"Not To Plan," PG, SG-1/XF
Available on my website here.
Disclaimers: Not mine, no moneys made, title explained at the end. Beta courtesy of Dragon, Alyss, devo, JiM, and tarsh; mistakes unfortunately by me.
Rated: PG or so, mostly for language.
Not To Plan
Cam's holding onto consciousness by five fingers and his teeth when they throw him through the doorway -- five because his right hand don't work for shit just now, all the way up to his shoulder -- which might explain why he doesn't think the other guy in the holding cell is alive, much less conscious.
Cam has no idea what the thugs' excuse is, and he's never gonna find out, either.
He comes up from the floor of the cell pain-blind, white light painted across his vision from slamming a dislocated shoulder into concrete. When he can see again, the other prisoner's slitting the second guard's throat. Not just ear to ear, either. It's an oddly graceful motion, curving across jugular, windpipe, carotid, not quite pausing at the upswing and then thrusting back and down, spearing along the back of the vertebrae without any scratch of metal on bone. He's good at it, and he killed the first guard while Cam was still standing up.
The guy's a knife himself, Cam decides, wavering on his feet: sleek, streamlined, edged, and lethal. Beautiful as air over a well-designed wing. Cam hauls his brain back together when the guy tosses him a zat, mouth curved in something that isn't really a smile.
"Use it if you know how, point it at them if you don't. We're leaving." The guy pulls Cam behind him the way 18-wheelers tug his cycle into their slipstream, and Cam's willing to let him take point -- he's a helluva lot less beat up than Cam is.
Still, it has to be asked. "And you don't think I'm a plant?"
The guy turns back, puts a hand over Cam's mouth -- and there's something wrong there, it's cool and hard, not a real hand at all -- and whispers, "Quiet." He vanishes around the corner, comes back no more mussed than he'd left and slipping into a black leather backpack like Cam pulling on his favorite flight jacket. He tugs Cam into motion again with that fake hand, good hand full of a zat of his own. "Of course not. You'd have bruises if you were a plant, not a ruined arm."
"Ain't ruined," Cam says flatly, not willing to believe that any more than he'd accepted the surgeons' collective belief he'd never fly again. He'll win this one too, and he can shoot a zat just fine left-handed anyway. "You got a plan? And a name?"
That gets a soft laugh. "Watch our backs. I'm Alec." He's busy at a locked door, focused on it instead of fighting it with arms and shoulders as well as clever hand and whatever he took from that side pocket of his pack. Cam doesn't think his name's really Alec, but what the hell, it'll do.
"Cam Mitchell." The door springs open and the sirens and lights finally erupt into paroxysms of sound and fury signifying... what?
Alec yanks him into the room he's opened and slams the door shut. The locks slam back into place, the chunk of metal into metal and wood audible even over the sirens. Alec just smiles again, that same curve of non-humor, and shifts Cam into a computer chair still warm from somebody's ass.
"This will hurt," Alec mentions and his fake hand catches Cam shoulder while his grip on Cam's arm tightens and pulls--
Cam's eyes open again while his brain's still filing pain/trouble/pain/noise/pain/strangers and as bad as he wants Teal'c there, or any of his team -- hell, right now he'd take that brand new first lieutenant who still looks like she has no idea why she's at the Mountain -- he doesn't need more than a second to match the man typing in steady bursts of keyboard clatter to his memories of however long ago the jailbreak was.
Alec doesn't turn around but he says, "Coffee mug to your left. Leftover from the guy I killed on the way in, but I'd chance it. The painkiller's from my pack and you're going to want it. I've got all the joints more or less back in place, but the swelling was bad."
Cam recognizes the blue oval as an OTC med but he palms it, pretends to drink a swallow of the coffee and wipes his mouth clean on his sleeve. "We got another way out of here? 'Cause I'm thinking you've just postponed things."
"No. They have us right where I want them," Alec says calmly, still typing rapidly but not like he's panicking. Looking at the set of his shoulders, at his face reflected in the computer monitor he'd angled to keep an eye on Cam's chair, Cam's none too sure he wants to be in a situation that could panic this 'Alec.'
"So you got a plan? Any room for me to follow you on out?" This room's full of computers -- individual terminals, racks of server units, power cords in clusters of outlets, power wires running up to the ceiling and out, large metal-meshed vents pushing cold air down in a constant war against the heat of so many processors and hard drives. There's no visible water fountain, no door to even so much as a drain much less a john -- nothing to make this a self-contained work center. It should be, but apparently they just aren't that fucking smart yet. And doesn't that make you feel better about being clothes-lined off your cycle, Mitchell?
There's fire extinguishers behind glass on either side of the room; it looks like pulling one from its bracket might set off the fire alarm. It's the only kinda fire safety they practice, though, 'cause there's a shotgun racked next to the extinguishers and the safety ain't on.
"Fucking prepared for anything, huh?" Cam keeps looking around, but he can't find a 'this way out in case of fire' map, or a local phone book, and since when do techies not even have a flyer for the nearest pizza joint? Come to that, he can't find a phone.
"Not even close," Alec says calmly. "They can't get through their own door, and they can't gas us in here, much as they'd like to. Yes, I have a plan. Yes, I'm almost done. Yes, I'll take you with me." He smiles briefly, and it's not nice, but the amusement is real anyway. "They want you incapacitated. Reason enough to get you back out of here intact." Alec hits a final button with his whole hand, not a finger. He turns around, standing up even as the screen flashes dark before starting to scroll symbols too small for Cam to follow easily.
"Gas us?" Cam looks at the monitors again: one scrolling numbers, computer code of some kind, the others black with little white starbursts appearing randomly until the screen is full and black spirals out from the center before the fireworks start again and the screen fills again. It's almost hypnotic, and Alec has to snap his name before Cam looks back over.
"Yes, gas. The stuff I used on them. They're dead now," Alec says calmly. "Even the ones with the snakes around their spines. The gas has gone inert by now, and the security system is going to go unstable soon. Pass out again later, because even if I was willing to carry you, I couldn't do that and make it out in time."
Cam smiles despite himself. "And you ain't willing. Got it. Get your ass in gear, then."
Alec laughs at that, grin suddenly white, wild, and real as the other smiles haven't been. He goes through the door first, moving fast, and he deliberately stays a few paces ahead of Cam all the way through the hallways littered with black and white corpses made more ghastly by emergency lights, up the stairs thunking hollow concrete echoes under their boots in the yellow glow of battery-powered energy saving bulbs, around the corners that never have shooters waiting for them, just bodies to step over and between.
How Alec can run crouched over so far is a welcome diversion from images Cam knows will figure prominently in this month's nightmares, even if they aren't in the same league with the messes the Ori can make of a stubborn planet. Where Alec picked up that much skill with opening and hotwiring cars is another good line of speculation for a rattled brain. (Cam's pupils aren't the same width when he gets time to look; he knows his head wasn't hard enough this time, knows he's got a problem and needs his team real fucking soon.) How fast this guy's brain turns over options, weighs risks, makes decisions... that part's almost familiar to Cam, sure and skilled as his team.
Reminds him of Teal'c looking at a chessboard he's passing, Daniel glancing over at tomb hieroglyphics, Vala casing a store in one glance, Sam reaching for the problem as soon as she's got the cover off a control panel.
Cam blinks his eyes open to the feel of a hand on his shoulder, tries to come up swinging, but his left hand's full of air instead of zat and his right arm is telling him all circuits are busy. The view through the windshield is the sun coming up over a small town gas station; there's an honest to God, actual pay phone outside the passenger door. Hopefully it still works.
Alec just passes over a handful of change. "Call for a ride to a hospital. 911 if you can't wait for the military to get here."
Cam blinks at that, stares at him, and then closes his hand around the money. "Thanks."
"Call them. You've responded to the last two checks, but you do have a concussion." Alec grins suddenly. "It really was naproxen, but here." He hands over a wallet, and Cam realizes then that Alec's still gloved; there won't be any fingerprints on leather or money except those of the bastard Alec stole the wallet from. "Buy some coffee and some painkiller while you wait."
"Helluva bedside manner, Alec. Or whatever your name really is," Cam says, mild as milk.
That gets that same wild, dangerous grin. "You're been less trouble to rescue than most. And of course that's not my name . I wasn't in there deliberately to get to their computers, either. Good luck, Mitchell." Alec unfastens the seatbelt for him, waits for him to get out and close the door before he powers down the window and mentions, "And, Mitchell?"
"What?"
Alec's smile is gone again. "You swore to defend the Constitution. Learn to keep a blade hidden, and next time, be more ready to kill. They're Quislings. Killing is what you do to people who sell us all out."
Cam watches Alec pull away, taking the last word as he'd taken a compound's worth of lives, as he'd taken apart data SGC could have used. But Alec gave, too: gave Cam an arm that's back in joint at shoulder, elbow, and wrist and might just heal instead of swelling until already stressed tendons snapped. Gave him his life, his freedom, a ride to a phone and money to call. Hell, gave Cam a wallet where the driver's license and fingerprints might be enough of a crack to let the SGC lever open another Trust base, which is what Cam'd bet good money that place was.
The air's cold and Cam's exhausted; shaky with pain and one too many bouts of unconsciousness. So he calls the emergency number, dredges the correct responses and code words out to get help scrambling his way, and makes his way into the convenience store to buy a bottle of water and a sealed packet of anti-inflammatories. He'll still be awake when they get there to pick him up. That's not gonna be a problem, as much as he's got to think about, as many things as he needs to remember now so he can haul all the details back out later for the debrief.
Staying awake won't be a problem at all. Finding answers for his questions... that might be another matter.
~~~ finis ~~~
Comments, Commentary, Miscellanea:
'Not To Plan' much like 'Map not to scale.' Further, deponent sayeth not, including whose plans. I had hell's own time working out a title for this.
Yup, that was Alex Krycek. Cam didn't think about his appearance during the story, although he'll be able to give details for the debrief.
There's an aikido pin that will put you on one knee; if you try to break free, it'll dislocate wrist, elbow, and shoulder. Shoulders are bad to put back in, but elbows and wrists are worse.
Alex was there reprogramming and rerouting a couple satellites. But no, he doesn't like the Go'a'uld one bit. Knowing him, he stole the available intel on that gas, too. Cam won't get it from him, but he'll be able to tell Sam there's a gas that kills humans and Go'a'uld and something in the air neutralized it, given time. That alone will be useful to her.
Oh, and Alec, not Alex, because of the change in sound. Sibilants carry farther.
Disclaimers: Not mine, no moneys made, title explained at the end. Beta courtesy of Dragon, Alyss, devo, JiM, and tarsh; mistakes unfortunately by me.
Rated: PG or so, mostly for language.
Not To Plan
Cam's holding onto consciousness by five fingers and his teeth when they throw him through the doorway -- five because his right hand don't work for shit just now, all the way up to his shoulder -- which might explain why he doesn't think the other guy in the holding cell is alive, much less conscious.
Cam has no idea what the thugs' excuse is, and he's never gonna find out, either.
He comes up from the floor of the cell pain-blind, white light painted across his vision from slamming a dislocated shoulder into concrete. When he can see again, the other prisoner's slitting the second guard's throat. Not just ear to ear, either. It's an oddly graceful motion, curving across jugular, windpipe, carotid, not quite pausing at the upswing and then thrusting back and down, spearing along the back of the vertebrae without any scratch of metal on bone. He's good at it, and he killed the first guard while Cam was still standing up.
The guy's a knife himself, Cam decides, wavering on his feet: sleek, streamlined, edged, and lethal. Beautiful as air over a well-designed wing. Cam hauls his brain back together when the guy tosses him a zat, mouth curved in something that isn't really a smile.
"Use it if you know how, point it at them if you don't. We're leaving." The guy pulls Cam behind him the way 18-wheelers tug his cycle into their slipstream, and Cam's willing to let him take point -- he's a helluva lot less beat up than Cam is.
Still, it has to be asked. "And you don't think I'm a plant?"
The guy turns back, puts a hand over Cam's mouth -- and there's something wrong there, it's cool and hard, not a real hand at all -- and whispers, "Quiet." He vanishes around the corner, comes back no more mussed than he'd left and slipping into a black leather backpack like Cam pulling on his favorite flight jacket. He tugs Cam into motion again with that fake hand, good hand full of a zat of his own. "Of course not. You'd have bruises if you were a plant, not a ruined arm."
"Ain't ruined," Cam says flatly, not willing to believe that any more than he'd accepted the surgeons' collective belief he'd never fly again. He'll win this one too, and he can shoot a zat just fine left-handed anyway. "You got a plan? And a name?"
That gets a soft laugh. "Watch our backs. I'm Alec." He's busy at a locked door, focused on it instead of fighting it with arms and shoulders as well as clever hand and whatever he took from that side pocket of his pack. Cam doesn't think his name's really Alec, but what the hell, it'll do.
"Cam Mitchell." The door springs open and the sirens and lights finally erupt into paroxysms of sound and fury signifying... what?
Alec yanks him into the room he's opened and slams the door shut. The locks slam back into place, the chunk of metal into metal and wood audible even over the sirens. Alec just smiles again, that same curve of non-humor, and shifts Cam into a computer chair still warm from somebody's ass.
"This will hurt," Alec mentions and his fake hand catches Cam shoulder while his grip on Cam's arm tightens and pulls--
Cam's eyes open again while his brain's still filing pain/trouble/pain/noise/pain/strangers and as bad as he wants Teal'c there, or any of his team -- hell, right now he'd take that brand new first lieutenant who still looks like she has no idea why she's at the Mountain -- he doesn't need more than a second to match the man typing in steady bursts of keyboard clatter to his memories of however long ago the jailbreak was.
Alec doesn't turn around but he says, "Coffee mug to your left. Leftover from the guy I killed on the way in, but I'd chance it. The painkiller's from my pack and you're going to want it. I've got all the joints more or less back in place, but the swelling was bad."
Cam recognizes the blue oval as an OTC med but he palms it, pretends to drink a swallow of the coffee and wipes his mouth clean on his sleeve. "We got another way out of here? 'Cause I'm thinking you've just postponed things."
"No. They have us right where I want them," Alec says calmly, still typing rapidly but not like he's panicking. Looking at the set of his shoulders, at his face reflected in the computer monitor he'd angled to keep an eye on Cam's chair, Cam's none too sure he wants to be in a situation that could panic this 'Alec.'
"So you got a plan? Any room for me to follow you on out?" This room's full of computers -- individual terminals, racks of server units, power cords in clusters of outlets, power wires running up to the ceiling and out, large metal-meshed vents pushing cold air down in a constant war against the heat of so many processors and hard drives. There's no visible water fountain, no door to even so much as a drain much less a john -- nothing to make this a self-contained work center. It should be, but apparently they just aren't that fucking smart yet. And doesn't that make you feel better about being clothes-lined off your cycle, Mitchell?
There's fire extinguishers behind glass on either side of the room; it looks like pulling one from its bracket might set off the fire alarm. It's the only kinda fire safety they practice, though, 'cause there's a shotgun racked next to the extinguishers and the safety ain't on.
"Fucking prepared for anything, huh?" Cam keeps looking around, but he can't find a 'this way out in case of fire' map, or a local phone book, and since when do techies not even have a flyer for the nearest pizza joint? Come to that, he can't find a phone.
"Not even close," Alec says calmly. "They can't get through their own door, and they can't gas us in here, much as they'd like to. Yes, I have a plan. Yes, I'm almost done. Yes, I'll take you with me." He smiles briefly, and it's not nice, but the amusement is real anyway. "They want you incapacitated. Reason enough to get you back out of here intact." Alec hits a final button with his whole hand, not a finger. He turns around, standing up even as the screen flashes dark before starting to scroll symbols too small for Cam to follow easily.
"Gas us?" Cam looks at the monitors again: one scrolling numbers, computer code of some kind, the others black with little white starbursts appearing randomly until the screen is full and black spirals out from the center before the fireworks start again and the screen fills again. It's almost hypnotic, and Alec has to snap his name before Cam looks back over.
"Yes, gas. The stuff I used on them. They're dead now," Alec says calmly. "Even the ones with the snakes around their spines. The gas has gone inert by now, and the security system is going to go unstable soon. Pass out again later, because even if I was willing to carry you, I couldn't do that and make it out in time."
Cam smiles despite himself. "And you ain't willing. Got it. Get your ass in gear, then."
Alec laughs at that, grin suddenly white, wild, and real as the other smiles haven't been. He goes through the door first, moving fast, and he deliberately stays a few paces ahead of Cam all the way through the hallways littered with black and white corpses made more ghastly by emergency lights, up the stairs thunking hollow concrete echoes under their boots in the yellow glow of battery-powered energy saving bulbs, around the corners that never have shooters waiting for them, just bodies to step over and between.
How Alec can run crouched over so far is a welcome diversion from images Cam knows will figure prominently in this month's nightmares, even if they aren't in the same league with the messes the Ori can make of a stubborn planet. Where Alec picked up that much skill with opening and hotwiring cars is another good line of speculation for a rattled brain. (Cam's pupils aren't the same width when he gets time to look; he knows his head wasn't hard enough this time, knows he's got a problem and needs his team real fucking soon.) How fast this guy's brain turns over options, weighs risks, makes decisions... that part's almost familiar to Cam, sure and skilled as his team.
Reminds him of Teal'c looking at a chessboard he's passing, Daniel glancing over at tomb hieroglyphics, Vala casing a store in one glance, Sam reaching for the problem as soon as she's got the cover off a control panel.
Cam blinks his eyes open to the feel of a hand on his shoulder, tries to come up swinging, but his left hand's full of air instead of zat and his right arm is telling him all circuits are busy. The view through the windshield is the sun coming up over a small town gas station; there's an honest to God, actual pay phone outside the passenger door. Hopefully it still works.
Alec just passes over a handful of change. "Call for a ride to a hospital. 911 if you can't wait for the military to get here."
Cam blinks at that, stares at him, and then closes his hand around the money. "Thanks."
"Call them. You've responded to the last two checks, but you do have a concussion." Alec grins suddenly. "It really was naproxen, but here." He hands over a wallet, and Cam realizes then that Alec's still gloved; there won't be any fingerprints on leather or money except those of the bastard Alec stole the wallet from. "Buy some coffee and some painkiller while you wait."
"Helluva bedside manner, Alec. Or whatever your name really is," Cam says, mild as milk.
That gets that same wild, dangerous grin. "You're been less trouble to rescue than most. And of course that's not my name . I wasn't in there deliberately to get to their computers, either. Good luck, Mitchell." Alec unfastens the seatbelt for him, waits for him to get out and close the door before he powers down the window and mentions, "And, Mitchell?"
"What?"
Alec's smile is gone again. "You swore to defend the Constitution. Learn to keep a blade hidden, and next time, be more ready to kill. They're Quislings. Killing is what you do to people who sell us all out."
Cam watches Alec pull away, taking the last word as he'd taken a compound's worth of lives, as he'd taken apart data SGC could have used. But Alec gave, too: gave Cam an arm that's back in joint at shoulder, elbow, and wrist and might just heal instead of swelling until already stressed tendons snapped. Gave him his life, his freedom, a ride to a phone and money to call. Hell, gave Cam a wallet where the driver's license and fingerprints might be enough of a crack to let the SGC lever open another Trust base, which is what Cam'd bet good money that place was.
The air's cold and Cam's exhausted; shaky with pain and one too many bouts of unconsciousness. So he calls the emergency number, dredges the correct responses and code words out to get help scrambling his way, and makes his way into the convenience store to buy a bottle of water and a sealed packet of anti-inflammatories. He'll still be awake when they get there to pick him up. That's not gonna be a problem, as much as he's got to think about, as many things as he needs to remember now so he can haul all the details back out later for the debrief.
Staying awake won't be a problem at all. Finding answers for his questions... that might be another matter.
~~~ finis ~~~
Comments, Commentary, Miscellanea:
'Not To Plan' much like 'Map not to scale.' Further, deponent sayeth not, including whose plans. I had hell's own time working out a title for this.
Yup, that was Alex Krycek. Cam didn't think about his appearance during the story, although he'll be able to give details for the debrief.
There's an aikido pin that will put you on one knee; if you try to break free, it'll dislocate wrist, elbow, and shoulder. Shoulders are bad to put back in, but elbows and wrists are worse.
Alex was there reprogramming and rerouting a couple satellites. But no, he doesn't like the Go'a'uld one bit. Knowing him, he stole the available intel on that gas, too. Cam won't get it from him, but he'll be able to tell Sam there's a gas that kills humans and Go'a'uld and something in the air neutralized it, given time. That alone will be useful to her.
Oh, and Alec, not Alex, because of the change in sound. Sibilants carry farther.