faded. That was one problem with looking like a college student—it was hard to command respect, even from someone like this punk.
"What'd they do?"
"They ate someone. A few someones, actually. It was…messy."
The kid's eyes went very wide, more with fascination than fear. He rifled through a drawer and pulled out a key, which Jack impatiently snatched from his fingers.
"They're in room 24," the kid said.
Jack took the stairs to the second floor two at a time, pulling out his zat as he went. He preferred his gun, but he'd read up on the Wraith and he knew that while three bullets might not take one down, three shots with a zat definitely would.
The curtains on room 24 were drawn. Jack couldn't hear any sounds from inside. His zat in his right hand, he carefully unlocked the door. There was a click as the bolt retracted, then another click that made his eyes go wide.
Reacting purely on instinct, he leapt off of the balcony, landing on the pavement a floor below with a painful somersault. He was just in time—the subsequent explosion blew out all the windows on the second floor and the fireball that blew out the door would have fried Jack to a crisp. He covered his head with his hands as debris rained down.
"Spock, my ass," he muttered, dodging a piece of flaming door frame.
The door to reception sprang open and the desk clerk scurried out, his mouth hanging open as he gaped at the destruction.
"What did you do?" the kid said, his eyes huge.
Jack shook his head and handed the kid a card. "Call this number. They'll take care of it." The SGC had plenty of experience in dealing with this kind of incident by now.
He walked to the edge of the parking lot and peered left and then right, trying to assess which way the Wraith and Sheppard had gone. There was no civilization for at least thirty miles in either direction—the small town of Caliente far to the north, Las Vegas to the south. He didn't care how strong the Wraith was—there was no way it was traveling on foot, especially not with Sheppard in tow.
He turned around and examined the strip mall—what was left of it, that was, as the motel was continuing to burn and now the flames had begun to lap against the adjoining walls of the McDonalds and casino. The occupants of both establishments, all twelve of them, came pouring out to gape and point at the fire.
"Who here is missing a car?" Jack called out.
He had to repeat himself twice before the crowd heard. Most of them ignored him, but one man, tall, thick around the waist, probably in his late forties, whirled around.
Jack beckoned to the man, flashing his badge when he hesitated. At the sight of it his expression brightened and he hurried over.
"Someone stole your car?" Jack said.
The man nodded, paused, then shook his head, looking sheepish. "I lost it. At cards."
"You lost your car." Jack rubbed his forehead. People never failed to amaze him. "The guy you lost it to, what did he look like?"
"He was a Spock impersonator," Car-Losing Moron said. "Tall, kind of pasty looking."
Clearly no one here had ever actually seen Star Trek.
"Was he with another man?"
"No," Moron said. Apparently he was eager to tell his story, as he launched into his explanation before Jack could ask him what had happened. "So there I was, a royal straight right on the flop. Then the turn comes and there's two spades on the table—no way he's gonna get a flush. I go all in. So the Spock guy, he calls, then raises me three thousand dollars. I tell him I haven't got any more money, he says I should throw in my car. That's not really how we play it in these parts, but I figure my hand's unbeatable, so what's the harm? I throw in my car. And there we are, waiting and waiting and waiting for the river, the room as tense as can be. Then the river comes down, six of spades. That's when I really started to sweat, you know? We turn over our cards, and I'll be damned—he's got the ace and ten of spades."
"And you just let him take your car?" Jack said.
Moron shrugged. "He had that look in his eye. Don't fuck with me, you know, that kind of look. And he's a big fellow, looks like he could break a guy in half."
Well, at least Moron hadn't been dumb enough to get himself killed. Jack counted himself lucky not to have stumbled onto a pile of dead gamblers.
Although, he thought dubiously, glancing over his shoulder at the inferno, which was now blazing even brighter than before, if the fire trucks didn't get here soon all that would be left would be ashes. The Original was never going to let him live this one down.
"Describe the car," Jack said.
The man rambled a long and convoluted answer that eventually coalesced into the description of a battered red Mustang. Anxious to get back on the road, Jack got the license number and Moron's contact information, then swung himself back on top of Zelenka's bike and considered his options.
The Wraith obviously knew it was being followed and was doing its best to kill or lose Jack. In a town like Caliente it would stick out like a sore thumb, and it was a long way to the next city from there. Las Vegas wasn't that far south, and that other Wraith—the dead one—had already proven that even a Wraith could blend in amidst Sin City's garish lights and gaudy costumes.
"I'm getting too old for this shit," Jack muttered under his breath, and turned right.
He observed with some pleasure that John Sheppard did not lose consciousness after receiving the Gift of Life this time. That was a good sign. It meant that the human was stronger now.
He gave Sheppard one last burst of energy then pulled back his hand. Sheppard was drenched in sweat, his body taut as if it each of his limbs were being pulled in a different direction.
"That is some drug," Sheppard panted, and looked as if he didn't know whether to be horrified or ecstatic.
"Several more such treatments and you will begin to lose yourself," he said.
"Like hell," Sheppard spat.
He shook his head. "Everyone breaks, John Sheppard. Even you."
Sheppard scowled. "So what's your plan? Gonna try what your buddy did and send the location of Earth to your commander?"
"Wraith report to queens," he informed the man, astonished again by how little Sheppard knew of the Wraith. He felt such a strong connection to the human, a peculiar draw, that he kept forgetting that Sheppard had never been to the Pegasus Galaxy, had never seen a Wraith hive or met a queen.
"Whatever. To-may-to, to-mah-to."
"I have no intention of sending a signal," he said, deciding to ignore Sheppard's flippant and indecipherable response. "You and I are going to steal a ship."
Sheppard twitched, his body betraying his interest, and just for an instant their minds connected. He saw through Sheppard's eyes in that instant, felt the thrill of flying, the exultation and freedom it entailed.
Sheppard was a pilot. Of course. He should have known.
He tried to strengthen the connection between them, to show Sheppard his own memories of piloting a dart so long ago—he, too, loved to fly—but the human's mind was too weak and when he tried to grip the connection it slipped away as water seeps through a cupped palm.
"I've never flown a spaceship," Sheppard said, but it was a weak protest if indeed it was a protest at all.
"You will be able to fly the ship I have in mind. One might say that you were born to fly it."
Sheppard stared at him in clear suspicion. "How could you possibly know the location of any ships on Earth? You've been a prisoner the whole time you've been here."
He gazed at the man for several seconds, debating whether to reply. Finally he said, "I listen, Sheppard. People say many things they should not when they take their prisoners for granted."
"So where's this ship you want us to steal?"
"In a place called Area 51."
Sheppard snorted. "Area 51? Where they keep the little green men?"
"It is where the SGC keeps much of its alien technology. You have been there before. It is where we met."
"That was Area 51?" Sheppard's eyes gleamed with excitement for a moment before he shook his head. "And how, exactly, do you think an alien and a washed out pilot are going to break into a top secret government installation?"
He smiled and flexed his feeding hand. "The same way I broke out of one."
Sheppard's eyes drifted from his face to his feeding hand. "See, that doesn't work for me." There was a greedy look in those hazel eyes of his, though; he was already craving another injection of the enzyme, and the first dose was still far from leaving his system.
"I will not remain on this planet, John Sheppard," he told the man regretfully. In Pegasus, before he had been captured, he would never have tried to enslave one such as Sheppard. It was a violation to break the mind of a strong-willed man, who was so much closer to being Wraith than his weaker minded peers.
"And I'm not going to help you kill anyone," Sheppard insisted, leaning forward, straining against the handcuff around his wrist. "No matter how much of that drug you give me."
He stared at the man, probing gently with his mind to test the truth in his words. Sheppard believed what he was saying, though whether time would prove him right was a mystery to them both.
"Listen," Sheppard said, then hesitated. "Hey, what's your name, anyway?"
"You would not be able to pronounce it."
Shepppard sighed. "Of course I wouldn't." He shook his head. "Look, you've got to realize that there's no way out of this. We managed to stop your buddy and he had weeks to work on his doomsday device before McKay and Woolsey figured out that he'd survived his landing. Every cop in the city's going to be looking for you."
He growled in frustration and punched the wall, leaving a deep indentation. "What would you suggest, then?" he snarled. "Shall I give up? Shall I surrender to a slow death by starvation? I am finally free after all these long years of captivity, and you seek to frighten me with threats of a pursuit?"
Sheppard watched him calmly, apparently unfazed by the outburst, only the tension in his jaw belying his unease. A moment passed and then another, and then Sheppard said something that made no sense at all: "Todd."
He hesitated, disliking the feeling of being caught off-guard. "I am not familiar with that term."
"It's what I'm going to call you. You remind me of a guy I knew in college, and that was his name."
John Sheppard was so very different from any human he had ever met. Defiant and sarcastic in the face of captivity, deceptively intelligent. He spared a moment to wish that Aidan Ford had had such strength to him. How different things might have been for them both. But the boy had been young and foolish, and Wraith did not take betrayal well.
"Your body needs sustenance to assist in breaking down the enzyme," he said. He walked over to the table and picked up the thin plastic binder which said "ROOM SERVICE" on the front. He had learned to read the humans' language during his first year in that cell on Atlantis, when one of the scientists had lent him a historical text titled The Count of Monte Cristo. He carried the menu to Sheppard and tossed it on the man's lap. "Choose what you would like to eat."
"What about you?" Sheppard said cautiously. "Are you going to…eat?"
Clearly the man was worried that he would consume the busboy—as if that would not immediately reveal their location to the SGC.
"I ate my fill when I escaped this morning. I will not need to eat again for some time."
There was a hard look in Sheppard's eyes that suggested that he did not quite trust him. The man flipped open the menu, perused it quickly, and said, "A cheeseburger, medium rare. And a Coke."
"Very well." He studied the small placard on the table which contained phone numbers, then picked up the handset of the boxy telephone—which seemed to be a less portable version of the cell phones his captors sometimes used—and dialed.
"Oh, and Todd? Thanks. I'm starving."
On the other hand, Todd thought, if he'd been imprisoned with Sheppard he might have simply drained him of his entire life force simply to wipe that smirk off of his face.
Jack pulled into the MGM Grand's parking lot with a sigh. This was the fourth hotel on the Vegas strip he'd checked. So far he'd found seven battered red Mustangs, three of them with invalid license plates, and no sign of the Wraith. The Original had called twice to pester him—as if they didn't both know that the Original couldn't do any better!—and he was growing increasingly annoyed with the whole situation.
What was the point in killing one Wraith if you were just going to let another go, anyway? And this Wraith was old, probably much older than the other Wraith, which had been a lowly pilot after all. From what he'd read in the mission files, no one knew how long the Genii had held this Wraith captive before it had worked with Lt. Ford to escape only to turn around and kill Ford just before the rescue team arrived.
Jack couldn't really blame the Wraith for acting on its nature—from what he could tell, only a fool would ever trust a space vampire—but he didn't want one running around his planet wreaking havoc, either. Earth had enough problems; Pegasus could keep the Wraith.
Besides, if the Wraith ever reached Earth en masse, Charlie might one day encounter them, and that possibility, remote as it might be, was simply unacceptable.
There was a red Mustang in this parking lot. Its license plate was missing, and looked as if it had been torn off, which made warning bells sound in the back of his mind.
The hotel lobby had a separate entrance from the casino. Jack approached the desk, acutely aware of his dusty apparel and the way his windswept hair and sunglasses made him look like nothing so much as a young hoodlum.
Young. Ha.
He had to give the receptionist credit; she didn't sneer at his worn state, just gave him a fake smile and said, "Welcome to the MGM Grand, sir. How may I help you?"
"FBI." He dragged out his badge for the umpteenth time and held it up. She looked from the badge to his face and then back again, a dubious wrinkle on her brow. "I'm looking for two men. One is tall, with greenish-white skin and—"
"Oh!" one of the other receptionists, this one a young man, interjected. "The Spock impersonator!"
"He looked nothing like Spock," the woman sighed. It sounded like they'd bickered about this before.
"He was just a beginner," the other guy said, as if maybe the Wraith had somehow gone to a costume shop and mixed up a black bowl-cut wig with a long white one.
"What room?" Jack interrupted when it looked like they might break into a full-blown argument.
The woman was caught with her mouth open mid-retort. She flushed under Jack's impatient stare. "Uh, do you remember what he said his name was, Jimmy?"
The man scratched his head. "Dot? Something like that?"
"It started with an 'D'," she agreed, frowning, "but I don't think that's it."
Of course the Wraith was smart enough not to use the name of anyone it had come into contact with on Earth. Jack missed having stupid enemies, like Ra.
"It was Dantes," the third, and final, receptionist said. "You know, like Edmond Dantes in The Count of Monte Cristo. He used a different first name, though. Aidan, I think."
"Yes, I remember now," the woman said. "Thank you, Charlie." She typed at her computer for what felt like forever, then hit enter. "He and his drunk friend are in room 804." She hit a few more buttons, inserted a key card into the key card programming machine, and handed it to him.
"I'm forever in your debt," Jack said with the smooth grin that always used to make women swoon.
She frowned at him, her nose wrinkling with distaste.
God, he hated being a kid.
He took the elevator with a drunk couple who were wearing brand new wedding rings and a man dressed as Dolly Parton. Getting off on the 8th floor, Jack felt his heart begin to pound as he crept down the empty hallway, zat in hand. Obviously that motel earlier had been a decoy meant to throw him off the scent, but he doubted that was the case here. The Wraith was nearby. He could practically feel it.
He was nearly to the room when the elevator dinged. He hastily tucked his zat in the back of his pants. A moment later the elevator doors opened and a kid in a hotel uniform walked out pushing a room service cart.
"Stop," Jack said, holding up his badge.
The kid halted in his tracks, then took a few steps back, looking terrified. "Look, this is a mistake, I didn't mean to steal that silverware, it just fell in my pocket and—"
Jack rolled his eyes. "I'm not here for you. What room are you going to with that?"
The kid was so relieved that it took him a second to reply. "Uh, 804."
So, the Wraith had ordered room service. Obviously it was less interested in what was on the cart than who was pushing it.
Jack sized up the kid and was both relieved and dismayed to realize they were about the same size. "Give me your jacket."
"What?"
"Your uniform jacket, give it to me."
Jack shrugged out of his own blazer while the kid obeyed. The uniform jacket had a loose fit and smelled like cigarette smoke, but it would do the trick. A cursory inspection found two forks and a spoon in one pocket.
Kids these days.
"Get lost," Jack said. The kid reached for the cart. "Ah ah! Leave that. Now scram."
The kid scurried back to the elevator bay and jabbed the call button, looking over his shoulder at Jack as if he couldn't believe his luck at getting away. He didn't know the half of it; Jack had probably just saved his life.
Jack tossed his blazer to the side and drew his zat again, holding it low, behind the cart. With one hand he pushed the cart toward room 804. Reaching the room, he took a deep breath and knocked.
"Room service," he called out.
The Wraith answered the door. It had done nothing to disguise its appearance except for changing out of its prison jumpsuit into a slightly too small suit.
"Give it to me," the Wraith said in its rough, almost multi-tonal voice.
Wait, it wanted the food?
"Man, I can't do that," Jack said, affecting his best dumb-surfer-kid persona. "I gotta set it up for you, man, or they'll fire me."
The Wraith just looked at him for a long moment, as if expecting that its gaze alone would change Jack's mind—come to think of it, it probably would have worked if Jack was who he was pretending to be—but when Jack didn't budge it shook its head and opened the door wide enough for him to push the cart inside.
He took in the details of the room at a glance. Typical Vegas luxury, plenty of room to maneuver. A bag of cash and set of car keys on the table. No lifeless husks of the Wraith's victims that he could see, but maybe they were in the bathroom.
Oh, and John Sheppard was handcuffed to the bed. Only Sheppard didn't look quite like Jack had expected from reading his file and hearing what had happened out in the desert. He wasn't dying, for one thing. For another, he looked about ten years shy of his real age. The Wraith's doing, no doubt, although from what Jack knew the Atlantis Expedition wasn't aware that the Wraith could de-age people in addition to sucking their lives out.
"Get out of here," Sheppard hissed, making a shooing gesture with his free hand.
Ignoring him, Jack continued to push the cart until he'd reached the table. He was highly conscious of the Wraith behind him, still standing by the door. Bracing himself, he jerked up the zat as he spun to face the Wraith.
He got off two shots.
So did the Wraith.
John watched in dismay as the kid went down, his head hitting the edge of the cart even as the momentum of the bullet striking his shoulder spun him around. The first shot had gone wide, taking out the TV—those Wraith fingers really weren't designed to handle a small human handgun—but the second had struck home. Todd was down too, apparently disoriented by the blue electricity that had zapped him twice, but he hadn't lost consciousness and was already trying to get up.
Biting the inside of his cheek, John twisted a paperclip inside the handcuff lock until he heard the click. He'd managed to sneak the paperclip off of the room service menu without Todd noticing, but he'd had to wait until Todd was distracted by the busboy to unlock himself.
Not sparing the time to massage his sore wrist, he sprang off of the bed, surprised by how energetic he felt. That Wraith enzyme was really something.
He knelt at the kid's side, gently turning him over, wincing when he saw the deep gash on his temple. The gunshot wound was bad but not life-threatening. What really surprised him, though, was the kid's youth. He couldn't have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two. What on Earth was he doing taking on a Wraith?
John didn't have time to ponder the question for long, Todd's unhappy grunts reminding him to hurry. He grabbed the kid's funky looking gun—it couldn't be an alien gun, could it?—and aimed it at Todd, his pointer finger finding the trigger after some fumbling. The Wraith was on his hands and knees, the sidearm pressed between his right hand and the floor.
"Don't move," John said. "Let go of the gun, Todd."
Todd growled deep in his chest. John could read the indecision in the Wraith's eyes—he was wondering whether he could get off a debilitating shot at John, and whether another shot from the funky gun could kill him or at least knock him unconscious.
"Don't try it," John said softly, his finger tightening on the trigger until a twitch was all it would take to shoot. He didn't particularly want to kill Todd—he was beginning to think that naming the Wraith had been a bad idea, since he couldn't help but think of someone called Todd as being almost-human—but he wouldn't hesitate to do it to save his own life and the kid's.
Todd let go of the gun.
"Now, toss it over to me. No sudden movements."
The Wraith grabbed the gun by the barrel and tossed it to land on the carpet by John's feet. John picked it up and tucked it one-handed into his pants, using the other hand to keep the funky gun trained on Todd.
"Stand up and come over here," John said.
Todd stood, teetering a little unsteadily once he found his feet. He grew more confident with each step, though. John would have been more impressed by the Wraith's impossible strength if he hadn't known that it came from sucking out human life.
John gestured at the kid. "Heal him."
Todd balked. "I cannot."
"Yeah, you can. You did it to me."
"Those shots weakened me, Sheppard. If I try to heal him, I may die."
"Don't you get it? You're already dead. If not in this hotel room, then in the government's custody. You're not getting off this planet, Todd."
"Then what incentive is there for me to help him?"
John lifted his chin. "You save his life and I'll let you do your thing to me. Suck my life out. That should sustain you for a while, shouldn't it?" It was a bad bargain, but John couldn't let some kid die for him, no more than he could have left Nancy to die in Afghanistan when there was even the slightest chance of saving her. At least this time it was only his own life on the line.
"You are the strangest human I have ever known, John Sheppard," Todd said, sounding both reluctantly admiring and royally pissed off. "I will accept your offer."
Jack woke feeling like he'd just been hit by a zat, a million volts of electricity coursing through his body. He was off his back and on his feet before he consciously made the decision to move, his heart pounding so hard he thought it might explode.
The Wraith must have been standing over him, because Jack's movement was enough to send it staggering back to collapse in a chair by the table. Sheppard stood by the bed, Jack's zat in his hand, his face twisted in disgust at whatever had just happened.
"There is something off about him," the Wraith gasped at Sheppard.
On closer inspection, it looked like it was in a bad way. Maybe those two zat shots had hurt it worse than he'd expected.
"What just happened?" Jack demanded.
"Todd saved your life," Sheppard said, nodding at the Wraith. "And what do you mean, there's something off about him?" he added, looking at "Todd."
"He is…not entirely human." The Wraith slumped even further in its chair, its greenish-white skin nearly gray. "Sheppard…we had a deal."
Sheppard hesitated a long time. He looked at Jack. "You're not going to kill him, are you?"
What, was Sheppard concerned for the space vampire?
"The guys at Area 51 aren't done with him, from what I've been told," Jack said.
Todd made a guttural noise that might have been a laugh. On a human it might even have been a sob. It seemed to be almost collapsing in on itself. What was wrong with it? "Sheppard…"
Sheppard closed his eyes as if arguing with himself. Finally he heaved a sigh and looked Jack in the eye. "Listen, I don't know much about what you people do, but experimenting on Todd and starving him to death, that's not right. If you're going to kill him, just do it already."
Jack's eyebrows drew together. "You haven't seen the pictures of what was left of Ford when 'Todd' was done with him, Sheppard. You want to talk not right? That wasn't right."
"Aidan Ford betrayed me first," the Wraith said, its voice barely above a whisper, its eyes falling shut. "He shot me in the back just as we reached the perimeter of Kolya's bunker. I was forced to take the rest of his life force to save myself."
Jack sneered. "Yeah, and if he hadn't shot you, I'm sure you would have given him his youth back."
"There is much about Wraith that you do not know," the Wraith replied with surprising dignity.
Sheppard held out the zat to Jack. "It's not right," he repeated.
Maybe Sheppard was right. "It's not my call," Jack said, closing his hand around the zat's grip. "I just work there." He'd been the Man once, but that had been about thirty-five years ago. He tried to imagine asking the Original to show the Wraith some leniency. Yeah, that'd go over well.
Sheppard raked his hand through his hair, then walked with slow steps to where Todd was sitting.
"What are you doing?" Jack demanded.
"We had a deal," Sheppard said, speaking more to the Wraith than to Jack.
Todd dragged his eyes open to regard Sheppard. "I did not truly think that you would honor it."
Cringing, Sheppard leaned in, close enough for Todd to lift a trembling hand and place it on the man's chest.
"Whoa," Jack said, pointing the zat at Todd. "I don't think so."
"He saved your life," Sheppard told him. Jack could hear what Sheppard left unspoken: I'm doing this for you, kid.
Before Jack could argue, the Wraith pressed its hand harder to Sheppard's chest. There was a sound like a dart puncturing skin, and the Wraith began to feed.
This was what he wanted, Jack reminded himself, watching in sick horror as Sheppard's too-youthful face began to age, his hair growing wilder, wrinkles forming around his eyes. It was like watching the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark in slow motion—the slow corpsification of a man.
Except that Todd stopped before it got anywhere near that bad. Sheppard looked about forty when the Wraith ripped its hand away, its sharp teeth bared as if it were in agony.
Sheppard stumbled back until his knees hit the edge of the bed and he collapsed on it. "Why did you stop?" he gasped.
"I took enough to survive," Todd said. The Wraith did look somewhat less haggard. "You may be weak for several hours, but you will live."
Jack was barely listening. His mind was racing, turning over implications he had never dared to consider before.
"Just like that?" he demanded. "You can give and take life that easily? You don't have to kill—or nearly kill—your victims?"
Todd's spine, which had been nearly folded in on itself before the Wraith fed, slowly straightened until the Wraith's posture would have made Emily Post proud. "Young Wraith do not have the control necessary to control the flow of life," Todd said. Then, almost self-deprecatingly, it added, "I am very old."
"So you could do that—" Jack waved his zat at Sheppard "—to me? You could age me to, say, fifty-five years old?"
Todd's face didn't have quite the same expressions as a human's, but somehow Jack could tell that the Wraith's interest had been piqued. "I could not do it in one go as I did with Sheppard," Todd said slowly. "The shock would kill you. It would take perhaps a week to do it properly. But, yes. I could do it."
"Why are you even talking about this?" Sheppard asked the ceiling, still unable to move.
Jack lowered his zat. "I want you to do it."
The Wraith tilted its head. "You are a fool if you believe that I will assist my captor."
"No," Jack said. "I know you won't do it without incentive. So here it is: I'll help you get back to Pegasus. I'll help you escape."
"How?" Todd said sharply.
Jack shrugged. "How were you planning to do it?"
"He was going to steal a spaceship," Sheppard said, laughing under his breath.
"I believe your kind call them gateships," Todd said, ignoring Sheppard's sarcastic tone.
"And? Then? What?" Jack said. At the Wraith's blank expression, he explained, "The only way to Pegasus in a gateship is through the Stargate, and the only Stargate on Earth is twenty-eight stories below ground. You and Sheppard could never have managed it on your own." He paused for effect, unsurprised when the Wraith leaned forward in its chair. "I have access. I can get you in."
"Just like that?" Sheppard scoffed. "You're just going to release him back into the wilds of Pegasus?"
Jack gritted his teeth and wished that Sheppard hadn't, for reasons that escaped him, decided to become the Wraith's advocate.
"Not exactly, but anything's better than captivity, isn't it?" Jack snapped.
"It is," Todd said, with such feeling that Jack almost felt sorry for it.
Jack took a deep breath and prepared to break every agreement he'd ever made with the Original. "There's a drug. Carson Beckett developed it before he was killed. It can change a Wraith's basic makeup, so that it lives off of normal food instead of humans. It removes their ability to feed. I'll help you escape to Pegasus if you agree to take the drug."
Todd replied faster than Jack expected. "I will do it."
Jack nodded, already coming up with a plan. Except…He glanced sidelong at Sheppard, who had managed to push himself up onto his elbows and was now staring at Todd and Jack as if they were both insane.
"We can't do it without you, Sheppard," Jack said. "You'll have to pilot the gateship to Atlantis. McKay said that you have the gene."
Sheppard's eyebrows went up. "And then what? I'm just stranded in some other galaxy with Todd?"
"You can join the Atlantis Expedition," Jack said. It was probably true. "I can make it happen. If you tell them Todd took you captive, that you had no choice, I can get you clearance to stay. Heck, McKay wants you for his gate team, although if I were you I'd rather just form my own than put up with him."
"I don't even know who you are," Sheppard said.
Jack smiled. "I'm Jack O'Neill."
The arrangements took some time and a great deal of trust from Todd. The human Jack O'Neill had insisted that they find someplace else to stay, since "sooner or later even the Old Man will figure out that he can call every hotel on the strip looking for a Spock impersonator and find us."
("What's with the Spock thing, anyway?" O'Neill had asked.
"One of the scientists on the base thought about the television show Star Trek frequently," Todd had replied. "I did not have costumes available to me as the Other did, so I made use of what little I knew about this place.")
They relocated to a much smaller inn on the outskirts of Las Vegas proper, O'Neill booking a room at the front desk while Todd and Sheppard snuck in through the back. O'Neill returned to Area 51 to report that he had failed to locate Todd and to steal a vial of the drug. Todd half-expected all the forces of the SGC to bust down the door while he was gone, but O'Neill returned alone as promised.
O'Neill set the vial on the nightstand and took a deep breath. "Okay. I need to make a phone call, and then I'm ready."
There wasn't much privacy to be had in the tiny room, but Sheppard and Todd pretended they could not hear every word. O'Neill went into the bathroom and shut the door.
"Charlie, hey, it's Jon. Yeah, I know, I haven't seen you lately, sorry. Listen, I can't talk for long, but there was something I really needed to say to you. Dad's going to come by in the next month or so. He's gonna want to apologize to you about being such a dick. No, no, I know that I always told you to ignore him if he ever did that, but—yeah. He's our dad. I want you to give him a shot. Promise me you will? Okay. Great. Yeah. Love you too, bro."
There was a long silence, which Todd took to mean that O'Neill had hung up. He didn't come out for several minutes, though, and when he did his expression was tense. He stalked over to the bed and sat, opening his shirt.
"Age me," he said.
Todd obliged.
Apparently Jack had the same miracle gene that John did—John still wasn't that clear on the specifics—because he was able to steal them a gateship—which was, hands down, the coolest ship John had ever seen—and fly it, invisible, partway into the desert, where John and Todd were waiting for him.
Jack stepped out of the back, grinning broadly, more at ease by far than he'd been before Todd started the slow process of aging him. He looked about Sheppard's age now. Sheppard still didn't know the entire story behind just why Jack wanted to be aged, but the other man hadn't backed down, not once, not even when it had turned out that being fed upon was significantly more painful than being given the Gift of Life.
"We've got to make one more stop before we go to Cheyenne," Jack said. "In D.C. There's something I have to do." He cocked an eyebrow at John. "You want to take her for a spin?"
The gateship—which seemed like a ridiculous name for a puddle jumper such as this, but whatever—came to life as John stepped on board. His mind was assailed with commands, readings, settings—everything he needed to fly the thing, all in his brain. He'd never felt anything like it.
The flight from Nevada to Washington, D.C., took less than an hour. It was very late by the time they arrived. Jack directed them to a large house in the suburbs. John parked the gateship on the street like a car.
"Stay here," Jack said in a tone that was meant to be obeyed, and left.
There was no spare key, so Jack broke a window with his elbow and entered that way. The house was large and comfortable, just like his house in Colorado Springs had been.
He found the Original in the kitchen, leaning against the counter and drinking a beer, watching Jack come with dark, knowing eyes.
"Kid," the Original said dryly. "You're growing up so fast."
"You know why I'm here," Jack said, coming to a stop on the other side of the kitchen.
The Original shrugged. "You want what you think is rightfully yours. I know how your mind works."
But Jack shook his head. "No," he said. "It's not rightfully mine. But you had your chance and you screwed everything up. It's my turn now."
"You really want to be me?" the Original demanded. "You want to be the Man? You want Charlie to hate you?"
"I spoke to Charlie recently," Jack said with a cold smile. "I told him to give our old man a shot, the next time he called. It might take some time to repair that relationship—it's our fault his mother died, after all—but I'm willing to put the effort into it. You never were."
The Original glowered at him, then looked away, ashamed. "The world needed saving."
"I know. I was there. But it turns out our family needed saving, too."
"You think your life is so bad," the Original sneered. "You've had it good, kid."
"As your personal assassin, you mean?" Jack shot back. "Killing for you. Following your orders, as if you're not just as fucked up as I am."
"You could have walked away at any time and you know it."
"Not with you holding Charlie over my head, I couldn't."
A muscle leapt in the Original's jaw. "You never should have gone to him in the first place. And telling him you were my illegitimate son—you were trying to make him hate me even more than he already did."
"Still. You never should have threatened to tell Charlie the truth."
It was useless to argue with himself. They both knew all that there was to say.
They fell silent, just looking at each other.
"So this is it, then," they said in unison after almost a minute had passed.
"You really hate yourself, don't you?" Kate Heightmeyer, psychiatrist extraordinaire and pain in Jack's ass, had asked him once, before he'd been split in two.
The answer then, as now, was yes.
The Original's reflexes were fast as he whipped out a gun from behind his back.
Jack, with the benefit of youth, was faster. He shot his zat once. Twice. Three times.
"You know the plan," O'Neill said, standing behind Sheppard and Todd in the gateship's cockpit. "I'll go in, enter the override code to open the missile silo for you to fly down to the gateroom, and dial Atlantis. Then you fly straight through—I'll send an IDC that'll get them to drop their shield—and immediately dial the gate to that address of Todd's and fly back through before they have time to raise the shield."
O'Neill was much changed now. He wore a dark blue uniform with two stars on either shoulder, and was old enough to look commanding.
"How do we know that you will not betray us?" Todd said.
O'Neill looked at Todd's now-defunct feeding hand. "I have no reason to."
The drug had worked as O'Neill had said that it would. Todd still felt hunger, but it could now be assuaged by the bite of an apple or a delicious hamburger. He was not human, but he was no longer Wraith either. He was something different, perhaps even something better. Most importantly, he was no longer anyone's captive.
"After you drop off Todd, Sheppard, dial Atlantis again and use that IDC I gave you. Tell them—"
"That Todd made me help him, yeah, yeah." It was difficult to tell whether Sheppard was as bored as he appeared behind his laconic smirk.
O'Neill shook his head. "The traces of Wraith enzyme in your system will give your story credence. I'll update your security clearance on this end and work to get you assigned as a civilian consultant to Atlantis. I'm the Man now, so it'll be relatively easy." He paused for a moment as if thinking, then said, "I guess that's it."
"I…appreciate your assistance," Todd said.
O'Neill looked surprised, then shrugged uncomfortably. "We had a deal." His eyes moved from Todd to Sheppard. "Good luck, Sheppard."
Sheppard quirked a half-smile. "Thanks. Sir."
The plan went off without a hitch. Less than three hours later Todd stepped out of the jumper and onto a planet he had last visited nearly two centuries ago. Sheppard followed him out, his eyes scanning the sky alertly.
Sheppard would fit in just fine in Pegasus, Todd thought, oddly comforted. Better than fine.
"You sure the other Wraith are gonna want you back?" Sheppard said, a little doubtful.
"I will be fine," Todd said evasively. No need to mention that he had saved a sample of the drug O'Neill had given him. Certainly no need to mention that he had great plans now that he was finally back in his own galaxy. Sheppard would see for himself soon enough.
"Well. It's been…interesting."
"Indeed. Be well, John Sheppard." Then, echoing a move he had seen the humans perform many times, Todd held out his hand.
Sheppard eyed it for a moment before shaking it firmly, though he let go faster than would be polite on Earth.
"And if we meet again…" Todd said.
Sheppard smirked. "All bets are off."
The human walked back aboard his gateship and vanished from Todd's sight. Todd turned his face up to the sky and, for many hours, gazed at the stars.
John flew the gateship into the Atlantis gateroom for the second time that day, coming to an abrupt halt in the small parking space. He was at the same level as the control room. Looking straight across the dashboard he saw a group of technicians working at various panels. Among them was a woman with dark hair and a commanding air who was glaring at John and his ship as if they were her worst enemy.
"Identify yourself!" she shouted into a microphone, the sound transmitting to Sheppard's ship.
"John Sheppard," he drawled. "And you are?"
It was obvious that she knew his name. Her eyes widened and she exchanged a whisper with the technician beside her before leaning into the microphone again. "Elizabeth Weir, leader of this base. You have permission to land in the gateship docking bay overhead, Mr. Sheppard. If you try anything you will be shot."
"Understood." He had a feeling they'd get along perfectly.
He flew the ship up, up, into a bay filled with gateships. His fingers twitched. He wanted to fly every single one.
He set his own ship down gently on the floor to one side, gave the dashboard an approving pat, and lowered the ramp.
He got halfway down the ramp before he saw the veritable army of Marines who'd circled around the back of the ship, armed and ready for anything. He held up his hands, amused by how threatening they seemed to find him, and stepped off of the ramp.
Atlantis woke.
Lights and devices and sensors that had slept for centuries sprang to life all at once, causing a great deal of excitement and consternation among the Lanteans. Her son—her favorite son in any universe—had arrived, at last.
John Sheppard was home.